by Cindi Madsen
The file under it was similar, but the red stamp said temptation in progress.
Curiosity got the best of me, and I pushed those files aside to study the others. One had a ruggedly handsome man with a shaved head, crude tattoos, and a scarred eyebrow. Someone most people would steer clear of if they happened to meet him in a dark alley, but the stamp marking his file read unsuccessful.
You go with your bad self—I craned my neck to read the name—Carlos Reyes.
“Where were we?” Dad asked, and it took me a second to remember.
“You telling Abigor to chill-out-igor.”
Dad scrunched up his eyebrows and his nose. “You say the strangest things.” He tugged at the sleeves of the silky gray shirt underneath his charcoal suit coat. Heaven forbid he look anything but polished.
Hmm. Maybe Heaven really has forbidden it.
“Fine,” Dad said. “I’ll talk to him for you.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” The hug happened before I realized I was going to act on my gratitude.
Every organ in my body turned leaden at once, and I awkwardly sat back on the love seat.
Dad took a moment to recover as well, clearing his throat and glancing down, and I wasn’t sure if that meant I’d ruffled his clothes or if he simply didn’t know how to handle hugs.
He smoothed a hand over his hair. “Is there anything I need to know about? A reason you need time after school?”
Regardless of the fact that he might be proud of me for breaking rules, he’d also probably be mad about the sneaking around with Tristan, and since I didn’t have a gambling problem, I decided not to find out. “I just like to wander. My prison sentence is more confined to Hell than the castle, right?”
“You can wander. Nowhere near the inner circle.”
“Like I’d want to go there. As if I’ve always wanted to be crispified by fire-breathing dragons, and even though the molten core of awfulness was loads of fun the last time I was there, I think I can refrain.”
“Eventually we’ll take an extended tour of the kingdom since you need to get a better feel for how Hell works, but I need to give you added protection before we go, and naturally I’ll be with you the entire time to ensure your safety.”
I leaned back, resting my head on the top of the love seat. “Sounds like a real fiery blast, Dad. And who says you don’t know how to live it up?”
“Nearly every one of my indentured servants.” Dad tossed another file on the pile and aimed a smirk my way. “Obviously they don’t have a sense of humor like yours.”
His words effectively killed my happy vibes. Here I was making jokes, while the rest of the people stuck here were working away. No wonder I usually spent my castle-bound time in my bedroom. Thinking about this stuff was as depressing as—well, saying depressing as hell seemed kind of redundant now, didn’t it?
I figured skipping down the halls of Hell High at the end of the next day would be very conspicuous, but that was exactly what I felt like doing as I hurried out of the school for my rendezvous with Tristan.
At least I hadn’t had to deal with Abigor today, and with any luck Dad had taken care of that.
I climbed the fence and swung my leg over the top. And almost fell off the other side when I thought about the way Tristan’s hands had come to my waist to help me down yesterday.
You need to calm down with the swooning. You still don’t know much about him.
I did my best to keep my promise to Mom about being careful when it came to falling for a guy, but I’d always had trouble with not falling hard and fast. I bet my profile even said it was one of my weaknesses.
Note to self: look up my profile tonight and see what it says.
Twigs snapped under my feet, and I caught a whiff of burning smell, which was pretty regular fare here. But in the woods there was that sitting-in-front-of-a-crackling-campfire scent. Man, I could so go for some s’mores about now.
“Tristan?” My voice echoed in the silence.
Worry began building, tightening my skin. What if he set me up?
What if he’s off somewhere with his actual friends, laughing about how he got Satan’s daughter to go wandering in the woods alone?
No. He wouldn’t do that. Surely he feels the same chemistry I do whenever I’m around him.
Right?
I thought about the way he saved me from Abigor yesterday, his easy smile, and the way he’d squeezed my hand. And I was right back to falling fast.
For a guy in Hell.
What am I thinking?
That’s the problem. I’m not. And I don’t want to.
