Rapacia: The Second Circle of Heck (13 page)

Bordeaux skipped to Vermont Avenue.

“So, lass,” asked Ms. O’Malley “Do ya wanna buy it?”

Bordeaux shook her head. “We already have a cabin in Vermont,” she replied.

Ms. O’Malley smirked and shook her head. She scooped up the dice and rolled them again. “Five! Go fer a walk, Jordie.”

Jordie stumbled over to the Reading Railroad and took two hundred-dollar bills from her stack. “Stonking!” she exclaimed, handing her money to the teacher.

“Congratulations,” Ms. O’Malley said while taking Jordie’s pretend money. “Smart move … for a Brit,” she added with a sly wink.

The teacher rolled the dice.

“Four … ooh. Sorry, Lyon,” Ms. O’Malley said.

Lyon fumed and stomped to Income Tax (Pay 10 percent or $200).

“Income tax?!” the spoiled girl snapped. “My family doesn’t have to pay taxes—we’re rich.”

“We’re playin’ a
game
, luv,” Ms. O’Malley said.

Lyon wadded up two hundred-dollar bills and threw it at her teacher’s feet. “Keep the change,” she huffed.

Ms. O’Malley sighed to herself as she rolled the dice. “Ten … ouch. My condolences, Miss Fauster.”

Marlo frowned. She wobbled ten paces across the lurching floor to Jail.

Lyon laughed wickedly. Just then, the door opened.

“Yes?” Ms. O’Malley inquired.

A warty demoness with scraggly white hair stood in the doorway.

“I’m here for Marlo Fauster,” the demoness rasped in low, husky tones.

“Wow,” Bordeaux whispered. “She really
is
going to jail.”

“Ha!” Lyon snorted. “I might learn to like this game after all.”

“—and Lyon Sheraton,” the demoness finished.

The corners of Lyon’s mouth drooped slowly downward.

“And what is this all about, then?” Ms. O’Malley rumbled fiercely.

“The Grabbit.” The withered demoness gulped. “It wants to see the two of them. Immediately.”

“Oh,” replied the teacher as the winds of ire left her sails. “Of course.”

Ms. O’Malley smiled at the girls, but the concern in her eyes betrayed the reassurance of her warm grin.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, girls,” she said unconvincingly. “Two people shorten the road, ya know.”

The two girls looked at each other and frowned.

Marlo had a sinking feeling that the road ahead, while admittedly short, was uphill all the way.

MiDDLEWORD

It may be that no man is an island, as the popular human saying goes, but every girl is an aisle. A place of opportunity, of hope, of freedom. She wanders down this aisle—herself—searching, browsing, assessing, filling her cart (or pockets) with shiny things. Does it make her feel better? Not necessarily. But it can fill her with a sense of who she is, or at least who she wants to be. But, in some cases, when you put the cart in front of the girl, she may soon wonder who—or what—exactly she is filling it for
.

See, sometimes, want is a carrot dangling before your eyes. You stumble forward, blind with desire, and before you know it, you find yourself in some ghastly place with no idea of how you got there, and—worst of all—no carrot to show for your troubles
.

This want—the inexorable urge to follow something shiny and new, not carrots specifically—can be overwhelming, pushing all reason and perspective out of your head. It can quickly become an electric, all-consuming hunger that drives wanting wanters to do almost anything to get whatever it is that the havers have. The problem is that these wanted things, much like carrots, aren’t particularly worth following (as they can only lead to salads). And sometimes, if you’re not careful, that carrot of want can lead you to the feet of something terrible—something like a giant, greedy, frighteningly powerful rabbit with a cataclysmic agenda
.

20 · UP AND ATOM

CLAD IN A
reflective catsuit, Yojuanna B. Covetta slunk undetected across the Mallvana plasma screen. Shoppers bustled by, oblivious, blinded by the joy that, though death had prevented them from “taking it with them,” in Mallvana they could buy it back, return it, or exchange it for something in their size.

Yojuanna reached the edge of the screen, which bordered the Science ’n’ Séance store. She crouched down, thrust her arms in front of her, leapt from the screen—breaking up into billions of little ones and zeros—and reassembled on a computer terminal inside the store.

She wiped beads of digital sweat from her brow and hid behind an open document on the screen—the very one she had come to get.

Yojuanna smiled as she tucked the digital document down the front of her catsuit.

“Come right this way, ma’am,” said the Science ’n’ Séance cashier as he approached the register. Yojuanna grabbed several folders on the desktop and hid behind them.

