Page 124 of Monsters in Love: Lost in the Underworld

“Have I thanked you for saving me yet?” Jonas asks quietly, “Because, Jesus Fuck,Thank you.”

“You’re welcome and I’m sorry. You wouldn’t be here in the first place if I hadn’t messed up that spell.”

I turntoward the barn and grip both Julia’s hand and the chain connecting me to Jonas a little tighter. It’s the only place left where Dylan might be.

Its paint peels as though scorched by flame, black and red and bubbling and the heat I’d gotten used to is somehow hotter here.

The doors hang on their hinges. The lights dangling from their cords pulse with a sickly yellow glow.

But it’s empty inside.

Or… it is for me.

Julia’s skin has gone from gray to sheet white and the wisps of her semi-non-corporeal form flow toward the barn as if hell has finally gotten ahold of her and is trying to drag her in.

I don’t ask what she sees. I step behind her and look for myself.

There are two people inside the barn. The one she stares at is a man dressed like he’s from another era. And on the other side of the barn, I sit… no. It’s not me. Minnie sits on that side of the barn, in an enormous pile of hay, twirling her hair and blowing big, pink bubbles.

I look back at the man and squeeze Julia’s hand a little tighter, going to her side. “Is this the entrance for the wrathful?

“Yes.” Julia says, softly. “This ismypath to punishment.”

“And that’s the man who killed you?”

“Yes.”

For the first time since we arrived in hell, I feel a faint tug.

Even though he’s already dead, I’d like to kill him all over again.

It offers Julia her murderer—I assume that’s why Minnie is inside as well: to tempt the man from the cornfield.

Julia touches her throat and I see a faint pulse of light there. The shape is too obvious to miss.

Handprints.

“He got what he wanted. But I didn’t let him enjoy it, even for a moment.” She doesn’t look away from him and I see the tendrils of her skirt flow toward him, its tug is stronger than it was before.

I catch Julia’s hand. She flinches at my touch, but I make her look at me.

“Come back with me.” I look in to where I know the man waits for her wrath. “Choose me. He’s dead, if you stay, you’re punishing yourself… and you’re punishing me. Not him.”

She smiles, squeezing my hand back and turns her back on the specter of the man who killed her.

“I’ll always choose you, Genevieve. The temptation it offers me there is hollow. I know better than to trust anything here that offers to give me what I want.”

She kisses me and I hear a low curse from behind us and the chain tugs a little.

When I look back. Jonas has turned away, from us and he’s adjusting his pants. “Sorry. I’m not trying to be a creep.”

Julia laughs lowly. “Lust brought you here, you’re more susceptible to it here than you were in the living world.”

I start to tell Jonas that it’s okay when movement catches my eye, just a second too late.

The weight of another person knocks me to the ground and I shove at the man from the cornfield.

My hand goes straight through the hole in his chest and the strangeness of that makes me pause, just long enough that he gets his hands around my throat.

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