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Chapter 19

Dan led the devil into Irregardless on West Morgan Street a few minutes before seven.

"I'd say that went well," Puck said.

"I'd say the whole day went extraordinarily well." When they were seated at a comfortable booth at the back, Dan studied his menu. "Try the Bean Burger," he told the devil. "It's fabulous." He ordered a margarita while he waited for Meg; the devil drank scotch, neat.

Dan put his menu aside. He didn't want to order food until Meg got there. "It was so strange that almost all of them wanted to talk with you first, though."

"Not really. Almost everyone knows someone he cares about who didn't live an exemplary life. Almost everyone would like to know that friend or family member wasn't damned."

Puck had changed remarkably during the day. His manner of speech was gentler. His facial expressions lacked the air of Hellish viciousness they'd had when Dan first found him. And physically he'd become different, too. His copper scales, initially so large and coarse and sharp-edged, now were as small as goldfish scales, and surprisingly attractive.

This wasn't to say that Puck was any thing of beauty. Even though his horns and fangs had shrunk and his talons had rounded and flattened, his square-pupiled, goatish eyes still glowed with unmistakable Hellfire. And that face was never going to be anything but ugly.

Dan caught a flash of movement from his right and saw Meg following the waiter toward them. Meg was still dressed in work clothes—a linen suit, sensible shoes, and her briefcase.

She smiled at Dan and gave Puck a frankly curious stare as she joined them.

When the routines of introductions and ordering were out of the way, she turned to Dan. "I have several things to discuss with the two of you. I don't know much about your devil here, nor do I have any real idea of how likely his . . . rehabilitation . . . is going to be. None of that matters at the moment. Puck, I've spent much of my day on the phone with some of my colleagues at the ACLU. I did the preliminary work on the initiation of a class action antidiscrimination suit designed to force legislation mandating equal employment and housing opportunities for the Hellraised."

"She's talking about equal rights for devils," Puck said to Dan.

"I know what she's talking about. Shut up, already."

Meg glanced from the devil to Dan, a puzzled frown creasing her forehead. "But I don't know what you're talking about."

"Puck here used to be the guy in charge of translating clearly worded communications into High Bureaucratese. He's taken delight all day in translating bureaucratic babble-speak back into English for me, whether I needed it or not."

Meg said, "I thought my way of phrasing things was clear and to the point."

Dan kissed her. "I know, gorgeous. And that little touch of the delusional is part of your charm."

Meg laughed. "Fine. Let me tell you where I am in my . . . my quest for equal rights for the Hellraised. Was that clear enough?"

Dan nodded. So did Puck, who grinned when he did it.

Meg filled both of them in on her reasoning behind the need for such a class action suit, and finished with a shrug. "I don't have the manpower or the time to do this right. But a couple of old friends of mine who are still with the ACLU are going to take my preliminary work and build a case around it. If." She paused.

Dan watched Puck, who had been looking amused by the whole idea of human lawyers fighting for his sort.

Puck raised one scaly eyeridge and said, "If?"

"If you can convince your . . . your what? Associates? Friends?"

"Fellow damnedsouls," Puck suggested.

Meg pursed her lips. "Fellow damnedsouls. If you can persuade them to go into the offices of the ACLU around the state and make public statements about their grievances. The jobs they've tried to get, the housing they've been turned away from, the sorts of abuses that they've had to suffer."

Puck tipped his head to one side and thought about it for a moment. "I'm not actually on speaking terms with any of the other Hellraised at the moment. However, I imagine I could find a way to get in touch with a few who wouldn't hurt me too much—and they could pass the information on."

"Fine." Meg opened her briefcase, took several sheets of paper out of it, and passed them across to Puck. "Addresses of the offices statewide."

Puck smirked. "We knew where they were."

"Tine." Meg didn't react to the smirk or the implication. Instead, she said, "The good news is, a successful suit will make life here easier for everyone, I think. The bad news is, it's a long-term project. In the meantime, we need to do something for your people now, before they have equal rights. And since I think it's likely that very few people will hire the Hellraised as things stand, I think we need to find a way for the Hellraised to employ themselves."

