Title: The Heights of Hell
For: This a completely gratuitous story.
Links to: The Road to Hell, The Gates of Hell, My December
Disclaimer: The Nightworld is the property of the fabulous L. J. Smith. All concepts and / or characters you recognise from the books belong to her: everything else is created by me.
Notes: This scene demanded to be written, and while it isn't a request, it does fit in with the various themes and events that happen in this year's clutch of Easter Eggs. I hope you enjoy it.

Jean Paul Sartre famously said, "Hell is other people." The cynic.

The Heights of Hell

Hell, he had been told once, was other people.

Not so. For Cougar Redfern, hell was the memory of other people. The lost ones, stark absences in his life, the faces he'd plaster on milk cartons if he thought it would do any good.

Some had only fallen out of touch.

("You never call," he'd snapped at Zara last time he saw her, trying to keep the anger from his voice and failing miserably – when had that been? God, six months, maybe more – and she had only looked back, a flush beginning to crawl up her face.

"I'm busy," she had said, but it had been what she'd left unsaid that wounded him; the indifference dividing the words.

Too busy for you.)

Some had merely turned their back.

(She'd been in his dreams the other night, appearing with the persistence of a haunting. Strange how he had always thought of her as faded, lace-delicate, yet here she was in striking technicolour, head thrown back in a laugh that seemed wild and foreign to him as a flock of flamingos taking wing.

He didn't know the people with her in that rickety truck that bounced along a desert road, but there was some guy with his arm slung over her shoulders like he had a right to touch her. Cougar hated him on sight, hated his ready smile, his wide-brimmed hat, his scruffy clothes, but what he hated most of all was the way Ria leaned into the crook of his arm.

She looked so different – in the baked, dusty landscape, there was a sparkle to her eyes he couldn't recall seeing, and when had he ever seen her so relaxed, shouting into a conversation like that? He didn't know this raucous, merry creature, and he had to wonder if she had only blossomed in the absence of his love and despair.)

Others had denied him, severing their ties with wanton audacity.

("Get out of here," he'd whispered, and uncurled his fingers to reveal the key, shining in his palm like a star. His heart was still hammering – he knew what would happen when his father found it missing.

Blue had stared at him, his eyes as black as his bruises.

"I will get out," his little brother had answered, and the certainty in his voice was so calm and cold that Cougar felt like a child before some dreadful, malevolent sage. "But I don't need your help. I'll leave when I'm ready."

"But..." he'd stammered, wanting to say a thousand things and forgetting them all under that cruel gaze. To have taken so many risks and yet to be denied and dismissed so coolly...

"Go away," Blue had declared. "You're boring me."

That he could sound so regal with chains around his legs and blood caking his skinny arms was another mystery. And in that moment, in that refusal, the gulf between them had become impassable.

I don't need you, Blue had said, and worse, he had been right.)

And some...some had died.

(He never saw roses without thinking of Sonj. To other people, they were romantic, but the sight of them – voluptuous, startling, a splatter of dark red colour – always made his stomach churn. Even a whiff of a scent brought her back, swirling into his head like a Hollywood starlet, all glitz and sunshine. And under that, a hazy, boozy decay; he could never hold that image for more than a few seconds before the blood blossomed over her skin, before she was a hollow shell of someone he'd wanted to know better.

He'd only bought a girl flowers once, and when she'd asked why he'd chosen lilies – didn't he know they were for funerals? – he'd only stared back blankly from a cage of thorns.

Blood and roses. Same difference.)

Too many losses, and he was determined that there would be no more. He'd never had a group of close friends until he came to Ryars Valley – he'd never really loved people, and never been loved with such breathtaking ease. Admired, yes, feared – hell yes. But loved...?

That had been new and exciting and addictive and terrible all at the same time.

So for the first time in his life, he was refusing to accept their loss.

That was why he was here in Hades, deep beneath the earth in a place plucked from a mesh of nightmare and legend and hallucinogenic fever. He'd wanted to keep Chatoya safe, to keep her sane. He wasn't sure he was succeeding with either as they staggered up the muddy slopes from the Styx, drenched from the knees down.

