§ § § -- January 16, 2005

It was gratifying to Roarke to see Gareth Moran in the best of health, with lively color in his face and an energetic grace in all his movements, as though he couldn't wait to begin using that energy for all the good causes he and Amarette Blaine were ready to tackle. Amarette, for her part, seemed a little wan, but when Roarke smiled and nodded to her, a glimmer of hope crept back into her eyes. Brennan Reese was tense but calm.

"Where are we supposed to meet the…uh…" the doctor began.

"The Prince of Darkness?" Roarke provided quietly. "He shall be along, Dr. Reese. He knows he will find the four of us here and has been waiting for the moment to arrive. Rest assured, he will appear."

Time slipped by; no one said much. Amarette lit oil lamps and a few candles in the parlor, and served tea that no one drank; the sun set and twilight fell, and Roarke suggested that Amarette draw the heavy velvet drapes over the windows. She looked spooked, but she arose and did as asked without protest. Roarke thanked her; she took her seat, and the wait continued. Sometimes they heard the sound of horses' hoofs clopping along the cobblestone street outside, occasionally they heard voices, but in the parlor was only silence.

In Roarke's experience, Mephistopheles always announced his appearance, and this time was no exception. At first only Roarke noticed the red glow, subtle to start with, that slowly lit the parlor. Then Moran asked uncertainly, "Is there a fire somewhere?"

A familiar chuckle sounded, and a dark silhouette stepped into the red glow that now filled the entrance to the parlor. "You might very well say that, Mr. Moran." The silhouette glided forward, and the light from the oil lamps and the candles, not very bright, brought the sharp, spare features of Mephistopheles into relief, pitted with shadows. "I do hope I haven't kept you waiting. And well, well, Roarke, fancy meeting you here."

"The devil makes small talk?" Brennan asked blankly, staring at him.

Roarke effortlessly concealed his amusement; Gareth and Amarette stared at him in horror; and Mephistopheles peered at him, pretending to be affronted. "My dear young man, I am as capable as anyone else of exhibiting nice manners," he huffed. "I'd ask for a bit of that tea there, but I suspect it's long since grown too cold to be enjoyable any longer." He shrugged. "No matter, we have business to conduct."

"Indeed," said Roarke. "Perhaps you'd do me the small favor of stating exactly what the nature of your business is."

"Why, I've come for Amarette Blaine's immortal soul, of course. She owes me that. Surely she's told you, Roarke," Mephistopheles said.

"But you can't take my soul," Amarette said, her voice trembling. "Not now. The reason no longer exists."

Mephistopheles peered at her and seemed to see Moran for the first time. "Well, well. It seems you've been restored to health, my good man. How unexpected." His gaze slid to Roarke, and he amended in a darker tone, "Or maybe not…"

Brennan suddenly stood up and announced, "I'm the one who cured him, Satan. If you take anyone's soul, it'll be mine."

Mephistopheles eyed him in amusement and drawled, "Oh? Suppose I'm not interested in your soul, young man? The contract was between me and the lady here, and I intend to collect on it. She promised that she would meet me here, in this room, this evening, and I would escort her directly to my domain."

Roarke spoke up: "She promised to do that only in the event that you cured Gareth Moran of his illness. That, you did not do. Therefore, you cannot take her soul."

"Now wait just a minute here," Mephistopheles said, glaring at him. "Don't try to spring yet another of your damned relentless loopholes at me, Roarke. You and I both know full well the contract was completely valid. Miss Blaine herself will attest to that." He gave Amarette a look that made her shrink a bit in her seat. "Won't you, madame?"

Amarette closed her eyes and nodded. "Yes," she murmured.

"Well, then, it's settled, wouldn't you say? Come along, Miss Blaine."

"I repeat—you cannot take her soul," Roarke said. "As I explained to you, you did not hold up your end of the deal. You can't take payment for services not rendered."

"Was it my fault that young interloper stepped in and beat me to the punch?" demanded Mephistopheles. "What am I supposed to do now?"

"Take my soul," Brennan said again.

"You fool," Gareth said incredulously. "You can't be serious about this. Don't you understand what you're doing?"

"Don't, Dr. Reese, I beg of you," Amarette cried. "After what you've done for Gareth, the world can't lose your services. You can help so many people."

Mephistopheles rolled his eyes. "You altruistic do-gooders really turn my stomach."

"Perhaps you'd like to return to Hades and take something for it," Roarke offered, with a perfectly straight face. The others gawked at him.

Mephistopheles shot him a sour look. "Hilarious, Roarke. You're not going to cheat me out of a soul. I suppose the young doctor has a point there. He did sneak in and do what I had meant to do, and I do have a valid contract that by rights should be fulfilled, so I expect the only solution here is the one he suggested. Right this way, Dr. Reese…"

"Surely you aren't leaving," Roarke said, as if mildly startled. "I, too, have come to conduct some business, Mephistopheles, and mine isn't yet finished."

"Oh, really," said Mephistopheles, pausing and looking over his shoulder at Roarke with an impatient, long-suffering look. "Anything to prolong the agony, eh, Roarke?"

Roarke shook his head and tsk'ed at him, with a sorrowful expression. "Surely you didn't think I'd let you get away so easily! Contract or no, you aren't entitled to any of the souls in this room."

