Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
MAX
Dear God …er Lucy, these forms were insane.
I’d filled out tax returns, court documents—hell—even prenups for celebrities who barely knew each other’s middle names. But whatever sadistic pencil-pusher in Hell’s Human Resources had cooked these forms up needed to be publicly flogged with their own stapler.
The HR demon slid me a form titled Consent, Quotas, and Quality Assurance.
“Fill in prior experience,” she said.
I wrote: Attorney. Specialized in screwing opponents.
The man beside me snorted.
“Rebirth candidates get better apartments,” he murmured. “You aim for the top.”
I was aiming for whatever would give me my dick back.
The questions ranged from the standard—name, cause of death, next of kin (if you care)—to the ridiculous. How many orgasms have you delivered in your lifetime? Rate your oral stamina on a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being tragic and 10 being divine.
I stared at the line like maybe, if I glared hard enough, the answer would magically come to me or write itself.
“Don’t lie,” Agnus snapped, leaning over my shoulder. “We check.”
I jumped. “You check?”
“Cross-referenced with your internet search history, ex-girlfriends, and the cries of despair echoing through the mortal plane.” She poked me in the chest with her clipboard, hard enough that I nearly toppled backward in the chair.
“We just know if you are telling the truth or not. Give it your best guess.”
“God!”
“Wrong jurisdiction,” she shot back without missing a beat.
I rubbed at the sore spot and muttered, “Lady, you’re gonna leave a bruise.”
She arched one of her terrifying eyebrows that could have had its own zip code. “And?”
Right—demoness. I wisely shut up.
By the time she was finished ripping me a new one, I was praying for Ivy to reappear. Not that prayer got you very far here, but still. Ivy—sweet, strawberry-blonde Ivy—was the only thing in this whole pit that looked remotely like hope. I couldn’t imagine how she’d become a demoness.
I’d only been with her for about five minutes, but the girl was the perfect cocktail of innocence and simmering heat, like one of those angel-faced models you only saw in lingerie ads, only shorter.
I didn’t have much experience with classy ladies like her. No real girlfriends, just a rotating cast of “fuck buddies” who bailed as soon as the deed was done. So when Ivy had agreed to be my friend, it had rattled me.
I mean, Hell, I could handle. Loneliness? That was a different beast.
“Are you about finished here?” Agnus barked.
I jolted and scribbled my last shaky answer. “Almost. Uh, where do I go after this?”
She gave me a look that said I’d just asked if fish could swim. “It’s Hell. You go back to your job and wait.”
“Wait for what?”
“To hear if you made it through to auditions, obviously.”
The Captain Obvious was implied.
I sat there fuming. I wasn’t stupid. I was a goddamn lawyer, for crying out loud. I’d survived courtrooms full of sharks and mafia crime lords in thousand-dollar suits. But here? I was a slug trying to rub off my clipboard bruise.
“Don’t mind her,” a deep voice said at my side.
I looked up and saw a tall black guy about my age, smiling, who set me at ease. He held out a hand. “Kevin.”
I shook it. “Max.”
“First day?” he asked.
“How could you tell?”
Kevin chuckled, teeth flashing. “Your look of abject horror is a dead giveaway. Come on—I’ll show you where intake is. You can skip to the front of the line for your housing. They won’t worry about an occupation until they decide if you’re show material or not.”
I followed him through the door, grateful for the lifeline. “You’ve auditioned before?”
“This is my second time,” he said with a sigh. “You only get three tries. Last time I made it to the finals but lost to some Crusader.”
I blinked. “Like… chainmail and swords, Crusader?”
“Yeah. Accent got him the win. Judges are suckers for medieval French.”
I laughed out loud. “Hell really is rigged.”
“Welcome to eternity, man.” He clapped me on the shoulder.
We wound through a maze of stone corridors that looked equal parts DMV and college dorm.
I shook my head. “I hadn’t thought about people down here who died that long ago.”
“Oh, it’s a trip,” Kevin said. “The timeline’s all mashed up. You’ll find Vikings arguing with mobsters, Quakers and Shakespeare playing craps on their free days, disco dancers learning from TikTokers how to twerk.”
“That’s… horrifying.”
“That’s Hell.”
He pointed me down another hallway. “See, the way it works is, there are levels you climb depending on your deeds, service, or luck. At level fifty, you get a chance at rebirth.”
“Reincarnation?”
“Not for everybody,” he warned. “If you were pure evil, you would get tossed into the outer darkness plains with demons who think flaying is foreplay. But for guys like us? There are options.”
“Options?”
He nodded. “Rebirth, or—if you’re really lucky—you join the HHB and possibly even imprint with a demoness.”
My stomach dropped. “And that’s good?”
Kevin’s smile softened. “The best. Fated mate, eternal bond, live in happiness, have demoness babies—the whole thing. I’ve only seen it once, but they say it’s like fireworks and earthquakes rolled into one. Erotic as leather and lace, too.”
I swallowed. Erotic fireworks didn’t sound terrible. But a forever bond? My longest commitment was a Hulu subscription.
Kevin must’ve read the panic on my face because he laughed. “Relax. It’s rare. Most guys go their whole afterlife without imprinting.”
“And what about you?” I asked. “Is that the main goal?”
His eyes flickered, something wistful hiding under the humor.
“I’d like it. Someone to love me until the end of time?
Yeah. But if not, I’ll take rebirth. Try living again, and see if I can do it better this time.
I want to find my daughter and be the dad that she deserves.
I know that’s a long shot, and maybe I will never make the pearly gates. But the guilt is eating me alive.”
He wanted rebirth to find his daughter. I wanted to get my dick back.
A flash of guilt flooded me. Here I was in Hell being the same tool that I’d been on Earth.
Then again. If I didn’t audition for the HHB, I would be starting even lower on the totem pole.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted out of the afterlife, or even if I'd hit level 50. But I knew some change was needed.
He asked, “Do you ever think about Heaven?”
“Sure,” I said. “But it’s invite-only, and I lost my plus-one.”
He laughed, but I could tell he was just being polite. “My daughter will be going there, I’m sure of it.”
“I hope you find her,” I said suddenly, surprising myself. “I really hope you do.”
We passed through a lobby where demonesses in pencil skirts sipped lattes while flame-haired interns carried trays of paperwork taller than they were. The place buzzed like Wall Street.
Kevin steered me toward a middle-aged demoness behind a counter marked Housing and Sustenance. She wore glasses and had a permanent frown carved into her forehead. Without looking up, she shoved a key and a plastic card toward me.
“Temporary housing. Food pass. Don’t lose either.”
I stared at the card. “This looks like a college meal swipe.”
“Same idea, except the food here won’t give you diarrhea.” She blinked her reptilian eyes once, slow and terrifying. “Usually.”
“Comforting,” I muttered.
Kevin just grinned. “See? Just like college. You’ll get used to it.”
I wasn’t convinced.
The dorm was a narrow, echoing hallway lined with doors. Inside, my room was spartan: twin bed, scratchy blanket, a desk bolted to the floor. It smelled faintly of brimstone and Axe body spray.
Dropping onto the mattress, I let out a long sigh. My brain felt fried from all the new information: auditions, levels, reincarnation, fated mates. It was a lot.
And under it all, one thought pulsed like a neon sign. Ivy.
She’d been kind. She’d smiled at me like I wasn’t just a corpse with a fashionable, new Ken-doll body. And for reasons I couldn’t explain, the idea of never seeing her again felt worse than eternal damnation.
I’d have to find her. Ask her more about this imprint thing.
But first? Sleep.
For the first time since dying, I let my eyes close and drifted under, sleeping like… well, like the dead.