"Was that really necessary?"
"What?"
Sabrina stared back at her father, eyes wide. "You started pelting those guys in the head with volleyballs just because they asked me to join a game!"
The Morningstars only arrived at Long Beach a little over twenty minutes ago, but the younger of the two was already convinced that this whole thing was a bad idea. No, scratch that. A terrible idea.
So far, the only thing they'd managed to do was set up an obnoxiously large beach umbrella (dark red, of course) and scare off a bunch of teenage surfer boys (who, by the way, were just genuinely looking for more players to join their team), all before Sabrina could even think to sit down and catch a goddamn breath. Lucifer, on the other hand, was already stretched out on the overpriced deck chair he bought from the gift shop, sunglasses on, and sipping at a piña colada.
The teenager had half a mind to rip the stupid pineapple shell from his hands and chuck it into the ocean.
"Oh, please. Those boys just wanted to ogle you." The devil scoffed, stirring his drink around with a bright yellow straw. He gave his daughter a pointed look over the rim of his undoubtably expensive glasses. "You know, they're quite lucky I aimed for those particular heads instead of their other ones."
"Their other ones…?" It took a full second or two for Sabrina to figure out what he meant, but the moment she did, the witch swatted at her father's arm with the oversized bottle of magic sunscreen she had in hand. "Lucifer!"
The club owner held back a laugh as his daughter continued to assault him with SPF 200. "Well, you're the one who brought it up, hellspawn. I'm just answering a question."
"You didn't have to answer like that." She grumbled under her breath.
Sabrina always thought Theo and Roz were just being overdramatic when they used to complain about their dads during the occasional sleepover back at the mortuary (fathers were a sensitive topic around Harvey, so they had to wait till he wasn't around before they could bring it up).
Rev. Walker, apparently, was so overbearingly protective that he had to check if Roz made "God-fearing" fashion choices before leaving for school each morning. Mr. Putnam was arguably even worse, Theo pointed out, considering how he liked to coddle his son like a seven-year-old at every given chance.
The witch just used to smile and nod along during those conversations. She didn't have much to say about dads who were annoying and smothering and somewhat embarrassing, mostly because she never even had one of those to begin with.
It wasn't until now, a couple of years later in a public Californian beach, that she finally understood what her two friends meant.
"For the record, they weren't ogling me." She said matter-of-factly, plopping down on her own deck chair next to Lucifer's. "I don't know why they'd even want to. I mean, their grandmothers probably have a picture wearing the exact same bathing suit as mine."
The red 1950s one-piece was the most modest thing she could find, stopping just a few inches below her upper-thigh and with a discreet halter neck that flaunted her collarbones more than anything else. After the whole witch mark incident a few months back, she wasn't all too keen on showing off any unnecessary skin to strangers (save for Lupercalia, of course. That was a special occasion), even if it did make her look ridiculously overdressed compared to the other teenage girls walking around Long Beach in bright, stringy bikinis.
Then again, Lucifer was sitting right next to her in a full-blown white linen suit and Louboutin boat shoes (which came packed in a perfectly pressed garment bag in the trunk of the Corvette), so really, maybe overdressing wasn't as big of a deal as she thought.
"Darling, those are teenage boys." Lucifer muttered annoyedly into his piña colada. "And you're a pretty girl. They wouldn't care if you pranced around in a burlap sack, much less if you decided to resurrect their dead grandmother's summer clothing."
"I never said the grandmothers were dead."
"Well, they most certainly will be in a few years. I think America's life expectancy rate speaks for itself."
Sabrina sighed and tossed her hands up in defeat. Roz and Theo were definitely gonna hear about this in their next sleepover (well, assuming she got them up to speed on her latest infernal family drama).
"Look, what does it even matter, anyway? It's not like I'd ever go out with one of them." She scoffed, blowing the short platinum curls away from her eyes.
