Chapter Text
Vaggie hadn’t slept in what felt like years.
The dead didn’t need their sleep—but it felt rejuvenating. It made healing and functioning easier, and it made you feel normal, and when you were in Hell and you had missing or extra limbs and memories of typically painful deaths, you really clung to the normalcy of the past.
…Normalcy couldn’t protect her now.
She stared Angel down while he handed the half-full coffee pot to her and watched her pour the entirety of it into her mug. Charlie’s tastes had rubbed off on her, but there wasn’t any room in the cup for her usual cream and sugar, so she swallowed a mouthful of it, black and boiling. It’s heat scorched any fatigue out of her.
”Oh, but Vaggie,” Angel said, snidely. “Ya can’t just replace one addiction with another. Excess is bad for ya. Gluttony’s a sin, don’tchya know?”
”Coffee is completely different from weed and booze,” she shot back. “And you know that. Plus—I’m not trying to get redeemed here, you are.”
Alastor popped in the room, like he usually did when he wanted to frighten or anger Vaggie. “We really ought to lead by example, my dear.”
”I’m not your dear,” Vaggie spat. “And I’m not leading here—I’m a follower, of Charlie’s orders here.”
”Oh,” Angel said. “So ya got no authority over me. Cool—Al, ya wanna split a joint?”
Vaggie snatched a tightly rolled blunt from Angel’s fingers—he seemed to summon them at will. They still didn’t know where he was getting the drugs, because somebody usually escorted him to the studio he worked at, so unless one of them was slacking, he shouldn’t’ve been able to purchase any drugs. “I know you think this is so funny, but the hotel’s had a no-drug-use policy since you first started staying here, and that hasn’t changed.”
Angel grinned at her, smugly. “Not against the rules if ya don’t catch it.”
”Well.” Vaggie held up the offending drug. “You got caught.” She looked it over. “Is this liquid PCP too, or just weed?”
Alastor swiped it from her, too quick for her to think about it. “I’ll take care of it from here, sweetheart.” Apparently, he would just look for a different pet name—and then probably cycle back through them, just to piss her off. She bet if she acted like she liked it, he’d stop, but for the life of her, she couldn’t pretend to even tolerate him. It made her feel looked down on. He clutched the joint between two clawed fingers. “Wouldn’t want you to fall back into old habits now, would we?”
If Vaggie thought she could get her hands on him, she might’ve tried to knock out a few of his yellow teeth, but he was gone in an instant, currently satisfied with having ruined her morning, if not her day.
At some point during a group therapy session, Charlie had insisted everyone share some sort of detail from their lives—something they were ashamed of. She thought it might help build trust, humble them, help them empathize. She had spoken of the first cleanse she had ever watched through a window, with her father, and how she sometimes still thought about the man falling to his knees and screaming in terror while he was ripped to pieces—and how even then, and even in weeping for her subjects and mourning them every year, she hadn’t done anything until literally this decade, and her inaction might’ve cost zillions of lives, and her fear she was failing as a ruler before she even acquired the throne.
Alastor had helpfully pointed out it might still take a zillion years to an eternity to achieve anything. Charlie thanked him (in a tone that sounded way too fucking genuine) for his insight.
Vaggie figured she ought to take it seriously too—so she admitted, she regretted ever getting into drugs and continuing the bad habits for so long. She didn’t say what type of drug, or what it pushed her to—just that after so long of bad decisions, she thought she might not be capable of making good ones, and that she worried no matter how long she spent clean, she was still irreparably dirty, and everyone who looked at her could somehow know anyway, just what was wrong with her.
Niffty said she didn’t know Vaggie used to “sniff drugs”, and said she looked very clean despite the fact her hair was a little greasy. Then Alastor started describing his first kill in gruesome detail—his regret? Letting the body be found.
By the man’s nine-year-old daughter.
It had descended into chaos from there.
Nothing had really stuck from it, but apparently her addiction lived on in everybody’s memories, and Alastor liked tormenting her over it for no other reason than that it hurt.
It hurt so bad she wanted to launch Alastor into the sun. Bad enough, even Angel (who pissed Vaggie off like it was an Olympic sport and he was going for gold) knew that for the most part, he needed to steer away from that weakness.
So far he had, anyway.
Angel watched him leave and sighed with no real sorrow in it. “There goes the PCP! Y’know how much that shit costs?”
”Well, stop buying it,” Vaggie said. “So you can save it for the swear jar, because it needs a dollar right now.”
Angel snorted. “I’m a porn star, toots. I make more in one film you ever made in your life, a dollar ain’t gonna faze me or my drug money.”
”You can buy drugs, but you couldn’t pay rent before the hotel.”
A red hot anger flashed in Angel’s eyes like Vaggie had said the most vile and infuriating thing he had ever heard, and she knew immediately he was going for something below the belt, that he was absolutely going to say something about her past addiction—but instead he said, “And deprive ya of my company?” He leaned closer, gold implant glinting in the light, almost (but not quite) a threat, like it had briefly crossed his mind to go for the throat. “You’re not gettin’ rid of me, babe—not ‘til one of those Exorcists takes me out, or Charlie gets sick of me, and we both know this hotel ain’t got any other interested patrons, so good luck with that.”
This time, he pulled out a cigarette and a lighter—Vaggie found it a disgusting habit, but you kinda signed up for it when you had demons from anywhere before the 1960s present, who still thought it was okay to smoke indoors, inside literally anywhere.
She snatched the cigarette from him and pointed. “Outside,” she said. He rolled his eyes and she tossed it back to him, and he did go outside to smoke.
It suddenly occurred to her Angel’s insistence upon trying to break that rule was because Charlie might not be enforcing it properly.
She made a mental note to talk with Charlie about it later. Hopefully, whenever she found her. She had disappeared awhile ago, and Vaggie wasn’t sure when. Of all the powers Charlie was capable of holding, she didn’t think one of them was invisibility.
…Christ, she hoped one of them wasn’t invisibility.
She left the kitchen and started towards the office—there was tons of paperwork to be done, mostly bills and financials. The hotel didn’t have much going for it in a populace that laughed at redemption, but not having the lights on and the water running would make them a bigger source of ridicule, and they’d been netted with the paying of it, even if not the need for money to pay it, thanks to Lucifer’s… assistance.
