Hell Has A Honeymoon Suite

Episode One: Check-In

I knew I was dead because the room had swans.

Towel swans.

Two of them, folded together on the end of a bed large enough to require planning permission, their little cotton necks bent into a heart.

I had spent thirteen years organising weddings.

No benevolent god would have greeted me with towel swans.

I lay still for a moment, looking up at a ceiling painted the soft pink of an expensive sunset. Somewhere nearby, water bubbled. Not pipes. A spa bath.

There were rose petals on the duvet.

Champagne in a silver bucket.

Chocolate-dipped strawberries arranged suggestively on a plate.

And at the foot of the bed, propped against the champagne, a cream card embossed in gold.

WELCOME, VICTORIA WOODS.

THE INFERNAL GRAND IS DELIGHTED TO HOST YOUR ETERNAL STAY.

HONEYMOON SUITE 616.

My last clear memory was of the Marris wedding.

Not my wedding. Obviously.

I had never married, which was the second reason the honeymoon suite felt unnecessarily sarcastic.

The Marris wedding had been a three-hundred-person nightmare involving white peacocks, a champagne tower taller than I was, and a bride who had changed her mind about the colour of the napkins while guests were already sitting at the tables.

I remembered walking onto the hotel balcony because the bride's father wanted to speak privately.

I remembered him sweating despite the cold.

I remembered telling him I had seen the invoices.

The catering company that did not exist. The florist payments that had somehow become six figures. The large amounts of money moving through events I had personally organised.

I remembered him telling me I should have minded my own business.

Then his hands.

My back hitting the balcony rail.

The horrible weightless second when the world disappeared beneath my feet.

After that, nothing.

Until the swans.

I sat up.

My body felt perfectly fine.

Better than fine, actually. My shoulders didn't ache. My left knee, which had clicked every time I climbed stairs since I was twenty-nine, appeared to have reconsidered its life choices.

I touched the back of my head.

No blood.

No broken skull.

Dead, then.

Wonderful.

Someone knocked.

Three polite taps.

I looked around for a weapon.

The closest thing was a champagne bottle, which I took by the neck.

The door opened anyway.

The man who stepped through looked at the bottle in my hand and smiled.

It was only the smallest shift at one corner of his mouth, the sort of expression that suggested he found me entertaining and had not yet decided whether that was good for me.

He was tall. Dark-haired. Broad through the shoulders without looking like a man who spent his mortal life admiring himself in mirrors.

If he had ever had a mortal life.

There was something wrong with his eyes.

They were brown until the light caught them, and then there was a thin ring of ember-red around the pupils.

He wore black trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms and no jacket. No horns. No tail. No dramatic red cape.

Hell had apparently updated its dress code.

His gaze moved from the champagne bottle to me.

Then to the towel swans.

His expression soured.

He introduced himself as Rhett and told me he handled disputed arrivals.

I told him I wanted a manager.

That smile again.

Apparently he was the manager.

There is nothing more irritating than asking for authority and discovering authority is attractive.

I kept the champagne bottle.

Rhett remained near the door, he did not come farther into the room until I put the bottle down.

He explained the basic situation without unnecessary drama.

I was dead.

This was Hell.

Not all of Hell. The Infernal Grand occupied a sort of administrative borderland for newly dead souls whose final placement had become complicated.

My placement, apparently, had become very complicated.

He handed me a folder.

Paper.

Actual paper.

I laughed.

I couldn't help it.

Hell, apparently, was still using hard copies.

Rhett said eternity made system upgrades difficult.

I opened the folder.

VICTORIA WOODS.

DATE OF DEATH: 14 SEPTEMBER.

CAUSE: BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA FOLLOWING CARDIAC ARREST.

DESTINATION: INFERNAL.

CLASSIFICATION: REPEAT OFFENDER.

Repeat offender.

I looked up.

Rhett had the decency not to look amused.

The next page contained my sins.

Murder.

Arson.

Adultery.

Poisoning.

Fraud.

Desecration of consecrated ground.

Two counts of attempted regicide.

I stopped there.

"I've never even met a king."

Rhett's mouth twitched.

I flipped another page.

There were dates beside the offences.

1891.

1892.

1893.

I was born in 1991.

I continued reading.

One offence involved poisoning a husband named Bartholomew by putting foxglove into his bedtime cocoa.

Another involved setting fire to a rectory while a bishop was inside.

There was an incident with six goats that had been recorded only as "malicious".

I closed the folder.

"I want to appeal."

That, apparently, was why I was in the hotel.

Disputed souls received seventy-two hours.

If I could prove the record did not belong to me, my destination would be reassessed.

If I could not, I stayed.

"Here?"

Rhett looked around the honeymoon suite.

"No."

The way he said it made the towel swans seem suddenly comforting.

I chose not to ask.

Not yet.

He pointed out a black telephone on the bedside table.

Room service was available at all hours.

No charge.

The minibar replenished itself.

Bathwater stayed hot indefinitely.

The bed adjusted to the sleeper's preferred firmness.

There was a cinema, a library, and a dining room downstairs.

Hell, it turned out, had hospitality standards.

"So the torture comes after checkout?"

"Usually."

I wasn't sure whether he was joking and that was going to become a problem.

He moved toward the door.

Something occurred to me.

"Why the honeymoon suite?"

He stopped.

For the first time since entering, Rhett looked uncomfortable.

Apparently the Infernal Grand assigned rooms based on what the soul had denied itself most strongly while alive.

I looked at the room.

Then at him.

"I denied myself a spa bath?"

This time he laughed.

The hard line of his mouth went. Something warmer appeared underneath.

He told me the suite was not necessarily about marriage.

It was about intimacy.

Desire.

Indulgence.

The things people spent their lives insisting they did not need.

I hated the room immediately.

"I organised weddings for a living. I've seen intimacy. It costs forty thousand dollars and ends with someone's uncle vomiting behind a photo booth."

Rhett leaned one shoulder against the doorframe.

"You've seen weddings."

That landed more cleanly than I liked.

