A few weeks after the destruction of Rask’s forces, the Dominion had long since returned to its usual rhythm, which essentially meant that the consequences of the battle had been transformed into reports, inventories, logistical decisions, and endless discussions about what should be recovered, abandoned, or sold.
Rask himself still had not returned in a complete enough form to claim anything, which considerably simplified negotiations surrounding his former territory.
Several organizations had tried to take advantage of the vacuum left by his temporary disappearance, but none had shown the suicidal urge to test the Dominion’s new boundaries.
The roads we used were now respected with an almost touching degree of rigor, and the few intermediaries negotiating the redistribution of certain industrial facilities had suddenly become remarkably polite.
I could almost have believed Pentagram City was learning from its mistakes.
Almost.
I wasn’t thinking about Rask in particular that morning.
My attention was focused on a report covering the specialized company’s first few weeks of training when my phone vibrated against the desk.
I finished the line before looking at the screen.
Charlie.
Since our long conversation after her experience with Valentino, she had gone back to sending me messages far more often than calling.
Her messages could be extremely long, admittedly, but at least they had the advantage of being readable after a meeting.
This time, she was calling.
I answered.
“Good morning, Charlie.”
Her response came immediately, much closer to the pace I had grown used to.
“Tanya!
Hi!
So, I know you’re probably busy and I don’t want to bother you, well, technically I am bothering you since I’m calling, but it’s important and I really wanted to ask you something before—”
I let out a small laugh.
“I see you’re doing better than last time.”
Charlie stopped long enough to understand the remark.
“Oh.
Yeah.
Yeah, I’m doing better.
I mean, there are still a lot of things going wrong, but I’m doing better, so that’s something.”
“I’ll consider that excellent news.
What’s happening?”
She took a breath, as if she were genuinely trying to organize her thoughts before throwing all of them at me at once.
The effort lasted about three seconds.
“I’m going to call my dad.”
I remained silent.
Not because I hadn’t understood.
Because I wanted to make sure she meant the person I thought she meant.
“Your father.”
“Yes.”
“Lucifer Morningstar.”
“Yes, my dad.”
The perfectly natural way she said it reminded me just how differently certain things mattered depending on the person experiencing them.
To Charlie, Lucifer Morningstar was first and foremost her father, with whom she had a complicated relationship.
To literally everyone else in Hell, he was Lucifer Morningstar.
The King.
The fallen angel at the very origin of this place.
A power so far above the Overlords that the comparison quickly became pointless.
I set the report down in front of me.
“Why now?”
Charlie’s energy dropped slightly.
“Because I need to talk to Heaven.
Really talk to Heaven, not just Adam in that embassy where he spends all his time making fun of me.
Vaggie pointed out that my dad could probably arrange a meeting with someone higher up, and…
I think she’s right.”
She hesitated before continuing.
“There are only a few months left, Tanya.
We’re making progress, I mean, I think we are, but I still don’t have anything concrete to show them, and if I wait too long, it’ll be too late.”
I understood her logic perfectly.
Her project depended largely on convincing Heaven that a sinner could change.
Continuing to work exclusively inside the hotel without ever gaining the attention of someone capable of recognizing that progress was essentially the same as running an experiment whose results no one would agree to examine.
“So you want to use your father as an intermediary.”
“When you put it like that, it sounds really awful.”
“And yet that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
She sighed.
“Yes.
But I want to see him too!
I mean…
I think I do.
It’s been a long time and we don’t talk much, and whenever we do, it’s weird, so I don’t really know how this is going to go.”
That probably explained why she had called me before even contacting Lucifer.
I leaned back slightly in my chair.
“Do you want my opinion, or do you just want someone to listen while you panic?”
“Both?”
“Ambitious.”
Charlie gave a small laugh.
I let a few seconds pass before continuing.
“Call him.
If your goal is to secure an audience with a celestial authority above Adam, and Lucifer genuinely has the contacts necessary to make that happen, refusing to try just because your relationship is complicated would be stupid.
As for the rest…
you’ll probably have to talk to him sooner or later anyway.”
