I lower my voice an octave, just to show I mean business. “No good souls go to Hell on my watch. Not unless we’ve no other choice.”
Celia’s entire body quivers as she speaks. “Our choice was already made for us. By the ghouls. All we have to do is act on it.”
I watch Celia tremble; all the irritation drains right out of me. The ghouls spent twenty years brainwashing her. Her so-called Masters left only two months ago. I can’t expect to erase years of conditioning in a matter of weeks. “When was the last time you slept, Celia?”
“Two days ago, Great Scala.”
I rest my hand gently on her upper arm. “Go home. Take the day off. We’ll talk about this later.”
After a fast nod, Celia slowly walks away.
Suddenly, the power generators stop. Green lights flicker along the top of the Tower, showing that we’re now running on back-up energy from Upper Purgatory. Everything turns eerily quiet.
My body goes on alert. Shutdowns like this only happen if the containment walls crash or if there’s some serious diplomatic gunk going on. Maybe we’re about to get an emergency visit from my mother, who’s now Purgatory’s President.
I cross my fingers, hoping it’s Mom.
From across the concrete floor, my best friend Cissy appears in the doorway. She’s our new Senator for Diplomacy, so that puts things solidly into the ‘diplomatic gunk category’ of shutdown. I exhale a shaky breath. I don’t need any more adrenaline rushes today.
My best friend runs at me at full speed, her golden retriever tail wagging busily behind her. Cissy is tall and willowy with tawny brown eyes and blonde hair that falls in neat ringlets. Today, she wears purple Senatorial robes and a worried look on her face. She stops to a skid at my side.
“You’re in your Scala robes, good.”
Huh. Cissy wants me to look all official. Must be an ultra-important diplomatic thingy going on.
“What’s up, Cis? Is Mom coming over?” I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been monitoring this whole scene from her office via the Control Room.
“No. Do you want the bad news, or the really-bad news?”
“Let’s start with the bad.”
“Adair’s coming over with all the other inter-realm Diplomats.”
I let out a long groan. Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.
That’s Adair as in Lady Adair, the nutjob who wants to marry my very-much-in-love-with-me boyfriend Lincoln, the High Prince of the demon-fighting thrax. A few months ago, Adair became Thrax Diplomat to Purgatory. Since then, she hasn’t done dick as diplomat. Her sole purpose seems to be following me around, trying to cause trouble. Last week alone, she started three petitions about my supposed incompetence as a leader. No one signed them, but still. Sheesh.
“What’s my personal stalker up to this time?”
“Adair’s performing an official emergency inspection of this Ghost Tower, followed by some kind of formal announcement.”
“Ugh. That could be a problem.” Especially since one of my Cloud Carriers looks like Swiss cheese. Not exactly inspection-friendly.
Cissy shakes her head sadly. “I’m so sorry, Myla. I’ve been trying to run interference for you.”
“Hey, just because you’re the Senator for Diplomacy doesn’t mean you have to be Adair’s babysitter. It’s bad enough that she took over your day with her emergency.” I make little quotation marks with my fingertips when I say that last word.
“Goes with the job,” retorts Cissy with a shrug. “Diplomats can’t go around inspecting Purgatory’s buildings without having our Senator for Diplomacy along.”
“Still, you’ve better stuff to do.” I give the floor a frustrated kick with my sandal. “When will she be here, anyway?”
“In a few minutes,” says Cissy. “I just found out about this myself. You know how Adair’s been grilling me about the Ghost Towers. I told her it’s classified, but she interviewed some Wardens in this tower and heard all about our problems.”
“Man, I hope it wasn’t Celia.”
“Who’s Celia?”
“My Lead Warden. She’s been a little twitchy lately.”
“Well, whoever it was, Adair’s now in a big huff.”
Unfortunately, as Thrax Diplomat, Adair has every right to huff. If the ghosts break free, her people will be called into Purgatory to clean up the mess. And if Adair uses her Diplomatic role to make noise about our Tower problems, there’ll be a ton more pressure on me to move souls to Hell. My people tolerate my changing the ghoul-rules—they’re even excited to get rid of the Orb—but that’s only because they don’t know they have Ghost-Tower-pressure-cookers in their back yards.
“Can you stall her for a bit? I need to fix up this Carrier.” The ghosts are already sleepwalking around, finding comfy spots to snooze, but the containment walls look B-A-D.
Cissy stares at the spider web of fractures along the Carrier wall, noticing them for the first time. “Myla, this thing almost broke wide open. I’ve seen smashed windshields that look better.”