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yesterday . . .”
    â€œSomething’s happened to him, hasn’t it?” I ask, even though I have a feeling I don’t want to know the answer. Perfidious’s very presence in that room was a terrible reminder that just because we devils can’t die again doesn’t mean bad things can’t still happen to us here.
    â€œWe found Sir Richard this morning on level 43 . . . and also on level 99, and then on level 427. I believe his head was found floating in a toilet on level 666,” replies Septimus. “He had been butchered, torn into pieces by what the rather nervous new head of the HBI says was an animal.”
    At that, the loudspeakers crackle and whistle. We all jump, even Septimus. And every devil in Hell hears the howling laughter of wolves.

6. Thieves
    Hell is no longer in lockdown, but it doesn’t matter. After the Skin-Walkers’ little public service announcement over the loudspeakers, most devils are too terrified to leave their dormitories.
    Septimus has given the four of us permission to stay in the accounting chamber, but Alfarin wants to check up on his family, and Mitchell decides to go with him. I don’t have any family here—at least, as far as I know. My dad ran out on my mom and me when I was little, so even if he were here he could go screw himself. Mom is definitely still alive, because if she were a devil, she would have found me.
    Because that’s what moms do, isn’t it?
    â€œDo you have any family you want to check up on, Elinor?” I ask.
    â€œNo. Our John and our William were the only ones I really worried about,” she replies, “and they went Up There with our Alice. My brothers, Michael and Phillip, are in Hell, but they are older than me and can handle themselves.”
    â€œWon’t they be worried about you?”
    Elinor’s bloodred eyes lower to the ground. “I doubt it. They’ve never really bothered with me. Death didn’t change anything there.”
    â€œI didn’t have any brothers or sisters, at least not any that I know about,” I say. “Maybe one day, when we know each other better, we can be sisters to each other.”
    I could kick myself. What in Hell made me say something as stupid and sentimental as that? But instead of laughing at me, Elinor smiles.
    â€œI would like that very much, M,” she says. “I don’t know why, but I feel like I know ye so well already.”
    And I know what she means, because I feel it, too. It’s as if there’s a dark veil in my mind, and I’m overwhelmed with the feeling that if I grab hold of it somehow and pull it back, I’ll be able to remember something really important. I’ve never believed in reincarnation or anything like that—with my luck I would return to life as a bug or a hairy spider and I’d get squished within seconds—but fate I can believe in, for better and worse.
    I rub my temples. Maybe I can’t remember anything because I’m too busy trying to get the image of Sir Richard Baumwither’s head floating in a toilet out of my brain. I wish I had never met him. Or Perfidious.
    And I wish they didn’t know about me.
    I had nothing to do with Rory disappearing, but are the Skin-Walkers going to believe me? Would they care?
    â€œWhat are ye thinking about, M?” asks Elinor. She’s sitting on Mitchell’s chair and plaiting her hair into a thick red braid.
    â€œI was just thinking about the Skin-Walkers.”
    â€œYe mustn’t. They’re evil.”
    â€œI know. That’s what scares me.”
    Every sound, both inside the accounting chamber and outside on the level 1 landing, is magnified tenfold. My overactive imagination is fooling me into thinking I can hear the Skin-Walkers. In the corner of my eye, I think I can even
see
the Skin-Walkers. They’re laughing at me, hunting me, because of my association with