Truth be told, Vaggie believed he was helping to teach some sort of a lesson. What that lesson was, Vaggie didn’t know, but she didn’t think it was in their favor, and at times, she thought Charlie’s determination for this project was just as spiteful as it was good-natured, something born just as much for her love of her people as it was the desire to prove her father wrong. But it wasn’t something she wanted to say out loud—it was hard to understand the conflict between two people that loved each other, like a father and daughter, and Vaggie knew to stay out of it aside from supporting Charlie the best she could. At the end of the day—she supposed, wondering why the lobby smelled like weed and where Alastor had disappeared to—help was help.
Two steps away from the office, and realized she left her phone in the kitchen—she considered leaving it, but she needed the calculator on it to do anything, and if Charlie texted her, she would want to respond, so she turned around to get it.
She stopped in her tracks in the lobby—the scent of weed was still there, but much more present was a scent of something burning. Smoke billowed from the open door in the kitchen and Husk—no longer manning the Welcome Desk or the bar—was shouting, “WHEN THE FUCK DID YOU LEARN TO FLAMBÉ, KID?”
Niffty, ever chipper, responded, “I didn’t!”
Before Vaggie could even start running to help, there was a splash and then the louder blaze of a higher fire, quickly followed by screaming.
Instead of running to the kitchen, Vaggie sprinted for the nearest fire extinguisher on the wall.
When Vaggie took up the position as manger of the Happy Hotel, she did expect to manage. She could organize in her sleep. She knew when to be civil, and when to be bossy, and she was getting better at being friendly.
Unfortunately, these days, she was apparently just being naggy. She wondered if being the manager was supposed to be like being a babysitter.
Vaggie pinched the bridge of her nose. “How did you set… the oven on fire?”
”Forget about the oven,” Husk said. “Kid—why the Hell did you pour a bottle of 151 on the fire?!”
Niffty was still trying to rub the soot and char on her face off, but was only succeeding in smearing it with her napkin. Her eye was red and aggravated from the smoke—they’d opened all the windows and vents in an attempt to air the place out, so the screaming traffic of Pentagram City was louder than usual. “It was nearby!” She exclaimed. “I thought it would help!”
Vaggie blinked at her incredulously. “How would alcohol help put out a fire?” She demanded.
”How was I supposed to know alcohol’s apparently fuel?” She asked.
”Common sense?” Vaggie snapped.
Immediately, Niffty deflated and her smile dimmed—great, now she was being an asshole. Husk offered only, “Lay off her a little, she didn’t mean to do it.”
”The kitchen,” Vaggie said. “Was on fire. Our oven is broken, the walls are smoke-damaged, the paint was melting—what if it spread?”
”It didn’t,” Husk said. Apparently, he was a voice of reason when it was too early to have completely replaced the reason in his body with alcohol. “It could’ve been really bad, but it wasn’t, and those curtains over the sink were ugly anyway. It’s not like it would’ve mattered—everybody in here’s dead, anyway.”
No. Charlie wasn’t. Instead, Vaggie leveled him with the hardest stare. “That’s a good thing—but burning down this hotel isn’t, and it’s not even ours. It belongs to Charlie’s parents—if we burn this whole place down, there will be Hell to pay.”
”He’d charge his own daughter?” Husk asked.
Vaggie considered it—because Lucifer was not a good person, and he was weird as fuck, but every interaction Vaggie had had with him had reinforced one thing: he loved his daughter. He might not go the right way about it, he might not always respect her, and he might not always let Charlie know that he loved her. But he did. He did love her, the way a decent parent ought to—enough to try and do what he thought was right for her.
”If he thought it’d teach her something,” he said. “He would. Without a doubt.” Husk pulled a face. Vaggie asked, “What?” and he waved her off.
Both Angel and Alastor appeared in the lobby to the smoke, and to see Husk holding Niffty’s hand like he’d rather be anywhere else, and Niffty hanging her head in shame like accidentally starting a fire was the worst thing she had done in her life.
”Oh,” Alastor said, as if something had just dawned on him, but he wore the same stupid, self-assured, plastered-on grin he always wore. “So the smoking-indoors rule has been lifted.”
Maybe the joke was the use of the phrase “has been”, like the word Alastor had replaced Happy with on the sign for the hotel, which they could not replace. (Charlie’s contract only applied to the building itself, and the sign was an addition onto the buildings. All things considered, not the worst loophole that could’ve come about.)
Either way, Vaggie was not in a joking mood.
Angel looked over at Niffty, still covered in soot. “Damn girl,” he responded. “You’re smokin’. You do somethin’ new with your makeup?”
Niffty perked up when she was being acknowledged and responded with a chirped, “Scrubbed it off trying to get the ash off my face!”
Vaggie grimaced. “Niffty tried to flambé the kitchen.”
Alastor stopped like a deer in headlights and turned back to her. “When did you learn how to flambé?”
Niffty shook her head like a dog drying it’s fur, and ash and bits of char soared through the air to fall on the carpet. ”Today! That’s why I’m crispy!” She looked at the black specks speckled along the carpet and frowned. “I need to vacuum.”
”Go clean up first, kid,” Husk said, nudging her towards the stairs.
”Y-Yeah?” She looked up at him. “With the vacuum? That’s cleaning.”
”Go wash your face.”
She gestured towards the carpet. Husk nudged her harder, she sighed, and turned on her heel in the direction of the stairs.
When she was up them, the smoke alarm nearby started trilling, shrieking, at a volume loud enough to rupture an ear drum. “Oh, come on!” She snapped, as if the alarm would have mercy on her. “Now you go off?”
She grabbed a nearby stool and waved her arm frantically like the movement would give her the length to actually press the stupid button on it. “Shit! Why are the ceilings so tall?”
Alastor’s eyes crinkled in the corners as he regarded her, nowhere near the smoke alarm. “I can’t be quite sure, but I think you’re supposed to deal with the source of the smoke, before the alarm.”
”We already put out the fire,” Vaggie retorted. Alastor shrugged, and no one made any move to help her.
She strained again, and this time, when she touched it (barely even grazed it), it popped off and fell to the carpet. In her shock at the falling object, she wobbled and fell with it.
She scrambled to her hands and knees to get her grip on it again, and then tried to shut it off. It had this button on it, but when she pressed it, it only shrieked louder, as if in pain.
