Chapter 10: Dealmaking

It probably took all of five minutes for me to grab what I needed and hightail it back to the office. I had my tarot deck in one hand, my crystal ball in the other, and the pockets of my jeans were stuffed with almost every travel-sized crystal I owned. My legs and lungs were burning, but I was sure I'd have even bigger problems to worry about if I left Lilith waiting too long.

Lilith was as I had left her, still sitting before the desk in her chair with her legs crossed as she leaned on her elbows. Just like when I had left, her eyes followed me from the door back to my seat on the other side of the desk. Goosebumps raced down my arms as I tried to avoid falling over myself. If I could avoid humiliating myself any more than I felt like I already had, things would be just peachy.

"You sure are light on your feet," Lilith commented, "You didn't waste any time whatsoever."

I laughed nervously as I sat down, "Wouldn't it be a crime if I left Her Majesty waiting?"

"Not at all! I understand you must be quite the busy bee around here. Waiting a few extra minutes wouldn't have killed me."

I managed a polite smile to compensate for my lack of a response. Laying my supplies out in front of me, my hands instantly gravitated towards my crystal ball. The orb was very unique amongst those of its kind. While most were made up entirely of quartz crystal and were almost completely see-through, mine was composed of labradorite, filling the ball with a mosaic of blacks, greens, and metallic blues. Some days, I would just stare into it for hours on end, lost in the various images it had to show me.

"How lovely," Lilith commented, "Can you really use that to see into the future?"

"Past, present, and future," I responded, "And a lot more than that, depending on the kind of reading I'm doing. What would you like to know?"

Lilith tapped her chin in thought as her eyes seemed to search for something she could gain some insight on. Odds were that there wasn't much that she didn't know, since she had a tendency to keep tabs on everything that was happening in her realm. She must have come up with something, though, as she folded her hands and shot me a smile.

"There's this maid that works for me," she said, "There's a rumor going around that she's been stealing jewelry and other items from my dressing room. I have noticed a few things of mine have come up missing, and at the same time she has been able to indulge herself with a bounty of drugs and nice things. Has she been stealing my things and pawning them off in order to obtain the money for them, or is there something that I'm overlooking?"

My throat went dry. Everything about that situation sounded like it was going to have some pretty bad repercussions for this maid if it turned out to be true. The punishments that the royals dished out on those who wronged them were on a legendary level of terrifying. I heard Lucifer once skinned a man alive and played around with his internal organs for an hour before forcing the man to eat his own intestines. All of that, and only because he had poked fun at the outfit the king had been wearing that particular day.

What kind of punishment would be in store for someone who had stolen from the queen, and had sold the items for the money to indulge in some of Hell's finest luxuries?

Nervously, I lifted my hands and curled my fingers around my crystal ball, the tips of my claws hovering less than an inch away from its surface. My eyes scanned the details of the orb until they honed in on a sweeping arc of black that seemed to cut through a bright patch of the metallic blue in the labradorite. As I stared deeper into it, I could make out the image of a female demon in a maid's uniform. An aura of greed radiated off of her like a musky cloud, and I sensed that the pockets of her dress were lined with all manner of sterling silver earrings, gold chains, and precious gems. Her mouth moved, and even though I couldn't hear what she was saying, I could read her lips.

"I don't get paid enough for this shit!"

I pulled my hands away, and leaned back in my chair.

"Well?" Lilith piped up, "Did you see anything?"

As much as I didn't want to play a role in deciding someone's guilt, I knew I couldn't very well lie to the queen's face.

I nodded, "She's robbing you blind. She seems to think that you don't pay her enough for the work that she does. It looks like she keeps everything she manages to take in the pockets of her dress when she decides to steal something."

Lilith nodded calmly in understanding, but I could still see a hint of murderous intent lingering behind her eyes, "I suppose we shall have to rectify that when I return home. What about my husband? What sort of mischief is he getting himself into?"

I turned my crystal ball over in my hand until a flash of green from it caught my eye. An image of Lucifer manifested within it; a man with the same rosy cheeks and gleaming yellow eyes as Charlie, clad in a white overcoat and a comically large top hat. He appeared to be sharing a laugh with someone on one of the upper levels of the hotel.

"I suppose I can do that," he seemed to say, "You have yourself a deal!"

A tall, slender silhouette strode up to him. It took a moment for the image to clear up, but I already knew who the second person was just from the fluffy ears on his head and the microphone stand he had grasped tightly in one of his hands. Alastor.

