Chapters (60)
- DAW Books Presents
- HAPPY HOURINHELL
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Dedication
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- prologue
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- interlude
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- interlude
- thirteen
- fourteen
- interlude
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- interlude
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
- forty-three
- forty-four
- forty-five
- forty-six
- forty-seven
- forty-eight
- epilogue
Getting clean and leaving the house had definitely been a step forward, but if I was going to live, I’d need to find something worth living for, which meant finding something about myself worth living for. The failure side of the ledger was pretty impressive, and all I could come up with on the other side was Gob. I hadn’t managed anything a real hero should have, like getting the poor kid out of Hell, but I’d at least helped him out of a terrible situation and into a slightly better one, with Riprash. That might count for something. Yeah, Bobby Dollar, demi-mini-quasi-hero.
Every time I tried to think of good things I’d accomplished, the rest of my failures wailed out at me like cartoon ghosts. The latest and biggest failure of all was Caz, of course. Even the idea of her was a scorched, radioactive hole in the middle of my thoughts—I couldn’t ignore it, but I had to stay as far away as possible or I’d go crazy. But not thinking about her was really just another way of thinking about her, and then it all started over again.
Like I said, the failure side of the ledger was pretty impressive, maybe even spectacular. Case in point: I’d gone through everything Hell could throw at me and somehow managed to survive, but I’d lost the one thing I should have held onto at any cost—lost her because I was arrogant and careless, because I trusted my own ability to anticipate Eligor’s tricks. Orpheus went all the way to Hades for his girlfriend, then lost her when he looked at her too soon. I lost my love because I hadn’t looked carefully enough.
“I should have known,” I said for what must have been the three hundredth time since the parking garage. “I should have never left Hell without her. He was setting me up way back in Flesh Horse—showing me a fake Caz and telling me he’d release her. He was already planning it then! He hands the fake over, and he’s not breaking his word. He didn’t even need to, but he had one last chance to torture me, and he took it.”
My stomach felt curdled. I looked down at my Bloody Mary. Now that I was drinking one—well, my second, to be completely honest—I wondered if I really wanted any more alcohol. Oblivion was the only thing that had allowed me to survive the first few days, but even drinking wasn’t helping much anymore. Unless I seriously intended to nosedive into the big black, I had to start thinking about other strategies. Tomorrow. I decided I would definitely start being alive again tomorrow. Or the next day. No, maybe I could do tomorrow.
Trying to care sucked.