Clara, no!
But I’m going. The emotions of the souls wash over me all at once, now that I don’t have Christian’s added strength to help me block them out, but I grit my teeth and move quickly across the street, onto the opposite sidewalk. Toward the pizza place. Each step draws me closer to the front window, which has a long, horizontal crack in the glass, like it might collapse into a thousand shards at any moment, but through the hazy pane I see Jeffrey, his head down, a filthy dish towel in his hand, swiping at a table in absent circles.
It’s worse than I thought.
My brother’s in hell.
20
ZOMBIELAND
I don’t take time to think. I burst through the door and go to him, knowing that any second now Kokabel and Samjeeza and who knows who else could be after us, painfully aware that I promised Samjeeza I wouldn’t talk to anybody but Angela, but I don’t care. He’s my brother. In that moment it occurs to me that maybe my purpose in coming to hell wasn’t all about Angela, after all. Maybe I was meant to save Jeffrey.
He does a double take when I approach him, then scowls. “Clara, what are you doing here?”
I guess I shouldn’t expect him to be happy to see me.
There’s no time for small talk, no time for explanations. I spot Angela and Christian on the sidewalk right outside the window, their mouths open in horror that I was right. “I need you to do what I tell you, just this once,” I say quietly, glancing around at the gray people in the restaurant, one person to a table, but none of them look up. Yet. I grab his hand and tug him toward the door. “Come with me, Jeffrey. Now.”
He jerks away from me. “You can’t show up here and order me around. This is my job, Clara. My meal ticket. It sucks, but one of the things about having a job is that I can’t exactly come and go whenever I please. Bosses tend to frown on that.”
He doesn’t know where he is. He thinks this is his normal life. I don’t have time to ruminate about how depressing it is that my brother can’t tell the difference between normalcy and eternal damnation.
“This is not your job,” I say, trying to keep calm. “Come on. Please.”
“No,” he says. “Why should I listen to you? Last time you were really freaking rude to me, and you yelled at me, and then you didn’t come back for all this time, and now you expect me to—”
“I didn’t know you were here,” I interrupt. “I would have come sooner if I’d known.”
“What are you talking about?” He tosses his dishcloth down on a nearby table and glares at me. “Have you gone mental or something?”
Oh, I’m on my way. Already the barrier I’ve erected between me and the emotions of all these people around me is corroding, and little whispers are getting through.
None of her business.
I hate him. I deserve better.
Cheated. They cheated me.
I blink furiously and try to clear my head, concentrate on Jeffrey, but then—
What is she doing here?
Oh, crap. I stare over Jeffrey’s shoulder, and there’s Lucy, framed in the doorway, her expression totally shocked to see me.
“You … What are you doing here?” she marches up and demands, her eyes full of fury, but her voice controlled. She slips her arm into Jeffrey’s. Just seeing her again brings the memory of that night at the Pink Garter rushing back, the fireball she hurled at us, her shriek as Christian cut Olivia down, what she vowed afterward. I swear I will kill you, Clara Gardner. And I’ll make sure you suffer first.
“Let go of him,” I say in a low voice.
Christian is suddenly by my side, staring at Lucy with fierce eyes that dare her to attack us here, like he’s reminding her that he killed her sister and he might have a glory sword with her name on it. Which makes me wonder if glory swords work in hell.