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“...Devil May Cry.” After a moment of hesitation, Vergil answered the phone at the front desk.
“Huh? Who're you?” came a voice on the other end, what sounded like a young woman.
“Devil May Cry,” Vergil repeated blandly.
“I know that. Where's Dante?”
“...Taking the day off. What's your business?”
“My business is I want to talk to Dante. I have something very important I need to plan with him. Where is he?”
“Busy. What do you want?”
“Listen, mister,” said the voice on the other end, “I don't know who you think you are, but I'm not the kind of girl who'll take attitude. Either you tell me where Dante is, or I'm coming down there right now.”
Vergil hung up on her.
Within half an hour, the front door of Devil May Cry was rudely flung open by a young woman in a yellow dress that even Vergil, who hardly knew what humans wore anymore, could tell was expensive and fashionable. Marching right in, when she saw Vergil sitting at the front desk, leaning back in the chair reading a book, she got this oh! expression on her face.
“Are you the one I talked to on the phone?” she said, walking up to the desk. Now that she was closer, Vergil could see the tiny red jewels in her earrings shone abnormally bright, and the chain of her necklace disappeared into the modest neck of her dress. He spent a few beats too long examining her jewelry before he remembered he was dealing with a human. Magical adornments were the norm among higher-order demons, so he'd gotten used to scanning for them to analyze a potential threat.
Another habit that was unnecessary, up here.
“You look just like Dante!” the young woman said. “Are you related?”
Sticking a bookmark in his book, Vergil closed it with a snap. “Yes. We're brothers. What do you want?”
The young woman looked at him in shock. “Dante has a brother?! How come nobody ever told me?!”
“I've been...away,” Vergil said evasively.
“Oh, but pardon my manners,” the young woman said, shifting her hand bag into both hands in front of her. “I'm Patty Lowell. Dante and I go way back.”
You're a child. How far back could you possibly go? Vergil kept his thoughts to himself, however. “Vergil. If you tell me your business, I can relay it to my brother.”
“Well, Morrison told me Dante got back from his trip,” she said, and then with a quick examining look at Vergil, she added, “to you-know-where, I mean. So I wanted to throw him a welcome-home party! It's been forever, after all.”
Vergil narrowed his eyes at the girl—Patty. If she knew Morrison, and where Dante had really been, then she was clearly not just anyone. But she seemed like a very ordinary human, and Vergil couldn't imagine just how she was connected to Dante. “I'll let him know. But I doubt he'll be interested in any social get-togethers. He's...feeling under the weather.”
Patty raised her eyebrows at him. “Can he even get sick? I've never seen him sick before.”
“It's possible.” It was true enough that neither of them caught ordinary colds, but there were all sorts of weird demonic ailments that Vergil wished he wasn't even aware of—this one was more like a curse, but she didn't need to know the details about it. He reached out to his book again. “So is there anything else?”
Patty looked up, eyes sweeping the Devil May Cry. “Well, just the usual, I suppose,” she said. She set her hand bag down on the front desk, took off her white silk gloves, stuffed them in the pocket of her jacket. And then without a by-your-leave, she walked herself straight over to the cleaning closet, opened it up, and pulled out the broom.
Head turning to follow her, Vergil said, “What are you doing?”
She gave him a look like he'd asked her something absolutely absurd and replied, “Cleaning up the place, of course. You don't think I'm just going to leave it like this, do you?” She swept an arm around the place, indicating the pizza boxes, stray magazines, the unswept floors, the dried blood on the walls, nameless trash just lying everywhere. “How long has he been back, and it's already like this? If you're here, how can you let it get like this?” as she spoke, she pulled out a trash bag from the closet, and with the trash bag and broom together, began simultaneously sweeping and gathering garbage.
Vergil's cheek twitched. While on the one hand, he did find Dante's habits disgusting, he wasn't really in the habit of picking up after himself, either. He couldn't remember the last time he'd lived in the sort of domestic situation where he had to. When he'd been a child, his mother had done everything, as a teenager, he'd hardly ever stayed in one place, and under Mundus's control—well, he could make a lot of complaints about Mundus, but he was actually very fastidious. When you have an army of demons under your control and zero respect for their lives, the demon maids in your opulent death castle keep everything quite spotless. Vergil may have been a slave, but not the sort that needed to clean the demonic toilets.
It wouldn't be going too far to say that Vergil had never been placed in a situation in his life where he needed to clean up after himself. ...He didn't even know where to put the garbage, actually.