Puck nodded. "The higher-ups are pretty well taken care of in that regard. They have Satco—but unfortunately for most of the lower-echelon Hellspawn, Satco doesn't employ all of us. I don't think any company can claim to gainfully employ one hundred percent of an entire ethnic population in a state."

Dan snorted. "That does sound unlikely."

Meg said, "So what I need to know, Puck, is this: does anyone in your organization have any ideas for self-starting employment?"

Puck thought for a while. Dinner arrived while he sat there with his eyes tightly shut, his face screwed into an expression of extreme concentration. He didn't even notice the food.

Neither Dan nor Meg said anything. They waited, silently eating their Bean Burgers and Caesar salads.

Suddenly Puck's eyes opened. "I remember something. But it's something really, really big. It's not like vegetable stands or anything. Before his—disappearance—the first head of Satco, Agonostis, made plans for a big amusement park kind of thing, called Devil's Point. He intended it to be a place where Hellraised could operate a legitimate business. It would have been huge! Thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of us would have been required to run it." Puck briefly outlined what he recalled about the amusement park, and Dan found himself becoming interested.

"Could the Hellraised really do that—bring back extinct animals and showcase them in their natural habitats from the times when they lived?"

"I couldn't have, even when I had my powers, but the fallen angels could. That comes under the heading of a 'benign miracle'—as long as the dinosaurs and whatnot can't do any harm—and the Fallen can do any sort of benign miracle they like." Puck shook his head. "That park was a possibility once, but it isn't going to happen now."

"It sounds like it would work," Meg said. "What went wrong?"

"A couple of things. Scumslag, the new guy in charge of Satco, didn't come up with the plans, so rumor has it that he's dragging his heels in trying to implement them. That's the first problem, and for all I know, the scuttlebutt may have been wrong. I wasn't all that high on the food chain even before they kicked me out."

Meg shrugged, "That sounds like typical bureaucratic stupidity to me. I've known people who've deep-sixed terrific ideas because they couldn't take credit for them. So we'll assume for the time being that what you heard is right. We may face some resistance from the CEO of Satco. What else?"

"The Hellraised can't get the land. I know right after our management turnover, the devils who were on the team said they'd found the ideal site for the amusement park, but nobody will sell property on that scale to the Hellraised. I guess that kind of thing happens when your company gets a bad reputation for sticky contracts. The funny thing is, people are desperate to sell their property to get out of the state, but they still won't sell to my kind."

An idea occurred to Meg. "Where's the property?"

Puck said, "Down by the beach somewhere. I wasn't on the Devil's Point development team, so I really don't know."

"Can you hook me up with someone who does?"

"I know someone who does. The problem is that she won't have anything to do with me. I'm poison for anybody's career right now."

"Could you tell me how to reach her?"

"Sure. Just don't tell her how you got her number." He gave Meg a phone number. "Her name is Glopsmear. Tell her you're calling in regards to Devil's Point."

Meg started to tuck the number into her briefcase.

Puck said, "Wait. Aren't you going to call her?"

"Right now?"

"Satco doesn't have to worry about paying overtime or things like that, and it doesn't pay any attention to the regulations for an eight- or twelve-hour day. Jobs there are twenty-four hours a day."

Meg looked at what remained of her burger, and Dan saw a flicker of regret that she wasn't going to be able to finish it while it was hot. Dan empathized—the food was some of the best he'd ever had. But she shrugged and bit the bullet. She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I'll be right back."

When she was gone, Dan said, "You could have at least waited until after she finished dessert to tell her that."

"I got the impression time was of some importance to her." He took a huge bite of his Bean Burger.

Suddenly Dan realized that Puck had said he couldn't eat vegetable matter.

Incredible how fast he's changing, he thought.

He was still pondering that when Puck looked up, wide-eyed, and ran for the bathroom.

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