“That’s exactly what Vaggie says.
Well, without the part where she calls me stupid.”
“She’s more diplomatic than I am.”
“That really depends on the day.”
On that point, I could believe her.
Charlie inhaled again, but this time there was something more hesitant in her voice.
“There’s something else.”
Naturally.
“I’m listening.”
“If I call him and he agrees to come…
could you come too?”
I frowned slightly.
“Why?”
“Because I’m nervous.”
For once, she didn’t try to bury the answer beneath five separate explanations.
“Vaggie will be there and everyone else will be there, but…
I don’t know.
You don’t know him personally and you don’t have all this history with him, so I feel like maybe you could see things more clearly if it goes badly.
And also…”
She paused long enough for me to understand that she was hesitating over how to phrase the next part.
“You matter to me.
I’d like you to be there.”
I looked at my desk without really seeing it.
Charlie had this very particular ability to say perfectly sincere things with enough simplicity that any sarcastic response would immediately feel unnecessarily cruel.
I could also recognize another reality.
Lucifer Morningstar might be walking into the Hazbin Hotel.
I had never met the King of Hell.
Curiosity alone probably would have been enough to make me agree.
“All right.
Let me know if your father accepts.”
The explosion of enthusiasm that followed forced me to move the phone slightly away from my ear.
“Really?!
Thank you!
I promise it won’t be weird!
Well, I can’t really promise that because it’ll probably be incredibly weird, but I’ll do my best to—”
“Charlie.
Call your father before organizing the disaster.”
She laughed.
“Okay.
I’ll call you back!”
The call ended.
I remained staring at the phone for a few seconds.
My lieutenant entered at that exact moment with several files under one arm and immediately noticed my expression.
“Charlie?”
I looked up.
“Has it become that obvious?”
“She is the only person capable of making you look at a phone as though it has just handed you an incomprehensible mission order.”
I decided not to comment.
“She’s going to call Lucifer.”
My lieutenant stopped.
There.
Finally, an appropriate reaction.
“Lucifer Morningstar?”
“No, another Lucifer who just happens to be her father.”
He slowly placed the files on the desk.
“I assume she wants his help regarding Heaven.”
“Correct.
And she asked me to be there if he comes to the hotel.”
The toothy smile that gradually appeared on my lieutenant’s face did not please me at all.
“I see.”
“You’re coming with me.”
His smile diminished slightly.
Wonderful.
“I see that as well.”
I returned to my report.
“Now give me those files before Charlie calls back to announce that the King of Hell is arriving in ten minutes.”
She called back twenty-seven minutes later.
Lucifer was coming the next day.
Of course.
When our car stopped in front of the Hazbin Hotel the following afternoon, I immediately understood that Charlie had decided to treat her father’s visit as a military operation whose primary objective was to produce the greatest possible number of decorations in the shortest possible time.
Several additional ornaments had been installed around the entrance, and a banner whose text I couldn’t yet read was visible through the glass doors.
Rapid movement regularly passed in front of the windows, accompanied by enough noise to confirm that the inside was probably no calmer.
My lieutenant got out with me.
This time, I had no reason to ask him to remain outside.
He had already visited the hotel several times, and Charlie was familiar enough with his presence that she no longer considered it unusual.
We stepped through the doors.
The lobby looked like what I would have gotten if I had asked several people with completely incompatible definitions of the word elegant to decorate the same room in an emergency.
Charlie stood at the center of it all.
“Tanya!
You’re here!”
She came toward us with a huge smile, stopped a few steps away, and briefly looked behind me.
“And Lieutenant!
Hi!”
My lieutenant inclined his head slightly.
“Princess.”
Angel Dust, sitting nearby, raised a hand.
“Hey, Sexy No-Eyes!
Hey, Tiny General!”
I slowly turned my head toward him.
“I see the fear of death still hasn’t produced any noticeable improvement in you.”
Angel’s smile widened.
“I’ve learned to live dangerously.”
“You’re already dead.”
“Administrative detail.”