Suddenly feeling rather embarrassed about that fact, Vergil cleared his throat. “...So are you the maid?”
“Maid?!” Patty turned to him in outrage. “Maid?!”
“...If you're not the maid, then why are you cleaning?”
With a sigh of the utmost exasperation, Patty said, “Because if I don't do it, who will? He needs someone taking care of things, and no one else will do it!”
“Hmph. Do what you will.” Opening up his book again, Vergil turned back to his reading—a battered old leather tome from an illicit collection that he'd first made an acquaintance with in the human world as a teenager. He had a lot of research to do. This book didn't really have the answers he was looking for, but he was going to have to start from the ground up for this problem, or he wouldn't even know what to look for. With a sigh, he readied himself for a long road ahead.
x x x
Vergil had a hard time concentrating on his reading, however, with Patty bustling right and left all around the place, and she also had a habit of chattering as she cleaned.
“So do you live here too, now?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“For now.”
“Where were you, all this time? I've known Dante for ten years, and he's never even mentioned he had a brother!”
Eyes on his book but not really reading, Vergil's lips twisted. Well, it was no surprise Dante would want to avoid even remembering he'd had a brother. “I see.”
“Were you guys estranged, or something?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, whatever happened in the past, I think he's glad to have you back.”
Vergil looked up from his book, turning to see Patty carrying a bucket of water out from the bathroom. “What gives you that idea? I thought you hadn't spoken with him since his return.”
“Well,” Patty looked up the stairs toward the closed door of Dante's bedroom, then came closer to the desk, leaning in as she lowered her voice. “I dunno if you know, but Dante drinks a lot. But I've been cleaning, and I haven't found any bottles or cans. He must be in a good mood, lately.”
Vergil hadn't known that, in fact. Dante had hardly spoken about his life now. He would easily talk about Nero, Trish, and Lady—and now that Vergil was thinking about it, he'd also mentioned a “little busybody who never leaves me alone”—but he slid right away of discussions of what he'd been doing, all this time. Well, Vergil preferred it that way, since he certainly didn't want Dante prying about his history, either.
When the two of them did talk, aside from bickering, it trended toward reminiscing—about their shared childhood, Dante filling in the gaps in Vergil's memory, and occasionally about their clashes during their teen years. The space in between their parting at Temen-ni-gru was a no-go zone that neither of them touched.
When Vergil didn't respond, Patty continued, “Dante tries to pretend that he's just all cool and independent, but I know he's actually really lonely. If not for me coming around here to give him attention, he'd just be brooding day in and day out! But now that you're here, maybe...” the sloshing sounds of mopping suddenly stopped. “...Maybe I don't need to come in as much.”
Vergil examined the girl out the corner of his eye. She was looking at the floor, both hands on her mop.
She quickly got going again, though, scrubbing away at the floor that seemed like it probably hadn't been mopped during the whole year of Dante's absence. “Anyway, it's nice that he's got some family around, these days. Since he's not even married, at his age! And what about you, do you have a wife?”
Surprised by the question, Vergil didn't answer right away. “...No.” He was really starting to want this girl gone, but it was a visceral relief to have all that trash packed away in a bag, so alas.
“Really? How old are you?”
“Dante and I are twins.”
“Twins! Really!? You looks so much younger! You must have a great skin care routine.”
“Yes, bathing in the blood of my enemies,” Vergil muttered to himself with a private smile, and when Patty turned toward him with a “Huh?” he cleared his throat and said, “Different lifestyles.”
She seemed to accept that, nodding knowingly. “That Dante just doesn't know how to take care of himself! I keep telling him that a diet of takeout is gonna ruin his health. Anyway, you're not married either? What a couple of good-for-nothings! At your age, you should have a wife, kids, a car, a mortgage, and a dog!”
Something about the way she said that struck Vergil's funny bone in spite of himself, and he snorted. Mundus kept quite a lot of dogs, most of them of the large and three-headed variety, and Vergil couldn't say he was very fond of them. They were good at protecting things, and killing them could be quite satisfying, but keeping one as a pet? You'd have to have some seriously twisted sensibilities. Though just about every demon Vergil had ever met had some seriously twisted sensibilities.
Vergil snapped his book shut. This book didn’t have what he was looking for. He was supposed to be helping Dante with his...current issue, being that Vergil was essentially the cause of it, but he was just running into a lot of dead ends.
“...I have a son,” he finally replied to Patty’s statement.
