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“Hi, sweetie, me again. Give me a call when you get this. Everything’s fine at the hotel, I have it handled here, just – let me know you’re OK. OK? See you soon.” Vaggi ended the call with a sigh and laid her phone face-down on the bar.
Husk poured two fingers of whiskey into a tumbler and pointedly set it down next to her. “Voicemail again?”
“It’s not like her,” said Vaggi. She eyed the whiskey and considered knocking it back in one go, but restrained herself to a sip. “You know she gets… preoccupied sometimes,” Husk gave a grunt that somehow managed to convey both that yes, he did know that, and that he thought it was an understatement, “but not for this long.” She held up her phone to show him the string of unread texts and unanswered calls. “She said she’d be back by lunch. Lunch was nine hours ago. I’ve never seen her leave a text unread for more than five minutes.” She sighed again, rubbing her forehead with the tips of her fingers. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she lied. “She probably just… put her phone down somewhere and forgot where she left it.” Husk raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.
Vaggi swivelled around on the barstool to check the rest of the lobby. There had been a fight earlier between two guests, left at a loose end without a therapy session to occupy them, but things had quietened down since then; Cherri was tinkering with a project on the far side of the room, swearing occasionally as it sparked and smoked under her screwdriver, and Baxter sat with a handful of others around the television, muttering to himself as he scribbled something on his clipboard, but most of the residents had returned to their rooms for the night. Keekee’s tail gaped in a yawn as she curled up with Razzle at the far end of the bar. A faint crackle of radio static drifted from the balcony above, but it didn’t come with any snide comments for a change.
It probably said something about how used everyone was to Lucifer that they barely even looked up when he materialised at the top of the stairs and all but skipped down to the bar, humming to himself and clutching a notebook decorated with little yellow ducks. “Hey… you!” he said with a cheerful grin, perching on the next barstool. Vaggi lifted her whiskey and nodded a ‘hello’. “Do you know where Char-Char is? I had some ideas I wanted to run by her. I haven’t seen her today, she’s probably been so busy with her group activities…”
He kept talking as Vaggi and Husk looked at each other, then up at where the balcony railing had been ‘repaired’ with an untidy bundle of tape after the fight, then down at Vaggi’s phone on the bar. Husk raised both hands and turned his back, busying himself rearranging the gin bottles with a faint murmur of “This one’s all yours, Miss Manager.”
Vaggi shot a scowl at the back of his head and braced herself. “Charlie hasn’t been at the hotel all day,” she said. “She hasn’t been answering my calls.” She held up her phone again in illustration. “Has she texted you?”
“Oh! Maybe she…” Lucifer fished his own phone from one pocket of his coat. “…No,” he said, unusually subdued. “Nothing since last night. Did she say where she was going?”
“She said she needed to visit the Lust Ring,” said Vaggi, folding her arms. “She’d been talking about learning more about where sinners had come from, saying she might get through to them better if she knew more about what they’d been told about Hell before they got here and things like that, and that she had an idea that ‘Uncle Ozzie’ might be able to help with. She went to see him after breakfast, saying she’d be back by lunch, but I haven’t seen her since she left.” She didn’t quite manage to keep the tremble from her voice.
Lucifer snorted. “Ozzie? He hasn’t even spoken to a sinner since before Charlie was born, how would he-” He broke off. His smile vanished completely, and his eyes widened. “Ohhhh, no.”
“Lucifer…?”
He slid off the barstool and slowly walked over to the nearest armchair instead. Everyone turned to watch as he dragged the chair over to the foot of the stairs and sat down. His eyes reddened and began to glow. Horns rose from his forehead. Black talons sprouted from his fingers and sank into the arms of the chair, tearing through the cloth with ease. The hotel began to shake.
Over the last few weeks, the hotel residents had – for good or ill – got used to thinking of Lucifer as just ‘Charlie’s dad’, the goofy little man who liked pancakes and ducks and loved his daughter more than anything else in creation. For the most part he had seemed content to let that stand, unwilling after the Vox debacle to remind them that he was still the King of Hell and the entity whose power had threatened to level the Pentagram.
Not any more, apparently. The shaking intensified; a few cracks appeared in the ceiling. The guests looked up, did some mental calculations as to whether bringing the roof down on them counted as ‘harming sinners’, and fled down the corridors. Baxter and Cherri remained, but took shelter behind one of the couches just in case. Cherri raised her phone camera over the arm and pressed record.