There had to be a reason why beautiful blond surfer guys kept getting killed off in every single B-rated horror movie she'd seen at the Greendale Paramount, and she wasn't gonna stick around long enough to find out. Besides, she was already in pretty deep with a certain Mr. Nicholas Scratch. She wouldn't trade that for all the seasalt smiles and board shorts in the world.
"Precisely. Because boys are nasty little parasites. I'm glad we agree on that." Lucifer nodded, finishing off the last of his cocktail.
"What? No!" Sabrina recoiled. "It's because I have a boyfriend. A wonderful, sweet, caring boyfriend who even went to he-"
"It's not that awkward miner boy, is it?"
That stopped the witch right in her tracks. (Did he just…?)
She turned and glanced suspiciously at the club owner. "Say that again."
"The miner boy. Or it's the miner's boy, I suppose, till he inevitably follows in his father's pickaxe-wielding footsteps." Lucifer rolled his eyes. At Sabrina's blank, wordless stare, he set his jaw and tried explaining a little further. "You know, that stiff-looking lad who only dresses in awful plaid shirts."
The witch knew exactly who he was talking about, but she had to take a few seconds to let it sink in just the same.
"Do you…do you mean Harvey?"
Lucifer snapped his fingers. "Yes, yes, that's the one! Harvey Crinkle. I remember Maze wanted to gouge out his eyes once, when you pulled him under that dreadful mistletoe. Now I almost wish I hadn't stopped her."
"Wh- Maze? How…?" Sabrina's mouth opened and closed a few times, fumbling for the right words. "How on earth do you even know about that?"
It all happened a few years ago, when the world was much simpler and smaller and saner, and the members of the Fright Club were still awkwardly dangling on the edge of thirteen. The music was just starting to die down in Mr. Putnam's annual Christmas Eve party, and Harvey was the first to hold out his hand. Sabrina remembered feeling warm, in her cheeks and down the tips of her toes. Theo (who still went by Susie back then) nudged her in the stomach and told her she looked like a tomato.
She kissed the miner's boy that night. Harvey's two left feet somehow led them across the living room and all the way out the front porch, and when their mindless dancing sent them swaying under the mistletoe, she was the one who leaned in first. It was shy and innocent and magical in a way the grimoires never talked about, and Aunt Hilda caught it all with a giddy click of her disposable camera.
(Strangely enough, though, that very same photo went missing just a couple of days later).
Lucifer shrugged, pushing his straw around the now-empty pineapple shell. "I have my sources."
"Uh huh." Sabrina said, unconvinced. She had one brow arched so perfectly that even Lilith would be proud. "And what source would that be, exactly?"
"The annoying, holier-than-thou kind."
The teenager had to work very hard to resist the steadily-growing urge to just pack up her beach chair and walk as far away from there as humanly possible. First, the confusing string of emoji text messages, and now this. For someone who's lived well over a million years, her father had no idea how to communicate like a normal person, and it really, really shows.
"Would it kill you to give a straight answer?" She groaned, sitting up on her elbows. "Like, I don't know how it works for the devil, but does it physically hurt you to have an ordinary conversation?"
"Well, that depends on who I'm talking to, hellspawn. If it's Detective Douche, for instance, then yes, my soul is slowly roasted from the inside."
"Lucifer…"
The club owner took one long look at her and folded faster than a cheap tent.
"Fine," he breathed out, all long-suffering and theatric in a way she was slowly getting used to. (No wonder all his coworkers thought he was a method actor. The guy was the dictionary definition of a drama queen). "I may or may not have asked your uncle to keep an eye on you while I was off doing Dad's dirty work in hell."
Sabrina paused. Squinted. Tilted her head to the side like a vaguely scrutinizing owl (Roz said she looked like one when she made the same face during their first pre-algebra class. Now she couldn't get the image out of her head).
"But I don't have an uncle," she finally said out loud.