“Oh? How old is he?” Patty replied.
“I'm not exactly sure.”
The sounds of mopping stopped again. “What? You don't know your own son's age?”
Vergil shrank into his chair. “He's probably in his twenties...”
“Probably in his twenties?!” There was a clank as Patty dropped her mop. “How can you not know how old he is?! He's your son!” Suddenly, she gasped. “Are you a deadbeat dad?! I can't believe it! Dante doesn't have any secret children floating around, does he?! He wouldn't, no way. Is it just you?!”
Vergil covered his face with one hand. “If you're going to clean, then clean. Enough with your interrogation!”
Patty totally ignored his response, marching right up to his side to clap her hands in front of his face. “You listen to me. You need to know the basic facts about your own child,” she said, sticking up one finger after another. “His age, height and weight, birthday, star sign, favorite food, favorite color, hobbies, the type of girl he likes, who his friends are, what kind of music he listens to...”
Vergil suppressed a groan. He really had no way to argue with this girl, that was the worst part... Pushing out of his chair, he rose to his feet. “My personal life is none of your concern. Finish your cleaning and get out,” he said, going up the stairs to escape to his room.
“Hmph! Rude!” he heard her say, behind his back.
x x x
“A girl came to visit you,” Vergil said to Dante that evening after Patty left.
They were in Dante’s room. Since Dante had returned, the state he was in being what it was, he didn’t like to leave his room, especially during the day. Under the light of his bedside lamp, his distorted face looked particularly ghastly.
His teeth were fangs, his skin rough, and he had baby horns sticking out of his hair. He wasn’t in full Devil Trigger—but he wasn’t fully human, either. Ever since running into a particular demonic poison in hell, Dante had been stuck like this.
It had happened after they’d fought a particularly tough enemy, a scorpion-looking thing that had stabbed Dante with its stinger. Dante had gone mad—full Devil Triggered and stayed that way for months in a practically feral state. Vergil had been forced to chase after him as he tore through hell, killing everything in his path, finally dragging what was left of his humanity out of him—but after that, Dante had never managed to fully return to human form, though he could still go into Devil Trigger. Not like he ever did. After that, Dante had been terrified to turn demon again.
Vergil had suggested that they stay in hell to find a cure, but Dante had wanted to come back as quickly as possible. He hadn’t wanted to spend another moment in hell. And so they were stuck like this.
“A girl? Like Trish or Lady?” Dante asked, sitting on the side of his bed. His voice sounded growlier than usual, a side effect of the curse.
Vergil shook his head. “No. Younger.” He gave Dante a judging look.
“Hey. Just what are you accusing me of? ...Oh, you mean Patty.” He waved a hand. “Just ignore her and let her do her thing.”
“You’re not going to see her?” Vergil asked, leaning against the doorframe.
Dante winced. “Like this? Naw. We’ll get me fixed up, then maybe I can say hello.”
“About that—” Vergil began. Dante gave him a hopeful look.
But Vergil just sighed and shook his head, and Dante sighed along with him. “No go, huh?”
“If we went back to the underworld—”
“No,” Dante cut him off, more firmly than necessary. “We’re not going back there. There’s got to be some other way.”
Vergil made a disgruntled sound, but let Dante have his way on this one. It was his body, after all.
x x x
After about a week, Patty came back.
She did more of the same—bustling around, cleaning and chatting. Since she had Dante’s pass to be there, Vergil basically counted her as one of his, and thus, untouchable. Not like Vergil would have murdered her for no reason or anything. No matter what Dante or anyone else thought of him, he’d never seen any pleasure in striking down an unarmed woman to no purpose, and these days—well, these days, he was thinking a lot about the value of human life. In the abstract, literary sense, at least.
So Vergil left Patty alone. It couldn’t be said, however, that Patty left Vergil alone.
“So what’s your guys’ relationship like?” Patty asked, but when Vergil didn’t answer, she just continued the conversation all on her own. “Dante and I go way back, you know. He likes to act all cool, but he’s actually a pretty hopeless case. I don’t even know what he’d do without me.”
From his seat at the front desk of Devil May Cry where he was reading another book, Vergil glanced at Patty again. She had a broom in hand and was sweeping the office area.
Looking at Patty again, Vergil was again struck by her jewelry. She was wearing those same red earrings, and this time, her neckline was a bit lower, exposing the top of a pendant.
“Excuse me! It’s rude to stare!” Patty put a protective hand over her chest area.
