Chapter Text
Vaggie stares at her reflection with a scowl. Her costume left little to the imagination and Vaggie couldn’t believe she let Velvette taunt her into wearing this for Adam’s stupid Halloween frat party. They were holding it at some abandoned hotel that was supposedly haunted–not that Vaggie believes in ghosts. Of course, Velvette, being the fashionista of the women’s volleyball team, jumped at the opportunity to design them all matching costumes.
She feels more like a Vegas showgirl than an angel, but Vaggie can begrudgingly admit that the custom-made outfit flatters her curves wonderfully. With one last glance at the mirror, she rushes out of her apartment to meet up with Lute and Emily who were sporting their own angelic variation. Between the three of them, Vaggie’s is the sultriest and she wonders if Velvette did that on purpose. Fucking bitch.
“Took you long enough.” Lute narrows her eyes in silent appraisal. It was her first time seeing Vaggie like this, and Vaggie has to force herself not to react out of self-consciousness. While she had no qualms dressing in more revealing clothes when the occasion called for it, she preferred to dress modestly in her everyday life.
Vaggie rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
They make it to the hotel with minimal fanfare. Any potential catcalls had been silenced by Vaggie’s and Lute’s intense glares at the men they passed on the way. The men knew not to try anything from their deadly expressions alone, but they’d made sure to sandwich Emily in-between them just in case. You could never be too careful.
“Welcome ladiesss!” greets Sir Pentious. He’s wearing some type of steampunk cobra costume, passing out candy to guests. “Please take a goodie bag. It’s filled with delicious treats I made myself!”
Lute barely spares him a glance as she shoves right past him, parting the crowd like the Red Sea with her every step forward. Vaggie follows suit; she feels slightly guilty for ignoring him, but then remembers his insistence on calling her “Vagatha” no matter how many times he’s corrected and her guilt is swept away… along with Lute. Shit. Where did she go? Why did she have to walk so damn fast!?
It takes her a minute to gather her bearings and bulldoze her way over to Lute and the rest of their team. Her wings are a hot mess by the time she’s pulled into the clearing by Cherri.
“Damn Vags! You look hot! Didn’t know you were hiding all these curves,” says Cherri. “I’m a little jealous. Wish mine showed off my ass like yours.”
“To be fair, she doesn’t have any tits,” Angel Dust rudely chimes in from over the loveseat he and Niffty are lounging on. They’re both dressed in leather bodysuits, except Angel had two extra arms on each side.
“What are you supposed to be?” asks Vaggie.
Angel smirks. “A slutty jumping spider.”
“I’m a dominatrix,” adds Niffty, giggling. She snaps her whip for effect.
“I figured that much,” grumbles Vaggie. “Are these even costumes? Or did you two just pull that out of your closets?”
“Maybe we did,” Niffty responds with a cackle. Yep, definitely closet.
“Can’t you tell this is real leather?” Angel snaps the sleeve of his suit to emphasize his point.
“Nope, not really.” When it came to their shared affinity for BDSM, Angel and Niffty were like two chaotic peas in a pod. Vaggie didn’t really understand the appeal–what’s there to like about being tied up and giving up control? It sounded like a nightmare, but who was she to kink shame?
“Anyway, ain’t we missin’ someone?”
“Yeah, where’s our rising star?” says Cherri.
“Oh, shit!” Vaggie frantically scans the dancing mass of people. She should’ve kept a closer eye on Emily; she was way too innocent for one of Adam’s Frat parties. She shuddered to think what Sera would do if anything happened to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches a flash of six blue-grey wings bouncing excitedly by the entrance and sighs out in relief. “She’s with Pentious.”
“Pentious? What’s she doin’ hanging out with him?”
“Dunno, but it’s probably for the best. Pentious can’t harm a fly even if he tried.” Vaggie recalls a time when he’d set up an elaborate flytrap with Niffty to show her how AI could be trained to kill bugs only for it to mistake him for one and turn on him.
Cherri snorted. “You think he’s trying to rizz her up? Should we save her?”
Vaggie cranes her neck over to the laughing duo. “No, she looks like she’s having a good time.”
“Speakin’ of havin’ a good time…” Angel drags Vaggie over to the bar. Apparently Adam had the foresight to hire a bartender to man what remained of the hotel’s lobby bar. “We gotta loosen you up, Vagina.” Angel snickers at his own joke and Vaggie’s fists involuntarily clench in response. She reminds herself to relax–that it’s just Angel being his annoying self–and unclenches.
“Whaddya want?” the bartender–whose name tag reads ‘Husk’–asks, clearly annoyed that he has to be here.
“Gimme a tequila sunrise for my friend here.”
“Coming right up.” Husk slides the drink over the bartop to Vaggie. “And you?”
Angel perches himself on the barstool and leans forward over the counter, purring out, “I think I’ll have a tall drink of you.”
“Excuse me?” Husk’s eyes twitch, and Vaggie takes this as her cue to leave.