Chatoya stumbled, and he hauled her upright, feeling his own footing skid. "Come on," he breathed, trying to be gentle. "Not much further, then we're back on the path. Then it’s just a little stroll out of here-"

At the very edge of his hearing, something howled – a long, low sound tinged with hunger. Cougar prayed she hadn't heard and carried on, fumbling for words. "-and we can get some coffee back at the hotel, and then we can fly home and all your minions will grovel at your feet."

"Ha," she muttered between laboured breaths. "Not likely. But they might stop trying to kill me so often."

"You're telling me we flew all this way just so you could get one less dose of arsenic in your porridge? What's the point in running the Furies if you don't get to abuse your power?"

"Well, I could be wrong, but I think most people do it for the money." She slipped again, and once more he caught her. "Not me though. No, no, I had to do it because I thought I could save the planet. I could have planted trees, or bought a goat in Africa. But that would have been too easy – why donate to charity when I could spend the rest of my life trying to reform people who think Blink Murder is a speed trial massacre?"

"Babe, if we're going to talk party games, it could be worse. You could have spent Christmas playing Blind Man's Buff with Jepar. Until you've been groped by a drunk shapeshifter in a Santa outfit, I don't think you can complain."

She giggled. "I wish I’d been there."

"I wish you had too. I could have used you as a shield."

They lurched through the cave, trampling down the asphodel that released a faint scent into the air. The whole place had the empty, sad feel of a disused ballroom, but he had no urge to meet any of the long-gone dancers.

Something was bothering him, and he didn't ignore the niggle. It wasn't the muffled sounds which clattered at the edge of his hearing. Disturbing as they were, they were constant as the gurgle of the rivers. No, it was a shift in the light. He'd stood on the banks of the Styx, hadn't he, and he'd surveyed the whole place, peered into shadows, half-expecting carnival horrors to peer back and-

Shadows. That was it. There were more shadows than there had been, forming long ragged shapes high on the walls. Whatever the source of the glow, it was buried in the far corner of the cavern, away from the dangling rows of skulls which clutched light between their teeth like a bitten-back prayer.

"Cougar?" Her voice, beseeching, anxious. "What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. Can you ward us? Two separate wards," he clarified.

She knew what that meant, and in her pale face, he saw the flicker of anger. "I'm not staying here."

"Damn right,” he agreed and was satisfied to see her frown. “I can’t protect you unless I keep you with me. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you go strolling into danger. You stay with me, but if it turns out to be something nasty, I’ll handle it.”

If he could. Cougar honestly wasn’t sure that he would survive an encounter with an underworld creature. Everything about this place left him covered with a scum of sweat and fear.

Yet no a trace of it showed in his confident smile. If he was good at nothing else, he knew how to put on an almighty show.

“All right,” said Chatoya grudgingly. She raised her ruined hands and sketched unsteady symbols into the air, whispering softly. Cougar felt the spell settle onto him like mist, bestowing the illusion of safety.

She swayed, pasty in the hell-lights. It had taken its toll; and here, who knew what the price was?

“Can you walk on your own?”

“I’ll have to, won’t I? If something does attack us, you need your hands free.”

Her practicality was unsettling. That was a hunter’s thought, not a witch’s.

“Come on then, babe,” Cougar coaxed.

As they neared the light, he saw that it fell from a dangling lantern on the wall that glowed an eerie, watery blue, revealing a narrow entrance and small, steep steps that curved away into darkness. It hadn’t been there earlier and such a sudden appearance seemed too convenient.

Someone – or something – is inviting us in. What does it want?

Toya, no doubt. She drank from the Styx, and if that kind of power is enough to gain respect from the Furies, what else might it attract?

Things like Blue, crawling out of death just to touch her and devour her if they can.

“Someone wants us to come in,” he said. “Question is, do we go?”

“Yes.”

The certainty in her voice startled him and when he glanced back, her eyes were fixed on the doorway with a fascination he didn’t share. It was another sign of how deeply the Furies held her, another black mark against them.

“Nothing happens here without a reason,” she said, her face lit with passion. “No one’s been in this part of Hades in years – Aspen certainly never mentioned anything like this. If something here wants to talk to us-“

“Slow down,” he said sharply. “Who says it wants to talk? It might just want to kill us in drawn-out and gruesome ways. This is the damn underworld, not a tea party in the park.”

