Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had always been there after the Fall.

Once expelled, Lucifer had carried her battered body for untold miles before Hell had shuddered and submitted to the force of his despondency—the infernal palace erupting out of the hollow deep.

She did not see it happen, drifting in and out. One moment, in a wasteland too large to encompass the eye, stretching on endless. The next moment, the gossamer ceiling of a canopy bed, drapes roped back. Lucifer perched on a black chair, stillness inhuman, staring at her. Ichor crusted in his hair. Red horns ruptured out of skin. Shadows beneath his new bloody eyes.

“It’s called Pandemonium,” he whispered.

The air was molten. A sulphurous red glow on the skyline. She realized she had horns of her own—thick and curled like the ram she had named in the Garden. Her eyes closed again, weighted.

Time was unmeasured back then in that nether place, but Lilith estimated it’d be two days before she was fully conscious. Another day and a half before she could leave the cool satin sheets of her new bed.

Heaven was a white drop in the upper darkness, like a bead of spilled milk. The Garden was gone.

He drifted around the room as he waited for her to bathe, opening empty drawers, untwisting the knots of a wicker chair. His ichor dripped on the marble floor, which she wouldn’t notice until almost slipping on a puddle of it.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, holding his face in both palms.

“What could you do?” he said back, gentle, and lifted his flayed arms. His fresh spindled tail. A glittering wound gaped down his chest.

All six of his wings were crushed.

“I think I’m dying,” he said, and it was without any fear, with only a pinch of awe. Lilith would never forget the way he looked then, in that room of Pandemonium.

“Don’t be a fool,” she told him, for fear of saying anything else.

The Hellquake came on a Wednesday. Charlie was one-hundred ninety-three, walking home through a tangle of recent apartments in the Pentagram. The constructions of the sinners were of enormous fascination to her. She was tickled by how industrious they were. How they persevered still. She was in the middle of marveling at how high they had stacked the apartments when she felt it.

The world trembling.

Three paces away, the nearest wall split in two, brick coming off like fine powder. The ground tilted. Sinners sprinted out of the buildings, bewildered, shouting. Charlie looked at the sky. It wobbled and shook until she realized it was beneath her feet.

Everything ripped open.

The apartments folded like papier mache. Sinners splattered into the pavement. Crushed by stone and metal. Years from now, many of them still wouldn’t be regenerated fully.

By the time she made it back to the palace, all six of the Sins were there. Burnt ozone stench coated the grand hall, testament to their race here from across the rings.

Just like that, Charlie knew her mom was gone. She would never have allowed them to stand here unattended.

“She must’ve left this morning,” Aunt Bee said, “He wasn’t answering our messages. Oh, hon, I’m sorry.”

They wouldn’t let her see her dad. He had told them to keep her away from him. That it wasn’t safe. It didn’t matter how hard she cried and begged and struggled as Uncle Mam and Ozzy carried her to her rooms. For all their fondness for her, they would never defy her dad when he meant it.

Their head butler, Forcas, brought her supper later as Hell continued to shake outside. The maids were running around to Aunt Levi’s orders in the hall. Something broke in the foyer. The world would tremble ceaselessly for a week.

She didn’t get to see her dad for days and days and days and days. Her mom never again.

The first extermination happened a month later.

Though she tried, Lilith lost track of how many months they spent in the palace innards, exploring the countless apartments and wandering the tar-polished corridors.

They danced together in the barren rooms. Slept entwisted at any hour. He conjured a fiddle and played it for her in their chilled, vacant hall. Over time, he recovered. His horrific injuries healed and his wings mended. The skin of his arms regrew blackened and scarred. He joked that they looked like gloves.

It was bearable. Perhaps one day, Lilith thought it would even become joyful. Happy in the same way it’d been promised to her in Eden. (Though she had never been happy in Eden).

She told him as much. He grinned and said it would be so. Asked what she desired most. To say the word and he would recreate it in Hell. She knew he would. Knew he would give anything to her if he could.

It was as invigorating as it was frightening.

“Later,” she said, “Are you better now?” She rested a hand on his chest. Aside from his wings, the great wound there had been the slowest to heal. She remembered its ragged edges spidering across his skin, outward like fractures in porcelain.

Thankfully, it seemed gone.

“Of course,” he said, gently lifting her hand off.

The Hosts slaughtered the sinners. Charlie sat beside her dad, clutching his shirt as she listened to the rapid flapping of wings outside. The boot heels stomping on distant rooftops.

Through the large stained glass, the angels were dark streaking specks against a glowing sky of white. They wielded swords and javelins of pure light. Charlie could not make out their features. They stayed far away from Pandemonium.

Screams echoed. Stupefied, agonized screams. And where one scream ended, another one would rise.

“Why’d they all have to come here anyway?” Her dad lifted a bony hand to rub his temples. “Wish they’d stop.”

Charlie jumped as the stones shifted overhead. Giant onyx blocks bulged out of Pandemonium’s walls, grinding past each other, overpowering the screams. Moving like some unseen monster up in the shadows of the vaulted ceiling.

“It’s okay, honey,” her dad slurred, as she clung to his arm, her eyes squeezed shut.

It went on for an eon and was over in a second.

Then silence so sudden that every hair lifted on Charlie’s nape.

When she dared lift her head again, all the windows were gone. Only smooth black walls remained. Forcas and the staff wandered the dark with candelabras. The windows would not reappear again until she managed to shake her dad awake the next day.

“How’d that get there,” he said, brushing a hand along the wall. The palace rolled to obey and groaned around them, moving like jaws pried back open.

Eventually, she wanted to know what was beyond the palace walls. He found this idea lacked both sensibility and appeal.

“There’s nothing.”

“How would you know?”

Lucifer shook his head. “There’s nothing, Lilith.”

But he was not Adam after all and following some persuasion, he agreed.

Beyond Pandemonium was a stretch of land parched of anything but dust. He flew her across its expanse against the rabid blistering winds, six wings out and startlingly white, barely beating. She wondered if this was the wasteland he had carried her through. Wondered where precisely they had crashed. The actual moment of impact would always remain broken for her, shards of fire and feathers. The world trembling.

When they reached the far edge of that desert, they found another boundless field of mud. Past that a field of ash. At the very end was a canyon. It was not particularly wide, with the other side plainly visible. The cliffsides were pale and mottled, indented with giant finger-like grooves. Below was a darkness that pierced into the bowels of Hell.

Lilith turned, cold and riddled with sweat.

He was right. There was nothing.

“I thought it might’ve been different on the other side,” she said, hair streaming over his shoulder as he flew them back, “I thought it may’ve been like the ocean.” Back in Paradise, she realized now, with a surge of embarrassment. She hated clinging to the past. If she could, she would sever it from her like a poisoned limb.

Lucifer didn’t move when she sighed and pressed against the back of his shoulder.

“There is no other side,” he whispered, “There’s no other side. Only this one for eternity.”

Her dad had made a deal with Heaven.

“There’s too many of them, Charlie,” he explained on one of his good days, “We’re overcrowded.”

They’re down in the kitchen and he’s flipping pancakes—a mortal confectionary they’re both terribly weak to. The jars and pitchers had glided off the shelves to the mixing bowl, beckoned by his clawed finger. Cinnamon sparkled in a fine shower. Goat milk poured out rich and sweet. Plump apples lined the counter.

The pancakes tasted ungodly good. She stuffed herself silly, not able to help the soft squeals of happiness that escaped her. Whenever she finished, a new stack appeared, fluffy and smeared with butter. After all, he quipped, he did know a thing or two about temptation.

Charlie pulled a face and he laughed, soft and easy. His hair was smooth and healthy again, shining like spun gold. His eyes were clear. He looked so beautiful. So alive. Charlie was filled with such inexplicable ache that she almost didn’t want to process what he’d said at all.

“You’re going to let them be killed once a year?”

“That was the deal.”

“They’re our people, dad.”

He gave her an odd look. “No hellborn will get hurt.”

“I meant the sinners.” She set her fork and knife aside. “And it’s not right. They couldn’t help being here.”

“Actually they could.”

“You know what I mean!” She shook her head and stood. “It’s cruel. It’s pointless suffering.”

“That’s what punishment is, Charlie,” he said, looking baffled, like he was watching something disintegrate before his eyes. His gaze was dulling, growing opaque. Panic spiked through Charlie.

“Never mind, dad,” she said and sat back down.

Later, when she lost him again anyway, she tried her mom’s number for the first time in a year. The dial tone rang twenty times, before going to voicemail. Charlie didn’t remember anymore what she’d said, but it had probably been long and rambly and unconvincing.

One day, they found the Sins on the outskirts of Pandemonium. Clustered together, shivering still in the hot bladed wind, newborn pelts moist with grime.

Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Sloth and Wrath.

“Man’s Ruin has birthed us in Hell,” they chirped, voices high and distorted, “to dwell where the Morningstar fell.” Their owlish eyes peered up at them, expectant. Strange little creatures, though Lilith was fond of their bright vivid colors, their flopping ears.

Lucifer was delighted and gleefully shepherded them through the gates. They were eager and curious, tottering in his shadow each day, perhaps drawn to the honey of his magic. At her suggestion, he gave them real names—twisted and corrupted ones she hadn’t been expecting.

Asmodaeus, Beelzebub, Mammon, Leviathan, Belphegor, Satan.

“The Great Adversary,” he mused, scratching Satan at the base of his leaf-sized wings, drawing chirps of bliss.

“What?”

“It’s what they’ll call him.”

Lilith settled her teacup on the tray. She watched the red shadows swim across his hair.

”Why would you give them such names?” she asked, “What are they meant for here?” There was always a reason for better or worse. That was how the universe turned.

Lucifer tilted his head.

”I don’t know, Lili,” he said, “I just know it will be.”

And that was that. Time passed and the creatures grew like weeds, instantly outstripping Lucifer in height, before eventually surpassing her as well. Until they woke one morning with Satan gone from Pandemonium. They found him again far away, in a boiling land of steaming tar and belching flames. He declined to return and in time, the other five vanished as well, scattered to the wide rings.

“What did I tell you,” Lucifer said softly, amused, “Can’t keep ‘em home forever.”

On the second extermination, her dad slept through the whole day. Charlie lay in the library, sprawled on the floor between shelves. It was a room even more soundless than the rest of the palace and maybe with the most physical impossibilities as well, extending as endlessly as it did. As a child, it had unnerved her so much that her dad had created singing birds which flew eternal in the library, landing from rail to rail.

She stroked one on the head as she read through a stack of human novels her mom had gifted her long ago. They were quite romantic, dashing swordsmen and painted dancers, an injured warrior nursed by a blushing maiden. She loved every happy ending. It was easy to wade into these stories and let them tug her inside. Much harder for her to stay.

So when the angels departed at midnight, Charlie left the library, snuck past Forcas and went through Pandemonium’s gates. In hindsight, she did not know at all what she’d been expecting.

The streets were incandescent with blood. Soaked and slippery like a second skin. Ethereal steam rose from the grates. Corpses of sinners dotted alleys, bushes, rooftops, trees, everywhere. Charlie breathed slowly, her heels echoing overloud on the sidewalks. Heat blobbed her vision. The air was rank.

Before her brain could even catch up, her legs were bolting back to the palace.

It was fate alone that caused her to slip on the pool of ichor. Nearly tumble down onto the dead angel’s body.

It lay prone, thrown down into the gash her dad had struck into the earth seven years ago. The sinners must’ve been trying to refill the ravine with concrete, because chunks had hardened over the angel’s legs. Gold blood coated a perfect hole in one of her eyes. She had the whitest hair, like the silk gowns of human brides.

And she looked up at Charlie and blinked.

He ate and slept much less than she did. Granted, by virtue of his nature he had never required something as human as food or sleep in the first place. Not even breath, at the heart of things. It was unnerving, but it was also true.

So he was often awake by the time she stirred in his arms, though he never moved a muscle before that.

“I like holding you,” he said, in his distant, simple way sometimes, “I’m glad I still get to.”

Lilith smiled, brushing a thumb over the charred ridge of his knuckles. One century ago, as they fell, he had shielded her in his arms the same way. She had watched his wings and skin flay and crinkle like burning paper—his form as witheringly hot as the tailfeathers of a comet. He had not screamed then. Would never have permitted his brothers to hear him scream. It was only after they‘d hit the ground. She could hear him sometimes still.

“Me too, darling,” she whispered and brought him close.

She hid the comatose angel in her rooms for a week before Forcas told on her. The staff had been jumpy in general, recoiling at the divine stench in the air, the sterile and serrated edge of holy blades. She supposed she didn’t blame them for running to her dad, but still. It was crazy they thought the angel could hurt anyone now, when she couldn’t even turn on her side without Charlie’s help.

“She’ll die out there,” Charlie said, shielding the bed from him, “Please, Dad.”

He rubbed his eye with the heel of his palm. “I told you not to go outside.”

“I know,” she said, “I know, I’m sorry. I just wanted to see. I needed to see it.”

“See what?”

“All of it, Dad.” His stare was blank. Frustration bubbled in her gut. “The exterminations! How they’re massacring our people! You should’ve seen those streets, e-everyone was—” She sucked in a breath. “A-and I’m glad I did go too. It’s wrong. They have to stop.”

“Charlie.” He sighed softly. “I really don’t want to fight.”

“Then let her stay.” Charlie grabbed his hands, sensing give. “She won’t hurt anybody, I swear. Forcas doesn’t even have to come in here. I’ve already been taking care of her for a week by myself.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said, a note reproachful, “The Hosts wear blessed armor. You could’ve burned yourself bad.”

