The Death-Defying Pepper Roux by Geraldine McCaughrean Page A

triple seraphim wings! He climbed back down into the print rooms, legs shaking; sat at his desk; and, just to celebrate, wrote a story about a chicken in Bagnol that had laid forty-three eggs in one day. Around him the printing machines flailed like windmills, and the giant rollers spewed out page after page of news, cut wafer thin. The chief setter said, “Have you heard? Circulation’s up thirty percent. Happy days.”
    The editor came back from the front office, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. Laughs, like hiccups, kept breaking free from his throat. “I believe a glass of wine might be in order, gentlemen,” he said.“Go and get us half a dozen bottles of red, will you, Papier?” And he pulled out his wallet.
    The heat was dying out of the day, so Pepper put on his jacket to go to the wineshop. His head was full of new ideas for stories: about a parakeet that could translate Malay into French—about a cure for baldness involving marmalade—about a boy who receives a mysterious envelope on his fourteenth birthday, and inside it a fancy iron key to a chateau along with a note saying I want you to have it….
    So he did not notice the sound of footsteps behind him, keeping pace with his, until he was almost at the shop. Glancing back, he saw the figure of a man stop sharply and lift one finger to point at him. A chill went down Pepper’s spine, as if the iron key in the story had been dropped down his collar. The bright lights of the wineshop were comforting and reassuring once he was inside: the rows of wine bottles a palette of glorious oily reds, pinks, greens, and golds. Pepper had never been in such a shop, never bought wine before, and never drunk it except at Holy Communion. He was enchanted by the huge array of shapes perched like statues around a church. The labels bore lilies, port cullises, castles, eagles, boars, rearing horses, andcrowns. Some bottles wore little helmets of silver wire, others sackcloth tunics like monks doing penance.
    “Six bottles of red, please,” said Pepper, and the vintner laughed out loud and spread wide his arms to indicate the choice.
    Then someone outside the shop put his face close to the window, hands cupped around the eyes to peer through the glass. Condensation at once blotted out the face, so only the shape of the head showed, hands curving like tusks away from the cheekbones.
    Pepper emptied the money out of his fist onto the shop counter. “Sorry. Please. Sorry. Give this back to the editor at L’Étoile, will you? Say Papier’s sorry, but he had to go.” Then he squeezed between the racks of wine, setting them chinking and rocking; forced open the back door of the shop; and tumbled out into an alleyway. The alleyway had only one exit—back onto the main street. As Pepper walked briskly toward the streetlights, the same figure stepped into the alley’s opening: a silhouette against the streetlamp, a halo of gaslight around his hat.
    “Roux!”
    Pepper turned back and ran. He ran at the alley’s end wall, dislodging mortar with the toes of his boots,scuffing his knees, reaching up. There was barbed wire along the top of the wall. A clothesline in the garden beyond that caught him in the throat and threw him on his back. But not until Pepper had vaulted three fences did he feel any pain other than fear.

SIX
CONFESSIONS
    T he best time to get killed is immediately after going to confession. Well, after doing penance, too, of course, but that’s the easy part.
    A long time ago, Aunty Mireille had explained how the rules worked: If, when he died, Pepper was carrying any unforgiven sins around with him (such as a dirty handkerchief or five out of ten for his math assignment, or second helpings at dinner), he would have to go to Hell and have those sins burned away before he could present himself in Heaven. There was no guarantee he would be allowed into Heaven at all—not after eating cake with his fingers instead of a fork—but while he was larded in