Lucifer’s wings spread out behind him. He took a deep breath, flames flickering in the corners of his mouth, and gave a roar that echoed through every Ring of Hell.
“AS-MO-DE-UUUUUS!”
A tornado of blue-white fire erupted in the centre of the lobby, spiralling so high it left a scorch mark on the ceiling, and vanished just as quickly to leave an enormous demon standing in its place. Baxter cut his losses and skittered away towards his room, saying he couldn’t possibly concentrate in such conditions.
“Luci, long time no see!” said the Deadly Sin of Lust, hastily tying the belt of his dressing gown. “Give a guy some warning next time, won’t you?” He turned around on the spot, taking in his surroundings. “Oh, so this must be Charlie’s hotel I’ve heard so much about!” He placed his hands on his hips, nodding appreciatively. “I… have some notes on the décor, but I like what she’s done with it! Where is my favourite niece, anyway? Did she enjoy her first trip to Earth?”
“You tell me,” growled Lucifer.
“I’m sure she’s just full of stories about everything she’s seen up there, and – what? She hasn’t told you?”
“She’s. Not. Here.” Lucifer’s outstretched wings shivered, fiery sparks rising from the blood-red feathers.
Asmodeus took a step towards the makeshift throne, holding out one hand in a placating gesture, but before he got anywhere close there was a bright flash and a sharp crack like an electric arc and he snatched the hand back. A ring of reddish-gold light appeared around his feet, filled with a strange, complicated symbol outlined in the same power. He looked down, frowning.
“A sigil-binding, Luci? Really? That’s low.”
Lucifer bared his teeth. The glow in his eyes brightened until it was almost blinding. For a few long, fraught moments, neither he nor Asmodeus spoke; they just stared at each other. Asmodeus flexed his claws, and the flames around his shoulders burned higher. A sheet of plaster fell from the ceiling and shattered on the floor.
Finally, Asmodeus averted his gaze. Another flash of blue fire engulfed him for an instant, somehow leaving him fully-dressed afterwards. He lowered himself to one knee within the circle and bowed his head. “Your Infernal Majesty.”
“You gave Charlie an Asmodean crystal.”
“I lent her a crystal,” he said. “Just until she has a better handle on portal magic herself. She wanted to visit Earth to learn more about where her sinners had come from – thought if she knew more about that, she might have a better idea of how to help them here. You know I could never say ‘No’ to that smile.”
“You gave her a crystal and you sent her to Earth – Earth, where sinners come from – by herself, and she hasn’t come back.” Lucifer rose from the chair, tearing more chunks from the arms as he went. “You are going to fix. This. You are going to find. Her. And you are going to bring. Her. Home. Or I will send you somewhere that will make the Cocytus ice fields look like a Gluttony resort. Is that clear?”
Asmodeus closed his eyes. “Yes, my King.”
The glow in Lucifer’s eyes softened very slightly. “I’ve trusted you with her safety before. Don’t make me regret it.” His cane appeared in his hands, just so he could rap it against the floor, and he vanished in a whirl of fire.
The binding circle vanished with him. Asmodeus straightened up to his full height, tipping his head back, and covered his eyes with both hands. “Put that damn camera away,” he said without looking at Cherri. She quickly ended the recording and stowed the phone inside her top. With a sigh, Asmodeus produced his own phone out of nowhere and tapped one of his contacts. “Fizzy, baby, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be late back from Pride – don’t wait up for me. Family business, you know how it is. Uh-huh. Yes, I know, I’ll make it up to you. Love you. Mwah.” He hung up, sighed, and turned towards the bar. “Is there somewhere more private I can work?”
“I’ll take you to the lounge,” said Vaggi. “Husk, you’re in charge.”
Husk gave a wordless grumble and took a long swig from the nearest bottle, but didn’t otherwise protest. A couple of the braver guests crept back out from their hiding spots and eyed him thoughtfully, but retreated again when Cherri joined him by the bar and began bouncing a grenade up and down in the palm of her hand. There was a ripple in the shadows up on the balcony; the radio static hissed louder, then vanished altogether. Vaggi decided to worry about that later and waved for Asmodeus to follow her. She almost had to jog just to stay ahead of his stride. He ducked under the lintel of the lounge door, angling his shoulders awkwardly to fit them through the frame one at a time, and settled on one of the couches.
“Stay, please,” he said when she turned to leave him to it. “You might be able to help.” He laid his phone down on the coffee table and brushed the fingertips of one hand against the screen. Immediately, rectangles of blue light rose up to form a half-circle in front of him like computer monitors, each one showing rows of numbers, symbols and charts that Vaggi could barely follow.
