Hell to Pay

Chapter Twenty-Six

Twenty-Six

One Year Ago

I couldn’t believe it was happening. I, Elysia Fields, was making out with Tolliver Takao.

We’d been sitting on the cot in the basement, talking about the latest job, and he just leaned over and kissed me.

At first, it was gentle. Just the meeting of lips. And then his arms went around me and that was that. Before I knew it, we were horizontal, and his weight was kind of on top of me, one of his legs between mine, and there was tongue involved.

I don’t know how long we’d been kissing when he pulled back.

“What were you saying?” he asked.

That startled a laugh out of me. “I have no idea.”

He blushed and looked almost shy. “Was that…Is it okay? That we did that?”

I pretended to think. “I think so. Maybe we should try again, just to be sure.”

His mouth met mine again just as an alarm went off.

“Shit,” he said against my lips.

“What is it?” I asked as he pushed off me.

Tolliver did most of his alchemy in my family’s basement.

When he first started learning, my parents built him a small lab in the corner.

Just a couple stainless steel counters, a few flasks, and a Bunsen burner.

Now it took up almost the entire room, with cabinets full of ingredients and potions.

He even kept his alchemy prosthesis there, hanging from a hook over his cot.

Some nights, like that night, he wouldn’t even go home.

He’d just text his mom that he was staying with Dante, and she’d tell him to have a good time and that she loved him, and then it’d be a week before she’d text back asking when he was coming home.

Tolliver turned off the timer. “I think…I think it’s done.”

I sat up, basically bounding off the cot. “What? Juliet?”

He nodded, eyes wide as though he couldn’t believe it himself.

“Can we test it?” I asked.

He bit his lip, and I knew what he was thinking. Dante would be furious. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Tolliver’s work. But he’d want to test it first.

Rule #24: Always test new equipment, potions, and spells.

He was the one who was usually the guinea pig. Sometimes CJ. Never me.

Ever since my parents disappeared, Dante had grown more and more protective.

It started slowly. I was given fewer responsibilities on jobs, relocated to positions that had fewer risks.

Then I was kept in the Beforedeath, stuck with Tolliver in the lab.

Eventually, I was cut out of jobs entirely.

Dante wouldn’t tell me why, only made excuses about not needing me or the job being too dangerous, even though that had never been an issue before.

But Dante wasn’t here right now. It was just me and Tolliver.

“Please?” I pouted.

Tolliver’s eyes fell down to my lips, and it wasn’t like I was conning him. Not really. No more than people usually con each other. He liked me, so I knew he would say yes. But I hadn’t made him like me just to get him to say yes. So that was okay, then.

In hindsight, this is probably why Dante had the rule about no romantic entanglements.

Tolliver blushed the whole time he prepped to send me into the Afterlife. The process was pretty similar to Miracle Max. I lay on a gurney and Tolliver put the mist mask over my mouth and nose. Hit a few buttons, turned some knobs. But after that, things were completely different.

I was used to a spiraling descent, a rush of sight and sound, then a slow realization of waking up in a place that was almost like where I’d just been, just thinner, a little detached.

But with Juliet, none of that happened. My eyes grew heavy, but no sooner had they closed than they were open again.

I was in the same place, as I always was when I went to the Afterlife, but nothing felt different than it did in the Beforedeath.

The table beneath me, the mask attached to my face.

It all felt as real as it did seconds ago.

At first, I thought it hadn’t worked but then realized Tolliver was no longer beside me.

I pushed off the gurney, removing the mask, and almost stumbled.

I felt…solid. It wasn’t the slightly fuzzy feeling of existing as a living person in the Afterlife.

For a moment I considered that maybe Tolliver’s experiment had gone wrong and he had actually killed me, and now I was actually just Dead.

But no, if that had been the case, I would have ended up in some sort of liminal space.

My watch beeped, the first marker. Tolliver told me I had ten minutes to walk around and explore, and if I was fake Dead, I was going to make the most of it.

I wandered up the stairs. The house felt just as it usually did, only empty (a feeling I would grow uncomfortably familiar with in the coming months). I walked out the front door and took in my surroundings.

The trees in the cemetery across the street were budding with new growth, even though in the Beforedeath, the graves were currently covered in crisp fallen leaves. A few cars drove down the road, followed by a horse and buggy and one lonely parade float made of beehives and a single tuba.

