“That may be, but we pride ourselves on being the most exclusive area in afterlife disposition. All the best worst people are here, from beyond the Gates of Eden to that of your most difficult forebear, who was an actual lord. Alas, Adrian Ashworth had not sinned quite enough to enter.
“He did kill that ragamuffin you see there, who has darkened our antechamber and inhabits limbo on his account. Adrian Ashworth, Lord Heathford, as of now inhabits your earthly shell in that satisfying arena of what your time calls sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. He will have a second chance at entrance by despoiling what few virgins remain there. You, however, have become an awkward evictee. You’re eminently worthy of our divinely evil company, but . . . the Other Place believes you too deserve a chance at redemption. I am sure you have all the right stuff, as they say, to return here and join the right people.”
Here the black double doors behind Pitt flared open on a wildly lit, scream-filled vista. Adrian stepped forward without thinking. Light, heat, ear-shattering sound, adulation . . .
He paused. “Why does the child care
where
I go?”
Pitt shrugged. “Self-interest. Its fate is now tied to your shirttails, not your forebear’s. Lord Heathford drove the horses pulling his perch phaeton too fast around a corner en route to visit his mistress after over-imbibing on the Eve of the Holiday That Shall Not Be Named. Equipage and driver crashed, sweeping a young match-seller into the afterlife with him.”
“I . . . he was a drunk driver and killed a child?”
“There’s no need to boast. We here at the Yorick Club well know the finer qualities of those up for membership. Your predecessor’s need for further achievements has complicated your admittance, but I am sure of eventually welcoming you both.” Pitt sighed. “Now you must undergo some token attempt at redemption. I have full confidence that you will confound the boring do-gooders. Go forth and sin some more.”
Adrian stared at the set of grand ebony doors, listening hard. “Those are the gates of Hell?”
“Nothing so gruesome as you think, my dear sir. We have a long waiting list for our premium facilities. All the best people are eager to continue their excessive ways in an environment that truly caters to them.”
Adrian had dealt with enough crooked record company execs and financial managers to recognize a dicey deal when he heard one. He turned to the oddly adult child.
“I can get a ‘second chance’? Not be . . . dead?”
Again the squat figure regarded Pitt. “He could return to the forebear’s death scene, and proceed from there. He’ll either prove to be a better or a worse man than he is now, and it will be clear where he belongs for eternity, your Yorick Club or my Blue Heaven.”
“I am still annoyed that the first one squeaked through to a similar experiment in the future at the last moment. He eyed Adrian. “However. I am convinced he will choose our side. Look. Even now he trembles from the absence of the drug he craves and that fuels his lust and greed and pride and gluttony. Lovely, lovely man.”
Adrian only then sensed the hunger crawling under his skin, eating at him.
It was either rehab with the ghastly resurrected waif his ancestor had accidentally killed . . . or the unknown eternity behind the black doors that looked so fine and elegant, like Pitt, but contained a constant forsaken wail that shredded Adrian’s nerves like chalk on a blackboard.
“Take me,” Adrian either begged or ordered, he didn’t know which, staring at the pitiful child. And it did, instantly.
He fell back onto rough stones and into the stench of garbage. Under some glint of dawn he saw a couple of rag pickers lifting a small limp form into a wheelbarrow.
“’At one’s still living, barely,” one raw Cockney voice said with a nod in his direction. “We’ll fetch ’im tomorrow.”
So the abandoned child had abandoned him here in turn. He shuddered from the foggy, tepid dampness. London, he thought, in an earlier era. How could he redeem himself here?
“And what the hell is a ‘perch phaeton,’ some sort of fish . . . ?” Adrian muttered as everything faded again.
***
“Goodness, Huddlestone,” a woman’s voice said from high above and far away like an angel’s. “Do you suppose he’s dead?”
“I’ve no wish to get close enough to tell, Miss Marianne.”
