The problem with being damned, as Constance Blackwell had learned over her four centuries of recurring existence, was not the fire. It wasn't the brimstone, the weeping, the gnashing of teeth, or any of the other theatrical accoutrements that medieval theologians had dreamed up while sweating through their celibate nights. No, the real problem with damnation was the paperwork.
Constance sat in a limestone cave somewhere beneath what would eventually become Prague, though in this particular incarnation it was still just a forest full of people who hadn't yet learned to bathe properly. She was attempting to file her seventh complaint with the Bureau of Eternal Torment regarding the inconsistent heating in her assigned reincarnation portal, while simultaneously trying to remove a particularly aggressive species of cave beetle from her left nostril.
"You're not listening," she said to the empty air, which was technically inaccurate because the air was occupied by several thousand more beetles and the lingering spiritual presence of her coven-sister, Magda, who had forgotten to fully manifest her physical form again. "The point is that if we're supposed to be teaching humanity some kind of cosmic lesson, we really ought to have better accommodations. How am I expected to prophesy with dignity when I have insects in my nasal cavity?"
The air shimmered, and Magda's head appeared, floating approximately three feet to Constance's left. The rest of her body was presumably somewhere in the Byzantine Empire, judging by the olive complexion that was slowly spreading down her neck like a particularly determined suntan.
"I read the First Manifesto again," Magda said, her voice sounding like it was being filtered through a barrel of honey and regret. "Lilith was very specific. We walk the path of shame so that He might have miracles to perform. The shame is the point, Constance. The beetles are part of the aesthetic."
Constance flicked a beetle into the fire. "Lilith also said we could stop reincarnating once the world learned what we had to teach. That was six thousand years ago, Magda. Six. Thousand. Years. Do you know how many times I've been burned at the stake? Seventeen. Seventeen times. I've been drowned twice, pressed to death under rocks once, hanged four times, and in one particularly memorable instance in what will become Belgium, I was beaten to death with a wheel of cheese."
"The cheese was unexpected," Magda agreed, her head rotating slowly to face Constance. "But you have to admit, the miracles that followed were impressive. The way He turned that dairy product into a flock of doves—"
"That was not doves," Constance interrupted. "That was rats. The villagers were being eaten by cheese-rats for three days. It was in the report."
"Well, they stopped eating dairy for a month afterward. Very spiritual awakening."
Constance sighed, a sound that caused the cave beetles to pause in their scurrying, as if even they recognized the weight of eternal exhaustion. She pulled her knees to her chest, feeling the rough wool of her shift against skin that had known too many centuries of cold. In this incarnation, she was seventeen years old, red-haired, freckled, and possessed of a birthmark on her left shoulder that looked suspiciously like a map of the Nile Delta. The locals had already begun to whisper about her. They always did.
"The others?" Constance asked.
"Gathering," Magda said. "Beatrice is trying to convince a village in Gaul that she's a healer, not a harlot. The distinction is apparently lost on them. Agnes has managed to get herself locked in a tower again—she does love a good tower. And the new one—"
"There's a new one?"
"There's always a new one. Lilith keeps... expanding the coven. She says the original business model didn't account for market growth." Magda's head flickered, her eyes rolling back to show the whites in a gesture that had nothing to do with mortal physiology and everything to do with divine exasperation. "Her name is Tabitha. She's from a future time, something called 'New Jersey.' She's very loud and keeps asking where she can charge her 'phone.'"
Constance felt the familiar sinking sensation in her stomach that had nothing to do with the cave beetles and everything to do with the endless, grinding repetition of their cosmic purpose. They were the Coven of the Damned, the thirteen—no, fourteen now, apparently—women who had walked away from Eden before Eden had even been properly established. They were Lilith's daughters, in the spiritual if not biological sense, created from the same clay that had formed the First Woman, breathed into existence by the same divine lips that had whispered secrets to the night.
And they were, according to every sacred text that had been written and would be written, utterly and completely damned.
But here's the thing about damnation that the theologians never understood: it was boring. It was bureaucratic. It was, in its own way, a nine-to-five existence that stretched across eternity with all the spiritual fulfillment of a job stamping forms in a windowless office.
"We need to talk about the prophecy," Constance said.
"Which one? There are so many."
"The one that matters. The one about the end. About Him coming back."
Magda's head solidified fully, her body catching up with a sound like wet laundry being snapped in a windstorm. She was older in this incarnation, silver-haired and bent, with fingers twisted by some disease that wouldn't have a name for another thousand years. She looked, Constance thought, like every grandmother who had ever been accused of souring milk with a glance.
"He's not coming back," Magda said quietly. "Not until they accept that we had the power. That we gave Him the prophecies. That without us, there are no miracles, no resurrection, no ascension. Just... a man in the desert, talking to himself."
"And how are we supposed to teach them that? We've been trying for six millennia. We've been stoned, burned, drowned, defamed, forgotten. We've been written out of every gospel, every scripture, every history book. We're the footnotes, Magda. The cautionary tales. The witches in the woods that children are warned about."
Magda smiled then, and it was a terrible smile, full of teeth that were too sharp and eyes that held the memory of the Garden. "Then perhaps we need to change our teaching methods. Perhaps it's time we stopped being the footnotes and started being the text."
Outside the cave, thunder rolled across a sky that hadn't yet learned to fear lightning. And somewhere, in a place that existed outside of time and space and the tedious progression of history, Lilith laughed.