Year Two: Rebels - Cara Wylde Page 0,72

want to add another member to your happy poly thing. I’d be so in! I’d be all over it, if you know what I mean.”

I wanted to tell him that he was disgusting, but I needed him on my side today. Also, who was I to judge Valac? I was sleeping with three men, not two. And I was pregnant with one of them.

Limbo was the home of those souls that weren’t sinful enough to deserve full damnation, but neither pure enough to go to Heaven. It was bathed in dim light, its streets were narrow, and all the houses and shops were rundown. The souls here were poor and depressed, but they didn’t suffer that much. Once they served their sentence, they were going to reincarnate on Earth again and see if the lessons they’d learned here had stuck. The number one difference between Heaven and Hell was that in Hell, the streets weren’t empty. Demons were everywhere, watching us from the shadows as they gossiped around corners. Valac strayed away from the group a couple of times to greet friends and acquaintances. I was surprised to find out that he was quite popular here.

The Second Circle of Hell was windy. The sky was dark, the skeleton trees bent under the wrath of the hot, dusty storms, and most of the houses had lost their roofs a long time ago. The air was barely breathable.

“Everyone, put these on,” Professor Maat took out face masks she’d brought with her. “They’ll help.” When Valac reached out for one, she slapped his hand away. “This is not a joke, Valac.”

I put the mask on, but it didn’t seem to do much. Corri flew off my shoulder, twirled in the air a few times, and emerged from her cloud of pixie dust in something that looked like a miniature hazmat suit.

“I can get one for you,” she said.

I laughed. I would’ve loved one, really, but I didn’t want my colleagues to think that I was a weak human who needed a pixie’s magic to keep her alive.

She shrugged and landed back on my shoulder.

“Maybe a better mask, please?” I whispered in her ear.

She snapped her fingers, and a mask that I could actually breathe through replaced the one from Professor Maat.

“I’ve been here before,” she said casually. “I know the drill.”

“Oh, so I see. You were scared out of your mind when you first came with Mila.”

She looked offended. “That’s not very nice.”

I giggled. “The truth is not nice.”

It rained in the Third Circle, and the streets were flooded with a green, disgusting slush. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to melt our shoes when we stepped in it, so it wasn’t acid. The souls that were guilty of gluttony dwelled here. There were restaurants everywhere, and the food looked amazing, but Professor Maat told us that it couldn’t be eaten. That was the torture device: once a fork or a spoon touched the food, it would turn into green slush. The souls that had succumbed to their voracious appetite on Earth were starving here. All the ones who’d once been human were skeletal, lanky, and weak, while the demons walking among them looked as healthy as ever.

The Fourth Circle of Hell was the complete opposite of the Third. Here, the demons tortured those who’d been greedy and hoarded wealth. Their punishment was to be surrounded by wealth and beauty, by shops filled with jewelry and fine clothes, while their houses remained empty. They couldn’t use anything and couldn’t own anything. Every time they walked out of their house, they saw beautiful, expensive, exquisite things everywhere. Yet, they could not buy them. They couldn’t buy a single needle.

We stopped to eat at the Sinful Elk.

“You sure you don’t want to have a bite first?” Valac asked. “Hell has the most delicious food in the world. Not even Heaven can match it. It’s for demons only, of course, and for the Academy students who visit once every two hundred years. Although, I think Grim Reapers can stop to eat in Hell if they want.”

“We’re going to dig up a grave,” I said through gritted teeth. “No, I don’t want to eat first. My stomach is turning already.”

“Fine,” he said in an exasperated voice. “Let’s get it over with. I’m hungry.”

“Lead the way.”

We slipped out unnoticed. Like always, it was so easy to disappear when Professor Maat was in charge. She was easily distracted by the other students and the demon waitresses.

“We should have gone to the