Page 23 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

“Who?”

“Your pop culture knowledge needs some work,” I mutter as he continues outfitting himself with weapons. He finishes by shrugging on an oversized leather jacket that’s—you guessed it—black.

Satisfied with his assortment, he closes the trunk. Arms crossed over my chest, I raise a brow. “What? You didn’t want to take the spear?”

“I’m still debating if I want to take you.” He looks at the closed trunk like he’s considering locking me in it. “This is your last chance to change your mind. Once we’re on that train—”

“It’s a one-way ticket to where the sun don’t shine,” I finish for him, forcing fake confidence into my tone. “I’ve read the fine print. I’m going. We’re wasting time.”

He bristles but says nothing else as we step out from under the overpass. The darkness makes a familiar swell of fear rise. During the ride, I packed it down since it’s never as bad when someone else drives. Now, it’s impossible to ignore the lengthening shadows.

“What exactly does an entrance to hell look like?” I ask as we turn into a more populated area.

“Is this not hellish enough?” Luke gestures at the push of bodies we stop with, waiting for the crosswalk light to change.

“Not a fan of the Big Apple, huh?”

“A little too dense for my taste.” The light gives the walking go-ahead. Like a school of fish, we make our way across. “You?”

“Love it. Used to come every December to see the Rockefeller Center tree with my mom,” I explain, keeping my pace brisk as if it might help me outrun the onslaught of memories. “We’d stay for the weekend and go to a Broadway show. It was my favorite place. When I moved away from home, the plan was to come here.” To run here. “But I didn’t have a job, or much in savings since I’d been in school. I only got as far as Tarrentown before—” I freaked out behind the wheel and almost crashed my car. Again.

I stumble, both over the truth and the curb. Luke’s hand shoots out to steady me, and so does my well-worn excuse. “Before my car broke down. The fix was expensive so I started applying for jobs and apartments and never left. But New York is still my final destination. It reminds me of her.”

“You were close with her?” he asks. We stop at another light.

“Yes.” I smooth the simple word out on my tongue so it doesn’t sound as strangled as I feel.

The icon changes and I plow onward. Luke’s steps match mine and we reach the other side in unison. Another turn has us entering the explosion of lights and screens that is Times Square.

A smile cuts across my face, the magic of it shocking me like it always did when I was little. As usual, it’s packed with people. I glance at Luke to find him already looking at me with a strange expression, like he’s never seen me before. The lights dancing across his face make him glow in a purpley hue.

“What?” I laugh. The energy in the air is contagious, the scent of roasted nuts and Krispy Kreme and halal food surrounding me in a tantalizing haze.

The word breaks whatever weird trance he was in. He shakes his head, glancing at his watch. “Shit. We’re going to miss the train.”

We hightail it through the crowd to the Forty-Second Street subway station. “Don’t we need to wait by the tracks?” I ask as we hurry past the turnstiles.

“Not those tracks.” He pulls me toward a dirty, white-tiled wall that’s in the opposite direction of the crowd.

I look behind me, confused. “There are other tracks below the main ones?”

“If you know where to look.”

I face forward in time to watch him push open a sketchy-looking door leading to a staircase.

Except, the door wasn’t there a second ago. I’m sure of it.

“What the—”

“Like I said,” he says, ushering me through the doorway, “you have to know where to look.”

That ominous nugget is all I get as the sound of our pounding feet floods the steep stairwell. We go down and down and down, the pressure making my ears ache. I try not to imagine the tons and tons of earth above our heads, not to mention the buildings and people and cars. If it were to collapse, no one would be the wiser that we’re buried down here, especially if, like me, they can’t even see the entrance. Maybe I would get added to Tarrentown’s growing list of vanishing women.

Maybe I already have been.

At the bottom, Luke holds the door for me and I burst onto a platform, sucking in deep lungfuls of musty, damp air. Unlike the regular tracks above, there aren’t stairways and elevators in the middle, just a giant slab of seemingly never-ending cracked concrete. A single light shines at the far end of the platform.

“We’re not in the clear yet. We still need to get tickets,” Luke says.