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in the mounting confusion.
    “You’re a living person, but you can enter the realm of the dead...”
    “We’ll show you,” Via promised. “We’ll show you the city...” It was nothing she could have ever expected. Why should she? Cassie didn’t even believe in the existence of Hell—until now, of course. There were some surprises.
    They left the garage through the side door, stepping out into the sultry night. The chirrups of crickets throbbed loudly. Moonlight made the woods fluoresce. They wound around to the front of the house, which faced south. “You said we’re going to the city,” Cassie stopped them.
    “That’s right,” Via replied. “It’s called the Mephistopolis.”
    “You’re talking about Hell, right?”
    “Oh, yeah,” Xeke answered. “Home, sweet home.”
    “Sort of,” Via amended. “See, we don’t live there anymore—we can’t. We’re XR’s—ex-residents.”
    “Same as fugitives,” Xeke explained. “In the city, there are two social castes: Plebes and Hierarchals. We’re Plebes, commoners, and as XR’s we’re not allowed to reside in the city anymore. We’re considered criminals because we haven’t conformed. That’s why we have to live in a Deadpass, like your house, or the Deadpasses in the other three Outer Sectors. It’s a bitch, but if we stay in the city too long, the Constabularies get wise to us. We wouldn’t last very long if we tried to stay in the city limits.”
    Via could read the confusion on Cassie’s face. “Believe me, it’s easier to just learn as you go. You still do want to go, don’t you? Remember, you don’t have to.”
    “I still want to go,” Cassie said testily. “I just want to know exactly where it is we’re going. Hell? Hell isn’t supposed to be a city. It’s supposed to be a sulphur pit, a lake of fire, stuff like that.”
    Xeke chuckled. “It used to be—several thousand years ago when Lucifer was cast out of Heaven. But just use your common sense. Take New York City, for example. What was New York City several thousand years ago?”
    “Woods, I guess,” Cassie said, still not getting the point. “Just ... land.”
    “Right, undeveloped land. So was Hell when Lucifer first arrived; it was just a hot plain, a wasteland.”
    Then Via put it this way: “Just as human civilization has evolved over the past three or four thousand years ... so has Hell.”
    Xeke: “And just as God’s creatures have developed here on Earth, Lucifer and his dominion have developed equally. Progress and technology don’t just happen in your world, Cassie. They happen in ours as well. That sulphur pit is now the biggest city to ever exist.”
    Hush pulled Cassie along by the hand, pointing. Xeke said, “Here’s the Pass. Just walk a few more steps...”
    Cassie walked out ahead of them now, her flipflops crunching over the trail’s carpet of twigs and fallen leaves. But as she progressed, she felt something strange, something that could only be described as variants of pressure and temperature. Vertical layers of hot and cold, an annoying strain in her ears. Then came a sensation like dragging her hand through dry beach sand, only the sensation encompassed her entire body, through her clothes right to her skin.
    For a moment, all she saw was utter blackness.
    Then—
    “My God,” she muttered, looking out.
    That’s all it took. One more step.
    Now Cassie stood at the foot of another world.
    Overhead the sky churned in gradients of scarlet. An exotic, sweet-smelling heat caressed her. A sickle-shaped moon hung in the horizon: a moon that was black and whose black light impossibly lit her face. Indeed, a scrub, smoking wasteland extended from her feet over what had to be the next fifty or even a hundred miles. She could see everything, every detail in a crisp macrovision. And beyond this intricate wasteland stood the Mephistopolis.
    The scape of the city—with its buildings, skyscrapers, and towers—seemed forged against the scarlet