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Back Happy Hour In Hell
Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

She and the tall servant went out, leaving me alone to think about that interesting image, but I was suddenly so exhausted that I fell asleep within moments after the door closed behind them.

The strange days of my official citizenship in the Red City slipped by. Snakestaff might be an unimportant minor demon of the Liars Sect, a sort of small town lawyer compared to the sharpies I had faced as Doloriel, Heavenly Advocate, but now, Snakestaff and I had been whirled into the heart of society, or at least the damned version of the idle rich.

It wasn’t easy to make sense of the way Hell worked, because everything here seemed as bizarre and chaotic as Heaven was ordered and seemingly unchanging. It was clear to me at least that Vera was not exactly at the heart of things. Her friends Elizabeth and Francis were much bigger players than she was, but she was an enthusiastic participant, an infernal social butterfly with a love for the trappings and protocols of her lost earthly life. She took me to various gatherings, and although I met some truly hideous people (and I’m using the term “people” very loosely here) I met others who, except for their appearance, wouldn’t have been out of place at any smart gathering. Many of the damned and demonic were funny, colorful, even charming (in a don’t-turn-your-back-on-them sort of way).

I was often referred to as “Vera’s new man,” although nothing definitively romantic had passed between us. Sometimes I was “Vera’s discovery,” as though my clodhopping, lower-level ways revealed Lady Zinc’s cleverness, or at least her open-mindedness. A few in her social set were openly hostile to me, mostly the kind of young (or young-appearing) males who probably would have liked to be in my place, but that was just another interesting facet of what was a truly rich and complex society. In fact, I was beginning to find myself almost comfortable in Hell, which terrifies me now and should have terrified me then, but a weird kind of contentment had gripped me. There were times, especially as Vera sat on my bed at night stroking my hair and murmuring to me, that I could scarcely remember the earlier part of my journey, let alone my angel life on Earth.