It takes a long time to cross the river. The water is thick as oil and I am careful to keep my hands inside the low edges of the boat. A dank fog rises off the water. Looking too hard at the current makes me dizzy. Instead I stare at my knees, the place where the fabric is fraying and I can see a patch of skin. I think of Jack’s hand there, of kissing him over the tarot cards, of Aurora laughing, blowing smoke out my window, drinking Dr Pepper in my bed. I think of the most ordinary things I can imagine. Puppies, why not? The godawful still life I am working on in art class. Cass blowing her brown hair out of her eyes while she measures herbs. Raoul putting Oscar Wilde on my head, Raoul laughing, Raoul bringing me hot chocolate with chilies in it. I think of Jack, not the musician but the person who is barely not a boy, smiling at me with his joker’s smile. Telling me to draw him pictures of kittens and sailboats, ridiculous things. Down here in the dark there is no light but the light I bring with me, and I will not fail. I will not fail. Do you hear me, Aurora, I am coming for you. I am coming. I’m not the kind of girl they’re looking for in hell. I’m not pretty; I don’t play instruments; half the time I can barely draw. But I’m the girl they’ll never forget, because I’m the girl who’ll win.
At last I can make out the other side through the heavy dark. The ferryman poles the boat toward a smooth place where the bank flattens out. Dark sand, slick with the same oil that sheens the surface of the water. I catch one foot on the gunwale as I’m getting out, almost tip into the water, catch myself at the last minute, one hand inches from the surface. Something tells me I don’t want to get wet. I can feel Minos’s eyes on my back. “I’m fine,” I say, to no one but myself. Minos is moving past me, not waiting. I have to half-run to keep up with him. But I remember how fast he moved in the warehouse. This time, for whatever reason, he is letting me follow.
We are standing on the edge of a vast bone-white plain that glows with an unholy light of its own under the empty sky. So Death’s great city welcomed armies of the dead. But there are no armies here, only me and the hot blood in my human veins. Ahead of us stands a palace. There’s no other word for it: looming, massive, rising out of the white rock like a tumor. Black stone walls, grease-shined like the river. I can see hundreds of doors all around it, and all of them are open. Locks don’t matter, here. My stomach knots, and I can’t catch my breath. This is more than anything I bargained for. This is not a place I should be, not a place anyone from my time or my world should ever have to see. Minos does not turn around, but he pauses. I can feel him, at the edges of my thoughts. Amused, contemptuous. His disdain kindles my courage. I take the first step forward, walk past him. I know where I’m going, now. He can follow me.
It takes longer than I think it should to cross the white plain and draw close to the nearest door. Aurora, I think, Aurora, Aurora, Jack. Holding their names under my tongue like talismans, I take the first step inside.
I am back in the penthouse apartment Aurora took me to. The room is empty and the chandeliers are unlit, the greasy candles melted into long strings of wax. Beyond the windows I see not the plain we crossed but the black ocean, the black sky of my dreams. It’s colder here than anywhere I’ve ever been. I draw my sleeves over my knuckles, but it’s no use. Nothing can keep out this chill. It slips between my ribs and down my throat. I shiver and tug at Raoul’s rosary. I’m starting to wonder if I will spend the rest of my life in places that aren’t entirely real, and then I think about where I am and how the rest of my life may not be a very long time at all, and then I decide to think about something else. Ripley. Thomas the Rhymer. Weetzie Bat. Plum sauce. Wendy Wanders. Raoul’s tamales. Oscar Wilde. Cheetos. JD with his homemade bomb. Cow tipping. Staying frosty. Keith Richards. Keith Richards is definitely cooler than Minos. Maybe even older. I think about bringing this up, decide against it.
The room is smaller than I remember from the party. One wall is windowless, painted white and lined with oil paintings in simple frames. I walk closer, unable to help myself. Security guards at museums hate me; I’m forever trying to touch the art. These are a series of murky oil landscapes all done in a similar style. Each one is populated with tiny figures, their faces rendered in perfect detail. A man rolling a boulder up a hill, his shoulders covered in gore, his face full of pain. A man tied down, mouth open in a scream, while vultures tear open his belly. A line of sad-faced women trying to carry water in sieves. And people I know, too. People who lived too fast and died badly. When I find the picture of Aurora’s father, I am not surprised. He’s in the garden of Aurora’s house, looking at something outside the frame of the painting. His face looks the same way it does in my memory. At the very edge of the picture, there’s a half-obscured figure in a dress that might be Maia. Or Aurora.
“This is fucked,” I say. I turn back to Minos, and then I see him. The tall pale man from the party, the one whose touch burned my skin. Minos’s boss. I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t know who he is, don’t know who the two people I love most in the world have been cutting bargains with. His ice-blue eyes are mocking. He’s standing by the windows on the far side of the room, as casual as if we were all at a cocktail party. Aurora lies crumpled at his feet. Please, let her be alive, I think. Please. Please.
“Come forward,” says the ice-eyed man. I can feel my shoulder burning where the thorns pierced my skin. I cross the room. Slow, slow steps. If Aurora is dead I don’t want to know yet.
But she isn’t: I can see that, when I’m standing in front of the god of hell. Faint rattle of breath in her throat, faint rise and fall of her chest. She’s so beautiful now she is transcendent, as though passing over from the realm of the living stripped her of any remaining imperfection. I am so filled with love for her I can hardly talk. “I came here for her,” I say.
“I know what you came here for,” he says. “What will you give me for her?” The terrible eyes are amused.
Once there was a musician who fell in love with a girl. When she died too young he followed her into darkness, played so beautifully that even the lord of death was moved. Take her, he said to the musician, and bring her to the world above. But if you falter on the path, she is ours forever.
But I am not the musician, and I am not the girl. I am only myself, muscle and bone, stubborn and jealous and sometimes too mean, selfish and in love. I am only all the things that make me, and the best of those is her. I have nothing to offer the god of hell, no sweet-voiced song to trade, no unearthly beauty, no rare and precious gift. I can’t charm animals or fight kings or sail a fleet of ships to a hundred monster-haunted islands, trick a Cyclops, make a goddess fall in love with me. I curl my hands into fists and stand there, helpless and out of luck. I don’t even win at board games.