Page 121 of Hell Bent

“Because something on the other side is going to be pushing on it, trying to get through. The tough part is going to be closing it up again.”

“We should…” Dawes chewed the inside of her cheek as if she’d stored words there for winter. “We should be prepared for … something worse.”

Tripp dragged his Yale sailing cap off his head, leaving his hair rumpled. Alex noticed his hairline was starting to recede. “Worse?”

“Demons love puzzles. They love tricks. They won’t just let us walk back into their realm and play the same script twice.”

Tripp looked like he wanted to crawl into the crucible and never come out. “I don’t know if I can do it all over again.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Mercy said. Her voice was harsh, and Tripp looked like he’d been slapped. But Alex finally understood why Mercy disliked Tripp so intensely. He was too much like Blake. He wasn’t a predator—his only cruelty was the casual kind, the blade of having more than everyone else and not quite knowing that was a weapon in his hands—but on the surface, he was cut from the same smug cloth.

“We all have a choice,” said Turner.

Alex opened her mouth to argue—that they didn’t if they wanted to live without torment, that they still had debts to pay—when she smelled smoke.

“Something’s burning,” she said.

They charged down the stairs.

“The kitchen!” Turner shouted.

But Alex knew Dawes hadn’t left the stove on.

The ground floor was filling with smoke, and as they reached the base of the staircase, Alex saw the stained glass windows glowing with the light of flames. The demons had set fire to the entrance of Il Bastone.

“They’re trying to smoke us out!” said Turner. He already had his phone in his hand, dialing for the fire department. “Where’s your extinguisher?”

“The kitchen,” Dawes said on a cough and ran to retrieve it.

Alex turned to Mercy and Tripp. “Go out the back. And stay together. Wait for me outside, okay?”

“Okay,” said Mercy with a firm nod. “Move,” she told Tripp.

Il Bastone’s smoke alarm began to beep, a plaintive, wounded bleat. Alex waited only long enough to see Mercy and Tripp start down the hall; then she was racing toward the kitchen. She intercepted Dawes and grabbed the extinguisher. She’d had to use one when Len had started a grease fire in their apartment kitchen when he was cooking bacon, but she still fumbled with it.

Turner seized it from her hands.

“Come on,” she said.

She threw open the front door. Flames had consumed the grass and hedges. They were roaring up the front columns. Alex felt as if she were burning too, as if she could hear the house screaming.

The demons stood in the firelight, and behind them, their shadows seemed to caper and dance. She heard the whoosh of the fire extinguisher as Turner fought to damp the flames. But Alex didn’t stop. She strode toward the demons.

“Alex!” Turner shouted. “What the fuck are you doing? This is what they want!”

The thing pretending to be Hellie grinned. She looked leaner now, hungrier. More like Alex. But not quite. Her hands curled into claws. Her eyes were dark and wild, her mouth crowded with teeth.

“You want me, you bargain knockoff?” Alex demanded. She dragged her tongue across her wrist. “Come and get me.”

The thing ran at her and then shrieked, darting backward, its grotesque smile fading. Alex saw her own shadow had shifted, as if she’d grown a hundred arms—not arms, snakes. They hissed and snapped around her, lunging at the demons, which cowered away from her.

“Alex,” said the thing called Hellie—and she was Hellie again, her eyes that stormy watercolor blue and filled with tears. “You promised you would protect me.”

Alex’s heart twisted in her chest, the grief too powerful, too familiar. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

The serpents wavered, as if they sensed her hesitancy. Then Alex breathed in and coughed, tasting the smoke on the air, the cinders of her home burning. She heard the crackle of rattlers, their tales shaking with her rage, a warning.

“Last call,” she snarled at Not Hellie. “You’re going back where you came from.”