Free The Devil's Dreamcatcher by Donna Hosie

Rory.
    â€œElinor, that night outside my old house in San Francisco, was that the only time you’ve seen the Skin-Walkers?”
    Elinor lets her hands fall to her lap, and the long braid immediately falls apart.
    â€œNo,” she says. “We had seen them before, the same night we left Hell.”
    â€œWere they chasing you because you were running away?”
    â€œNo. They were heading in the opposite direction. They had an Unspeakable with them. It was horrible, M. They were torturing him.”
    I’m not an evil person at all, even if I am in Hell, but I don’t share Elinor’s obvious horror. I’m glad these Unspeakables are punished in the Afterlife. They deserve it.
    â€œHow many Skin-Walkers are there?”
    â€œWe saw eight that first time, and then two of those again in San Francisco. Yesterday was the first time we saw Perfidious, though.”
    â€œAnd how many Unspeakables are there in Hell, do you think?”
    â€œI don’t want to think about it,” replies Elinor, once more starting to braid her hair. “It is too much evil to understand. The Skin-Walkers haunted us while we time-traveled. They came at us in the darkness. When I sleep, I still see them coming.”
    â€œTell me more about the Viciseometer,” I say. “I always thought that being able to change time was a Hell myth. You know, a story to torment devils, to make us hope for a different future. But if you managed it, why don’t more devils try? Why doesn’t everyone get out of here?”
    Elinor stands up and walks over to the safe. It’s huge and built into the black stone wall.
    â€œI think others have tried to get out of here,” she replies. “But death is something ye can’t cheat, not in the end. Ye can just try to make it easier, if ye are lucky.”
    â€œSo how did you use the Viciseometer?” I ask, watching Elinor trace a circle with her fingers on the safe door. “What did you want it for? And how did you get out of here in the first place?”
    Stop it, Medusa. I pinch myself. I have so many questions, but I shouldn’t overwhelm Elinor. I need to slow down. When I was a kid, I was always being told off for asking too many questions. Then I stopped talking altogether, but nobody noticed. Then I got mouthy again when I got to Hell. I can never seem to get the balance right.
    â€œIf I tell ye, ye must promise never to say a word to anyone,” says Elinor, turning around to face me. Her red eyes are glistening, andfor one horrific moment, I think she’s going to cry blood, like the little boy in my nightmare.
    â€œI won’t say a word to anyone,” I whisper.
    â€œWell, ye already know that the Viciseometer is a time-traveling device,” begins Elinor. “There are only two, apparently, one in each immortal domain. Mitchell used Hell’s Viciseometer to take us all back in time, to the moments of our death.”
    â€œYou wanted to watch yourselves die?” I exclaim. “That’s horrible, Elinor. Didn’t you want to stop it from happening?
Why
didn’t you stop it from happening?”
    â€œIt’s a long story, M,” says Elinor, and she bites her bottom lip. “It wasn’t as simple as stopping our deaths. In the end, only Mitchell really wanted to do that, and then he realized that he couldn’t, because he would have changed everything and M.J. would never have been born.”
    â€œWho’s M.J.?”
    â€œMitchell’s little brother.”
    â€œAnd he’s still alive?”
    Elinor nods. “Mitchell’s parents were divorced and his mom remarried after he died. We time-traveled to Mitchell’s grave and saw his mom and her new husband. They had a little boy with them called M.J. It was Mitchell’s little brother, who was born after Mitchell died. He was ever so upset.”
    â€œThe kid?”
    â€œNo—Mitchell. He thought he had been