“It wasn’t always like this. A hell, I mean. It was different once. Before the Burning Times, before something happened that changed Hades. There were wonders here, Cougar, things you can hardly imagine – in our archives, there are accounts that describe it as this beautiful, idyllic place, full of magic and fantastic creatures. What if some of them are still here?”

The awe in her face was compelling. But standing in the middle of the dank cave, it was too hard to believe. “That was thousands of years ago – like you said, before the Burning Times. Look at this place! There’s just the dead and the monsters and us.”

And then it happened: a girl’s voice floating down from the steps, wry and light and (oh god I missed you so) familiar.

“And what’s so bad about the dead, Redfern?”

His world stopped. Stopped, right there between breath and pulse, paused like a rose in bright, bloody bloom.

Sonj Jameson.

Chatoya gasped, “No!” and the spell broke. They stared at one another. Was he as pale as she was, his eyes so vast, torn between joy and horror?

And then there was no more discussion; what was there to say? Nothing - the guilt and the loss stood between them already, so stark that they might have been fifteen again, children again, reeling from the brutality of the Nightworld.

He found himself stumbling up spiral stairs, clutching at the blue-hued walls and knowing that this was folly, utter madness, but knowing too just how much he had missed Sonj – that he would walk blind into hell just to exchange a couple of awkward words with her. Chatoya was at his back, and he whispered a litany of instructions back at her; uneven step here, watch your hands, babe, sharp corner here.

Climbing, scrabbling, hoping.

And there...

He barely registered the small round room, hewn from the rock. His eyes were feasting upon the figure within it.

She wore a long cowled robe, but inside the hood, he caught a glimpse of peach-pale skin and a tendril of red hair, a flash of one silver eye. And creeping into his senses, the bittersweet scent of roses. It was enough. He strode across the threshold without ever registering the line of stones set into the floor, red fire winking from them-

Cold hit him like arctic waters and he was plunged into a blackness so complete that even his night vision could make nothing of it. It stretched around him, as if he had been swallowed into the belly of some ancient, starving monster.

Not so far from the truth, that.

“Sonj!” he howled, but there was no answer.

And then it hit him just how desperate and how very stupid he had been.

It was a trick, and you fell for it. You bloody idiot! You stupid, thoughtless bastard. Sprinting up the steps like a madman, all on a voice and...and...

But it was her. I’m sure. I would swear it on my life, on her death. How could I forget?

And there in the darkness that seemed to seep beneath his very eyelids until he was embalmed in it, not quite living, nowhere near dead, he became aware of something beside his own fear and his wistful memories.

Chatoya was gone.

He reached out to try and find her, terrified, swiping into the nothingness.

“She is not here,” a voice said by his ear.

Cougar whirled, punching at the sound – but his hands swept through air. He blinked and blinked, trying to see something, anything. His ears were full of his own panic, crashing like a storm in his ears. Hammer of his heart, lashing of his breath, all alone in the maelstrom of his self.

“Where is she?” he barked.

“Outside. I will not harm her.”

It was a strange voice; it sounded as if many spoke in tandem, giving it an almost choral quality. It was man and woman, child and beast all rolled into one, and it was lovely and eerie as wolfsong in the night.

He stilled, trying to think. “Who says it’s you I’m worried about?”

“Nothing in Hades can or will harm her. You have my word.”

He snorted. “Oh? Really? You trick me into coming in, you don’t even have the guts to show me your face, you shut me in the dark and separate me from my friend, but you give me your word. Why didn’t you say so earlier? Have you got a timeshare villa in Spain to sell me too?”

“What a contentious creature you are.” Its amusement was almost worse than the darkness. There was something of Blue in the cool scorn, something that spoke of cares beyond mere morals.

Nonetheless, he grinned into the gloom, putting on a show of bravado. “Come close enough and you’ll see just how contentious I can be. Now bring Toya back, or I’ll....”

“You’ll?” That was a child’s glee overriding the other voices, satisfied with its own cleverness.

He thought about it, trying to quell the terror piling up inside him like dead leaves. Last time he’d found himself in a dark cave, pinned to the stone in pain and fury, he had felt the best pieces of himself begin to flake away like scales sloughing off. What had been revealed...

