Now he frowned, the vein in his temple pulsing. “I hesitate to say this, but I’m guessing you won’t believe me.”
“And that’s stopped you from yakking my ear off before? You set my chair on fire to get me to pay attention to you. Whatever it is, it must be serious—so tell me what the frig you want from me, and let me decide if I believe you.” Which she probably wouldn’t, but who didn’t want to hear the gossip they’d evoked straight from Hell? If she was all the rage down there, she wanted every juicy detail.
“All right. So it’s just like I told you. I don’t know how I ended up in Hell. I’d swear that on the Bibles that crazy woman offered me. A stack of them. I’ve been there for three months—in the file room.”
A snicker escaped her throat. “Hell has files?”
Clyde’s face grew strained, almost as if what he claimed to have seen in these files really did trouble him. “A shitload of them,” he said with a gruff note to his tone. “On everyone—the incoming, the due to be incoming, potential visitors, the easily corrupted, the want to corrupt but haven’t decided what road to take to the land of corruption—plus, mission assignments for all the demons in Hell, et cetera.”
Mayhem, madness, and chaos—all in one neat little filing system. Very clean. “So what does that have to do with me? I can’t be corrupted, believe me. I know.” And know she did. She’d been offered wealth and power once before by the very definition of evil. It’d been ugly, ugly. That warning shiver ran along her arms again with just the hint of the long-ago memory.
Clyde’s jaw shifted. “You weren’t in those files, Delaney. You were in the files for ‘vengeance—long overdue.’ ”
Her bravado slipped from her hands like sand in an hourglass. Her breath wheezed out of her lungs, leaving a heavy pressure in its wake. “Meaning?”
The pained expression left his eyes and they took on a solemn, direct stare. “Meaning, someone was assigned to come here and taunt you, to torment you in whatever way they had to, to get you to give in and follow Satan. From what little I read, your file was flagged. It’s the kind of file that’s in the equivalent of the urgent basket, which means a demon given the assignment is supposed to do whatever it takes to bend you to his will—make a contract with you—because, as Marcella said, demons can’t literally kill anyone. They can only coerce you into doing something that will land your soul in Hell upon your death—make you see your worst fears by creating illusions. I gather they were going to try and make you so crazy that you might end your . . . commit . . . suicide,” he said with graveness so gravelly deep, she couldn’t ignore it.
Huh. Surely the devil, after his run-in with her fifteen years ago, knew that just wasn’t gonna happen. Hadn’t he already tried, indirectly anyway, to corrupt her and found out he was SOL? But suicide . . . that was playing some serious hardball. Fighting to find her calm, Delaney popped her lips. “Well, if you were sent here to make me want to end it all, you’re doing a phenomenally shitty job, my friend. Though, if you hang around much longer, temptation might not be as mighty an effort to resist.”
For the first time, Clyde laughed, but it wasn’t the kind that dripped with sarcasm. It was hearty, rich, deep. It left something warm in her belly, right in the deepest depth of it, stealing another gasp of air from her she had to hide. “But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I don’t belong in Hell and I’m damned sure not going to participate in helping you take . . . well, you know. When I realized no one was doing anything but laughing at me behind my back, and sometimes boldly to my face when I told them I’d been gypped, I decided to figure out a way to get out of Dodge without doing anything too heinous to anyone. Especially after I found out what those beginners’ demon classes were. When I refused to participate in learning how to create mayhem, or study ‘Possession—Your Guide to Rebirth,’ I was sent to the file room, and for someone like me, all that paperwork really is Hell—a punishment I can’t quite describe, and my level boss knew it. I was eventually labeled difficult, but not untrainable. So I lay low, learned a thing or two. Learned newbie demons are granted day-, week-, even month-long passes all the time. But, some of the things I’ve learned—seen—I’d like to forget. So there it is.”
Her lips pursed. “Still doesn’t explain why Lucifer sent you to do this particular deed. You’re a noob. Unless he thought you had some innate ability. Like driving mediums crazy with a demon’s constant yapping.”
His sigh expelled from his chest, making it expand and push at the throw she’d given him. “You’re right, I am a noob, painfully so. But Lucifer doesn’t do much more than leave the assignments up to his level bosses—most times. Though your file had his handwriting all over it. But here’s the clincher on this whole mess. I wasn’t really assigned to you.”