“Can we help that poor man hanging from the pole, Grandpa?”

  Dick cocked his head to survey the gibbet. “Nah, he’s gone. Must’ve died and faded already. Too bad for him.”

  “Oh, I wish you’d only killed Vassos. They all abused me, but I had somewhere to live. What shall I do now? Work a corner? Oh, why did I ever talk to that devil!”

  Dick gasped in horror, and wasted precious seconds trying to remember the last time he’d gasped like that. He couldn’t recall. “Y-you... talked to a devil?”

  “I wanted revenge on Vassos. I saw him stick a knife in your eye! I thought he’d killed you and you were Giftless, gone from the world. But you were still alive.”

  “Yeah. The devil fail to mention that to you, did he?”

  “I suppose.”

  Dick’s upper face tightened, almost like a smile, but tighter. His eyes warmed and crinkled up. Shaking it off, he screeched: “How could you be so stupid to sign a contract with a devil, ya numbskull!”

  Becky bit her fingertips, whimpering in a pathetic rhythm. “Some men call their granddaughters Precious. Or Princess. Or Kitten. Mine calls me Numbskull.”

  “Aye, and you’re fortunate! It’s the nicest word I got for girls.” Dick fished around in his purse. “I got money for you.”

  “How much is it?” Becky held her hands out.

  “Not a chance. I lost your mother to a handsome, smooth-talking pukebucket what took advantage of her. That won’t happen to you, not on my watch! We’re goin’ straight to town.”

  “Are we riding the ghost horse?”

  Dick couldn’t suppress a half-hearted giggle. “Ghost horse? Nah, that’s a smokemare. Never mind, it won’t carry you. I know your leg’s messed up, but ya gotta walk. Sorry. And once we’re in town, we go straight to the counting-house. Then to the docks. I’m buying passage for you Becky. On a ship east, to the Empire. Far, far away from all the rotten people ye’ve ever known, starting with me. It’s the best shot I can give you. I’ll put the rest of the money on a letter of credit, payable only in Konigsburg by the Great Falian Merchant Company, payable only directly to you in your presence, with a big payday for whoever escorts you there safely, and a piece set aside to the Church of the Maker to educate you.”

  “Do you truly see me as being a priestess of the Maker?”

  “Hmmm. Not really, no. But if anyone can get you out of a devil’s contract, it’s those self-righteous, scheming pricks in the churches of light. You’re awful young, maybe they can work that angle. And if they don’t, suck it up and die one Gift, two Gifts, whatever it takes to be free of this bastard . . . so . . . so you can have some real choices in your life!”

  “Is that the whole plan? Join the church of the Maker, just to try and use them that way, for what I want?”

  “Becky you’re fourteen. You’ve got no idea what you want.” Dick wondered why he was panting so much. “And Becky . . . don’t ever lose faith that there are good people in this world. Who mean well. They let you down sometimes, ’cause they ain’t perfect, but in the end---”

  “Oh cut the shit, Grandpa! You don’t believe that’s true.”

  Dick drew back his hand, barely restraining himself from slapping her. “I didn’t SAY it was fucking true! I said have faith in it. The gods don’t love us, Becky, as you well know, so you might as well kiss ass while you may and play the odds! Faith is like rum: too much makes ya crazy, but a little gets you through the rough patches.”

  *

  Halfway between sunrise and noon, Dick and the smokemare waited on the crest of the rocky cliffs. He stretched his shiny, new-bought telescope to watch the ship Becky was on. It was a merchant ship, with its captain’s son for a mate: a fresh-faced strapping buck with a head full of numbers and a mouth full of please-and-thank-you. The captain’s other son was a brand-new Makerite priest. Both young men had noticed Becky was beautiful... or at least, pretty... or at least, not male, and were seeking her regard. Their father had noticed the reward for escorting her safe to her payoff destination. With luck, that might lead to good things.

  “Best you could do, Dick,” he muttered. “Best ya could do.”

  “Ahem!”

  Dick shut the telescope without sparing the devil a glance. “So I got the smokemare till sunset, right? Or should I call it a ghost horse?”