”How the fuck does this stupid thing work?” She shouted. The alarm shouted back at her. “Piece of fucking shit—“ She flipped it around, in case there was some other button marked press here to regain silence and the lingering remains of your sanity, but only found the little hinge in it’s plastic case that indicated it’s battery compartment, and tried to pry into it with her fingernails. She had trimmed them down just last night and filed down any jagged edges in bed with Charlie for, uh… reasons.
Reasons that had not come to fruition because she had immediately passed out on top of Charlie, but that had been the reason.
“C’mon!” She ground her teeth. “La concha de tu madre!” It wouldn’t open. She was gonna throw herself out the window and take the fucking smoke alarm with her. Alastor had taken out a notepad and was jotting something down. Bastard.
After five minutes, she finally got it open and had taken out the batteries. She was sweating like crazy and her head was pounding—but she was victorious. “Mierda,” she breathed, wiping the sweat off her brow and pocketing the batteries before she threw the empty alarm onto the counter. “I hate these fucking things—how would we not notice if something wasn’t on fire?”
”Could be asleep,” Angel said. “Smoke’ll get to ya first and ya won’t wake up.”
She thought about it—she wasn’t in the habit of taking stock of smoke alarms in places that she lived, but before the hotel, neither of her apartments down here had had a smoke alarm. She wasn’t even sure if her last apartment back in El Salvador with Laura had had any—it’d been a pretty shitty apartment. “That doesn’t happen,” she said.
Angel shrugged. “Happened to my family,” he said.
Now she felt like a bitch. “…Oh.”
Angel didn’t seem too fazed by his family’s deaths. He didn’t talk about his family much, or… at all. Vaggie considered the fact that he had died in 1947, that he’d been in the mob, and that he was what he was currently, and…
It wasn’t like she spoke about her family either. She wouldn’t judge him for that.
Alastor looked up at her, in that super concerning way he did when he was about to piss Vaggie off. “Thirty-six,” he said. Vaggie looked at him blankly. “That’s exactly the amount you owe the swear jar. You’re in debt, sweetheart!”
He pushed the notepad into her dumbfounded hands. He’d been doing fucking arithmetic while she struggled with the smoke alarm. She fumbled with her words for a minute before looking back at him to glare, “You don’t even know what half those words meant!”
Angel chimed in, “You called Al a motherfucker last week.”
”No, I did not.” It didn’t count if he didn’t know about it, she figured.
“You really ought to lead by example, my dear.” He grinned so wide his face was mainly only yellow teeth. “Think about the example you’re setting for all the patrons!” He gestured to Angel, watching with the most interest she’d ever seen. “What would Charlie think to learn her beloved, mad little manager wasn’t following the rules she put in place?”
Her and Charlie had worked together for the swear jar. They settled on a dollar for each one, put it in the perfect place, and decided there would be no mercy with it.
Well, fuck.
Grousing (but not cursing), Vaggie walked on over to it and yanked her wallet out her pocket before groaning her frustration. Angel called over cheekily, “Need a loan, toots?”
”I only got two-twenties,” she said. “No singles.”
Alastor shrugged—he would bend every other rule he saw fit, but this one, he had decided, was more fun as it was—especially (but probably only) when he was not the one being punished by it. “You owe the jar four more swear words—I’d make them count.”
She needed thirty more to convey her hatred towards everybody in this lobby, but opted for flipping them off (a loophole with the sweat jar that they wouldn’t smooth out for awhile) and finally retrieving her phone from the kitchen.
She stopped and screamed. “The oven’s on fire again!”
Charlie found her laying on her back and staring at the ceiling in their bedroom, in total darkness. “One of those moods, huh?”
”I’m either going to cry, or kill everybody in the hotel lobby, and I’m not sure which.”
She shut the door behind her and approached quietly—her care in her steps didn’t seem to be born of fear, like she was worried how she might react if she provoked her, but like she just didn’t want to disturb her. “I think you’re just tired. How much sleep did you get last night, be honest.”
She sighed. “None.”
”You can sleep now?”
”Probably not.” She slid her palms over her face and dug the heel of one into her only eye until stars winked out in front of it. “I drank a lot of coffee, I’ll be up for hours.”
Charlie pursed her lips and turned on the light to better see her. “Then you should at least relax a little,” she decided, curling up beside her. She pulled Vaggie close and made her lean her head against her chest so she could better stroke her hair. She started humming the entire soundtrack of In The Heights like that, quietly, touching Vaggie as gentle as she always did.
”…The kitchen caught fire,” she told her. “Twice.”
”I know,” Charlie responded. “Niffty told me, actually. It could’ve been a lot worse—it just needs a little remodeling done now.”
Vaggie cringed. “Can we even afford that?”
”Yeah.” She rubbed Vaggie’s shoulder comfortingly. “I know it just looks like a lot of money to you, but a new kitchen is… pocket change to my family.”
Vaggie sighed. “I don’t understand rich people.” They probably didn’t understand poor people.
Charlie kissed her temple. “What’s going on?” She asked. “You have something on your mind. Do you want to talk about it?”
”There’s nothing to talk about, hon,” she said. “It’s just the same shit.” She shut her eye—Charlie’s fingers passed through her scalp again and she had to swallow the rising lump in her throat Charlie’s tenderness liked to coax out of her. “Just homesick.”
She kissed her hairline. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
“Stay here a moment,” she said. “Ju-Just… give me a moment, please.”
Charlie kept stroking her hair. Vaggie listened to her breathing, slow and steady. The same lungs she used in the songs she made up on the spot, and to tell Vaggie or anyone else that she loved them. Vaggie loved her girlfriend’s lungs, inside that soft chest.
“I feel like we’ve been so busy,” she said. “When was the last time I got to hold you like this?” She ran her hand down Vaggie’s side comfortingly. “I have this beautiful, stunning woman in my bed, and I barely even appreciate her. Someone needs to hold her at night. Someone needs to remind her that she’s the most beautiful woman down here.”
Vaggie scoffed, but the praise wormed further into her chest and tightened around her heart like a vice. “Someone does do all that,” she said.
