Page 24 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

Despite the urgency in his tone, his palm on the small of my back nudging me toward the light is surprisingly gentle. Though my lungs burn, I force my legs to match his rushed pace.

“Tickets?” I pant. “We need to pay to get to hell?”

He shoots me a perplexed look. “Of course. How else are they supposed to fund the upkeep of infrastructure?”

I match his bewilderment with my own. “I…didn’t think that was a thing.”

His expression flickers with amusement. “I’ll explain more once we’re on the train, but it’s really not so different from the overworld in that department. Money rules all, even if it looks different from the money we’re used to.”

“The overworld,” I echo. The word fell from his mouth so easily. “And I suppose we’re going to the underworld?”

“It’s all the same thing. Hell, underworld, the abyss.”

“So anyone can get to down under whenever they want?”

He hesitates, though his steps don’t. “Not necessarily. The only reason we found the staircase is because I could see the door. That’s not normally visible unless you know how to look for it.”

He stops suddenly. We’re close enough that I can finally see what the light is illuminating: a ticket booth. A lone person sits behind the glass.

“Shit,” Luke swears, glancing at his watch again.

“Why’d we stop?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself. It’s freezing down here.

His gaze jerks to mine, a line between his brows. “You can’t—”

He’s cut off by the blare of a train whistle. The platform quakes beneath our feet.

His hand wraps around my arm, tugging me toward the ticket booth. Shivers race down my spine as the temperature drops the closer we get.

“Two tickets for the incoming train to hell,” he tells the woman behind the glass.

“Please,” I add.

She glances up from her monitor. Her glasses sit low on her nose and her pupils are so large her eyes look black. Despite not sporting wrinkles, it’s difficult to tell her age, like she could be anywhere from thirty to fifty. The name tag pinned to her black uniform reads Esmar—Customer Service Specialist.

“Back of the line, sir,” she drawls in a voice that suggests she could do this all day.

The line? I look behind me, but it’s just an empty platform.

“We need to get on this train,” Luke insists as another whistle pierces the air. The train’s headlight shines onto the tracks, though it has yet to emerge from the tunnel.

The woman is entirely unbothered, her nails making a click…click…click sound as she types something on her keyboard at a snail’s pace. “We closed outbound tickets for this train thirty minutes ago. You can purchase two for the next train that leaves at the same time tomorrow. If you buy online, you save ten percent. We’re trying to go paperless.”

“We can’t wait until tomorrow.” I shoot Luke a panicked look as the train pulls up.

“Sorry for the inconvenience.” Esmar does not look one bit sorry. “I’m happy to give you the number to our support line. A representative can transfer you to speak to a manager.”

“I don’t want to speak to a manager,” Luke growls, “I want to get on that train.”

He jabs his thumb toward the train coming to a stop. The door on the car closest slides open.

“Unfortunately, there’s really nothing I can—”

She’s cut off by Luke, who leans forward to speak directly into the intercom drilled into the plexiglass. A string of words in an unfamiliar language leaves his lips in a lethal hiss that makes Esmar’s eyes widen to the point where I can see the piss-yellow ring around her pupil.

“Of course,” she sputters, her entire demeanor changing. Suddenly, she can’t type fast enough. Clickclickclickclickclick. A whirring sound. She pushes two tickets through the gap in the glass. I was wrong about her noisy typing being due to her nails. She has claws. “On the house.”

“You’re too kind.” Luke grabs the tickets, passing one to me.