Caught In The Undertow

by Andraste

Summary:

It takes Vox a long time to find out what the radio demon wants from him, and that Hell really is what you make of it.

Or: five times Vox wanted something out of Alastor (and mostly didn't get it) and one time Alastor wanted something back (and did).

Notes:

1. This is complete in draft form, I'll be editing and posting one chapter per day.

2. There's Vox/Valentino sex in Chapter Four and references to their relationship elsewhere but I decided a Vox/Valentino relationship tag probably wasn't appropriate since I doubt this is the kind of thing anyone wants if they came looking for Vox/Valentino. (You'll see when we get there.)

3. Velvette also has a guest appearance in Chapter Three; everyone's clothes stay on for that one though.

4. Title courtesy of Arthur Altman and Jack Lawrence's All or Nothing At All.

Chapter 1: What A Difference A Day Makes

The radio comes with the room.

There's not much else - a mattress he’s pretty sure has something living in it, a radiator, a broken window, a cracked mirror, a bedside table that lists to one side so the radio is in danger of sliding off, a bucket that better not be for what he thinks it's for. It’s the best room in this flop house, though, so of course it’s his. If there ever was a door it's long gone, but at least it's somewhere he can finally have a minute to think. Vincent reaches for the radio dial just for a distraction, like he's going to hear this evening's episode of The $64,000 Question. In Hell.

The music is fucking weird, which he should probably have anticipated. A little old-fashioned, like something from when he was young. He recognizes the ragtime chord progression, but not the instrumentation.

He’s just wondering if he needs to fight the mattress or check the bucket first when there’s a knock on the door frame. Ethan, of course, he’d know that appropriately diffident sound anywhere. One thing hasn’t changed today, at least.

“Sir?”

“What is it?”

Ethan stick his head around the doorway. Vincent still hasn’t got used to the new face, not that he can throw any stones. “The others managed to scrounge up some food, I was wondering if you wanted to eat?”

“No, he says. He absolutely does not want to know what the food here is like. Assuming he even can eat in his - current condition. Ethan turns to go, correctly reading his mood, but Vincent calls after him. “Make sure it’s distributed evenly.” He absolutely cannot have infighting right now on top of everything else. “Tell everybody to get some rest and I’ll speak to them about the plan in the morning.” By which point he is going to need to have a plan, beyond trading the questionable dish-washing services of his followers for a night under a roof. He’s still got hold of the group, just barely, because he’s the one familiar thing here. It won’t last unless he can offer them something, and he doesn’t even know what the options are.

The truth is, Vincent never thought about going to Hell. He heard plenty about it as a kid, but he was smart enough to figure out everything they said in church was bullshit before he was ten. And he wasn’t wrong - the minister never said anything about standing in a long line, then being handed a pamphlet by a guy with horns that said WELCOME TO HELL on the front and SO YOU’RE FUCKED inside. He didn’t tell the congregation that they’d still need to find shelter and jobs and food. He never said that it would all be so much fucking work. A lake of fire sounds kind of cosy by comparison right now.

It’s been less than a day, and he’s exhausted. Twenty-four hours ago, he was at the apex of success, ready to triumph at a whole new level and then - . He doesn’t want to think about that. The minister also said that you can’t take it with you, and yet, here Vincent is, in charge of everyone he brought along. He tries not to wonder about what it means that only two thirds of his followers are here. Nobody has mentioned the other place. They keep looking at him like he’s meant to have answers, and he keeps trying to act like he has any. The old bastard of a minister is probably around here somewhere, always assuming cheating on your wife gets you Hell. Maybe Vincent should find him and kick him, it might make him feel better.

The song on the radio ends, and a voice replaces it. “If you’re just joining us, the news of the day is that Dumah has finally retired. I would have asked him to comment, but the Overlord of silence wasn’t known for giving interviews. Of course your favourite radio demon will have all of the reports from his peers, as soon as I can find someone with something nice to say.” Radio demon, huh. Vincent is pretty sure he saw a poster earlier - the guy is not actually a radio, whatever his own shape might imply about Hell’s possibilities.

But ‘Overlord’. Now there’s an interesting word. Are those the people in charge around here? Vincent wonders if the pamphlet explained it, but he threw his copy back at the thing that handed it to him. Ethan will have kept his for sure, though, Vox should get him to summarise the main points tomorrow before he briefs the group.