"Is that so! And where do you get that outrageous claim?" Mephistopheles wanted to know, turning fully back around and regarding Roarke with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. "Honestly, in all my existence, I've never known anyone who tries my patience the way you do! Let me warn you, Roarke, if you don't come up with some valid reason that I supposedly can't take the soul I'm entitled to, I'll walk out of here with all four of you."

"But you can't do that, and you know it," Roarke said. "And the reason is not only valid, it's very simple. You tried to obtain Miss Blaine's soul under false pretenses."

Mephistopheles folded his arms over his chest and eyed him, leaning against the wall, almost smiling. "This gets better and better. Go ahead and tell me how, so I can have my nice laugh and then get the doctor back home."

Roarke removed the sheets of paper Leslie had printed for him from his inside jacket pocket and unfolded them. "This is a newspaper article that reports the disappearance of Miss Amarette Blaine; and this one is an obituary for Mr. Gareth Moran. Proof that you did not keep your end of the bargain." He paused long enough to register their reactions; then he extracted Amarette's diary and opened it to the pages containing the final two entries. "These are not the original entries in this diary. Something else was written on these pages and then—for lack of a better word—erased, in favor of the new entries that appear here."

"But how could you tell?" Brennan asked, staring at him. "I mean, for one thing, you can't erase ink. And second, you can see those pages never met up with an eraser, because when you erase something, it leaves the paper rougher than the part that was never erased."

"Indeed," Roarke said. "That's why I told you that I would send you back to cure Mr. Moran. Those original entries were not quite obliterated, and that's what alerted me that history was improperly changed."

Mephistopheles had begun to look trapped, but he tried to cover it with bluster. "Oh, come on, Roarke. Of all the excuses you've ever used to try to get yourself or someone else out of my clutches, that one has to be the most insane."

"Miss Blaine," Roarke said, "please advise what you wrote in this diary for the last two days, yesterday and today."

Amarette looked flustered. "Oh…well, I wrote something last evening about having made arrangements to save Gareth's life, and today I merely wrote a farewell."

Roarke nodded. "Would you please come here and tell me what you now see on these pages?" He smiled when Amarette arose and slowly approached him, stopping a foot or two short of him and leaning forward to peer at the pages in the flickering light.

"They're blank," she said, sounding shocked. "How can that be?"

"Because of the change in history," Roarke explained gently. "What took place here recently should not have done so. The evidence of true history was contained in the nearly vanished entries you made in this diary originally."

"And Satan…Lucifer…Mephistopheles changed it," Gareth said.

"I know of no one else with such power—or such lack of conscience as to use it in that way," Roarke told him.

Mephistopheles snorted. "You could at least have made up your mind which of my names you want to call me by," he muttered, then glared at Roarke. "Spoil my fun, as always, Roarke, why don't you?"

"You know full well you never could have gotten away with it," Roarke said. "The universe is a will unto itself, Mephistopheles. When someone attempts to alter things for the wrong reasons, there will always be evidence of the wrongdoing, and sooner or later those improper changes must be made right. There are forces out there greater than I—greater even than you—and those forces will not be thwarted or swayed from their intended course. Oh, you can try to walk away with Miss Blaine's soul, or Dr. Reese's soul, but I daresay you'll not be allowed any farther than the doorway in which you stand."

Mephistopheles closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, his entire body tensing, his hands clenching into fists and the horns emerging from his forehead while they all watched, Roarke expectantly, the others in horrified fascination. At last he looked up and growled at Roarke, "I really ought to know better than to tangle with you by now, but I can't seem to help myself. I think what keeps me going is the knowledge that one day you're going to run out of loopholes and escape clauses, and I'll have you at last."

"Go home, Mephistopheles," was all Roarke said, with a slight smile. "But before you do, I must insist that you extinguish that little flame at your feet. You really do need to learn to control that temper."

Everyone looked down, and sure enough, there was a small fire crackling away on the carpet right in front of Mephistopheles' toes. The devil growled again, flicked his fingers at the fire and waited till it vanished, then warned, "You'll see me again, Roarke," before walking away. The red glow faded, and slowly the tension drained from the air.

"Changing history," Amarette finally said faintly, looking dazed. "I never dreamed anyone would even attempt it, or could—not even Mephistopheles."

"One never knows, Miss Blaine," Roarke said.

Gareth stood up slowly and extended a hand toward him. "How can we possibly thank you for what you've done? A feat like that defies repayment."

Roarke smiled. "And I ask for none, except that you and Miss Blaine follow through on your intentions of moving west and opening a medical clinic for poor and disadvantaged people. Knowing that history is being carried out as it properly should be is all the repayment I want. You are two extraordinary people, and I wish you both all the very best."

"Dr. Reese? Would you still come with us?" Gareth asked.

"Well…it's a generous offer, and tempting," Brennan managed, "but there are people here, in the east, who need my help. Who knows, maybe one day we'll find a way to eradicate tuber—uh, consumption on both sides of the country."

Gareth and Amarette thanked him and Roarke several times over, and as Brennan followed Roarke toward the front door, he glanced back and smiled wistfully. They waved at him, and he waved back one last time, wondering what he would find on the other side of Roarke's time tunnel.