My immediate reaction wasn't so much shock as it was, well, laughter. Alastor towered, and I mean towered, over Lucifer by at least two feet. Enough that the Radio Demon had to stoop down slightly just to shake the man's hand. Most likely, I had a good couple of inches on him, as well. The last thing I expected the King of Hell and the almighty Prince of Darkness to be was short!

"What's so amusing?" Lilith inquired, quirking a brow in intrigue.

"Oh, it's nothing," I replied, "I didn't know Lucifer and Al were such good friends."

Lilith frowned slightly, "Al?"

"Alastor."

First names didn't seem to be Lilith's forte as her confusion deepened.

"The Radio Demon?" I said questioningly, "Tall, red, and cheezy?"

"Ah! I know, now. I'm sorry. He normally goes by other names around the palace. Deer, Deer Boy, Happy Deer, sometimes we just call him Red. I guess I just wasn't expecting you two to be on a first-name basis with each other. Oh! Are you two perhaps..."

Lilith waggled her eyebrows suggestively as she shot me a smile. An intense heat exploded throughout my face at the implication, and I became so flustered that I nearly sent my deck of tarot cards that was sitting beside me scattering.

"I-It isn't like that, really!" I stuttered, "We're just friends! That's all!"

Lilith laughed with amusement, "I'm sorry! You're just so easy to mess with, I couldn't help myself!"

I hid my face behind a thick curtain of dreads as I pulled my hair over my cheeks. Sheesh! First this woman had me falling all over her, and now she was getting me all hot and bothered over Alastor? What's next?

"I already have a mate," I explained, flipping my dreads back over my head and slumping in my seat, "Besides, Al really isn't my type. Too mischievous, not to mention he doesn't seem to really be looking for anyone, himself."

"Well, you got me there. Eighty six years in this realm, and I have yet to see the Radio Demon look at someone with the slightest hint of romance or lust."

And I was pretty sure it was going to be another eighty six years, times infinity, until that happened. Flashes of the vision I'd had a couple of nights ago appeared in my mind. Alastor didn't want to be with anybody. That's just how he preferred it.

"It looks like Alastor made some kind of deal with Lucifer," I piped up, "That's gonna be a problem."

Lilith rolled her eyes and groaned, "Again? I've told Luci a thousand times to lay off on the dealmaking!"

My stomach dropped. Again? Again, as in Al had made deals with Lucifer before?

I knew from firsthand experience that making a deal with any demon was a big no-no. It wasn't over once both parties had fulfilled their end of the bargain. It was never over. Those who accepted a deal dealt by a demon were forever marked and eternally in debt to the dealmaker, and the dealmaker could decide when and how many times they could cash in on favors from them, if the debt was deep enough. A deal was only officially over when one of the parties was killed off. I highly doubted Lucifer would be one to put himself in that sort of situation, so it was more than likely Alastor had been the one to accept terms from Lucifer.

Charlie and Vaggie were going to be pissed when they found out... If they found out.

"I guess I'll have to have a word with my husband once we're done here," Lilith sighed, "For now, I'm very interested in those cards you have there."

My eyes fell to my tarot deck, and I felt a smile tug on the corners of my mouth, "Would you like to take a look at them?"

"Certainly!"

I scooped up the cards and casually passed them to her. It didn't take more than five seconds of flipping through the deck before a look of bewilderment settled itself on her face.

"They're... blank," she said, "I don't see anything on these cards."

"That's because these cards are very unique," I replied, "The bond between a tarot reader and their deck is very personal, regardless of whether the reader is human or demon. The same is especially true with this deck. The only side others can see is the back of the card. Only I can see the images on the front of them, and the images manifest in a way that is intimately connected with my soul."

"But why?"

I took the cards back from Lilith and shuffled them contentedly, feeling the magic in them boil and flourish in my hands, "Let's just say that there are some types of readings that aren't meant for the faint of heart. If a reading goes south, the names and faces of the cards become embedded in the minds of my clients, and they become permanently tied to the fate they've decided upon. This way, the only one plagued by the cards is me, and the client still maintains the ability to change their fate if they choose to."

"So, hypothetically speaking, what would you do if the cards predicted the death of the person that was getting the reading? How do you handle that kind of situation?"

A slight chill passed through me. The sad truth was that I got those kinds of readings a lot more often than people thought, especially around the time the extermination would happen. And the worst part about that was it only took two specific cards to condemn a client to death: the Ten of Swords, and the Death card. Two cards that, when I was alive, I never once saw appear in a reading together, but with Hell having one day out of every year that was dedicated towards the mass killings of people all over the realm, those two cards started pairing up together a lot more often.

