At the entrance of town, just under the lip of the sunshade, there was a huge sign that read DEMONDALE: WELCOME TO THE HELLMOUTH. Seeing it made Anya realize that she’d never felt more at home. This was truly a town for her. Hell on Earth. The best of above and below. Pizza and demons. Evil and cable television. Money and things worth spending it on.

Eternal darkness suited her. Her human skin was prone to sunburn. And vampires were the best tippers at Best Pressed—not that she’d ever admit that in front of Human-Mike. Say what you wanted about the living dead, they had their own generational wealth and they were not stingy with it. Especially since the juicery had started offering nutritional boosts in their blood smoothies. Turns out most vamps were low on vitamin D.

But even with her pockets fat with tips, she was beginning to worry that she had traded one listless existence for another. She got up, counted her money, went to work, and came home. The same on earth as in hell.

Except on earth, with its oppressive gravity and linear time stream, she was susceptible to aging. She could practically feel her skin losing elasticity. She looked very nearly twenty now. Maybe it was time to throw in the towel and give the whole topside experiment up as an identity crisis. She could give her two weeks’ notice, murder Human-Mike, and take the first portal back to Arashmaharr. Her condo was sublet for another six months, but she could probably sleep in her cubicle for a while and call it dedication. Or she could try to pull a Halfrek and go live on assignment.

The juicery’s glass front door banged open. Two huddled, bloodied bodies tumbled inside. Human-Mike shrieked when he saw the bloody footprints on the pristine lobby floor and darted into the back room for a mop. It took a moment for Anya to recognize the blood-covered people. One was her off-duty coworker Andrew. The other was the littler of his two friends, the one whose hair went down instead of up.

“Ugh,” Anya groaned, peering out the window toward the dark sky. “Is it raining blood already? The weatherman said it wouldn’t hit until Friday, but I knew that good-for-nothing was lying again. . . .”

“It’s not rain.” Andrew gasped for air as he slammed his reddened forearms on the handoff counter. Beneath the gore, he was looking particularly pale, even for Andrew, which was saying something. Normally the buggy-eyed human boy was as pale as the bleach streaks in his hair. Now he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Ghosts were still pretty rare, even in hell’s first colony on earth. “Anya, we need your help.”

Anya eyed him warily. “I’m not interested in picking up any more of your shifts, Andrew. You said you were going to be too busy to come in today and yet here you are, bleeding all over the place and flaunting your freedom.”