FORTY-TWO

"Betsy, my God!"

Had I ever been so tired? I looked up as my sister finally reached me. It seemed like she had been screaming forever. No more screaming. I'd had my fill of screaming for the day. Night?

I hoped she wasn't going to be difficult about giving me a ride back home. "Just Betsy," I said. I wiped some of the blood from my eyes. "Not your God."

"What are you doing?"

"Taunting your mom's severed head." It had stopped rolling, and I stifled the urge to boot it farther away. My sister wasn't likely to take that well. And it was pretty disturbing that I wanted to do it, even. "There's no way to make that sound not crazy, is there?"

"Why did you-why were you-" The Antichrist burst into tears. "Why? Why?"

"To save him. And me." It sounded simplistic. The truth did, sometimes. It didn't matter what I said, anyway. Laura was never going to forgive me. We were probably going to become really bad enemies over this. At the least, she was gonna blow off Thanksgiving.

Oh. Thanksgiving. Since Satan hadn't killed me, I still had that to worry about.

"And you! What did you think you were doing? My mother respected you! My mother-"

"Was right to fear me." Ancient Betsy, looking as close to happy as I'd ever seen her. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then she said, "This. This is what I was waiting for."

"Yeah, no shit." Sure, now it was obvious. She couldn't have said, "I kind of need you to kill the devil to save the future"? Was that such a difficult fucking speech? "Thanks for all the help." Actually, judging from the bruises slowly purpling her face, it looked like Laura had fought like a, well, hellcat.

But Sneaky Evil Me didn't have to entirely prevent Laura. Just figure out the right time to follow her to hell-did she ask Laura to take her? Or could she move back and forth on her own after all these centuries of hanging with the devil? Anyway, she only had to slow Laura for a few crucial seconds.

And she had.

"I am really hating your face right now," I told Crooked Wily Me.

"Yours is almost unrecognizable!" she replied with what sounded like sincere admiration. "Satan really made you her bitch before you cut off her head. My condolences, Laura," she added.

"Shut the fuck up!"

"Laura!" we both gasped. Okay, under the circumstances, Laura's response was one hundred percent appropriate. It was just a shock to hear the Antichrist make with the potty mouth.

"You," she said to (aw, nuts) me. "You ... what you did here ... it's not just unfathomable. It was stupid."

"Ah," Ancient Me mused. "A day without the Antichrist sitting in judgment on you is a day without sunshine."

"Give her a break, we just decapitated her mom." God, was I really gonna turn into that vicious chilly bitch? Just ... appalling, really. The idea. The horror.

"I didn't know you hated her so much. When I was you, I didn't hate her. That came later."

"It's not that I hated her so much," I explained to myself, "but that I love Sinclair so much."

She smiled. "Yes. You did. You do. I never killed the devil. That's the-"

"Thing you were waiting for, yeah, yeah. And as for 'stupid,' Laura, I'm aware that me killing your mom while Other Me slowed you down is gonna make things awkward for a while."

"For a while?" Laura looked like she couldn't decide whether to cry or choke me or rage or kick me or barf. I sympathized, as much as I could.

"I know it seems horrible-"

"Seems?"

"-okay, good point, but this way I won't write the Book of the Dead eighty zillion years from now. The devil-" Made me do it, I almost said, recognizing at the last second what a huge cop-out that was. "Satan and Old Yucky Me were allies, right? And through that relationship, you and I were allies in the future. But now that Satan 1.0 isn't around, she won't spend the next bunch of centuries helping me do all sorts of nasty things, like scribbling my blog on Sinclair's skin."

"And you know that, how?"

"Uh..." A lucky guess? Instinct? My super secret vampire queen decoder ring? "Old Me didn't do that." Pointing at her mother's severed head. "Ergo, the future will be different than the one you and I fell into. Because I did do that." Probably. But this was no time to insinuate in any way that I wasn't 100% confident my impromptu plan would work.

The devil was dead, and that was maybe worth celebrating. Except I knew things, in one respect, weren't gonna change. Not really. The devil was dead, long live the devil.

"You shouldn't have done that."

"What?" My sister's face, her voice. Her mouth was smiling. Her eyes weren't. "Laura?"

"You'll regret it."

Oh, sure. Add it to the list! I had gobs of regrets. Getting drunk at senior prom and barfing all over my science teacher's/dance chaperone's shoes. Falling for a Jimmy Choo knockoff when I was thirteen. Signing up for the Miss Burnsville pageant of my own volition. So long a life, so many regrets.

"You shouldn't have killed my mother."

"Yeah, I was afraid that's where this was going."

"If for no other reason," she said, and her voice was calm, and her hair was bleeding red through the blond and getting redder and redder, so I was getting scareder and scareder, "than because you created a job opening."

"I've gotta come right out and be honest: you're sort of terrifying me right now."

"This isn't over."

By which she probably meant, this isn't over.

"Wait. Laura!"

She'd opened up a portal to somewhere and stepped toward it. She did it without once looking away from me. She did it as easily as I'd have flipped a burger on a grill. And-this is weird-I was actually scareder at this moment than when Satan and I threw down.

"Laura!" Going, going, and now almost..."I had to save the future, dammit! It's not like I killed one of the good guys, right? It wasn't personal! By which I mean it was very, very personal! It's not that I hated your mom so much, it's that I love Sinclair so much! You hear me yelling, right? Because it feels like I've been yelling at you for hours!"

"Save your breath," Ancient Me advised.

"Don't make me put you on the spreadsheet I haven't started and keep forgetting about!" I yelled. "Get over here or-"

"Spreadsheet?" Ancient Me asked.

"-you're off the Christmas card list!"

... gone.

FORTY-THREE

"So, what? Do we try to hail a cab? The Antichrist left in a huff-with good reason, I'm not saying she didn't have good reason-and are my ears bleeding?"

"Yes."

"What's so fucking funny? Are my eyes bleeding?"

"Yes. You. You're so fucking funny. I can't believe you did it."

"Yeah, that bish-bitch-never knew what hit her. Not Laura. The devil." I should probably hail a hell cab and make it take me to an ER or something.

"She was wrong, though. Laura."

"Nuh?"

"You knew what you were doing when you killed Lucifer Morningstar."

"Corningware." I was gonna vomit. No, wait. I wasn't. Prob'ly. Ow. "Heh."

"Lord, you're just as much an irritant when you're heavily concussed and near death."

"Am not. 'Cuz time's a wheel."

"Ah!" She sounded pleased. "Marc did remember. I thought he might."

"Not really. Fuzzy. Like a dream. He'd say, 'n' then he'd f'rget. Um. What'd I say?"

"Time is a wheel." She stuck out her finger and made a circle. "If you live long enough, Betsy, you eventually catch up to yourself. That's the secret. That's the meaning of life, in case you ever wondered. When you did things I didn't remember doing, I figured it out. All I had to do ... was live long enough ... to undo."

"I don' geddit."

"Yes, well. Another time, perhaps. Get it?" She actually giggled. "Another time? Do you see what I did there?"

"Time's wunna those things, um, those round things guinea pigs run in?" I was going to throw up. No, pass out. No, throw up. No, both. "Ummm..."

"And you knew what you were doing the entire time. You knew you were creating a job opening. Betsy? Stay awake, dammit. Don't you understand how much I want to talk to you about this? You're being really quite selfish. Think of my needs for once. So, elaborate: you knew who'd have to step in. The only person who could."

"Nuh? Meh. Uh?" Hey, Ancient Me was getting small and wee! Ancient Me was Wee Me! Good-bye, Wee Me! Good-bye! Good

(bye)