Chapter 28

28

T he moment I was back in Hell—in the gym in the basement of the skyscraper, which still made me shake my head—I pulled out my phone and texted Stefan to ask if he had time to talk after work. It wasn't long before I got a text back asking if everything was okay. I assured him I wasn't in danger and just needed to talk, and he wrote back that he'd be off work in a couple of hours and suggested I meet him upstairs. I agreed, talked my grandfather into stopping in the food court with me, and went upstairs carrying several bags of food with his help.

Gabe was surprised to see us if the look of shock he was giving the elevator when the doors slid open was any indication. He'd known grandfather was on his way, given he'd had to use his badge on the elevator, but he hadn't expected me to be with him. "What are you doing here?" he asked. "I mean, not that I'm not glad to see you, don't get me wrong. I just hadn't expected you so early."

"I need to talk to Stefan," I told him. "After I talk to him, I'll need to talk to you, Stan, and the grands."

"You figure things out, then?" Beelzebub asked, dropping the bags he was carrying onto the counter in front of Gabe's desk.

"Maybe?" I said. "Probably? I don't know. I still need to work things out in my head. Regardless, it's going to require a long talk."

"Well, I'm here when you need me," Gabe said. "Stefan's not off the clock for a few hours, right? What do you want to do?"

I pointed at the food. "Stuff my face and play video games, maybe. Something that requires no thought. Some of that's for you and Stan, by the way." I looked aside at our grandfather. "Okay, I guess you can have some, too, since you helped carry it and all."

"Big of you," he said with a snort before thumping me on the back.

"Well, you did help me get it all here without dropping it," I said as I opened a bag and rummaged through, pulling out a thickly-packed egg and bacon breakfast sandwich and unwrapping it to take a bite. "I suppose you should be allowed to help eat it."

"Oh, for the love of little green men, don't talk with your mouth full," Beelzebub groaned. "That's disgusting."

"That's your grandchild," Gabe reminded him as he also started rummaging through a bag. He pulled out an equally large sandwich and craned to look down the hallway. "Babe?" he called. "Zeke brought us breakfast."

Stan laughed when he came out to find Gabe and I already stuffing our faces and made us carry everything to the break room. Then he helped himself to a sandwich and a serving of tater tots. "So, what do you have planned for today?" he asked me. "If you have time, I could use some help reviewing paperwork. We had an entire suicide cult show up, so I'm running behind."

I frowned at him. "A what?"

"A cult," he repeated. "They believed they had to die in a fiery explosion to reach their one true Utopia and that taking as many unbelievers as possible with them would help secure their place in the afterlife." He snorted. "Well, it secured their place, alright. Unfortunately, it was not the part they thought they would get to. They blew up the three-story apartment complex they were renting the entire ground floor of and took out the whole building. So, yeah, I've got a lot of paperwork."

"Sure," I said, somewhat hesitantly. On one hand, I was sure Stan would never hand over paperwork that would give me nightmares. On the other hand, it still sounded like a horrible way to spend a morning. That said, Stan had done a lot for me, like everyone else I was close to in Hell, so ultimately, I did want to help him out. Besides, I'd wanted something that required no thought, and Stan's paperwork was nothing if not repetitive.

So, when Stefan showed up a few hours later, it was to see me at the table in the sitting area of Stan's office, surrounded by a metaphorical forest of paperwork and with what was likely a vaguely haunted look on my face.

"Wow, okay, you don't look so good," Stefan noted when he saw me, his brow furrowing with concern. "What are you working on, anyway?"

"The cult the guys downstairs are jokingly referring to as the 'Boomsday Cult'," Stan told him. "Which is a horrible pun."

"Also, a tasteless one, considering people were murdered," I muttered darkly. "But I suppose if you're already living in the afterlife, you can afford to make jokes about people dying."

Stefan grimaced. "Yeah, okay, you need a break. Stan, I'm stealing your temporary assistant."

"Please and thank you," I said with a grateful sigh, tossing the pen I was using onto the table. "Sorry, Stan, but I can't stare at this anymore. I'll pick it back up if it's still here tomorrow."

"I think I can finish it from here," Stan said with an understanding smile. "You go have your chat. When do you want the family meeting? Tonight? Tomorrow? A week from Thursday?"

"I'll let you know," I told him as I stood and stretched.

"My place, then?" Stefan asked as he took my hand and led me from Stan's office.

"Please," I told him, waving goodbye to Gabe, who yelled something about venomous aardvarks into his phone as we reached the elevator. The door immediately opened, and we were serenaded by horrible music the whole way down.

The drive to Stefan's apartment was thankfully free of yellow snow, oceans of blood, or any other atrocious thing that existed there. We drove through a glittering frozen snowscape, made far more enjoyable by the fact that I couldn't feel the chill, and then popped into the familiar tunnel. His apartment had become as much like home as showing up at my actual home was, which I found a little bittersweet, and I dropped onto the couch like I owned it.

