Chapter 68: Trouble in hell

Things were not going well for the underworld. Project Sugarloaf had hit a plateau. After initial success, the level of addiction leveled off. Both of Screwtape's lieutenants had lost track of the troublemaking teen and her brat. None of them knew at first that Mary had given birth to twins. That complicated the matter. Conjoined twins -- very rare -- what could it mean? The Enemy was involved somehow. Screwtape was scared. And when he was scared, he was especially dangerous. Screwtape was on the verge of coming unhinged. He screamed and ranted and threatened. Snakefoot caught the heaviest dose of Screwtape's wrath, since he had been living with the wench when she disappeared. "Unbelievable!" Screwtape howled. "Right from under your nose! You! The slyest devil in the universe! Outwitted by an illiterate teen! You were supposed to monitor her every move! You can't find a pair of conjoined twins? Not exactly a needle in a haystack!"
   For once, Snakefoot had no sarcastic comeback. His arsenal of excuses was depleted. He had let Mary go to the abortionist alone, because he wanted her isolation, her desolation to be complete. How could he know that she would simply disappear? Of course the birth made a news splash. And of course the hospital would not give out any information.

   The news media, astonishingly, was behaving ethically. They didn't intrude on the family's privacy. They seemed completely uninterested in the story. "I don't know where they are, and if I did, I wouldn't tell you," a snippy reporter told Snakefoot. The slut and her whelps had simply vanished. Snakefoot's assistant overlings were clueless. The Enemy had wrapped her in a protective cloud; he was sure of it. That was the only possible explanation why he couldn't track her. But it was useless to mention it. Screwtape was not in the mood to listen to excuses. He was resolved to his fate. He expected his summons to come at any moment.
   Glubwart's situation was only slightly more tolerable. Screwtape's ringer, that damned nuisance, Snakefoot, had intruded in an ongoing operation and upset weeks of planning. Glubwart was the injured party. Still -- and this was a point Screwtape never failed to make -- Glubwart was the low-ranking officer in the field. Ultimately, the responsibility rested with him. All of his underworld contacts, all of his tricks had proven inadequate. The wretch had simply vanished. Glubwart smelled the heavy hand of the Enemy. He had smelled and felt it before -- murderous cutthroats slipping out of his grasp at the last second in genuine deathbed conversions; tortured souls suddenly glimpsing a ray of truth through the fog so carefully and painstakingly created by Glubwart. Glubwart spat in disgust.