Work Text:
The thing about immortality was— it usually didn’t come to those deserving. It didn’t come to those who spent their lives and youth searching for it, in springs and wells and fountains, and it didn’t come to those who wanted to be immortalised for their work, for their genius, for their pride.
Pamela laid out tarot cards on a bright December day in her cafè in London in a three spread. She wasn’t thinking about anything specific, another year had come and gone, and she had managed to arrange herself with immortality like any other burden that had crossed her path. She had even arranged herself with Belial, after years had passed and grudges felt faintly nostalgic. The world was going to continue going round.
She turned around the first card, not expecting Judgement turned up-side down. What was there to feel uncertain about? With slight trepidation, she flipped over the second tarot card to look at Death — also inverted. Stagnation and keeping to the status-quo, of uncertainty. How nice. She rushed to turn the third card, and, lo and behold, the third card was a reversed Ace of Wands — immaturity and poor timing.
How utterly delightful.
The same thing happened three more times that day, until she was so fed up with the nebulous warning the cards gave her about chaos that will be here forever, she stopped laying them out.
"I don’t think anyone up there likes me anymore," she said to Belial, later, when she unconsciously went for her cards again, and the same ominous card spread appeared.
Belial was, as so often, pretending to sleep in one of the comfortable armchairs looking like his next destination was the poor house with his ripped jeans and a stubbly chin, but apparently that was what was in fashion now. Pamela went with the times when it meant her tiny café had an upswing of visitors because small individual cafés were the latest fad. She could not get behind the thought of buying ripped or washed out clothes, however — something Belial loved to indulge in.
Belial opened one eye to blink at her lazily, and replied, "You haven’t been cheating on me, have you?"
She rolled her eyes as that was the only reply he deserved.
"I could go on a killing spree again."
"You could," she answered. It wasn’t that she didn’t care, it was that she knew he wouldn’t. He threatened to kill everyone a couple of times each year but at the core of himself Belial was lazy and would much rather do something interesting, like tempt someone into bungee-jumping out of a plane. "You could also hand me another one of the fancy chocolates."
"Or I could not."
Pamela stood up to brew herself a cup of coffee, and stole one of the Belgian chocolate mussels she kept in a jar by the counter.
Today had been rather slow, even with the Christmas rush outside, and it was not that far off from closing time. When the door bell chimed its melody, and a woman wrapped in scarves entered, she was an unexpected customer. She looked around furtively, and kept directing her gaze back to Belial who was not wearing seasonal appropriate clothes, sprawled out decked in a Hawaiian Shirt and tattered jeans.
"Welcome to the Tarot Café!" Pamela smiled at her, "How can I help you?"
"Uhm—" the woman said, and tried to look away from Belial. Instead, she stared at the tarot imagery hanging behind Pamela on the wall. It was her original deck, and it had aged well beneath the protective glass frames — maybe helped along with a bit of magic Pamela didn't care to ask about.
"Someone told me to look you up at midnight, but your Yelp! review page says you close at seven?"
Belial was sitting up now, and looked suddenly very interested in the proceedings.
"Yes," Pamela said with another smile, "but we do keep open longer for people with specific needs. We are like a community centre in that way. What seems to be your problem?"
"Could I — uhm — Could I have a cup of coffee, first, that smells absolutely delicious," the woman asked.
When the coffee was prepared and she had taken a sip in obvious pleasure, she looked at Pamela again, and said, "I have a great-uncle. Had, I guess, and he wasn’t really my great uncle as he was somehow related to me and looked about fifty years old. He had been around for much longer, but really, at some point you just have to accept that great-uncle Gary was immortal and never aged." She said it as if she expected protest, but carried on as if that wasn’t important anyway. "He did about three months ago. I can’t really say why, the doctors said it was a stroke, but it’s very nebulous. Fact is, he’s dead and probably won’t be coming back as a zombie — I have no idea if that’s even a thing. My problem is, that he left me a creature called Joe, and I can’t find it."
She took a folder out of her handbag. "I have a detailed account of what I’m supposed to do with Joe — he needs a diet of blood once every three months — but nowhere in his blasted testament does he say what kind of creature Joe is."
"It drinks blood?" Belial asked lazily from the side.
The woman turned to him. "Yes," she said and scrutinised him from top to bottom. "And you are?"
"He helps, sometimes," Pamela explained. "So why do you think this is a case for me? I’m more familiar with the esoteric, really."
"According to this document," the woman leaned really close, "my great-uncle’s pet was alive for three hundred years. It’s got diseases that aren’t even around anymore. How would I explain this to animal control? Not the least that they laughed at me when I reported Joe stolen. You could be looking at a new outbreak of pestilence, for all that I know."
Pamela sighed. "We aren’t really in the pet retrieval business," she said.
"It’s not like I want a flea-filled, blood-sucking pet," the woman said with a shirty tone.
"Hold on," Belial said, suddenly alert. "You say you don’t want it?"
"I’ll gladly wash my hands off it," confirmed the woman.
"Well then," Belial said with a smirk. "I’ll be sure to treat it well." He stood up, fluidly but in quite the hurry, and left.
Pamela smiled at the perplexed woman and said, "Sometimes he’s very quixotic." She rolled her eyes and added, "Men."
The woman laughed, finished her coffee, and then left soon after.
Belial showed up days later, on Christmas Eve, with a tote in his hand, his jeans barely hanging onto him.
"Where have you been?" Pamela asked.
Belial took the bag and put it on the table. It looked lumpy, and had holes. Pamela peered inside.
"I brought you something," Belial said. "You were complaining about not being able to keep a pet because they die so soon. Since this one is immortal… Have at it."
The thing inside the bag seemed motionless and dead. Pamela might be fearing a zombie, but what sprang out the bag was even more terrifying -- a wounded blur vaguely resembling a cat bit into her wrist and wouldn’t let go.
When she extended her arm, she could recognise the species at least. A long bushy tail, long haired wisps on the pointed ears — it was a squirrel, looking like it spent the last months living in the gutter (and smelling that way, too).
"I didn't mean a squirrel," she said faintly.
"It's fluffy," Belial shrugged, "It fits into a handbag. It's immortal, and needs to be fed. A perfect pet if you ask me. Also, I got you this," he brandished a deck of Tarot Cards. Emblazoned on the front is, "Now with the 23rd major Arcana! Enjoy your fortune telling with the Happy Squirrel."
"It seemed like an omen?" Belial shrugged.
Sometimes, immortality came to squirrels instead.