"Want something to drink?" Stefan asked, nodding toward the kitchen.

"What would you do if I decided to live out my natural life?" I asked him, not answering his question. The query had been stuck in my brain and forced its way out before I could think to stop it.

Stefan went still for a moment and almost appeared to wilt before slunk to the couch and sat beside me. "Well," he said, his tone grave, "I'd miss you, obviously." He thought about it silently for a moment, then continued. "Like I told you before, living out your life would just delay things for a while. Yahweh told you, what, 80-ish years before they'd let you return?"

"Yeah. Eighty-four," I said quietly.

He nodded, then went silent again and stared at the floor. We sat like that for a minute as my brain raced to find a way to break the silence, to no avail. Then he said, "It's nobody's place to tell you what to do with your life. Not mine, not Gabe's, not even Yahweh's." He finally looked at me then and gave me a hint of a smile. "Honestly, eighty years is nothing when you're immortal," he admitted. "And it's not like I won't see you at all between then and now, according to what Yahweh said, right?"

"Yeah," I agreed again. "He said once a week. I was kind of..." I looked away for a moment, embarrassed, then returned my gaze to his face, determined to look him in the eyes as I spoke. "I was kind of thinking every fourth visit could be with a family member. Well, I'll see my grandfather in person until Abby's an adult by our society's standards, so not him for the first while, but I wondered if maybe you might want the other visits."

His eyes widened for a second, and then his smile grew a fraction stronger. "So you're suggesting weekly dates?"

I nodded, my face heating as I did. "Um, yes. Unless you'd rather not?"

"No, I'd like that," he assured me, reaching to hold my hand. "So it sounds like you've come to a decision, huh?"

"I think so," I admitted. "I'm going to do what Yahweh told me to do and keep thinking about it until the end of summer, but yeah, I think I know what my choice will be."

"Can I ask why? I'm not questioning your choice or anything. I'm just curious."

Honestly, who wouldn't be if they were in his shoes? "Well, I had a moment of clarity, you might say, when we went to see my parents. I've been thinking ever since good things finally started happening to me that I was fortunate to find supportive, loving family and friends who wanted me out of a miserable situation. When I was staring down at the raving lunatic and the weasel-faced degenerate that brought me into the world, I was so furious, and as we were heading back, I was saying that no one should have to go through what Gabe, Abby, and I did and more people should help."

Stefan's expression slowly morphed into one of affection and pride. "And you realized you were uniquely positioned to be one of those people."

I nodded. "I want to do what Rose did. I want to take my experiences and try to make lives better. I want to give kids the opportunity to live those lives instead of ending up in the afterlife before their time. Sure, they'd be fine once they got here, but they deserve more than that."

"You're right," Stefan said, squeezing my hand. "They do." He let out a long sigh, but he looked less withered than he had when we'd started talking, and his smile was genuine, if a little sad. "I really will miss you," he said, "but I'll still get to see you roughly three times a month, and it's not forever." His gaze became a little unfocused in thought. Then he gave me the big, toothy grin I was used to. "And we still have three months to do a lot of fun things, right? Era will shift into 1959 in a few weeks; we could wander the futuristic house right down the way from the futuristic bathroom exhibit."

"You're such a romantic," I told him with a laugh. "Let's do that. Let's do a lot of things before I leave."

Yeah, we'd be okay.

Our family meeting was the next day. I would have done it that night, but I wanted to have Abby there, and getting permission for Gabe and my grandmother to go to the living world again right after already having gone there for my graduation would have been a massive pain in the butt. Because, you know, they were dead. I was told that made the higher-ups not want to give permission more than necessary.

So it was down to either Abby not being there—which just couldn't happen, considering my decision affected her, too, since we'd be sharing a house-or asking her if she'd come back to Stan's office one more time. Thankfully, she was amenable to the idea after I said it was important, and I wouldn't ask her to make the trip otherwise. I may have also promised to bribe her with food. Honestly, I think the food may have had more to do with her decision.

Regardless of why she may have agreed, the important thing is that she was there when all of us gathered in Stan's office, blinds closed so she wouldn't get subjected to afterlife spoilers. "So," she started once we'd all taken seats around the table in Stan's office. "What's so important that you even need me here?" She reached over and grabbed a container from the table, opened it, and squinted. "What is this?"

Gabe leaned over to see what she had. "Fried paneer," he said. "It's a type of cheese. Good stuff, give it a shot."

"I was in the mood for it when we stopped for food," Stefan admitted, reaching over and stealing a piece from the carton Abby was holding. "I would have just gotten curry, but I figured that might be too messy for a meeting."

"You should have brought cake," I suggested, grinning. "Then it could have been a party."

He laughed and shook his head. "Hate to tell you, but it didn't work the last time I did it, either. It was still a meeting. Just with cake, so at least it wasn't a complete failure."

"Let's get back on track," Beelzebub said. "Not to sound like I don't care about my grandchildren's well-being, but I have actual work to do at some point."