“But I didn’t! And I was super careful.”

“Not the point.”

But he was faltering. Since that morning in the kitchen, they’d both been delicate about the topic of exterminations. Her anger had startled and troubled him, and though Charlie knew guilt would eat her alive later, she pounced then for all she was worth.

“Please, Dad.” She squeezed his hands. “Let her stay. It’s what I want more than anything.”

His face crumpled. In retrospect, Charlie wondered if this was why her mom had always been so cross with her when she tried to bypass her and ask him for things instead.

“Alright, if you can promise you’ll be careful.”

She bobbed her head eagerly, making him smile. Then her heart skipped a beat, when he walked around her to the bedside. The angel slept on, bandaged chest moving in pitiful wheezes. He tilted his head, hands folded over his cane.

“Wow, never seen such a young one before.”

Charlie blinked, doing an unthinking circuit of the angel’s taut muscles, wide hips and big breasts, before the blood rushed to her face. “W-What do you mean?”

“She’s a year tops. Must’ve just popped out of the factory.” He tapped his left brow. “That eye’s a goner.”

Charlie’s heart sank. It wasn’t a surprise though. No matter how she’d tended it, the eye had been near-obliterated. The poor thing would be blind.

“Do you know anything else about her?” she asked, always curious of how much knowledge her dad acquired from every entry into his domain. He shrugged.

“Not much to know about a yearling,” he said, before making a face of idle disgust, “Maybe she’ll tell you more herself later.”

Charlie nodded, two bunched fists of resolution, as she gazed at the angel. She would need to get more bandages for the eye and talk to Forcas about making something for the fever. The wings worried her. Every day, they seemed to diminish a quarter inch. They were already half the size they’d been when Charlie found her.

“Thanks, Dad.” She kissed him on the cheek, before studying him. He didn’t seem too tired, so she ventured, “You feel like helping me make some poultices? I don’t want her wings to get infected.”

Joy surged through her as his eyes lit up. “I’d be delighted to, sweetie, if that’s what you want.”

“Of course it is, Dad,” she said and looped her arm through his. She was getting too tall for him, but she persevered. “And by hand, alright? Forcas said most of the herbs we need are too hard to be manipulated by magic.”

“Too hard for Forcas maybe,” he noted, and she rolled her eyes. But he refrained from magic. And as a result, was so little help that she relegated him to the supervisor’s chair within the hour. He seemed content with that, if not embarrassed.

Every once and a while, she would glance over from her work to see him staring at her, as though he could not believe his eyes. As though he was trying to burn every detail into memory.

Pandemonium contained a library that had shelves extending into near infinity. Lilith spent much time perusing it, stacking volumes numerically, seated at the great stone table which rotated at the room’s center. Each tome housed a piece of his memory from Creation, scrawls of glowing ink appearing as she turned the pages. Each spine hummed. This one contained the scent of wet leaves. This one drew the oldest hills. This one snarled at her, hissing beneath its scaled alligator cover.

What was, what is, what will be.

“Not everything though,” he said, with a cool wisp of irritation, “Only the parts I’d been delegated.”

They were extraordinary parts indeed.

Lilith learned of humanity after Eden—Adam and his much-deserved toil, which was also forced upon his perhaps less-deserving wife. Their pallid, fallen sons. She read of mankind, which would build itself kingdoms and empires, and one day wildly proclaim themselves gods.

Over her, Lucifer’s shadow perched on the balcony, golden dust reshaping between his fingers. A leathery wing. A coned ribcage. The magic was sharp, metallic, frenzied with frustration and heat.

“Sit here with me,” she called and he swooped down. She nudged her current book over, wrapping her arm around his shoulders and scooping him close. “What’s this one about?”

He smiled, glancing at the page. “A place called Constantinople. It’ll appear someday as one of the grander cities of mortals. ”

“It’s beautiful.” She traced a finger down the painted column of a domed building. Felt the bumps of elaborate colored tiles, the smooth pedestal of an altar. “I wish I could see it.”

He turned around, glancing up at her with still, luminous eyes. “You could,” he said, “Is that what you desire?”

“Not to live in, Luci,” she stressed, because it was still mortal and therefore a sickly shade of Pandemonium, “But it might be nice to look at and visit occasionally. I don’t know how you can stay cooped up in here every day.”

“The company’s enough for me,” he said, grinning, and darted away before she could snort and elbow him off. He cracked his knuckles, scanning the book again. “Well, if that’s what you want, then I’ll get to work. It’s been a while on this one. My memory’s pretty rusty.”

Another week passed, before the angel woke. Charlie had walked into her bedroom to see her crawling toward the door, half-dragging herself by her nails. Much to Charlie’s own embarrassment, she screamed. Dropped her entire stack of towels onto the disoriented angel.

Brief chaos reigned, before she managed to get the poor thing untangled. The angel gawked at her, silent through Charlie’s babbling apologies, eye climbing her up and down repeatedly. Blood loss and fever had drained the color out of her skin. Normally, it looked like it would be dusky, the loveliest contrast with her hair.

“Anyway, I’m Charlie,” she said, cutting herself off, “I’m so glad you’re awake. Do you remember what happened?”

The angel sat on the floor, frozen.

“That’s okay. You were hurt pretty bad.”

She knelt too fast and the angel flinched hard. “Oh, shoot, sorry! It’s alright, I’d just like to help you off the floor. The bed’s a lot more comfortable, trust me. Like stuffed with gryphon feathers and—“

“Where is this?” Her voice was deeper than Charlie had expected. Husky from disuse. Suffused with the deepest dread. “Are you a demon?”

Charlie hesitated, mulling over how to proceed. Based on appearance alone, she did not look too demonic. And aside from the voicemails she left her mom, no one else knew about the angel’s improvement over the past few days.

She just had to be tactful.

“Not technically—”

The door opened.

“Your Highness, is everything alright?” Forcas asked, with his three pairs of eyes, three beaks and three heads.

The angel fainted.

She didn’t see him for some time after her request in the library. He locked himself away, carving out a workshop in the aviary of the palace.

Lilith didn’t try to crowd. Lucifer had always been single-minded with his artistry, wholly preoccupied with his vision. Only occasionally would she visit the aviary to stare up miles into the rafters. From here, she could just discern the door, small and glowing and golden, much like himself. Spiraling chains hung from the ceiling, seared Enochian and adamantine.

Hell beyond hissed and tapped at the tripartite glass panes.

It was strange to be without him for so long. They had never been apart longer than a day since the beginning. Perhaps freeing, if Lilith let herself feel such a way. She had her books and her tea.

But mostly, it was lonely. There was nothing else that lived in Hell.

So when she walked into the aviary one day and saw him sitting at her table, she already knew what her next wish would be.

“Come outside,” he said, laughing after she had kissed and squeezed the breath out of him, “It’s ready.”

He flew them to a plain far from Pandemonium, where the behemoth palace flickered in the dust clouds like a shadow on the horizon. Lilith was settled on a boulder, the smaller stones rocketing up to accommodate her feet, plush moss bursting out like pillowing.

“You are ridiculous,” she called as he zipped off, all cheek, and disappeared into darkness.

Then the world purred beneath her legs.

Lilith gasped as the ground sank. Or perhaps she was being lifted. The surrounding rocks spidered with pulsing cracks, brimstone smoking from within. All of the ground stretched and pinched, as though made of clay, until she realized she sat now on a towering outcropping.

Below was the abyssal valley, nothing but darkness and steam. Lucifer hovered over it, six wings open. His arms spread wide.

Hell moved to obey. Great walls of stone crunched and heaved, releasing gouts of smog. The valley twisted and the ridges crimped around him, rising, corroding and smoothing, until urged into the incredulous skeleton of a city. Perfect arched bridges. Titanic layered walls. Lush murals. The dome of pure gold.

Lucifer lifted his left hand and a hole appeared in the rockside. Hell revealed its underbelly and expelled a geyser of precious stones. Diamonds. Garnets. Opals. Tobernite. Rubies. Every jewel imaginable. They spiraled out in winking rivers, studded columns, rails and the obelisks of the elegant spina in the marketplace. Canals flowed with sweet lavender water.

It was the city of Constantinople.

Lilith did not breathe. He glided up, flaming eyes aglow.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“I do,” she whispered and tugged him out of the sky, “Of course, darling, I do.”

The angel refused to leave Charlie’s room. She never went back into the bed, adamant about curling in a corner behind Charlie’s credenza. The wings were gone. Despite how many of Forcas’s balms and ointments she slathered the angel’s back with, they never returned. Only two patches of scarring remained, dark as bruises.

Charlie was at a loss. Her mom had recounted how her dad’s wings had eventually regrew and healed after their fall. But that was her dad of course, and perhaps impossible for a normal angel.

Ironically, the angel was less distressed about her wings than Charlie was. She seemed to know they were a lost cause. Her abject horror was reserved for when she discovered Charlie was the Princess of Hell.

“You should probably keep clear for a while,” she told her dad, “I don’t think learning you’re actually just upstairs is going to go over well right now.”

He blinked slowly. “Sure, duckling,” he murmured, “Who is this again?”

Charlie swallowed her sigh. “The angel, Dad. From last month?”

“Oh, yes.” He lay his cheek on his desk, swinging the weight of a clock-less pendulum, which hung suspended in space. “The fallen yearling.”

His eyes were a pale insipid pink. Charlie’s heart began to pound.

“C’mon, sit up.” She reached over and took his shoulder, moving him upright. His magic pulsed through her palm. Charlie resisted the urge to flinch. The heat had always startled her with its intensity. As though her dad’s inconceivable power recognized her and beckoned her, ready to leap from Lucifer’s body into her own.

“She tell you what happened?”

Charlie blinked, confused, before realizing he meant the angel. “No.” She rested him back against the chair and released his shoulder. “Forget that, I don’t even know her name yet.” Charlie worried her lip. “I think she still doesn’t trust me, Dad.”

Lucifer chuckled. He gazed out the window, dulled hair soft against his eyes. “Just keep being you, Charlie. She will soon enough.”

“People?” he asked.

“Yes, Luci,” she said and danced from the pews. She spun under the cathedral, her dress twirling, a kaleidoscope of mosaics overhead. The jeweled portraits of supplicating mortals, all in various poses of worship. Her heels echoed against the floor. An earthly echo, like the caverns of Paradise. It was breathtaking. Perfect.

“This city is too big just for the two of us,” she said, turning back to where he sat, “What do you think?”

He smiled, a hollow thing that did not reach his eyes. “I could never create a human, Lili. They have souls.”

“Could you not create a soul?”

Lucifer chuckled. “No,” he said softly, “that is beyond me.”

She frowned, thoughtful a moment, but undeterred. “Then perhaps demons? Or other creatures that do not require souls, like the Sins.” It did not have to be humans after all. Just something more. Anything more.

Then this would be a world. One full of life and culture and witness and freedom. Even damned. Even in Hell.

“I suppose I could try,” he said, with more confidence now and extended a hand out, palm up. Golden dust swirled, a small twister of light. The bones materialized. The ribcage. The torso spun in his hand, skinless and incomplete. A long moment passed, before Lilith sat down beside him.

“What’s wrong, darling?”

He was staring at nothing, brow furrowed. “I can’t remember anymore. I used to fix the image in my head. That was how we created all living things. I can’t remember anymore.”

“Remember?”

“What He looked like.”

The silence drifted between them, unmoored. Blood had slowed in Lilith’s chilled veins. She did not ask who he referred to.

“Think of something close,” she said, “The closest that you can. You’ll be able to do it, I promise.”

Who was she to promise such things, but she didn’t let the conviction waver. It always comforted him.

The glow of his hands swelled again. A skull appeared above the ribcage, sculpted with perfect symmetry. A spine sluiced down from the back. A pelvis. Thick bones, before the muscle knitted over them. It floated again, limbless.

He inspected the creature. The spinning dust intensified around it, growing hotter and brighter. His shoulders tensed, breath hitching. She saw in his desperate gleaming eyes the reflexive attempt to grasp Infinity again.

“Something close,” she reminded him, hand on his back, “Just something close.”

Lucifer breathed. His shoulders slumped. Then something seemed to occur to him. He lifted his other hand, sliding it across the gold-bathed body.

The eye sockets reshaped, enlargened, while the torso divided and shrunk. Its bones thinned, grew fine and brittle-seeming, before the skull distended. Long it stretched and ended at the point of a beak. The muscles regrew.

“It will have to be black,” he muttered, and his voice vibrated through the empty cathedral. As soon as the words landed, feathers sprung out, blazing across the expanse of the body, glossy-dark as night. A pair of wings. Tail feathers. It was very tall when it landed on the ground, upright on taloned feet, the same height as her.

The four eyes were lightless still. Even inert though, she smelled the immense magic within it. And though it was not made under the Creator’s image, Lilith did not care. It would live.

“Oh darling, it’s extraordinary,” she whispered, hugging him. She wanted to ask who he had thought of instead, but resisted. Perhaps another of the seraphim, though how could any of them carry the power to conduit creation if Lucifer could not. He had been the first of them all. Second to the Creator. Who could be closer beyond him?

But it did not matter. She brushed the faintly dull hair out of his face. It was usually so well-kept. He’d been working too hard.

Lucifer smiled. He looked past Lilith’s shoulder, gaze roving over his creation.

“We knew her as His Speaker,” he said, “And she was much taller and the feathers were gold.”

That was all he ever said on the matter.