Vaggi took the opposite couch. “King Asmodeus-”
“Anyone as important to Charlie as you can call me Ozzie,” he said, and gave her a quick smile through the semi-transparent screens. “She speaks very highly of you.”
“What did Lucifer mean, he’s trusted you with her safety before?”
Ozzie shook his head. “Just a dramatic way of saying I used to babysit when she was little.”
“What was that like?”
“It was fun,” he said with another smile, this one more nostalgic. “She loved to sing even then. Just the sweetest little voice you ever did hear, brightening up every corner of my palace down in the Lust Ring. I still have some of the drawings she left behind, but that was a long time ago. I expect her art’s improved by now.”
“Ehh…”
“She outgrew needing a babysitter, of course, but she still came to me for advice now and then when she was older. Confidential advice,” he added with a knowing grin, catching Vaggi’s questioning look.
“That explains a lot,” she said, thinking back to their bedroom a few nights ago, before she dragged her mind back to the present. “Lucifer’s just being protective,” she went on. “They won’t have angelic steel on Earth. They can’t hurt her.” Ozzie met her eye for a moment and returned his attention to the screens, scrolling through a long list of numbered crystals. “Right?”
He kept scrolling for a little longer, selected one particular crystal from the list, and studied the database entry that appeared. His eyes widened, he pushed the screens aside, and he covered his face with both hands again. “Oh, I’ve really fucked up.”
“What?”
He brought up the database screen again and turned it to face her with a flick of his wrist. “Her crystal. It was flawed. Flagged for disposal. It should never have been in with the rest of them, and like an idiot I didn’t check before I gave it to her.”
“What… what does that mean? It won’t have taken her to Earth? Then where-”
“No, it’ll have taken her to Earth,” said Ozzie quickly. “Just… maybe not right where she meant to go. And once on Earth… Its connection back to Hell will be weak. Not enough to drop her human disguise, I hope, but… difficult to return. Very difficult.”
Vaggi shot to her feet. “So Charlie’s trapped on Earth? By herself, alone among millions of humans who might-” She cut herself off, squeezing her eye shut for a moment and clenching both fists. “They can’t hurt her, though,” she said again. “Right?”
“…I don’t know,” said Ozzie.
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t know’? You’re a Deadly Sin, ruler of a whole Ring of Hell, how can you ‘not know’?”
He opened his mouth, the glow of his flames brightening angrily for a moment, but didn’t immediately reply. “Charlie is… special,” he said eventually, flames dimming again. “In all the years of Hell, there’s never been anyone like her.”
“I know that.”
He shook his head again. “I don’t mean how she is. I’m talking about what she is.”
Vaggi just glared at him with raised eyebrows. “Which is?”
“Her daddy’s an angel. A fallen angel, but still an angel. Her momma was… not human any more, not by the time Charlie was born, but not an ordinary sinner either. What does that make Charlie? Something different, not angel or sinner or Goetia. And I – none of us knows what the rules are for ‘something different’, not even Lucifer. Angelic steel isn’t the only thing that works on other demons. Humans have worked some things out now and then. Salt, silver, running water, meteoric iron, holy ground… Sure, they don’t all work the same on all demons and they wouldn’t do much in Hell, but on Earth…” He held both arms out in a shrug. “Probably there’s nothing to worry about and she can handle anything Earth can throw at her. Probably she’s just been having so much fun she lost track of time.” He looked back at the crystal database, propping his chin on one hand. “But…”
Vaggi slowly sat back down, her fingernails digging into her knees and worrying at the fabric of her stockings. “But maybe she’s in trouble and needs our help.”
“Yes. Maybe.”
“So… What can we do? How do we find her?”
Ozzie sat up a little straighter and brought up a different screen. “There might be something here,” he said, tapping at the icons that appeared. “It’s still in the testing stages, but Prince Vassago’s been helping me to develop a tracking system for the Asmodean crystals. It can’t find the actual crystals just yet – we’re working on that – but it can track the energy signatures of their portals.” He placed a finger against one icon in particular and swept it upwards. Immediately the screens shifted aside to make room for a huge three-dimensional image of the Earth, about as far across as the span of Vaggi’s wings. Oceans and continents were outlined in more lines of bright blue, and while it had only a few vague areas of faint hatching to suggest other features such as mountains or cities, tiny points of orange light were scattered across the landmasses.