"Right," I said, taking a deep breath. I wasn't altogether sure why I was nervous because, ultimately, the decision of what to do with my life (or my afterlife) was mine. Maybe I was worried they'd argue with me about it. "I've decided I'll return to the living world come the end of summer."

I was met with silence. Just as I was getting very nervous, Abby let out a long, relieved sigh. "Oh, thank god," she exclaimed. "I was hoping that's what you'd do." She gave Stefan an apologetic look. "No offense, but I didn't relish spending the next several decades without moral support."

Stefan chuckled and shook his head. "No, I get it. It would suck for you to lose him when you just got him, right?"

"Yeah," Abby said softly. "Doesn't mean I don't feel bad for you."

"It'll be fine," our grandmother said. "Take it from someone who spent decades only being allowed to see her husband in her dreams. When you know it won't be like that forever, the dreams are enough. It hurt worse not to be able to communicate with Gabe until he'd died. I would have loved to pop up and say, 'I told you so' about there being an afterlife. We had a bet about it and everything."

"You cheated," Gabe pointed out. "Insider information. So either way, you still owe me five bucks."

"Shame there's no use for your five bucks down here," she pointed out. "What would the equivalent credits be, anyway?

"Honestly, you two will argue about anything," Stan said with a sigh.

"It's how we show we care," Gabe said. "I'm pretty sure if we were all sweetness and sunshine to each other, you all would take it as a sign of an impending apocalypse."

"Focus," our grandfather told them. "This isn't about you." He picked up his cup of coffee from the table and took a long swallow before returning his attention to me. "Now, give us the whole story."

So I launched into the entire explanation of how I'd been continually reminded how lucky I was to have someone to help me get out of my horrible situation, how I had finally realized that I could be that person for other people, and how it had kind of felt like a puzzle piece clicking into place and that I just needed to do it. "No lie, parts of it are going to suck," I admitted. "Once Abby's a legal adult, Grandpa isn't allowed up again until after I die. Which kind of makes me feel like she's also being punished."

"I would have had to wait to meet him until after I was dead if all of this hadn't happened," Abby pointed out. "So, no, I don't feel like I'm being wronged here. It seems more to me like everything's returning to how it was supposed to be in the first place. They're just forcing extra years of living out of you." She made a face, her nose wrinkling. "I can't even imagine you at one hundred and two."

"Neither can I," I admitted. "Honestly, the whole thing scares me a little because I don't know what to expect beyond knowing I'll be back here someday. But I've got to do something . I can't just not do anything."

"Well, you're a better person than me," Abby said with a shrug. "I don't feel compelled to use our trauma to help others."

"There's nothing wrong with that," Gabe assured her. "You have to do what's best for you. You'll find what it is you want to do with your life. Even if that thing is adopting a hundred cats and declaring your house a cat refuge."

"Yeah, no, that's not happening," I said immediately. "She gets to find her own place if she wants to do that. I'm not cleaning up after a hundred cats."

Abby narrowed her eyes in thought. "Can we get a mountain lion?"

" No ," Beelzebub and I told her firmly.

My sister mumbled something about party poopers under her breath and took a bite of the food she was holding.

"So, what exactly is your plan?" our grandfather asked me. "Do you even have one yet?"

"Only a vague one," I admitted sheepishly. "I figure I'll get in touch with Rose and talk to her about what I need to do. I assume college has to be involved. I'd rather start from a community college level and work up to a university. That's probably the easiest way to acclimate myself to a school that wants to teach people useful things."

"Yeah, I'm guessing none of our school experiences have been normal," Abby agreed through a mouthful of food. She held the container out to me. "This is good, you should try some."

I obliged, grabbing a plastic fork from the table and spearing a piece.

"My last year of high school will probably blow my mind," she continued. "I wonder if I'll even be able to make any friends. Not that it matters. I'm guessing high school sucks no matter where you are."

"You're not wrong, as far as I'm concerned," Gabe agreed. He also reached out to steal a bite from Abby's container, then stared at me thoughtfully as he chewed.

"What?" I asked.

"You should ask Rose if her office has unpaid intern or volunteer positions. I don't know how it works. All I can tell you is that she works for a nonprofit, so it's not like you'd have to go through a government agency to assist her. That probably makes it easier." He shrugged, then began going through the containers on the table for his next snack. "Anyway, it would give you experience and look good on your resume when it's time for you to hit the job market."

"I already know the answer," Stan interjected, "but... you're sure about this?"

I nodded. "The more I think about it, the more sure I am."

"Okay," my brother-in-law said. "We're all going to miss you, but we're also rooting for you. Besides, it's not like we'll never see you again."

"In the meantime, we have a lot of fun things to pack into the next three months," Stefan told them.

As I watched them all start to debate what we had to do and what we could pass on until after I'd died, I smiled to myself. This was my family right here, and I was very lucky to have them.