”Well, she needs to do it more.” She pulled Vaggie up, so her breath ghosted over her cheekbone, and her fingers rubbed right where her clavicles met in front of her while she sank her teeth into her shiny, black bottom lip. “Maybe she should just… hold you here for a minute. And kiss you. And hold you. And tell you how much you mean to her.”
Charlie’s fingers were soft, and warm. “Maybe I’d like that,” Vaggie mumbled—and then she remembered the kitchen and groaned. “No, we got stuff to do.”
”Like…?” Charlie had that lilt to her words, the alluring type she knew would make Vaggie melt under her if she used it right.
”Like figure out what the Hell to do with the kitchen?” Vaggie said. “We need to replace the oven, the curtains, see what damage we did to that backsplash by there which is probably a lot—“
”Already done!” Charlie said. “Me and you are gonna go look at ovens tomorrow. I gave Niffty a catalogue for any nice decorations for the kitchen, I feel like it’s only fair since she spends most of her time in there, and aside from roasting the oven, she’s been doing a really good job so far—I feel like the hotel could use a bit more life to it, you know, since we are living here, I don’t want it to feel like a prison when we get any more patrons than Angel—“ When. Her optimism was so casual. That was one of Vaggie’s favorite things about her. “We already dealt with the worst damage down there, replaced the batteries on the smoke alarms, and—“ She stopped to catch her breath, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I also restocked all emergency supplies.”
Vaggie looked at her, so she elaborated, “First-Aid kits, and fire extinguishers, mostly. But I also got an AED, in case we need that, and in case the power goes out, we got candles, those little flashlights you need to wind up to use, plenty of batteries.” A beat. “What is it you like to say? ‘Prepare for the worst, hope for the best?’ I guess it’s not the worst, but I feel like, if most things happen, we’ll be relatively prepared.”
Responsibility was a crazy good look on Charlie. Charlie was… she didn’t know, quirky, and she was fun-loving, and she burst into song, and she danced, and she didn’t always take things seriously when Vaggie wanted her to—but she was smart. And she was preparing for any sort of disaster that could strike the patrons without any input from Vaggie, and she thought for a moment, even with the fact that the oven had caught fire twice and Alastor’s presence in the hotel, things were relatively safe here.
”That’s… great, hon.” Charlie smiled down at her and climbed onto her thighs before she cupped Vaggie’s face. “…It’s the middle of the day, though.” Charlie pouted, and heat pooled in Vaggie’s stomach, because just her twisting her lips a little made her want to push her into the bed. “I think they’ll notice if we both disappear for an extended amount of time and return back downstairs together.”
”We’ll say we were talking,” Charlie insisted. “And I mean, we just were, so we’re not even lying.” Vaggie pursed her lips and Charlie climbed on top of her, giggling. “You can curse in here. There’s no swear jar around. No one to hear you…” Her lips brushed over her. “I went out and bought more lube,” she said. “Papaya-flavored.”
”You’re disgusting.” Vaggie kissed her fiercely—Charlie’s responsibility was hot. One time, Vaggie caught her folding clothes, and she had ended up tackling her onto the bed because it was so hot. “Let me hear your Spanish.”
Charlie always went to her favorite first. “Mi lechita.” Her hand squeezed Vaggie’s thigh and rose up, up—
She caught Vaggie’s lips again, and broke away to whisper, “Te quiero comer a besos.”
”Where’d you learn that?” Vaggie asked.
”The Internet!” She hummed, and corded her fingers through Vaggie’s hair. “Muy cachondo.”
Vaggie sighed through the kisses being layered on her collarbone. “Cachonda,” she corrected. “Feminine. The o is masculine.”
”Fuck yeah.” Her nose pressed into the hollow of Vaggie’s throat, her eyes staring up at her like a hungry animal, but her sex appeal was significantly undermined by the fact that she was fucking adorable. “Correct my grammar more. Teach me a lesson, Vaggie—¡Así me gustas!”
Vaggie ran her hands over her hips. “I haven’t been neglecting you that much, have I?” Charlie grinned, and tugged at her dress. “Just that desperate, princesa?” Her skin was warm to the touch, and invitingly soft. She knew how to get Vaggie going—existing seemed to do the job. “What do you want?”
“Dámelo.” Charlie licked her lips. “Please?”
”What?” Vaggie whispered. She tugged on the ends of Charlie’s hair and her grin grew wider the edges. “What do you want, princess?”
She leaned closer. “I want you to stuff my pupasa.” A beat and she broke into a fit of almost-childish giggles, and Vaggie took her into her arms, willed by her gaze.
They kissed again, quieted by the warm press of flesh. Sometimes, Vaggie forgot how lucky she was to be able to crawl into bed beside Charlie—not just because she was so hot, or because she was a princess, or even solely because Vaggie loved her so much, but because her touch was the single most comforting thing she had ever gotten to have to herself, in life or death.
Vaggie pulled away. “Get the light,” she said.
Charlie pressed a wet kiss against her collarbone. “I don’t wanna get off of you.”
Vaggie nudged her. “Get the light,” she said. “So no one knows we’re in here.”
Charlie sighed, a single finger tracing circles into Vaggie’s chest through her dress. “But what if I want to look at you?” She asked.
“You can just feel me over,” Vaggie said. “And look at me later. You’ll survive, princess.”
She pouted playfully, and grasped the hemline of Vaggie’s dress, tugging it upwards. “Hon,” she warned, but couldn’t keep the grin off her face. Charlie pushed her onto her back and claimed her lips again. How she could be so pretty, Vaggie didn’t know—she didn’t know it was possible to be this attracted to someone until Charlie. Every minute around her, she admired her in some way—her red eyes, her sharp little smiles, her little blushing marks on her face, or even just her presence, with the quiet satisfaction of knowing she was her’s.
The lights flickered—once, twice, and then all at once shut off, and the room spiraled into darkness.
A beat and Vaggie pulled back panting, “Was that you?”
”No.”
Vaggie looked—even the hall light from under the door, usually seeping in with a yellow glow, had went dim, and though it wasn’t something she usually paid attention to, there was always this faint hum in the walls from the electricity through the building. She couldn’t hear it.
“Fuck.”
Vaggie was not an electrician. She wondered if maybe engineering would’ve been better to study than business, because currently, the breaker box was a puzzle she couldn’t solve. She was half-certain she was gonna break something.
