Page 40 of Death Trap

“We came to get you out,” I cut in. “I owe Wyatt and Sean for all the help they gave me with a demon problem.”

She snorted a laugh. “That sounds about right.” A smile snuck across her lips at the mention of her husband and son. “How are my boys? How have they managed without me for all this time? I’m surprised none of them are dead yet.”

I swallowed. “Er…”

To my surprise, she rolled her eyes. “Which one? Or both?”

“Wyatt…” I muttered, still uncomfortable with bringing up his death. “Sean is alive and well. He’s been living in the trailer.”

“Was it the smoking? No, the drinking?”

Well, shit. This woman was a straight shooter, wasn’t she? I didn’t know what I was expecting exactly. Maybe not a full-out crying fit at the mention of her husband being dead, but she didn’t even let out a sniffle. I guess when you’ve been dead yourself for so long, you get used to news like that. Death holds a different meaning to it.

“That demon thing I spoke about earlier? Well, Wyatt didn’t make it out of that one alive,” I told her. “But he’s living it up in the afterlife. Owns a bar and all.”

Another smile captured her lips, this one transforming her entire face. And in that moment, I realized how beautiful she really was. Shaving off the hardness from years locked up in Hell did wonders.

“I’m not surprised,” she said. “That had been a dream of his forever. Crazy bastard.”

“Ironically, he named the bar Arrogant Bastard.” I chuckled. “I thought it suited him.”

She laughed even harder, her shoulders bouncing. “Absolutely.”

Eli cleared his throat, disrupting our moment. We both turned toward him.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he began. “But Jade here believes you were put here by accident. Is that true?”

“Accident? Well, I don’t know if it was an accident exactly or part of some larger plot.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“If I’m here and Wyatt’s in some cushy afterlife, you bet your bottom a mistake was made,” she replied.

Funny, that’s what Wyatt had said, too.

“But I always assumed this was where I was meant to be. I woke up here in this room, and every so often a demon will come in and check on me. More like annoy the shit out of me for a few hours before leaving me again.”

“How long have you been here?” Eli asked.

She shrugged. “I have no clue. There’s no sense of time here. It feels like yesterday yet a decade ago at the same time.”

A decade was probably more accurate of a guess. Maybe longer.

“I thought how we found you was a bit strange. It wasn’t like the others,” I said, then turned to Eli, my brow raised. “See? It’s looking more and more like that cosmic magic screwed up, huh?”

His expression revealed that he still needed some convincing, but he had at least opened up to the idea. It wasn’t as impossible as he’d originally thought.

Lisa chimed in, “Wait, what do you mean by others?”

“We had to search a bit before finding you. There were two other Lisas we found. They were in their own personal Hells, meaning they had specificsituationsthey were put into.”

“Situations?”

“Torture,” Eli clarified. “Souls sent to Hell are of the cruelest and most sinful in the world. They must live their afterlife paying for what they did while alive. The torment is supposed to last for the rest of eternity, so it is odd that we found you untouched and unabused.”

Lisa pressed her lips together. “And I thought being left alone was bad enough. I felt like I was in prison.”

“Compared to what we’ve seen, I would say you’ve been lucky,” I said frankly.

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