Chapter 1
I.
I can tell you what happens when your life goes to hell.
When you’ve crossed a line you can’t come back from.
You’re scared. You’re confused.
And if you’re standing in front of me, your life has literally gone to Hell.
Still, I think for the fiftieth time since starting my shift in the Welcome Hall six hours ago, that doesn’t give anyone the right to be an asshole to me.
Take the dead douchenozzle standing here now, bashing his fists into the top of my desk, unsympathetic to the fact he’s giving me a migraine.
“I’m not dead! Stop saying that!” He bends over the table, so close that the acrid stench of alcohol on his breath smothers me.
I wipe a smattering of his spittle off my cheek with the back of my hand and resist the urge to wipe it back onto his face. That’d require touching him, and the dampness of his saliva on me is enough to trigger my gag reflex.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say flatly. “You’re dead. You died in a car crash.”
“Impossible.” He swats away my statement with a wave of his hand. “I’ve never been in an accident.”
I narrow my eyes at his blatant lie.
One thing about humans is that you can’t trust them. Everyone tries to lie their way out of here. What they never understand is that I have no say in their final accommodations. That’s all my father.
I flip the folder so he can see it. “This says you were drinking.”
“I had one or two,” he sputters. “But I’m a good driver, even after a glass of wine.”
I fix my gaze on the stone ceiling and stifle a sigh.
This pointless after-school job was Father’s idea. He thought it’d help me understand what he does. He said it would build character. I wonder if annoyance and boredom are the character traits he’d had in mind.
“You actually had six glasses of wine.” I hold up his file, heavy with the weight of his many sins. “Then you crashed into a tree after almost running over an old lady.”
“But I didn’t hit her. I swerved at the last minute.”
I hurl the folder onto my desk and stand so I’m at his level. This has gone on long enough. I’m not here to argue with the dead. I’m here to make sure they’re punished for what they did when they were alive.
My voice comes out as a low growl. “She had a heart attack and died two minutes later.”
His dark eyes widen as he backs up, and I take a grateful sip of the air he’d been hoarding with his closeness. “I can’t be blamed for that. It was obviously her time.”
“Seems it was your time, too. Look, you already have your stamp.”
I gesture to his right inner wrist. A mark ripples like a snake beneath his skin before settling into a series of scarlet letters and numbers.
He frowns and shakes his arm, as though the ink might disintegrate if he applies enough force. “What the—?”
I squint at the digits. “You’re assigned to Lot Ten with the other liars.” I arch my eyebrows as I delve deeper into his file. “Looks like you did more than drink and drive in your lifetime. You naughty boy.”
“B-but… None of this is right,” he stutters.
The color drains from his face, and I smirk at his unease.
I don’t usually enjoy my work, but once in a while I can see why Father does what he does.
“I can’t be dead. And I certainly can’t be here.”
Scrawling a checkmark on my clipboard, I reach behind me and snatch a crimson jumpsuit from the large pile on the floor. There’s no need to scrounge for a size; it’ll mold to the wearer’s body type when they put it on.
“For the last time”—I right myself in my chair—“it’s correct.
You’re dead. You’ve been judged and this is where you wound up.
Deal with it.” I drop the clothing on the table in front of him and point to my left.
“Follow Nefas over there. He’ll take you to Lot Ten.
You’re going to spend eternity in those clothes, so I recommend taking good care of them. ”
Gaping at me, the man remains in place.
I flick my gaze to the tall, midnight-colored demon stationed by the dock. He nods and heads in my direction.
The flames on the wall flicker off the onyx scales that cover his massive body. Emerald horns break through his forehead and peak in a U over his head.
With hooves that stamp the ground hard enough to make the floor rumble as he walks, Nefas cuts an imposing figure.
He’s carted souls to their lots since Father was banished to this place.
Good as he is at the job, I can’t imagine doing anything that long.
I can barely get through eight hours a week here.
“Let’s go.” Nefas clamps down on the man’s shoulder with sharp nails.
The man’s eyes widen as he’s dragged screaming from my desk, the heels of his black dress shoes imprinting a path after him in the gravel.
“Welcome to Hell, sir!” I call after him in a melodic tone. “I’d say enjoy your stay, but you probably won’t. That’s kind of the point.”
Nefas shoves him onto a small boat tied to a dock along with hundreds of other shadelings as I scrawl “Devica” along the “Checked in by” line at the bottom of his report.
Snapping his folder shut, I shove it on top of my “Done” pile and survey the never-ending line in front of me. I groan.
How can humans suck this much, even after they’re dead?
Plucking another folder from the stack beside me, I flip it open and call to the line without looking up, “Next!”
“Uh, I think that’s me. But there’s been a mistake.”
“Seriously?” I rub my temples as the pressure in my head builds. “Did you not hear the dude in front of you? We don’t make mistakes here.”
I scan the information provided in the report with bleary vision.
Why do I keep getting the complainers? I should pawn them off to my coworker, Ferus. He may be the worst demon who ever demoned and he hates humans more than I do, but he has a way with them. By the end, they think he’s doing them a favor by sending them off to their lot.
“You don’t understand,” the voice persists. “I really don’t belong here. I did nothing wrong.”
I study the report. An elderly lady with white hair and glasses smiles at me from the attached photo Father used for judgment. Funny, the voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to a senior citizen.
I raise my eyes and frown.
The boy before me bears no resemblance to the woman in the photo. His eyes are the kind of blue I’ve seen only in pictures Father’s shown me of oceans on Earth. Their depth makes me shiver.
