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break, it took me hours to come up with all that.” Well.
An
hour. Except it was more like thirty minutes. I had time to kill while waiting for Sinclair to get ready to go another round. For a dead guy, his refractory period was pretty impressive. But not, y’know,
instant
. Besides, he was getting steadily more sulky about being left at the mansion every time I went to Hell. But that was an argument for another day. Another
year
, hopefully. “But it’s like Father Markus said: the basics are pretty much always the same. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t be a dick. The big diff is, it’s not a hard-and-fast set of rules for Christians. Don’t kill and don’t steal apply across religions, or lack of religion.”
    â€œI can’t decide if that’s brilliant or deepest blasphemy.I’ll pray on it and get back to you.” He would, too. He was always tracking me down to let me know he’d prayed on something, and how the power of prayer revealed to him my general incompetence. Blech. “It’s true, you’ve covered the basics,” Markus admitted. “Though I’m not one hundred percent behind the ‘murder is okay in wartime’ clause.”
    â€œWhen
else
would murder be okay?”
    â€œMeet the new boss,” Tina murmured, “same as the old boss.” At the stares, she replied, “Why are you looking at me like that? I enjoy the Who as much as the next woman.”
    â€œExcept that’d be me,” Cathie pointed out, “and I hate that shit.
The Simpsons
described the sixties perfectly: ‘What a shrill, pointless decade.’ In fact, as more and more boomers end up in Hell, I’d like to move we forbid all bands who were in the top one hundred between 1960 and 1979. For their own safety.”
    â€œI’m not the same as the old boss,” I said, stung. “I’m giving Hell a much-needed and long-overdue makeover, for free, I might add, which is something the old boss either never thought of or never cared about.”
    â€œI’ll guess it’s the latter,” Markus replied. “So then. How to get this information to the masses?”
    â€œI dunno. Put up flyers?”
    â€œIsn’t that a little late, though?” Marc asked. He was definitely more engaged in the meeting, which was really, really, really, really good. You know that whole “zombies need braaaaains” thing? It was true. But the movies got it wrong: zombies needed stimulation, not Dr. Hannibal frying up brains in butter. Marc needed to keep busy, to keep learning, to stay focused, to be
alive
. He was a zombie, but one who had been dead maybe a minute. Still (mostly) warm, still (for most intents and purposes) alive. He doesn’t need to eat or drink; he’ll enjoy his Caesar haircut forever; he’ll never have to worry about cancer or Alzheimer’s or arthritis. But if he went too long withoutstimulation and got bored, or was away from me for too long, he’d start to rot.
    Nobody wanted him to rot. Especially after all he’d done for us from the moment I talked him out of jumping from the rooftop, BBC Sherlock–style: embracing our vampire natures, backing us up regardless of the Big Bad du jour, risking his life, being turned into a vampire in the future and a zombie in the present . . . endless. Endless sacrifices.
    So we put up with him dissecting mice on our kitchen counters and reading and writing at all hours of the night and doing Sudoku (when will that puzzle trend die?), cleaning out the attic by dumping all the old stuff into the basement, then reversing the process to clean the basement, and roaming the mansion at all hours, always looking for something to keep himself occupied. Not that I had anything against roaming; Sinclair, Tina, and I did it all the time. (We’ve tried to keep the lurking to a minimum.) But it was less creepy when vampires did it, which