Forcas created a special tincture for the angel’s fever. The swirling liquid took the quality of twilight, colors shifting like a sunset as she rotated the vial—scarlet to pink to rose gold. She was surprised to learn it was Aunt Bel’s formula and that Forcas had spent a century or two in Sloth. She’d always thought he’d served her parents in Pride since the very beginning.

“Her Majesty selected me personally from the Goetia,” one of his heads said, utterly neutral, if not for the slight puff to his feathers, “She thought she could find use for my medical expertise here.”

“Really? There aren’t many hellborn in Pride.”

“Indeed.” Forcas said, with a wrinkle in his beaks to convey exactly how he felt about the topic. “She asked me here for the sinners, in anticipation of the influx arriving. There was to be a hospital.”

Charlie looked away, setting the tincture back on the kitchen counter. She ignored the warm softness in her chest trying to rise, because beneath was an ocean of ache.

“Oh, I see,” she said, chipping at the counter varnish, “That’s really…That was great of her to think so far ahead.”

“She had enormous vision,” Forcas agreed. He did not offer how there clearly remained no hospital in Pride and she did not ask.

He stacked the medicinals into a neat filigreed box for her, rearranging tubes of ointment and poultices. “Here we are, Your Highness,” he said, handing her the box, along with tincture, “Remember to administer the tincture during a meal. Under the tongue for quickest effect.”

“I will.” Charlie smiled, hugging the package, “Thanks, Forcas.”

“Of course. It is the pleasure of the Ars Goetia to serve the child of the Morningstar.” Forcas collected the pestle and mortar in a tray. “But you’ll forgive me if I leave the rest of the girl’s care to you, Your Highness. Frequent bouts of fainting aren't good for her blood pressure.”

Charlie scratched her cheek, vaguely embarrassed. “I hope you weren’t offended by that, Forcas. It wasn’t really ‘cos of how you look. She was just in a lot of stress by that point.”

Forcas huffed. “I would not dream it was for any other reason.”

Charlie stifled her giggle. For a moment, there was silence as he turned the sink on and water rushed into the basin. Charlie picked at the filigree pattern of the box.

“You know,” she said, “for a second I actually thought Mom might’ve brought you here for Dad. She was so worried about him. We must’ve had a different healer here each month.”

Lilith had been looking for a cure that Hell could not give her, that Charlie could not offer her. Looking away always.

Forcas did not respond. When she glanced back up, his middle face maintained his expressionless measure. The left face was resigned. The right one strange and melancholic.

“His Majesty has always been a different story,” he said, “And I do not presume the ability.”

He deemed them the Ars Goetia.

There were all different kinds, bright feathers in multitudes, three-headed, serpent-tailed, powers that were ice-raveled or fire-laced or plucked from night. Bereft of souls, he wove in their personalities himself with braids of infernal thread.

Group by group he placed them, until there was an entire population filling the hollow city. Singular. Coupled. Family units destined to become dynasties.

When he finished, he flew high. Far past the city’s great dome and the outcropping where Lilith watched.

He flew until the celestial chains flashed into existence around his throat and wings, binding him from further ascension. Icy fear flooded Lilith’s human heart, but he did not look alarmed or surprised, so she kept watching.

Raising his manacled left hand, Lucifer gazed down upon the city of his creations. His wings beat powerfully against their chains. His voice boomed in the red, hissing sky.

“Look up, grand demons of the hollow deep.”

And the Ars Goetia breathed.

The third extermination came on the dot. Charlie caught the exact moment they arrived—light bleaching out the red sky as a portal of Heaven blinked open. The great swarms of wings descending through. They killed less this time. Following the first two exterminations, the sinners had adapted. They reinforced their buildings and shelters, hunkering down for the worst.

But it was still slaughter. Always would be.

The angel was mad with terror. She backed into the corner of Charlie’s room as far as she could go, angling the credenza to block her exposed flank. Her hands shook even as she hugged her knees.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, “What’s happening?”

Charlie knelt down, lifting the quilts the angel had kicked aside in her scramble across the floor. ‘Just your people murdering mine,’ didn’t seem like the best reply.

“It’ll be over soon,” she settled on, glancing at the pink hands of her clock. Ostensibly, there was only an hour left. She could never be sure though, since all the clocks in Pandemonium sped forward when her dad was feeling impatient. “I think so anyway. But we’ll be alright. They leave at midnight.”

The angel’s eye widened. Her head snapped toward the ceiling, realization dawning on her. “The mission,” she said, and if there was any secret concern on Charlie’s part that she would try to use the extermination to reunite with her ilk, it vanished then.

Charlie smoothed the stack of quilts and spread them back out on the floor. “You’re safe here. They never come near the palace.”

“Because of the Morningstar.” It wasn’t phrased like a question.

“Yes.” Charlie tried not to make her smile too nervous. “B-But don’t worry. Like I said, you’re safe. Dad could never hurt you.”

The angel stared at her, bewildered. “Yes, he could,” she said, “He could do absolutely anything to me. Anything. There is no ‘never.’”

Something exploded in the distance. Charlie hurried out of her bedroom and peeked through the window of her antechamber. Black smoke plumed in a small cloud far away. A gas tank or a main in one of the sinner towns.

“Nowhere now can I find redemption.” The angel clutched her hair, the luminous locks pooled around her. Her nails dug into skin. Tears flowed out of her remaining eye.

“That’s not true.” Charlie knelt in front of her. “Please, just calm down—”

“I am judged fallen—”

“—you’re hurting yourself—”

“—condemned to Hell for eternity—”

“--listen to me—”

“--it’s over.”

“No, it isn’t!” Charlie said and yanked the girl into a hug. When she was a child, Lilith had made sure to drill into her the proper forms of etiquette and mannerisms befitting of her title. No interrupting. No raising your voice. And certainly no touching without consent.

She hoped her mom would not mind too much.

The angel froze, pressed to Charlie’s chest. Despite her lingering fever, her body was clammy with sweat. A human heartbeat hammered through her pulse.

Charlie talked fast, words tumbling out. “You’re not condemned, alright? You’re not. I won’t pretend to understand how you feel right now, but I promise, promise this isn’t the end. No one is going to hurt you. Everything you’ve lost, you can get back.”

She squeezed the girl’s shoulders. The walls groaned around them. Through the ajar door, the windowlight from her antechamber vanished. And as staff upstairs rushed to her dad’s chambers, Charlie felt the wet heat scorch down her face in trails.

“Anyone can be saved,” she said, “It has to be true.”

The angel was silent. In hindsight, Charlie probably bruised her up worse than she could’ve ever done to herself, but she couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t move. The angel didn’t push her away. They sat together behind the credenza for who knows how long. Until her clock struck midnight, and blared stupid pop music into Pandemonium’s dark.

Then Charlie dropped her as if burnt. “I’m sorry.” She wiped her face. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Vaggie.”

Charlie blinked. “What?”

The angel fell back against the wall, hair sliding against Charlie’s lap.

“My name,” she said, “It’s Vaggie.”

It had always been there after the Fall.

Following their birth, Lilith began organizing the Goetia immediately. They would need infrastructure, leadership and ways to manage the abundant resources of the city. There was much to be done. For their part, they listened carefully. Absorbed her words with rapt attention.

What was more, they were quite opinionated among themselves, jockeying for her favor and regard. There were rivalries and calculations. They formed memories with each other, past the scope of her or Lucifer’s awareness. They lived.

And as their civilization blossomed, they constructed more cities of their own and expanded beyond the limits of Pride. Satan wandered back, badgering for instruction on how to make creations of his own. In a fit of annoyance, Lucifer taught him and from Satan (to the best of his ability) came the infernal imps. Then, because if he showed one then he had to show the other five, Lucifer taught the rest of the Sins as well.

Hell teemed with succubi, incubi, hellhounds and monstrous ghost-fish from the deep.

It was not the Garden, Lilith knew, and never ever would be. She dared to believe it was better.

“So, Dad, this is Vaggie. And Vaggie, this is my dad.”

With a flourish, she gestured Vaggie forward. Vaggie stood rigid. Charlie settled her hand in the middle of her back. The corded muscles there were locked into knots. Charlie tried to hide her smile.

“Now that she’s all better, she wanted to come up and introduce herself.” Gently, she nudged Vaggie into the room. Motion seemed to break whatever trance Vaggie was in, because she stiffened and took two quick steps forward.

“Y-Yes, a pleasure to meet you,” she said, a pronounced croak in her throat, “Thank you for your hospitality, um, Your Majesty.”

Her dad stared at them from his desk. For an exasperated moment, Charlie wondered if he’d forgotten who she was again, before he tilted his head.

“Sure thing. Any friend of Charlie’s is always welcome here. No need for the majesty stuff.”

“Yes, Seraphim—I mean, sir. Morningstar, sir.”

Charlie winced.

Lucifer snorted as Vaggie’s face drained of color. “Anyway, sad to say you won’t be able to sample the rest of the rings. All fallen get an exclusive ticket here with me. But I’m sure Forcas could give you a tour of the Pentagram if you wanted one for whatever reason.”

“Actually, Dad, I don’t mind just taking her around,” Charlie said, before sidling up to his side of the desk, “There’s one other thing. Vaggie and I were talking and I wanted to run it by you first.”

“It’s truly amazing,” she said one day, spreading her arms upon the balcony rail, where Hell bustled beyond Pandemonium, “Can you believe all this has happened, darling?”

Lucifer smiled. He reclined in a chair beneath the shade of the balcony, hands folded in his lap. He was much stiller than he used to be. She wished he would dance with her again, like he had at the beginning, but he said he preferred to sit and watch these days.

“Anything you desire,” he said, “If you want it, then it’s yours, Lili.”

“You mean it’s ours,” she said and drew up to him, kneeling down to see him unobscured of red shadows, “And the best is yet to come.”

A strange look came over him as he observed her, not dissimilar to the way he’d first looked at her in Eden. Like he saw something mystifying. Shocking. His gaze fell to her hands, before rising to her belly.

Then he grinned and despite the wan shadows beneath his eyes, there was not a being in Creation more beautiful. More divine.

Centuries later, Lilith will wonder if he had known all along what would happen to him. If he had realized someday she would be forced to watch the light bleed out of him piece by piece, bit by bit, over and over again. That a year from now, she would wake to him sitting at the edge of their bedside, hands limp in his lap, staring into nothing.

For it had always been there after the Fall.

“Yes,” he said and tucked the loose hair from her face, “The best is yet to come.”

“I have this idea, Dad, about the sinners.” Charlie framed her hands. “Picture this, a hotel.”

Chapter Text

The line clicked on.

The line clicked off.

The parcel she purchased was an abandoned sinner complex, perched on a serene hillside outside the noise of Pentagram City. It was a wide property, dotted with rocks of pure onyx and speckled nightshade. A beautiful pyrewillow stood rooted on the incline, its thick crooked branches wrapped in ashthorn. It was a fixer-upper that would eat away a lot of time, but it would be worth it. Charlie was certain.

“And as Man’s wickedness grew, so did Hell’s armies,” Vaggie muttered, hands on hips as they surveyed the roof.

From here, the Pentagram was a sea of casino and brothel lights in the pit of the valley. The opulent towers of the overlords glared out like neon beacons. Sinners packed in like sardines. Much more than last century. Far more. It was undeniable.

“They’re not part of any army here,” Charlie said for the third time.

“You don’t have to be modest,” Vaggie said gravely, “The Host have all heard of the legions in Hell commanded by the Morningstar.”

Charlie’s shoulders drooped. She crossed her arms against the rusty safety rail and refrained from correcting Vaggie and scaring her. Between the Goetia and the Sins, her dad had no need for a bunch of tormented souls to shield Hell with. By all rights, he probably didn’t need the Goetia or the Sins either. He was shield enough for them all.

There was no Hell without the Morningstar.

“I apologize.”

Charlie blinked out of her thoughts. She glanced over at Vaggie, who studied her with remorse.

“It was insensitive of me to bring up your father,” she said, “I know you were disappointed by his response to the hotel.”

“No, no, it’s not your fault, Vaggie,” Charlie said, cringing as the inevitable scenes from two months ago looped through her mind’s eye again. To say her dad’s reaction had been lackluster was an understatement. Charlie sighed and ran a hand through her hair. “Maybe he didn’t really hear me. I should’ve made sure he was in the right state first. Sometimes it sneaks up on him.”

That was it. That had to be why. She was so stupid.

“Sneaks up on him?” Vaggie said, “What does?”

Hot wind gusted across the roof and rifled through their hair, a mournful howl, before descending into the valley.

Charlie smiled and flapped her hand. “Nothing. Sorry, just talking to myself.” She turned and waved towards the rest of the roof top behind, all sooty ground and bent ducts. “By the way, what do you think of this spot, Vaggie? I got so excited, I realized I never asked.”

Vaggie shrugged. “My opinion’s immaterial. It’s your mission.”

“Oh, come on! I’d still like to know.”

“Hm.” Vaggie crossed her arms, unimpressed with her wheedling. She looked out towards the city. “Seems rather out of the way. There’s a high possibility this location will be inaccessible for most of the sinners and halve any of the potential clientele you’re hoping for. Also, this particular view puts the degeneracy and folly of their city on full display, which is pure temptation.” She lifted a finger to halt Charlie’s flabbergasted retort. “But I like it, Charlie.”

“You do?”

“Yes, it’s a good view.”

“Literally just heard you say the view’s terrible.”

“Of the city where they came from,” Vaggie said and pointed upward, “Not the place where they’ll go.”

Charlie looked out at the white sphere far above. Despite its distance, it still bathed the dirty rooftop in soft light. Still gleamed, as though a droplet on Vaggie’s slender fingertip. Charlie willed the heat from rushing to her face.