  “That was the sloppiest performance I’ve seen in a century!”

  “Didn’t I leave Katrina alive?”

  “Briefly, yes. The plodder stepped on her ribcage and crushed it during your little game of tag.”

  “Haw! That’s funny. Serves her right!” said Dick. Then, biting his lip and stretching his palms out, “Aw, maybe not. I never been good at figgerin’ just desserts.”

  “Are you aware of how badly that went? Your half-cocked rampage actually killed every Grumachian in that camp except Vassos Milagro!”

  Dick’s eyes widened again, this time in delight. “You mean he’s still alive in there? Alone in the middle of the woods! Broken legs, no tongue, no eyes, with that monster standing over him like a mother hen?”

  “As you predicted, you idiot! The plodder follows orders from Vassos.”

  “What’s he gonna order with no tongue? Eh?” Dick’s mouth got so wide his cheeks hurt. “Can ya tell me that? What’s he gonna do? Write out orders on a little chalkboard round his neck?” Dick threw his head back, dispatching guffaws to the sky’s blanket of white clouds. “And with no eyes - mebbe he’ll get his monster to lead him around by the hand! Only it’s a mindless flesh-eater made of moss and carrion, what can’t think!”

  The devil trembled in rage, waiting for Dick’s mirth to die down.

  “That little coward’s shivering helpless in the wild, stuck to his musclebound undead giant until he freezes! Or starves! And guess what, devil - if he dies that way on his last Gift, that means he’ll never be murdered!” Dick couldn’t restrain himself from bouncing in the saddle. “You’ll be in breach, you ruff-collared ass! Your contract with Becky’ll be no good! Devil, your contract’s no good!”

  “You may find your final two Gifts don’t last as long as you may hope, Mr. Skyler.”

  “Did I say I have two Gifts left? I got only one.”

  “That’s impossible. All my sources agree you’ve died only three times.”

  “Maybe, but you couldn’t have been that certain. If you’d been certain, you wouldn’t have felt it necessary to go over all my deaths one by one before signing the contract.”

  “How’d this fourth death of yours happen?”

  “Moving stolen jewelry at a rendezvous point. Deal went bad. I didn’t make it out.”

  “How could my sources have missed this?”

  “Your sources can foul things up, they’re mortal ain’t they? Well, between me marching with the demons and me joining the army? I ran with the church of Ullon, Lord of Secrets and Deception.”

  “But Ullonites never sign contracts with devils! Their rules forbid it!”

  “Tell me about it. That’s why I left the Ullon church, same way I left the Unmaker church. Too many damn rules! Gods’re all like that. Bunch of whiny pissers.”

  “No one leaves the Ullon church voluntarily. They’d have marked you for death!”

  “Well, not all my deals went bad. I bought them off with my next big score. Then I signed my military pension over to ’em, so they know when I die the money stops. I also did some favors, like lying under oath. Got an innocent guy hanged - the guilty bastard went free!” Dick indulged himself with another laugh. “Yeah, no one knows bad like Mean Dick Skyler.”

  “So you left two churches of darkness and lived to tell about it?”

  Dick scowled. “I thought you said you’d seen it all. You may have seen it all, but ya don’t really know nothing because you’ve never felt it. Ya succeed here and there in your silly chess game, and maybe ya win more than ya lose. What good’s it do ya?

  “Real triumph is this: when you’re mortal, and you kill another mortal. You win yourself another precious few years, drippin’ out your heart, out your lungs and out your ass, ’cause that’s all you have anyway. Real triumph belongs to us, who take real risks! Stop jawing and get some dirt under your fingernails: it’ll do ya good.”

  Dick pulled on the insubstantial reins, to make the smokemare rear. He regretted that it would never whinny, and he couldn’t make it piss or shit on command.

  “Now suppose I go back to enjoying myself. I’d have, oh, maybe a week before you set up some other deal for me. With every loose end tied up tighter than a rat’s ball-sack. Dick do this, Dick do that, or you’ll arrange some awful fate for Becky, am I right? I’m the only one who loves her. So as far as you’re concerned, she’s my biggest weakness, and I’m hers. So fuck you, devil. Take your forty years of youth and shove it up your fart chimney.”