The noise of a stick cracking echoed through the area, making it hard to discern where it’d come from. An enormous crow flew overhead, so close I felt the brush of his wing tips and the loud caw pierced my eardrums.
I wheeled around in the direction he’d flown, my heart hammering against my ribcage. The creeptastic sensation of being watched pricked my skin, and I spun in a full circle, checking every direction.
I couldn’t see the school anymore, and I wasn’t sure where the castle was, either. Lost and stood up. Great. Just great.
Slowly I turned around.
And screamed in Tristan’s face.
He clamped a hand over my mouth. “Shhh. We’re trying to be sneaky, remember?”
I worked to slow the rapid breaths sawing in and out of my mouth. “Then don’t go jumping out of trees at me.”
The words came out muffled against his hand. “Sorry. I had to take care of something at school, and it took longer than I thought it would.” He dropped the hand he’d had over my mouth and held it out to me. “Ready?”
I took it, and we wove our way through the trees.
His fingers slipped between mine, lacing them together and tightening the press of our palms. “You look pretty today, by the way.”
I smiled, and a tingly zip fired up my core. “Thanks. I wish I could change it up more, but it’s so roasty all the time, and walking around in fancy outfits and heels in this joint would be total torture.”
“Yeah, I hear that’s what they make people do in the inner circle,” he said with a laugh. Then he gave me a sidelong glance. “You always look gorgeous. Even the guys who claim to hate you can’t stop staring and talking about how hot you are.”
I stepped over knotted roots in the overgrown pathway. “I honestly don’t know what to say to that. It almost seems like a compliment, yet there’s all the hatred that makes me think ‘thanks’ isn’t quite the right reply.”
He laughed, full-out, and it was the best noise I’d ever heard in my life. “That’s one of the reasons why I knew you were trouble. Then I found out how funny you were, and I realized I was in even more trouble than I thought.”
“You did a rather good job of pretending you hated me.”
His footsteps slowed, and he swallowed. “You scared me.” His green eyes lit on mine. “You still scare me.”
I frowned. “Why would you be scared of me?”
“Well, there’s the obvious. Who you are. Plus, what you did to Constance. Your eyes glowed with an odd, unnatural light, and then you did that mind manipulation thing that left her in a daze.”
“I didn’t mean to,” I quickly said, desperate to explain it’d been an accidental dazing. “I only learned that I even had that kind of power the day before, and I’m doing my best to shut it off. I’d pull an Oedipus and stab my eyeballs out, but then there would be that whole unable-to-see thing.” I exhaled an anxious breath. “You do something strange, too. Like a calming thing. How do you do that?”
“You picked up on that, did you?” He shrugged a shoulder. “I’ve always been able to do it, even when I was alive. Mine’s not overpowering like yours, though. I can’t use it to make a person do something against their will.”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “I don’t mean to use mine to take away people’s free will.” I locked eyes with him before realizing that might be dangerous, and quickly
dropped my gaze to his chest. “Please believe me. My freedom’s been taken away, and I’d never purposely do that to anyone.”
Tristan seemed to ponder my words for a moment, and then he gave a tiny nod. With that out of the way, we continued through the trees. I hadn’t been paying any attention to where we were going, so if he decided to strand me out here, I would be completely lost.
Maybe I could snap myself back to the castle. And if that failed, I’d just end up dying in the woods, picked to death by crows, because that same crow—or maybe it was another—kept making an awful racket as he circled the area.
I tightened my grip on Tristan’s hand, hoping I wasn’t making a deadly mistake letting him drag me to who knows where.
The trees grew sparser, and thankfully Mr. Noisy Crow stayed behind. We crested a tiny hill, and in the valley below sat rows and rows of squat straw and mud huts. It reminded me of something you’d see in a third-world country. At least I assumed, since I’d only seen pictures. The huts were crammed together, and there was an area in the center that appeared to be for washing and hanging up clothes to dry.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Home. Or Slate Manor as I like to call it,” he said with a mirthless laugh.