“You do believe me then?” she said and Vaggie scoffed.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” she said, “But I do owe you. So I’m going to help you succeed. Failure’s not an option.”

She walked past Charlie, hair feathering behind her.

“Now do any of your demons know how to renovate?”

She should’ve waited until they’d secured the actual place. Why hadn’t she done that?

“Condemned souls can’t be redeemed, Charlie.”

“We still have to try, Dad, it’s only right. They suffer so much here.”

“Sure, it’s a shame,” he said, slurring slightly, chin propped on palm, “But they had their shot.”

What had she expected him to say, as she hovered at his desk flipping through her dumb drawings? That was no impression to start off on. She’d just wasted his time and tired him out.

It’d be different once she showed him the real thing.

Renovations took another three months to complete. An outrageous timeline, considering the bare minimum amount of work the construction sinners ended up doing. Only the framing, loadbearers, plumbing and electrical wiring (or so they claimed) were completed, before they demanded additional payment.

Vaggie threw a fit. She’d adapted to Hell with shocking speed for a former angel, unfazed by either her lost eye or any of the Pentagram’s daily carnage. She saw through ploys and honey words better than Charlie ever could. It was as though this new world had seeped into her and the last of Heaven had dried like water out of her hair.

“They didn’t even install a fucking lock,” she said, as the limo cruised down the city streets, “They wouldn’t have dared if you just told them who you are.”

“I mean sometimes they still do. And I don’t really want to make it a whole thing. It can really freak them out.”

“Isn’t that the point, Charlie?” Vaggie sighed, shaking her head. “I also can’t believe they didn’t just recognize you. Are they all blind as well?”

Charlie twiddled her thumbs. “I haven’t exactly been…out much. At least not this far into the city. I like staying closer to home.”

Her dad had been reluctant to let her go far into the Pentagram. She’d fought about it once, as a stupid teenager, screaming that she hated being locked inside the palace with him, that he had caged her and destroyed her. Cruel words that she didn’t mean, but were all she had. He’d backed down.

She stayed in the city for the entire day. It wasn’t particularly fun, since she was crying for most of it. The neon signs hurt her eyes. Vomit splattered doorways. By the end all she wanted was to make up with him and a hug.

So she went home and he’d been so dissociated that he thought he was in Eden and had nearly incinerated one of the cooks over a fruit bowl. Aunt Bel had to come sedate him. Charlie never went far from the palace again after that.

Vaggie collapsed against the seat. “That’s great. No one’s going to give that place the time of day when it looks like a half-finished wreck. Let’s just look for a new contractor.”

Charlie nodded eagerly and scooted to the front to inform the chaffeur. She’d come to find a lot of comfort in Vaggie’s self-assurance, how she made room for herself with such unquestioning ease. Charlie was intoxicated by the possibility that they were friends. It clutched her with wild giddiness.

They circled Pentagram City twice without luck. The other contractors all attempted various degrees of similar scams. Even the ones that heard them out refused to make the trip all the way out of the Pentagram. Charlie floated the idea of mentioning the hotel in their proposals, wondering if it’d make the sinners more partial to help. Vaggie vetoed it without a thought.

“It’s too abstract, Charlie. They’ll think we’re full of shit.” She crossed her arms, glaring at the retreating backs of the latest sinners to walk away laughing at them. This bar was quieter than the other ones they’d had meetings in, dimmed with floral smoke and low-lights.

“You know what I do think would actually help? Name-dropping your dad a couple times,” she said it with gingerness, as though poking at a bruise, “I just think it would move this along a lot faster.”

Charlie’s face fell. She tore another strip out of one of the napkins she was shredding. It was as deeply red as the rest of the bar. ‘Val’s Vixens’ was printed on the front in an elegant font. Well, that explained the heart-shaped ears on all the servers.

“I know,” she said, “I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just really want to do this on my own. I want to surprise him with it. I think he’ll really like the idea.”

Vaggie gave her an odd look. “You already told him the idea.”

“Well, yeah, but those were only doodles.” She folded the napkin into a square. “This would be like a physical place. We could take him on a tour of all the rooms.” He would be obsessed with the atelier she had planned. She could see it now.

“If you say so,” Vaggie said, understandably a little taciturn. Though she’d been living at Pandemonium since her recovery, Lucifer and Vaggie rarely saw each other. At first, Charlie worried it was because Vaggie was still frightened by him, before realizing it was less so fear than a mix of intimidation and profound awkwardness. He tended to have that effect on people.

“And not just my dad,” Charlie said, excitement bubbling, “The guests are gonna love it! We’ll have a rec room, a garden—”

“Okay, slow down,” Vaggie snapped, though her mouth tilted along the corners. “We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves when it’s already this hard to find a renovator. I don’t even want to think about the first guest—”

The sinner slammed into their table. He skidded across its top, knocking over their empty glasses and condiment caddies, before hitting the floor at their feet. In a flash, Vaggie’s dagger was out while Charlie jumped a mile, legs scrabbling up onto the booth.

“Hey!” Vaggie stepped in front of her. “What the fuck are you doing?”

The sinner groaned and flipped onto his back. Strips of Charlie’s napkin caught in his pale pink hair, before he pushed himself upright on four spidery arms. He was very tall and slender. A magenta mini dress hugged his body.

“Fuck.” He dusted off the dress. “I hate this shift.”

“I asked you a question,” Vaggie snapped.

The sinner turned, glancing at them in a cold, irked way, as though they were the ones who had crashed into him. A fat bruise purpled his right eye. Blood dripped from a busted lip. Charlie’s mouth opened.

“I’d watch your gob, Angel,” a giant sinner said, trudging over, eyes round and yellow like a goat’s, “There’s a limit to how cute that sass is.”

The sinner named Angel grinned. He wiped the blood off his chin with a swipe of his thumb.

“Are those ears just decor?” he said, “You got what you paid for. No more, no less.”

“I told you I didn’t want you wagging your slutty ass at anyone else here.” The goat sinner walked closer, until he was two feet away. Veined muscles bulged from his neck and shoulders. Angel was a pink toothpick in his shadow, but that didn’t seem to give him pause at all. If anything, it made him grin wider. Look wilder. Charlie’s blood ran cold.

“Wait.” She stumbled out of the booth, trying to push past Vaggie. “Don’t—”

“And why should I listen to you, huh?” Angel said, “You think you and I are like that? We fucking boyfriends? Who the fuck are you even? Just another pathetic freak who can’t get his own dick wet.”

The goat sinner’s eyes flamed—two lumps of glowing coal in the shadowed room. Charlie cast a frantic glance at the rest of the bar, but they were all silent, staring as if transfixed. Vaggie grabbed her hand when she tried to move forward again.

“We need to go.”

“But—”

“Quit while you can, baby.” The sinner’s teeth appeared, long serrated reams in a goat’s mouth. “No fucking crack whore plays with me.”

“Play with you?” Angel spat out a laugh that was half blood. “I said you got what you paid for. Not my fault you ain’t big enough for the truth, baby.”

Charlie shoved past Vaggie.

“Wait!” She dove forward as the large sinner’s fist went ramming at Angel’s face. Desperate heat glowed in her heart and coursed through her bones. She squeezed her eyes shut like a fool. Could only picture Angel on the floor afterwards, snapped neck dangling like a crushed flower.

Something collided with her palm. It was firm, but not especially forceful. Almost like the weight of a foam ball.

Charlie’s eyes snapped open at the ear-splitting yowl which followed.

“You bitch!” The sinner was on his knees, eyes tear-riddled, gripping the wrist of his right hand. The flesh was swollen purple. The fingers bent wrong. Something hard and white poked out of a knuckle. “What the fuck?” the sinner said,”What the fuck?”

The whole bar stared at her. Vaggie stared at her. Angel was squinting at her, like he’d just noticed her presence for the first time.

Charlie lowered her hand from where it had still been held aloft. In the dark, a microwave finished and beeped twice. Then her phone rang—a muffled series of angry duck quacks. She fumbled it out of her pocket. Accidentally pressed the speaker button.

“Your Highness?” her chaffeur, Pox, said into the room, “I’ve got the car waiting up front for you.”

Whatever spell cast over the silence shattered. Vaggie was already in motion though, snatching Charlie’s wrist. They sprinted out the door, before the swell of voices rose behind them.

When she was very young, her father had told her stories about the floating galaxies and the swirling weave of the cosmos. Drew them on her rippling bedroom wall, golden with his magic.

“At the beginning,” he said, “the Creator breathed and the universe burst with light.”

He held up a candle for her to see better with, though he was brighter than the flame. Brighter than anything he was pointing at. Charlie had looked into his face and thought the cosmos swam right there in her father’s gaze. She was of the firm belief that he had created the galaxies—shaping the mortal stars like blown glass and hanging them like beads, all lustrous and crystalline.

“Oh, duckling,” he said, chest puffed up, sly grin split wide, “If that’s what you believe, who am I to tell you otherwise?”

She goggled in amazement, staring up at her cool and powerful dad who had created the stars and could grant her anything. He told her that stars were all souls waiting to be born. That he saw the Creator pluck them from blackest space for each new breath of human life.

“Did you see Mommy?” she asked, for she knew her mother had been human once too.

“She was the prettiest one,” he agreed.

“Did you see me?”

He smiled and squeezed her too tight. It was a sudden breathless hug, like he was bracing against something far too heavy.

“Of course I did,” he said, “I see you, Charlie.”

The ride back to Pandemonium was uncomfortable. Vaggie stared out at the blurring landscape, back ramrod straight. Charlie perched on the edge of her own seat, trying not to fidget too much. She itched to ask Vaggie what she was thinking about. If she thought Charlie had screwed everything up for good somehow. If she was scared of her now.

Up front, Pox muttered profanities at the mini-tv. Charlie couldn’t make out the screen from her spot, but there was a gold flash of her own hair. Something emblazoned like a headline. Charlie’s hands were over-warm, heat humming beneath her fingertips. She avoided touching anything in the car.

When they walked through the palace doors, Forcas was already waiting.

“I trust your day was an eventful one,” he said, dry as bone, before producing his phone. A news crew was already at Val’s Vixens, capturing footage of their broken table, still littered with pieces of her napkin. There was a reel someone had posted of her catching the goat sinner’s hand. A recording of Pox’s call. Excitable witnesses recounted the scene with embellished detail. Angel wasn’t among them.

The Princess of Hell was slumming it in the Pentagram. The sinners didn’t know what to make of it. Was she here to muscle her way in?

Vague mortification twisted in Charlie’s gut. Sunk deep into her belly. Forcas slid his phone back into his pocket. He didn’t ask what they’d been doing, though his right face clearly wanted to.

“Well, you both certainly need dinner now.” Forcas waved at one of the underbutlers, who bowed and strode off to the kitchens. “And to get cleaned up. You smell like that city.”

Vaggie nodded and turned for the washrooms. She did offer a glance at Charlie before she left though, a bemused yet somehow noncommittal look. Was there dislike in it? Charlie tried to calm the rising tide of her distress. The humming heat in her hands grew worse, pulsing in her ears.

“Is Dad free, Forcas?” she said, “Can I see him?”

“His Majesty retired to his rooms.” Forcas’s beaks tightened. “But Your Highness…you might want to postpone telling him anything important to another time. When he’ll remember it better.”

Charlie barely heard him, already hurrying upstairs.

As expected, there was no answer when she knocked.

“Dad?” Charlie slipped in, closing the door with a soft click.

The lights were off again. Only a handful of candles illuminated the room, guttering in a cool phantom wind. There was a sound from far away, on the edge of audible, like chimes. Charlie drew up to the dark silken bedside. She had a distant memory that her dad used to curl up when he slept, but now he lay on his side stringless. Arms simply splayed. Pale hair against his porcelain skin. It was such a huge bed and he looked so small.

Charlie’s throat tightened. She kicked off her shoes.

He stirred as the mattress dipped, glazed eyes slitting open when she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “Lilith?”

“No, it’s me, Dad.”

There was a beat, before his frame loosened. “Oh, hey, duckling.”

Instead of answering, Charlie tightened her arm around his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He blinked in exhaustion at a pillow. “Yes, ‘m fine. Jus’ tired.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No, Charlie. Of course not.” A limp hand shifted to wrap around hers and Charlie’s breath escaped her as the humming heat evaporated out of her palm. “What is it?”

The words spilled out, half-jumbled, though she tried to make it concise and comprehensible. The boy named Angel. The sinner with the goat eyes. The bar with the crimson napkins. Her face on the news, all of Hell knowing.

“I broke his hand, Dad.”

There was a long silence. She was really getting anxious of silences today.

“You…what?”

“Broke his hand.” She sighed, pressing closer to his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to! I just wanted him to stop. He was really going to hurt that other guy. I tried to block the punch and then his hand just snapped in two.” She felt him shaking. For a second, she panicked before leaning over for a closer look and—

“Are you laughing? Dad!”

“Sorry, honey,” he said softly, grin spreading, “But I just…that surprised me, is all. Not what I was expecting to hear.”

“I know,” Charlie said, lamentful.

“That’s my girl.”

“What? Dad, no!” She sat up to glare at him. “This is serious! I was trying to help, but I only made it worse.”

“You made it no worse than it already was, Charlie.” He shifted onto his back, breathing out, ringed eyes on the ceiling. “Demons need to be put in their place occasionally. They tend to get uppity otherwise. Do you regret stepping in?”