"All I can do is give the person the advice they need in order to avoid that fate," I explained, "It's an unspoken law amongst tarot readers that we never outright say that someone is going to die. That way, the person that's getting the reading has a chance to change their fortune, and can still maintain their peace of mind."

I sat my cards down on the desk. With a snap of my fingers, three cards hopped from the deck and laid themselves out before me. As I peered into faces of each card, their images slowly emerged from their blank surfaces.

The Empress; upright, the Ten of Cups; upright, and The Lovers; reversed.

"What do you see?" Lilith asked, staring in vain at the cards.

Several images passed through my mind's eye, but they were all almost virtually the same. Scenes of Lilith's past interactions with Charlie flashed by. At times, they'd be sharing a smile. Other times, Lilith would be comforting her. They were images full to bursting with love, support, and nurture.

But a shadow loomed just behind that; a stifling presence that seemed to choke that feeling out of existence. Lingering in the background of every tender smile and warm embrace was a cold scowl. With every word of encouragement would come one of ridicule spat from a sharp tongue. With every drop of motherly love from Lilith came a drop of toxic disapproval from Lucifer as The Lovers refused to see eye to eye.

"Juniper? Are you feeling all right, dear?"

I snapped back to my senses to find Lilith's staring at me with heavy concern as she rested one of her hands over mine whilst the other came to rest against my cheek.

"Yeah," I replied weakly, snatching a shard of obsidian from my pile of crystals and rubbing my thumb over it, "I'm all right."

"You're pale," she commented, "And your face feels like it's burning up."

I rested the back of my hand against my forehead. It was definitely warm and a bit clammy, but I'd dealt with worse. Negative energy could hit hard when it wanted to, and as I hadn't slept properly and had been going without cigarettes for the past day and a half or so, I wasn't exactly the best shape to be handling the level of negative energy that Lucifer emitted. Luckily, obsidian absorbed negative energy fairly quickly, and little by little my head started to clear.

"What did you see?" Lilith inquired, settling back in her chair, "Was it something bad?"

"Not necessarily," I said, "Charlie wasn't kidding around when she said that you were a beacon of love and support to her."

"She said that?"

"She says that it's because of you that she was able to open up this hotel in the first place. Your love and support is essentially what keeps her going. That much was evident in the cards."

A touched smile spread across Lilith's lips before falling into a frown, "So, what happened then? You look like you saw a ghost along the way."

"I guess you could say that," I stated, placing my obsidian crystal back in with the others, "You and your husband don't exactly see eye to eye, do you? On more things than just this hotel."

Lilith scowled and crossed her arms, "Well, you aren't wrong. I've resided in Hell for eons; long before Lucifer fell from Heaven. A pure-blooded demon and an angel God crafted by hand are as polar opposite as you can get, but we were all we had. Charlie was born one hundred and fifty years ago, if that tells you how long it took for us to finally get it on."

I let out a laugh, "What did you do? Avoid him until then?"

"Pretty much, but the more sinners we started getting, the more potential there was for something to go wrong, and I worried that he might be overthrown. So I convinced him that Hell needed an heir. Don't get me wrong, we both love Charlie to death, but he and I have our differences when it comes to what we expect from her. He wants her to be this cold, heartless antichrist that can destroy humanity and crush Heaven underfoot. I just want her to be happy, and if redeeming sinners is what makes her happy, of course I'm willing to support her."

Lilith let out a sigh. That must have been something she'd been keeping in for decades, now. She seemed much lighter, almost at peace. Most of Hell's denizens weren't the most optimistic of sorts, and tended to look upon it like it was a cruel joke. It made me wonder who the angel here really was. Lilith or Lucifer?

"I'm sorry," the queen piped up, "I must sound like a fool to you."

"Not at all!" I responded, "You're more like a breath of fresh air, than anything."

The two of us exited the office as I offered to give Lilith an official tour of the hotel. It was nearing supper time, and chances were that Alastor already had dinner cooking in the kitchen. The massive groups of demons I'd brought back from the south side had finally been sorted out, checked in, and settled in their rooms. Things finally felt like they were coming together.

Lilith and I only made it halfway through the lobby before I was stopped by a cold, slender hand landing on one of my shoulders. The action was so sudden that I nearly jumped out of my boots. I felt claws dig into my skin through my shirt as a deep voice growled from behind me.

"There's my favorite little witch!"

My shoulder was almost torn off as I turned around, and came face to face with the wide brim of a white top hat. My eyes drifted down to meet the yellow ones staring up at me. The sharp-toothed smile that greeted me was almost identical to that of Alastor's, only rather than being an unhealthy, coffee-stained yellow in color, these teeth were almost as white as freshly fallen snow.