I asked him to leave.

He did.

No argument.

No smug observation.

The door closed.

I stood there alone.

Dead.

In Hell.

In a honeymoon suite.

I drank the champagne.

I felt no guilt whatsoever.

It was excellent champagne.

I took the folder into the bath and spent the next hour reading every page until the paper softened from steam.

None of it was mine.

I had cheated on one exam when I was seventeen.

I had stolen a lipstick from a chemist at fourteen because my friend dared me.

I'd once told a bride that the florist had been delayed in traffic when the truth was I'd forgotten to confirm the final order.

There had been men I slept with and regretted, men I refused and regretted slightly more, and one particularly bad year when I avoided my mother's phone calls because every conversation made me feel twelve again.

I had hurt people.

Been selfish.

Been spiteful.

Been cowardly.

Sometimes I'd enjoyed being right more than I'd cared about being kind.

But I'd never killed anyone.

Not even a bishop.

By the time I climbed out of the bath, the champagne bottle was empty and I was furious enough to feel almost alive.

That was when the mirror changed.

It hung above the dressing table, tall and oval, framed in tarnished gold.

The glass darkened.

My reflection disappeared.

Rhett appeared instead.

Not the Rhett I'd met.

This Rhett wore a long black coat and stood in a room full of white light.

He had something in his hands.

My file.

A second figure stood across from him, faceless in the brightness.

Words appeared in the mirror as though scratched into fog.

VICTORIA WOODS.

CLEARANCE: UPPER HOUSE.

TRANSFER AUTHORISED.

Rhett looked down at the page.

His jaw tightened.

Then he took a pen from his coat.

He crossed out UPPER HOUSE.

Beneath it, in his own handwriting, he wrote:

INFERNAL REVIEW.

My whole body went cold.

He had not found the mistake.

He had made it.

The mirror kept going.

Rhett opened another file.

He removed pages.

Murder.

Arson.

Poisoning.

The bishop.

The goats.

He placed them inside mine.

Then he closed the folder.

The memory vanished.

My reflection came back.

I stared at myself.

Wet hair.

Hotel robe.

Face pale with anger.

Behind my reflection, something moved.

Rhett stood in the open doorway.

I hadn't heard him enter.

His eyes locked on the mirror looking betrayed by what he had witnessed.

I picked up the empty champagne bottle.

"Start talking."

---

Episode Two: Complimentary Sin

Rhett did not deny it.

Instead he stood by the door while I held an empty champagne bottle like a woman who had forgotten she was dead and could no longer be charged with assault anyway.

He admitted that he had changed my destination.

He admitted that he had taken condemned acts from unclaimed records and inserted them into mine.

He admitted that without him, I would never have seen the Infernal Grand.

I'd have gone directly upstairs.

Heaven.

The Upper House.

Whatever they preferred to call it.

I threw the bottle.

Not at him.

Near him.

I would like that recorded accurately.

It shattered beautifully against the wall.

I asked why.

He hesitated.

I reminded him that I'd just watched him frame me for regicide and malicious goat activity.

He owed me the truth.

So he gave it to me.

At death, every soul passed through Transit.

Most remembered nothing about it because Transit took less than a human second.

Rhett had been working there when mine arrived.

His job was not to judge.

Only route.

Infernal.

Upper House.

Return.

Hold.

There were rules governing each category.

He had processed thousands.

Maybe millions.

Numbers became strange after the first century.

My file had been simple.

No extraordinary virtue.

No extraordinary cruelty.

I had qualified for the Upper House under what Heaven called restorative admission.

It sounded pleasant.

I asked what restorative admission meant.

Rhett looked toward the window.

Outside, the Infernal Grand's grounds stretched beneath a dark red evening that never quite became night. Black trees moved in a wind I couldn't feel. Far below, a river reflected fire without appearing to burn.

He told me that Heaven did not punish pain.

It removed it.

Grief.

Shame.

Trauma.

Regret.

Fear.

Human souls arrived carrying too much of themselves to experience perfect peace.

So Heaven lightened them.

At first I didn't understand why his expression had gone hard.

Then he listed what else counted as burdens.

Resentment.

Anger.

Longing.

Sexual desire.

Obsession.

Jealousy.

Unfinished love.

Memory connected too strongly to suffering.

I sat down.

"My memories?"

Not all of them.

Only those likely to disturb eternal contentment.

The phrase made my stomach turn.

I thought of my father dying when I was twenty-two.

Mum falling asleep beside his hospital bed with her cheek against his hand.

The last stupid argument I'd had with him because he'd bought the wrong milk.

The guilt afterward.

The smell of the hospital lift.

For years I'd wanted those memories gone.

Then I'd stopped wanting that.

They hurt because he had mattered.

Take away the hurt and somewhere, inevitably, you started sanding away him.

I thought of my first real heartbreak.

The man who had taught me I could want someone and still leave.

I thought of weddings.

Hundreds of them.

The happy ones.

The doomed ones.

The ones where I stood at the back while two people looked at each other as though the room had emptied.

I thought of every ugly part of myself I'd earned honestly.

I understood Rhett then.

I understood.

He had seen my clearance.

Seen the treatment listed underneath.

And changed it.

"Why me?"

There it was.

The question I hadn't wanted to ask.

Rhett's gaze came back to mine.

Apparently the newly dead arrived with one final mortal thought still intact.

A spark.

Most were afraid.

Some prayed.

Some called for people they loved.

My final thought had been different.

I had been falling from a balcony, three floors above a paved courtyard, and my final thought had been:

The cake hasn't been cut.

I covered my face.

"Oh, God."

Rhett laughed.

I heard him trying not to.

I'd spent six weeks on that wedding.

The cake had cost more than my first car.

Of course my dying brain had gone to logistics.

He said that was why he looked more closely.

Not because I had been chosen.

Not because of fate.

Because I made him laugh.

A woman was plunging to her death and worrying about a cake schedule.

So he read the rest.

He saw my life.

Not every private moment. Transit records were impressions, not surveillance. Choices. Attachments. Patterns.

