Lacy's met the devil, once.
At a party.
In a bar.
(She's seventeen.)
The Christian devil, you know.
(Or the Norse)
But definitely not the Greek.
Or the Roman.
Or even Egyptian.
(She knows what those devils look like.)
The devil offers her a drink
But Lacy says no.
She's seventeen, she says. Not stupid.
(Persephone was seventeen and stupid, she knows.)
He smiles, a terrible wolfish grin.
Because most seventeen year olds aren't clever enough to figure these things out.
He lifts a finger, strokes her cheek.
(Lacy can feel the lust leaking out of his skin, and it scares her.)
He asks her if she wants what he wants.
Lacy doesn't answer.
(There are lots of things devils want, see.)
He laughs at her silence.
I like you better, he says, in these worlds.
In others, you know, you die.
Those worlds, he adds, are boring as hell.
(Devils, of all creatures, know hell.)
She has to ask how.
(It's simple human nature.)
How, she asks, do I go?
An arrow, he says conversationally.
A Roman arrow.
You're a martyr, there.
Ended the war on the strength of your convictions.
(But a martyr, he thinks, is even more boring than tax returns.)
Well, she says, aren't I a special one.
(Aren't you indeed, my pretty, the devil asks.)
The devil smiles.
Drinks.
Hands her a card.
(Lacy didn't pull up the flower by the roots, and so remains in the land of the living.)
If you ever get tired,
(Curious, maybe.)
You call that number.
Pull up the narcissus.
Descend into hell.
(I'll be waiting by the phone.)
He leaves the bar.
Against her better judgement,
(Card clutched in her fist)
She runs outside.
Says, I never got your name.
You wouldn't expect me to call someone without knowing his name, would you?
(Never, in forty-five hundred years, has someone asked for his name.)
Fenris, he calls across the parking lot.
Disappears.
The devil is gone.
(Lacy drops the card.)