I let out a small laugh before returning my attention to Charlie.
She looked much more nervous than her smile wanted anyone to believe.
Vaggie passed behind her carrying several objects and gave us a brief nod.
“Thanks for coming.
She’s been like this all morning.”
“I am perfectly calm!”
At that exact moment, something crashed upstairs.
Charlie jumped.
I looked at Vaggie.
“Impressive.”
“I know.”
Charlie gave both of us a betrayed look.
I removed my cap and held it under one arm while observing the room.
Pentious was clearly participating in the preparations with enough enthusiasm that, if no one supervised him, it was likely to end with the creation of some unnecessary invention.
Niffty ran between decorations while muttering something about dust.
Husk, behind the bar, had chosen the far more reasonable strategy of touching absolutely nothing.
Alastor stood slightly apart.
His usual smile was in place.
When our eyes met, he inclined his head briefly.
“Tanya.
What a delightful surprise.”
“Charlie invited me.”
“Naturally.”
I didn’t have time to ask what that tone meant.
Charlie checked the time and seemed to suddenly remember that her father could arrive at any moment.
She began checking several things at once until Vaggie firmly placed a hand on her shoulder and said something too quietly for me to hear.
Charlie took a deep breath.
Then the door opened.
I had imagined Lucifer Morningstar in several different ways over the decades.
None of them had been correct.
The man who entered the lobby was shorter than his title might have suggested, dressed with fully deliberate extravagance, and wearing that particular expression of someone who had mentally prepared for a meeting without ever managing to decide how it was actually supposed to begin.
Charlie froze for a fraction of a second.
Lucifer did too.
Then his face lit up.
“Charlie!”
The hug that followed was enough to make several things clear to me.
The first was that Lucifer genuinely loved his daughter.
The second was that neither of them knew exactly how to handle that affection after so much distance.
And the third had absolutely nothing to do with their relationship.
I couldn’t measure Lucifer.
My magical detection worked perfectly.
I could clearly sense the hotel residents, my lieutenant behind me, and the scattered signatures around the building.
But when I tried to actually determine Lucifer’s power, my perception collided with something far too vast and, more importantly, fundamentally different from anything I was used to analyzing.
I stopped trying immediately.
That was clear enough.
His appearance could almost be comical.
The power behind it was not.
Charlie began introductions after the first few awkward seconds.
Lucifer greeted Vaggie with an odd combination of curiosity and a father clearly trying to understand, immediately, who exactly was sharing his daughter’s life.
He then moved on to the other residents, his reactions ranging from polite enthusiasm to complete confusion.
Then Charlie reached me.
“Dad, this is Tanya Degurechaff.
She’s an Overlord and she runs the Dominion.
She helps me with things sometimes and…
she’s a friend.”
Lucifer looked at me.
I could very clearly see him searching his memory for the name.
He failed.
That amused me immensely.
“A pleasure, Your Majesty.”
I held out my hand.
Lucifer shook it after a brief hesitation.
“Lucifer is fine.
I mean, normally.
I think.
Do people still say ‘Your Majesty’?”
I looked at Charlie.
Charlie looked at her father.
Lucifer suddenly seemed unsure of his own rules of protocol.
“I’ll stick with Lucifer, if that works for you.”
“Perfect!
Much less weird.”
His attention then shifted to my lieutenant.
I made the introductions.
Lucifer stared at the complete absence of eyes for about one second longer than politeness probably allowed before catching himself.
“Can he see?”
“Very well,” my lieutenant replied.
I immediately turned my head toward him.
Somewhere behind us, Angel Dust stifled a laugh.
So that answer was genuinely going to become a habit.
Lucifer slowly nodded as though he had just received perfectly ordinary information.
Then a voice came from the side.
“Your Majesty.”
Alastor.
Lucifer’s reaction was nearly immediate.
Not hostility.
More like total incomprehension.
He looked at Alastor the way one looks at someone whose name one is reasonably certain they should know, while having absolutely no idea who they actually are.
Alastor’s smile did not move.
I immediately understood that the next few minutes were going to be excellent.