It’s obvious already that the old Whittman charm isn’t going to get him far. Down here, nobody knows who he is, and he hasn’t had to explain that in a decade. Shit, half of them don't know what he is - people have been asking him what he’s meant to be all day, since it turns out most of the people here died before television was invented. His followers came out as eels or fish or squid, most of the people here seem to be something alive at least. The first time he glimpsed his own reflection, he didn’t know what he was looking at either.

It’s time to figure that out. Always better to know what you’ve got to work with.

“It always brings a tear to my eye when one of the true bastions of Hell’s old order vacates the field, but we all know that there must be rot in order for there to be new growth. Some would say Overlords dropping like flies is a sign of the degenerate times in which we live, but I prefer to see it as an opportunity. Come tomorrow, who knows which bright young sinners will be chewing over his assets? I say Hell could always use fresh blood!” Vincent wonders what the real accent underneath the mid-Atlantic surface is. Definitely American, maybe somewhere south?

Enough putting it off, though. Finally, he turns to the mirror. His reflection isn’t any less startling at second glance. Like the TV came to hell with him along with his inner circle. His eyes are still different shades, but he can see perfectly. Which is just as well, since putting his glasses on isn't even an option any more. He puts a hand on the side of his head, and he can feel the cathode ray humming in there. He frowns, and the image on the screen shifts. He touches the antenna on the top of his head, feels the picture on the screen buzz and experiences a small surge of panic as his heart speeds up. So he’s got a heartbeat. He needs to breathe. He’s still got a tongue, but not a nose. He runs the tongue along his rows of teeth, and feels their pointed edges. He opens his mouth and puts one of his - fingers? Claws? - inside, and yep, it’s definitely hollow and damp in there and he really doesn’t want to think about how any of this works.

“Now, speaking of former overlords, time for some more music from the studio band.” The weird sound starts up again, this time a minor-key turnaround, like Stray Cat Strut played on a real stray cat.

Time to see what the rest of the damage is. He pulls the threadbare curtain across the window, not that anyone would apparently care if he stripped off in full view of the whole city. They walked past at least two dozen movie houses showing porn on the way here and he even saw two guys literally fucking in the middle of the street. All that happened was that someone threw a garbage can at them because they were blocking the way. Vincent never thought of himself as a prude but that’s going to take a little getting used to for sure. The rules down here are clearly different.

The room doesn’t have a wardrobe or a chair, so he carefully hangs his jacket on one end of the radiator. His shoes are scuffed already, and the cuffs of his pants are covered in something unspeakable. Not for the first time today, he’s glad that he can’t smell anything. He sheds those and the rest of his outer layers, too, adding a change of clothes to the list of things for tomorrow. At least he was dressed when he - arrived. Plenty of people in the line around them were in hospital gowns or nothing at all.

He can see more of his skin now that he’s down to his undershirt and shorts. Pitch black, with a texture more like the insulation on the outside of an electrical cable than human flesh. He wonders if he’s waterproof, and if he can safely drink if he isn’t. Past the churning in his stomach whenever he looks at his reflection he thinks he’s getting thirsty.

That can be a problem for tomorrow, along with clothes and a better place to stay and what he’s going to do with the rest of his endless, interminable existence in this accursed pit.

Vincent really thought that when he was dead, it would be over.

He pokes the bed, and since it doesn’t poke him back, he crawls onto it. He’s been trying not to think about how his neck is holding up his head, but even as exhausted as he is it doesn’t really feel heavy. Like it’s meant to be there.

He figures the only option is to lie on his back, even though he’s always slept on his side. He puts a hand to his throat and feels where the join is, swallows and feels his Adam’s apple bob like he’s still got bones and cartilage inside.

Vincent lifts his undershirt up and slides a claw down the centre of his completely hairless chest. He’s been trying to ignore the fact that he has vents down his sides, like strange gills, but he can feel warm air flowing out every time he exhales. Now that he looks, they’re blue. He brushes over them with his knuckles as he breathes in and out, discovering that they’re sensitive. Not in a bad way.

Nothing for it, then, but to slide his shorts down. He tilts his pelvis up so that he can see and it’s - also blue down there. Huh. Still, he’s got his cock and his balls. First good news of the day right there. He slides his shorts back on, too tired to check whether anything works.

“Dear listeners, I’m hearing reports that a gang war has already broken out over Dumah’s territory! Looks like it’s going to be a long night out there, but you know I’ll be here to keep you informed and entertained.”