Angel stood nearby with his phone—the flashlight kept moving from the breaker box on the wall to the back of her head because he hadn’t offered to help, he was just there checking his socials, and when Vaggie got sick of winding up one of those stupid flashlights to hold in between her teeth for thirty seconds before it went out, she had said, “Turn on your flashlight,” and he did so just so it could be on and not help her in any way.
Niffty popped back in, hands behind her back. “Miss Charlie wanted me to check that you didn’t electrocute yourself,” she said. “Are you crispy?”
Vaggie sighed. “No.” She wasn’t that fortunate.
Her finger snagged on something and when she pulled back, sparks shot out at her like it wanted to correct her, but she was fine. Niffty didn’t comment on the sudden brightness. “You think it’s something wrong with the breaker box?” Niffty asked.
”No,” Vaggie said. “I’m just wrist-deep in it in total darkness for fun.” Angel made a vague noise of frustration behind her that… probably wasn’t related to her.
”Oh,” Niffty said. “I get into those moods too. I once changed every lightbulb in the entire fourth story for no reason.” Vaggie paused. “And then I was like, ‘why did I do that?’ because they didn’t need to be replaced, so I went one by one and gave them back their original lightbulbs. And then one of them did blow out, and I had to replace that one.” A beat. “Oh. And that one time I rewired all the electricity in my apartment for no reason at all.”
Vaggie paused and turned to look in her direction. “Did you pull something like that inside the hotel?”
Niffty hummed, like she was trying to remember. Oh, god. “I don’t think so,” she said. “That sounds like something you’d remember, right? I don’t remember doing something like that.”
Vaggie wouldn’t stake anything on Niffty’s memory. She pulled back and sighed.
Angel spoke up from against the wall he was leaned against, “It’s not the hotel.” Vaggie turned to face him. “Well, it is the hotel—but it’s just the hotel.” A beat. “Nobody else’s got an unexplained blackout.”
Vaggie frowned. “Is it a problem with the power grid, or…?”
Angel snorted. “Yeah, and his name is Vox.”
Vaggie sighed. “Does Vox hold a personal vendetta against the idea of redemption?” Wouldn’t be the first demon to decide they hated the very idea of this hotel for no fucking reason.
Angel shrugged his shoulders, which was not much of an answer, but Vaggie wasn’t letting this go. “I’m confused. How?”
”Nobody knows how,” Angel said. “He just does. He’s created like, Hellwide blackouts before, toots.” A beat. “You mean to tell me ya got all you know ‘bout the Radio Demon, but ya don’t know anything ‘bout the Vees?”
”I know of them,” she insisted. “But I don’t know what they got to do with the power.”
Angel hesitated in this super specific way Vaggie had come to associate with when he was hiding something a little more serious—like that one time he had taken too much of the wrong drug and tried to pretend he wasn’t just sober, but okay, and then had ended up blacking out halfway through the stairs and gone head over heels on his way down. You couldn’t really be angry at someone who just about cracked their skull open.
”Angel,” she said. “Did you do another shitty thing that’s gonna wind up on the news?”
”Not the news,” he said, and chewed his bottom lip. His other pair of arms hung limply at his sides, but he clenched his fists, flexing his hands before sighing. “I didn’t do anything else.” She gave him a stern look, the type that usually did absolutely nothing. “Really—but, uh, everybody caught that news segment, and…” He trailed off.
”And?”
Angel hesitated again. “And Val ain’t the biggest fan of me stayin’ at this hotel.”
Vaggie wasn’t sure how to read that. She knew Angel himself wasn’t the biggest fan of the hotel—and maybe it was just that, when you ran a business based off of sinning, you didn’t want one of your employees surrounding themselves in a sinless crowd. It was like letting your best employee at a butcher shop surround themself with vegans—sure, they currently stood with you, but what if they changed in their surroundings?
And then, Vaggie factored in what she did know of Valentino. Not a ton, all things considered, but enough to be repulsed. Sex work as a whole made some primal part of her, all the way in her core, flinch like she was being stabbed—the idea of it in Hell…
She wanted to retch. She didn’t imagine anyone liking it. Sex, maybe, but as a job? She refused to believe even Angel had such low standards as to be genuinely happy, working for a pimp in an aggressive industry, living an empty lifestyle, where sex was fake and plastic and lacked any sort of real intimacy even balls deep in your partner? Where satisfaction was just sticky on your hands and stomach, present in moans but not in your chest as an emotion?
”What’s that gonna do?” Vaggie asked. “Is that gonna make you go back?”
Angel shrugged. “It’ll make him feel better.”
How would that make someone feel better? Vaggie scoffed. Turning the lights off was annoying. The A/C was off, and in the heat, that would suck. (She wasn’t sure if you should worry about heatstroke in the afterlife.) Was it just to make sure Angel might enjoy this any less than he already did? To try and lure him out and back to wherever he’d been living before the hotel? Was he just pissed that Angel maybe reaching redemption would mean skipping town, Hell entirely and leave him with a position to fill?
Stupid, she thought. She said as much, and Angel responded, “Yeah, he ain’t gonna shut up ‘bout me being here, and I’m guessin’ his boyfriend got real sick of it.” A beat. “Or maybe that’s just ‘cause Alastor’s here.”
”Valentino has a grudge against the Radio Demon?” She never heard anything about that—maybe she was ‘t supposed to. She would admit she didn’t know the intricacies of all the Overlords and their relationships with one another (outside of that VVV was tightly-knit and they were some form of allies down here, though what she’d seen on Voxtagram didn’t seem to indicate that), just that she should stay away from them all, and why she should.
”Nah,” Angel said. “But Vox does. Has since he dropped down in Hell, they fuckin’ hate each other.”
Vaggie turned to look at him flatly. “You know all that, but you didn’t know who the Radio Demon was?”
Angel scoffed. “Vox doesn’t call Al ‘the Radio Demon,’ babe—he always calls him Bambi.” Vaggie wrinkled her nose. “Those Overlords like to give each other names—usually somethin’ they think’d offend the other. All Vox’s ever done was try to piss him off, but he complains ‘bout him a lot. Val and Velvette don’t like him much either, but that’s like, typical Overlord stuff, nothin’ personal. As far as I know, anyways. I ain’t been taking notes.”
