Page 50 of Hellbound

“I don’t drive.”

To Marian’s relief, Tori didn’t pry into how Marian could live in a city so punishing to people without vehicles. After another minute or two, Tori shoved her phone in her pocket and leaned into the stiff seat with a defeated sigh. “Can I ask you something?”

“That is the worst fucking way to preface a question, but sure.”

Tori stared out the window, her youthful features drawn.

“What the hell happened back there?”

Marian let her hand fall onto her lap. She stared at the knot of damp blue fabric peeking out from under the edge of her jacket sleeve. Klaxons blared in her head. They’d been blaring since she returned from the dead, but in the silence of the aftermath, she couldn’t ignore them anymore. She could only deny the warning they screamed: that everything she thought she knew about the boundary between Hell and Earth had changed.

And the Remnant. Her heartbeat quickened as she saw the whites of Lloyd’s eyes in her mind, swiftly followed by the last memory she had of Elio Ramirez alive. Hovering over her quaking body, wresting the bloody knife from her grip seconds before she succumbed to unconsciousness.

Had it possessed Elio, too? No, that wasn’t possible. Elio had been the lucid that night. He’d tried to stop her from hurting herself. She would have remembered something like what she’d seen tonight. Wouldn’t she?

Marian swallowed thickly.

“I don’t know.”

Tori folded her arms across her chest. A muscle in her jaw ticked as she looked away. “I wish you were lying.”

A heavy silence fell between them and lasted until the next stop, when the doors opened and closed without a single passenger boarding.

Tori turned to Marian.

“You said something in Hell about the Remnant taking you again. What did you mean?”

Marian’s shoulders stiffened. More lies sprang to mind, but Tori would see through them. She didn’t want to tell the truth, but she couldn’t sit there in silence. Not while her conscience reminded her that Tori had saved her and probably deserved some of the information Marian had withheld.

Or all of it.

A terrible idea. But her traitorous mouth opened anyway, and the words poured out.

“A month ago, I got lost in Hell while on a dive for a client. The Remnant found me. It … took me.”

Marian glared at a scuff on the floor as she tried to ignore the sensation of Tori’s eyes burning through the side of her face.

“I don’t know what happened after that. I figured it was the end of me. But then I came back. I remember some darkness and pain, but I don’t remember why it stopped. My spotter, the guy who died … Elio, said it took ages to restart my heart.”

“Jesus,” Tori stared at her unblinking, horror plain in her face. “But people don’t escape the Remnant. That’s what I read, at least. If it takes you, you’re done.”

“I know,” Marian replied gravely.

The traveler’s eyes widened, her jaw dropping in epiphany. “Arthur Falk. That’s why I know that name. The Remnant got him and he never came back from Hell.”

Marian nodded. “Greg Bjernsen was his partner. He was with Falk in Hell when the Remnant consumed him. He said their spotter got Falk’s heart going a couple of times after Greg revived, but it kept failing. I assume his brain died before the rest of him, like that Hamilton guy from Irvine who wanted to track brain activity in the presence of the Remnant. He put electrodes on himself, then his spotter put him on the opioid elevator to Hell. But Hamilton didn’t think to bring anyone with him to witness what happened next. Hamilton’s spotter said he was brain dead well before his heart stopped.”

It was part of what had drawn her to Greg in the first place; he was the only living witness to the Hell side of the Falk incident.

Tori stared at her, wide-eyed.

“How do you know all this?”

Marian palmed the back of her neck. “I read a lot.”

It wasn’t a lie. But it wasn’t the entire truth, either. Information about demons and divers was scarce, and often in the form of unsubstantiated rumors on abandoned forums. She’d once made a career out of excavating facts and turning them into context for her readers. Context created understanding they all so desperately needed; the powerful counted on the ignorance of the masses to obfuscate their crimes. That muscle never fully atrophied after she abandoned her life as a journalist. Sometimes that life seemed like a dream.

The outstanding student loans assured her that period had been very real. She’d been so close to doing some good with it. If only she hadn’t tried to use her powers against her stepfather.