As a kid, he always hated it when the radio broadcast day ended. It felt like the world outside had been turned off all at once and left him alone, like nothing interesting could ever happen again. He’s spent the past few years trying to push the network to broadcast later and later. Sometimes he leaves - left - the set in his penthouse apartment on all night, tuned to the test card, just to listen to the tone. If the radio plays forever here, that’s two pieces of good news.

Vincent closes his eyes. Or maybe he doesn’t, since he doesn’t have any fucking eyelids. He guesses that he … turns the screen off? It’s unnervingly dark, anyway. He focuses on the broadcast instead, a plan starting to take shape in his mind like it always does when he needs one.

If there’s a media industry, he can be in it. Fuck that, he can be the industry. The radio program format is a little old fashioned, maybe, but at least this guy is in the right century, which is more than you can say for most people here. If the show is popular enough, there must be radios all over, and if they can broadcast a signal ...

First thing tomorrow, he’s going to find out where they make the radios. John Logie Baird is dead too, if Vincent has to dig him up to find out how to make a television, he’ll do it.

“Ah, it warms my heart to see such enthusiasm among Pentagram City’s gangs, such zip and verve! It reminds us all that Hell’s power is there for those who reach out and take it.”

Maybe Hell has possibilities. If there’s power to be had here, he can be the one to grasp it. Of course, he’s going to need to rebrand. That can be the first order of business tomorrow morning, give everyone something to take their minds off things. Make them feel like he’s listening to their thoughts.

“Always remember, sinners, Hell is truly what you make of it. Or you will be what Hell makes out of you, and we wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

“You said it, pal,” he murmurs to the radio demon.

Vincent drifts off to the sound of strange music, and sleeps the sleep of the dead.

Chapter 2: I've Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)

The party is starting to wind down, which is to say that most of the party-goers are heading away from the music and towards the orgy. Vox has to knee and elbow his way through a crowd that’s flowing in the opposite direction, looking for Alastor to say goodbye. He knows he should really be there before the crowd of other up-and-coming Overlords and wannabees - it’s his celebration, now that he’s officially got his thousandth soul - but the honest truth is that there’s nobody over there he wants to talk to half as much as the guy who technically isn’t an Overlord at all. He can always be fashionably late instead.

Predictably, Alastor has reclaimed the piano bench now that the rock ‘n roll band has left the stage. Vox was thrilled that he could book them - the genre was only just getting started when he died, but he’d had it on his list of things to keep an eye on. Just as well musicians seem to be just as into killing themselves early with drug overdoses as ever, whatever the style they play.

“Dancing’s over,” he says, looking up at the stage. “I’m heading out.” Alastor never comes along for the orgy part, however much Vox secretly wishes he would. One of these days, he’s going to be drunk and brave enough to ask what it is that he’s into, but he doesn’t think it’s going to be tonight.

Alastor sniffs. “If you call that dancing.”

Vox grins. “You have to get with the times, old man. Jazz is dead, rock and roll is here.” He’s only been dead a few years, but he’s determined not to let his tastes atrophy. He’s not going to get stuck in the mud just because he’s in the dirt. Alastor makes a noise, and Vox can’t help but laugh. “Watch out, soon Chuck Berry will die and end up here, then the takeover will be complete.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it. Do remember who controls Hell’s airwaves, Vox.”

“Oh, because music was perfected in 1930 like everything else,” Vox says, rolling his eyes theatrically. Alastor thinks nylons and ballpoint pens are newfangled, too. It's kind of cute.

“Perfected? In a sense, yes. Jazz is flexible. A simple set of structures that contain infinite possibilities - isn’t that perfection?”

“C’mon, Al, you’ve only been dead for a couple of decades, no need to fossilise yet. Do you want to end up like Zestial?”

Alastor sighs heavily. “Fine,” he says, patting the bench beside him. “If you’d care to join me, I’ll demonstrate.”

Vox swallows heavily. He’s been up on the bench here a time or two, but Alastor’s never asked anyone to play with him as far as Vox has heard. He climbs up on stage and sits down, glancing around at the rest of the room. Most of everyone left is passed out or clearly travelling in that direction, not that there was more than one opinion he really cared about in this room before everyone went next door. This has to be a test, like when Alastor asked him what he did to get to Hell. Vox treasures the memory of the first night they swapped stories about their kills, and he reminds himself this is just another performance. He’s good at those.