Across the street, a store sign flickered between a neon beer advertisement and an old wooden sign for Callahan’s Hardware and Supply Co. Through the window, a man was drinking at the bar. Another man walked out the front door, holding a canister of paint.

As I walked down the sidewalk, my fall clothes melted away to a sundress and cardigan.

At the corner, an older couple was loitering on a stoop.

I waved to them, and they waved back. Usually the movement would give away my ghostly appearance, but I was still as solid as ever.

I bent down to pick a weed that was sprouting through the concrete.

The stem snapped under my fingertips. The tear was ragged.

A smear of green stuck under my nail as I rubbed my forefinger and thumb together and watched the plant twirl.

This was what it was like to be truly Dead.

It was incredible.

Jobs would be so much easier. We could work without considering lighting. We could easily interact with the things around us. No one would know we weren’t actually Dead.

“Excuse me,” a voice said.

I stood and turned to find a man with a Red Sox hat pulled over his eyes. I opened my mouth to ask want he wanted, but then he was pulling out a gun and pointing it at my chest.

I didn’t run. There would have been no point.

It wouldn’t have been the first time I was shot in the Afterlife by a hellhound.

Or stabbed with a syringe or run through with a pitchfork or, one time, snuffed out like a candle.

It hurt, yes. The unprepared jolt back into the body was excruciating.

But the sickness would pass, and the pain would remind me to be more careful next time.

I sighed. “Ugh, let’s get this over with.”

I’d barely gotten the words out before I was pushed to the ground.

I landed on my elbow and knee, pain running up my limbs. It made me slow to move, but I looked up just in time to see the hellhound shoot Dante.

And then I watched my brother disintegrate.

This was no quick disappearance, no instant vanishing. For a moment, I thought it was all a mistake. But then Dante began burning away from the outside in. Crumpling in on himself, a shocked look on his face, until even that was gone and there was nothing where he once stood.

I just lay on the ground, stunned.

“Dante?” I croaked.

The hellhound turned on me, and I braced myself for whatever fate my brother had just met, but before it could pull the trigger, I was jerked back into my body.

Cold air.

A long high note.

Fire racing through my veins, lungs gasping for air.

Tolliver pulled the mask from my face and cradled my head. “Elle? Elle? Are you okay?”

I pushed him back, leaned over the side of the table, and retched.

“Elle? Elle, what happened?”

I couldn’t respond. The ringing in my ears worsened, grew sharper. My body was trembling out of control, and I wasn’t sure if it was from the shock of being sucked back from the Afterlife or because of what I’d just seen: my brother’s soul disintegrating.

At the thought of Dante, I pushed myself up, crawling off the table and stumbling to the one next to me, where his body now lay. And now I understood what the high noise was. Not ringing in my ears.

The sound of his vitals flatlining.

“Bring him back!” I shouted at Tolliver, ripping the monitor cuff from Dante’s wrist.

“He’s gone, Elle. I’m sorry.” Tolliver’s voice was strained.

“NO! The adrenaline!”

I staggered over to the drawer where Tolliver kept the epinephrine shots. Hands shaking, I rifled through, tossing aside anything that got in my way.

“I already tried!” Tolliver gasped, grabbing me. Tears streaked down his cheeks. “It’s too late.”

I looked over to Dante’s body, finding an empty syringe lying next to him. Some inhuman sound left my throat as I fought against Tolliver’s hold. I shoved him harder than my body was ready for and fell backward into the cabinets. Unsteady, I slid to the floor.

I cried for a long time, Tolliver watching from a few feet away.

Once I quieted, he asked, “What happened?”

“Why didn’t you bring him back?” I croaked, throat hoarse.

Tolliver shook his head. “He came down, saw you on the table.” His voice was quiet. “He made me send him in to get you. When he…” Tolliver looked over to where Dante’s body lay and swallowed. “I cut off your dose.”

He pushed himself to his knees and crawled over to me, taking one of my hands. I was too numb to pull away from him.

“What happened, Elle?”

“We should get Poppy,” I said, sniffing. “She could do a spell.”

Tolliver gave me a worried look. “No spell can bring someone back to life.”

The next few days were a blur. There was a funeral, which I don’t think I helped much with. CJ and Poppy both went into the Afterlife looking for Dante but decided he had passed on quickly when they couldn’t find him. It’s unusual but not unheard of.

What I do remember is replaying the moment over and over and over, and I knew—I knew—my brother’s soul wasn’t gone. Some instinct inside me told me that I could fix it. It had been a stupid mistake. It had happened in a moment. I could just go back, erase it.