The Sawyers only ever had one child (her mother), and the older generation of Spellman warlocks had already died off a long time ago (her stepfather). Technically, the closest thing she had to an uncle was Father Blackwood, being Aunt Zelda's murderously misogynistic husband and all (at least until Prudence kills him off or hauls his ass back to Greendale for a divorce – whichever comes first), but she was pretty sure even the devil himself wouldn't cohort with that walking piece of magical garbage.
(Unless, of course, she was wrong. That seemed to be the new normal these days.)
The witch suddenly snapped out of her thoughts when Lucifer started to laugh, a bright, open sound that took her completely by surprise. Blame it on the stack of 70s horror films she snagged from the discount bin at Dr. Cee's, or the yearly Church of Night passion plays Aunt Zelda kept forcing her to go to, but she always just assumed the Dark Lord's laughter would sound a lot different in person. Sinister or menacing, maybe. The kind that sent chills up and down your spine.
Oddly enough, though, it just sounded warm.
The club owner shook his head. "You kill me, hellspawn. A world without your uncles. Oh, I bet your aunts would've had a field day with that."
"My aunts? Why would they…" Sabrina looked around. Nothing seemed to be out of place, just the typical picture of overheated Californians swarming a cool ocean on the onset of summer. If anything, the two of them were probably the weirdest ones here. Designer suits and grandma-inspired swimwear weren't exactly what you'd call beach chic. "What the heaven is so funny?"
Lucifer was trying – and failing (spectacularly, she should add) to suppress the rest of his decidedly un-devilish snickers. "I'm sorry, hellspawn. I just keep picturing the look on Remiel's face when she finds out she doesn't have to go hunting with Michael anymore."
"I have no idea who those people are."
"Your family's favorite comedy novel is the King James Bible." Her father snorted. "Trust me, witchling, I think you do."
Ambrose and Aunt Zelda were part of a weird pseudo-bookclub (which, unsurprisingly, only included the two of them) where they'd sit in front of the living room fire and laugh their faces off at the Book of Genesis – and all the other books, really.
("Oh, would you look at that. These ignorant sheep actually believe Eve was the first of women." "If you think that's golden, Auntie, just wait till you hear this bit about Noah's floating zoo.")
It meant the sitting room was magically sealed off every Friday night from 9 to 10 as soon as Aunt Hilda left them with a steaming pot of tea (Satan forbid anyone from the coven – especially that catty bitch, Sister Shirley – walk in uninvited and catch the Spellmans reading a Christian Bible. Auntie Zee would sooner bury herself alive in the Cain Pit).
It also meant Sabrina picked up a copy herself just to see what all the fuss was about.
(And just like that, the names Remiel and Michael suddenly came back to her like a sucker punch to the gut).
"You…you're talking about angels." She whipped her head up to stare at Lucifer with those wide, brown doe eyes that really had no right to look so betrayed. "The False God's emissaries. You seriously had one of them spy on me?"
It made her skin crawl as if she'd just been thrown headfirst into a pool of Aunt Hilda's spiders. Her mother might not have had any siblings, but her father – her real father, the one with witty jokes and expensive suits and that sharp scent of cigarette smoke and alcohol that she was just getting used to – did. A whole heavenly host of them, in fact.
She subconsciously brushed a hand over the healed arrow wound on her left shoulder.
"Well, I wouldn't call it spying," Lucifer argued. He pushed his sunglasses up his head to get a better look at her, and for a split second, Sabrina almost thought he was gonna try to mojo her again. Not that she'd let him. "I'd say it was more 'protective surveillance'. And maybe a few rounds of petty theft from your aunt's photo album."
The witch's mouth dropped open. "That was you? Ambrose smoked the whole house with sage 'cause we thought ghosts were stealing my preschool graduation photos!"
"Correction: it wasn't me, it was your Uncle Amenadiel." The club owner pointed out. A few seconds later, his lips pulled back into a small grin. "Though I always did find you quite adorable in that little cap and gown."