Alastor cracks his knuckles theatrically, then places his hands on the keys. “The Tiger Rag,” he says, “you know it?”

“Sure, from forty years ago.” It’s an old chestnut - Benny Goodman even performed it on his show one time. Vox can’t recall the last time he played it himself, let alone with another pair of hands.

Alastor raises one eyebrow at him. “I can probably find the sheet music somewhere, if that would help?”

The truth is, Vox never learned to read music - he doesn’t even play by ear, really. His knack has always been for watching what other people do and playing it back to them. “You go ahead,” he says. “I’ll catch up.”

He spends the first run through the tune just watching Alastor’s hands, which are always distracting even when they’re not deftly running over the piano keys, before Alastor bends closer to murmur in his ear. “Any time you like, Vincent, unless you don’t think you can keep up ...”

Well, fuck that. It’s a souped-up quadrille, not fucking Rachmaninoff. “I’ve got it,” he says.

And he does. Vox starts out just playing the chords, but as soon as he feels like he's got his feet under him he starts doubling the melody with his right hand an octave below. Alastor soon abandons the tune altogether to improvise a harmony, and by the time they've run through another verse Vox feels the kind of calm focus he only experiences when a performance is going perfectly, or in the moment when he's got a victim on the ropes and they know it. For every flourish Alastor puts in he adds another, and soon enough Vox is reaching across him to get to the high keys and then slamming back down to the lowest notes, faster and faster until the music sounds like it’s being produced by a single soul. Like they’ve rehearsed it together a thousand times.

When they eventually crash to a conclusion, what’s left of their audience cheers and claps, but it’s not like Vox gives a shit what they think. His eyes are fixed on the demon next to him, close enough to touch.

“Not bad,” Alastor says. But the smile is genuine, Vox can tell. He relaxes.

“A good pair of hands make any song work.”

“Which is precisely the point of jazz,” Alastor says, like the smug bastard he is. “Like Hell, it’s always what you make of it.”

Vox nearly tells him right then: that he’s happy he died and ended up here, because Hell has Alastor in it. God, it makes him want to puke right on the piano, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.

“Well, good night,” Alastor says, standing up to go. “I assume you're following the party next door?”

“Uh,” Vox says. Somehow the orgy seems completely unappealing now, despite how keyed up he is. Fingers crossed everyone will be too distracted to notice his absence at this point. “I thought I’d make it an early night. Lots to do now I’ve got a thousand souls in hand.”

“Well,” Alastor says, grin widening, “be sure to drive safely.”

Then he vanishes into the shadows and once again Vox can’t tell if he got anywhere or not. Alastor seeks out his company, he laughs at at least some of his jokes, they’ve swapped stories he hasn’t told anyone else alive or dead, but Vox has no idea what any of it means and it’s making him crazy. Not for the first time he wants to grab Alastor and turn him upside down and shake until all his secrets fall out.

He makes it as far as the front seat of his car before he unfastens his fly, wrapping a hand around himself and thinking about Alastor’s fingers brushing over his, about the way his eyes lit up when Vox told him about his first ever kill. About what it might be like to slide his cock into that perfect smile. He slides forward on the genuine leather seat and tilts his hips forward so that he can summon one of his own cables and slide it inside himself, all the time imagining that it’s a supple wisp of shadow instead. An embarrassingly brief interval later, he shudders and comes hard enough that he manages to make a mess of his own screen.

He’s still got his forehead pressed to the steering wheel waiting to get his breath back when someone bangs on the side window and startles him so much he slams his antennas into the roof. “Are you going to move your car?” they yell.

“Fuck off!” Vox snarls, but he also reaches over to put the car in gear.

Vox has got to tell Alastor. Not about this, obviously. He has to make him see that they’d be so much stronger, so much better, together. They could tear down every other sinner here, make them all crawl and rule the whole place. He needs a plan, a suggestion - no, a proposal. He drives home sticky, rehearsing the conversation in his head yet again.

Notes:

Fun music facts of the day: Tiger Rag is arguably the first jazz recording ever made, back in 1917 when the act involved was still called the Original Dixieland Jass band because the spelling hadn’t been standardized yet. It was a popular standard throughout the time both Alastor and Vincent Whittman were alive.

Chuck Berry was ninety years old when he died in 2017, which is another way you can tell Vox’s ability to predict the future is tragically flawed, even if he did invent Shark Week and 24-hour news channels that make shit up.