But Vergil scowled at her. “I’m not looking at you.” He pointed at her pendant. “Show me that.”
“Huh?” Patty looked down at the chain around her neck and pulled out an ornate pendant carved with intricate, abstract figures. “You mean this old thing?” She laughed. “Oh, it’s nothing special. Just some pretty jewelry.” She tucked it under her dress again.
Vergil narrowed his eyes. She was lying. That was not just any pendant. Vergil pushed back his chair and walked around the desk toward Patty, then leaned in and gave her a sniff.
“What are you doing?!” Patty shoved him in the face, looking quite aghast. “Creep!”
But Vergil had gotten the information he wanted. “You smell of the demonic,” he said. Not very strongly—she was not a demon herself, but perhaps she had visited the demon realm for a brief time. That tended to change humans, though subtly.
“Don’t smell me!” Patty jumped back, a good meter away from Vergil, as she looked at him like some kind of subway groper.
But Vergil stepped toward her again and gave her another sniff—this time, deeper. This was another faint scent, but a very familiar one. Vergil scowled. “You smell like Dante.”
Patty blushed bright red. “I—I—well—” Then she seemed to gather herself. “Yeah, because I’ve just been carrying his dirty laundry!! Who wouldn’t smell like Dante!” Then she rushed off to the broom cupboard and started rattling around in there, away from Vergil.
Her inexplicable reaction aside, Vergil pondered why she would smell like Dante. Specifically, she smelled like Dante’s blood—not as a physical scent, but a demonic trace. She had consumed Dante’s blood at some point—perhaps by accident. Vergil couldn’t imagine Dante doling out his blood to ordinary humans, but he could have been stabbed in a fight. Who knew. Vergil wasn’t going to bother prying too deeply about it. Patty was Dante’s human, and that was all Vergil needed to know. It had probably changed her, for better or for worse.
As Vergil was pondering these matters, Patty switched to a mop and continued to babble at him. “Anyway, you can’t act like that to a lady! It’s weird. Don’t smell people. I can see now why you’re not married. You’ve got to learn how to treat a woman. Look at Dante! He’s a gentleman.”
Vergil looked up from his book and raised an eyebrow. “Really? Dante? A gentleman?”
“That’s right,” Patty said smugly. “You should take a page out of his book.”
x x x
The next time Patty came over, a couple weeks later, Lady was there.
Lady was there for the usual—nagging Dante about his debts. She was about to go upstairs to visit Dante when Patty burst in.
“Oh!” Patty said when she saw her. “Hello, Lady. So is Dante here?”
“Um,” Lady looked at Vergil, who looked back at her. She seemed to be asking if they were allowed to tell Patty, or not.
“Not right now,” Vergil said, before retreating to his room to escape from Patty.
Through the door, he heard Patty say ask Lady, “So when will Dante be in? I thought he was back from his trip.”
“Oh, he’s back. He’s just...busy,” Lady said vaguely. “But anyway, you don’t need to keep coming in like this. You don’t have to clean up after Dante.”
Vergil sat down in his chaise, thinking to start reading again, but he kept getting distracted by the voices through the door, and wound up listening.
“If I don’t do this, who will?” Patty replied, haughty. “Neither you nor Trish will ever lift a finger for him. I just wanna do what I can to help him.”
Vergil heard Lady sigh. “Look. You’re not a little kid anymore. You understand what this business is for. And this?” Vergil heard the jingling of a chain. “This isn’t for play. This is witchcraft. And you need to stop.”
The chain jingled again. “Yes, and?” Patty’s voice was sharper now. “I said I want to do what I can to help him. And this—”
“You’re playing with fire,” Lady cut her off. “And you’re way over your head. And you can’t help Dante. Not with that, and not by playing his maid. No matter how many times you come in here and clean up his bottles, there’s just going to be more. ...He’s never going to be your father.”
There was the sound of someone catching a wrist in their hand. It sounded like Patty had tried to slap Lady, and failed.
“You don’t understand anything,” came Patty’s tearful-sounding voice. “He needs me.”
“Find a cute boy your age who can actually reciprocate,” Lady replied icily. “You know why Dante keeps telling you to get lost? It’s for your own good.”
