Good-looking women seemed to enjoy saying that to him, for whatever reason. Not all that reassuring when he’d had his fair share of encounters with creatures that bit first and asked questions later.

He ran his fingers over the wood of the rail, examining her with a bald, unblinking intensity.

New? The people he'd encountered around the mansion kept implying the same thing over and over--that he was in a new place, not Hell, not Heaven, but somewhere else that sat between the real world and a fantasy land. Every cell in Adam's body wanted to argue. He'd acclimated to something darker and more savage, and giving the crumb of hope in him room to grow felt like a trick, like a way of letting Hell get deeper inside him.

Indecision gave way to a sense of defeat at her offer to help. Too little, too late. Even an angel--one of the bastards who didn't give a single fuck about helping some insignificant kid from Minnesota--had apologized to him for not helping.

He must been a pathetic fucking sight for people to start worrying about him now.

The line of Adam's shoulders sagged. "I went to Hell. You think you can fix that?" he said, voice deep and rough. Of course not. "You can't. No one can. I don't even know if you‘re really here."