Chapter 3: After You've Gone

The day after an extermination is like a huge collective hangover in Hell. Nobody knows what happened the day before, everyone is counting the broken lamps and nobody wants to show up at work. Which is exactly why Vox always makes a point of getting into the office bright and early, so that he can review the report on what happened and plan accordingly, before the dust has time to settle. Taking a day to count your losses isn't worth missing the gains.

“No Overlord deaths this time?”

“No sir,” Ethan says, shifting nervously from foot to foot like he’s not sure how Vox is going to take it.

Mostly he’s not surprised. The first time the Exorcists came they lost half a dozen, but last year it was only two. Everyone left alive has smartened up and learned to hide, himself and his partners included. They spent the previous day a long way from the tower, in separate locations where nobody would think to look for them. The angels seem to kill at random - they’re more interested in pure destruction than in dismantling Hell’s power structures, which is how Vox can tell they're idiots - but nobody is truly safe. Everyone got lucky this time.

“Mmmm. Well, bull markets have their advantages, right? Make sure the news is taking a positive tone, we don’t want to look petty about our enemies being alive.”

“Will do. Do you want me to arrange a staff meeting today so that you can talk to them personally?”

He does like to rally the troops after a day like yesterday, but not just now. “No, I’d better go see the others, do some top level planning.” It will probably turn into toasting their continued survival until they’re hammered, but that’s its own kind of team-building exercise. “Where are they, by the way?”

“Mr. Valentino is in his studio. Apparently his, uh, stable was hit quite hard this time.”

Vox already got the angry voice mail. Angel Dust survived, because Vox doesn’t have that kind of luck, but Val’s throwing a tantrum because Heaven tore through the rest of his stars like a hot knife through cheap whores. As if Hell isn’t oversupplied with people who will take their clothes off in front of a camera for money.

“And Velvette?”

“She came back to the tower early this morning,” Ethan says, then hesitates. “She seemed - upset?”

Maybe the angels have been busy with her models and designers, too. Or they got through enough of the plebs that her follower count dropped, that would do it. “I’ll go check up on her. No sign of the radio demon?” He asks it casually, like he always does at the end of these meetings. Vox doesn’t know for sure that there’s a connection between Alastor’s disappearance and the start of the exterminations, but the timing has always nagged at him.

“Not yet, sir.”

“Off you go then. Tell all the VoxTek staff who are still alive they can divide up the possessions of the ones who didn’t make it, that usually raises morale. Lorelai's dead, right? Why don't you treat yourself to her tablet, it's nicer than yours.”

"Uh, thank you, sir." Ethan nods and backs out of the room.

Vox sends Velvette a text, waits sixty seconds, and frowns when she doesn’t answer. Ethan says she’s not dead, but he struggles to think of anything else that would stop her paying attention to her phone for that long. He heads for her studio, noting with pleasure that the janitorial staff have already got most of the blood out of the carpet. He makes a mental note not to dock their pay at the next general meeting.

The place looks deserted, overhead lights off and curtains drawn, like it’s still closed up from yesterday. No signs of destruction, or not more than the usual fabric and half-finished projects everywhere. Hell's fashionistas don't stop changing outfits long enough to sleep, so someone is always working. Just not today.

“Velvette? You in here?”

“Over here,” she calls out.

Despite how tiny she is, it’s usually hard to miss Velvette. She commands whatever space she’s in. For once it takes him a moment to find her, perched on one of the cutting benches with a martini glass in her hand.

“What’s up with you? You didn’t answer my text.”

“Do I have to answer my phone every second? I was busy.”

“Uhuh,” he says, taking in the two empty bottles of vodka next to her on the table as he walks closer. More ominous still, she's dressed in the same outfit she was wearing when she left last night, although her hair is down around her shoulders. “Sure looks like it. What are we drinking to?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Tell me about the stupid report instead.”

Vox can see why Ethan hesitated over his description earlier. Her voice is steady, and ‘upset’ doesn’t quite seem the word - for some reason the one that springs to mind is ‘harrowed.’ But if she doesn’t want to talk about it, he’s not going to make her.

“Not much to tell,” he says. “The usual chaos and carnage. No Overlord deaths this time, and no sign of Alastor.”

Velvette puts the glass down hard on the table. “For fuck’s sake, Vox, it’s been six years. For all you know the angels got him first.”

