For once, Charlie had kept her unintentional promise.
She hadn’t dragged me into a single catastrophe for several days.
I had almost started to believe that trend might last.
The days following my meeting with Carmilla had been occupied by far more ordinary problems.
The first additional shipments of angelic steel had not arrived yet, but the teams selected for testing had been assembled, the engineers had prepared several protocols, and Depot Four was being reorganized despite the fact that we didn’t immediately need it.
My lieutenant had naturally interpreted my remark about “making sure we had enough room” as authorization to completely redesign the building’s organization.
I hadn’t said anything.
The result was better than the old system.
The small territorial war disrupting our convoys had also begun to become profitable.
Both sides had accepted our offers with almost touching speed after discovering that fighting a war consumed considerably more resources than shouting a few threats from a balcony.
Ammunition went to one side, fuel and spare parts to the other, with margins comfortable enough that the additional forty minutes imposed on some of our convoys suddenly became much less irritating.
Not a single piece of angelic steel had left our reserves.
I intended to keep it that way.
As for the underground tunnels, the engineers had indeed started talking about a railway network.
I should have kept my fucking mouth shut.
They had presented the project with maps, estimates, several construction phases, and an analysis detailed enough to demonstrate that the idea was unfortunately not nearly as absurd as I would have liked.
I had therefore authorized a more complete study, while specifying that a study was not permission to immediately transform the bowels of my territory into a central train station.
They had looked far too happy.
My day had therefore passed between an inspection, two meetings, several financial reports, and a testing session devoted to a new magical detection system my researchers had been developing for several months.
A normal day.
A productive day.
A day without the Princess of Hell appearing in my office with some new idea capable of altering the political balance of Pentagram City.
I was sitting behind my desk in the early evening when my phone began to vibrate.
I continued reading for several seconds before reaching for it without taking my eyes off the report.
Charlie.
I looked at the name.
Then the time.
She could have sent me a message.
A call usually meant she wanted to talk long enough to consider typing a waste of time, which, with Charlie, could represent a rather alarming amount of words.
I answered anyway.
“Good evening, Charlie.”
There was a brief silence.
“Hey…
Hi, Tanya.”
I immediately stopped reading.
That wasn’t Charlie’s usual voice.
She hadn’t launched into my name with her normal enthusiasm, hadn’t started talking before I’d even finished my first sentence, and didn’t sound as though she was about to introduce some new group activity involving drawings, songs, or a criminal amount of glitter.
I put down my pen.
“What happened?”
Another silence followed, accompanied by a small sigh on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry for calling you like this.
Are you busy?”
I looked at the documents covering my desk.
“Yes, but I assume you didn’t call just to ask how my day went.”
“No…
I mean, I could ask you too.
I don’t want it to seem like I only call you when I have a problem, because that would be really horrible and—”
“Charlie.”
She stopped.
I softened my voice slightly.
“You can tell me what happened.
My work will still be here in twenty minutes.”
Judging by the amount of paperwork in front of me, it would probably still be there in twenty years.
Charlie took a deep breath.
“I really fucked up today.”
I leaned back in my chair.
That was unusual enough to deserve my full attention.
“All right.
Tell me.”
She started slowly.
Angel had needed to leave for work that morning.
Charlie, still convinced that the hotel’s exercises required everyone’s participation, had wanted to get a few extra hours with him and had gone directly to his workplace to speak with his employer.
I already had a fairly bad idea where this story was going before she even said the name.
“Valentino.”
My gaze instinctively dropped toward my phone.
I briefly remembered Angel at the bar, glass in hand, his smile changing for less than two seconds when a message appeared on his screen.
Valentino.
I hadn’t asked anything that night.
Apparently, Charlie had discovered part of the answer today.
“I know the name,” I replied simply.
“Continue.”
Charlie explained that she had entered the studio intending to talk.
She had believed she could convince Valentino to let Angel leave early, or at the very least find some compromise that would allow him to participate more in the hotel’s activities.
The situation had obviously not gone as planned.
The more she spoke, the more I understood why her voice sounded so different.
She gave me no details about Angel’s work and didn’t try to explain what happened behind the closed doors of the studio.
She stayed mostly with what she herself had done, seen, and understood.
Valentino had reacted very badly to her intervention.
Angel had asked her to leave.
Charlie had insisted.
She had tried to make things better.
She had made them worse.
“I thought if I just explained why Angel needed time for the hotel, he’d understand at least a little.
Or that we could work something out.
I know it sounds stupid now, but at the time…”
She stopped.
“I just wanted to help.”
I remained silent for several seconds.
Not because I was searching for some comforting phrase.
Simply because Charlie clearly wasn’t finished.
