Free The Devil's Intern by Donna Hosie

says seriously, slapping me on the shoulder. “Then you will apologize to Medusa for the slight you made on her character.”
    “I didn’t mean it.”
    “What happened at the Masquerade Ball, my friend? Medusa has been bringing out the best and worst in you ever since,” saysAlfarin, walking past the groaning heap of HBI investigators. Their limbs stick out at strange angles. They look like an enormous pile of spiders that has been run over.
    I was hit by a bus. Did I look like that afterward?
    “This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen,” I mutter.
    “How what was supposed to happen?”
    We turn into a dark corridor. It smells like blocked toilets, and a thin stream is running down one of the walls. I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s water.
    “I’m leaving, Alfarin. I’m leaving now.”
    “Leaving what?”
    I lower my voice to a whisper. Everything has ears here, including the walls.
    “I’m leaving Hell. I can’t explain everything here, but I’m going to ask you to trust me, Alfarin. I’m asking you to come with me.”
    “No one can leave Hell, my friend.”
    “I’ve found a way.”
    Alfarin crosses his trunklike arms and leans back against the damp stone. His blond beard has tiny braids woven into it, fixed with blue and yellow beads. Medusa and Elinor’s work. They say the colors remind them of the sun and sky.
    “Then when do we leave?” he asks.
    I’m forced to hold on to the stinking wall. The relief makes me go light-headed, which is totally embarrassing. I didn’t think it would be this easy to persuade Alfarin, but he’s the most loyal person I know. Alfarin is like a brother.
    “You’ll really come with me?”
    “The gods would curse me if I allowed you to undertake this on your own, my friend. How much time do I have?”
    “I can give you thirty minutes to get what you want from your dorm.”
    “May I bring my axe?”
    “It’s a long walk to the HalfWay House.”
    “I have the strength of ten men,” says Alfarin proudly.
    “Then bring what you want, but do not, do not, do not tell the girls. I don’t want Medusa or Elinor to risk their necks for me.”
    “May I ask you a question, my friend?”
    “Anything.”
    “Why are you leaving?”
    “Because I want to
live
, Alfarin. I don’t want to just exist. This is it for me, and it isn’t fair. If I told you I’d found a way to control time, wouldn’t you want to change the way you died? If you had the chance to fight more wars, or live to grow old and become a Viking king, wouldn’t you grab hold of it and never let go?”
    “You are my friend, Mitchell, and I will follow you into any battle, but you are playing with fire.”
    “Here there is nothing for us
but
fire, Alfarin,” I reply. “Now go. I’ll meet you at the admin center in thirty.”
    I arrive at the lobby of the admin center on autopilot. This is happening—this is really happening.
    There’s a devil on duty 24/7. There has to be. Death is too inconvenient to work between the hours of nine and five.
    I slink into the shadows and send Alfarin a text.
where r u?
    I get nothing back.
    The on-duty devil in the admin center is processing someone who has just arrived. I couldn’t do that job. All that wailing and crying. The HalfWay House is a lot calmer than Hell’s processing center. The newly dead arrive here and think they’re going to be encased in fire and flayed with whips and have their teeth pulled out by demons with pliers. Stay on the right side of The Devil, and that won’t happen, you hope.
    I wonder who will take my job. I hope Medusa goes for it again, because she’d make an awesome intern. She’s smart and funny and she doesn’t take any crap from anyone. And she gets along with Septimus.
    Seriously, if Brian Molewell gets the position, I’ll come back to Hell just to spite him. In the end it was between the three of us: me, Medusa, and Brian. He’s the same age as me, but he’s been dead longer. He died in the Vietnam War.