Charlie drooped. “No,” she said, voice firm though, because she remembered Angel’s battered face as he struggled to his feet. The manic, senseless boldness of someone small facing someone big. “That goat guy was horrible. I really messed up his hand though.”

Lucifer laughed, eyes like lanterns in the dark. “There are worse things to live through. Trust me.”

Charlie crossed her arms, trying not to pout. “His fist was so light,” she said, tracing the outline of her hand, the tips of her blackened nails, “I didn’t even feel the bones.”

“Naturally,” Lucifer said, flippant, “And the surface hasn’t even been scratched yet, duckling.” But he regarded her, thoughtful, and his gaze softened. “But it’s your power to use however you want. Or not at all. I’m just saying, don’t be afraid of it.”

He reached up and brushed the hair out of her face. Charlie couldn’t help her smile.

“Well, at least we won’t have a problem finding a new contractor now.”

“Contractor?”

“You’ll see, Dad.” She flopped onto her stomach, hugging one of the pillows under her chest. “When it’s done, Vaggie and I’ll give you the tour.” She hesitated a beat. “Or I hope she will anyway. She might be mad at me now.”

Lucifer scoffed. “If she’s mad, Charlie, then let me talk to her. Guaranteed she won’t be mad for much longer.”

“That’s not what I meant at all,” Charlie said, and rolled half on top of him, giggling when he elbowed her gently.

Within a week, they had a new contractor finish the hotel. The asking price was barely a third of what it should’ve been. Her protest against special treatment only seemed to make them more determined to complete the project as fast as possible. They would’ve done it all for free if Charlie hadn’t insisted. The foreman almost wet himself shaking her hand.

After two centuries of dodging the spotlight in Pride, she hoped this wasn’t the image she’d be stuck with among the sinners.

On the bright side, the hotel was stunning. The polished wood and plush velvet carpeting. The gold trims of the reception desk and staircase. How the parlor’s fireplace was exactly as she requested, the perfect position to offset the endlessly eerie red tint of the windows. Even the suites had the color palettes she’d wanted.

They still forgot to install a lock, but Charlie was loath to call them back again.

“It really doesn’t look too bad,” Vaggie said, as the limo pulled out of the lot, the spotlights of the hotel shrinking into the distance.

“It’s all thanks to your help,” Charlie said, offering a smile. Vaggie shot a mild one back. Aside from a passing comment that she should’ve expected as much from the Morning Star’s daughter, Vaggie hadn’t mentioned Val’s Vixens again. And because Charlie didn’t know how to bring it up herself, she hadn’t either. Things did seem more reticent between them these days. Or was that Charlie’s imagination?

It was all because of her powers! She never wanted to use them again.

“We’ve arrived, Your Highness.”

Charlie blinked, knocked from her spiral as Pox slowed to a halt. Outside, the massive ash-smeared stacks of the sinners’ industrial yard loomed through the window. They were here already. She unbuckled.

Vaggie gave her an exasperated look as Charlie slid out a crystal case from the lower seat compartment.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Um, not like one-hundred percent sure,” Charlie conceded as she opened the case. A bouquet of bloodglass orchids glowed in a chiffon wrap. “But pretty sure! I just want to apologize, you know? He worked there and everything. I hope I didn’t get him in trouble.”

“Demons aren’t hard to predict, Charlie,” Vaggie said as they made their way toward the apartment complex beyond the yard, “Of course you got him in trouble. But if everything you snooped through is true, it’s not exactly like he’s begging for work.”

“I wouldn’t call it snooping. It was targeted research.” And it hadn’t been much initially. Just that the sinner boy named Angel was actually famous. Angel Dust being his full stage name. She had to panic-decline her phone’s eager offers to showcase the best of his filmography.

Maybe she should’ve let it go there, but his face haunted her. Followed her. She just wanted to know he was okay. She hadn’t expected the manager at Val’s Vixens to pull Angel’s entire file for her, but at least it got them an address.

“Would he really live in a shithole like this?” Vaggie’s nose wrinkled at the decayed fenceline wrapping along the sidewalk, smeared with blood and greasepaint. “Isn’t his studio part of that big, flashy tower? Hard to believe he can’t find somewhere better.”

“I did ask about that.” Charlie hopped over an oil puddle. “But his file said he wanted all his mail sent here.” It was an easier location than trying to go to Vee Tower. Charlie didn’t know much about it aside from the fact that it was owned by overlords, but that was more than enough reason to avoid it.

They passed a scavenged bulldozer and avant-garde arrangements of cinderblocks. Charlie tried not to stiffen too obviously at a giant crater in the middle of the road, overflowing with tires and flies.

Vaggie tilted her head. “It’s over thirty feet deep. I didn’t know Hell experienced earthquakes like the mortal world does.”

“It’s rare,” Charlie said softly, “Almost never.” She speedwalked past it.

Despite the labyrinthine maze of chaotically organized lots, they found the apartment listed for Angel’s address on the top floor. It had a sturdy door pocked with burn marks.

Hot pink spray paint scrawled across the front: CHERRI’S MANCAVE

“I thought his name was Angel.”

“It is.” Charlie rubbed her chin. “Cherri could be his roommate? Ohh, or girlfriend!” Vaggie glanced at her with skepticism, but Charlie grinned. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her that Angel might live with someone else. The fact that he wasn’t here alone strangely cheered her.

Maybe she could even tell them about the hotel.

Straightening up the bouquet, Charlie stepped to the door. She knocked twice.

Chapter Text

Thirteen human months after the creation of Pandemonium, he saw his brothers. They would appear in the sky, at the palace windows, in the dust of Hell. He didn’t tell Lilith. He knew they weren’t there. They were gone.

“Do you know what happens now?” Gabriel asked.

Lucifer ignored him. He was seated in a sea of poppies. Soft-stemmed, smooth-petalled things, bestowed a mortal name by Adam of all people. They brushed against his ankles. Ghosted his wrists. He traced the sloped clouds.

“Are you ignoring me?” Gabriel sighed as he watched from the top of a grassy knoll. “Lucifer.”

In this world, his wings were whole again, every delicate miniscule bone perfect as the day of their creation. His arms no longer charred. No more horns or tail. No wound near slicing his chest in half. Fuck, how that chest wound bled. On and off, on and off. Ichor on the sheets, on their clothes, on the bandages Lilith had changed an hour ago. Beading on the floor until Pandemonium quivered and sucked the gleaming ambrosia down through its stones. Had he been mortal, between his chest and his wings, he would’ve been dead ten times over.

“I know you know you’re dreaming.”

I know you know that I know.

“Now that’s childish. Will your anger keep you from listening?”

Lucifer thought Gabriel was too full of stupid questions even for a dream. He thought Gabriel should try fighting him without the aid of Michael for once, unlike when they had conspired against him.

“I’d never win, brother. You were the first of the seraphim.” Gabriel drew closer, a handful of steps. “And you know we did not conspire. Will you listen to me?”

They had cast him down. Destroyed him forever. And all for what?

For fucking what?

The world began to tremble.

Gabriel’s eyes flickered, the same ageless bronze as his horn. “The humans always say the artistic minds are the moodiest ones.” He looked at him and Lucifer did not need to look as well to know ichor wept from his chest again. The wound snaked across his skin, a glowing fissure. Feathers wet with gold scattered about his legs.

“Fractured creature, brother mine, will you fight me like this?”

He would kill him like this.

Gabriel shook his head. “You must stop creating to please her. You are too lost.”

Who was this little brat to tell him what he was? Lucifer stood, wings dragging behind him. He would—

Lucifer sat up. The sheets pooled down from his bandaged chest. His wings shivered with pain, heaving in makeshift splints. A still barren Hell trembled outside.

Lilith breathed and turned in her sleep. Her face pressed against his waist.

When she first woke up in Hell, Cherri was more at peace than most. She’d been a wild girl and not a particularly nice one. Had done shitty things to people who deserved it and even more to people who didn’t. She’d always been told she’d meet old Lucifer in the flesh one day if she persisted down the track she was on. It was even one of the last things she heard. Some version of it from her mum right before she disowned her, voice like a distant bee over the phone.

Cherri remembered the molotov sailing at the oil drums. Whichever gangbanger sprinting off. The dry gust against her legs. Being wrecked on coke. Whatever, she’d thought and that was all.

Angie had found her. He’d been dead near forty years before she arrived and became her personal guide through that first decade of eternal damnation. Helped her carve out a place with smoke and gunpowder. She’d never say it to his face, but for that he had her ever-lasting gratitude. He was a dramatic, cranky bitch, but he was home.

After he admitted he’d sold his soul to become a fucking porn star, she could’ve killed him again herself. One, because it felt like she was destined to be alone. And two, because the bitch used her address and now all his creepy fans kept showing up at her door.

In fact, when Cherri heard the two crisp knocks, she was tempted to toss out the first little surprise she’d made out of the batch this morning and go back to her nap. Who knew what possessed her to forgo that in favor of dragging herself to the door.

“Good morning!” said the fucking Princess of Hell holding a bouquet, “I’m Charlie!”

There was some pissed off-looking chick beside her.

Cherri was too sober for this shit. “...What?”

“Oh, um, I said I’m Charlie—”

“I know who you are,” Cherri said, staring at her, “Why are you here?” God, though didn’t she already have a feeling why? She’d seen the news like the rest of the city that night. Her dread was only confirmed a second later.

“We’re looking for Angel?” Princess of Hell said, “Angel Dust is his full name, I think? Or at least what he goes by now. I thought this was his address, but I’m not—let me just check…” She maneuvered the bouquet to one arm, groping frantically in her suit pocket. Whatever flowers were in that fabric wrap, they clinked like a cluster of bells. Something reserved for that lofty upper echelon of hellborn. Far too fancy for sinners.

“Uh, this is Unit 88 right? Of the Industrial Park?” The princess held out a slip of paper. It was Cherri’s address alright, written in looping cursive and dotted hearts. God, she was going to kill Angie.

“We know this is the right place,” pissed-off chick said, “Is he here or not?”

Oh, an attitude.

Cherri leaned against the door. “There is no Unit 88, babe. Not since half of the floors got sheared off in the hellquake seven years back.” She batted her eye. “So no, you don’t know shit actually.”

“Vaggie, wait,” the princess said, holding out an arm to block her bitchy friend from doing whatever she was planning to do. Too bad, because Cherri was always up for teaching assholes manners and there was an infinite supply of them in Hell.

“I’m sorry,” the princess said, “I must’ve had the wrong address. Please excuse us. We didn’t mean to disturb.”

She turned, ushering Vaggie with her, and for the Devil’s spawn she sure looked like a kicked puppy. Too bad Cherri was dead to that stuff. She leaned against the jamb, glaring at their backs.

While her initial instinct was to keep the princess as far away from Angie as possible, it occurred to her that this was also a chance to get a pulse-read on the situation. He’d been hysterical by the time he’d stumbled back from the Vixens that night. From what Cherri had gathered, Valentino didn’t care when Angie was mouthy with other sinners, but had a line at drawing the attention of the Morningstar.

Nothing she said had comforted him. She even promised they’d find a way to get him out of his deal together, that she’d fight Valentino herself if she had to. It only seemed to freak him out more. By dawn the next morning, he was gone. She hadn’t seen him since. Cherri’s mouth twisted.

“Wait,” she said, “Angie’s still at work, alright? But he’ll be back in a few.”

The princess spun back around, beaming at a hundred watts.

“So he does live here?”

Cherri faked a smile. She held the door open. “You can wait for him if you want.”

She thought she’d need to do some more cajoling first, but the princess walked right over.

“Oh my goodness, thank you! That’s really so kind…” she said, walking in, still babbling away. The Vaggie girl followed, sending Cherri a withering look. There was a huge stick up that one. What kind of name was Vaggie anyway?

Cherri shoved her hands in her pockets and shut the door again carefully. Somewhere deep in the walls, the broken pipes still squealed and rattled from the motion—one of many things the hellquake had fucked up that no one bothered to fix. Nobody in the Pentagram ever wondered why Hell was constantly breaking itself back open.

Nobody except one idiot.

Hell was mutilated with fractures and holes.

Objectively, this was not remarkable. When categorized in the strictest sense, there was little scientific reason for why seismic activities would not occur in Hell. Particularly when the surface topography was every bit as solid, concrete and inherently coherent as the topography of Earth. Relatively speaking.

Pentious had been dead long enough to know Pentagram City was nowhere near the final borders of the underworld, but he didn’t dare think beyond it. Don’t look down, as they say. Pride alone was enough to study.

“Here will suffice,” he said, and his egg boys waddled past him, carrying each their weight in computers, recorders and cables. They settled the items close to the edge of the pit. For some unfathomable reason, the imbecilic sinners here had filled it to the brim with old tires. Some fool must’ve gotten inadvertently buried as well, since the mass wriggled with maggots and flies.

The pit extended thirty feet down. It had appeared in the industrial park seven years ago, from a mighty hellquake that had destroyed half the city and lasted an astonishing week. The largest one ever, if he could believe the oldest sinners.

“What’re ya looking for this time, boss?” Egg Boy 1 asked.

“The same thing as last time, my little yolk.” Pentious adjusted the knobs of the seismograph. “The nature of the Hellquakes.” Straight after the last one, he had tried and failed to pinpoint the epicenter with the remains of his salvaged equipment. Now that his resources were sufficiently replenished, he would delve anew into his questions. Where were they coming from? What similarities did they share with the earthquakes of his mortal life?

Why, when he mapped out the bedrock’s texture, was it so covered in fractures that Hell resembled less land than the scarred expanse of an ancient god’s flesh?