There were still days when he had to fight to retain his humanity; it seemed that all he despised in himself had been moulded into the image of that cave, and its blood-slicked walls ringed him still. Days of anger and regret and the grim fight to hang onto his ideals. Hard days.

He had the feeling this was going to be another of them.

“Okay,” he said with false breeziness. “I’ll shout and scream and then I’ll probably cry and hit things, and I’m sure I’ll still be stuck here in the dark and you can float around feeling smug or whatever it is that all-powerful disembodied voices do when they’re not being cryptic. But I swear, I’ll be really, really annoying.”

“Now that I do believe, Cougar Redfern.”

He became still, so still he was sure even the small motions of his life were muted. “You know my name. How, exactly?”

“Oracles can be infuriating like that,” it said, and this time he thought he heard a woman’s gentle tones, tinged with laughter.

An oracle. He knew the term, and he searched his memory for it. “Do you tell fortunes?”

“Nothing quite so crude. I have seen your future – every possible choice, every day, every night, every liaison you have and heart that you break and everything you abandon. And for a small price, I will tell you some of it.”

The offer was more tempting than he had thought. A chance to know if he would wake up one day and find Chatoya beside him, to glimpse what he would do with his life, if he’d travel the world or become a rock star, or do any of a thousand crazy things.

To see his future...and if he didn’t like it, why not to change it?

A thought struck him. “Why me? Why isn’t Toya here?”

The voices became many again, chanting in eerie unison. “She has decided her own future. Where there is certainty, we are blind.”

Oh. Good. He’d be having words with Chatoya when he got out of here, because he had a queasy feeling he knew what she was certain of.

He didn’t bother to disguise the cynicism in his words. “And your price?”

“Your sweetest memory. Nothing more.”

“That seems a little too good to be true.”

It was the child who spoke, and the thin, high voice was full of sorrow. “It has been years since anyone came to pay tribute to me. I have lived among the dead, who have nothing but tears and dust to offer, and I am so lonely...so very lonely. I can never leave here – I have never seen the sun or heard the sound of rain, but you have. Surely it is fair? I will give you a piece of your future in exchange for a piece of your past. Please...once they lined up to offer me memories of love and joy and the meetings of old friends. But I have been forgotten, and all their memories died when they did.”

“Why didn’t you escape?”

“I cannot survive outside Hades. It is my home, but it is also my body, much as that flesh you wear is yours. I am old, boy, and I am the last of my kind. There is nothing else for me.”

He could only feel pity. He too knew the emptiness of a stone cell, of being forgotten and alone. But he had endured only days; the oracle had been confined for aeons, and he shuddered to think of it staring into the future, yearning for someone to come and give it the only sad imitation of life it could have.

He licked his lips. This was insane. He knew it. He was in Hades, and he was stood here feeling pity for one of its monsters.

In his mind, Chatoya spoke, full of eagerness. ~ It was different once, before the Burning Times...there were wonders. ~

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

A long, high sigh whistled through the air. “Oh...so long. I was here when Persephone came to Hades and wore the summer in her hair, and I counselled her to beware crownless kings. I was here when Hades drank the Lethe to try and forget her, and when Mab came to curse him for filling the dream world with her face because forgetfulness was not oblivion. I was here when Ryar ap Sangager came to sing for her brother’s soul, and I warned her that her silence could prove more fatal than any song, and I watched when Fireblade forged his sword in the depths of the Phlegethon.” Its voice was that of an old woman, quavery and half-full of tears. “And when war filled the underworld and the weeping never stopped, I begged Hades to intervene, and was refused.”

Before the Burning Times, then. Before Hades was abandoned to decay and devils.

But still, half-cautious, he would not give in. “I want to speak to Sonj.”

A frenetic whine echoed all about him. “That is not part of the bargain.”

“It’s part of any bargain you make with me,” he said stoutly.

A man’s voice rose to the surface of that eerie chorus, grimly amused. “She was right about you. No wonder she was eager to act as lure.”

He caught himself smiling in the dark. “Well, then, you’d better listen to her.”

There was a pause that seemed to stretch out for minutes, though it might have been less. Deprived of his senses, he had no way to measure the passing time.