Vaggie turner back to him. “I still don’t know what they think turning off the power’s gonna do. Do they think shut off lights is gonna force you out?”
A beat. “I don’t think it’s the lights they think will get me outta here.”
Vaggie didn’t know what that meant but before she could think about it much more, Angel shut off his flashlight and said, “Why the fuck do ya need me to stand here? Your phone ain’t got a flashlight?”
”It’s dead,” she responded. “And I can’t exactly charge it like this.” She figured she was done anyway. She wiped a hand down her face and sighed. “…Swear jar?”
Angel clicked his tongue. “Shit, did I say that?” He asked. “My bad. Y’know, I really would, but it’s so dark, I don’t think I’m gonna find it.”
”…It’s in the same place it always is,” Vaggie argued, but he was already walking away. She sighed, and Niffty pulled out a bag of alcohol wipes from her skirt (in… pockets she didn’t have?) before reaching for the fuse box.
”Is it just me,” Niffty said. “Or do things get dirtier in the dark?” She asked. “Like, no, things don’t get dirtier, but like, they could be, and I won’t even know to clean it?” Her hand flailed in the air before her fist found metal, just the bottom edge of where it jutted out of the wall.
Vaggie chewed her bottom lip, considered whether or not she was being a little too patronizing, and then bit the bullet and asked, “Do you need help?”
Niffty tittered in the darkness. “You’re so sweet—but I saw how the lobby was when I first got here, and it’s okay! I guess you modern women are just built a little different, and that’s why you can’t clean or cook—it’s okay! You’re no less of a woman, and better yet, you don’t even have to worry about landing yourself a husband because of it! Because you found another modern woman that can’t clean or cook!” Vaggie didn’t know where to jump in to defend herself or Charlie. “You don’t gotta help me, but it’s nice of you to ask—“
”I meant…” She ground her teeth together. “…do you need help reaching that?”
A beat. “Oh.” Niffty tittered again. “Yeah! That’d be great!”
Vaggie picked Niffty up by the waist and held her up closer to the fuse box’s shut door. “Y’know,” Niffty started, wiping down with these quick, precise movements like she did this every day of her life. “I’m not really used to people asking before they pick me up.”
Vaggie frowned. “I was trying to avoid sounding too patronizing,” she said.
She giggled. “No, it’s nice—I’m so used to Husk randomly scooping me up like a chihuahua, or Al grabbing me by the scruff of my neck, it doesn’t really faze me anymore.” Something about that rubbed her the wrong way, but she couldn’t quite put it into words, so she just pursed her lips. “I can’t entirely blame them, though—I think the reason I’m so short, is ‘cause God knew I’d be a menace if I was any taller. It’d be really bad—He had to humble me, y’know?”
“Uh,” she said. “Sure.” A beat. “You know, you have every right to boundaries, Niffty. You don’t have to let people touch you, if you don’t want them to.” She thought back to Alastor, shoving her around while Charlie was distracted, slapping her ass when he passed by for seemingly no other reason than that he wanted to piss her off and knew it would—and looking at Charlie, like she was a sheep he was fleecing. “…Even if it’s your boss.”
“Don’t worry,” she chirped. “I really don’t mind it.” Vaggie put her back on her feet and she dusted off her skirt. “It’s nice of you to worry, though. Are all you modern woman so nervous? That must be why so many of them drink—not that I’m judging, of course! You know how many housewives did cocaine in the fifties? A lot. I think.” A beat. “Anyways, yes! I’m fine! Thank you, Vaggie!”
She zoomed off somewhere, probably to clean and Vaggie lingered a moment in the hallway to rub at her eye. She was still tired—not in the way that would let her sleep, but in the way she was ready to peel off her own skin in discomfort, and every little thing was going to bother her for all of eternity or until she got to sleep.
She returned to the lobby, to find a shadow perched on the floor, knees bent and a box of matches in her hand—after a moment, she managed to light the candle in front of her and a golden glow illuminated her yellow hair down her shoulder.
Vaggie almost swooned.
Charlie turned to look at her with a smile bright enough to illuminate not just the entire Pentagram, but each and every last ring in Hell. “Good thing we prepared for this, right?”
”Yeah,” Vaggie said. “The flashlights suck.”
Candles had settled on just about any surface that could hold them, lighting up most of the lobby. Every once in awhile, you would step into a dark spot that the swells of light didn’t reach, but it was enough nobody was bumping into each other. In the darkness, they had settled in the lobby—Niffty had switched from her usual fanfiction laptop to a typewriter, not because her laptop was dead, but because she really liked the aesthetic of it, and the only reason she wasn’t cleaning was because Alastor had just barely caught her trying to wipe something down with what she thought was Lysol but was actually bug spray, and had apparently gotten concerned that she would somehow harm herself with it (according to Husk, she had huffed cleaning products in the past, and they thought the bug spray might be worse), and had taken the liberty of relieving her from her cleaning duties.
Husk was slumped behind the bar counter (like usual), and Angel had taken a seat in his usual stool, stroking Fat Nuggets’ head.
“It could be worse!” Charlie exclaimed, ever the optimist. “At least the weather’s steady—back in 1976, the Pride ring got the worst blackout for two weeks straight in the middle of a blizzard. You’re lucky you missed that, Vaggie.”
She paused. “…Hell has blizzards?”
“Once every five years!” Alastor was in one of the more shadowy corners of the lobby—maybe he just liked the aesthetic. “The last one put three icebox factories out of business—that last one’s owner said that he would only let go of his business when Hell had frozen over!” He laughed. Vaggie wondered if all his jokes were supposed to leave you feeling somewhat on edge.
Niffty’s skirt was swishing with all her movement, even seated—she had a tendency to kick her feet a lot, like even when she was staying put she needed to feel like she was moving around. “I remember that!” She said. “My face froze to a toaster.”
Charlie faltered again. “Why did your face freeze to a toaster?”
”Because my face was on the toaster,” she said. “And water freezes on metal in the cold, and it was very cold.”
Vaggie frowned. “But why was your face wet?”
”I had water on it,” Niffty said.
They stopped asking questions.
Vaggie sat down heavily on a couch and sank her fingers into her eye again. She considered the possibility that all of what Niffty was saying made total sense and she was just too tired to connect the dots. She also considered asking why, if blizzards happened every five years, she hadn’t experienced one just yet, but then remembered the meteorologists were probably in Heaven anyway.