None of the other denizens stopped to question it. Not even Baxter. They thought him a loon who wasted his time. There was nothing further to understand. They were here.

It could be that they were right. Pentious knew well why he was in Hell and always would. But it’s not as if he didn’t have the time. And just because he was damned, did not mean he wasn’t still curious.

“Oh, boss, I think Miss Cherri Bomb’s home,” Egg Boy 4 said, standing on tiptoe, “I just saw her go inside.”

“Really.” Pentious plugged the cables into a portable generator. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the dilapidated apartment complex. On the top floor, her door was shut, that garish message still prominently displayed. “Well, one does have time to spare when unemployed.”

“I think we should go say hi,” Egg Boy 1 said, “Miss Cherri Bomb always likes seeing us.”

“Aren’t you unemployed too, boss?” Egg Boy 3 said, his least favorite and to whom Pentious did not dignify with a reply.

“I am far too busy for her frivolities today,” he said, and tapped mindlessly at the keyboard as he waited for his latest software to buffer. The speed was atrocious. This truly was Hell.

“Aw, she loves to fight with you, boss!” Egg Boy 1 said.

“Yes, well, as I said, no time for inane barbarism.”

“But you could show her the new rockets you made!” Egg Boy 4 said, pointing up at his airship.

That was a tantalizing point. Pentious stroked his chin. Caustic as she was, Cherri Bomb proved an attentive audience to the sheer genius and magnitude of his latest inventions.

“The rockets would be a bit much for this terrain,” he mused, “But the ray guns are just as worthy of showcasing.”

“Even better!” Egg Boys 1 and 4 said. Pentious hummed. He set down the keyboard.

“Uh, what about all this equipment, boss?” Egg Boy 3 said, “We just set this all up. Are you gonna leave it here?”

“Stay and guard it then,” Pentious snapped, and headed back in the direction of his airship for his weapons, Egg Boys 1 and 4 toddling behind. He may as well afford himself a pinch of distraction and indulgence. He had seen the maddening effects of time on sinners here.

It was rare to find someone to break the monotony with.

This was a waste of time.

Vaggie had known it would be the second they’d gone on this pointless trip. This Angel Dust wouldn’t appreciate flowers and an apology. He was a soul in Hell. The fact that he hadn’t spoken out to set the record straight on what happened at Val’s Vixens was proof of his so-called character. Yet no matter how many times Vaggie had said it, she hadn’t been heeded.

“I know they look fancy, but they’re really not hard to take care of,” Charlie was saying, making a glittering arrangement of the bouquet in a milk pitcher, “Just a pinch of sulfur in the water and a teeny drop of blood every month. My mom used to say bloodglass orchids are impossible to kill.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep it in mind,” Cherri said, with poorly disguised boredom. She was leaned up against the kitchen counter, picking her nails with a switchblade. The apartment was a mess. Soot-stained walls. Scattered clothes on every surface. There was an acrid smell of gunpowder in the air. The smoke-tinged burst of firecrackers. This sinner knew how to fight. Vaggie’s shoulders coiled. She shifted her position closer to the sole door.

“So what’s someone like you bringing Angie flowers for anyway?” Cherri said, “I mean, he’s pretty popular, but you don’t seem the type to, you know, be familiar with his stuff. You a fan, highness?”

Charlie laughed, the sound pitched. “Ah, just Charlie please. And no. No, no, not me, though I’m sure his work is very excellent. I did read some of the reviews—b-but that’s not actually why I’m here.”

She took out her phone and went on to repeat the events at Val’s Vixens. It hadn’t seemed to occur to her that Cherri was likely already aware of what happened, given the entire thing was viral. Granted, Vaggie was still unsure of the extent of the media coverage herself. Charlie had offered to get her a phone weeks ago, but it had never seemed pressing compared to the hotel’s renovations. They hadn’t needed phones in Heaven, she remembered.

“...and I really, really didn’t mean to cause trouble. Or make anything harder for him.”

“Uh-huh, so you were just helpin’ poor Angie out?” Cherri flipped her phone around. “‘Cos these headlines sure sound like you were aiming to make some kind of statement.”

CHARLOTTE MORNINGSTAR SHUFFLES THE DECKS: THE PRINCESS OF HELL STAKES HER STREET

Vaggie blinked. There was no substance behind the article, cobbled together by blurred photos and talking heads, but the fact that zero recent activity hadn’t killed the story was surprising.

“What?” Charlie screeched, hand grabbing at her hair, “I didn’t—I was just trying to—I wasn’t staking anything! Why do they keep thinking that?”

Cherri shrugged. “To be fair, no one’s sure what to think. You haven’t been seen around the city in a while, babe.”

“I can’t go far,” Charlie said, firmer, “Not with my dad at home—”

She cut herself off. Vaggie blinked again. It was the fraction of a second, a faint catch of breath that was nigh unnoticeable for anyone who hadn’t spent hours upon hours with Charlie. Certainly, Cherri didn’t notice.

“The Devil’s the overprotective type. Alright, I’ve heard weirder.” Cherri tucked a hand beneath her chin. Her free hand drummed on the counter. “Speaking of your old man, no one’s seen him for even longer. Like centuries. What’s he think about what happened with Angie?”

She was laying on the nonchalance thick, but Vaggie knew stress when she saw it. Every inch of Cherri had tensed at the mention of Lucifer. She was afraid.

And so was Charlie, when Vaggie looked at her. Her shoulders hunched. Her back sinking in the chair. Vaggie frowned.

She walked over and planted her hand between them.

“None of your business,” she said, “We’re here for Angel. Not an interrogation.”

It split the silence like a knife through butter. Cherri scoffed and lifted off the counter with her palms up. “Fine. Sorry, just curious.”

Charlie slumped in imperceptible relief. Vaggie still caught it.

“Who are you anyway?” Cherri eyed her strangely. “Her bodyguard?” She held up a photo of Val’s Vixens on her phone. The goat sinner’s crushed hand. “Doesn’t really seem like she needs you.”

“Of course I need her,” Charlie said and smiled at Vaggie, tentative, “She’s my friend.”

Vaggie allowed herself to smile back. Charlie was odd like that. All around a perky and anxious person, with subpar instincts and what seemed to be debilitating naivete. She was infatuated with Vaggie’s irrelevant thoughts on everything and anything, which made her perplexing and weak.

But her heart was good. Vaggie didn’t need Heaven’s light to illuminate that for her.

Perhaps such light was off limits to her now anyway. Every day, Heaven faded more from her memories. She could not remember a single face there. Could not remember the streets. It left her, detaching from her fallen form, but she had not panicked. She’d been designed to endure things as they were.

“Cute.” Cherri’s one eye studied them. There was less edge in it than before. “Well, it’s good to have a friend in a place like this.”

She set her phone on the counter. Charlie winced as the photo of the crushed hand flashed across the screen.

“Oh god, that was an accident,” she said, curling in, “I won’t ever use my powers again, I promise.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Vaggie snapped.

“I am going to keep it.” Charlie’s chin set in a stubborn jut. “I’ve decided I’ll never use them again.”

Cherri snickered, amused by the theatrics, while Vaggie stifled her sigh. “Charlie, if you don’t use your powers and you still want to keep your dad in the dark, then it’s going to be difficult to protect that place.”

“But you’ll be there, Vaggie,” Charlie said, wide eyes confused.

“Yes, I will be there, and I can handle normal sinners. Like her for example.” Cherri snorted and flipped two birds, which Vaggie ignored. “But the bigger ones. The overlords, you call them? I’m going to need help. Back-up, at least.”

Charlie bit her lip. “Oh…but it’s not like the overlords would be interested in the hotel. Maybe someday I hope, but they have everything they want here in the city now.”

“Demons never stop wanting,” Vaggie said, eye narrowed.

“What hotel?” asked Cherri.

She flinched when Charlie swiveled to her, red twinkling eyes much brighter than they had been a second ago.

“Oh, Miss Cherri, I know you’ll love it if you come! It’s called the Happy Hotel and—“

The door blew in.

In a spray of sparks, it flew smoldering into the wall and clunked down on a pile of go-go boots. Vaggie yanked out her knife before she had her footing. Over-accustomed to her old spear’s length, she stumbled backwards and cringed as Charlie inadvertently shrieked in her ear.

Melted hinges drizzled on the ground. Vaggie had the passing thought of relief that she hadn’t still been standing near the door, before a tall shadow appeared through the smoke.

“Behold, Cherri Bomb!” a snake sinner said, two glowing guns belted across his chest. “My genius!” He puffed up his chest and struck a pose.

Vaggie near knifed the weird bastard through the throat, when Cherri cackled and hopped to her feet.

“Sir Pentious comin’ to entertain little ol’ me again?” She pulled open a counter drawer. “Catch, bitch!”

She threw a grenade.

Pentious screamed even louder than Charlie. He fled the entrance, as the grenade sailed out into the hall. The explosion blasted out the barriers of the staircase. Hot pink smoke flooded Vaggie’s vision. She hacked in disgust, groping to the kitchen counter.

“Alright.” She snatched Charlie’s arm. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.”

As though a switch had been flipped, Charlie scrambled out of the chair she’d been glued to. “O-Okay. But Miss Cherri, about the hotel—”

“Save it for another time, babe,” Cherri said, as she stuffed a pillow sack with grenades, plunging firecrackers into her pockets, “I lied by the way. Angie’s not here. Hasn’t been here in a week. Sorry about that.”

Her grin dimmed for a heartbeat, something worried and raw underneath, but it vanished as fast as it came. She tore out of her destroyed apartment.

As Vaggie would learn, it was the universal inclination of all the sinners to be searching for the next high here. To cling for all they were worth to whatever life they could find.

Thirteen human weeks after the creation of the Ars Goetia, the archdemons held their first council meeting in the city of Pride. Preparations alone took days as the assembly theatre was scrubbed and washed and bedecked with carpets and banners. In their ardent zeal, the Goetia built for them a lavish imperial box that was both too high and too far to efficiently witness anything in.

It didn’t stop Lilith. Lucifer had never seen her so engrossed, watching every long-winded debate or display of spellcraft with utmost interest. As a joke, he conjured for her a pair of pompous opera glasses, which she swatted at him for before settling them on the bridge of her nose. She smiled when he cracked up. He knew she often tried to make him laugh.

She was a true work of the Creator.

“You’ve outdone yourself, elder brother.” Raphael held a trampled poppy, healing its broken stem. “An entire race to inhabit the rings. Demons to fill the darkness. You always were brilliant with creation.”

“And you always did love to butter me up,” he said, anger simmered after two centuries in Hell.

Raphael smiled. It was not unkind. Lucifer hated it and ached for it.

“Why did you cast her down?” he asked.

“Who?”

“You know who,” he said, “Why didn’t you let her stay in the Garden?”

A breeze flowed down from the hill, swaying the poppy sea.

“She did not wish to stay. She followed you, because she knew she would never see you again otherwise.”

Was that true? He remembered Lilith dancing in the empty cathedral, part of that mortal city of Constantinople which he had recreated for her in Hell. Her hunger for life. Her memory of the ocean. She had belonged in Paradise.

Raphael’s dark hair wavered against his eyes, gentle and eternally green. Lucifer felt them linger on his chest. In dreams, the bandage remained, though the real wound had healed years ago. Even when he peeled it off here, the skin underneath was smooth and scar-less. He’d dispose of the bandage in hellfire and it would return within a blink. It remained.

“You were immensely damaged from your fall,” Raphael said, “Far more than if you hadn’t shielded her.”

He could’ve never let Lilith reach the ground first. She would’ve perished in an instant. How could he have survived that afterwards? He loved her more than was bearable. He’d give her anything if he could.

“I know, Lucifer,” said his brother—

His head hit the back of his throne. It made a dull thud, echoing strangely. Lilith was crouched over him, nails in his shoulders, as if she’d been shaking him hard. The assembly theater was empty. The Goetia all gone. Was the meeting over already? He swore the line of waiting orators had trailed out of the building. He must’ve fallen asleep.

Lilith nodded when he apologized, her face white. She said she was tired too and suggested they go rest at home. Far be it from him to argue, so he stood. They passed Lilith’s own seat, which had been knocked on its side. The opera glasses were shattered on the floor.

They had hurried from the apartment complex and down the street toward the limo. Based on the explosions, Cherri and Pentious had swanned off in the opposite direction, likely towards the other blocks. Insane assholes. Other sinners had poked their heads out of surrounding buildings, cursing or blathering. Vaggie grabbed Charlie’s wrist and they stayed close to the street fence, as out of sight as possible.

The industry yard was thankfully still deserted. The pit of tires continued to buzz with flies.

A little girl sat beside it, humming. Piles of cables surrounded her. A large puddle of egg yolk smeared near an over-accessorized computer.

“Oh,” Charlie said and waved as they approached, “Hello there.”

The girl looked over and smiled. She had bright red hair and a single orange eye.

“I’m Niffty,” she said, apropos to nothing, “And you’re the princess.”

It wasn't a question. Charlie’s brows crumpled, clearly resisting the urge to coo something like ‘you’re the true princess, sweet pea.’”

“What do you want?” Vaggie said, before she could.

The girl ran toward them. Without a word, Vaggie stabbed forward. The girl skipped sideways, and the arc of Vaggie’s blade met wind.

“A bad girl,” she said, landing twenty feet from them, her hands tucked behind her back.

She was tiny. Mud caked her black feet. Maggots wriggled in her apron pocket. Vaggie’s hair rose on her nape.

“I said what do you want.”