It took less time than expected for Lucifer and Alastor to hate each other.
I wasn’t entirely sure which of them had started it.
Probably both.
Lucifer clearly regarded Alastor as a strange nuisance who had become far too comfortable around his daughter, while Alastor had almost immediately realized that the relationship between Charlie and her father contained enough tension to give him an endless supply of buttons to press.
And press them he did.
Enthusiastically.
I stayed slightly back with my lieutenant while Charlie tried to present the hotel and everything they had accomplished since opening it.
Lucifer listened, but his pessimism regarding sinners quickly surfaced behind nearly every remark.
He didn’t seem to want to destroy his daughter’s dream out of cruelty; he simply appeared deeply convinced that she was trying to save people who would eventually hurt her.
Alastor, naturally, chose that exact moment to become the strongest supporter of Charlie’s project in the entire Pride Ring.
I watched him declare, with completely false enthusiasm, how proud he was to participate in the hotel’s growth.
Lucifer clenched his teeth.
Alastor smiled wider.
I raised my glass slightly to my mouth to hide my amusement.
My lieutenant leaned close enough that only I could hear him.
“He’s doing it deliberately.”
“Obviously.”
“Why?”
I watched Alastor slip in another remark that immediately provoked a reaction from Lucifer.
“Because he discovered that it works.”
My lieutenant observed them for a few more seconds.
“Is that reason enough?”
I smiled.
“For Alastor?
More than enough.”
The situation would already have been ridiculous enough if it had remained limited to verbal sparring.
Then they started singing.
I looked at Lucifer.
Then Alastor.
Then Charlie, who had apparently just realized that she had completely lost control of the visit.
Since arriving in Hell, I had accepted many things.
Demons.
Overlords.
Exterminations.
The existence of a princess trying to rehabilitate sinners in a hotel.
The apparently universal tendency of this place’s inhabitants to transform their emotions into musical performances remained, however, one phenomenon I still refused to become completely accustomed to.
Lucifer and Alastor had now turned an argument over the influence they had in Charlie’s life into a musical competition.
I looked at my lieutenant.
“Seriously?”
He showed admirable discipline.
“I said nothing.”
“Your smile is enough.”
The song continued.
I quickly stopped trying to follow every word and instead watched the reactions.
Lucifer became progressively more irritated as Alastor presented himself as someone present in Charlie’s everyday life, while Alastor seemed to savor every additional second during which he managed to provoke a being who could probably reduce him to dust without significant effort.
I had to admit one thing.
He had balls.
Or whatever the demonic equivalent happened to be.
Charlie, meanwhile, looked ready to die of embarrassment.
The performance was reaching an impressive level of absurdity when a new voice interrupted everything.
Mimzy had arrived.
I didn’t know the newcomer personally.
Alastor, however, clearly knew her very well.
The shift in his attitude was natural enough to catch my attention.
He welcomed Mimzy with a familiarity I had rarely seen him show toward anyone, while she immediately behaved like someone completely convinced that she had every right to be there.
Lucifer observed the scene with an expression that summarized my own feelings rather well.
The visit continued regardless.
Charlie led her father deeper into the hotel with Vaggie and Alastor, still determined to show him that her project had genuine value.
I could easily have followed them.
I didn’t.
That conversation mainly concerned Charlie and Lucifer, and I had no desire to become one more piece in an already complicated family relationship.
So I stayed in the lobby with my lieutenant, Angel, Pentious, Husk, and Mimzy.
That choice quickly proved far more interesting than expected.
Mimzy talked a lot.
Angel did too.
The combination was nearly hazardous.
She began by telling several stories about Alastor, some dating back to his arrival in Hell.
I obviously knew the Radio Demon’s reputation.
Any Overlord ignorant of how Alastor had built his name deserved to lose their territory through natural selection alone.
But Mimzy had known the man behind the reputation.
She described his appearance in Pentagram City, the Overlords he had begun making disappear, and especially the theatrical way he broadcast their suffering over the radio after defeating them.
Pentious listened with a mixture of fascination and concern.
