Page 20 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

Look, I never said I deserved an Oscar for my acting, okay?

“Is anyone in the apartment with you?”

I tug on the only pair of shoes in my room—my beat-up Doc Martens. “Just me! I’m single!”

“We asked if you were alone, not if you were single.” The policeman sounds exasperated. “Can you please open the door?”

“Coming!” I lie, shoving a crewneck in the bag along with fistfuls of toiletries. The last thing I grab is my glasses case, which also houses my contacts case. The duffel is so packed I can barely close it, but I manage to zip it shut as the knocking returns.

“We’re going to have to force entry.”

“No!” I shout, my gaze darting toward the door. I never locked it after letting Beliar in. “I’m coming!”

I’m really not. The hum of an engine outside proves it. Luke gets out of his car, leaving the driver’s door open and gesturing down.

It’s a long fall, but I don’t think twice before pushing my duffel out of the window and over the edge of the fire escape. Luke catches it, stuffing it into his back seat.

I shrug on my denim jacket, which is in no way heavy enough for the weather. But I can’t go back into the living room to grab my puffy coat hanging by the door. As it is, the knocking has turned to pounding since I’ve stopped answering. Any moment they’ll realize it’s not even locked.

The last thing I make sure I have before I leave is my ring. It sits on my right ring finger as usual, a small amethyst set against a gold band that was a high school graduation gift from my parents. I left nearly everything behind when I moved away from South Dade, Miami, but not this. It came with me then, and it’s coming with me now.

I make it through the window as the policeman announces, “We’re coming in!”

The doorknob turns.

I don’t wait to watch it swing open, navigating down the rusted ladder with my heart in my throat. It might be code for apartments three stories up to have fire escapes, but I’m extremely skeptical of how up to code it actually is. Not to mention if this thing has a weight limit. While Luke might be tall and muscular, I’m not far behind him in height and definitely win when it comes to curves and a little extra around the stomach and thighs.

But I didn’t survive crying my way through Hollister fitting rooms in my teens for a rickety ladder to take me out in my twenties. I make quick work of the climb, my feet finally touching the pavement below.

“Get in!” Luke leans across the passenger seat to open my door. I slide in, barely closing it before he’s stomping on the gas. We roar onto the street, and he takes a sharp left away from the cop cars and sirens and nosy onlookers. Another series of turns makes me lose all sense of direction. I grip the panic bar, teeth clenched and seat belt firmly locked in as Luke maneuvers through Tarrentown’s innards like a Formula 1 driver.

It’s only when we reach a long stretch of farm road and a sign that reads, “You are now leaving Tarrentown. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” that he eases up on the gas. We pass the last turn-off point and Luke’s eyes track it in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t even think about turning around to leave me behind,” I threaten him.

He scowls, gaze flicking toward me. “I don’t want you to come.”

“Then why’d you tell me to get in the car?”

He doesn’t respond right away, flexing his fingers on the steering wheel. “The dagger I stabbed Beliar with is obsidian. It’s the only thing that can truly hurt monsters. Demons especially. I thought Beliar left of his own volition after he came to my house. But he didn’t. He caught your scent, following it back to yours. Or maybe got your scent there first, then followed you to mine, and then back to yours again. I don’t know. But stabbing him should have sent him back to his world for good.”

“To hell?” I turn to look at him. Luke hesitates, then nods. “So I was right. I’m his next target.”

“You should be safe from him now.”

“ ‘Should be’? Something tells me if you really believed that, you would have left me behind to deal with the fallout.”

“Leaving you behind is still on the table.”

“Well, take it off,” I argue. “I’m coming with you to save Krystal. End of story.”

A muscle ticks in Luke’s jaw. I stuff my hands beneath my thighs so I don’t do something ridiculous like trace the defined line.

We coast above the speed limit, though not as fast as before. Silence wraps around us as I try to make sense of the last hour of my life. Beliar Luke’s skin curling, like the fragmented pieces were burning off him. The smoke and the stench. It’s nothing I recognize, not quite decay but something worse. Something rotten and foul. Otherworldly.

“You’re hurt.”

“What?” I startle at Luke’s voice, and more aptly, the concern laced through it.