“Very well,” it said, sounding like a sulky teen. “These are not the terms I would choose, but I will risk the wrath of hell for another glimpse of happiness.” Its tone changed to the slow thunder of ritual. “I offer you this then: a future of my choosing, and a conversation of yours for your sweetest memory and nothing more. Do you agree the price?”

“I agree,” he said, and felt the air contract, squeezing him like a giant fist. Panic rushed over him, but just as quickly, the pressure was gone and he could feel the floor against his feet once more.

Light returned with feeling – he was in the middle of that small room, and now he saw that its back wall was a dark, opaque screen, as if someone had found a long smooth sheet of obsidian and planted it here. His muted reflection gleamed back, a shadow of himself.

“First, your memory,” the chorus whispered as if it stood directly behind him. “Put your hands on the mirror, and remember...”

He obeyed, skin crawling at the sensation of unseen eyes upon him. The wall was warm to the touch as sun-heated brick, but he did his best to ignore that and instead tried to think of his best memory.

Like a card-shark, he shuffled through them, plucking them here and there to examine them: the first kiss with Ria that had been suffused with genuine love, all soft and slow and warm, but no...

A moment on the enclave with his father, clapping him on the back and murmuring how he proud he was that his son was a Redfern, true to the blood. No.

Dinner with Zara at a local restaurant, howling with laughter as another piece of meat flew out of her chopsticks and onto the floor. No.

A rare moment of intimacy with Chatoya, walking back along the road and certain that today he was going to tell her, that he would give tongue to all these complex, gnarled feelings that were crammed into his heart, feeling a hope so bright and strong that it dizzied him with imaginings of her reaction. No. Definitely not.

And then it came to him through the muddled medley: a very simple moment, free of destiny’s machinations or any whisper of romance. High on the hills of Ryars Valley, there was a certain grassy plateau Jepar had found that overlooked the whole of the town. In one of the early days of autumn, with the leaves just starting to crisp and the air full of gentle heat, they had gone for a picnic. He’d mocked the idea relentlessly of course, and Sonj had threatened to choke him with the rug she was carrying.

But once they were sat down, and he swapped insults with Sonj over sandwiches while Lisa rolled her eyes and passed out drinks, and Jepar sunbathed with the happy enthusiasm of an elderly cat, Cougar realised that this was he wanted. This quiet, familiar cluster of people, that ring of affection in their voices, the effortless trust of Sonj resting her head on his stomach, of Lisa’s insincere threats to push the lot of them off the mountain if they didn’t stop arguing.

In that moment, he had been absolutely fearless. There had been no anger, no envy, no need for anything more than what he had right there. It was a sated calm, without haste, infinite as the deep blue vault of the sky that overarched them.

It had been the happiest moment of his life.

It had...

It had...

It had gone. He searched his mind for the memory of – of that moment, and found only a gaping hole that irritated him like a missing tooth.

“Where’s my memory?” he demanded, outraged.

“My memory, now,” it answered, a child cuddling a new toy close. Rapture echoed breathily in its words. “You gave it to me. Mine. Mine until you die.”

“You didn’t mention that!”

“It was understood,” it said, sounding bemused. “Those were my terms.”

He felt cheated and stupid. And he had agreed. “That was sneaky,” he muttered darkly, but there was no heat to it. Always read the fine print. Wasn’t that what Blue had taught him, if nothing else?

“It was fair,” it replied. “And for my part – for your kindness – I will offer you a choice. Choose what you would know: hope, truth, or love.”

It seemed to think it was doing him a favour. Cougar felt like screaming and hitting things, but given that it was a creature of Hades, antagonising it might not be his wisest option.

He agonised over the choice, but finally it was easy. No one needed to show him what love lay in his future: he knew, and it was immutable and unrequited, but he had learned to live with it.

In the last few months, he had had his fill of truth. Too often it was bitter, laced with danger.

“Hope,” he said. “I can always use more of it. Especially now.”

“A wise choice,” it remarked. “So many ask for love and leave disappointed.”

“Yeah, that tends to happen if you ask for it,” he drawled. “And sometimes if you don’t.”

Its chuckle floated eerily around the room, but it held no malice. “Know me, then,” it said in mockery of the epigrams scrawled beside the river of Hades. “And hope.”

~*~

In the dark mirror, images coalesced, the figures lurid against the black background.