Charlie sat down next to her, close enough she could feel the fabric of her slacks against her thigh where her skirt crept up, and grasped her hand. In the low light, she looked like a dream—and with the dimness and her ever-growing fatigue, she was a reason to stay awake. Nothing kept the nightmares away like Charlie did.
“This is a good idea.”
She’d been repeating it to herself since she woke up this morning with the intentions she had gone to sleep with. Like some sort of a pep talk—maybe if she repeated it enough, she’d start to believe it, so she kept going, Está es una idea buena. Está es una idea buena. Jury was still out on whether it was working or not.
She consulted the picture again, and looked at the rising sun above San Salvador. She had a long day ahead of her.
She thought she might as well get started.
About an hour passed and Vaggie snapped out of it, and had took some of the paperwork from the office out into the lobby to do by candlelight.
About halfway back to the couch with Charlie perched on it and jotting something down in a little sparkly notebook, Vaggie stopped in her tracks, still holding a stack of papers.
Something was wrong.
She stayed still long enough for Charlie to look up at her in concern, red eyes oozing fondness, even when her lips quirked. “Vaggie?”
She glanced about the lobby—nothing had changed. It was still dark without the candles, everybody was where they had been when she left, but her hair in the back of her neck stood on end, and a new stiffness joined her limbs. “Something’s off,” she said.
Everybody was looking at her like she was crazy—she didn’t care. First thing her mamá in El Salvador taught her was to trust her gut. If something felt off, it probably was—better safe than sorry.
Her heart started doing double time in her chest—she thought, this was the same feeling you got late in bed, when things went bump in the night, when you heard a loud noise, when you were no longer sure if you locked your bedroom door. Had somebody broken into the hotel? Was there an intruder? Were they all going to die?
A bead of sweat rolled down her back—the zero air conditioners weren’t helping, she was sure. “Do none of you feel that?” She asked.
Angel had already turned away from her to pour a mystery bottle into a glass he had stolen from Husk. “Maybe she’s in shock,” Angel said. “Anxiousness is a symptom.”
Charlie jumped to her feet. “She’s in shock?!”
”I’m not in shock.” She hadn’t done anything that could put her into shock—and even then, it wasn’t like internal damage was going to kill her down here.
Angel shook his head. “The afflicted never know—look, she’s all pale and ashy, that’s a symptom too.”
”For the last time, I am not ashy,” Vaggie snapped. “My skin just looks like this.”
”Ya look like ya never even heard of moisturizer.”
Vaggie was getting ready to use those four bucks she had prepaid in the swear jar, when Charlie moved forward and pressed the back of her hand to Vaggie’s forehead. “You don’t feel cold,” she said. “Actually, you feel kinda warm. Maybe you’re sick?”
Alastor jumped into the candlelight like a new performer jumped into the spotlight. “If she has a cough, we can make Niffty fetch the heroin.”
Her anger came hand-in-hand with the unliveable shame thinking about heroin brought. “Go to Hell!” She snapped—and if she hadn’t left her harpoon by her side of the bed, she would’ve been threatening to send him to double-Hell.
The candlelight did worse-than-usual things on his yellow teeth, even when his eyes blazed in delight that she would take the bait, that she would always respond to his goading. Patience was a virtue—Sinners didn’t tend to have a ton of those. “I’ll be right on that, darling. You really don’t ask for much, do you?”
She ground her teeth so hard, she thought she might’ve cracked them, but Charlie was still there, her soft features pulled into an almost heartbreaking frown. “Maybe you should lay down? Vaggie, you… really don’t look good.”
”I-I’m fine, hon.” She had felt fine—then she got all paranoid, and now she was forgetting about the paranoia entirely to think she was going crazy, and be self-conscious over how everyone was looking at her like she was. “S-Seriously, none of you feel that?”
Angel blinked, and then chuckled to himself. “Think there’s a storm coming—but that’s about it. Not really anythin’ to get this freaked out about.”
“Since when do you know anything about the weather?” Vaggie snapped.
Angel shrugged his shoulders. Charlie reached and squeezed Vaggie’s shoulder, “Maybe you just need to rest a little more. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends.”
Vaggie hesitated, and sighed. “I didn’t feel like this three minutes ago.”
Charlie kissed her temple. “I know,” she said. “But you do now, and we don’t want it to get worse.”
She looked back at Charlie—and she offered this really specific flavor of reassuring smiles where she seemed to glow in a thousand different ways, and light up the room, and Vaggie felt like everything was okay.
Except, that light in the room wasn’t just Charlie.
She looked down at her feet.
Candles stood in a small circle around her, as if trapping her within them. They weren’t Charlie’s candles, because they were all white sticks that glowed yellow with their lit wicks, but the ones scattered about the lobby were far from uniform, mismatched in color and scent and shape. Wax dripped down their sides in neat lines, beginning to pool on the carpet.
And they were glowing brighter, brighter still.
Candles were such a mundane thing, but they had just appeared around her. She almost thought it was some sort of joke, and her tired mind was struggling to catch up. The lobby grew brighter. “What the fu—“
The candles blazed high and almost blinding. The room filled with light, searing her retina and leaving her spiraling in fire.
When thought returned to her head, the first one was What the fuck.
The second one was Who the fuck, because when things went wrong, she usually blamed either Angel or Alastor, because they both seemed to get their rocks off on ruining her day, so she was trying to single out one of the suspects before she registered that she was on her feet still, and the fire must’ve still been going, because it was still so bright, she had to squint.
It was not carpet beneath her heels, but something harder. Stone? Cement? She looked down, and then lost her balance and nearly stumbled and knocked something over, but she could barely see it. She was still squinting.
The world was blurry. She could remember drinking about half a bottle of tequila in the span of a night and waking up naked on the floor of her apartment, and being less sensitive to the morning light than this.
Vaggie groaned. “I don’t know what kind of a joke you think this is, Angel—“ She decided this was a little too childish for Alastor. Alastor didn’t go out of his way to piss her off unless it was really funny, and this ratio of humor: effort wasn’t enough for him—so, Angel. “—but I swear to God—“
Someone screamed.