“You’ll just have to. We’ve had no luck for hours and Papa will be furious we’re coming home after dark. I must not miss a Christmas wish. Look at the poor man. No coat, no gloves, no hat in this chill weather. Yet he’s wearing leather breeches and boots, and a shirt hand-sewn from good material.”
“Please do not bend so near. It is on my head if he murders you. He is likely a groomsman, and a drunkard, and, I do hope, dead.”
“Huddlestone!”
“Your father will raise the roof at what trophy you propose to bring home this year. And I’ve no wish to be carting such street filth in the family carriage. Even the horses will take exception to
this
!”
“You know the bargain.” Miss Marianne’s voice turned stern. “Any pitiful creature once a year for Christmas.”
“‘Creature’ means furred and feathered, or God help us, scaled.”
“And scaled,” she agreed.
“Don’t remind me of that one! He’s no beauty either,” Huddlestone muttered.
Nevertheless, Adrian felt hands hook under his arms and tug hard.
“And,” the man’s voice grunted, “given your menagerie already, that’s saying something. Folly indeed. It’s on your head, Miss Marianne, and
I’ll
not be thanking you for this night’s work either.”
***
Adrian felt like Alice Cooper in Wonderland over the next few hours. He’d been carted to bed semi-unconscious before, of course, and put in a cold shower to sober up, but the water had never felt so icy, the bed so lumpy, and he had never ached so much or felt so disoriented. Or smelled so much excrement. Could Hell itself be worse than this?
“C’mon, Buttercup!” A kick at the side of his leg awoke Adrian. “Time to rise and shine.”
Buttercup?
Adrian tried to bound up, only to be hit in the face by the swish of a long blond ponytail. A coarse, long blond . . . tail on an immense horse. Thank God
that
was “Buttercup.” He rose from his bed of hay to follow the creature’s swaying buttocks and clopping hooves into daylight, blinking.
His boots were replaced by clogs, and his borrowed shirt and long trousers were as coarse and itchy as Buttercup’s tail. He shivered. The English Christmas air was chill, not icy, but the damp bit into the bone. His fingers combed through hair still stiff with hay.
The groom led the horse onto a red brick path through a leafy passage toward a classical white structure, like a mini-rotunda, dead ahead. Did horses go to Hell too? A scent of roses, not brimstone, saturated the air. They were passing a glass hothouse and finally paused beside the round structure, which toffs called a garden “folly,” he recalled. Before the classical white pillars stood—not Pitt—but a Grecian lady in a long blue gown gathered below her breasts, her hair bound up in a coronet with tendrils all around.
Adrian blinked. Was this the heaven the wretched child had called “Blue”? Or Mount Olympus?
“Buttercup,” the young woman called joyfully, looking up.
The groom released the horse’s harness and left, rolling his eyes as he passed Adrian. “Good luck, mate.”
Buttercup snorted up the sugar lumps in her palm. Then she patted the horse and approached Adrian.
He backed away. It was white and consumable, but. . . . “Sugar’s not my drug of choice.” Nor was licking hands.
She was busy sizing him up anyway. “You’re looking much better, poor man.”
The once-over was mutual. He seldom saw natural brown hair. His women either went platinum blond or Goth black, and the pink in her cheeks was from the weather, not Urban Decay. Her short jacket had long sleeves for the chill, but it still revealed a low neckline filled in with gauze. He detected a plump bit of cleavage. Not his style. He liked them lean and mean. Her neck was long and graceful, though, like the ostrich now ambling in front of the mini-Greek temple. The ostrich? Was there a Greek goddess whose symbol was an ostrich? He didn’t think so.
Adrian looked around, and spotted a white rabbit sitting up on its haunches eyeing him back.
Was this actually Wonderland?
“The grooms clothed you,” she said, “but that really won’t do. Your own clothes were of quality.”
“You . . . looked at them? They were filthy rags.”
“After you were out of them, of course.”
“After I was out of them. Did you look at me then too?”
She blushed—at least he thought that was what had turned her cheeks scarlet—and evaded answering.