“You’re an idiot,” Jepar was saying to him as they sat in his living room. Cougar saw himself scowl and was appalled by how like Blue it made him look. “Why didn’t you tell her?”

“Why do you think?” snapped Cougar. “I wasn’t ready for another round of I-love-you-like-a-friend-but-nothing-more.”

“Ha.” The shapeshifter eyed him. “Are you sure that’d be the response?” he said mildly.

“What’s changed?”

“Her?” he threw back. “Honestly, Cougar, sometimes you’re so blind. Ever since New Year’s, she keeps...looking at you.”

“Oh, well why didn’t you say so sooner? Call the orchestra and let them know I need a full fanfare outside the house by tomorrow morning! She’s got eyes, JJ. Of course she looks at me.”

“No, there’s something in it. Lisa thinks so too.”

It was weird watching the interest light up in his eyes. “Really?”

Jepar sighed. “Yes, really. And every time you go near her, she moves away, but it’s not fear. It’s...um...” His voice faltered, but he was far too nosy to let the question lie. “What exactly were you doing out in the snow on New Year’s?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Jepar tapped his nose, appearing rather embarrassed. “I have a good sense of smell. Pheromones, you know. And it is very definitely not fear I’m getting from her every time you turn up.”

Cougar flushed and saw the colour reflected on his future self. He’d forgotten just how uncomfortable it could be trying to keep things from a group of preternaturally gifted friends. “Nothing. Look...are you sure?”

“Positive.” Those green eyes were shrewd and amused. “As your best friend – and hers – I’m officially putting my seal of approval on your hamhanded attempts to start a relationship. But for gods’ sake, Cougar, get on with it. Being around you two right now is like being the lettuce in a sexual tension sandwich that’s been left out too long, and we’re all starting to feel kind of limp and soggy.”

Cougar of the future managed to look perplexed and disgusted. “JJ, I think I vaguely understand what you’re trying to say, but can we leave your weird fetishes out of it?”

“It’s not a...”

The scene faded into blackness, but only for a moment before another set of figures blossomed into technicolour life. Aspen Martin was poring over a book, one finger moving slowly across the page.

“It’s in here somewhere,” he mumbled to a strange man.

The man in question waited patiently. He looked like a human with his pleasant, ordinary face, but the fact he was sat in what was patently one of the Furies’ offices marked him as someone powerful.

“Here it is,” exclaimed Aspen, pushing the book over to the man. “My kid loves this one.”

The man looked mildly horrified. “You’re in charge of a child? A child you read...” He checked the cover. “Apocalypse: The World That Almost Was And Could Be Again?”

An injured look stole over Aspen. “Yeah. He loves that story. And Vlad the Impaler. It’s...” and his tone changed to that of recital. “...good preparation for the morally bankrupt and wayward delinquents he’ll inevitably meet in his attempts to become a decent human being or the closest possible thing.”

The man blinked. “Right.” He bowed his head over the page and made a small triumphant sound. “I thought so! If this is true...”

“Will it tell you how to stop Kheo?” asked Aspen eagerly.

“Not on its own. But it’s the first hint. I’d almost forgotten all of this.” Something close to grief shadowed the stranger’s face, hung there in his river-green eyes. “What a fool I was.”

The darkness subsumed the pair, yielding in its turn to the girl who was sat up in a bed, hair a wild tumble around her face which was cast in ebony and ivory by the fickle moonlight. No. Not a girl: a woman, here, beyond the threshold of youth and into a ripe, beautiful maturity, but Chatoya was clearly not so much older than she was now.

The yearning on her face shocked Cougar, because it was directed at the figure poised in the doorway, surely as her hand was outstretched to him, tall and dark and tense upon the threshold.

It was directed at him.

“Stay,” she said, and the fierce appeal in her voice brought an answering heat to his body there in Hades as he stared at his own future, and hoped. “Please.”

It faded, and the voice of the oracle murmured in his ear. “It is as you asked.”

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

“As I said, a wise choice, though it can give you no answers of love or truth. And now, for the final part of our bargain.” It sounded weary. “May you have more joy of her than I have had.”

He stared at the wall, expecting Sonj to appear there, and jumped when her voice came from behind him, full of anger and youth.