Angel mostly seemed delighted by the more gruesome details.
I took a seat near the bar with my lieutenant.
Husk poured me a drink without my needing to ask.
“Thanks.”
He simply shrugged.
“Gonna need to pour a lot of these if she keeps going.”
Mimzy didn’t notice the remark.
She was continuing a story about one of the first Overlords unfortunate enough to attract Alastor’s attention.
I already knew the essentials.
But some of the details were new.
More importantly, they confirmed an impression I had held for a long time: Alastor had never needed a particularly complicated reason to enjoy destroying an opponent interesting enough to hold his attention.
The thought made me smile.
A few weeks earlier, I probably would have filed that trait away as a useful oddity to remember.
Now, I understood it much better.
Angel noticed my expression.
“What?
You think the story’s cute?”
“I mostly find it amusing that you seem surprised an Overlord who terrified Pentagram City for decades has a violent history.”
Angel raised several hands.
“Hey, I’m not surprised.
I like the juicy details.
There’s a difference.”
“Naturally.”
Mimzy turned toward me.
“You’re an Overlord too, right?”
“Yes.”
She looked me up and down, clearly comparing my size to whatever mental image she had of people dangerous enough to hold that title.
“You’re tiny.”
My lieutenant very slowly turned his head in her direction.
I placed a hand on his forearm before he interpreted the remark as something requiring a response.
“I’ve already been informed of that.
Thank you.”
Mimzy smiled.
“I like you.”
I took a sip.
“It’ll probably pass.”
Angel burst out laughing.
The conversation continued for a few more minutes until Husk suddenly left the bar.
I returned my attention to Mimzy.
The attack began with an explosion.
The building shook hard enough to knock a glass down behind the bar, followed almost immediately by several screams from outside.
Pentious straightened.
Angel already had a weapon out.
My lieutenant placed a hand on the hilt of his blade.
I turned toward the windows.
Several vehicles had just stopped in front of the hotel, and a respectable number of armed demons were pouring into the street.
Their equipment and the way they deployed were enough to show that they had not come to ask for a room.
Mimzy’s expression changed immediately.
That answered one question.
“They here for you?” I asked.
Her silence was eloquent enough.
Angel let out a long sigh.
“Fuck, Mimzy.”
Another explosion struck outside.
My lieutenant began drawing his weapon.
I raised one hand slightly.
He stopped.
“Not yet.”
His face turned toward me.
I pointed at Alastor.
The Radio Demon had just entered the lobby wearing an expression far too pleased for someone whose hotel was currently under attack.
I recognized that smile immediately.
I recognized the feeling behind it too.
My own smile appeared almost despite myself.
“I think he wants this one.”
My lieutenant watched Alastor for several seconds before slowly sheathing his blade again.
“I see.”
Alastor quickly confirmed our interpretation.
Something changed in his silhouette.
His magical presence expanded through the hotel and beyond with enough force to make several people step back.
His transformation was anything but subtle: the proportions of his body distorted, his features became even more inhuman, and the atmosphere itself seemed to bend around him as he went outside to face the attackers.
I moved closer to a window.
Lucifer and Charlie had returned as well.
Lucifer watched the scene with an expression very different from mine.
The loan sharks had no chance.
It simply took them a few moments to realize it.
Alastor descended upon them with spectacular brutality, manifesting shadowy appendages and crushing their formations before they could properly react.
Vehicles were overturned, demons ripped from their positions, and several attacks literally disappeared into the demonic mass he unleashed around the hotel.
Pentious took a slight step back.
Angel looked delighted.
Charlie much less so.
I was mostly watching Alastor.
He wasn’t merely doing what was necessary to defend the hotel.
He was enjoying himself.
Far too much.
I could recognize the difference now with embarrassing ease.
He could have handled the situation much faster and probably much more cleanly.
He had no desire to.
The last group of attackers vanished in an assault spectacular enough to shake the windows once again.
Silence gradually returned.
Alastor resumed his usual form with the air of a man who had just finished a particularly relaxing activity.