The balding cashier, with tufts of wild gray hair on the sides of his head, set a large box down on the counter. “Phew!” he gasped to an old woman with a pair of spectacles balanced on the tip of her nose. “Your grandson will love this Smash ’n’ Flash Atom Cannon. When is he due to arrive?”

The woman fumbled with the catch on her purse. “He has a terminal disease,” she said with a trace of excitement. “So I should be seeing him any day now! And, without his mother around, I can spoil him all I want!”

“This kit is a great start,” said the man with a grin. “In fact, I was just reading about some experiments in
particle collision they’re conducting up on the Stage. I’ll print you out a copy for you to give to your …”

He stared, puzzled, at the computer screen.

“That’s odd,” the cashier said. “I just had it up. And what are all these folders doing here?”

The man tried to click on the folders, but Yojuanna grabbed the cursor and threw it across the screen with all her virtual might. The cashier dragged it back, then he—and unbeknownst to him, Yojuanna—struggled for control of his computer.

“What the … ?” he muttered, cursing his cursor.

The old woman sighed.

“I don’t think I brought enough money,” she relayed with frustration. “I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached to my shoulders. And it almost
wasn’t
, after that terrible accident…”

The cashier scowled at his computer.

“Maybe if I just turn it off and on,” he mumbled. “That usually seems to—”

Yojuanna gulped and let go of the cursor.

The man exhaled with relief.

“There,” he said. “That always seems to scare these infernal boxes.”

He looked at the woman and smiled kindly.

“Don’t worry about the money, ma’am. I’ll just put it on your tab. It’s not like you’re going anywhere!”

“Thank you so much,” the woman said, her face crinkled with bouquets of lines blossoming around her
eyes and mouth. “Could you deliver it? I’m afraid it’s a little heavy for me.”

“Of course,” he replied. “Cloud One, I assume?”

The old woman’s forehead scrunched up with indignation.

“Cloud
Two,”
she said, stretching out the “two” like a rubber band just before the point of snapping. “In the right light, you can almost see my halo.”

The man looked back at her dubiously.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said with the even tone of someone who has worked retail for years and wishes to avoid unnecessary conflict. “Cloud Two, then. I’ll send it HCW—Heaven Can’t Wait—Express, so you should get it before your return.”

The cashier popped up a new screen on his computer and typed in delivery instructions. Yojuanna crept from folder to folder until she reached the window. She carefully scaled the window’s edge like a digital cat burglar.

“Name, please, ma’am?” the cashier asked, tapping away at his keyboard. “For the delivery.”

“Thera Grandit,” the woman replied.

The man typed in the name and prepared to send the order off to be delivered. Yojuanna, however, kept kicking the cursor away from the send button with her camouflaged boot.

“Blast it!” the cashier cursed.

Just then, a miniature cruise missile shot up from
the model rocketry aisle and dive-bombed the cashier on its race for the entrance. The old woman screamed as the missile’s flaming exhaust singed her blue-white hair.

A dotty old man peered over the smoke-filled aisle. “Sorry” he called out, his face as red as a beet. “These newfangled ignition systems are touchier than a blind man reading a Braille comic book.”

The cashier grabbed a small fire extinguisher from beneath the counter and trotted over to douse a series of blazes burning from the Whee! Gee! Ouija Board section.

With the cashier away Yojuanna crawled atop the delivery form, stopping above the “To” field, and rappelled down. She hovered over the address and changed it from “Thera Grandit at Cloud Two, Heaven” to “The Grabbit at Circle Two, Rapacia,” then modified the quantity, increasing it from one “Smash ’n’ Flash Atom Cannon” to two.

Yojuanna tucked a strand of silver hair back into the cinched hood of her reflective bodysuit and kicked the submit button with her toe. A new window replaced the form.

Order Complete
.

Smiling, she climbed off the new window and arranged the folders on the computer’s desktop in a clean, even, horizontal line. Yojuanna stood on top of a folder on the screen’s edge, crouched low, then ran for
all she was worth. Leaping from folder to folder, she dove spectacularly off the screen and into the air—again breaking up into a misty cloud of data bits—until collecting her discombobulated self on Mallvana’s towering plasma display.

Yojuanna uncinched her glossy hoodie and shook out her sleek silver hair. She clapped, summoning a throbbing dance beat, and tugged above her ear, pulling out her telescoping microphone headset.

21 · HARE-BRAINED
SCHEME

MARLO, LYON, AND
the carbuncled demoness guard hovered outside the Grabbit’s warren. From inside came a dreadful, grating rhapsody: not the Grabbit’s usual monotone soliloquy, but something that bordered on rhythmic. Almost …
rapping
.

