Free The Catalyst by Zoe Winters

mate.”
    Jane’s hands clenched and unclenched at her sides. He
was such a wanker. She wanted nothing more than to punch him in the
mouth, but violence wasn’t allowed here. “Why give us a room like
this?”
    “We let people say goodbye in their own time. I
shouldn’t have indulged you so long. Sometimes we just have to take
the room away.”
    The idea of losing the window into her old life put
her in a full panic. Jane’s face was tear-stained by the time she
found her voice again. “Please. Please send me back.”
    He ignored her plea, instead staring at the monitors,
a thoughtful expression on his face. Such a smug bastard. As her
adjustment angel, he was there to help her get her bearings in
heaven and to act as her tour guide.
    Except for the official tour, she’d only spent a
little time outside her mansion. It was what she’d always been told
Christian heaven was like. The reality of it made her shudder.
There were streets of gold and lots of worshiping and prayerful
meditation. Everyone wore glistening white gowns, and the birds
would never shut the hell up with their happy songs. Her
surroundings were perfect, idyllic. But it was so… boring and
empty.
    A couple of times when she’d been walking beside the
ridiculously clear river, she’d caught the gaze of someone who she
could have sworn shared her misgivings. But nobody questioned. She
knew why. If heaven was as it had been described down to details
like golden streets, was hell’s description equally accurate? And
what would happen to them if they asked questions? Would they be
sent there?
    She’d managed to pry the knowledge out of Rodolfo.
Hell was where she’d been. Jane supposed it was all about
perspective, because heaven was inside the warmth of Cole’s arms.
This was hell.
    In heaven, everybody had their own mansion. It was
frivolous and pointless. Husbands and wives lived next door to each
other and waved and said hello on occasion, but the intimacy they’d
shared in their human lifetime was gone. It never got dark. There
was no weather. No one slept. No one had sex. They ate sometimes,
but that was the only genuine pleasure. Still, it felt muted
against the backdrop of too much agonizing perfection.
    And some dark part of her longed for the
struggle.
    She scrubbed the tears off her face with her arm.
“They need me.”
    The angel turned, as if perhaps she’d suffered enough
to satisfy some quota only he was aware of. “There is a way.” His
voice was beguiling, going up a register on the last word.
    A devil’s bargain was something struck in a seedy
motel or in some murky corner behind a dumpster. If the devil
didn’t have literal horns, he’d at least be wearing a black coat
and have two days worth of beard growth, and a lit cigarette
hanging out of his mouth. But wasn’t the devil a fallen angel? And
if he could fall, this Rodolfo character couldn’t fare much
better.
    Although Jane and the angel were in clean
surroundings—too clean if you asked her—the warning light flashed
in her mind. Even so, she latched onto the lifeline he’d tossed.
She didn’t care what she had to do—accept some awful punishment,
walk across hot coals—if there was the smallest hope of being
reunited with Cole and their child, she’d do it.
    “You would never be able to return to heaven, of
course,” he said, laying the trap.
    She fought back the sarcastic retort rising in her
throat. No way to return to this ? Oh, sign her up for the
exit door, please. She’d take an eternity stuck in hell where at
least there were challenges, things to do, something worth fighting
for, instead of the maintenance of the unmarred status quo.
    “There is no guarantee he’ll want you,” he
continued.
    “Why wouldn’t he want me?”
    “You’ll be a demon, a succubus.”
    Jane swallowed around the lump forming in her throat.
On the one hand, the idea of being such a powerful being, of never
being able to be killed or be someone else’s victim again,