“Who’d be interested in dating that—”
“Dante isn’t capable of caring about you or anyone,” Lady cut her off. “He’s a demon who lives to fight. You’re absolutely wasting your time with him. I get the appeal of an emotionally-distant daddy figure, but you’re just going to hurt yourself over and over. Maybe you’ve built up this image in your head of who he is, but he’s not that, and he’ll never love you in the way you want, not as a father or a big brother or a boyfriend or whatever it is you want from him. Stop coming here to clean, and stay away from witchcraft. That sort of power will burn you, and you can't handle it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about! You’re just jealous that I have these gifts, when you’re an ordinary human. How many years before your body gives out, and you can't fight demons anymore? You can't order me around when you're gonna get yourself kill—”
A loud slap rang out. “You’re a completely clueless little girl.” There was the sound of a brief scuffle, and it sounded like Lady was shoving Patty to the door. “Go home and don’t come back.”
After hearing the sound of the front door opening and closing, Vergil stepped out of his room to retrieve something from the front desk and caught Lady glaring out at the front door, where Patty had left. But somehow, she seemed less angry and more sad.
She caught Vergil looking. “What?” she snapped.
Vergil didn’t even raise an eyebrow at her. “Nothing at all. Dante has such lovely friends.” He grabbed the papers off the desk that he’d been looking for. “...Dante is a demon who lives to fight, hmm?”
“Am I wrong?” Lady said icily, back to him. But now, she just seemed embarrassed.
“...No.”
It was around this time that Dante strode out of his room, sans shirt and yawning as if he’d just woken up from a nap. Seeing the place half-cleaned and Lady and Vergil standing around, he said, “Wait, was Patty here?”
Lady didn’t react to seeing him all half-demon—she already knew, clearly.
Lady looked at Vergil, then at Dante. “Yeah, but I don’t think she’s coming back.”
Dante snorted. “Yeah right.”
Lady scowled at him. “Look, I know you’re a total manchild, but you need to be straight with her and tell her to stop coming around.”
Dante just shrugged. “She does what she wants. I can’t tell her what to do. I never tell her to come here, she just barges on in.”
“You never tell her to leave, either,” Lady took a step toward him “Is it fun having a little girl take care of you, because you can't do it yourself? You're just taking advantage of her, because she's a lonely kid who wants to have a father. You're never going to be that for her, so stop leading her on.”
Dante folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at her. “You sure we’re not talking about you?” he said, half-under his breath.
For a moment, an aura so murderous erupted around Lady that Vergil’s hand automatically went to the blade at his side.
But Lady just laughed in Dante’s face. “I don’t expect anything from you, Dante. I know all you’re good for is killing.”
Then she stormed out.
Vergil watched her go, then looked at Dante. “Perhaps I should leave you alone,” he said dryly, turning to return to his room.
“No, wait—” Dante held out a hand to stop him, then rubbed his face awkwardly. “Don’t worry about them, okay? It’s just a little tiff. It’ll be fine.”
“Why in the world would I care about your friends?” Vergil replied with a look of utter apathy, and Dante made a face.
“Yeah, of course, yeah...”
x x x
Vergil was gone.
Not gone forever—just gone for a while. “I’m not going to leave until I fix your problem, Dante,” he’d said. Unspoken was because it was my fault. Dante had been the one to take that hit from the scorpion demon for Vergil, so Vergil felt responsible.
So Vergil wasn’t going to really leave—not yet. He was just out for a little trip.
But still, his absence made Dante think about his inevitable departure. There was no way he would want to stick around forever, not like Dante wanted him to. Dante hadn’t been outside in over a month—he didn’t want to be seen like this. Couldn’t afford to be seen like this. He was just lying around uselessly, without any ideas about what to do. Vergil was the one who knew about demonic curses, or problems like this.
Maybe Vergil really had been right, and they should have stayed in the underworld to find a cure, but Dante hadn’t wanted to stay there another minute. The longer he stayed there, the more he felt like he would never turn back. He just wanted to feel human.
And then there had been that thing with Lady. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d fought with her. She could be a little hard to get along with. He was definitely hard to get along with. She’d be back, in the end.
Still, sitting on his desk at the empty Devil May Cry as the sun set, Dante couldn’t help but think that it would be better if she didn’t come back. Pouring himself a glass of wine, he imagined, not for the first, second, or third time, Lady’s possible demise at the hands of the demons she hunted.
She wasn’t like him.
One drink led to two, which led to three, which led to four. The thing about drinking was that Dante didn’t even do it out of a conscious desire to drown his sorrows anymore. It was just habit, what he did when he was alone. There was always a glass in his hand before he knew it. He was too old to start fixing these bad habits now, he figured. And if nobody was there to click their tongue at him, might as well get drunk.