“Vaggie, calm down,“ Charlie said, reproachful, but Vaggie ignored her.

For the longest moment, Niffty looked Charlie up and down multiple times. Her grin inched with each circuit. The teeth were huge and serrated. This was no little girl.

“Alastor said you’d be looking for the bad boy,” Niffty said, “Also known as the mad boy and the sad boy.”

“Alastor?” Vaggie said and Niffty rocked on her feet. She didn’t elaborate.

That was just as well, because they were leaving this place and never coming back.

“Come on,” she told Charlie. The limo was within sight. Much to her exasperation, Charlie didn’t move.

“Hold on,” she said, staring at Niffty, “Who we were looking for, do you mean Angel?”

Niffty giggled. “The spider boy! The pretty boy!” She hopped from foot to foot. “Wanna go see him?”

“No,” Vaggie said, before Charlie looked at her, “We already came here. You brought your flowers, you talked to his friend, you asked after him. We don’t have time for this.”

“But Cherri said she didn’t know where he was.” Charlie frowned. “We could go check up on him for her. She sounded worried.”

Clearly not worried enough to refrain from running off with that snake guy. Vaggie considered pointing this out. Considered pointing out that there was, ultimately, nothing that could happen to Angel. Nowhere deeper he could fall.

But she was also starting to realize what was an exercise in futility. Vaggie’s shoulders slumped.

“Fine. But if this is a trap, you can figure out how to get us out of it.”

Charlie beamed and Vaggie shook her head. She trailed behind as Charlie struggled to make sense of Niffty’s directions, eventually insisting Niffty ride in the limo with them. Charlie’s eyes were absurdly bright, gleaming and clear, like those bloodglass orchids from her bouquet. It was a surreal image in Hell, but perhaps still fitting. She was the Morningstar’s child.

“Um, by the way, Niffty, what is all this?” Charlie gestured at the myriad of equipment . “Were you…working on something?”

“Egg boy was,” Niffty said, pointing at the yolk trail, “But when I came over, he ran, fell and died.”

“O-oh, I see.”

“It’s a bad hole, I know, even though it makes lots of baby flies. It came from the big, big Hellquake.” She patted her bulging apron pocket of maggots.

“You fall in and you can’t climb out, even though it’s not very deep. Even if you’re a great climber. And then it makes lots of baby flies.”

Charlie was quiet.

Thirteen human years after the birth of their daughter, Lilith left and never returned. Lucifer didn’t remember it very well. Pride was half-destroyed when he regained himself. The other Sins had stayed for a week, before they deemed him able to see Charlie again. She didn’t ask where he’d been or why she’d been kept away. Regarding her mother, she was wordless. Almost unsurprised. It unnerved him, how quiet she was.

All the way up to one day when a maid found her sobbing in the greenhouse, because the last of Lilith’s roses had withered. She was inconsolable, even after he restored the roses to perfection, even after he promised to summon a gardener to specifically tend to her mother’s plants. He didn’t know what to do. So he walked around the palace all day with her sniffling at his side, holding her hand while trying to sort out Lilith’s former duties. It seemed to offer her some marginal comfort.

Forcas worried and nagged about his stress levels. Said Bel had advised lots of rest. He volunteered multiple times to keep Charlie company for a few hours, but she clung to him, little hands fisted into his coat. Lucifer finally told Forcas to buzz off, before she started thinking she was a burden. It was fine. He was tired, sure, but he wasn’t delicate.

In the evening, Charlie asked to sleep in his bed and he couldn’t bring himself to say no. He told her a story and breathed for the first time when she smiled. He fell asleep with her in his arms and woke up in the middle of the night feeling half out of his body. He thought he had a nightmare, but couldn’t remember. Random objects in his room were vibrating. His hands burned, so he went to the bathroom and turned on the sink. He heard the gush of water.

“You should send the child away.” Michael’s long hair shone like a polished coin, the same white the Creator had pinched from the moon. “She’s not safe with you.”

Where was he supposed to send her? Charlie didn’t want to live in the other rings. The sinners couldn’t be trusted. He would sooner destroy himself than hurt her anyway. He would never hurt her. Never.

“You are fractured,” Michael said, armor gleaming off his wings as he walked to where Lucifer sat, “Lost.” The poppies parted for his tread. “Do you understand, Lucifer?”

“Understand what?” Lucifer looked away with a sigh. “I can’t believe I even still think about any of you. I must be fucking crazy.”

“Is that not what the demon said of you after Lilith left? The one named Belphegor.” Michael tilted his head. “The humans would refer to it as a nervous breakdown.”

“I’m not human.”

“True,” Michael said, imperious, “You are not. We were shaped by light alone. Creation is all that He included in your design.”

“So what,” Lucifer couldn’t help sniping, “Battle is all that’s in yours.” His brother ignored him.

“Accept the truth for what it is,” Michael said, silver eyes soft and pitiless, “Until then, it continues.”

He inclined his head and Lucifer looked down. Ichor stained the poppies. It came from—

He blinked slowly. A streak of red sun bled over his ankles. Lucifer lifted his head. The wall braced his spine. He was in his bathroom and saw himself in the mirror sitting on the floor. Jagged cracks webbed the reflection. Gushing water reverberated in his ears.

It was morning.

The sink was on.

Then he remembered.

Lucifer sprung upright. “Fuck,” he breathed, and would’ve rocketed to his feet for the bedroom if not for the weight on his thigh.

Charlie was curled tighter than a ball, hair a tangled mess in his lap. She’d brought her pillow as a cushion for the floor. Her hand gripped his shirt, knuckles white even in sleep.

Chapter Text

In the next few centuries, Lilith forgot about the mortal world. There was hardly room in her mind for it anymore. Not with administrations to establish, territorial Goetia conflicts to adjudicate, and Pandemonium’s growing household to run. So many things demanded her attention and Lilith welcomed it all. She could not fathom returning to those days right after the Fall, empty and ichor-soaked.

For his part, Lucifer continued to sculpt the lands. To accommodate the blooming populations, he created grand supports for the rings and further taught the other Sins how to stabilize their individual realms. Blending creation dust and brimstone, he crafted the first embryonic seeds to flourish in infernal soil.

It wasn’t an uncommon sight to see him beyond her office window, white wings spread in the dark distance, as Hell followed his path like a devoted dog. It sent the wild chills up her spine. She sometimes suspected he did it on purpose. They would never again lay behind the jade bushes of Eden together, but there were certainly many new avenues of pleasures in exchange.

They had marvelous fun, as they always did. And Lilith forgot about the mortal world.

So it went until one day, she walked into Pandemonium’s library and found Lucifer perched on the upper floor’s balustrade. His wings were materialized and folded against his spine. He was chewing the tip of his thumb, eyes murky. She climbed the stairs, trying not to run.

He blinked when she reached him, brightening when she touched his back.

“Adam’s gone to Heaven, Lili,” he said, “Half of his children too.”

Lilith wasn’t sure how to feel about that, so she settled on nothing. Adam was of the past. She had cut him out quite cleanly.

“I’m sure he’s just ecstatic.” The man had always carried that affected, almost oblivious air about him. Like he still expected the most heavenly things to be bestowed into his waiting hands. “You said half of his children. The other half still lives?”

“They’re coming here.”

Lilith stared. “What?”

Lucifer tilted his head, golden hair shadowing his burning red eyes. He turned to the shelves and crooked a finger. A book came free. One she’d never seen before. Lilith’s face darkened. As the library was a mere physical extension of his divine knowledge, every new book was an unpleasant oddity. Heaven had severed him and yet persisted in haunting him with these visions, as though he was expected to continue performing the Creator’s Will. It was a cruel facet of his punishment, and mystifyingly petty.

The book landed between them on the rail. Lucifer stared at it, perfectly balanced in his perch.

“Do you really want to know?” he asked and she nodded, hand still spread on his back between the wings. Back then, the book was still thin, the cover soft and wrinkled like a calf’s skin.

“Adam’s seed,” he murmured and it flew open, pages riffling. They were turning too fast, only streaks visible—orange, black, blue. For a moment, Lilith saw nothing before she very suddenly did.

The breath choked from her lungs as blood and hair flooded her mouth. Piked bodies flashed in her vision. Dangling, pustuled feet. Rancid meat wafted up her nose. Coins plinked. People wailed. The conceptual words hissed in her mind, tearing into existence.

PillageTortureMurderRape

A flood.

The book snapped shut.

Lilith’s knees buckled. Her hands grabbed the rail in a vain attempt to catch herself. She coughed and hacked on her knees, throat burning, phantom taste of blood vivid on her tongue. The library’s stone floor blurred and she did not realize she had cried, until he’d crept down beside her and wiped her face.

Distantly, she remembered the Sins again, their child-like voices from an ageless time ago. Man’s Ruin birthed us in Hell to dwell where the Morningstar fell.

“Is this because of the Tree?” she asked, though she knew the answer. Knew it better than her own heart.

“Why would they do it,” Lucifer said, almost dreamily, “I thought it was a beautiful gift. Why would they do it?”

Niffty directed them through a series of turns and loops deep into the sinner city. She had Pox swerving down blocks and fishtailing corners, until the poor imp looked close to tears. Apparently, she went everywhere on foot and had trouble differentiating which places a limo could reach. Charlie sat in polite, nervous silence. Just as she was starting to worry they were being led by mere impulse to nowhere, the road narrowed into the sticky black path of the gambling district.

Rainbow lights strung the buildings. Glossy posters plastered the walls. They passed under a flashing arch shaped like giant fish-netted thighs.

“Your Highness, I’m really not sure this is a good idea,” Pox said, as Niffty and Vaggie climbed out onto the curb, “The main streets and apartments are one thing, but if His Majesty learns I took you into one of these back alley places…” He scratched between his horns. “I’d be sent to help the gardeners for the next decade. And I heard some of those plants are a little fond of imp meat.”

”He doesn’t have to know, Pox,” Charlie said, resting a hand on his shoulder. Embers were sweating from his scales and through his uniform. Charlie patted them out best she could. “Just drop us off and go relax for an hour. I’ll text you when we’re done.”

She tried not to grin, considering the nauseous look on Pox’s face, but it was kind of exciting. Despite being near two-hundred years old, most of the Pentagram remained a mystery to her. She couldn’t deny some giddiness attached to the possibility of exploring. As a child, her dad had once snuck her off on a trip to Uncle Ozzy’s ring behind her mom’s back and she remembered the ritzy glamor of his casinos, all the sculpted fountains and beautiful succubi and incubi. They could go out for a night on the town here too. Maybe afterwards, she could invite Niffty to Pandemonium along with her and Vaggie and ask Forcas to set up tea. It would be like one of those girl nights she used to have with her mom.

Charlie let the fantasy engulf her as they followed Niffty into the winding dark.

Once past the largest of the sinners’ casinos, which already paled in comparison to the ones in Lust, they grew more and more dilapidated. Became dingy rows that turned into a maze of alleys. Niffty pattered on, past building after building, where the only sounds were slots and shuffling cards drifting from broken windows. Orange slatted light fell on the ground. Niffty hopped over beer bottles.

They didn’t see many sinners outside. Most were passed out or making awful puking noises. One woman seemed dead and hadn’t started regenerating yet. The glossy posters on the walls had been replaced with blood stains.

Charlie let the fantasy go.

They went down an alley that squeezed two people side to side. Vaggie’s hair brushed against her arm, soft as feathers. She looked unamused when she glanced at Charlie, who could only offer a nervous smile back. This was possibly-maybe-perhaps starting to seem like she might’ve been too hasty in her agreement.

Eventually, Niffty finally stopped. The first thing Charlie noticed was it looked like a small unfinished bar. It had a filthy corrugated roof and an unplugged and upside down OPEN sign.

The second thing was a little demon pig on the ground, rooting through wrappers and cigarette butts.

And the third was Angel Dust, leaned against the wall, staring at his phone.

”What the fuck,” Vaggie muttered, “He actually is here.”

Niffty catapulted forward.

”IT’S SPIDER BOY!”

Angel swore as Niffty landed on top of him. He dropped his phone, sending the pig squealing off, as two arms flew up to catch her on reflex.

“Whoa! Niffty, what the—“

”Hey there, sad boy,” Niffty said, hanging off Angel’s front, grin near touching her eye, “I brought some bad girls to see you.”

Angel looked up. Based on how his jaw dropped, he’d recognized them instantly.

”Oh shit,” he said, straightening, “Uh…”

Charlie couldn’t contain herself. With a squee, she ran forward and grabbed the two hands not holding Niffty.

“It’s so, so wonderful to finally meet you, Angel!” she said, “Oh my god, we have literally been looking everywhere for you! I’m so glad you’re okay!”

Angel stared down at her like she’d grown a second head. “Um, thanks, your…highness? I don’t—“

”No, no, please call me Charlie!” She squeezed his hands, eyes shining as she took him in. “I have so much to say, I don’t even know where to start! Do you remember Vaggie? This is Vaggie by the way!”

“Hi,” Vaggie said, walking up with arms folded. She shrugged at Angel’s baffled look. “It’s a long story.”

Angel took a step back. ”Okay, wait—“

“Yes, it is,” Charlie said. She took a deep breath. “But a week ago, at that bar Val’s Vixens, I wanted to—“

Angel jerked his hands away. Charlie blinked.

“Hold on,” he said, some pale emotion skittering across his face, “Just stop for a second.” His remaining arms dropped Niffty, who landed on her feet with a cackle. One of his wrists had a bandage wrapped around it. Charlie’s smile began to fall.