“They were too worn to wear, but the shirt was China silk and the breeches and boots the highest quality leather. You’re quite a mystery. Who are you?”
I am Adrian Lord and I’m as rich as a Russian oligarch.
“Anybody Nobody,” he said, “but you must be the ‘Miss Marianne’ I heard that man talking to when I arrived.”
“Arrived? What an odd way to put being found in a gutter. No matter, you are safe here now, and I’ll ask Huddlestone to find you a coat.” She frowned. “Oh, those fantastical boots you wore. Most . . . gypsy like. I can’t promise to replace their match. And your hair, worn so long in the old way. I rather like it.”
“Marianne and her idiotic tender heart,” came the soft words from a voice as acid as a lemon.
Adrian turned to find a woman dressed like his rescuer, but in fabrics that shone and crackled.
“And what does this one eat?” she asked as she circled him. “Grass, leaves and hay do not seem sufficient. Papa will be even more livid about its cost than Buttercup’s or Beau Brummel’s.”
“Beau Brummel?” Adrian had heard the name somewhere. A brand of whiskey?
“The ostrich,” the fair-haired woman answered his unspoken question. “
Marianne
thinks its neck is
elegan
t and in need of an
ascot
. Now, I wonder what you’re in need of.”
Adrian knew a woman on the prowl in any guise. He kept still.
“I’m so sorry,” Marianne told him. “Selina is right. I hadn’t thought about feeding you. Present yourself at the kitchen door immediately and Cook will take care of you.”
“And where will it sleep?” the blond went on, mocking them both. “In the stable with Buttercup, I suppose. They seem quite the matched pair.”
Was she the evil stepmother? Was he in a fairytale? Undoubtedly, heaven was one.
Selina smirked. “Please dispose of it as you wish, sister.” The word “sister” unleashed Selina’s real feelings. “You always do. You’re the favorite, but now you’re ruined and you’ve destroyed my chances and the family’s as well, yet you still insist on Papa granting your Christmas wish.
You are the soul of selfishness.”
Selina rustled away toward a large brick three-story house.
“How are you ruined?” Adrian asked. “What is your Christmas wish? Does it involve plucking half-dead blokes out of the gutter?”
She smiled. “Actually, you are far less ‘half-dead’ than my usual specimens.” She pointed to the horse, the rabbit now nibbling the grass with a goat and a lamb, and the ostrich leaning its delicate neck into the white latticework girding the folly to keep the birds inside safe.
“This horse?” Adrian lifted a wary hand to stroke its muscular shoulder. “It has quite an unusual coat. Almost plaid in places.”
“Scars of the whip.”
Adrian’s hand retracted immediately, though the horse hadn’t flinched. “Poor bastard.”
Miss Marianne put a hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Oh. Father uses that word when he thinks no one will hear. And myself. I had to dress down Buttercup’s driver quite ferociously to get him to loose the traces at once, and sell me the horse.”
“I don’t see you as the ferocious sort and I don’t see this horse being called anything by such a master, much less ‘Buttercup.’ ”
Her expression was fiendishly angelic. “I always name my ‘finds,’ so if you don’t tell me yours I shall be forced to invent one. Mr. Nobody won’t do.”
“First, tell me how you’ve ruined yourself and your family. I certainly won’t give my name to such a person.”
“Scandal,” she said, with a sigh and a shrug.
“For rescuing castaways?”
“No. Something . . .
personal.”
He eyed her more carefully. He’d clearly been sentenced to some stuffy Victorian era. Of course! The high-waisted gown and billowing skirt folds. She was preggers.
“I see.” Adrian gave her a sage glance. He only saw pregnant women on sitcoms. “It doesn’t show much yet,” he said helpfully.
“What?”
“Uh, your ruination. Let me tell you, a century from now, no one will think anything of it.”
“It?”
He could see that she might be fierce with a horse-beater.
“I think no less of you for it.”