Getting drunk while stuck in a half-demon state was harder than usual, but Dante did it somehow. Leaving his empty bottles on the front desk, Dante staggered over to the couch and laid himself down for a nap. Probably, nobody would come in. If they saw him, they’d probably run straight out the door again, anyway. He should probably go back up to his room, but he was finding it hard to care, right that moment.
x x x
Dante was woken from his nap by the sound of humming—it was familiar humming. Patty. She often hummed when she cleaned.
Dante shot up off the couch. “Shit,” he said. He looked over at Patty, who was wiping the stair banister with a cloth. But she just kept humming, not commenting at all at his semi-demonic state.
“...Ah,” Dante began, rubbing the back of his head. He felt like he should say something. “Sorry for all the mess,” he said, waving at his desk—then realizing she had cleaned up his bottles. He cursed again. It wasn’t like this was the first time she had seen his bottles, or caught him drunk.
“It’s fine,” Patty said as she continued to scrub vigorously at the banister. “The orphanage director was like this, too. I had to do everything. It’s fine. I’m good at taking care of myself and the other kids. ...Honestly, most adults are so useless. If I want to take care of what’s important, I have to do it myself.” As she bent over to scrub the steps, a large, decorative pendant fell out of the collar of her dress to sparkle in the light.
She almost sounded like she was talking to herself. Dante felt awkward. He’d kind of been expecting her to scream on seeing him, but she was acting like it was nothing.
“So,” Patty said as she continued to scrub the stairs. “Is this why you didn’t come to my party?”
“Well, uh. Partly.”
“What happened? Why do you look all scaly?”
Dante rubbed the back of his neck. “Hmm, well,” he said. Patty knew he was half-demon, even if this was the first time she’d seen anything visibly demonic from him. “I was transformed for a while, and got kind of stuck,” he admitted, finally. “I got stabbed by a big scorpion demon, and I haven’t been able to turn human since.”
“...Your brother’s trying to help you, isn’t he?” Patty said as she continued to clean. “I saw the books he was reading. They were all on undoing curses.”
Now how would Patty know about something like that? “Yeah, he’s trying to help me. ...Don’t you worry about it. We’ll figure something out.”
“...You’re really close with Vergil, huh.”
“Huh?” Dante looked up. “I wouldn’t say close, exactly...” Why was she interrogating him about Vergil? This felt weird, and deeply uncomfortable. Dante didn’t like anyone knowing things about Vergil aside from himself. It was weird, but true.
“Must be nice to find some family,” Patty said softly after a while. There was something in her voice that Dante couldn’t quite read.
More silent scrubbing.
If Dante could have sweat in this form, he would have. In the course of cleaning, Patty had poked around a lot with his personal belongings—though he’d told her off more than once about it. That time she’d pulled his old glove out of his desk—well, Dante had apologized for how he’d acted, then, and she’d learned her lesson.
“...Look,” Dante said after a long silence. “You don’t have to do this.”
“What are you talking about?” Patty cut him off, the sounds of her scrubbing intensifying. “You’d be hopeless without me. This place is even messier than before, with your brother here, now. Besides, I want to do this.”
More scrubbing.
As he watched Patty continue cleaning, Dante thought of what Lady had said to him. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a point. Dante had made plenty of half-assed attempts to drive off Patty—for her own good, really—but they had never taken. Patty was just too stubborn. Weirdly, she reminded Dante of his mother. Maybe it was all the cleaning. Maybe that was why he’d let her do what she wanted, all this time. Fuck, he was so selfish.
He sighed and rubbed his scaly face with one clawed hand. It was time to put an end to this. “Patty, I’m gonna be honest,” he said in his coldest voice possible. “I’ve always found you annoying.”
The scrubbing stopped. Patty dropped her cloth and turned around. “Huh?”
“You heard me,” Dante forced himself to look at her, baring his teeth slightly—putting just a hint of demonic aura in it. He saw her flinch. “You’re annoying. What the hell are you even doing here? Do you have a crush on me, or something? Or is it a daddy thing? It’s really sad. I’m not interested in little girls. ...Get lost.”
As he spoke, Patty’s eyes got wider and wider, tears beading in them, but never quite falling.
Then she just quietly put away her cleaning cloth and left.
x x x
It was so obvious that he was just trying to drive her away. Patty could tell. Dante was just like that. He thought that being around him was too dangerous, so he pushed other people away. But it still hurt to hear him say that.