He saw enough.

He knew what the Upper House would remove.

And he'd done something stupid.

"Criminal."

"Technically."

"Psychotic."

"Possibly."

"Arrogant."

"Certainly."

Minimal dialogue, I reminded myself.

Even in death, I was editing.

I stood and went to the minibar.

A fresh bottle of champagne had appeared.

I opened it.

Rhett watched.

I poured one glass.

For me.

He looked offended.

I sat on the edge of the bed and told him we were going to undo it.

He nodded.

There were three things we needed.

First, the original Transit manifest proving my approved route had been altered.

Second, the source records for the false sins.

Third, an appeal hearing before my seventy-two hours expired.

Easy.

Except the original manifest was held below the hotel in the Archive, where Rhett was no longer permitted because of a previous disciplinary incident.

I asked what he'd done.

He became interested in the ceiling.

"Rhett."

He sighed.

Apparently he'd once replaced a condemned dictator's eternal punishment order with three hundred million years of customer-service employment.

I stared at him.

He said it had felt proportionate.

I started laughing.

The bastard was funny.

The bottle was halfway empty before I remembered I was meant to dislike him.

The false offence records were easier. Copies existed inside the hotel.

The room could retrieve them.

But there was a catch.

The honeymoon suites were old.

Older than the hotel around them.

They had once been confession chambers for nobility who died with contested marriage vows, secret lovers and inconvenient heirs.

The rooms responded to honesty.

Not spoken honesty.

Felt honesty.

They opened archives when occupants stopped hiding from what they wanted.

I looked around.

Bed.

Bath.

Rose petals.

The room was basically a supernatural couples therapist with champagne.

I hated Hell.

Rhett said we could start somewhere simple.

Food.

The room would respond to indulgence of any kind.

It did not have to be sexual.

I glared at him for clarifying.

That made him smile.

The bastard knew exactly what I had been thinking.

We ordered dinner.

Mine arrived under silver covers.

Roast potatoes with crisp edges.

Bread still warm.

Butter with salt crystals.

A steak so perfectly cooked I briefly reconsidered every religious opinion I'd ever formed.

Rhett ordered coffee.

That was it.

I asked why.

He said demons didn't need food.

They could taste it, but mortal hunger was gone.

For some reason, that made me sad.

I pushed the bread toward him.

He resisted.

I told him the room wanted honesty and I honestly wanted to watch a demon discover salted butter.

That was not entirely the truth.

I wanted to see him enjoy something.

He knew it.

So did the room.

The lamps dimmed.

Interesting.

Rhett ate the bread.

His eyes closed.

Only for a second.

A ridiculous little moment.

Warm bread.

Butter.

A demon who had existed long enough to measure time in centuries.

It affected me more than the shirt sleeves.

I decided not to examine that.

The mirror brightened.

A file appeared inside the glass.

VICTORIA WOODS.

OFFENCE 1: MURDER OF BARTHOLOMEW WOODS, 1891.

Then the name blurred.

The surname remained.

The first name changed.

VIOLET WOODS.

I almost cheered.

The room had found the source.

Violet Woods.

Born 1862.

Apparently a formidable woman.

She'd poisoned Bartholomew after he broke her jaw for the third time, inherited his money, opened a tavern and lived happily for another nineteen years before setting fire to a rectory.

I stared at the record.

"Why the rectory?"

Rhett read farther.

The bishop had objected to women owning taverns.

Fair enough.

I liked Violet.

The attempted regicide belonged to another Woods entirely.

The goats belonged to a man named Victor Wood.

No S.

Hell's filing system, it seemed, had once been alphabetical.

Rhett had chosen records close enough to my name to survive automated review.

"Very clever."

He did not mistake my tone for praise.

We spent the next several hours opening records.

Each required another honest indulgence from me.

Chocolate.

Music.

A silk robe that cost nothing because I was dead.

Standing barefoot on the balcony with the strange hot wind moving through my hair.

Nothing dramatic.

But I began to understand the room.

It wasn't demanding pleasure.

It was demanding admission.

I liked expensive sheets.

I liked being looked after.

I liked being desired, although I'd spent years pretending that particular need belonged to women younger and sillier than me.

I liked champagne.

I liked being right.

I liked Rhett's hands.

That one I kept to myself.

The room knew anyway.

Around midnight, he reached past me for a file.

His forearm brushed mine.

Heat ran through me.

Not metaphorical heat.

Actual heat.

His skin was warmer than human skin.

I looked down.

He went still.

Neither of us moved away.

The room changed.

A low hum ran through the walls.

The lights softened.

Behind us, the champagne bottle uncorked itself.

I laughed first.

Rhett didn't.

He was watching me.

That was the moment the whole thing stopped being theoretical.

I knew that look.

I'd seen it across bars and banquet tables and hotel lobbies at one in the morning.

Want.

Only this did not feel careless.

It felt restrained so tightly I could almost hear it creak.

I lifted my hand.

Touched the inside of his wrist.

The red around his pupils widened.

He said my name once.

Quietly.

Warning or question.

I wasn't sure.

I let my fingers slide into his palm.

The mirror flashed.

Another record appeared.

Not mine.

His.

Rhett tore his hand away.

Too late.

The room had found what he wanted hidden.

The mirror showed white wings.

Not black.

Not burned.

White.

Rhett stood beneath them.

Or perhaps they had once been his.

Across the glass appeared his original classification.

UPPER HOUSE.

ORDER OF MERCY.

Then beneath it:

FALL STATUS: VOLUNTARY INSUBORDINATION.

OFFENCE: REFUSAL TO ERASE GRIEF.

I looked at him.

He looked suddenly much older than his face.

"You weren't born a demon."

"No."

The mirror changed again.

A woman sat in a white room.

Dead.

Young.

Crying.

She clutched a baby's knitted shoe in both hands.

Rhett knelt before her.

A figure behind him held out one shining hand.

The woman was being asked to surrender her grief.

Rhett looked at the shoe.

Then at her.

He shook his head.

