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Then I shove her unceremoniously into the floral carpet bag.

“In you go, you gluttonous lard,” I say, tucking her tail in before zipping the monstrosity shut, making sure to leave a hole so she can breathe. “Try not to claw your way out. I need you intact for the reunion.”

I thank a confused Litha, sling the bag over my forearm, and burst back out into the alleyway with Chain-Chewer in tow.

We hit the main thoroughfare of the Central Hub like a wrecking ball. I’m a vision of absolute chaos, clad in white clothes stained with grease, blood, and soot, sprinting through the city carrying a floral handbag that looks like it was stolen from a geriatric knitting circle.

And I don’t fucking care. I have no dignity left to lose.

I fix my eyes on my office building, to where The Forbidden Zone lays underneath it.

I didn’t have a sanctioned permit last time, and I won’t need one now. I will throw myself through literally the first portal I can find, and figure it out from there.

“Out of my way!” I roar, shoulder-checking a massive, suited demon who is too slow to react.

I’m fifty yards from the door. Forty. Thirty. I can taste the freedom.

Then, the sky falls on me.

My face hits the cobblestones first, grating across the unforgiving stone. The skin of my cheek shreds, peeling back in wet, hot ribbons as momentum drags me forward across the grit.

The floral bag flies from my grip, skidding to a halt a few feet away.

“No!” I choke out, my mouth full of blood and gravel.

A heavy boot slams down between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the ground, and I thrash, spitting blood, trying to leverage myself up, but another weight crashes onto my legs. Then another on my arm.

I’m surrounded in a forest of pink skin and brute force.

Chain-Chewer’s snarling, snapping his jaws at the wall of bodies enclosing us.

“Cease!” a voice cuts through the chaos.

The boot on my back presses down harder, forcing the air from my lungs. I turn my head, my cheek scraping against the blood-slicked stone, to see a pair of pristine, polished black stilettos step into my field of vision.

“You... predictable... moron,” Veraxia pants, bracing her hands on her knees to catch her breath.

“Go... fuck… yourself,” I wheeze through the blood in my throat.

She straightens up, smoothing down the front of her blazer before pulling out her sleek, obsidian stone. “Wardens. Secure him and take him to the Oubliette. It’s time for his performance review.”

Chapter 40

Eden

TWO WEEKS LATER

Iheave the sodden cardboard box onto the counter with a wet thud.

“Breakup?” The elderly woman behind the register looks up from her crossword puzzle, peering over her spectacles at the box, then at my drenched face and hair.

“Uh… something like that,” I say, smiling warmly.

Technically, it was an inter-dimensional mission that ended with the realization that my now-dead-boyfriend was a narcissistic void of a human being who’s rotting in a holding cell in Hell. But that feels like a lot to unpack for a Tuesday afternoon at the Goodwill.

She stands, opening the flaps of the box to reveal the strata of Matthew’s life: the cashmere sweaters he never let me borrow because they were ‘dry clean only,’ the Italian leather loafers, the watches, the silk ties.

Her eyebrows shoot up toward her hairline as she runs a hand over a pristine grey blazer.