Page 32 of A Match Made in Hell

The solution to my current predicament is clearly avoidance.

If I can stay out of Sath’s way until the next task, maybe I’ll have gotten over .

. . whatever this is. It may not be the most mature solution, but it’s the only one I have.

I see, now, why he made me wait a month between tasks.

All of this would have been easy in the beginning, with Noah fresh in my mind and Sath nothing more than a stranger.

I spend the next week suffering more of Harper’s raised eyebrows and constant questions.

Today we’re in a large, domed cave filled with oil paintings, statues made out of clay, and crude figures scratched on the walls.

I guess all the real artists have taken up residence in a part of Asphodel I’ve not found yet, because every piece on this floor is the definition of well, it’s nice you have a hobby .

Abandoning Harper while she inspects a statue of – honestly, I’m not sure, but I think it’s a slug with a basket on its head – I retreat to a far corner of the cave. Mushrooms growing from the walls glow with a dim blue light, as though the piece in this section is sensitive to anything brighter.

Clusters of humans talk in low voices as they admire the art.

Everything here changes daily to keep things interesting, but there’s one painting that remains fixed.

It’s fairly abstract, a grey arch on a black canvas, a jagged line sliced through the middle.

From within that line bursts a large blue spiral, like a child has spray-painted what they think a tornado looks like atop the whole thing, with a scowling sketch of a screaming, snake-like head at its centre.

‘That’s his favourite.’ Harper sidles up to me. Earrings shaped like fairies rattle as she moves. ‘He’s been obsessed for the last year, coming in here to stare for hours on end.’

I don’t bother asking who she means. ‘Then he has terrible taste. It’s hideous.’

Looping my arm through her elbow, I drag her away from the ugly picture before she can use it to turn the conversation to Sath once more.

She’s been like a dog with a bone ever since that day in the park, like me giving her a sliver of truth about my life gave her a taste for more.

But confessing why I’m evading him would mean confessing I’m not staying here at all, and that opens up a whole heap of questions I’d rather avoid.

She beams at various humans as we weave through another section of statues – these are all moulded into misshapen clay flowers – calling out invites to Dionysus to everyone we pass. Sometimes I think of her as the Pied Piper, only she offers smiles instead of music and the dead come running.

‘How do you do that?’ I ask. ‘You’ve been here centuries and people still . . .’

‘Still what?’

It sounds pathetic, saying it out loud. ‘They still like you.’

‘Are they not supposed to?’ Her tone is a combination of genuine confusion and gentle mockery as we settle on a granite bench near a painting of a lake covered in swans.

‘Of course they’re supposed to,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know how you do it. How you . . . make people stay.’

Dad left. Noah went from wanting to be around me all the time, blowing up my phone with endless you’re so perfect s and I want you all to myself s, to me having to beg for the tiniest crumb of attention because I’d lost his and didn’t know how to survive without it any more.

When Mum introduced us, I suppose he thought he’d been presented with a diamond, someone who knew how to behave in his social circles and he could show off at family parties, but then he polished that diamond too much and found nothing but disappointing rock underneath.

No matter how hard I tried to shine, the sparkle always wore off. I didn’t know how to behave at all.

‘Don’t be silly.’ She knocks her knee against mine.

‘Not everyone here likes me; that would be statistically impossible. But Asphodel has a way of . . . leading you back to the same people. Or sometimes away from people. I was once good friends with a man named Gustav and then I beat him in a paintball fight and I’ve never seen him since.

’ She sighs. ‘I miss Gustav. Even if he was a sore loser.’

I suck in a breath. One day she’s going to find me missing. ‘Well,’ I say, throat tight, ‘if you never see me again, it won’t be because of that. I fully accept your paintball superiority.’

‘ We have never played paintball.’ She grins and jumps to her feet. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

Her laughter is infectious as I let her drag me out of the gallery, although to my ears mine sounds slightly hysterical, over the top, a desperate attempt at shoving away my lingering guilt at leaving her behind.

But it’s not like she needs me. We collect a troop of humans on the way to a cavern turned arena a few hundred floors down.

Wooden outposts shaped like castles fill the space, and by the time I’ve clambered up a tower to find a better vantage point, I’m almost distracted enough to not think about how this might be the one and only time I play this with her. Almost.