“Angel—“

“Look, your highness? Back there at that dive, I appreciate what you did, alright? Thanks. Sorry I didn’t say it at the time.” He gestured at the alley. “So could you please go now and forget it ever happened?”

“What’s your problem?” Vaggie said, eye narrowed, “She didn’t track you down just for a thank you.”

“What else do you want then?” Angel snapped, backing away, “With respect and all, considering your pops, I ain’t putting out.”

“No!” Charlie held her palms up, horrified, as Vaggie’s face twisted with disgust. “That’s not at all why I’m here! I actually wanted to apolo—“

Distant voices echoed behind them. Bangs and thuds. Charlie turned but saw only the narrow darkness of the alley they’d come from.

“The bad boys are back in town,” Niffty said, reappearing with the little pig in her arms. She trotted inside the bar, humming.

Charlie looked back at Angel in time to see him blanch the shade of curdled milk.

“Come inside.” He pushed open the door of the bar. “If you won’t leave, can you at least get the fuck in here?” His hands gripped the door frame. “Please.”

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” Vaggie said, just to be contrary, but Charlie grabbed her arm. She looked Angel in the eye.

“Of course,” she said, and they hurried in.

The first sinners came to Hell shrieking and bawling. Came to Hell howling and laughing. They came to Lucifer only and could not be moved to any other ring.

Once roused from his prophetic haze, her beloved was stunned and despondent. Like he didn’t know where they had all appeared from. He met with every single one, though he was able to read each soul inside out the moment they entered his domain. Murderous tyrants. Village raiders. Rapists of women and children.

“Why did you do it?” he kept asking and no matter how they replied, whether it was to plead with him or lie to him or blame him, the bewilderment remained unsatisfied. His mind found no peace.

When rage finally began to tint his questions, Lilith pulled him away. It did not matter to her why. The sinners were in their new world and it was up to the two of them to manage it. He had to focus.

“Don’t think of it anymore,” she entreated.

“I thought it was a beautiful gift,” he said, “Look at what they did with it.”

“Give them somewhere to live, darling.”

“They’re already dead. They’re already ruined. They’ve spoiled their own souls.”

“Lucifer.” She brought his hand to her cheek. “Please do this for me.”

He did in the end, for he could never refuse her. The remaining Goetia in Pride departed for the grandeur of the other rings and the empty city became a burrow of damned souls.

There was a beautiful radio on the bartop. A vintage, heavy-looking piece with scuffed dials and walnut wood—one Charlie recognized from the American 1930s. Jazz floated out of the speakers in a tangible haze, filmy and hypnotic.

That aside, the inside of the bar was just as shabby as the exterior. Dimly lit, leaky and its windows boarded up from past exterminations.

A winged cat sinner manned the counter. He polished a glass with methodical boredom, despite the griminess of the rag. Despite the entire bar being empty. He glanced over at them and went still.

“Well holy shit,” he said, staring at Charlie, “What the fuck is this, Angel?”

“You have eyes, don’t ya, Husk?” Angel said, collapsing on a stool, “Meet the royal highness.”

“Just Charlie please,” she said softly. Behind her, Vaggie nudged past. She walked off toward the perimeter of the room, seemingly observing the area. Niffty had disappeared, scrabbling among the shadowed furniture.

That left Charlie with no other alternative than to join Angel at the bar. Husk had looked startled for all of a second, before his expression flattened again.

“Damn,” he said, “Gotta admit, I’ve seen a lot of people in this shithole, but didn’t ever think the princess would be one of them.”

“I know I haven’t been as present as I should be in Pride,” she said, guilt worming in her gut, “Hope we’re not intruding. It’s not my intention to create a huge thing about any of this.”

“Might be a little late for that,” Angel said, calmer now that they were indoors, “You really fucked up Sid’s hand. He ended up just chopping it off, cos it wasn't regenerating at all. Still hasn’t.”

“Still?” Husk said, and darted a glance at Charlie that made her want to shrivel into a ball.

“I didn’t want to hurt him. He just sounded so mad at you, Angel.”

“I can handle an asswipe like Sid. You didn’t have to do all that.” There was a faint crease at the corner of Angel’s mouth. He was annoyed with her. Charlie chewed the inside of her cheek.

“What was a fancy deal like you doin’ at one of Val’s places anyway?” Husk asked, sticking an arm between them to scrub at the counter.

“Oh, it was for a meeting actually. The only place those renovators wanted to…” Husk and Angel flinched when she gasped, leaping to her feet. “Forget about that! The hotel! I need to tell you both about the hotel!”

“Hotel?” Angel said, before blinking as Charlie spun around.

“Vaggie!” she called into the red shadows, while pulling out her phone. To her frustration, she’d only snapped a couple photos of the parlor and one of a suite. None of them were great. God, why was she so stupid? Here she was hoping her people would come to the hotel, when she hadn’t prepared a single thing to persuade them with. Charlie groaned and set her phone aside, as Vaggie ghosted back over.

“Basically we’ve opened up a hotel,” she said, “And it’s going to be focused on the redemption of sinners.” She did her best to convey the idea, trying not to fixate on how she had bad photos and no sketch pad. At least Vaggie helped explain it with her. She was great at cutting through to the most important points.

“So it’s like a rehab house,” Angel said, with the colorless tone of someone who was already disinterested.

Charlie scratched her cheek. “Um, I guess if you put it that way, kind of—”

“No,” Vaggie said, “There are surface similarities, but the ultimate goal is different.”

“Oh yeah? What’s the goal?”

“Well for rehab in the mortal world, you’re usually stuck in this cycle of checking in and out,” Charlie said, gaining momentum, “But for example, Angel, if you stayed at the Happy Hotel, you would be there only once before you checked out for good.”

“Why?” Husk asked, “Where’s he going?”

“Heaven.”

They stared at her. A beat passed. The jazz on the radio looped, scratching with static. Husk stiffened. Niffty snickered from somewhere on the floor.

“Got it.” Angel leaned back in his seat. “Sure, your highness. That’s real something.”

“It’s Charlie, please,” she reminded gently, before clasping her hands, heart pounding in her ears, “So, would you be interested in checking in?”

“Uhh…” Angel lifted his phone. “I’m gonna get back to you on that.”

“What if we piss you off while we’re there?” Husk said, glancing at the radio, “Who’s to say we won’t get an encore of that hand shit?”

“I wouldn’t!” she said, shaking her head frantically, “I don’t want you to think I could hurt anyone. I already swore to never do that again. ”

“That’s what they all say,” Angel said, half in jest, before he jolted when Charlie grabbed his hands again.

“Christ, don’t you know what personal space is—“

“Please.” Charlie leaned in, for she meant it with her whole being. “Please believe me.”

Angel leaned back, eyes darting to her and away. He tried to tug his hands out of her iron grip. “Okay, okay, back up, will ya? No need for the drama, you don’t seem that sort anyway.”

“I’m not sure you should be throwing out words like that so easily,” Husk said, as Charlie released Angel in relief, “This place sounds extravagant. Any asshole in the Pentagram would want to take it over for themselves.”

“I don’t think it's extravagant,” she said, slightly put out. This was the second time the hotel’s physical vulnerability had been suggested. “Like it was actually pretty inexpensive? And it’s completely outside the city and not close to anything.”

Vaggie could handle normal sinners and the overlords wouldn’t be interested. They couldn’t be. The Pentagram was their life blood and in many ways, the source of their power. Why would an overlord care about her small remote hotel?

No, she was the most frightening thing out there. Always would be if she didn’t work to change that.

As if agreeing, Husk looked several degrees less attentive. “Makes sense enough to me,” he said, glancing askance at the radio again. The static rose and he grumbled. He turned the dial before it could peak.

Charlie raised her palm. “I already promised I won’t ever use them for any reason. And promises are a pretty big deal in Heaven and Hell. So there’s no need to be afraid.”

Vaggie shook her head.

“Sure, sure,” Husk said, eyes on the radio, “What about your old man?”

“Oh.” Charlie flapped her hand. “You don’t have to worry about my dad showing up.”

“Charlie,” Vaggie said, “I don’t think they need to—“

“He doesn’t know.” Charlie smiled softly. “I want to surprise him when everything’s up and running.”

Angel snorted. “You make it sound like he gives a flying fuck about any of us.” Before the words had finished landing, he’d already stiffened. “That came out wrong.”

“No, it’s alright,” Charlie said, and held in her sigh, “My dad’s complicated. And really, really stubborn. But Hell’s his kingdom and you’re all his people. I wouldn’t say he doesn’t care.”

He did maintain general metaphysical stability to the ring and all of Hell. That was something! And he always knew the soul count, though part of Charlie wondered if it was just out of habit—following the schedule her mother had left behind.

No matter what he observed the sinners doing, horrific or harmless, it never seemed to irritate him any less. Charlie tried not to argue about it too often when he was so sick, but sometimes she couldn’t help it. It seemed unfair on his part.

The static on the radio became a screech, overpowering the jazz.

“Jesus, Husk, maybe it’s time to chuck that thing,” Angel said, rubbing his ear.

Husk’s eyes narrowed. “If only.”

Niffty hopped up and twisted the dial until the static settled. She ran off again, giggling.

Husk set the rag down. He took a breath and glared at the radio, as though already peeved to the bone. As his earlier questions had been so pointed, Charlie hesitated slightly in asking what was wrong before he looked at her again.

“So you can’t do shit to me?” he said, “Could I test that?”

Charlie blinked. “Test?”

Vaggie reached over and yanked her arm back. In that second, a glinting card thunked against the counter, embedding into the wood where her left hand had been. Angel flailed backwards.

“Whoa!” He turned, eyes huge, “Husk, what—”

Charlie yelped as another card flew at her right side. A wine bottle shattered and soaked green glass sprayed between them. Familiar heat coursed beneath Charlie’s skin, snaking up her fingers. Terror gripped her. She saw Husk’s charred fur, his obliterated body—

A chill bloomed in her hands. Charlie gasped as the heat evaporated. She flipped her palms up. Went white.

Husk fanned out cards of spades and diamonds, each one jagged and torn between his claws. “I’ve been here a long time. This old deck’s cut through just about everything.”

Vaggie stood with her knife out. Charlie squeezed her hands shut, retracting them to her chest. How was this possible?

“I-I’m sorry,” she said to Husk, “Have I done something wrong?”

“Nothin’ wrong, princess,” he said, eyes flat, “You got a problem. Go ahead. Stop me.”

“It would be a great time for that,” Vaggie agreed. Charlie shook her head, scrambling back on her stool.

“I can’t!”

“Charlie, even if you don’t want to use your powers, now’s not when—”

“No, I can’t,” she said, “I can’t!” She raised her hands and Vaggie’s eye popped at the black sigils that had etched onto her palms, raised and ice-crusted. Even Husk paused, gaping. He looked again at the radio.

“Shit, what the fuck’s going on?” Angel stood. “I’m out.” He didn’t move though.

“You actually did bind yourself?” Vaggie stared at her like she was a complete fool and Charlie blushed. Her mind raced for an explanation in futile circles. She didn’t even know how to use binding magic. How was this possible? She remembered thinking in the limo that she’d never use her powers again and saying the same at Cherri’s apartment. She had hated how they made her so big when she just wanted to be small.

And most randomly, she remembered her mom, holding her burning hands once and saying, “Hell will see right through you, Charlie, and obey.”

Then she half-fell off the stool as Husk came around the counter.

Vaggie’s lip curled. “Demons never stop wanting,” she said and brought up her blade, no trace of fear in her. But Charlie sensed the swirl of magic coming from Husk, ebbing and flowing like a sloshing cup. She felt it on her tongue, heady like whiskey. This wasn’t an ordinary sinner. He was an overlord. What was this place?

Could he actually hurt her? Her dad would find out sooner or later. He would kill Husk so horribly and he would get so stressed and he would get worse and worse until he never came back to her again.

Charlie’s vision grew white and wet.

“Wait,” she said, “Please don’t. We’ll just leave. We won’t come back here again, I promise.”

Husk snorted. “You for real? No promises mean shit in Hell, only deals.”

He raised his cards.

And closed them in his hand, before returning them to his pocket.

“There.” He turned to the radio. “Is that all you wanted?” He walked back around the counter. Right away, he picked up his rag and started cleaning the wine bottle he’d broken. The little demon pig waddled past his legs.

Silence reigned. Charlie stood frozen, clutching her hands. The sigils stung her palms, crushing down the frenetic roil of her magic. Turning to Angel and Vaggie illuminated nothing. The two of them were equally motionless, gripping their phone and knife respectively.

The radio turned on. When had it turned off?

There was no trace of jazz left. Only a cloud of pure static.

“Yes, Husker,” a voice said inside it, “That will be all.”

The door broke down.

Long ago, he had created the city of Pride for her as the immortal model of Constantinople. Glorious and perfect as it had been, it was less than a shade of a memory now. Most of the buildings ruins. All the jewels melted. The sinners screamed and snarled and lived on top of each other.

At Lilith’s request, he tried to make the ring thrive as he had before for the Goetia, but nothing stayed. Nothing held. The city withered and cracked and blackened. Eventually she asked him to stop, fearing how exhausted he was starting to look.

“I’m sorry, Lilith,” he said, shaking with sweat, claws blistered by the heat of creation dust. She shushed him and kissed his knuckles.

She knew he was sorry, though even moreso she knew that he wasn’t. He’d stopped speaking to the sinners decades ago. Stopped looking at them. All his bewilderment had calcified into disgust. In his heart of hearts, she knew he had grown to hate them.

And Hell had seen right through him and obeyed.