Dedication:

  To all the "never the one", I'm afraid your soulmate is dead—or worse, in Hell.

  Seven years in Hell.

  And I don't mean that in a figurative, "Oh, my boss is a nightmare" kind of way. No, I'm talking about The Hell. You know the one—sulfurous, smoky, endless, full of the sort of thing you'd never want to find yourself trapped in. The sort of place that makes you look at your life choices and wonder if you shouldn't have spent more time in therapy.

  The Morningstar's playground.

  I'm sure you've all seen the brochures. The ads and the press release where they try to make it sound... appealing. I have to praise the marketing team because they really got a whole pack of you to go here when you bite the proverbial dust.

  Hell is a place where souls get exactly what they deserve, in ways both creative and excruciating. If you've sinned, you will be punished—not just in any old "Here's a slap on the wrist" sort of discipline, but in whatever manner The Jury finds most poetic.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A furnace, a pit, a vat of something that looks suspiciously like bile—it's all a delightful menu of misery. It's not just the fire and brimstone you might expect, but the fire and filth that seems to cling to every surface, like a bad aftertaste that you just can't wash out. And be warn, the place is an eternal health code violation. Every year, sanitation inspectors make their notes, shake their heads, and leave—probably for their own therapy sessions.

  And don't even get me started on the benefits package of the working staff. The dental care is something the insurance companies would pay you to not use.

  But, in all their, forgive my French, bloody shit, the admin has managed to keep one thing almost together: The Bulletin Board.

  It's cobwebbed, yes, and you wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole, but somehow, inexplicably, it still lights up. The neon sign has been blinking red for the demons know how long. But today, it finally turned from red to green. A flicker of hope that there is an opening for a Reaper position in The Veil—or perhaps just a sign that someone was about to get fired from The Cellar.

  Don't get too excited. You see, Reaper Resources will not accept just anyone, they won't even do interviews, except for one. The powers-that-be have already picked their candidate, and they already sent someone to offer her the terms.

  She just needs to sign the papers and she'll be given her... reaping duties.

  But you can't meet her yet. Not until I take you back seven years ago to that little human cesspool you call Earth.