When he remarked that he had needed to blow off some steam, I felt my lieutenant’s gaze immediately turn toward me.
I didn’t even bother looking at him.
“Not a word.”
I could practically hear his smile.
Alastor passed near us.
His eyes met mine.
A fraction of a second was enough.
His smile widened slightly.
So did mine.
No comment was necessary.
What followed was much less entertaining.
Mimzy had apparently once again taken advantage of her old relationship with Alastor to hide behind him after creating a problem that should never have reached the hotel.
And Alastor did not appreciate it.
I didn’t hear the entire conversation, but I heard enough to understand that he was now forbidding her from using the hotel as shelter if she had no intention of genuinely contributing to what was being built there.
That reaction interested me more than the attack itself.
Alastor could eliminate a few loan sharks without difficulty.
But the fact that he refused to allow Mimzy to endanger the establishment again showed that he assigned real value to the place.
I still didn’t know exactly what kind.
Charlie?
His own investment?
A strategic position?
A source of entertainment he had no intention of seeing destroyed by other people’s problems?
Probably some combination of several things.
I simply kept the information.
Not every question needed to be solved the same day it appeared.
Meanwhile, the situation between Charlie and her father had deteriorated considerably.
Lucifer had used the attack as proof of what he had clearly been trying to explain since his arrival: sinners were dangerous, violent, and perfectly capable of turning her good intentions into disaster.
Charlie took it as a refusal to believe in her.
The argument that followed did not concern me.
So I stayed back.
Not because I lacked interest.
Because there were conversations where intervening simply made things worse, a lesson Charlie herself had learned fairly recently.
Lucifer and his daughter eventually walked away.
I didn’t follow them.
The lobby had already suffered enough that several residents had begun putting the furniture back in place.
My lieutenant helped me right an overturned table.
“Interesting family visit.”
I gave him a look.
“You really think now is the time?”
“I’ve been waiting since Lucifer arrived.”
I had to suppress a laugh.
“At least no one sang during the attack.”
He considered that.
“The day isn’t over.”
I hated that he was right.
Lucifer and Charlie returned a little later.
Something had changed.
Charlie’s eyes were still slightly wet, but the tension that had followed her since the beginning of the visit had almost completely disappeared.
Lucifer, meanwhile, looked at her differently, with far less hidden pride than before.
I had no idea what they had said to each other.
I didn’t need to know.
Charlie eventually announced the news that actually mattered to the rest of us.
Lucifer was going to help her secure an audience in Heaven.
For several seconds, no one reacted.
Then Charlie herself realized the full scope of what she had just said, and her enthusiasm exploded.
She was actually going to be able to present her project before celestial authorities.
Not at the embassy.
Not only before Adam.
In Heaven.
She turned almost immediately toward Vaggie, already launching into a string of ideas about what they needed to prepare before the meeting.
I remained silent.
A visit to Heaven represented an extraordinary opportunity.
Not only for Charlie’s project.
For understanding an environment almost no one in Hell possessed direct information about.
But Charlie wasn’t my spy.
I had no intention of asking her to steal documents, map installations, or start asking questions suspicious enough to draw attention to herself.
She already had enough to deal with.
Lucifer finished several exchanges with his daughter before preparing to leave.
Charlie was called away by Vaggie and Pentious, leaving me, for the first time, alone with Lucifer a few meters away while my lieutenant remained slightly behind me.
The King of Hell looked at me with the same curiosity he had shown during the introductions.
“So…
Tanya.”
“Lucifer.”
He still seemed slightly surprised that I used his name so easily after being given permission.
“Charlie says you’re her friend.”
I wasn’t entirely sure whether the sentence was supposed to be a question.
Probably.
“She has an impressive talent for adopting people.”
Lucifer smiled.
“Yeah.
Maybe she gets that from her mother.”
He looked toward Charlie before returning his attention to me.
“Do you actually believe in her hotel?”
Now that was a more interesting question.
I took the time to answer properly.
“I believe Charlie is sincere.
I also believe she is genuinely working toward something she considers important.