When Patty got home that day, her mother was waiting for her at the kitchen table. She had a stack of books and talismans in front of her, and was looking at Patty with accusatory eyes.
“What did I spend all those years protecting you from?!” she cried, smacking the books on the table. “What is this?!”
“I’m allowed to read some silly books, at least,” Patty snapped back at her.
“This isn’t just reading books! This is witchcraft! ...I knew it was a bad idea to keep letting you visit Devil May Cry all the time. It’s not a place to play around. Do you understand how dangerous this is?”
“I’m not playing around! This is serious! And now Dante needs me!” Patty snatched her things back from her mother and stomped up the stairs to her room.
Patty slammed the door behind her and dumped her books on her desk. Dante really did need her, this time.
Patty had been doing a lot of research, lately. Initially, it had just started as a curiosity—she’d wanted a window into the world where Dante and his friends lived. How could she care about a normal school life and normal boys after all she’d seen? She’d seen the demon world. She admired Dante, Trish and Lady more than anyone else, but they still treated her like a little kid.
Her mother wanted her to go to university and study something normal, but Patty wasn’t interested. She skipped out of school to travel, visiting ruins, libraries, and spiritual hotspots. It wasn’t like she was stupid about it. She’d learned various spells and such to protect herself, and she always wore her protection amulet. She’d even run into a demon once, but she’d managed to fool it and get away.
With everything she’d learned so far in her research, she was sure to find something that would help Dante. Right now, she was after rumors of one particular secret library—it was just...a little difficult to get into. But seeing how Dante was, she couldn’t not go. He couldn’t go out like that. He didn’t like to talk about it, but Patty knew he got depressed easily. If he was stuck like that, he would just keep moping around and drinking.
Dante’s brother Vergil was apparently poking around too, but well, he kind of seemed like an idiot, like Dante. She didn’t trust him to actually accomplish anything. As with anything else in life, if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
x x x
Patty came back before Vergil did.
Dante was briefly surprised before his surprise turned into resignation, and a hint of private happiness. He really did hate himself for that one unsquelchable dot of happiness. But seeing Patty walk in like Dante had never said anything cruel to her at all, the neediest, most pathetic parts of Dante’s heart gave in and let it happen, just like always.
“Long time no see, Dante!” she said. She had a tan, and she was carrying some bags like she’d just got off the plane from some long trip. “I just went on a really fabulous trip, and I have some souvenirs for you.” She was calling up to the door of his room, just assuming he was there.
Dante should have ignored her, but he couldn’t. He opened up his bedroom door and leaned against the doorframe to say hello. “Hey there. A souvenir? Aw, you shouldn’t have.”
Seeing him, Patty blushed, and then she whipped around to face the other way, fishing around in one of her suitcases. Dante realized belatedly that he hadn’t put a shirt on—but he was still all scaly, here. He knew she had a crush on him and all, but why the hell would she be getting all blushy over an overgrown lizard with horns?
But when Patty turned around again, she was all composure. What she held out to him in both hands was a little bottle, inscribed with all sorts of runes on it.
Dante’s eyes immediately narrowed. He could identify this at a glance as something magical. “Where the hell did you get something like this?” He snatched the bottle from Patty’s hands. He sniffed the bottle. It smelled demonic. “What is this?” Now his voice sounded accusatory.
But Patty didn’t flinch. “I think it will help you with your issue,” she waved at Dante, chin up.
Dante looked at the bottle, then back at Patty. While he was examining her, he caught something at her wrists—marks. Without a thought, he grabbed her by the wrist and pushed up her long sleeves. Patty winced, but didn’t resist.
Each of her forearms now had a long, red scar across it, and those scars were decorated with tattoos of magic symbols that went all the way up to the elbow on both sides.
“What the hell did you do?” Dante said, staring at the scars. “This is from a blood ritual!” He accused her.
But Patty didn’t flinch now, just glaring back at him stubbornly. “Yeah. So?”
“What did you do?” He demanded, and he couldn’t keep the growl out of his voice.
Patty pouted a little, and damn if she still looked like a little girl when she did that. She was a little girl. “...I found out about a secret library with loads of information and spells...but you had to pay a blood price to get in.”
“What the hell?!” Dante was yelling at her now. “I never asked you to do something like that! Do you know how dangerous that is?”
“I wanted to do it! And what I do is none of your business!” Patty whirled around, pushing her sleeves down, and grabbed her bags again. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have places to be.” And then she was stomping down the stairs of the Devil May Cry.