All I can say is I was glad I had seen him in my crystal ball first and gotten my hysterical laughter out of the way, because I don't think this encounter would have ended well if I collapsed before the King of Hell in a fit of giggles.

I took a low bow, "Good evening, you're Majesty."

Lucifer yanked his claws out of the meat of my shoulder and rolled his eyes, "Why so formal, June? You and me, we go way back! Just call me Lucifer."

I stared at him in confusion. Sure, I was no stranger to the faces of the royal family. I had seen Lucifer appear in newspapers, magazines, and on my television, but I had not once seen his face any time before my life ended back in the living world. 'Favorite little witch'? 'We go way back'? What was all that supposed to mean?

"You don't remember, do you?" Lucifer asked, an annoyed look settling on his face.

I shook my head, shrinking back as I met his hard gaze, "I'm sorry. Can't say that I do."

Lucifer tisked as he hefted his cane in one of his hands, and slowly began pacing the floor. If I had to imagine the amount of dread and anxiety the south side had felt when Alastor had done the same, just seconds before he had appointed me as their new leader, how I felt now as I waited for the King of Hell to speak would probably be it. He looked to be about as offended as I imagined he'd be if I had spat on his shoes. I was only being honest. As far as I knew, Lucifer and I had never officially met in person until now...

As far as I knew...

"Well, this just won't do at all, will it?" he chided.

In one smooth motion, he turned on his heel, approaching me with purpose in his strides. Lucifer tore one of his gloves from his hands, and wrapped his fingers around my left wrist. A white-hot burning pain shot up my forearm, dropping me onto my knees. My teeth clenched as I stifled a scream, squeezing my eyes shut as my mind filled with fog. I fell forward and felt myself land against a bony chest as Lucifer's voice rang in my ears.

"Perhaps this will refresh your memory..."

A very familiar face sitting in a very familiar room entered my mind. A girl with long, dreaded brown hair sat on her knees in a dilapidated bedroom. A thick circle of salt and blazing red and white candles surrounded her as she gazed down at a heavy leather book on her lap. Her protective circle sat inside of a pentagram that spanned almost the entire area of the room. In the circle with her was a single, red apple and a ceremonial dagger made out of a sharpened shard of blue calcite; the same shade of light blue as the feathers that lined my wings.

I watched as the girl drug the sharpened edge of the dagger across her left palm, and held her hand outside of the circle of salt. Six drops of blood fell from her hand onto the floor, soaking into the wood before a thick pillar of smoke manifested before her.

A black gloved hand emerged from the smoke, wrapping itself almost lovingly around her own. Slowly, the smoke started to clear up, revealing a familiar, white-clad figure.

"Well, well, well! If it isn't one of my favorite customers!"

Standing before the girl, with his boots just inches away from the circle of salt, was Lucifer.

Oh, yeah. It was all coming back to me, now. This girl wasn't just any old mortal. Between the dreadlocks, piercing blue eyes, and similar, dingy black V-neck t-shirt, the resemblance was almost uncanny. This girl was me.

"And what can I do for you today, my sweet little mortal?" Lucifer asked happily, "You low on money, again? Or did someone else decide to piss you off?"

I never returned his enthusiastic smile. Instead, a single word fell from my mouth with the same amount of finality as a death sentence.

"Power."

Power. The power to tear the little hick town I resided in down to its foundation, anyways. I found myself cursing myself as the scene unfolded. I knew I had made a deal with a demon to obtain my powers, but I had somehow completely forgottenthat it was Lucifer who gave me that power! How the fuck did I manage to forget something like that?!

"That's quite the tall order you've got there," Lucifer commented, "First you wanted the ability to see into the future, then it was the ability to immediately woo any man that tickled your fancy, and now this? You're just a puny, little human, after all. I'll tell you what, I'll give you the majority of the power you'll need to wipe this miserable town off of the map. I have a few demons working for me that would be happy to help you take care of the rest. In exchange--"

"My immortal soul?" Past Me interrupted.

Lucifer threw his head back and let out a hearty laugh, "Dear, you have no idea how much you owe me! I'm sure I'll be able to find a suitable way for you to pay off your debt, but you'll owe it to whichever demon you decide to employ for this task."

"I get to choose?"

A flimsy catalog appeared in Lucifer's hands, "Take your pick!"

I put my head in my hands. This entire day was now as fresh in my memory as ever. I didn't even need to wait with baited breath to make the realization. I knew full well which demon I had decided on as the image of myself stopped on a single page in the middle of the pamphlet.

The demon that I had chosen to help me was Sir Pentious.