The memory shattered.

The room went dark.

Rhett stood very still.

I understood then.

He had not altered my file because he'd taken a strange interest in me.

He had done it because, once before, Heaven had asked him to help erase something painful.

And he had chosen the pain.

I stepped closer.

He stepped back.

For the first time, I realised he wasn't afraid of what I might do to him.

He was afraid of what he might want from me.

The honeymoon suite hummed approvingly.

I looked up at the ceiling.

"Don't encourage him."

Somewhere inside the walls, something laughed. Episode Three: The Things Heaven Takes

I woke with Rhett's coat over me.

Not Rhett.

Only the coat.

I had fallen asleep on the sofa while reading the last of the stolen offence records. The fire had burned low. Empty glasses sat on the table.

His coat smelled faintly of smoke and something darker I couldn't place.

Not sulphur.

Thank God.

More like cedar after rain.

Rhett was on the balcony.

I watched him through the glass.

He stood with both hands on the stone railing, staring at the red horizon.

There were scars across his back.

I could see them through his thin white shirt.

Two long lines.

Shoulder to waist.

Where wings might once have been.

I looked away.

Some things felt indecent even when nobody was naked.

By breakfast we had identified every false offence in my file.

That left the Transit manifest.

The Archive.

The place Rhett was banned from entering.

Our solution was ridiculous.

Naturally, it involved pretending to be married.

There was an old service route from the Infernal Grand into Transit, mostly used for couples who died simultaneously and insisted on appealing together.

The lift would only open for bonded pairs.

Not married exactly.

Hell did not care much about paperwork done while alive.

The requirement was intention.

Two souls declaring themselves temporarily joined for the purpose of passage.

I stared at Rhett.

He agreed.

Absolutely not.

Five minutes later, we were standing inside the lift.

The doors refused to close.

I folded my arms.

Rhett swore.

A brass plaque above the buttons lit up.

DECLARE BOND.

"Absolutely not," I said again.

Nothing happened.

Rhett muttered something about infernal architects.

The plaque began flashing.

DECLARE BOND.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I told the lift that Rhett and I were voluntarily entering a temporary mutual bond for the purposes of archival trespass and that under no circumstances should this be interpreted as romantic, marital or legally binding.

The lift considered.

Then displayed:

INSUFFICIENT SINCERITY.

I nearly kicked it.

Rhett was laughing.

I told him he could do better.

He sobered.

Then he took my hand.

No drama.

No performance.

His thumb rested against my knuckles.

He told the lift he would go where I went until I was safely returned to where I chose to belong.

The doors closed.

I hated the lift.

We descended.

The Infernal Grand vanished above us.

The walls of the lift became transparent.

I saw levels of Hell.

Not fire.

There were offices.

I wish I were joking.

Miles of them.

Desks disappearing into darkness.

Paper stacked floor to ceiling.

Rooms full of clocks.

Waiting halls where souls sat clutching numbered tickets.

One level contained what looked like an endless call centre.

I leaned closer to the glass.

A man with a tiny moustache was being shouted at by a woman wearing a headset.

Rhett confirmed that was the dictator.

Three hundred million years of customer service.

I laughed so hard the lift shook.

The Archive sat beneath everything.

Cold.

Silent.

Built from black stone.

Shelves rose into darkness, packed with files belonging to every soul that had crossed Transit since people first became convinced death ought to have administration.

Rhett couldn't cross the threshold.

The ban stopped him physically.

One moment he was beside me.

The next, invisible force slammed him backward.

I caught his arm.

He shook me off more harshly than he meant to.

The scars on his back had begun glowing through his shirt.

His punishment.

He told me to go alone.

I didn't want to.

That surprised me.

Three days ago I hadn't known he existed.

Now the idea of leaving him outside a dark room bothered me enough to make my chest tighten.

It was not love.

I was not stupid.

But attraction had become something more inconvenient.

Trust, perhaps.

Early trust.

Fragile.

The dangerous kind.

I entered the Archive.

The shelves moved.

Names whispered as I passed.

Millions of them.

Every life filed somewhere.

Every secret reduced to paper.

I found my section by following the smell of wedding cake.

I am not joking.

The Archive had a sense of humour.

My original manifest rested inside a narrow drawer.

VICTORIA ELIZABETH WOODS.

ROUTE: UPPER HOUSE, RESTORATIVE.

Then another line underneath.

TRANSFER INTERRUPTED.

BODY STATUS: UNRESOLVED.

I stopped.

Body status?

I read it again.

UNRESOLVED.

There was an attached page.

MORTAL ANCHOR DETECTED.

DO NOT COMPLETE PROCESSING WITHOUT SECOND DEATH CONFIRMATION.

Second death.

"What the hell?"

My skin prickled.

I grabbed the manifest and ran.

Rhett was waiting beyond the threshold.

The moment he saw my face, his changed.

I handed him the paper.

He read it.

Once.

Then again.

The red ring in his eyes disappeared.

He went frighteningly pale.

Apparently demons could do that.

"What does it mean?"

He didn't answer quickly enough.

I took the page back.

Mortal anchor.

Body unresolved.

Second death confirmation.

Then I understood.

"I wasn't dead properly."

Rhett closed his eyes.

Apparently cardiac arrest could create a soul separation before biological death became permanent.

Rarely.

Very rarely.

Transit was supposed to hold such souls until the body either recovered or died completely.

But because Rhett had altered my route immediately, the hold warning had been buried.

I stared at him.

"You kidnapped a woman who wasn't finished dying?!!"

Technically—

I held up one finger.

He stopped.

Somewhere, far away, something tugged inside my chest.

I gasped.

The Archive flickered.

For one second I smelled antiseptic.

Heard machinery.

Voices.

A woman crying.

My sister.

Lucy.

Then Hell slammed back into place.

I grabbed the shelf.

Rhett caught me.

His arms went around me automatically.

Firm.

Warm.

Real.

I pressed my face against his chest before pride could object.

His heart beat strangely.

Slower than mine.

Heavy.

Like something knocking from deep underground.

