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"Enough that I would rather save it for getting you back," he said, "if something goes wrong."

My hand tightened around the door handle.

"It's fine, we can swim."

"It's November."

"I'm aware of the month, Blackman. I've been dressing for it." I shoved the receipt into my back pocket and opened the door before either of us could revisit the subject. "You can hover disapprovingly beside me if you'd like."

I swam half a mile through Lake Erie with my mother's key on a string around my neck and nine increasingly soggy questions in my pocket. River stayed exactly one arm's length away the entire time. He never offered to carry me again. He also never told me to turn around, though I caught him watching me often enough to know the thought had crossed his mind once or twenty times.

By the time we reached the pyramid my fingers barely worked. The glass rose out of the chop without a seam where it met the water, smooth and impossible, and when I pressed my palm against it I nearly jerked away.

Warm.

Of all the things wrong with the entrance to Hell, the fact that it was warmer than Ohio remained one of the most offensive ones.

The surface softened beneath my hand. It swallowed my fingers, then my wrist, and before instinct could convince me this was an appalling idea, the rest of me followed.

The first thing about Hell is usually the smell.

Everyone expects sulfur, because humans have apparently spent centuries agreeing on that detail without bothering to verify it. Hell actually smells like a wet cellar and old pennies, with something faint beneath both that reminds me disturbingly of the inside of a church.

The second funny thing about it is that you arrive dry. Completely, inexplicably dry. Half a mile of Lake Erie vanished from my clothes and hair the instant my feet touched black sand, leaving me feeling as though I'd spent the last hour beside a radiator. I have never discovered where the water goes, and I've decided some questions exist solely to punish the curious.

The River of Souls stretched ahead of us beneath a sky the color of a bruise several days into healing, its black water moving slowly between banks that disappeared in both directions. Enough water to swallow a city, and it went past without a sound. That silence had followed me into dreams after my first visit. Water that size should crash, or whisper, or lap at the sand. Instead it ignored the world entirely.

The river was empty when we arrived.

Then it wasn't. A flat black boat appeared several hundred yards downstream and began sliding toward us without oars, sails, or anyone showing even a passing interest in physics.

"Don't accept anything from him," River said quietly beside me. "Don't agree to anything you haven't understood, and whatever happens, don't thank him."

"I've met him."

"Once, and that went badly." His hand brushed the back of mine, so lightly I might have dismissed it as accidental if River did anything accidentally. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do, Firefly. I'm reminding you that he enjoyed winning."

The boat reached the bank without disturbing so much as a grain of sand.

Today, Charon had gone with the surfer look. Blond hair, tanned skin, board shorts, a stomach you could do laundry on. The kind of face designed to sell energy drinks to men who owned several paddleboards and considered sunscreen a character flaw. The glamour fit him about as convincingly as a hat on a pig.

Once you'd seen what lived beneath it, though, you couldn't forget. Gray leathery skin stretched over limbs built too long. Talons extending from his wrists nearly to the sand. Two rows of teeth crowded into a mouth set at an angle no human jaw could manage, one eye burning a steady red, and the other socket holding a silver coin sewn into place with neat black stitches.

"The Byrne child." His voice reached us twice, the second version trailing the first by half a heartbeat. His attention shifted to River and the wrong mouth widened. "Back so soon. And with the fallen thing. You've come down in the world, son."

River looked unimpressed, but the air beside me cooled.

I stepped forward before that conversation had an opportunity to become expensive. "Charon. I want to cross."

"Everyone wants to cross."

"Fine. Bad wording." I pulled the damp receipt from my pocket and unfolded it carefully. "I want to talk to you. I don't want passage, I'm not leaving this bank, and I know there's going to be a price because apparently you can't have a conversation without charging admission. Name it and stop wasting my time."

He stared at me for several seconds. Then the surfer's smile stretched slowly across his face, too wide and far too pleased.

"Oh," he said. "You've been preparing yourself for me."

But he did name it. The price was a memory.