As Vaggie guarded the studio door with her spear drawn, Decider pulled Leslie into a full-body embrace with much rubbing of the back, and blurted out how he was glad to see her. It was one of his hugs, and no mistake, but his scent was different. Leslie could only stare at their reflection in horror.

"I didn't think you'd be here," he said. "God, you're not supposed to be in Hell! What the fuck? You're a good girl."

She broke away. "Well, what are you doing here?" Leslie asked. She'd begun to tremble. "You overdosed?"

"Uh, yeah. It happened pretty quick. Look, don't worry, it's in the past. I'm going clean for good." Decider peered at her. "I can't believe how different you look. It's really you, babe."

"Yeah, thanks, I know."

He smiled, but it was forced, nervous. "We've got catching up to do. You are not going to believe what's going on up there. There's this virus-"

"Karl, stop. Please."

He got it. "You're not happy to see me."

"Damn right I'm not happy! You're dead. You've been using again… and who the fuck was this other person? You miss 'both' your girls?"

Decider sagged. "Look," he began, and Leslie pulled her ears over her face, trying not to hyperventilate. "Lellybean, lemme explain. OK, the OD thing. Look at me! You died, out of fucking nowhere. I had all these feelings and no-one to talk it out with, no fucking support system. I needed you. I love you. Getting fucked up was the closest I could get to feeling right."

"No support system. What, your girlfriend didn't let you grieve?" Leslie snapped, dropping her ears to look at him. "How long, you and her?"

"A while."

"A while?" She was going to strangle him.

"It wasn't about us, I… I'm trying to tell you, Les!"

She barely heard. "After everything I did for you! Wasn't I enough? I tried so hard to be enough!" Leslie felt the lump in her throat as she blazed on, "You know, I'm not even surprised. Maybe I knew, deep down. You were gone all the fucking time, I thought it must've been either drugs or some side bitch, but fuck you for making it both!"

"Hey, I didn't make it anything. I just made damn sure you two never knew the shitty thing I was doing. You were never humiliated."

"Why not just dump one of them?" said Vaggie in exasperation from the door.

"'Cause getting rid of Jordy wasn't that cut and dry," Decider said, then returned to Leslie. "Maybe there's no way to break this gentle." He sighed, placing his hands on her shoulders. "I don't like labels, but if someone saw this from outside, they'd say… Jordan was not the other girl."

Leslie was nauseous, barely processing the conversation, but she threw his hands away. "Yes she was! Yes she was! You were married to me, dipshit!"

He shifted uncomfortably. "Jordy kinda… beat you to it," he said, "back in 2015. What I did for us was like… a band-aid situation. I was trying to split from Jordy on the DL, I swear to God! The timing was just shit. I swear to fucking God, Lellybean."

"Don't call her that," Vaggie warned, harpoon raised.

Leslie staggered back, falling into a crouch. She felt physically winded. It was too much. No, no… This wasn't happening.

"Les."

"Leave me alone."

But he wouldn't. Oh no, he just had to explain himself. "You know what? I didn't love her anymore. She wasn't you. You actually helped me, the way she couldn't, nor my shitty-ass family. But we couldn't just do what you wanted and get hitched. How do you keep that secret? And I didn't get why you needed it, like it'd change how we loved each other. So yeah, we had our thing in the park, just to fucking… postpone. It was going to work out! I was going to get rid of Jordy, and then do the paperwork for us, whatever. You'd never have known! Don't you get it?"

She buried her face in her ears again. "Shut up, shut up."

"Obviously it's terrible, but I need you to… I need you down here, Lellybean." He touched her arm. "Please, babe. I'm scared!"

What happened next was a fluid surge of motion, as Side Bitch Leslie sprang to her feet. She yelled at Karl to GET OUT, giving them all a jolt. The mirrored wall rattled. He fled. Leslie caught a glimpse of her reflection: burning eyes, ears sharp and erect like garden shears, her incisors long and leporine. The terror of seeing it brought her face back to normal. Her ears fell.

"Jesus Christ!"

"Don't panic!" Vaggie hugged her. "That's your true demon form. Everyone has one. It's OK. You're OK."

Leslie wriggled out of the hug and bolted from the room, past a crowd of curious, eavesdropping demons, and up the stairs to the first floor. She had to be alone. It was too much, too humiliating. Once she closed her bedroom door behind her, she let go, crying into her sleeves. She wept for so long that it devolved into harsh, heaving coughs. Then came a knock at the door.

"Hey Les? Take it easy, huh? You'll puke." It was Angel Dust. "Can I come in? Vaggie told me what's up."

Suddenly self-conscious, she took deep breaths, trying to stop the tears. "I'll be quiet."

"I'm not here with a noise complaint, Les. Lemme in a'ready."

Eventually she capitulated, opening the door. He threw all six of his arms around her. "Men are cunts," he said.