I could hear Lucy again.

Victoria.

Vic, come on.

The voice vanished.

I lifted my head.

Rhett looked wrecked.

Not because I might be going to Heaven.

Because I might still be alive.

A laugh escaped me.

Small and wild.

"I have spent two days appealing a death that may not have stuck."

The corner of his mouth moved.

Then he laughed too.

It felt wrong.

Hysterical.

Perfect.

We were both still laughing when security arrived.

Three infernal guards rounded the shelves.

Rhett saw them first.

He took my hand.

We ran.

It turns out running from Hell's archival security is less dramatic than it sounds.

There were no flaming horses.

No three-headed dogs.

There were alarms.

Doors that locked themselves.

A clerk yelling that we'd failed to sign out.

Rhett dragged me through a records corridor and into the bonded-pair lift.

The guards reached us just as the doors began closing.

One shoved an arm inside.

The lift reopened.

I hit the CLOSE button repeatedly.

Nothing.

Rhett looked at the plaque.

DECLARE BOND.

"Seriously?"

The lift remained open.

The guard pulled a restraint from his belt.

I looked at Rhett.

There was no time for careful wording.

So I kissed him.

I told myself that it was because the lift needed it.

I knew that wasn’t the entire truth.

I kissed him because death, apparently, had become negotiable.

Rhett froze.

Only for a heartbeat.

Then his hand came to the back of my neck.

The kiss changed.

No longer practical.

No longer funny.

His mouth was warmer than I'd imagined, and admittedly I had imagined it.

He kissed me like restraint had been costing him something.

The guard swore.

The lift doors closed.

We shot upward.

I stayed against Rhett.

Neither of us pretended the emergency required that.

His forehead touched mine.

His breathing had changed.

So had mine.

The lift plaque displayed:

BOND ACCEPTED.

- -

Back inside the suite, things got worse.

Or better.

Depends how moral you were feeling.

I had not been alive enough lately.

That was the truth beneath everything.

Work had taken the space where the rest of me should have gone.

Weddings every weekend.

Emails at midnight.

Problems solved before anyone knew they'd happened.

I had become excellent at smoothing other people's lives.

Mine had gone quiet around the edges.

Rhett did not feel quiet.

He felt like exactly the sort of mistake I had spent years becoming too sensible to make.

I kissed him again.

Slower.

No guards this time.

No lift.

No excuse.

His hands stayed at my waist until I moved them.

So did the way he watched me when I unfastened the first buttons of his shirt.

Not hungry alone.

Uncertain.

The scars came fully into view.

Two ruined tracks down his back, silver-black against his skin.

I touched one.

He flinched.

I nearly stopped.

His hand covered mine and kept it there.

The room responded around us.

Candles lit themselves.

The balcony doors closed.

The ridiculous towel swans reappeared on the bed.

Rhett buried his face against my shoulder.

For a demon, he embarrassed easily.

I liked that far too much.

What followed wasn't graceful.

Grace would have ruined it.

We bumped into a table.

He caught his shirt cuff on the bedpost.

I laughed into his mouth.

Then stopped laughing when his lips found the place beneath my ear that turned my knees unreliable.

He learned me quickly.

Not because of magic.

Because he paid attention.

Every time his touch deepened, he waited for me to meet it.

Every time I did, something in him loosened.

I began to understand how dangerous restraint could become when a person wore it too long.

I touched the scars on his back without pity.

Kissed one because I wanted to.

His breath broke.

That sound stayed with me.

Later, with my skin warm and my head against his chest, the room quieted around us.

No grand transformation.

No sudden declaration.

Just the strange softness after wanting has stopped pretending it isn't hungry.

Rhett traced one fingertip along my shoulder.

I asked him about the woman with the baby's shoe.

He went still.

Her name had been Eliza.

She died in childbirth three hundred and twelve years ago.

Her baby survived.

Heaven wanted to remove the grief because the child would live a mortal life without her and she could not change that.

Eliza refused.

Rhett had been ordered to do it anyway.

He didn't.

He helped her hide the memory instead.

For that he lost his wings.

I asked what happened to Eliza.

Rhett's mouth curved.

She was in Hell.

Not punishment.

Employment.

She ran the bakery on Level Four.

Apparently her cinnamon buns were obscene.

I laughed against his chest.

Then the room gave a violent shudder.

The mirror flashed.

A clock appeared.

11:43:12 REMAINING.

Eleven hours.

My appeal deadline.

Behind the numbers came another image.

Hospital lights.

My own body.

Bruised.

Tubes.

Bandages.

A ventilator pushing breath into lungs that belonged to me.

Lucy sat beside the bed.

Her hands wrapped around mine.

A doctor entered.

I couldn't hear him clearly.

Only fragments.

Swelling reducing.

Response encouraging.

Tomorrow morning.

We may try—

The mirror went black.

Rhett sat up.

I knew before he spoke.

Tomorrow morning they were going to try waking me.

If they succeeded, I would be pulled back.

If they failed—

The clock kept ticking.

I stared at it.

Eleven hours.

Suddenly Hell wasn't eternity.

It was a checkout time.

And I did not know which possibility frightened me more.

--- Episode Four: The Appeal

The appeal court met in a ballroom.

Hell appreciated irony.

The room looked exactly like the sort of ballroom I'd spent half my adult life decorating.

Crystal chandeliers.

Gold chairs.

White flowers.

A long aisle down the centre.

At the far end, instead of an altar, sat three judges behind a black marble desk.

No robes.

No wigs.

One looked like a middle-aged woman who might have worked at a bank.

One had antlers.

The third was a child.

I decided not to think too hard about any of it.

Rhett sat beside me.

Not touching.

We had agreed on that.

Not because I regretted anything.

I didn't.

I had slept with a demon in Hell while technically not completely dead.

There was no useful life advice for that.

The appeal began with the charges against me.

Murder.

Arson.

Adultery.

Poisoning.

Fraud.

Regicide.

Goats.

I presented the source records one by one.

Violet Woods.

Victor Wood.