While Lucifer was very evidently caught up with his impromptu trip down stolen memory lane, Sabrina, on the other hand, wanted nothing more than for the ground to just open up and swallow her whole.
"…you saw that?"
"I kept that." Lucifer chuckled. "You looked positively murderous. I've never seen Maze look so proud."
She only ever had one picture wearing that stupid graduation outfit. The teachers made them put it on for a surprise song number dedicated to their parents, and she didn't see why she had to be part of it when she only had aunties waving at her from the crowd instead of a mom and dad. She'd stomped off the stage before the first few piano notes could even begin.
Incidentally, Aunt Hilda decided to snap a photo just as she was raging down the exit stairs.
The teen pressed a hand to her face. "Any other embarrassing childhood stories this Amena-dill person told you and your demon buddy about?"
"Oh, just about fourteen years' worth of them." He smirked, all shit-eating and amused, and she finally understood why Detective Dan kept itching to punch it off. "Didn't want to miss the big things now, did I?"
"Well, you missed some things. Like basic math classes, apparently. I'm not fourteen. I'm-"
"Sixteen. Born on 3:03 a.m. on October 31st, 2002. Six pounds, six ounces, and with a shriek so loud that all the Greendale banshees went into hiding till next Samhain." Her father finished proudly after listing it off his fingers. "Really, hellspawn, you think I wouldn't know?"
Sabrina huffed, crossing her arms. It was easier to be mad. Hell, she wanted to be mad. That seemed to be the only logical response to finding out that the devil's been using an angel (who, if memory serves her right, was probably just another homicidal witch hunter in disguise) to keep track of her all these years. It was sneaky and underhanded and frustrating, and she would've just hexed him then and there, should've just hexed him then and there, if only…
She looked at him. He still had that smug little grin plastered on his face, obviously quite pleased with himself for keeping such a thorough mental log of all things Sabrina Spellman. (The image of Lucifer hunched over a tiny computer screen, typing out her Wikipedia page in agonizingly specific detail suddenly came to mind, and it took everything in her not to burst out laughing).
The girl exhaled sharply through her nose.
…if only her father didn't make more of an effort than any other goddamn person she's ever met.
"Whatever. You still got it wrong. Fourteen's not sixteen." She said instead, because she'd finally reached that chaotic point in her life where arguing was less work than figuring out what she felt.
("No. Nope. That's not what we talked about." She could already hear Dr. Linda's inevitable, well-meaning rant in their next therapy session. "Emotions are difficult, yes, but they're necessary. You can't keep running away from them!")
Fortunately, she was somewhat of an expert at tuning out the stuff she had no intention of listening to.
"Contrary to what Lux's IRS investigators would have you believe, I know how numbers work, thank you very much," Lucifer sniffed, flipping his sunglasses back down. He just needed a fancy cigarette ring and two fingers of gin, and he might as well have been Aunt Zelda soaking up some morning sun from her seat in their front porch. "Besides, the only reason I say fourteen instead of sixteen is because your bloody uncle's decided to neglect his guardian angel duties ever since I've gone topside of hell these last two years. If anything, you should blame it on him."
"…I should blame an angel for refusing to babysit the antichrist while the devil went partying in Los Angeles?"
"Exactly. He and I had a deal, you know."
Sabrina could use her own piña colada right about now. (This conversation was too ridiculous to have while sober). "Great."
To be fair, she could see how it all made the tiniest bit of sense. Her life's been relatively uneventful (by a witch's standards, anyway), until she turned fourteen and the town unknowingly got its first incubus when Dr. Cee set up shop, the Weird Sisters suddenly had the guts to start picking on her after Black Mass, and the Greendale Woods was slightly darker than it used to be when she walked home alone at night. She'd just brushed it off as an ill turn of the wind ("It can't always be the witch's season, love," Aunt Hilda used to tell her), but now she realized it probably went much deeper than that.