“Excuse me,
Grabbit,”
the demoness interrupted after a dry cough.
“I
brought the two burgling bobby -soxers you requested.”

The Grabbit grinned its cold metal grin. Marlo noticed that the dingy white paint of its teeth was beginning to peel.

The demoness gave a creaky curtsy and backed out of the metal rabbit’s warren.

“Is this about our little extracurricular shopping excursion?” Marlo asked. “Because if it is, we never thought that Poker Alice would—”

“It’s all Marlo’s fault,” accused Lyon. “It was her dumb idea, then she tried to escape, and—”

“You lying bleach-blond toilet brush!” screeched Marlo.

The Grabbit’s spooky voice boomed through the burrow.

“Your goal?” Lyon replied.

Marlo bit her lower lip in concentration. With its permanent grin and flat, soulless eyes, the Grabbit’s true intentions were impossible to discern.

“So you want us to steal something for you—” Marlo asked with a quaver.

“—and expect us to believe that we’re going to be all hippity-hoppity ever after?” Lyon interrupted with a sneer. The Grabbit oscillated, essentially motionless to the naked eye, but the distressing reverberations it sent out were some bad vibes indeed.

Marlo and Lyon studied one another out of the corners of their eyes, each looking—without
looking
as if they were looking—at the other for guidance.

What does any of this mean?
Marlo wondered.
Is the Grabbit really some kind of ally, cutting us in on a heist that will sign the pink slip to this place over to us?

Lyon held her head up haughtily and stepped forward.

“We need to, like, discuss the chain of command here, first,” she said, her jaw squared, yet her lower lip trembling. “There’s no way I’m trusting …
her,”
she snarled, extending her finger toward Marlo without actually setting eyes on her. “And if you expect me to take orders from someone with more roots than a big outdoor place with trees and plants—”

“A forest,”
seethed Marlo.

“A forest,”
continued Lyon, “then you can take your plan and stick it in one of your way-too-long-to-suit-your-build ears!”

Marlo stormed forward, brushing past Lyon in angry strides. She didn’t want to work with Lyon any more than Lyon did with her, but the Grabbit’s proposition was too intriguing to screw up.

“Forgive Lyon,” Marlo said. “She actually ate today and her brain is all muddled, trying to sort the calories. What she meant to say is that wouldn’t it be more efficient if we used our skills …
independently …
so that neither of our personal snatching styles cramps the others?”

“That isn’t what I—” Lyon blurted before Marlo stopped her with a sharp jab to the ribs. Another round of bickering was cut short by the Grabbit’s hollow, booming voice.

Smiles of satisfaction spread across Lyon’s and Marlo’s faces. “You’re on,” they said in unison before spinning around to openly fume at each other.

“Sign for both your kits?” interrupted a voice from the doorway.

The girls turned. A deliveryman, wearing immaculate white shorts and a cap with little wings on the side, stood with two large boxes on a dolly.

“HCW Express,” he continued. “I have a delivery for”—he scowled at his clipboard—“the Grabbit?”

Though it was impossible, Marlo swore that the Grabbit’s tin grin grew wider, brighter, and creepier.

Marlo took the deliveryman’s clipboard, signed for the packages, then shuffled out of the Grabbit’s warren with Lyon, leaving the deliveryman to help the freakish, immobile machine to assemble its new toys.

Marlo’s brain flickered with flashes of warning, like faraway lightning muffled by brooding storm clouds. But the rest of her—her arms, her legs, her heart, and the lattice of nerve endings that held them all together in its high-voltage web—coursed with excruciating excitement. She tried to ignore the warning in her head. After all, what did her brain know, anyway?

Maybe the Grabbit’s plot to steal these important jewels really will shake things up down here
, Marlo considered.
Wait … two jewels? They must be the Hopeless Diamonds … the most precious gems ever produced! And I would be the girl—the Grabbit’s favorite—to make it happen, pulling off the biggest jewel heist in history! Milton would be proud … Milton
.

She bit her lower lip with her fang, pushing the sadness that her brother’s name inspired aside with sharp pain. Marlo would hatch the perfect plan and execute it flawlessly. She’d show Lyon, Poker Alice, Bea “Elsa”
Bubb—
everyone
—that you should never, ever underestimate a greedy girl with loads of nerve and precious little common sense. When Marlo set her mind to something, there was no limit to the amount of mischief she could stir up. And, as Marlo knew firsthand, where there was chaos, there was often opportunity.