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Chapter 21

Dan put his key into the lock and paused.

I forgot about the imp, he thought. It's been in there all day. God only knows what kind of mess it's made.

He took a deep breath. How much worse could it be than when he left? Well, he could have stuff dripping off the ceiling in the rest of the apartment. Everything he owned might be shredded and in piles. All the dishes might be broken. He opened the door and his first thought was that he'd been robbed. Then he realized someone had just cleaned up. He heard off-key humming, and after a moment he realized the song was "Copacabana."

Why would anyone hum "Copacabana"?

He stepped inside, switched on the light, and tried to get over the shock.

The previously grimy upholstery looked brand new—the worn spots no longer showed, the blue-and-brown herringbone had returned, and the overall pallor of gray no longer existed. But that was the least of the apartment's changes. He felt the next one under his feet, where carpet that had been pounded into a flat, felted mass now sprang up beneath his shoes. He slipped the shoes off and sank into the delightful cushiony resistance of new carpet. "How did he replace the carpet?" Dan asked Puck.

"Fetch is an it. And it didn't replace the carpet. It rugged it—went through and twisted all the fibers back into yarn." Puck, standing just to the left of Dan, bent down and experimentally twisted one of the strands. "It could have gotten them tighter. If we were back in Hell . . ."

The carpet wasn't splotchy neutral beige with darker stains anymore, either. It had become a solid, pleasant shade of light blue, and its color no longer matched that of the cigarette-smoke-stained walls. Now that Dan looked at them, the walls weren't the dingy yellow-brown that they'd been when he left that morning. They were white, that sort of snowfield-in-sunlight white designers so admired.

The kitchen wasn't covered in Jackson Pollock food splatters anymore, either. Its white-on-white brilliance matched the living room's . . . and the floor glistened. My landlady is going to love me, he thought.

"Fetch did all of this?"

"Imps have their uses. Takes time to train them, but it pays off. Of course, every now and then you get hungry and forget yourself. Then you have to start all over again with another one."

"You eat imps?"

"All Hellraised are cannibals. Didn't you know that? It's not like you can grow food in Hell. We're the only living things there. You don't see that sort of cannibalism dirtside, though. The little bastards are too expensive to eat. A colleague of mine fried up a couple of gargoyles and a six-pack of imps for a midnight snack, because he didn't know we had to pay for their replacement bodies, and the bill from Hell was so steep he couldn't pay it. He got recalled."

That entire revelation fell into the category of things Dan didn't want to know about the Hellraised. He didn't comment on it. Instead, he sneaked the imp a Mr. Goodbar for doing such a good job and gave him a quick scratch behind the ears. Then he checked his answering machine. Three messages.

Beep!

"Phone tag! You're it! Call me! Bye!"

Dan wondered if his sister ever visited her home for more than five minutes. This is long past absurd, he thought.

Beep!

"Hello, Dan, it's Janna. I'm sorry I got so upset about Bits. It isn't like the Hellspawn haven't been chowing down on family pets since they arrived. I should have kept him out of the way. Anyway, I'd still like to help out with your project . . . and I'd still like to see you, too. Call me when you can."

Beep!

"Hi, Dan. Meg here. Just wanted to say I enjoyed our dinner date, and my uncle is so excited about the plans I took home he's called his investors and they're meeting him in the bank tomorrow morning. I think this is going to work. I still want to find some time for just the two of us. See you tomorrow to let you know how things went."

He went into the kitchen to get himself a Coke, and the smell hit him. An underlying ammonia clean with an overlay of the lemony scent of floor polish. And a touch of cinnamon.

The scents were like a gut punch. He hadn't smelled them together since the days and nights when he could still come home to Francie.

Francie had died in Colorado. Her body was there. The house Dan had shared with her was there. His past, his life—they were in Colorado, too. She had never seen this apartment, and yet suddenly her presence filled the kitchen for him as completely as if she had spent her entire life in it with him. His eyes filled with tears and he leaned against the refrigerator, waiting for the pain to pass.

It didn't.

After the last horrible year, when she'd wasted and faded and suffered pain that only drugs and unconsciousness could lessen, he'd thought her final release into death would be a relief. He thought that he could stand her absence and bis loss, knowing that she no longer suffered. He had been calm at her funeral. It was for the best. For the best.

But his pain after her death had worsened. Every day, something happened that he wanted to tell Francie. Every time he turned around, she wasn't there. Every time he rolled over in bed and reached for her in his sleep, his arm touched an emptiness so terrible it burned. Her presence had filled his life, but her absence filled it more.

The new job, the new apartment, the return to his home state—he sought them out to flee the yawning void of Francie that threatened to swallow him up. He rebuilt himself around a life that had never known her, and tucked his hollow soul away with the pain, pretending she and her love and those few perfect years before the cancer came had never existed.

He pushed himself upright, wiped his eyes, got his Coke from the fridge with jaw-clenched determination, and returned to the living room.

He sprawled into his recliner and stared at the ceiling while Puck channel surfed.

"Dan?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Go ahead."

The devil turned to face him. "It's none of my business; I'm just curious. You don't seem like the two-timing type. So why?"

Dan closed his eyes. "You're right. It isn't any of your business."

"Touchy."

Dan popped the top on his Coke and took a swallow.

Puck watched. "How'd you meet them?"

Dan said nothing.

"Look, you like them. They both like you. Nothing wrong with that. But sneaking around boffing two women at the same time has been known to get men into more trouble than they ever imagined."

"I interviewed them on my show, both in the same week. I asked them out. They accepted."

They were supposed to take away the pain. They were supposed to make him forget that other life . . . that other, perfect, irretrievable time. But he'd been kidding himself. They couldn't replace Francie, and they couldn't make him forget her, and they couldn't take away his pain.

"You fool around with women," Puck said, "they'll break your heart."

Dan looked at him, but did not say what he was thinking.

You can't break what's already broken.

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Framed