I thought of my cushy, expansive room in the castle and felt ungrateful and way too spoiled. “This is where you live?”
“Yeah. What, you gonna change things up when you rule the place?”
My gut twisted and an ache settled over my heart as I thought about the souls who were trapped here for a literal eternity.
Tristan squeezed my hand. “Sorry. Bad joke.”
“How many of them have done awful, horrible things?” I looked up at him, wanting him to tell me that all of them had, but not wanting him to at the same time because of what it would say about him.
His eyes remained on the huts. “A fair amount. Of course, the worst ones aren’t kept here.”
Images of tormented expressions, the scent of burning flesh, and the sound of bone-shattering screams assaulted me. I kept those memories locked up tight, constantly trying to push them deeper into the recesses of my mind. “I know. Unfortunately.”
“I guess here, we either deserve it or we were dumb enough to make a deal,” he said, a somber note to his voice.
I curled closer and wrapped my free arm around his waist. “You’re not dumb.”
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t confirm if I was right to assume he’d made a deal. He didn’t deny it, though.
He had to have made a deal. It’s the only thing that makes sense.
Tightening his grip on my hand, he pulled me down the hill and into the open doorway—there wasn’t an actual door—of the third hut on the right. There was barely room to move, and the ceiling was short enough I had to crouch. Tristan waved me over to a pile of straw covered with a thin sheet. The bed, I guessed, since there wasn’t an actual mattress anywhere.
From his “bedside” he lifted a roughly made guitar. A chunk of blackened wood had been hollowed out and attached to a long branch. Three thick strings stretched across the opening. “I gathered enough materials over the past year or so to make this, so it’s not totally in tune, but it makes noise.”
A piece of straw poked my back, and I shifted, trying to get comfortable. “Where’d you get the strings?”
“I’m afraid if I told you, you’d sprint out of my humble abode and never speak to me again.”
I tilted my head. “I’m not as fragile as you think.”
“Okay, I came across a couple dead rats. I had to wait several months for the third, and it was almost all the way decay—”
“You’re right,” I said, waving my hands to stop him. “I don’t want to know.”
He flashed me a smile, one that was almost cute enough to distract me from the fact that the strings of his guitar looked like rat tails.
Then he began to play. The music was barely audible, but it was music. The first song I’d heard in over two and a half weeks.
“Requests?” he asked. “Actually I only know a few. Classic rock songs were all my dad taught me.”
“So no Khalid, then?”
Tristan gave me the sort of confused look most people gave me whenever I made one of my jokes.
“I was kidding. Out of the things from Earth that I miss the most, my playlists are high up there.”
My music tastes ran a broad range, and thanks to a super nice guy Mom dated for a while, I’d been introduced to classic rock. That was of course before Dad showed up and scared the guy to this side of death, because apparently if he couldn’t have Mom, no one could.
The first few chords of “Free Fallin’” rang out, and then Tristan played the song, stumbling in a few places but quickly correcting his finger placement and continuing on.
When he finished, I reached out and ran my fingers across the strings. Yep, they felt just like you’d think rat tails would. Smooth in a totally gross way.
Tristan’s gaze drifted out the doorway, and sorrow washed over his features. “My old man would play for hours. Then he taught me how to play, and we’d sit in the living room and have our own mini concert.” He strummed the strings and then flattened his palm on the wood. “I had visions of forming a band and becoming a big rock star…”
His sorrow transferred to me, and I felt compelled to take the sadness away, so I gently took the guitar from him. “Teach me to play something?”
Tristen wrapped his arms around me, showed me how to hold the instrument, and within a couple of minutes I was learning chords. And learning that I very much enjoyed having Tristan’s arms around me. I mean, I’d assumed, but it’s always nice to know.
“I did make a deal,” Tristan suddenly said, his voice soft and heavy with emotion. “To save someone I love. But I wasn’t some completely innocent person, either.”