She makes it 13 steps before she’s ambushed by Adam. Great, just her luck. She was hoping to avoid him for the whole party. He yoinks her drink out of her hand and chugs it.
“What the fuck!”
“Won’t be needing that, babe, ‘cuz you’re playing beer pong with us.”
Vaggie growls. “No.”
“Did I say you had a choice, bitch? Peter needs a teammate.”
“Peter?” Vaggie repeats. Did she hear that right? “Goody two-shoes, Mormon boy Peter is here?”
“Yeah, and me and Lute are gonna kick your asses. So suck it up, buttercup, ‘cuz you’re playing!”
Beer pong goes disastrously. Vaggie may as well have been playing solo the entire time because Peter threw like he had two left hands and the man wasn’t even drunk. If her pride wasn’t on the line, she would’ve quit after the first time he accidentally helped them score a point each. Now Lute and Adam were on their last cup while she and Peter still had four.
“Hope you aren’t scared of the dark,” taunts Adam. “‘Cuz after we win, you’re going down those stairs!” He points at the ominous staircase behind the lobby’s front desk. Rumors were that the lower level was used for satanic rituals and thus pentagrams littered the walls and floor. Vaggie surmised some rowdy freshmen were the culprits and originators of this silly campus legend.
Peter sniffs pathetically. He had given up a long time ago, realizing he was doing more harm than good, and had let Vaggie do all the legwork. “Can’t I just give you $50 like a normal person?”
Adam seems to consider the offer. “Alright, fine. You can, but Vag-gie still has to go!”
Vaggie shoots Peter a death glare for his betrayal. “Fucking sellout.”
Despite her best efforts, Lute and Adam win. Vaggie stares down at the abyss and hesitates.
Lute picks up on it, of course. She was team captain for a reason. Out on the court, that hesitation would’ve gotten Vaggie chewed out. In here though, with Adam by her side, Lute was insufferable. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
“You wish.” Vaggie flips her off before descending, using the railing as her guide. Glass crunches underneath her shoes when she reaches the bottom.
She can hardly see what’s in front of her, and blindly feeling around sounded like a bad idea with all the broken glass around. The darkness was stifling, and it enveloped her like a cold winter. If only she had a real flashlight because her phone one sure wasn’t doing shit.
But Vaggie trudges on like a good soldier in the trenches. She wasn’t going to let Lute and Adam have the satisfaction of further perverting her name.
So far, the lower level has given her absolutely nothing. And Vaggie was fine with that. She’ll take boring and disappointing any day over cultists. But it’s with that thought that Vaggie fucks up.
She trips over a table leg and slices the palm of her hand open on a broken wall mirror trying to catch herself.
“FUCK!” she yelps, balling her hand in a tight fist in an attempt to minimize the bleeding. She points her flashlight to her injured hand and watches as the blood drips onto… a pentagram? With each drop, it begins filling and Vaggie could only stand there like a deer in headlights as it slowly lights up the room in a warm glow akin to a campfire.
And like a moth to a flame, Vaggie draws herself closer to the center in spite of the warning alarms going off in her head. With a flourish and a snap, the pentagram erupts, releasing a haze of thick smoke that smelled of sulfur and oddly enough, cinnamon apple.
“Who’s there!?” Vaggie shrieks when she hears a hum. But nothing answers. Just my imagination, she reasons, and rushes back up the stairs before the fog could clear and prove her wrong.
“Ho-ho-ho-ly shit. We thought you were dead!” Adam shouts when she emerges. “Lute was ready to march down there for you, weren’t ya, bitch?”
Lute, who gives no indication that she actually gave a shit, eyes her injured hand curiously. “You’re bleeding.”
Vaggie can practically see the cogs turning in Lute’s mind about what this meant for the team. Were they going to have to bench her? “I’m fine,” she grits out. “Just a surface cut.”
Lute grabs her wrist and forces her palm open. In the light of the main lobby, it’s obvious that it was more than just a surface cut; her palm was mangled. Lute’s frown turns into a scowl.
“You can’t play like this.”
And Vaggie knows she’s right. Coach Carmine would never let her risk her health. Vaggie bites back the tears threatening to fall–both from the pain and for having to sit out the remaining couple months of the Championship season.
Worst Halloween ever.
The month goes by in a blur. Vaggie tries hard not to think about that night and how her life has been turned upside down since then. Coach Carmine had chewed her and Lute out for jeopardizing the team and forced them to stay after every practice to clean.
Emily would stay behind as well–”for moral support!” she’d said–but Vaggie knows she liked spending time with Lute for some godawful reason. And Lute–well, actually didn’t seem to mind her company. Other than Adam, Lute merely tolerated people and Vaggie wondered if she was just trying to suck up to Sera to score an internship with said District Attorney. It made Vaggie’s stomach turn to think Lute could be using Emily for her own ambitions.