Viktoria Wodes.

An astonishing number of criminally active people had shared versions of my name.

The bank-manager judge looked unimpressed.

The antlered judge looked bored.

The child was drawing something on the desk with a red crayon.

Then they reached Rhett.

His offences were simpler.

Interference with Transit.

Forgery.

Misallocation of a soul.

Removal of condemned records.

Unauthorised access to Upper House processing data.

And, newly added, unlawful entry into the Archive.

He admitted all of it.

I wanted him to lie.

Just once.

Give himself room.

He didn't.

The judges asked why.

He told them.

Not dramatically.

He had watched Heaven remove grief for centuries.

Not maliciously.

The Upper House genuinely believed suffering was something compassionate beings should heal.

But healing and removal were not always the same.

A scar was not an open wound.

Grief changed.

Regret taught.

Desire complicated.

Rage sometimes protected the person who had once been powerless.

Rhett had come to believe perfect peace required making souls simpler than the humans who had earned wisdom from their experiences.

The antlered judge asked whether he believed Hell was better.

Rhett laughed.

No.

Hell was worse in several measurable ways.

The child looked up from the drawing.

The bank-manager judge asked why he had selected me.

Rhett glanced at me.

I braced myself for something humiliating involving wedding cake.

Instead he said something I was not prepared for.

Because I'd spent my life fixing things.

Problems.

Events.

People.

Mess.

My record showed a woman who believed usefulness was the safest way to be loved.

I looked down.

He continued.

Heaven would have removed the exhaustion.

The resentment.

The loneliness.

But in doing so it might have removed the part of me that had finally begun to understand I was allowed to want something without being useful to anyone.

I didn't look at him.

Couldn't.

The honeymoon suite had been assigned automatically after he changed my route.

Not his choice.

The room had simply read me correctly.

Intimacy wasn't the thing I'd denied myself.

Receiving was.

That hurt.

In the deeply irritating way truth does.

The judges recessed.

We waited outside.

Rhett offered coffee.

I told him no.

He brought me one anyway.

Correct order.

No sugar.

I accepted it.

That was our apology.

The hallway outside the court overlooked a part of Hell I'd never seen.

Gardens.

Actual gardens.

Dark soil.

Pomegranate trees.

People walking together.

Not screaming.

Some were clearly human souls.

Others were not.

I asked Rhett about them.

Hell, he explained, had accumulated myths.

Some deserved.

Some exaggerated.

Punishment existed.

So did work.

So did rest.

So did people who had rejected Heaven.

Souls had more choices than religions liked admitting.

Apparently certainty had always been excellent marketing.

I leaned against the railing.

"Could I choose this?"

If I were truly dead, yes.

That answer sat between us.

If.

The court reconvened.

The bank-manager judge delivered the verdict.

My infernal classification was void.

All associated charges were expunged.

Rhett's alteration had been unlawful.

But the original Upper House transfer was also void.

Because I did not currently qualify as dead.

The child judge slid a paper across the desk.

MORTAL STATUS: ACTIVE.

I stared.

Somewhere, impossibly far away, a monitor beeped.

My heart.

Mine.

Still going.

The judges explained.

I had suffered cardiac arrest for seven minutes and twenty-two seconds.

My soul had separated.

Paramedics restored circulation.

My body remained critically injured but viable.

The Transit hold should have activated.

Rhett's interference had accidentally diverted me before that happened.

Which meant I had spent nearly three days in Hell because a fallen angel falsified my records too quickly.

I looked at him.

He winced.

"Efficient."

That was all I managed.

The antlered judge almost smiled.

I was being returned.

Immediately.

No Heaven.

No Hell.

No choice.

Back.

My throat tightened.

It should have been relief.

Mostly it was.

Lucy.

Mum.

My own bed.

Coffee from the place downstairs.

Rain.

Being annoyed by emails.

A body with a dodgy knee.

Life.

I wanted it so badly it frightened me.

Then I looked at Rhett.

And joy acquired teeth.

He would remain here.

Worse, there would be punishment.

His actions had crossed too many boundaries.

The bank-manager judge began listing possible sentences.

Memory sequestration.

Demotion.

A thousand years in Collections.

Rhett visibly reacted to that one.

I almost smiled.

Then she mentioned obliteration.

The humour vanished.

No.

I stood.

All three judges looked at me.

Rhett said my name softly.

I ignored him.

If his crime was unlawful interference with a mortal life, then punishment should repair the harm.

The judges waited.

I had organised weddings.

You learn contracts.

You learn clauses.

You learn that institutions love rules until those rules become inconvenient.

I asked whether Hell could punish a demon through mortality.

The courtroom went very still.

Rhett stared at me.

The child judge stopped drawing.

Apparently it could.

Rare.

Old.

Mostly abandoned.

Incarnation.

A demon could be stripped of infernal status and placed into a mortal body for the duration of one human life.

No powers.

No immunity.

No guaranteed wealth.

No priority parking.

Rhett whispered something extremely rude.

I kept going.

He had interfered because he believed mortality had value even when it hurt.

Fine.

Let him test the theory.

The bank-manager judge narrowed her eyes.

"You are proposing his punishment?"

"I'm an event planner. It's difficult to switch off."

The antlered judge coughed.

Definitely hiding a laugh.

Rhett stood.

He objected.

Strongly.

I turned on him.

"You abducted me into Hell."

He pointed out that he saved my memories.

"You framed me for murder."

Technically—

I gave him a look.

He stopped.

I faced the judges.

If they wanted punishment, mortality seemed exquisitely appropriate.

Let him have back pain.

Rent.

Dental appointments.

Slow internet.

Let him discover that avocados went bad in a twenty-minute window.

The child judge was now openly delighted.

Rhett looked betrayed.

Good.

The court withdrew for exactly forty-three seconds.

When it returned, the sentence had been approved.

Rhett would be incarnated.

Thirty to forty human years old.

Physical health within normal parameters.

Identity assigned at random.

No infernal abilities.

No guaranteed reunion with me.

That last part hurt.

