Page 28 of Death Trap

“Jade.” Eli was suddenly by my side. “Are you all right?”

I snapped myself out of it and cleared my throat. “Yeah. Let’s get to a portal and get over to Styx.”

Spinning around, I marched down the sidewalk toward the same portal I had used earlier, the one in front of the bookstore. Eli followed me silently as I stepped onto the platform’s symbols. They glowed white.

“Hold on to your pants,” I said.

He nodded, grabbing onto the belt loops of his slacks.

Wow. That was a bad joke. One he had taken literally.

Looked like he really hadn’t had much time in the living world among people.

Shaking my head at the ridiculousness of what I’d just witnessed, I spoke our destination clearly, and the magic of the portal whisked us away to Styx Corporation.

We arrived within seconds. Styx Corp. rose in front of us, a huge, ancient Greek temple surrounded by blue sky and clouds and tall columns and gleaming white marble. Eli stepped off the platform, his gaze locked on the building with the same dazed look I’d had when I’d first seen it. Styx was something straight out of mythology.

“You said angels have to be invited into the afterlife, right?” I asked him as we climbed the steps to the glass doors.

“Yes, they do,” he replied.

“Then how was Azrael running this show? Did a random spirit give him permission, and once he came over, he became the Angel of Death and my boss? How does that work exactly?”

“I don’t know all the details, of course.” He held the door open for me to walk through first. “Azrael is older than me, older than most of us. He was one of the Firsts. So, it is very possible he was created to be the Angel of Death from the very beginning and allowed to cross dimensions that way.”

One of the Firsts, huh? That was a little intimidating. Okay, very intimidating. Azrael had always scared me. Not only had he been my boss, but he was a celestial being—an angel—and I didn’t want to mess with that kind of ancient and otherworldly power. My only hope was that angels weren’t like vampires and gained more strength the older they were. Otherwise, if it ever had to come to fisticuffs between me and Azrael, I would be in some real doo-doo.

Hopefully it never came to that. If I was lucky, he’d just taken an early retirement and I’d never have to see him ever again.

A girl could dream, right?

The moment we entered the oversized entryway and the U-shaped desk came into view, I realized my first mistake with this underdeveloped plan. The secretary, Maryanne.

She wasn’t going to let me walk by without throwing at least one terrible insult my way—as was tradition. And with Eli at my side, those insults would then be followed up with questions. I couldn’t let her know who Eli was or why we were really here. And if I lied and said we wanted to see Simon, she’d let him know we were coming up in the elevator. Then, when we didn’t show up, Simon would know something fishy was going on.

How was I going to get out of this one?

Getting by her without being seen was impossible. She was a hawk. When I peeked her way and saw her beady eyes already on me, it only confirmed my fears. Of course she’d spotted me already, the old gremlin. She probably was so bored, I wouldn’t be surprised if she waited for me to walk through the door every day.

My only hope was if Eli kept his mouth shut and I somehow came up with a believable enough lie to convince her not to tell Simon we were here.

How did Cole do this stuff daily—most of the time on the fly? It was too stressful for me.

I lowered my voice to a faint whisper. “You see that old lady over there behind the desk?” I asked, and Eli looked over and nodded. “That’s Maryanne. She’s mean as can be and likes to push people’s buttons. So, if she says anything to us, let me do the talking, okay? I know just what to come back with to keep her tame.”

“She can’t be that bad,” Eli said.

“Believe me. There’s a reason she was given this job. Hell didn’t even want her. They tossed her right back out.”

Eli snorted a laugh at that. “All right.”

Nerves running rampant, I tried to keep my cool as we approached Maryanne’s desk. I kept my eyes glued to the hallway of elevators just ahead, but the sound of her chair scraping across the floor told me she was standing, readying to say something to me. As predicted, she wasn’t going to just let me pass scot-free.

“I knew it was you before you even walked through the door,” she said in her high-pitched, gravelly voice. Like nails on a chalkboard. Since it’d been some time since I’d heard it, I winced. “It’s hard to miss thatsmell.”

I gritted my teeth. My comeback wanted to fly free from my mouth, but I couldn’t let it. I needed Maryanne to be on my side if I was going to get to that elevator without anyone noticing.

That’s when she spotted Eli hovering a little too close to my back, still naked from the waist up, and a brilliant hunk of man. Definitely out of place amongst the high-powered, business-formal feel that was Styx Corp.

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