She continued on her own.
“And Angel was trying to make me leave.
I thought he was scared of Valentino and needed someone to stay with him, so I stayed.
I didn’t understand that…
that I was the one making things worse.”
Her voice cracked slightly on the last words.
“He ended up yelling at me.
He told me to leave.
So I left.”
I slowly rolled my pen between my fingers.
“And did you apologize?”
“Yes.”
She answered immediately, then seemed to feel the need to clarify.
“Not for wanting to help him.
I mean…
that’s not what I mean.
I apologized because I didn’t listen when he was trying to tell me to stop.
I was so convinced I knew what was best for him that I wasn’t even listening to what he was actually asking me to do anymore.”
That wording was much more interesting.
“Then you understand where you went wrong.”
Charlie remained silent for a moment.
“That doesn’t change what I did.”
“No.”
I saw no reason to lie to her.
“Understanding a mistake doesn’t erase it.
With a little luck, it simply prevents you from making exactly the same one next time.”
I left my chair and walked toward the window.
Night already covered most of the domain.
The lights of the industrial facilities drew bright lines in the distance while several vehicles moved between the buildings.
“You walked into a situation you didn’t fully understand because you thought your intentions would be enough to produce a good result.
They weren’t.
Now you know.
You can spend the next three days telling yourself you’re a horrible person, or you can learn from it and listen to Angel next time he tells you what he needs.
The second option seems slightly more useful.”
Charlie gave a small, humorless laugh.
“When you put it like that…”
“I’m not particularly good at turning things into inspirational lessons.”
“No, but sometimes that’s good.”
I raised an eyebrow even though she couldn’t see me.
“I’ll pretend that was a compliment.”
A little of her usual tone finally returned.
Not much.
Enough to reassure me that she wasn’t completely falling apart.
She stayed quiet for several seconds before continuing.
“What I saw there still made me really angry.”
I returned to my chair.
“Valentino?”
“Yes.
I knew Angel worked for him.
I also knew he had a contract with him, but…
I don’t think I really understood what that meant.
Not completely.”
She hesitated before adding:
“Valentino owns his soul.”
I didn’t answer immediately.
There was nothing particularly extraordinary about that information in Hell.
Soul contracts were one of the very foundations of an Overlord’s power.
Some accumulated souls by the hundreds, others by the thousands, and the conditions varied considerably depending on the owner, the person who had signed, and what they had received in exchange.
I owned souls myself.
The Dominion would never have reached its current level of power otherwise.
I had my own rules regarding the people bound to me, but they were exactly that: my rules.
They weren’t some universal law other Overlords were obligated to follow.
“Charlie, I’m going to tell you something you probably won’t like.”
She sighed slightly.
“I figured.”
“I can find Valentino completely disgusting in the way he treats Angel without believing that gives me any right over their contract.
Angel sold him his soul.
I don’t know the circumstances under which he did it, I don’t know everything he received in return, and most importantly, that contract belongs to Valentino.”
I paused briefly before continuing, long enough to keep the conversation from turning into a series of clipped little sentences.
“That isn’t approval of his behavior.
It’s simply reality.
Overlords don’t start questioning one another’s contracts every time they dislike the way a soul is being treated.
If we did, Pentagram City would be in a permanent state of war.”
Charlie didn’t answer immediately.
I could almost imagine her expression.
“There’s really no way to break that kind of contract?”
“Not simply because a third party wants it gone.
An owner can renounce the contract themselves, they can transfer it to someone else if the terms permit it, and their death can end their ownership.
But an outsider can’t simply decide they dislike the deal and make it disappear.”
I rubbed my temple lightly.
“And before your brain decides to turn the third possibility into a plan, killing an Overlord to recover a soul isn’t exactly an administrative procedure.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that!”
I let out a quiet laugh.
“I prefer to check.
You’ve spent enough time with Vaggie to develop bad habits.”
“Hey!”
There.
This time her indignation actually sounded like Charlie.
I smiled slightly.
“More seriously, Angel understands his situation better than either of us.
If he wants to talk to you about his contract, listen.
If he doesn’t, it isn’t your place to drag the details out of him because you want to find a solution on his behalf.”
“I know.”
Her answer was much calmer.
“I think that’s exactly what I understood today.
I want to help people so much that sometimes…
I guess I forget helping someone and deciding for them aren’t the same thing.”
I looked at the report I had abandoned on my desk.
“That’s a distinction a lot of people never learn.”
There was a noise on the other end of the line.
A door, perhaps.
Then a voice I recognized immediately.
“Wait, who’re you talking to?”
Charlie answered something too far from the phone for me to hear properly.
A few seconds later, Angel’s voice came closer.