The others didn’t agree. They spent the next week trying to talk me down and get me to eat. And then maybe CJ is right and I did some yelling. They all left.

And I was relieved because I couldn’t stand their practicality. Dante wasn’t gone for good. They just couldn’t see it. Right now, they would only get in the way. Once I had a plan, I would bring everyone back together.

And that’s what I did. Over the next year, I spent every waking moment learning new skills and gathering intel and collecting assets until everything was ready. And then I reassembled the crew, just as I planned.

I just never planned on telling them the truth.

The others are quiet after I finish telling them exactly what happened to Dante. Their faces are blank, but I can feel the anger coming off them in waves.

I’m surprised when Tolliver is the first to speak, voice low and…angry.

“You didn’t think I needed to know how Juliet interacts with hellhounds?”

I roll my lips between my teeth. Honestly, no. I didn’t even consider it.

CJ makes a slow fist and brings it down on the table, knocking some glasses and a bag of chips to the floor. “This is what I’m talking about. You didn’t tell us the truth about Dante. You didn’t tell us the truth about the job. You’ve been stringing us along telling us we could get him back—”

“Okay, but that part is true!” I insist. “We can get Dante back. I went into the Afterlife, and I baited a hellhound into reaping an actual Dead person, and I saw what happened to their soul. It…it transformed into this, like, little ball of light, and it went into the scythe. It’s like the hellhound was taking it somewhere. ”

“Oh, Elysia.” Poppy gives me a pitying look. “You just established that hellhounds react differently to people on Juliet than they do Dead people.”

“That doesn’t mean…” I huff in annoyance. For once I can’t figure out what to say. “I have a feeling about this. I know Dante’s not gone. He’s trapped and he needs us to free him.”

CJ raises an eyebrow. “Let me guess. His soul is in Tartarus.”

I don’t answer, but I guess that’s answer enough.

“Jesus, Elle,” they mutter.

“Hellhounds took Dante’s soul,” I say. “Hellhounds guard Tartarus. You can’t tell me this isn’t a good theory.”

“Theory,” they stress.

“Waring and the other syndicate leaders confirmed it! That was part of the deal. They would get him out of Tartarus if I got the book for them.” I get to my feet and start pacing.

“And so what if it’s a theory? That’s what you said about the grimoire and the resurrection spell, but I was right!

And anyway, it shouldn’t matter because we should be exploring every wild, inconceivable theory if it means there’s even a chance of bringing Dante back. ”

“You’re obsessed,” CJ snaps.

“Or maybe I’m the only one who actually cared about Dante! Since the rest of you are so ready to leave him in hell!”

“Where’s the blue bottle tree?” Poppy asks suddenly.

I stop short. “The what?”

She stands, squaring off with me. “The blue bottle tree I made for the house. It used to be in the front yard. Where is it?”

I frown, shaking my head. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question. What did you do with it?”

“I must have…” I swallow, chest tightening. “I needed money—”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “You sold it?”

“Jobs cost money,” I say weakly.

“I can’t believe you.”

I throw up my hands. “All this about some bottles? You’ve been here at least, what? Six times on this job? And you’re just now noticing it’s gone? It couldn’t have been that important.”

“I noticed it was gone the first day, but I assumed it was out back or in storage. Do you know the time and power I put into that? It took me months to find some of those runes! I never imagined you would be so thoughtless and self-absorbed.”

“We’re conmen! We’re all thoughtless and self-absorbed!”

“No, this is you doing what you always do—thinking only about yourself and acting out every single inane, selfish whim that pops into your head!”

“I think only about myself? I’m not the one who turned around and went to work for CJ’s family!”

I regret the words as soon as they leave my mouth.

The room falls silent.

Poppy closes her eyes and hangs her head. It wasn’t supposed to come out like this. It wasn’t supposed to come out at all.

CJ exhales roughly, tongue poking their cheek, face ashen. After a moment, they stand stiffly. They don’t give Poppy a single glance as they storm past her and out the door, slamming it behind them.

Poppy looks at me for a moment, a weird expression on her face, like she can’t decide if she wants to yell at me or cry on me. She just shakes her head, grabs her coat, and leaves.

Tolliver rises slowly, eyes red.

“Not cool, Elle,” he says before he, too, walks out.

I stare at the closed door. Mind quiet for once.

Ezra clears his throat, sits forward, and meets my gaze with a smug smile. “And that’s why I don’t do teams.”