Page 118 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

“What on Earth could make him want to go there?”

“We’re not on Earth anymore. And he sees dozens of beautiful, naked people beckoning to him.” She looks at me askance. “He’s here because he’s lusty—because he lusted for you—his hell tried to draw him in with it.”

That makes me pause. “Am I down there?”

“Yes. You and several others.”

“Gross.”

She shrugs. “It’s hell.”

She tries to help me with him, but her hands pass straight through him. Offering an apologetic smile, she says, “He might be able to see me here, but it looks like I can’t interact with him directly any more than I could in the living world.”

If I can get him into the corn maze, that will break his line of sight.

“Do you think the scarecrow stake in the middle of the cornfield will hold him? If we can’t get him to come back to us?”

“I don’t know. This wasn’t here when I was alive. Would it hold him in the living world?”

“It’s meant to stop kids from knocking it down. And the scarecrow is held up with chains. I can use those to keep him there.”

“It might.”

And “might” is the best I can hope for right now.

I have to drag him, bodily, away and even once he’s broken sight of the embers and skeletal remains below, he struggles to get back to it.

But the further we get, the less he fights me.

“The corn should help calm him down, right?” I ask,hoping.

“It will act like a buffer.”

When I drag him into the maze, following a path I memorized long ago, he does settle.

My nerves don’t.

“Genevieve?” Jonas’s head tips back and he looks at me like he’s drunk and just come out of a black out.

“Hey,” I say, stopping and taking a moment to breathe. “How you feeling?”

He grimaces and says… “I don’t think you want to know.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Wincing, he says, “You know how they tie up bulls to make them buck in bull riding? Yeah… it’s like there’s a rope pulling me the opposite direction you are.” He steps away from me.

“I can’t let you go back there.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no gentle way to break this to you… we’re in hell.”

His eyes finally clear and he looks all around. “Oh.”

I expected more. I expected…

He flinches, breaking my grip on one hand and I grab him again, as quick as I can.

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