Dante sighed and rubbed his face. This conversation was not going like he wanted it to. But Patty—
“Fuck,” he cursed, and that was right when a demon burst in through the window.
Patty shrieked. Dante dashed past her to leap down the stairs. He didn’t have his guns or a blade in hand, but he was already changing to full Devil Trigger, grabbing the demon by the neck to slam it against the wall and snap its spine.
It wasn’t like this was the first time a demon had crashed through the window, but still, it had been a while. As Dante was shifting back to half-demonic, Patty stared at him, eyes wide, and then at the dead demon on the ground. She seemed scared—but there was something else there, too, that Dante couldn’t read.
“Oh yeah,” Dante looked at the little bottle in his other hand. “...Guess I shouldn’t be too ungrateful,” he grumbled, popped open the bottle and down the contents. He wasn’t expecting anything, but might as well try.
The liquid tasted weirdly sweet, almost like peach juice. Dante was about to accuse Patty of messing with him when he felt something shift inside him, and he looked down at his hand and saw the scales were gone. It had worked—he was human again. Well—as human as he would ever get.
“Well, fuck me,” Dante said, looking at the bottle and then at Patty. “That actually worked. I guess I owe you a thank-you.”
Patty beamed at him. “I think you do, mister. See? Who was right? It was worth it. Even if...” she opened her mouth, but then her words hung there. Even smiling, the fear had yet to leave her expression. That was the look of someone who had bit off more than they could chew.
“Even if what?” Dante pressed her.
Patty dropped her bags again and fidgeted with her fingers. “When I did that blood ritual? I kinda, maybe, possibly might be...attracting demons to me, now. So that demon...might have been my fault.”
Dante’s look turned dead serious. “What? For how long?”
“Maybe...forever.”
Dante stared back at her. “No way.”
“It’s not like I wanted a normal life anyway!” Patty insisted, but that fear was still fixed deep in her eyes. “If you can’t take care of yourself, then I’m forced to do it!”
Dante looked back at her, watching her expression turn from determined to a wobbling pout.
“...You’re such a kid,” he finally said with a deep sigh.
He went over to her and mussed her hair. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her head in his chest, but if she cried, he didn’t hear it.
x x x
Vergil returned from his trip empty-handed, and seeing Dante human again and Patty proudly taking credit, his reaction was...chagrined, to say the least.
He didn’t ask what had happened until a demon smashed through the window of Devil May Cry, shrieking and moaning.
Patty, who had visited to clean again, shrieked and hid under the staircase, but before anything could happen, Lady, who had visited to nag Dante about his debts again, raised her gun to shoot the demon without even looking, and it exploded in a mass of demon dust.
When the second demon showed up, Vergil, who was sitting on the couch reading—poetry, this time—stabbed it with a mirage blade, also without looking up. Lady continued rifling through Dante’s filing cabinet, trying to sort out Dante’s bills to find out how much she could wring out of him.
Lady shifted from ruffling through the filing cabinet to Dante’s desk. But once Lady got to Dante’s bottom drawer, Patty rushed over and shooed her off. “Hey! You can’t touch that!” Patty whispered loudly. “That glove is one of Dante’s most important possessions. You know one time, when I tried to throw it out, he got so mad at me! I don’t know why he holds onto that grimy old thing.”
There was a tense silence in the room. Patty looked at Lady. Lady looked at Vergil. Vergil ignored both of them and ducked his head further behind his book.
Then Dante came out of his bedroom—properly dressed this time—to find the empty strawberry sundae glass on his desk and groan. “Hey, who ate that?”
Patty’s eyes shifted over to the glass, then widened. “Huh? What happened to it? I bought that for you, you know. With your money, of course.” She blinked, looking at Lady, who looked back at her and shrugged.
Nobody looked at Vergil, who sank further behind his book.
“Anyway,” Patty said, “Now that you’re awake, Dante, we can start planning this party.”
“Party?”
“Your welcome-home party!” Patty said with a beaming smile. “We’ll invite everyone. Make sure to invite Trish. ...And don’t you have a son, Vergil? I’d like to meet him! Invite him, too.”
Vergil sank even further behind his book.
“Aha-ha-ha,” Dante laughed, looking around at the others there. Lady was shrugging and shaking her head, Vergil was pretending to be a wall.
“All right,” Dante conceded. “Let’s have that party, Patty.”