“Sir, I present to you my full report on the recent incident regarding the six missing souls.”
Steve extended the spiral-bound document with great flair, as if he were gifting me his firstborn. The guy had even gone to the trouble of laminating a cover for his report. I took it, noting that his Photoshop skills had greatly improved, although he really needed to stop using Comic Sans.
I wasn’t worried about the six souls—partly because they’d only been missing for less than an hour and partly because I knew why they’d vanished, what sort of event caused them to vanish, and that there was nothing anyone could do about it. I wasn’t in charge of souls, their punishment, or anything to do with the operations side of the business. I was in charge of the firmament, the physical structure of hell, the rivers, and the veil that separated us from everything else. If I had to give myself a title, it would probably be Facilities Director. No, that didn’t sound quite right. Facilities Engineer. Grand Designer in charge of Facilities. The Architect of the Afterlife.
Something like that.
Hell was supposed to be a one-way ticket kinda thing, but throughout the ages, some souls had managed to escape. Usually that was due to crappy wording on a crossroad demon’s contract, or a special bargain, or a little internal corruption.
Sometimes it was due to necromancy. But no one really wanted to admit that. It was easier for the demons to point fingers at each other and send some poor scapegoat off to a pot of boiling oil for a century than admit a human could snatch a soul out from under our noses and we could do pretty much nothing about it.
At times, the finger pointing turned my way. They’d claim there must be a crack in the firmament, a tear in the veil, a narrow spot in the river that allowed souls to leave hell. When that happened, I’d shrug and tell them to show me the weakness. No one wanted to spend eons going over every inch of hell for an escape route, so they’d immediately go back to blaming each other and leave me blissfully alone.
Then Steve had come along. Fifty years ago Satan had decided I needed an assistant. One of his human worshipers had died, and personnel hadn’t been sure what to do with him. There weren’t any openings in the fifth or eighth circles. None of the executives wanted to bring him on as a member of their staff. We couldn’t toss him in with the rest of the sinners after a lifetime of exemplary work honoring the Dark Lord. So I got stuck with him.
Clearly I was being punished for something.
“If you’ll note here, sir.” Steve leaned over my desk to flip the report open. “The souls vanished from their stations at exactly the same time. They don’t reside in the same circles. They don’t have sins in common with each other. But, through some diligent research, I discovered that they are all related. The Hoffman family.”
“I see.” Satan save me from overzealous underlings.
“But!” He turned a few pages and jabbed a bony finger at the page. “Not all members of this Hoffman family left hell. Just this subset. How very curious, I thought to myself.”
“Yes, I’m sure you did.” I glanced up at the clock, wondering if I was going to make my ten-thirty tee time.
“I took the liberty of asking Purgatory if anything similar had happened to them. My source confirmed that two souls also vanished the exact same hour as ours, and that they too were related to the same Hoffman family.”
“You what?” Steve was going to be the death of me. We shouldn’t be exchanging confidential information with anyone outside of hell—especially purgatory and heaven. Yes, it was interesting that purgatory had the same problem, but that information wasn’t worth revealing that six of hell’s souls had momentarily poofed out of their circles.
Steve held up a hand. “My source is very discreet. They also told me it was rumored that several souls vanished from heaven at the exact same time—also from the Hoffman family.”
I sat back in my chair, intrigued. Purgatory and heaven had the same missing-soul issue as hell. That would definitely help if the finger of blame was pointed my way again. The problem couldn’t be with our structure and facilities. Although this sort of thing indicated a flaw at the top of the food chain. A design flaw. And since neither Satan nor his father were disposed to accepting blame for anything, it would probably end up in my lap at the end of the day. I picked up the report, wondering if I needed to cancel my golf outing or if I could still manage to squeeze in a quick nine after lunch.
Steve snatched the report out of my hands, turning it to the back page and pointing once more. “See? All of them were Hoffmans. Not all Hoffmans were taken. But every one of the souls who vanished was buried in this family cemetery on this farm. That’s the big link.” Steve plopped the report on my desk and stood back, his posture radiating smug satisfaction.
Steve was definitely crossing some insubordination lines here. Normally such behavior would have warranted disciplinary action, but for once I agreed with Steve. This was big. Really big.
A family cemetery. Over eight souls from all realms of the afterlife, all of whom were buried in one location. This wasn’t random or an escape assisted by a demon on the take. No, this was the work of magic.
It was the work of a necromancer.
I’d suspected as much, and it was gratifying to have those suspicions bolstered a bit, but at the end of the day, this really had nothing to do with me. These souls who’d temporarily left their afterlife hadn’t done so because of any design flaw in hell or purgatory. They hadn’t left because of a weakening in the veil, or a crumbling of the infrastructure. They’d been summoned by a necromancer.
It wasn’t my problem. Which meant I was absolutely going to make my tee time this morning.
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