Page 151 of Hellbound

Three weeks later

Marian sat on a bar stool at the edge of the counter in the modest, but comfortable, two-bedroom apartment she shared with Tori in the Arts District. The rent wasn’t amazing by market standards, but with Vale subsidizing it, neither Tori or Marian need care.

The god of Death tried to bully them into a luxury high rise when they refused to accept his offer to live in a guest house on his compound. Tori wasn’t sure how she’d explain to future classmates how she could afford such a lavish apartment on a student’s zero-dollar salary. And the ex-traveler had a lot of shit.

Tori’s parents insisted she take her many boxes of collector’s edition Barbies with her when she moved out. She and Marian needed a dose of normal after what they’d survived. But normal remained elusive—an aspiration, never reality.

Tori had taken up sleepwalking. Marian often found her facing the wall during the witching hour, muttering gibberish. It disturbed Marian to no end, and Tori always woke without any recollection of the dreams that moved her in the night.

Marian was not as fortunate; she remembered her dreams vividly now. They’d evolved into intact memories of her eons in the Remnant that found her in her sleep. A development she only shared with Tori.

Her roommate suggested she seek professional help, but there wasn’t a therapist on Earth who could help her process the time crammed into her head.

She and Tori occasionally exchanged glances that confirmed their unspoken concern for each other. But neither of them seemed inclined to discuss what they couldn’t fix. So, they kept on chasing normal, and when life continued to be abnormal, they pretended otherwise.

Marian threw herself into helping Paul track down the missing Argent, which proved to be a full-time job. They had few leads so far, but they hadn’t been at it for long. With Verinne dead, Vale deemed it safe for Paul’s sister, Bernadette, to come back to L.A.

Until then, Marian spent her days putting her old skills to work, looking up travel records, social media content, and the far-from-legal sources Paul forwarded to her email.

She’d opened his latest one to discover something different from the receipts and passenger manifests he usually sent; most of the Argent were globetrotting, never remaining in one place for long. It made it difficult to pin them down long enough to put a hit out within Paul’s network.

Paul had composed a message that was more than an emoji for once.

Whatever you did down there? I think it worked.

Marian lifted an eyebrow as she clicked the first of several attachments. Her breath caught in her chest.

A collage of screenshots from the Welcome to Hell forums.

“Where’s Preeti? Stellan? No one’s answering emails or taking calls.”

“My spotter swears I died, but there was nothing there when I crossed over. No Hell. Just black. Sometimes a sunrise. I tried three times.’

“Same here. What the fuck is happening?”

“I saw a bright light. My uncle was there, and my dad. They died six years ago.”

“How am I supposed to make a living now?? I’ve only ever worked at Wendy’s.”

Her eyes went wide. Had the door between worlds closed once and for all somehow? Had Hexceit defeated the ixyura and sealed the veil? Dare she hope? Before elation could manifest, shadows sputtered from her fingertips. She gasped, raising her hands from her laptop. The smoke kept coming, until it solidified in her hand. It was large. Too large. Like a fucking spear. No, she did not need a spear right now.

Marian shook out her wrist, hissing curses as she willed the shadows away. They swirled gently around her, lingering in the air as if confused by her command. The shadowy weapon eventually dissipated when Marian hopped off the stool, grabbed her phone, and marched into the bathroom to hide from her new, overzealous power.

That hadn’t happened before. In three weeks, she’d not seen a shred of evidence that the power Vale had given her could manifest in any meaningful way.

Tori didn’t need to see her like this. It would raise too many questions, and the former traveler still didn’t know anything about what Marian had learned in Hell or her conversation with Vale afterward. There’d come a time for that. Not today, or even this week. Maybe next month, when the luster of college life had worn off and Tori stopped talking to the walls at night.

In the meantime, Marian dialed Paul and tried to ignore the black swirls dancing above her head.

“Good job, Bulbasaur,” Paul said dryly in her ear. Paul, the former stranger who, in a few short weeks, had become someone Marian talked to on the phone almost daily. Sometimes about hunting Argent. Sometimes about nothing at all. She’d come to look forward to his calls.

Marian swatted at a swooping black whorl and pretended not to hate her new nickname.

“No one’s seen the Remnant, either?”

“Nobody’s seen anything. It’s over, dude. Whatever you did with Hex … Hexidecimal or whatever seems to have worked.”

“Hexceit,” she corrected. “And at least on our end, yes.” She shook out her wrist until it stopped smoking. “But we don’t know what we can’t see.”

She wanted to throw herself into hope. Elation. But doubt and the shadows she’d just ejected dampened her joy. “Hey, I’m coming over. I need to … talk to Vale.”

Paul downright giggled. “Oh, he’s going to love that. And I say that without an ounce of sarcasm.”

Death had made it very clear in three short weeks that he would not tolerate her absence for long, though Marian had managed to weasel her way out of most of her promised nights with Vale. He’d threatened to come over and cook for her on one of the nights she reserved with Tori, and she’d had to remind him of their boundaries.

Vale reminded her that he was a god who would always get what he wanted in the end. But despite his threats, he kept his word and refrained from crashing Tori Nights. Or pushing Marian when she deferred their rendezvous.

Every silence they shared was too charged for Marian to touch. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready to drop the wall she’d erected to protect herself from it. Death seemed content to wait.

Time passed in this strange new life of hers, a life still filled with heavy gray mornings and long nights of rot. Some days, Marian couldn’t get out of bed at all, and on those days Tori just ensured Marian ate and reminded her she was safe.

But despite the gloom at the edges of her days and the horrors that still awaited her in her dreams, Marian no longer went to sleep dreading the dawn. She woke up from her nightmares to a hot pot of good coffee Tori made before she headed to her morning classes. Some days sucked. Others did not. At least she was moving forward instead of treading water.

When her thoughts turned sharp and cruel in the solitude, Marian looked to Paul for distraction. He hadn’t divulged his own favorite Pokémon, leaving Marian to figure it out. Whenever she feared her own thoughts, she texted him another guess. There were far more Pokémon now than ever, and Marian was finally learning their names. One hundred and eighty down, eight-hundred-and-forty-five to go.