I stay in my tower for the duration of the game, getting splattered with neon powder every time I risk poking my head over the top – I am now fully convinced Harper was a sniper not a socialite in her past life – but I do manage one hit of my own, when I spy a demon tail poking out from behind a barrel.

I duck low before it can ever find out it was me.

When we’re finished, Harper is the only person not covered in multicoloured specks. She flicks my nose, sending a spray of yellow and pink puffs into the air. ‘ You need a shower before Dionysus tonight.’

‘Only if you teach me how to aim.’ We crush into a lift with the rest of the group, all slightly sweaty and out of breath.

I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the black glass – it’s murky and distorted, but there’s a visible shine in my eyes to match the sheen on my forehead, and a smile lifting the corners of my mouth.

It feels like a lifetime since I last saw that smile.

There’s a glow in my chest for the rest of the afternoon.

We split up so I can shower and change before Dionysus, as though this is one big holiday, and after a day at the beach I need to wash sand from my feet before we go out for the evening dinner, if the evening dinner took place inside a volcano and half the wait staff wanted to eat or torture me.

I’m applying the last flecks of mascara to my lashes when there’s a knock on my door.

Despite there being no clocks in Asphodel, Harper, I have discovered, has a sixth sense for when I’m running late. I fluff my hair and smack my lips together , then swing the door open, only to find it’s not Harper outside at all. It’s Sath.

Oh no. My stomach falls to the floor.

‘Evening,’ he says.

Instantly, my mouth feels like it’s been stuffed with marshmallows, too clogged to form coherent words.

He’s leaning against the frame, wearing a pair of dark jeans and a thick green jumper that wouldn’t be amiss at a festive gathering.

I can easily imagine him sitting in a cabin drinking mulled wine by a log fire, with me snuggled against the side of that jumper, which looks very huggable and – how long has he been standing there?

Oh, God. I think it’s been a while, and I’m gaping at him like a fish on land.

Words. I need to find words.

Any words will do. A complete sentence would be lovely.

Except the only thing I can think to say is you look very snuggable today, Sath , and I can’t say that .

I am losing my mind. I am actually losing my mind.

I stare at him, horror-struck, my eyes wide and mouth open.

I swear I used to be good at flirting. Every time Noah went distant I’d reel him back in with a flutter of my eyelashes and some filthy promise whispered into his ear.

The problem is I don’t want to flirt with Sath. I mean, I do. But I shouldn’t .

Right now I can’t remember why.

‘What are you doing here?’ I force the words out.

‘You’re avoiding me.’ Sath takes it upon himself to enter my room, ignoring my protests (which involve me screeching hey and privacy in increasingly incoherent pitches) and perching on the end of my bed.

This room is not big enough for two.

‘Are there space constraints in Asphodel?’ I ask.

There’s no chair, and standing leaves me with nothing to do with my hands other than think about alternative things I could be doing with them, so I settle on the far side of the bed, near the pillow where there’s no danger of accidentally coming into contact with Sath.

‘You couldn’t have sprung for a –’ Fuck.

I can’t talk to him about double beds. ‘I mean –’

‘Willow.’ Sath’s voice is coaxing, like he’s shaking a box of treats in front of a cat that’s gone into hiding. ‘Why are you avoiding me?’

‘I’m not.’

He raises an eyebrow.

‘I’m not.’ If I say it enough, maybe one of us will believe it. ‘I assumed you’d come and get me when you were ready for the next task.’

‘That hasn’t stopped you coming to bother me before.’

‘Oh, what, did you miss me?’ I scoff.

Sath is silent. He stares at a groove in the wardrobe where the wood has chipped – probably when it came into contact with my head after gluttony – with a furrow in his brow. My pulse kicks up a notch.

‘Did you?’ A smile creeps over my face. ‘Did you miss me?’

He doesn’t answer, but the corners of his lips have upturned ever so slightly.

He did . The thought delights me more than it should. I crawl towards him.

‘Sathanas, King of Hell,’ I half sing. ‘Did you miss the lowly human beating you at board games?’

Sath faces me, mouth curling upwards even more. ‘You have never beaten me at Scrabble.’