I hadn't expected them to say it.

Rhett hadn't either.

We looked at each other.

The return pull hit me then.

Hard.

My lungs seized.

The ballroom blurred.

Hospital voices flooded through the room.

Pressure dropping.

Victoria?

Come on, Vic.

The doctors were waking me.

I reached for Rhett.

He caught both my hands.

The court vanished around us.

For one impossible moment there was only him.

I didn't want a speech.

I didn't want a promise.

Promises made across dimensions felt irresponsible.

So I kissed him.

Quick.

Hard.

Real.

He held my face.

I felt him smiling against my mouth, which made me want to cry.

He told me something.

The hospital sounds swallowed most of it.

I only caught the last three words.

Find good bread.

Then Hell disappeared.

Pain arrived.

Everywhere.

White.

Hot.

Human.

I opened my eyes.

Lucy screamed.

A nurse nearly dropped something.

My mother burst into tears.

A doctor shouted.

The ceiling above me was plain white.

No painted sunset.

No red sky.

No towel swans.

My throat hurt too much to speak.

So I smiled.

Then, because I had apparently learned nothing from death, my first coherent thought was:

Who cut the cake?

---

Episode Five: Late Checkout

Recovery was ugly.

Nobody tells you that in stories.

People wake from comas in films and immediately have meaningful conversations.

I woke from mine and vomited on a nurse.

My left side felt as though someone had driven a truck through it.

Which was unfair.

The balcony had done most of the work.

My pelvis was fractured.

Three ribs too.

Concussion.

Surgical repair to one shoulder.

A scar along my hairline.

And, insultingly, the clicking knee remained.

After all that, death hadn't even fixed the knee permanently.

Lucy slept in a chair beside me for four nights.

Mum brought food I couldn't eat.

Police interviewed me once I could stay awake longer than twenty minutes.

Martin Marris had been arrested.

The balcony had security cameras.

Apparently rich men continue forgetting cameras exist when they panic.

The money laundering investigation widened.

The wedding had ended early.

I did not tell anyone about Hell.

Not at first.

There are sentences difficult to introduce naturally.

By the way, while I was unconscious, I stayed in a luxury hotel in the underworld and slept with a fallen angel who is possibly being reincarnated because I suggested it during his sentencing.

No.

I kept that for myself.

The memories did not fade.

Rhett.

The suite.

The Archive.

The taste of impossible champagne.

The scars where his wings had been.

Sometimes I woke expecting his coat over me.

Sometimes I could still hear him laughing in the lift.

I searched his name online once.

Then felt stupid.

What exactly had I expected?

RHETT, FORMER ANGEL, RECENTLY HUMAN, SEEKING WOMAN HE ACCIDENTALLY SENT TO HELL.

Age range uncertain.

Enjoys bread.

Three months passed.

Then six.

I walked without a cane.

Returned to work slowly.

My employer suggested administrative duties.

I lasted six days.

I needed movement.

Problems.

People.

Not because usefulness was the only way anyone could love me.

I was trying to learn that.

But I did actually like fixing things.

There is a difference between a cage and a skill.

The first wedding I agreed to manage after my recovery was small.

Eighty guests.

No peacocks.

No pyrotechnics.

No family member currently under investigation for financial crimes.

I had standards now.

The venue was a renovated hotel outside the city.

Beautiful place.

Old stone.

Modern glass.

Gardens.

The bride was sane.

The groom knew his own mother's name.

I felt optimistic.

At three fifteen, the florist arrived missing two centrepieces.

At four, the photographer announced his assistant had gastro.

At four thirty, someone discovered the wedding rings were still at the bride's apartment.

At five, the groom's mother cried because the napkins looked "aggressive".

I had missed this.

God help me.

Normal human disaster.

No eternal consequences.

No judges with antlers.

Only napkins.

By eight thirty, everyone was fed.

By nine, half the room was drunk.

At nine fifteen, the bride and groom disappeared into the gardens.

At nine twenty, a bridesmaid kissed the best man behind the dessert table.

At nine thirty, I finally sat down.

The hotel manager appeared five minutes later.

She apologised.

There was a problem with the bridal suite.

Plumbing.

Water everywhere.

The couple couldn't use it.

I closed my eyes.

Of course.

She said they could upgrade them to the only remaining premium room.

I asked which one.

She checked her tablet.

"Honeymoon suite."

My eyes opened.

No.

Absolutely not.

The universe was not that lazy.

I followed her upstairs anyway.

Room 616.

I stopped in the corridor.

The number could have been coincidence.

Six hundred hotels probably had a room 616.

I told myself that as the manager opened the door.

No red sky.

No supernatural fireplace.

No champagne waiting in silver.

Just a very nice hotel room.

I laughed at myself.

Then I saw the towels.

Two swans.

Necks bent into a heart.

"Oh, for God's sake."

The manager looked concerned.

I told her I was fine.

I wasn't.

Someone was crouched beneath the bathroom sink.

I could see only black trousers and the bottom of a white shirt.

The manager called to him.

"New maintenance contractor. Started this morning."

The man under the sink swore.

Softly.

Familiar.

My heart stopped.

Not literally.

I'd had enough of that.

He backed out.

Hit his head on the basin.

Swore again.

Sat on the floor rubbing his skull.

Then looked up at me.

Brown eyes.

No red ring.

Dark hair.

A little longer than before.

Same mouth.

Same face, mostly.

More colour.

More tiredness.

Human.

Rhett.

For several seconds neither of us moved.

The hotel manager continued talking.

I heard none of it.

Rhett stood slowly.

He wore a plastic name badge.

RHETT HARPER.

FACILITIES.

I stared at it.

He followed my eyes.

His expression became deeply offended.

Apparently he had been hoping for management.

I started laughing.

Not delicate laughter.

Not romantic.

Ugly, breathless, bent-over laughter that made my ribs ache where they'd healed.

The manager looked between us.

Rhett was smiling now.

Human teeth.

Human eyes.

A faint mark showed at one temple where he'd hit the basin.

