Page 41 of I Hope This Email Finds You in Hell

“Let’s test our bets.”

He inserts the key and the engine sputters. With a huff, he tries again, meeting similar results. He glances at me. “Don’t look so smug.”

“Me?” I say with an air of innocence. “Never.”

“It’s got gas, so it might just need a kick.”

To make matters worse, my suppressed visual comes to life. Luke drops his backpack and shrugs off his leather jacket, leaving him in just his ripped black T-shirt. I lean against a nearby truck with the bed rotted out, but my gaze betrays me to wander over to him. He’s on his knees inspecting the exposed engine of the bike, hands already dirty. His T-shirt stretches across the broad expanse of his shoulders and a bout of longing to run my nails over his skin beneath the thin fabric slugs me.

I force my eyes to the sky, where a moon must hide behind the congealed clouds. Despite the coverage, it’s not as dark as it could be. We still have enough light to see by. For now.

“Can I ask you something?” I say after the press of silence and his noises of annoyance become too much.

“Do you have to?” he grunts.

“Yes.” I suck down a deep breath, preparing to ask the question I’m not sure I want the answer to. “You’ve been here before, obviously. Hell. Why? For how long?”

From his backpack, he’s removed a few small tools, which he tinkers with on the bike.

“Exorcisms don’t work on all monsters,” he finally says. “Some need a more direct approach.”

“What about the obsidian blades?” I ask. “I thought those can send anything back to hell?”

He takes a minute to answer, fixated on the engine. “When a demon possesses a human, I can’t just stab them. It will hurt the human, too. Besides, these blades are very rare and I don’t like dragging attention to them, so don’t go waving it around.”

I tug mine out to inspect it. “How’d you get these ones?”

“My mother,” is all he says.

“So they’re a family heirloom? Are they both yours, or was one your brother’s?”

Faster than I can comprehend, he’s on his feet and in front of me, so close I press my body into the truck to make more space. He glowers down at me and says, “I let you come with me. I let you deflect my own questions with your cryptic responses and half-hearted humor. I let you keep your dirty little secrets. So let me do the same. We don’t need to get to know each other past niceties.”

His words sting, but even worse is the way dirty makes my body flush with heat. I refuse to let that be what wins, so I choose the closest boiling emotion to replace it: anger.

“What makes you think I have dirty little secrets?” I challenge him.

His intense eyes flick down to my lips, which are so close to his I can feel his breath ghost across my mouth. He leans forward until I’m sure they’re going to touch. At the last second, he shifts to whisper against my ear, lips brushing the shell. “Beliar wouldn’t want you if you didn’t.”

It feels like a slap, because it’s true. I do have secrets. And as Melinda confirmed on the train, so does he.

I push against his chest and he steps back, allowing me enough room to escape the cage of his body and the heat burning between us. But it’s not enough. I need to be away from him before I pull him back to me and do something I’ll regret. Before he sees how much his words have shaken me.

Turning my back on him, I head in the opposite direction of the bike.

“Where are you going?” he calls after me.

“To find some helmets in this fucking ghost town!”

Storming away feels childish, but standing before him as our unspoken dirty little secrets stretch between us is worse. He doesn’t come after me, which is all the better.

On the other side of the junkyard, there’s a mountain of crap I passed earlier. Still fuming from our heated exchange as my eyes blur with frustrated tears, I start rifling through the things closest to me. Most are random engine pieces and filthy car carpets. I handle them with my fingers pinched like tweezers, not sure what kind of critters lurk in hell and might have made the pile of shit their home.

“What are you doing?”

I all but leap out of my skin, spinning to take in a little girl just a few paces away. She stares at me curiously, her blond pigtails lopsided. Her right hand holds the paw of a stuffed bear that’s seen better days. Its feet drag on the dirt.

It’s a disconcerting image in itself, made worse by the fact that her pink dress is splattered in what looks a lot like dried blood.