But Leslie knew the problem wasn't with mankind; it was with her. She couldn't pick them. There was Ranajay, who cheated on her a decade ago; Liam, who became a lazy man-child the moment she moved in; Karlton, now Decider, who'd made her life with him small and pitiful; and inevitably, she thought of Alastor, the sadistic, egomaniacal, deal-making demon who'd turned her into his lapdog, and her stomach shrank at the notion of explaining all of this to him.

"What's wrong with me?" she said, spurting fresh tears that stung her eyes. "I try to be good, I try so hard, and I end up with someone who fucking..."

"Listen here, Les. Ya obviously know ya don't deserve that kinda treatment. Ya gotta forget this guy. Hey, want me to whack him?"

Leslie sniffed. "No. It wouldn't do any good."

Angel sat her down and told her about some sleazeball who once gave him the runaround. He told her she'd be going through some stages - feeling lower than dirt for a while, wanting to kill the fucker, even wanting to fix things, "because couples do that, right? They try an' overcome… But don't you do that, toots. Don't believe this fuckin' 'I was gonna dump her' crap."

"I won't, I won't."

"Just take it easy for a while. No big decisions, and maybe… maybe we can get him kicked out, like that Kain shithead," Angel said, but he didn't sound sure. He took her arm. "A'right, come wi' me. Fat Nuggets needs ta see his auntie."

o - o - o - o - o

Leslie waited. She made absolutely sure that all her tears were cried, and that no amount of prodding and pressing for details would prick her emotionally. Then she walked to her door and knocked - Shave-and-a-hair-cut - hoping Alastor was in his office to hear it. Better he get the story from her than some bystander.

Two-bits.

He let her in from the far side of the room, saying goodbye to someone on the phone. "Sorry, must go, I have to feed my pet. … Yes. Bye for now, Turnip!" As he replaced the receiver back in its cradle, Leslie took a seat beside him on his sofa. Then she told him everything, fluently, without fuss.

"In the end, I think I scared him off," she finished, with a casual shrug. "My demon form… kind of weird."

"Ah yes. Suitably scary for the uninitiated."

"Maybe. You should've seen it."

"Oh, I have. After the talent show, when you yelled at me."

Leslie blinked. "Really? Huh." She looked at him, reclining slightly into the arm of the couch, quite at ease. However, his permanent smile seemed more subdued. It was the same smile he wore when he heard dubstep. "So," Leslie asked, "what's your opinion on all this?"

"My opinion hardly matters," he replied, "unless this man poses some sort of competition."

"W- uh, what? No. What? No," she stammered. "That's… are you kidding? He two-timed me with that other bitch. Oh God, that's who he meant, when he said 'his wife'… He meant Jordan. After all the..." She shut up before the tears had a chance to form. Alastor was studying her, she noticed. Maybe coming to see him wasn't so smart.

"Well," he said, "it explains why he picked the smallest possible ceremony for you."

"Uh-huh."

"I doubt there's much I could say that would make this better," he said, clicking his tongue. "How terrible for you, and what a nasty shock! Those other fellows you told me about, you knew sooner or later how deliberately despicable they were. You felt righteous in leaving them, painful as it was, because they hurt you! But you didn't expect that from Decider."

"Go ahead," she snapped, "keep rubbing it in."

He took this at face value. "And the worst thing? Decider may still be lying to you - about divorcing her, or picking a side at all. Perhaps he was grateful for your death. It took the choice out of his hands, delivered him back to Jordan."

Leslie felt her chest sink; her lungs felt unbearably heavy and hollow at the same time. All she wanted was to scream the air out of her. She clenched her jaw to stop it happening. "No."

"You're crying," said Alastor, "because I'm right."

Indeed she was; the fact of having wept for an hour already, and the fact that weeping in front of him was demeaning, sadly did not stop her. She let the tears fall silently, denying him the satisfaction of noisy sobs, and stared at Alastor. "Maybe you are right," she said. "God, you must be annoyed."

"Why?"

"Because you can't hurt me like this. Not mentally, anyway." She wiped her nose. "How can you break my heart if I don't love you? You could reject me now, and yeah, it'd sting... but I'd be relieved too." Her inner bestie yelled at her to take it back, but it was true, and it might offend Alastor just a little.

After a moment's thought, he shuffled closer to her on the couch. "Well," he said, "there's one thing I can do."

"What?"

"Make you forget about him." He paused, and they heard the ticking grandfather clock. "Or not," he added, "I do have more calls to make this eve-"

She grabbed his antlers, steering his head down to hers so they could kiss. Then she dug her thumb into the hollow of his hip bone, something Leslie had accidentally found he liked. Sure enough, his eyelids drooped, and he let out a buzzing sigh. This was not a trick she employed often, for fear it would lose its usefulness, and perhaps it was unfair to use it at all. But she'd apologize later, not now.

Not now.