Father warned me that oceans are as dangerous as shadelings. They may appear calm and beautiful on the surface, but monsters lurk below.
A lock of sandy-brown hair falls in front of his right eye. He’s young, maybe my age. Too young to be standing in front of me. Usually, humans his age go to the in-between until they earn their way up or down.
He’s done something awful to be standing in front of me.
“You don’t look like an Ethel Tofflemeyer,” I say, reading the name typed beneath the old woman’s photo.
“I get that a lot.” He lets out a low chuckle.
I narrow my eyes. “You know where you are, right?”
“Let’s see, fire…brimstone…creepy-ass demons… I’m going to take a guess and say it’s not Disneyland,” he says. “This place does not scream, ‘The Happiest Place on Earth.’”
His sideways grin throws me. Not only because I can’t remember the last time a shadeling smiled at me, but because, for some reason, my heart picks up speed when his smile reaches his eyes.
I swallow.
Something’s definitely defective in this one. No wonder he’s here.
“I’ve never been to Disneyland,” I say, my gaze locked with his. “But that’s not our motto.”
An agonized cry bursts from one of the shadelings in the boat to our right, and all traces of humor drain from his face. “I’m getting that.”
“What have you done with Ethel Tofflemeyer?”
“Who?”
I hold up the photo of the elderly woman, and his eyes widen with recognition.
“Oh, her! She was in front of me. She saw I was upset and offered me her place in line. Then she gave me a stale butterscotch candy and disappeared.” He holds up a gold wrapper and rubs his chin. “Huh. I guess you can take it with you.”
Closing the file, I sigh, then scrawl an X across the front in black marker and toss it on top of a pile marked “Last-minute Ascensions.”
This happens sometimes. Someone who’s on the cusp of making it to Paradise earns their way up. It’s not a common occurrence, because humans, but I’ve seen it once or twice.
I pull the stack of folders I haven’t gotten to yet toward me and wade through them. “What’s your name?”
“Reynolds,” he says, peering at me over the files. “Nate Reynolds. Err… Nathan, I guess.”
“Mr. Reynolds, can I see the stamp on your wrist?”
“What stamp? I don’t—” He squints at his inner arm and gasps when he spots the mark etched into his skin. He opens his mouth to say something, but, for the first time since he’s joined my line, Nathan Reynolds appears to be speechless.
I hold out my hand, but he remains frozen, his gaze on his wrist.
I’ve seen this before, too. Shadelings so surprised about being here that they cease to function. I bite the inside of my cheek. So much for getting out of here early today. At this rate, I’ll be doing overtime.
I lift my butt out of my chair and grab his wrist. He jumps at my touch, and I gasp. I’ve forgotten how cold their flesh is compared to my own. His skin is smooth as ivory, soft as velvet. I clear my throat and scribble the numbers onto a blank sheet of paper.
He snatches his hand back the moment I loosen my grip.
My face must betray my surprise, because he mutters an apology and holds his wrist out again. It trembles visibly in the dim lighting of the Welcome Hall. “Did you get it?”
“Yeah, hang on. Let me find your file.” I scan his papers for a long time.
I’d been right about us being the same age.
Nathan Reynolds is—was—seventeen. An orphan from Los Angeles whose parents died in a car accident when he was only six.
He’d spent most of his life trekking from foster home to foster home.
Until today. The day he killed his foster dad.
Police found him standing over the body, clutching the murder weapon. When he didn’t respond to their pleas to drop the gun, they shot him. He died before he made it to the hospital.
I study Nathan Reynolds from behind the folder. It’s hard to believe that those eyes that crinkle when he smiles conceal the mind of a murderer. But I know better.
My home is proof that humans are capable of awful things. Especially those you least suspect. It’s why the line in front of me never ends. Humans don’t know how to be good.
“Well?” he asks, hope blooming across his features like a fire rose bursting through the dirt in Father’s garden.
“Yup, you definitely belong here,” I say, sliding an icy tone beneath my words. “You’re a murderer.”
“That’s not what happened.” He leans forward and I force myself to maintain his gaze, despite every instinct to look away. “I was framed.”
“Look,” I say. “I have nothing to do with this. Pleading with me won’t help. I check you in, and off you go. You’ve already been judged, and it seems you were judged correctly.” I toss a jumpsuit onto the desk. “Here are your new clothes. You’ll be in Lot Thirteen, with the other murderers.”
His fingers curl around my wrist, and I gasp at the contact. I took his arm earlier, but shadelings aren’t ever supposed to touch me. Not that it’s usually a problem. Most of them are too scared to try.
“Let go of me,” I growl.
“Sorry.” He drops my wrist and wrings his fingers. “I didn’t mean to do that. I hope I didn’t hurt you. I… Please, you need to help me. I don’t belong here.”
“Is there a problem?” Neither of us noticed Nefas approach, and we both jump at his appearance at my desk.
All color drains from Nathan Reynolds’s face, and I almost feel sorry for him.
Almost.
“No problem, Nefas. Mr. Reynolds here was about to get on your boat to Lot Thirteen. You should help him find his way.”
I watch as Nefas escorts Nathan Reynolds toward the river that leads out of Dominus, the capital, and into the cities of sin, and the human gives me one last pleading glance over his shoulder.
An ache blooms in my chest.
Lot Thirteen is a horrid place. One of the worst. Joke Boy’s not going to do well there.
Not that I care. He deserves what he gets.
They all do.