Page 100 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

Which is preferable, because if he sees what’s happening on the table right now, we’ll lose our last chance of escaping.

The dagger is slowly turning to face me.

Luke said they’ll always point toward each other. But I can’t let it reveal I have its counterpart. Not when I’m so close to sawing through the last of the bindings around my wrist.

Being essentially useless in this conversation has had its perks. Dante didn’t notice I still had my dagger strapped to my thigh. Or that it was close enough for my fingers to carefully tug free. It hasn’t been easy but turning it in my grip to slice through the ropes wasn’t impossible. Now that I’m almost there, I am not going to fail.

Luke picks up on what I’m doing—and, more importantly, how imperative it is to keep his brother distracted. He nods at me. You can do this, the gesture says.

I can do this.

“Why send the hounds after me?” Luke asks, stalling. “If you no longer care about me fixing the veil, what was the point of that?”

Dante turns slightly. I still my movements. He doesn’t look my way. I continue.

“I couldn’t just let you run amuck. I needed to maintain some authority. If you were coming to kill me, having them bring you straight to me was a safer bet.”

“They were trying to kill me,” Luke reminds him.

“I didn’t realize you could be killed,” Dante scoffs. “Much less that you were carting an overworlder around with you. Who is she, anyway?”

“No one,” Luke answers quickly. Too quickly. It’s a little warming, actually, that he’s clearly trying to protect me. It’s the least he can do after keeping his devil identity a secret.

Dante looks at me, and for a moment, I think I’m caught. But he just grins. “You put on quite a show with that fall.”

He still hasn’t noticed the dagger on the table, which, thankfully, stopped moving but points at me now. “Yeah, well, the party was getting a little boring. I had to provide my own entertainment.”

Luke shoots me a glare. Okay, not the best time to run my mouth. Noted.

“These things do grow dull, don’t they?” Dante turns back to the windows. I resume my sawing motion. “I think they’d be so much more fun in the overworld.”

My right wrist comes free and I manage to catch the ropes before they hit the ground. Placing them in my lap, I make quick work of the bindings on my left wrist. All that remains are my ankles and then I’m free.

So close I can taste it.

“What are you going to do with us?” Luke asks.

Dante stuffs his hands into his pockets. “If you had done things my way and gotten caught by the hounds, maybe I could have spared you. But everyone below saw your face. What would you do, if you were still me?”

Dante faces Luke, but he’s come to the table so his back remains to me. I have one ankle free. Almost there.

Luke inhales deeply, meeting his brother’s eyes. “I’d kill me.”

Dante snaps, pointing at him. “Bingo. By the way—is that still big in the overworld? Remember when Mom used to tell us about it?”

“I…don’t know.” Luke seems thrown off. “I visited her. And you know what she told me?”

Dante leans close, daring. “What?”

Luke’s expression cracks open. “She said if I have the chance to go back to the overworld, I should take you with me. And I will. Let us fix the veil, and then you pardon the three of us. I’ll show you how to do it right so it won’t tear the veil again. We can all return together.”

Anger works in Dante’s jaw. “You think it’s that easy? That simple? And who becomes the devil? Who rules the underworld in our stead?”

“I don’t know and I don’t fucking care,” Luke explodes. “It’s not our problem. I should have never made it ours to begin with. I’m sorry. Let the hell beings figure it out. The other devils. The devil. It doesn’t need to be us. We fix the veil and we leave. It can be that simple.”

Dante seems to actually consider it, growing quiet and contemplative. The barest bones of hope etch across Luke’s face.

But then, slowly, Dante’s head starts to shake. “Hell is home. Maybe once upon a time, when we were young, I dreamt of leaving. But I don’t dream anymore. I have no desire to go. I like it here. And if here becomes there and the overworld and underworld merge, then it’s all the same, anyway.”