Vaggi sat forwards to look more closely. “Each of these lights is an Asmodean portal?”
“Yes. The last one conjured by any given crystal. So if I can filter out the others…” The orange lights winked out, leaving just one. “That’s the one I lent to Charlie. That’s where she’s gone.”
The remaining light glimmered on an island towards the north of the globe, separated from the western end of the largest continent by a narrow strait. Vaggi stood up and tried to turn the globe for a better look, but her hands just sank through the projection to no response. At her irritated snarl, Ozzie beckoned for her to hop up on the couch beside him and zoomed in on the island so they could both see it more closely. The light of Charlie’s portal sat on the eastern coast, about two-thirds of the way up, and on the southern bank of a wide river that cut in from the sea like an axe biting into the neck of the island.
“There,” said Ozzie, sitting back against the couch with a sigh that wasn’t quite relieved yet. “That’s where the portal took her.” He made a pinching gesture to zoom in further, revealing the rough outline of a city and the light in almost its exact centre, but no greater detail of individual streets. “That’s a start. I can send one of my demons to look for her from there. Let’s hope she hasn’t gone too far.”
“…I’ll go.” He looked down at her in surprise. “Your people might know Earth, but they don’t know Charlie. If she’s wandered off somewhere, I’ll have a better chance of finding her than they will.”
“True,” said Ozzie. He clapped his hands together and both the globe and the rest of the screens vanished, leaving just his phone lying on the coffee table. With another gesture, more blue fire flickered around his hands, leaving him holding an arcane-looking book and an oval gemstone, its otherwise smooth gold surface etched with a small symbol. “This isn’t a true Asmodean crystal,” he said as he pressed it into Vaggi’s hands. “I… think I need to check my stock for any more flawed ones before I issue any others. But you can use it to signal me once you find her – run one finger over the lines in this order to activate it – and I’ll open a portal from this end for you.”
Vaggi nodded and put the crystal in her pocket. “Give me a minute to tell the others first. Then send me after her.”
“I’ll fix you up with a human disguise too,” he said, leafing through the pages of his book. “Any preferences there?”
She looked down at herself. “Do I need one? I already look-”
“Humans aren’t grey,” said Ozzie with a grin, drumming his fingertips against the paper.
“Oh. Right. Just that, then. Keep the rest of me the same. I don’t want to… look too different when I find her.”
“Can do. Though, you know, I’m pretty sure Charlie would recognise you whatever you look like.”
The lobby was almost empty when they returned. Niffty was sweeping up the fallen plaster with her usual energy and Husk and Cherri still waited by the bar, while a lot of muffled angry shouting from the direction of Lucifer’s tower hinted at where Alastor had gone, but that was it.
“Ready?” asked Ozzie once Vaggi had updated the others. Husk took another glug of whiskey and leant on the bar to watch.
“Ready.”
A wave of Ozzie’s blue fire ran over her, pleasantly warm rather than painfully hot. She looked down at her hands once it had faded. As he had promised, she looked almost exactly the same; the only difference was the colour of her skin, no lighter or darker than before but brown instead of its usual grey. Ozzie nodded once and closed the book with a snap. A ring of fire appeared midair, the blue edged with pink this time, and the portal tore open.
“Good luck,” said Ozzie. “Bring our princess home safe.”
Vaggi stepped through without another word and the portal vanished behind her, leaving her alone on a deserted city street. She turned around in a circle, taking in her surroundings. To one side, a statue of a man on a horse sat in the middle of a wide grassy square, ringed around its perimeter by tall, spreading trees and a shoulder-high black fence. To the other side was a road, also deserted except for parked cars and a single bus trundling past, and a row of tall terraced townhouses built from stone that had probably been a warm sandy colour once but was now more of a dirty grey. The concrete slabs of the pavement under her feet were dark with water and the air felt damp, but the rainstorm itself must have passed; there were no clouds overhead, letting a faint dawn light creep into the edge of the otherwise dark sky. The city’s clock must have been a few hours ahead of Hell’s.
There was, unfortunately, no sign of a tall, musical blonde anywhere in sight.
“OK,” said Vaggi. She tried to steady her breath, picked a direction – south seemed promising, if there was only that river to the north – and started walking. If it was anything like the Pentagram, some people would still be out on the street so early in the morning, and surely one of them would have seen Charlie. She had never exactly been good at blending into a crowd. “Hold on, sweetie. I’m on my way.”