I looked over my shoulder at him. My heart thumped, thumped, thumped, and with my back pressed against his chest, I wondered if he could feel it pounding out its rapid rhythm, too.
“Tristan!” A deep voice yelled, popping our intimate bubble. “Dude, you here?”
Tristan scrambled to his feet, keeping half crouched so he wouldn’t knock his head against the ceiling. The afternoon sunlight blinked out as he blocked the door with his body. He glanced back at me, eyes wide. “Keep out of sight, far to the corner of the hut, and then slip out once I get the guys away from here.”
“I don’t really know where I am or how I’m supposed to get back home.”
“Go west until you—”
“West? I couldn’t even tell directions back on Earth with only one sun and the ocean to help me. Do you seriously think I can do it here?”
“Tristan?” This voice was female—Constance, I was sure of it—and she was close.
“Out the door, head left, but down the hill more. You’ll see Charon’s house, then follow the river to—”
“Oh, I know how to get home from Grim’s house.”
His eyebrows drew together. “I don’t have time to figure out what that means. But you’ll be okay?”
I nodded.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” He bolted out the door, and I heard mumbled greetings and Tristan saying something about trying to catch a nap.
Huddled in a tiny ball near the back of the round room, waiting for the group to leave, I definitely felt like Tristan’s dirty little secret. Black smudges were on my clothes and hands, so the dirty part fit all the more.
Why is he so scared of us being seen together?
Then I thought about Abigor and how he thought I belonged to him. What would he do to Tristan if he discovered I was sneaking around with him?
Panic rampaged through me, destroying the joy I’d felt this afternoon and replacing it with fear.
Maybe if I could get Dad onboard…
But I had no idea how he’d feel about the idea of me and Tristan, and I wouldn’t risk Tristan’s safety like that.
My thighs burned from being crouch
ed over, but now that I’d let my mind run wild, more and more questions hit me. Before we’d been interrupted, Tristan told me he’d made a deal. And that he wasn’t completely innocent, either.
Who had Tristan loved that much, and just how not-innocent was he?
Eighteen
Tristan and I walked into the gym for the physical portion of Persuasion class. Or as I referred to it, beat the hell into somebody if they don’t sin when you want them to.
Abigor stood up front, and a menacing expression settled over his features as he eyed the two of us. He strode toward me, every one of his muscles tensed and bulging. My pulse picked up speed, and my self-preservation instincts went on high alert as I scanned my brain for what I’d done that would’ve made him so angry.
And how to talk my way out of it.
The hint of red tinging Abigor’s irises was enough to fray my nerves, but my demon suitor went the extra mile, invading my personal space so much that I had to lean back to look at his face. “Good morning, Princess,” he said in a glacial voice.
“Um. Good morning, Abigor,” I squeaked, trying and failing to maintain my composure. “How-how’s it going?”
“Your father spoke with me…”
Oh, jeez. What did Dad say to him? I thought he was going to handle it, not make it worse. “Yeah, see, it’s just that I’m still adjusting to life here, and—”
“Seeing you here, standing next to him”—Abigor’s accusing gaze darted to Tristan—“it suddenly occurs to me that you might not be worried about performing submission moves on me at all. Perhaps you think there’s someone else here better suited for you. Is that why I’ve been asked to back off even though you were promised to me?”
My feminist side rage. I wanted to go off and tell him I was my own person, not chattel to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, but the murderous intent filling his features made me hold my tongue. I needed to do something, though, and fast, preferably before he dismembered Tristan in front of me.
I put my hand on Abigor’s chest—yikes, those were some killer pecs he had going on. “The truth is, I asked my dad to speak to you because I, um… I left a boyfriend back on Earth. I recently learned he hadn’t been entirely honest with me, and since I’m not over the hurt that caused me yet and need time to heal, I’m not ready to jump into another relationship.”