“Oh no.
Don’t tell me you’re telling General Shortstack about your day.”
I closed my eyes.
That fucking nickname was going to survive.
I knew it.
I should have killed him while I still had the chance.
“Good evening, Angel.”
“Holy shit, it really is her.”
I heard Charlie immediately start protesting.
“I’m not telling her your whole life!
I just talked about what I did today and what happened when I came to the studio, I promise I didn’t tell her anything personal and—”
“Charlie.”
Angel’s voice wasn’t aggressive.
Mostly tired.
“Breathe, Princess.
I didn’t say you’d spilled my whole fucking life.”
I heard some movement, then his voice became clearer.
He must have moved closer to the phone.
“Listen, Tanya, I know you probably already know a bunch of shit because this city can’t keep its mouth shut, but if she starts telling you details that aren’t your business, you stop her, okay?”
I didn’t need to think.
“Okay.”
Angel seemed slightly surprised by the simplicity of the answer.
“That’s it?”
“What did you want me to say?
Your private life belongs to you.
If Charlie starts telling me something I don’t need to know, I’ll tell her to stop.”
Charlie immediately interrupted.
“I wouldn’t do that!”
“I know,” Angel replied, still carrying that noticeable exhaustion beneath his usual tone.
“It’s just…
fuck, today’s already been long enough.”
I didn’t ask why.
I also didn’t ask what Valentino had done to him, exactly what his contract contained, or why he had sold his soul.
Instead, I thought back to our evening at the bar.
“For what it’s worth, I’d already realized something was wrong with Valentino.”
A silence followed.
This time Angel didn’t joke immediately.
“What do you mean?”
“When we were at the bar, your phone vibrated.
I saw his name and your behavior changed.”
I could almost feel his attention lock fully onto the conversation.
“You noticed that?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t offer to explain.”
Another silence.
Then Angel breathed out something that was almost a laugh.
“Fuck…
you really are a weird Overlord.”
“I’ll take that as another compliment.”
“Knock yourself out.”
His tone regained some of its usual exaggeration.
“And just so we’re clear, if the Princess told you I burst into tears in someone’s arms while singing about my feelings, that’s fucking slander.”
Charlie let out an outraged noise.
“I never said that!”
“I’m getting ahead of it!”
I smiled despite myself.
“I have absolutely no intention of asking for details.”
“That’s why I like you, General Shortstack.
You know how to keep your nose out of other people’s asses.”
I remained silent for a second.
“That metaphor could have been phrased differently.”
“But it would’ve been less beautiful.”
It was difficult to argue with Angel Dust’s logic.
I heard Charlie say something quietly to him.
Angel answered, then his voice returned one last time toward the phone.
“Anyway, I’ll leave you two to your meeting of the club for girls traumatized by my wonderful personality.
And Tanya?”
“Yes?”
“The round still stands.”
I understood immediately.
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“Good.
Night, doll.”
He moved away.
Charlie remained silent for several seconds after he left.
“He’s doing better than earlier.”
“Good.”
“Husk stayed with him for a while.
I don’t know exactly what they talked about and I’m not going to ask, but…
when Angel came back, something had changed.”
I knew Husk well enough to know he possessed considerably more experience than his permanently irritated bartender attitude suggested.
“Then let them handle what they need to handle.”
“Yeah.”
This time, Charlie didn’t need any further explanation.
She understood.
The conversation could have ended there.
It didn’t.
Because Charlie was Charlie.
After a few seconds, she started talking about the hotel again, about the exercises that weren’t progressing as quickly as she’d hoped and the increasing difficulty of maintaining her enthusiasm when every new attempt seemed to produce more problems than results.
I listened.
At one point, her voice became quieter.
“And there are only three months left.”
I frowned slightly.
“Three months?”
“Until the Extermination.”
I automatically looked at the calendar on my desk.
She was right.
When Charlie had told me that Adam had moved the next Extermination forward, six months had still separated us from the deadline.
Half of that time had already disappeared.
To me, three months weren’t particularly impressive.
After decades in Hell, a few weeks could pass without me assigning much importance to them, especially when the Dominion constantly demanded my attention.
For Charlie, those same three months represented half the time she had to prove that her idea wasn’t impossible.
“I feel like I’ve barely accomplished anything,” she murmured.
“Three months have already passed and I still don’t have any proof that someone can actually be rehabilitated.
Angel tries, sometimes, but he still has so much to deal with.
Pentious only just arrived.
Husk doesn’t even really want to participate.
And if I reach the day of the Extermination without proving anything…”
She didn’t finish.
I let several seconds pass before answering.
“You want to know if I still think your project has little chance of working.”
“Yes.”
I could lie to her.