He was real.

I crossed the room.

Then stopped.

An arm's length away.

Suddenly I was frightened.

Hell had been strange enough to make everything easy.

There, we were dead.

Or mostly dead.

Time had an ending.

Desire had no mortgage, no work roster, no bad moods, no laundry.

This was different.

This was life.

Messy.

Ordinary.

Finite.

Rhett seemed to understand.

He didn't reach for me.

He told the manager we knew each other.

That was one way of putting it.

She left.

The door shut.

Silence.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I asked when he'd arrived.

Two days earlier.

He had woken on a bus.

That made me laugh again.

No warning.

No dramatic birth.

One second Hell.

Next second, a suburban bus with twelve dollars in his pocket, a driver's licence and an unpleasant amount of knowledge concerning air-conditioning repair.

He had apparently also been assigned a rental apartment, six months of employment history and a credit score he considered insulting.

I wiped my eyes.

"What did you expect? You committed fraud against the afterlife."

He considered that.

Fair.

He had remembered everything.

That was the first question I hadn't asked.

The relief nearly folded me in half.

He remembered the hotel.

The Archive.

The lift.

Me.

All of it.

I stepped closer.

His breath changed.

Human body.

Same tell.

I touched his wrist.

His pulse jumped under my fingers.

Fast.

Mortal.

Beautiful.

For one moment neither of us said anything.

Then I kissed him.

It was different.

He tasted like coffee.

Bad coffee.

Human coffee.

His hands came around my waist and held me carefully until I pulled him closer.

The kiss deepened.

Six months of not knowing where to put what I remembered came loose all at once.

I felt him laugh softly against my mouth.

I pulled back.

"What?"

Apparently he'd been told incarnation could place him anywhere in the world.

Billions of people.

Any country.

Any city.

Hell claimed assignments were random.

"And?"

He nodded toward the bedside table.

There was a cream envelope on it.

I hadn't noticed.

My name was written across the front.

VICTORIA WOODS.

I opened it.

Inside was one sheet of thick paper.

INFERNAL CORRECTIONS OFFICE.

Dear Ms Woods,

Following review of Case 616-VW, we confirm that all fraudulent offences previously attached to your soul have been removed.

We apologise for the administrative inconvenience.

As compensation, your eventual infernal or celestial admission will include one complimentary beverage.

Terms and conditions apply.

I snorted.

There was more.

With respect to former Transit Officer Rhett Harper, geographical incarnation was determined by standard random allocation procedures.

The following handwritten note had been added beneath it.

We lied.

I looked at Rhett.

He looked over my shoulder.

Then I read the last line.

P.S. The honeymoon suite was not our idea.

That part was yours.

I frowned.

Rhett went very still.

I turned the page over.

More writing.

Smaller.

Victoria Woods, during initial room allocation, unconscious soul preference assessment:

PRIMARY DENIED DESIRE: TO BE MET HALFWAY.

I stared at it.

Something tightened behind my ribs.

Rhett read it too.

For once, he had no clever response.

Neither did I.

So I folded the paper.

Put it down.

And kissed him again.

Later, much later, after the wedding guests had gone upstairs and the staff had started clearing glasses, I discovered the final joke.

Rhett was fixing the bridal suite plumbing because he had accidentally caused the problem.

He had been attempting to adjust the water pressure.

With infernal confidence.

And absolutely no human plumbing experience.

"You flooded the honeymoon suite?"

He looked defensive.

I laughed into the pillow.

There are moments when the universe becomes almost offensively obvious.

Rhett sat on the edge of the bed, shirt half-buttoned, mortal hair thoroughly ruined, glaring toward the bathroom as though the pipes had betrayed him personally.

I looked at the man I'd met in Hell.

Except he wasn't that man anymore.

Not exactly.

He would get older.

So would I.

His back would hurt.

My knee would continue making that ridiculous noise on stairs.

We would have bills.

Arguments.

Morning breath.

There would be grief.

Eventually.

That was the bargain.

Not Heaven's peace.

Not Hell's eternity.

This.

A finite thing.

Precious because you could lose it.

Rhett glanced back at me.

I must have looked strange because his expression changed.

Softened.

I didn't tell him I loved him.

Not then.

That would have been too neat.

Too quick.

Besides, I had organised enough weddings to know a declaration is not the same thing as a life.

Instead I asked whether he still remembered Eliza's bakery.

He did.

I asked about the cinnamon buns.

Apparently they really were obscene.

I told him good bread was going to be his first proper lesson in mortality.

His face changed.

He remembered.

Find good bread.

The words he'd given me while I was being dragged back into my body.

I touched his hand.

"I found you instead."

Too polished.

I hated it the moment I said it.

Rhett did too.

He stared at me.

Then started laughing.

"That was awful."

"I know."

"Truly terrible."

"I nearly died recently. Be kind."

"You were dead."

"Technicality."

He lay down beside me.

I rested my head against his shoulder.

Outside, ordinary rain began tapping against the windows.

Not ash.

Not fire.

Rain.

Somewhere below us, a vacuum cleaner started.

A drunk wedding guest shouted for someone called Darren.

The toilet in the bathroom made an alarming noise.

Rhett closed his eyes.

I smiled.

No choir.

No demons.

No perfect peace.

Just life.

Messy, embarrassing, temporary life.

Exactly as advertised.

Then my phone rang.

Rhett reached for it.

I stopped him.

"I have spent thirteen years answering phones during weddings. Leave it."

He considered this.

The phone kept ringing.

"Welcome to weddings."

The phone rang again.

I pulled the duvet over my head.

Rhett answered it.

Traitor.

He listened for a moment.

Then looked beneath the duvet at me.

There was something in his expression I did not trust.

"What?"

He covered the receiver.

Apparently the married couple specifically wanted the honeymoon suite.

I stared at him.

Then at the towel swans.

"No."

Rhett grinned.

The bastard still had the smile of a demon.

"Absolutely not."

He kept grinning.

I threw a towel swan at him.

And somewhere, very far beneath us, Hell laughed.