“No. If he was dead, the souls he held would have been freed." Vox knows exactly which Overlords Alastor consumed, both before and after he arrived in Hell. Even whatever weird creepy shit he did to them can't have actually destroyed those souls, so if he was gone they'd have started to put themselves back together by now. "That means he must be somewhere, and that means he’s still a threat.”

Velvette snorts. “What is it with you and the fucking radio demon, anyway?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I heard that you used to be friends.”

She must be drunker than she seems, or she’d know better than to ask. He knows that Val gave her the ‘don’t bring up Alastor around Vox’ talk when they first started hanging out, long before they became a triumvirate.

“We were not friends,” he says, through gritted teeth. “We were casual associates, until I wised up and saw that he was a fossilised asshole who couldn’t see my vision for Hell’s future.”

“Uhuh.” Not only was Velvette not dead when all of that happened, she wasn’t even born. Sometimes she makes him feel ancient. “You know, I went to school with this girl. Stone cold bitch, amazing tits. We spent all of Year Nine stealing each other’s girlfriends and yanking on each other's pigtails.”

“Does this story have a point?”

“Yes, the point is that she moved to Milton Keynes and then I never had to think about her again. What does it matter where the radio demon fucked off to or why? He’s gone and that’s the end of it, it’s over.”

She’s right, of course, but it still doesn’t feel like it ever ended. Vox has spent more than sixty years waiting to climb all the way to the top of Hell's hierarchy so he can rub Alastor’s face in it, and he's so close. The idea that he might never see him again is unbearable. He doesn’t want to win by default.

“The most dangerous enemy is one you don’t see coming.”

Velvette makes a noise that might be a laugh. “Can’t say I agree today.”

“Velvette, seriously,” he says, setting the empty bottles upright in a row. “What happened last night?”

“I saw an angel,” she says, staring out the window like she can see forever.

“It was an extermination night, we all saw them.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean I was at the safe house and fucking Adam arrived with half a dozen Exorcists. They tore the whole place apart, he was so close I could have touched him.”

“Shit,” Vox says. For once he's lost for words. “How are you not dead?” He knows people who have had near misses, but nobody who’s come that close to the big guns and lived. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders if it would make good television. They could at least get a breathlessly enthusiastic Katie Killjoy interview out of it.

“I’m small enough to get under the couch, and it turns out that angels are lacking in the brains department. Everyone else tried to run and - let’s just say I’m going to need some new models.”

No wonder she’s shaken. Velvette died young and died fast, before she had a wrinkle or a grey hair or any reason to think about her mortality. This is probably the first time she’s ever actually considered it at all.

Vox slides an arm around her shoulders and pulls out his phone. ““Right,” he says, “no brooding. I’m telling Val to stop counting dead porn stars and get down here, then we’re hitting Dante’s Inferno for brunch. You’ll feel better if you make a waiter cry.”

“Without a reservation?” Her voice is unsoftened, but she doesn’t pull away from his embrace.

“They’ll make room for us. Besides, they’ve always got cancellations the day after an extermination.”

“That’s what I love about you, V,” Velvette says, “you always look on the bright side.”

“We’re going to get fucked up and buy all the freshly vacated real estate,” he says. “Find you some new models and Val some new actors and drink to the future.”

“Yes. The angels are the problem,” she says. “Not Courtney from Year Nine, not the radio demon.”

He reminds himself once again that Velvette is young. She doesn’t understand that there are problems you just have to live with - or die with, if you don’t get under the couch in time. “The important thing is that you were smart and you survived and it’s done now. Hell is our oyster, don’t you forget it.”

She hops down off the bench and inhales deeply. "Fine. You get Val, I need to find something devastating to wear."

"That's the spirit! Make everyone who's still alive die from envy."

She heads in the direction of a change room, then pauses and turns back.

“Vox? Next year - no separate locations. I’d rather be here, whatever happens.”

He wants to argue that it doesn’t make sense to have all their eggs in one basket, but it’s hard to disagree right now.

“Sure, Vel, whatever you want.”

She could have just been gone, at the flick of an Exorcist's blade, and they’d have been down to a duo again. Shit, if Val had been with his people, Vox could have woken up today and found himself a triumvirate of one. Maybe it would be better to face it together, after all. He holds Velvette’s arm a little tighter than usual on the way out the door.

When Alastor gets back - and he will come back - Vox is determined that he won’t be alone.