Page 25 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

“What did you say to her? Was that Latin?” I ask as we hurry toward the train.

“Yes,” Luke replies, though he ignores my initial question. Another cold spell passes over me as we reach the edge of the platform. He gestures me through the door. “Ladies first.”

Nine

Luke follows me onto the car and the door slides shut behind us. With another whistle, the train chugs away from the station. We barely made it.

The lighting is dim, as it would be on any other night train. I pass rows of empty seats, their black leather covers worn, some to the point of yellow foam bursting through. The luggage racks above are bare, confirming my assumption that the car is empty.

“Let’s sit here.” Luke nods at a cluster of four seats that share a table. Before I can protest, he takes my duffel from me, slinging it onto the rack above.

“Thanks,” I mumble. I move all the way inside to sit by the window, and he sits across from me. He drops his backpack into the empty seat beside him.

I don’t know what I expected a train to hell to look like, but the fact it’s an average, run-of-the-mill train is ten times worse. As if anyone could step foot on the wrong one and be doomed for eternity.

Uneasiness presses down as we zoom through the tunnel. I can’t see anything through the windows, though I imagine there’s nothing to see but the same bleak gray walls that framed the mile-long platform we came from. I’ve always appreciated graffiti as an art, but never so much as a comfort. Now, I miss everything it represents. Most prominently, life.

“I think this is the quietest you’ve been since we left your apartment,” Luke comments.

“I was quiet in the car,” I counter.

“You hummed.”

“I did not.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t,” I snap, my voice harsher than I mean it to be. His eyebrows shoot up and a flush flies through me. I ease back into my seat. “Sorry, I just— I don’t hum anymore. I haven’t since—”

I cut myself off. Luke studies me with that inscrutable look he has, like he’s mentally evaluating me. “Since?”

He waits for me to elaborate, but I won’t. Because that breaks my rule of getting too personal. Besides, why should I spill all when he’s only given me scraps of himself to piece together? Most of which I’ve scrounged up myself based on half-assed hypotheses and outlandish assumptions. If he’s going to be a lockbox, I’ll be a vault.

I change the topic. “How close will this train bring us to Beliar’s lair?”

His eyes glitter with amusement. “Lair? He has a house, you know. Most hell beings do. Or at least a townhome or apartment.”

“You think he’s keeping Krystal and the others at his house?”

“It’s not just his house. He oversees a shipping facility in what you know as California. The location is what I think is Death Valley in the overworld.”

“What do you mean, what I know as California?”

Luke sighs, clasping his hands on the table. “Unlike the overworld, hell doesn’t abide by state titles, though the same rough geographic definition exists. Instead, it’s divided into departments. What we’d call California is known in the underworld as the Department of Transportation. Right now, we’re in New York, but in hell, it’s the Department of Marketing and Publicity.”

“What does hell need a marketing and publicity department for?”

Luke gives me a quizzical look, like it should be obvious. “To market new policies and put out crisis fires, of course. Among other things. You’d be surprised how similar the underworld and overworld are. Though hell is arguably more organized.”

This is absurd, but Luke’s expression is nothing but honest. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that there’s way more than what he’s letting on. “So Beliar lives at the shipping facility in California, aka the DOT? He lives at the same place he works?”

“It’s not uncommon in hell. Most live where they work, or close to it. So they can work more.”

I make a face. “That sounds like…hell.”

His lips quirk with a rare, real smile. “Now you’re getting it. To answer your original question, if we take this train for the full two-day ride it takes to get to California, we can get off at a station close enough to make the rest of the way on foot. Though it might be wise to jack a car at some point, in case we need to make a quick escape.”

I shudder at the idea of running for our lives on greater demon territory. I can’t imagine we’d get very far.