She would probably appreciate it for a few minutes.
It wouldn’t help her.
“Yes, Charlie.
I still think your chances of proving a sinner’s redemption before the Extermination are low.
You don’t even know exactly what criteria Heaven would use to consider someone redeemed, and so far you have no evidence that such a transfer is even possible.”
She said nothing.
I continued before she interpreted my answer as a conclusion.
“But low doesn’t mean zero, and more importantly, I don’t have any more proof than you do that it’s impossible.
You have three months.
If you give up now because the first three didn’t produce the result you wanted, then you’re turning a low probability into zero yourself.”
I heard her breathing change slightly.
“So you think I should keep going.”
“I think that if you genuinely believe in your project, quitting halfway through because it turned out to be harder than expected would be particularly stupid.”
A small laugh came through the phone.
“You have a really special way of encouraging people.”
“I’ve been told.”
“No, actually.
I don’t think anyone else encourages people the way you do.”
“I’ll choose not to find out whether that’s positive.”
This time she genuinely laughed, enough for the tension that had accompanied her voice since the beginning of the call to finally loosen.
We talked for several more minutes.
Or rather, Charlie talked for several minutes while I answered whenever an answer seemed necessary.
Eventually she explained that she wanted to rethink some of the hotel’s activities, that she probably needed to talk with Angel when he was ready, and that above all she planned to try listening more before deciding what other people needed.
I didn’t know whether that resolution would survive more than a week against her natural enthusiasm.
But at least it existed.
By the time we finally reached the end of the conversation, nearly forty minutes had passed.
My initial estimate of twenty minutes had been terribly optimistic.
“Thank you, Tanya.”
I looked at the time.
“I didn’t do much.”
“You listened to me.”
She said it with such simplicity that I couldn’t immediately find a sarcastic response.
“I needed that.”
I sighed softly.
“In that case, you’re welcome.”
“Good night!
And I promise, the next time I call you, it might actually be about something good.”
“The ‘might’ doesn’t inspire confidence.”
“I’m doing my best!”
“Good night, Charlie.”
“Good night, Tanya!”
The call ended.
Silence returned to my office.
I remained there for a moment with the phone still in my hand before putting it down.
Valentino.
I now understood a little better why Angel had reacted the way he had to that message.
I didn’t particularly like what I had learned.
That changed nothing.
Angel had sold his soul.
It was his contract, his life, and his problem.
I owned enough souls myself to know how hypocritical it would be to suddenly decide that the rules of Hell became morally unacceptable when one of the people involved happened to be someone I enjoyed drinking with.
If Angel ever wanted to talk to me about Valentino, I would listen.
If he asked me for something, I would consider the request.
Until then, I would keep my nose, as he had so elegantly phrased it, out of other people’s asses.
I picked up the report I’d abandoned at the start of the call.
Three months.
Half the time had passed.
The Dominion’s reserves were increasing.
The first specialized units would begin their tests soon.
The underground tunnels continued to expand.
Carmine Industries was preparing our next deliveries, and my agents were still discreetly monitoring the consequences of the Exorcist’s death.
Meanwhile, Charlie continued her improbable experiment in a hotel full of dysfunctional sinners under the threat of a celestial army that would return in three months.
I read two lines before someone knocked on my door.
My lieutenant entered carrying a file under one arm.
“The testing teams will be ready tomorrow at eight.
The engineers also want your approval on three additional protocols before they begin.”
I held out my hand.
He gave me the file.
“Perfect.
I’ll review them tonight.”
He noticed the phone still sitting in front of me.
“Charlie?”
I looked up.
“How do you know?”
“You were on the phone for forty-two minutes.”
I stared at him.
His enormous tooth-filled smile didn’t change.
“Get out of my office.”
He inclined his head slightly before heading toward the door.
“Good evening, commandante.”
“Out.”
The door closed behind him.
I looked at the file he’d just placed on my desk.
Then my phone.
Then the door.
Forty-two minutes.
Fuck.
A few months ago, I would have considered the idea of spending nearly an hour listening to the Princess of Hell describe a catastrophic day and her problems with the residents of her hotel completely absurd.
Now it was almost beginning to feel normal.
I didn’t know exactly when that change had happened.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
I picked up my pen again and opened the testing file.
Outside, the Dominion continued operating exactly as it always had.
Convoys moved, soldiers stood watch, factories produced, researchers worked, and several thousand individuals continued their duties without caring about Charlie Morningstar’s social experiments.
Three months now separated us from the Extermination.
Three months during which a great deal could still happen.
Knowing Charlie, Pentagram City, and my own remarkable ability to become involved in situations that appeared on none of my schedules, I strongly doubted they would be quiet.