As for redemption itself, I still have no proof that it’s possible.”
Lucifer looked surprised.
“And you still stay around her?”
“Not immediately believing a theory doesn’t prevent me from observing the experiment.
If she’s wrong, we’ll eventually know.
If she’s right, I’ll have witnessed something no one in Hell had seriously considered before.
Either way, I have no reason to lie to her just to make her happy.”
Lucifer remained silent for several seconds.
Then he looked at his daughter.
“She really does like complicated cases.”
I smiled.
“I noticed.”
He gave a light laugh.
I didn’t try to extend the conversation beyond what it was.
We weren’t going to become friends after five minutes.
Lucifer had no particular reason to care about the Dominion, and I had no reason to pretend this meeting had suddenly altered my place in Hell.
But I understood Charlie a little better now.
More importantly, I understood why she had continued hoping for something from her father despite the distance between them.
Lucifer wasn’t indifferent.
He had simply spent far too long convincing himself that protecting his daughter meant sparing her the same disappointments he had suffered.
I knew more effective strategies.
But I had also known much worse parents.
He eventually said goodbye to my lieutenant and me before returning to Charlie one last time.
A few minutes later, he was gone.
The hotel gradually returned to something resembling calm.
Or as calm as the place could be with a damaged wall, several overturned pieces of furniture, and enough signs of violence in front of the entrance to give the next visitor an unusually honest first impression of the neighborhood.
Charlie, meanwhile, seemed incapable of standing still.
“I’m going to Heaven.”
She had already said it several times.
I looked at her.
“I understood by the third.”
“No, but Tanya, really!
Heaven!
We’ll be able to show them everything we’ve done, explain the project, show them Angel is making progress and Pentious too, and if someone up there really listens to us, maybe—”
“Charlie.”
She slowed down.
“Breathe before you faint.”
She actually took a deep breath.
Then smiled.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.
This is probably the best opportunity you’ve had since starting your project.”
Her expression became slightly more serious.
“Do you think it can actually change anything?”
I considered the question before answering.
“I think you’ll finally be speaking to people who can give you more than laughter and insults in response.
What they do after that depends on what you show them and what they truly think about redemption.”
Charlie nodded slowly.
I continued before she could launch into another spiral of enthusiasm.
“And use the opportunity to look around.”
She frowned slightly.
“Look at what?”
“Anything you can see without putting yourself in a stupid situation.
You’re going somewhere almost no one from here has ever entered.
Even if your meeting goes perfectly, you’ll probably learn more simply by observing how they operate, the people present, and the way they treat you.”
Charlie appeared to think seriously about that.
“You want me to spy on Heaven?”
I stared at her.
My lieutenant turned his head slightly away, probably to hide his amusement.
“No, Charlie.
If I wanted to turn you into a spy, I’d start with several months of training and I’d probably choose someone incapable of bursting into song whenever they feel a strong emotion.”
She placed her hands on her hips.
“Hey!”
I smiled.
“I’m only asking you to keep your eyes open.
You’re capable of that.”
Her indignation faded quickly enough to make way for a smile.
“Okay.
I’ll keep my eyes open.”
“Excellent.
And try not to start a celestial war during the visit.”
Charlie gave a small laugh.
“I’ll do my best.”
I watched her for several seconds.
With Charlie, that formulation was probably the strongest guarantee I was ever going to get.
I retrieved my cap while my lieutenant was already heading toward the exit.
Angel called goodbye from the bar.
Husk raised his glass.
Pentious still seemed to be trying to convince Vaggie that some invention or other could be useful in preparing for the trip to Heaven.
A perfectly ordinary day at the Hazbin Hotel.
As I stepped through the door, I cast one last glance back at Charlie.
A few hours earlier, she hadn’t even known whether her father would actually agree to support her project.
Now she was preparing for an audience in Heaven.
I had no idea what she would find there.
But knowing Charlie, the angels, and this hotel’s remarkable ability to turn a simple conversation into a historical catastrophe, I strongly doubted the visit would go exactly the way she imagined.