It was high-pitched, feminine. For a minute, she thought it was Charlie, and thought instantly they were in danger, she was hurting, and she needed to protect her—she reached for her harpoon, and then her hand came away empty because she didn’t have her harpoon.
Heart racing, she blinked to clear her vision, to see what was threatening her girlfriend.
Before her, there was a girl.
A human girl.
Warm brown skin, and thick black hair that brushed over her shoulders, with these tiny little hair clips on the side of her face with cartoon character faces on them, made of such a cheap plastic they would probably break just after today. Her dark eyes were wide in her horror, like she had just watched someone kick a baby into the sun, or maybe would’ve preferred that.
She seemed young, too. Maybe thirteen? Fourteen? A teenager, but still a child, and her clothing was walking that line between the ages—trousers, a shirt a little too big, makeup awkwardly and badly applied to a baby face, like a little girl trying to look like her mother when she played dress up. She was also maybe a scene kid? Vaggie was seeing a lot of black—and her her fingerless gloves she had on were way too big for her tiny hands. Vaggie remembered being that young—puberty came, kicked your ass, took your innocence and replaced it with blood and tears, and then your body got all these different proportions. (At thirteen, she had had stupidly long legs for what felt like forever—and she still hadn’t been tall. When they visited her mamá’s side of the family, everybody made clucking noises when they saw her, and she wouldn’t wish that on anyone.)
“God.” She didn’t know what else to say. What was a kid doing here? “Oh… Oh my God.”
She knew some children did end up in Hell—but she had never really seen the child, unless in passing, never been close enough to see the innocence in their eyes, and the youth in their features, and being this close, she was ready to throw away about an entire life of anti-children to do absolutely anything she could for this poor human girl that must’ve been so scared and confused, Vaggie wasn’t even sure if she was supposed to ask questions about how she was here. Did humans sometimes wind up in Hell?
With the most panicked expression, the girl reached into this weird little tub she had on the floor next to her where she was kneeling—she looked so scared. Vaggie was actually grateful she didn’t have her harpoon on her—she would’ve scared her even worse than she already was. “It’s okay,” Vaggie said, as calmly as she could manage. “Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl pulled out a fistful of something gray and threw it at Vaggie’s chest—it was fine, dusty. Ash stuck to her front and sprinkled along her shoes. Vaggie glared down at it, but tried not to get too angry. She was a kid. It sucked she was actually ashy now, but Vaggie was not so low on patience that she would lash out at a clearly scared child. Arriving in Hell was scary. Seeing a demon for the first time was scarier. She didn’t want to make it an even worse transition.
“¡Puchica!” She cried, throwing herself back alarmed. “I didn’t think that was going to work!” Her hands, even with one still covered in soot, came up to clutch at her hair like she was as going to tear it from her scalp. “Por Díos, I-I thought—“ Her gaze scraped over Vaggie again, eyes still wide, bottom lip quivering like she was about to cry. Vaggie really, really wished she knew where Charlie was—she was much better at comforting people. Vaggie really needed to work on her people skills, and her empathy skills.
Then the girl’s hands fell to her sides and she exclaimed, “I thought you were going to have patas de ave.”
Vaggie stayed there a moment. “Huh?”
”Rooster,” the girl said. “Like, like the other.”
”…I don’t follow,” Vaggie said. “Other what?”
”The-The—“ Her hand was shaking, she pointed to the candles on the ground. “The shedim.” Vaggie tried to remember what those were, because she knew she had heard them before, but not for a long time. “He connected me to you.”
Vaggie looked down—smeared in chalk in the middle of the circled candles, there it was. She dumbly looked back at the girl. “This is a summoning circle. Not a pay phone.”
”Yeah, that’s what he said,” she said. “He said, ‘I’m not an operator’ and I said, ‘I’m not looking for an operator, I’m just looking for someone and it’s really important,’ and he connected me to you.” She wiped at her eyes with the heels of her clean palm. “He was very nice. Very tall. Very colorful. Rooster.”
Vaggie had stopped paying attention to glance about the area, and then pointed again. “This is a summoning circle,” she said.
“Sí.”
Vaggie glanced again, and tried to remember if the Human World was so bright when she’d been a part of it.
She moved her hands to her hips, and looked down at the summoning circle again. “…You summoned me.” The girl nodded her head.
She buried her head in her hands. “…Send me back.”
”Huh?” The girl asked.
“Ay, bicha—I’m sorry, but I’m not getting involved in any occult things.” She had heard stories about this—being up here was making her feel… all sorts of ways she didn’t want to feel, and in Hell, being summoned to the Living World was some sort of bragging points thing. Something girls did at sleepovers not expecting it to work, or cults did to bring about the end of the world, or assholes did to kill someone or get material goods. Demons were powerful in the Living Realm, but she had no interest in being a source of nightmares or making any deals. To her, it spelled trouble. “This stuff is dangerous, I’m not encouraging you to do stuff like this. You could get hurt. Send me back and go home.”
The girl clasped her hands in front of her. “You don’t… recognize me?”
Vaggie didn’t budge, just crossed her arms over her chest. “Send me back.”
The girl moved closer. “I-I recognize you—I was trying to get ahold of you, I-I’m trying to solve your murder.”
Her murder.
Vaggie didn’t like thinking about it. She definitely didn’t like talking about it. She wasn’t going to give this child nightmares, again. “I’m serious. I’m not even sure if this is legal—you could be getting me into trouble. Déjame ir. Now.”
For a moment, the girl looked sufficiently cowed, then she straightened herself out and looked Vaggie dead in the eye with a steely sort of fire no insisting could extinguish. “Vagatha Ana Mancia was twenty-two when she disappeared somewhere in San Salvador. There is no traces of her anywhere. Her roommate is the last person to say they ever saw her. For the last eight years, there’s been zero leads to her whereabouts—“ She stepped closer, sandal-clad feet meeting together. “—and zero evidence she’s alive.”
The world had stopped spinning. The girl clenched her fists at her sides, set her jaw—for the first time, Vaggie thought this girl did look somehow familiar, if only slightly, but had thought, maybe all humans looked more or less the same without the colorful skin tones, hair colors and extra limbs.
”Me nombre es Mia Mancia—and I have summoned her spirit in her hometown to bring her killer to justice and offer closure to the rest of her family.” She rested her hands on her hips. “Are you or are you not Vaggie, shedim?”