“Well, it might have had more joy from me if it hadn’t barged me out of the way to get at its damn dinner.”

He spun around, and there she was, grinning and vivid, her long scarlet hair pulled up into a high ponytail so it fell over one shoulder like a scarf.

Cougar gawped, and then stepped forward-

“Sorry, Redfern, no touching,” she said ruefully. “Dead and all. You’d go right through me.” She pretended to ponder it. “On second thoughts, I always did like watching you fall flat on your face.”

“Yeah,” he replied, the first shock over and replaced by a growing joy, “Me too. Meant I didn’t have to look at you.”

Sonj scowled. Even in death she had the rakish patch over her eye that gave her the look of a pirate, though he thought she’d seemed older – as if some of the childhood chubbiness had eased from her bones. “Hey, don’t speak ill of the dead.”

He shook his head. “This is weird.”

“You’re eloquent. Middle of hell, talking to the sexiest damn dead girl you ever met,” she winked, and he rolled his eyes, “and the best you can do is ‘this is weird’. Quick, call Shakespeare, he’s just been dethroned!”

He glared right back. “Well, it is weird. Don’t tell me it’s not weird for you.”

A little of her levity slid away. “I’ve been dead for the last five years, Redfern. Compared to the things I’ve seen, stripping off the veil to have a little chat isn’t too strange.”

“What’s it like?” he asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

She shook her head. “Can’t say, sorry. There’s an enchantment across the whole of Hades – I can’t tell you anything specific about the afterlife or anything in this place.”

A horrid thought struck him. “Sonj...it’s not really hell, is it? I mean...you’re not...” His throat felt thick, his words unwieldy. “Suffering?”

The gentleness in her face only served to emphasise the changes. She had grown up: her mouth was fuller, sweetly curved, and the stubborn line of her jaw was even more pronounced. “I’m fine,” she said, voice soft. “This is just a detour for me. I wanted to see you.”

A burden he didn’t know he carried dropped from him. “I missed you, babe.”

“Yeah. I feel the same - I’d miss me too,” she said with enormous arrogance. At the look on his face, her laughter rolled over the air and suddenly he found himself joining in, falling back into their old friendship as easily as if the years between had been demolished.

And then he found himself speaking freely and naturally – secrets and feelings and fears spilling out as they had not in...in...well, a long time. They covered the intervening years on his life, as she jumped in, finishing his stories with wild abandon and more accuracy than he would have liked: she knew his vices, his pride, his anger, his selfishness, and so sketched in some of what he was unwilling to say.

She hissed and booed at the mention of Blue, reducing him to a pantomime villain, which somehow took the sting from his recollection. And she had her own stories, though they were constrained by the enchantment: names and events that came to mean something to him as the time passed, enough to let him know she did not float alone in some ghastly void, to let him understand that it was another life, if one of a strange and incomprehensible kind.

And the old banter filled the spaces where they carefully trod around the memories of her death and the days leading up to it as he sat on the stone floor, breathing in the scent of roses without the familiar pang of grief.

At last, the conversation crept to an end, and he knew it was time to go. They must have been there hours, talking away his life, and it was only then that he thought of Chatoya outside the cave, blind to her future and so unable to see this piece of their past.

“You have to go,” she said, reading his face. Sadness quivered in her lips, but she controlled it. “Do you think...do you think you could come back? The oracle won’t let us talk again, but there are other ways here. If...if you don’t mind the danger.”

He looked at her, this girl who glowed there in the dim room, bright in death as she had been in life: more precious to him now than she had been then for her absence.

It was another sort of hell to leave, one more tangible than the stone walls and gruesome furnishings that surrounded them. And yet...

And yet his personal hell had one less of the lost among its ranks, one wonder that shone out in all of Hades’ dark halls. He would be back to cross the rivers, to quest for his loved ones as men of legend had so long ago, walking here to challenge Hades and win life for those whom they cherished too much to leave in an uncertain, mazy world.

Hope. It was as perilous as love or truth, he knew, but it blazed in him once more, rose-bright, thorny and sweet.

“Danger’s my middle name,” he proclaimed. He didn’t want to prolong their farewells, so he only walked past her and paused on the exit mid-step to fling Sonj his most dazzling grin, and a promise of return.

“See you in hell, babe.”