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It had been a pretty spectacularly bad day, all things considered.
Afterwards Charlie had found an isolated corner in one of the Hotel's deserted hallways and slumped down in the junction between two walls, pulling her knees up to her chest and pressing her forehead against them. The tears she’d been holding at bay since just past lunchtime welled up and overflowed, and she huddled there in the shadows, quietly (she hoped) sobbing.
He could ruin everything! Turn the Hotel back into a joke —
After they’d worked so hard over the past month and a half. All of them — even Alastor had kept his promise and highlighted the Hotel on his radio talk show several times, as well as appearing in public at Charlie’s side, all smiles and upbeat patter.
Usually Charlie had no trouble seeing the sunny side of things. But today Vox’s cruel words had cut her to the bone. To the heart. And the sorrow that welled out like blood was eating her up inside.
Maybe we ARE just a big joke... maybe... maybe Vox is right...
Charlie wasn’t sure how long she’d been in that corner before the elemental background hum of Alastor’s physical presence dimly penetrated her haze of misery. But she didn’t raise her head from her knees and she didn’t open her eyes. In fact, she squeezed them tighter closed and wrapped both arms around her head, as if to somehow hide herself and the tears she didn’t want anybody else — even Vaggie — to see.
“Charlie?” Alastor’s oddly filtered voice was accompanied by a sideways cock of his head — she just knew it. “My dear, what’s wrong?”
“I’m...” She forced herself to choke out a little laugh. “I’m fine, Al. I’ve just got... a really bad headache.”
“A headache.” She heard him coming closer, kneeling right beside her, and his melodic voice became more... normal. “Most headaches aren’t accompanied by copious amounts of tears.”
“Yeah, well...” Charlie kept her face hidden. “It’s a really really bad headache.”
“Hm.” He sounded totally unconvinced. “Does this have anything to do with Vox’s visit this afternoon?”
“Ummm...” She couldn’t stop the sniffle as more tears ran down her cheeks.
“That’s what I thought.”
Charlie had to lift her head, to scrub at her weeping eyes with one fist like a hurt child. “It’s — okay, Al. I just — I need some —”
Alastor’s voice became nearly a growl, almost all filtered quality gone. "That pompous overbearing fool needs to be erased from the face Hell.”
In spite of herself, Charlie smiled weakly. “He’s not that bad.” An appalling thought popped into her head and prompted another sob, her eyes squeezing tightly shut. “Don’t —”
He was so close, and the background hum of him was somehow soothing. “Never fear, darling — I’ll know when I’m ready to take care of him, and the time isn’t quite ripe. Not yet.” He made a clucking noise with his tongue and she could clearly visualize him shaking his head. “No, I have other responsibilities just now —”
And with that he scooped her up in his arms and rose to his feet, as easily as if she weighed no more than a feather pillow.
Charlie gasped and instinctively clutched at his shoulders. Her eyes flew open. “Hey, Al — uh, what are you doing?”
“A hotel hallway is no place to be crying. No, I’m taking you to your bed and tucking you in, where you can weep for as long as you wish in privacy.”
“That’s not —”
Reality flexed around them, and suddenly they were in her room at the Hotel.
“Ow!” Alastor’s teleportations always left Charlie feeling like her stomach had been left behind. “You could have just walked!”
Alastor shrugged, striding towards the narrow and neatly made bed. “Hush now, Charlie — and lie still. Let me care of everything else.”
He laid her down on the coverlet patterned with her royal seal and deftly removed her shoes, placing them neatly on the floor beside the bed, exactly where she would swing her legs over the side when she got up. Before she could protest he’d picked her up again, bridal style — she heard the covers rustle as they flipped back without being touched — and then he set her back down again on the clean inner sheet.
“Don’t you move,” he told her, and set off toward the bathroom. And now Charlie did have a headache, so she decided to leave her head on the pillow, which felt sinfully comfortable after crouching in a cold dark hallway.
She let her eyes slip closed again, more tears squeezing from the outer corners and running down toward the pillow. In the bathroom, a glass clinked and water ran. When Alastor came back a few seconds later he went round the bed to set the glass on the right bedside table, before coming back around to the left side. “There.”
“You’ve, uh...” Charlie hitched a wet sniffle, opening her eyes to look up at him. In the shadows of the room his eyes shone with their own eldrich light. “You’ve done this before, huh?”
Alastor didn’t answer. Not immediately. Instead he sat down on the edge of the bed and removed his own shoes, before reaching with his left arm to pull the covers over Charlie, tucking them in around her chin. What happened next was a big surprise: with sinuous grace, like a snake, he stretched himself out beside her and shifted in close, so close that the thickness of the bedclothes measured the distance between them.
The even bigger surprise was the way Charlie’s own body decided things for her: it rolled toward Alastor and huddled into the blankets, her cheek coming to rest on his narrow right shoulder. She could smell him now — electricity, clean fabric, and a strange musky perfume with a faint underlying tang of iron — and somehow that was soothing too.
“Yes,” he finally answered her question. His voice was almost completely unfiltered now, and Charlie had learned that the change signalled the speaking of some truth. “My mother was ill for quite some time before she passed. And I was her only son.”
“Hmmm...” Charlie tried to suppress a yawn and didn’t quite succeed. “Sorry. I mean — I’m sorry.”
Alastor shrugged under her cheek.
“Is she... is she here? In Hell?”
“My mother?” He laughed softly. “Oh, no no no — she certainly wound up in Heaven. She truly had a heart of gold and she never did anybody harm when she could possibly help it.”
Charlie smiled weakly. “And she made great jambalaya, right?”
“The very best, my dear. As you know, because you’ve tasted her recipe.”
“Mmm.” She closed her eyes again as Alastor’s left hand came to rest between her shoulder blades, slowly rubbing up and down her back. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say so they lay together in silence, oddly comfortable, even when Alastor shifted his hand to her face and wiped away her tears with a strange gentleness.
“Sleep now,” he said softly. “Everything will be better in the morning — I promise.”
“No deals,” Charlie mumbled against his shoulder.
“No deals,” he assured her with a wide and predatory smile, wrapping his left arm around her to hold her close.
“Cool beans...” she managed to whisper, his essential hum already filling her mind with big, soft, puffy black clouds that drew a veil across the troubled moon.
Comforted, she drifted off to sleep. When she woke in the morning she was alone — but the glass of water was still there, and her shoes beside the bed, so she knew that the whole thing hadn’t been a really weird dream, even if she didn’t know exactly what it meant.
Yet.
THE END