A Job From Hell (Ancient Legends #1)

sins,
meaning there was almost no supervision. Dad figured, being there in that
semi-darkness instead of with their loved ones was enough punishment already,
so he didn’t get involved.
    As said, Distros gave me the creeps even more than the torture chambers in the lower planes. The
emotional turmoil and suffering was too strong for an angel. So I didn’t
usually linger here, but today something made me hesitate.
    “Hello?” My voice echoed in the vast space,
cutting through the eerie silence like a knife.
    The soft wail of a girl carried over from
my right. Even though I knew better than to get involved, I headed toward the
tiny lodge. She was sitting on the porch, her blonde head buried in her lap,
strands of hair swaying in the wind. Behind her, a loose shutter thudded
against the dirty wall of the house.
    “Are you okay?” Stupid question, I know,
given that she was dead and stuck in Hell. Of course she couldn’t be okay when
her mind kept recalling the still vivid memories of her life. Rubbing my upper
arms, I took several tentative steps forward until I stopped several inches
away from her. This was the nearest I’d ever been to a Distros ghost. The distress wafting from her was palpable in the air. My fallen angel
side flickered to life, soaking up the chaos surrounding her, but for once I
didn’t feel like enjoying the thrill. There was nothing exciting about human
suffering and emotional pain.
    Her head rose, revealing a pale, chubby
face with large blue eyes and thin lips. She couldn’t be much younger than me,
but the wet trails on her cheeks gave her the innocence of a child. But she
must’ve done something to deserve being sent here.
    “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new?”
she asked, wiping a plump hand over her cheeks.
    I nodded because it was easier than
disclosing my real identity. I figured she might not be so inclined to talk to
me if she knew. “I’m Cass.”
    “Theo.” She smiled and patted the floor
next to her. I dropped down, tucking my legs under me to stave off the cold
wafting from her skin. In spite of the high temperature outside, she was
undoubtedly freezing like all the other ghosts on that plane.
    As if on cue, a shudder ran down her arms,
turning her flesh into goose bumps.
    “Where do you live?” Theo asked, wrapping
the thin shawl tighter around her slender body. I pointed vaguely behind me to
the woods with their dying trees and copper grass. She bobbed her head, knowingly.
“It’s much nicer there than to the west. At least, you’re not being constantly
preyed on by the demon wolves.”
    She was talking about the guardians’
helpers who made sure no one escaped Hell through the east gate.
    “You were crying because of someone,” I
said, eager to change the subject.
    “How do you know?”
    I shrugged, considering how much to reveal.
“I often see and hear what’s going on in other people’s minds.” Apart from
those related to me by blood, that is.
    Theo’s eyes grew wide open. “That’s a cool
gift to have. I bet I wouldn’t be dead if I could do that.”
    She had been murdered in cold blood.
Memories of a dark passage, an underground tunnel, flashed before my eyes. I
shook my head to get rid of them, and they stopped, but not because I wanted them
to. I couldn’t yet control what or how much I saw.
    Theo smiled bitterly.
    “Why are you here?” I whispered.
    She averted her gaze to stare at a large
fissure in the ground. “I hurt someone very bad.”
    The pictures didn’t come, so she was
blocking them out of her memory. That wasn’t the way Distros worked, meaning it was only a matter of time before they returned to haunt her.
    “I just wish I could warn my sister,” Theo
continued.
    “Why?”
    She peered up from the ground, her blue
gaze meeting mine. Her memories started flooding my mind. “Because she’s dating
his brother,” Theo whispered.
    Tremors ran up and down my spine as more
images flashed before my open eyes. A sense of sadness grabbed hold of me,
drawing me deep into a drowning pool of sorrow and regret. This was why angels
weren’t supposed to get too close to humans. We were too sensitive for our own
good, enjoying celebration to excess, and killing ourselves over the melancholy
in mortals.
    I rose, pushing up on my arms to steady my
shaking knees. My seventeen-year-old body felt aged by decades, my soul
wounded, just like Theo’s. It wasn’t right that she be here, and yet it was
because she took someone’s