This Amena-dill person (was there seriously an angel flying around out there named after a pickle?) presumably stopped his so-called "protective surveillance" ever since Lucifer left hell to put up a nightclub on earth. She didn't really trust the guy (she learned her lesson the first time she got murdered by angels, thanks), but she couldn't exactly blame him, either. One teenage witch in some obscure mining town wouldn't be high on the list of anyone's priorities when you had the actual devil running loose in the City of Angels.
It would explain why Lucifer seemed to know everything about her childhood, but nothing about the absolute shitshow that's been her life since last October. Hell, it would explain how he could just sit there with his stupid overpriced shades and his stupid overpriced deck chair, and chuck volleyballs at unsuspecting surfer boys like his daughter wasn't just harrowed and killed and almost forced into marriage while he wasn't looking.
"Where'd you get that drink?"
"At the tiki bar next to the giftshop – Sabrina!"
She'd already gotten up and was starting to walk away. Somehow, her father had managed to take a fun, innocent day at the beach and turn it into yet another emotionally exhausting L.A. field trip.
On one hand, he actually cared about her, which would've been nice if he didn't care about drugs and drinks and debauchery almost just as much (That's why he left hell - and probably her - in the first place, right? To go party?). On the other, he irritatingly fit the mold of everything she imagined a father would be (both the good, the bad, and the annoying), and she was around 87% sure he would've stood up for her through the past year's craziness if he only knew what was going on.
The problem was, he didn't know a damn thing. And she wasn't entirely sure who to blame for it anymore.
(Maybe she should just take a page out of Lucifer's book and blame everything on her grandfather. That seemed to be working well enough for him.)
"Witchling, would you please just slow down?"
Sabrina turned around to see that the club owner had already caught up with her, falling into step so easily as if she didn't just get a thirty second head-start. Those unfairly long celestial limbs (which he didn't even bother to pass on to her, by the way) were seriously pissing her off.
She huffed out a breath.
"Look, I just wanted some air." She threw up a hand before letting it fall limply back to her side. "And maybe one of those fun tropical cocktails they don't serve at Dorian's Gray Room. You didn't have to follow me all the way out here."
"Well, then we'll get some air and one of those fun tropical cocktails together-"
"No! That's not the-" Sabrina groaned and buried her face in her hands. She needed some air away from him. She needed to think away from him. And she would've told him just that, should've told him just that, if only he wasn't staring at her with the most earnestly concerned expression she'd ever seen, and she could feel the tension in her chest uncoil the slightest bit.
Fuck.
"You know what?" She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Fine. Fine! One drink-"
"Bold of you to assume I would've let you have more than one."
"-and then that's it. That's all we're getting."
Heaven knew she didn't want to be one of those miserable kids who only ever had their dad as a drinking buddy. More than that, she didn't want to be one of those miserable kids who only ever had the devil as a drinking buddy.
It sounded like the plot of some crappy sitcom pilot that never made its way to TV.
The club owner nodded along. "Well, that seems like the most logical choice, hellspawn. I imagine it's rather difficult to build sandcastles when you're pissed out drunk."
Lucifer almost collided into her back when she stopped walking altogether.
"…what?" She glared, eyes narrowing.
"Sandcastles!" He grinned a touch too brightly. It was putting her on edge. The devil wasn't supposed to look that like that unless he was devouring souls or setting off a third world war or something. "I picked up some supplies earlier in the gift shop. I thought you might like it."
"You do know I'm not five years old, right?"
"You really want to go through this again?" Lucifer raised his brows. "Yes, I'm quite aware you're not toddling around in diapers anymore. You were born on 3:03 am, October 31st, 2002. Six pounds, six-"
"Alright, alright, I get the picture!"
Sabrina crossed her arms and grumbled under her breath their whole way to the tiki bar.
Turns out she was gonna need something a lot stronger than a fun tropical cocktail if she wanted to make it out of this insufferable beach day alive.