  The devil threw up his hands. “Where do you think you’ll end up, Dick? Even if your soul won’t be mine, you still have much to answer for! You’ll be one more faceless sufferer among the legions of the damned.”

  “Aye, but you’ll gain nothing by it. And faceless or not, you’ll know me right enough. I’ll be the one laughing at you.”

  Mean Dick Skyler spurred the smokemare to a gallop. He rode it far, far out from the cliff’s edge, for one last lunge at the sunshine.

  THE DEVIL, YOU SAY

  by Alice Gaines

  Chapter One

  Ms Carole McHenry looked like an escapee from a fashion runway in hell: draped in an expensive cashmere suit with a skirt that barely reached mid-thigh, with every blonde hair coifed into submission and a body thin enough to bend in ways humans weren't meant to bend. She oozed a cloying quantity of Coco Mademoiselle. Worse, she was going to be Cyn's new boss.

  Cyn had worked her tuchus off for months to get this promotion. Stewart had all but promised the job of customer accounts manager to her - but then had hired someone from the outside after all. Now, he sat leering at his newest acquisition as if he’d already figured out a way to get into her pants. Maybe he had. Who knew? Maybe he’d hired her as payment for services rendered.

  “Carole will be transitioning into her new management role on Monday,” Stew announced.

  “That’s Carole with an ‘e,’” the new boss added.

  Cyn nodded. Both of them had told her that. Maybe the extra vowel got Carole a few thou more in salary.

  Stew leaned back in his faux leather executive chair. “I’d like you to prioritize your calendar so that you can show Carole the scope of her new duties.”

  “I have to train her?” Holy excrement. The bastard expected her to train the woman who’d gotten her job.

  “You’ve been here a while, Cyn.” Stew gave her an oily smile.

  “Six years.” Six long years of scrimping and saving in hopes of buying a piece of the American dream – her own house – only to watch the ridiculous real estate market snatch her dream away from her time after time. Without this promotion, she’d have to spend years scraping together a down payment, if she could even get a mortgage. Now her chances collapsed, thanks to Stewart and his obsession with leggy, skinny blondes.

  “I look forward to working with you, Cynthia,” the skinny blonde said. She didn’t look as if she looked forward to it, though. Her nose and brows lifted and her lip curled as if she didn't quite approve of Cyn, as if she planned to deliver mini-lectures on the "epidemic of obesity" and leave low-carb diet sheets around the office.

  ”I look forward to it, too, Carole,” Cyn said sweetly. “Say, I wonder if I might have a word with Stewart alone.”

  Carole’s eyebrow went up even further, and she glanced over at Stew for guidance.

  His beady eyes narrowed in disapproval. Then, he gave Carole a slick smile and gestured toward the door. “Would you excuse us?”

  “Of course.” Carole rose and sashayed to the office door, leaving behind a cloying cloud of Mademoiselle Coco. She paused with her hand on the knob. “Lunch later?”

  “Sure, doll.”

  Doll? Stew called his new accounts manager “doll”? He’d put Cyn off her feed if he ever called her anything like that. It didn’t seem to bother Carole, though, because she smiled and let herself out, closing the door behind her.

  “That was pretty rude,” Stew said, his pointy weasel nose all a-twitch. “You’re going to have to interface with Carole on a daily basis, you know.”

  “How could you do this?” Cyn demanded.

  “Do what?”

  “How could you hire someone from the outside?”

  A printer rattled, a phone beeped, and a computer voice chirped about an anti-virus update.

  Cyn waited.

  “I never bottom-lined it for you.” More nose-twitching. Stewart always got that rodent look on his face when he lied.

  “You told me all I had to do to prove I was manager material was to run Customer Accounts for a while. I did it for four months - and without a rise in salary. I defined the target audience for our new imprint, developed and implemented the strategy for social network promotion, and increased our customer base by four percent and our income by eight. In four months, I achieved more for the company than my predecessor did in four years!”

