Page 112 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

She tips my face up so that I meet her haunting eyes. “If this hadn’t worked, he would have had an accident tonight that he would not have walked away from.”

I believe her.

“I don’t want him dead, I just want him to be my friend again, with no expectations.” I chew on my lower lip for a moment and then I ask, “How do I get their souls back?”

Julia tucksa piece of my hair behind my ear. “Come with me… there is a spell in the black page book that can open a portal to hell… or there used to be, assuming no one has torn it out.” She grimaces and the memory of Minnie doing just that makes my skin crawl.

She rises through the ceiling, but I have to take the stairs.

I hurry up them, carefully, and find her waiting for me.

She reaches for the book, swiping her hand, and it flies open at her touch.

“Sorry,” she says, almost sheepishly. “Old habits die hard.”

“It’s okay. It’s familiar.” I feel like I could do with familiarity right now.

She flutters her fingers, flipping through to one of the pages at the very back of the book and floats out of the way. “It has some… odd requirements.”

I read the words and scowl at them. “What does that mean, ‘An act far more than centuries old, the joining of two beings hot and cold’?

“The spell requires that the witch who uses it is… intimate with something dead.”

I freeze, still staring at the pages, but I don’t see them anymore. “Wait, what?”

“It’s the only way I know to get a living person into hell.”

“I can’t…” the idea of it makes me physically ill.

Julia’s hand brushes my jaw and she turns me to look at her. “I’m dead.”

She’s… “Oh.”

The relief that floods me makes my knees a little weak and I sit on the rickety settee that’s still half covered by a sheet. “Is that something you would be willing to do?”

Julia comes to me and the lower half of her body turns to smoke as she seems to kneel in front of me and takes my hands. “I haven’t let anyone linger in my home for centuries… but I can’t drive you from it. I don’t want to. When you’re not here, it feels empty in a way it never has before. The shadows are longer. The air is fouler.

“I have come to… care for you in these last several months. You are my friend. And I would gladly do anything for you.” She looks down as if she can see the bodies below. “And I will do my best to never cross the lines he did if you do not want me to. We can find another way to get there.”

It’s my turn to cup her face in my hands. “They told me I was crazy for wanting to be here, but your presence has always calmed me. I like you… I’ve always liked you.”

Her smile is soft and sweet and so at odds with what I know she is… “CanIkissyou?”

She laughs a little. “Of course. Whenever you like.”

Raising herself to me, she lets me control this kiss.

She’s soft and cold and nothing like I expected, yet still, somehow, everything I want.

“Julia?” I say her name as I draw back from her.

“Yes, Genevieve.”

“Is there another way to get to hell?”

“Yes. You grandmothers’ library of spells should hold half a dozen options. At least.”

It would take me five minutes to get to the house, an hour or more to find the spell and then five more minutes back… that’s assuming I can find a spell that would work at all.

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