  “I appreciate your task-orientedness.” Stew steepled his hands on the imitation oak desk. “But it’s time to sunset that work modality for you and look at what’s best for this company at the end of the day.”

  “Speak English, Stewart.”

  His eyes narrowed even further. “Carole has more experience than you.”

  She also had pert boobs, long legs and non-existent hips, and she put up with being called “doll” - Stewart’s dream of a seductive yet compliant female.

  “Besides,” he said. “She’s an asset, brand-wise.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “We have a company website, you know.”

  “I ought to. I designed it.”

  “Carole’s picture there projects an image. It says, ‘this is a company with a winning paradigm.’”

  “Excuse me?”

  Stewart took a deep breath. “It says we have our feet on the ground, our nose to the grindstone, and our eyes on the prize.”

  And our head up our ass. She didn't speak her thought loud. Instead, she said, “Eye candy on the website.”

  “You’re being counterproductive, Cyn,” Stew said. “You need to stay on-goal.”

  “Oh, I’m on goal.” She rose, planted her fists on Stew’s desk and stared down at him. “And my goal requires promotion. Specifically, the position of customer account manager, and the salary that goes with it.”

  “The company has plenty of opportunities for advancement.” He gazed past her at the golf trophies on his shelf. “Don’t blame me if you haven’t utilized the right career paths.”

  Her fingers itched to shake the little weasel. That wouldn’t get her a promotion, though. In fact, it’d probably get her fired. She ought to quit on her own, but good job opportunities didn’t pop up everywhere these days, and most folks were happy to earn a paycheck, even from a boss like Stew the Poo.

  “Now, maybe you’d better get back to work,” the Poo said. “I still need the project implementation projections.”

  Cyn did a not-so-slow burn. The creep had dangled the carrot of a promotion in front of her for months. Then, he’d hired someone from the outside. Next, he’d ordered Cyn to train the new person. Now, he’d dismissed her. If she stuck around another minute, she’d say something she’d regret.

  So, she stood and looked down at him. “Fine.”

  He gave her an oily smile. He’d won, and he knew it. “You’re a team-player, Cyn. That’s what I like about you.”

  “Right,” she said from between clenched teeth. Before either of them could say another word, she turned and left the office.

  Once in the hallway, she pulled the door closed carefully, rather than slam it, as she’d really like to do. Then, she pounded her head on the wall a few times.

  Bam. There had to be another job somewhere that would pay her more money. But, she’d have to leave her pension and 401k if she left.

  Bam. There had to be a way for a regular single person to qualify for a mortgage. But in Oakland, decent houses started at three-hundred thousand.

  Bam. She’d move to the boondocks. But then, she’d have a multi-hour commute on freeways that looked like parking lots at rush hour.

  Bam. There had to be some way. There had to be.

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “Huh?” Cyn looked up.

  Midge, the receptionist, was staring at her with alarm-widened eyes, coffee spilling from her mug.

  “Why are you pounding your head against the wall?” Midge righted her cup.

  “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  She knew it didn’t. Still, what could she do?

  “Calories,” Cyn mumbled. “I need calories.”

  *

  Smells of chili and cilantro filled the air at Romero's, mingled with the scents of corn, cumin and melted cheese.

  Jenny shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the wooden chair opposite Cyn’s. “Okay, who died?”

  Cyn set down her menu. “You don’t want to know.”

  “You never ask me to meet you at Romero’s unless something really bad has happened.”

  “Sit down and help me decide,” Cyn said. “I plan to order half the menu.”

  From the kitchen came incessant chatter in Spanish and the clattering of pans and dishes.

  Jenny sat and put her warm hand on Cyn’s. “Tell me, honey.”

  “In a minute. I need to fortify myself with some refried beans.”

  “We’ll go for ice cream afterwards.”

  Bless Jenny. The rest of the world acted as if she had no right to eat because she wore a size twenty-two, but Jenny never disapproved.

  The elderly waiter waited with a pen poised in his gnarled fingers. “Do las señoritas know what you’ll have?”

  “We’ll want to split some guacamole,” Cyn said. “And I’ll have the number three.”

  Jenny didn’t even look at her menu. “I’ll have the same.”