That girl had a lot going for her and she’d hate to see Emily get hurt. Vaggie’s benching had allowed her to shine which didn’t go unnoticed; she was receiving more attention than Vaggie ever did. Meanwhile, Vaggie’s mental health had taken a sharp nosedive. Her strict dietary habits had deteriorated, and her once lustrous silver hair had dulled with visible roots. She didn’t know what to do with herself waiting for her hand to heal and she felt completely and utterly useless.
Not to mention crazy.
Vaggie had always been a light sleeper, but since The Incident, she’d wake up at repeating hours of the night accompanied with a feeling of dread and the sensation of eyes boring into her.
She’d shrugged it off at first, attributing her paranoia as a product of sleep-deprivation, but then the dreams started.
In these dreams, she finds herself in a lavish penthouse bedroom overlooking a fiery hellscape. A woman sings wistfully out on the balcony, her voice a haunting and beautiful dirge that contrasts the tortured screams coming from the city.
Vaggie can’t help being lured in by her siren call, but anytime she’s gotten close to seeing the shrouded woman’s face, she’d jolt awake.
And tonight was no exception. But this time–
Golden eyes peer over her. They widen slightly when it realizes Vaggie is awake. Sensing that Vaggie is about to scream, it presses its soft lips against her own. Stunned and a little mortified, Vaggie shoves herself away from the figure and scrambles for the light.
There, sitting politely on her bed, is the woman from her dreams in all her glory–looking way too apologetic for someone with a demonic set of horns and a tail.
“Ohmygosh, I am soooo sorry,” she babbles out. “This isn’t how it was supposed to go! I had this whole introduction planned out–with a musical number and everything–but then you were gonna scream, and I panicked and–”
Vaggie stands there in a stupor as the woman rambles, and she pinches herself to ensure she isn’t dreaming, because how is any of this even real right now?
Charlie watches helplessly as Vaggie paces back and forth through the master bathroom. She’s mumbling something to herself in Spanish and Charlie can tell by her tone that it’s not positive.
Part of Charlie wants to interrupt, the other part of her knows she should leave Vaggie alone and get it all out of her system. Lord only knows she’s the queen of pacing when things got overwhelming–a trait she may or may not have inherited from her dad. There had been many a night when her parents thought she was asleep where she’d catch him pacing in their study, but Lilith always knew how to sooth him with her songs.
Maybe it could work with Vaggie, too?
With a newfound determination, Charlie begins to gently sing one of her favorite tunes: I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.
The shuffling in the bathroom stops, and Vaggie emerges with a cross and bible. Charlie winces as Vaggie starts reciting random bible verses like she’d found her silver bullet. She didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Church just made that shit up to sell more copies of the bible, so she waits patiently for Vaggie to finish her adorable attempt at an exorcism.
When it’s become abundantly clear that the power of Christ was not compelling her, Vaggie tosses the holy items aside and slumps down against the wall in defeat.
“You know,” Charlie starts, cutting through the tension like a knife. “I think we got off on the wrong foot. How about a do-over? I’m Charlie.”
Vaggie doesn’t respond or bother looking at her–she’s staring blankly at the space ahead of her–and Charlie’s resolve to make amends with the human crumbles a little. She tries a different angle. “Look, I know you’re going through a lot right now, but believe it or not, I’m here to help.”
Charlie kneels down and reaches out for Vaggie’s injured hand; she’s seen the turmoil it's caused her for the past month, and if Charlie could, she’d kiss it better. Sadly her healing powers–as limited as they may be–did not work on humans. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try.
So she does.
Charlie presses a light kiss on Vaggie’s knuckles–and suddenly that hand bunches into the collar of her dress and she’s being pulled in close. "I don’t know what kind of games you’re playing, but I am not in the mood for them.”
“I-I’m not–”
“Listen up,” Vaggie hisses. “I know exactly what you are and what you’re doing, and if you think you can manipulate me with your beauty and singing then–”
“Wait!” Charlie’s brain whirls a mile a minute, finally putting the pieces together and realizing how all her careful planning of easing herself into Vaggie’s life could be taken–especially after her earlier… mishaps. It was the perfect modus operandi for seduction, and while Vaggie is very pretty and she can’t get the image of her in that angelic outfit out of her mind, she would never prey on her. “You’ve got the wrong idea! I-I’m not a succubus!”
“Bullshit.” Vaggie’s eyes roam her body; her heavy scrutiny makes Charlie’s whole being flush and she’s beginning to regret wearing her sleeveless dress over her trademark suit because it was not helping her case right now. But damn it, she wanted to make a good first impression!
“I promise! I know we have a bad rap, but not all demons are the same. We come in all shapes and sizes.”
Vaggie scoffs. “Is that supposed to be better somehow?”
“Well–” Charlie sucks in a breath and goes off into a passionate rant about Hell’s hierarchy. Vaggie had a lot of stereotypes and misconceptions about demonkind and as the Princess of Hell, it was her duty to represent her people in a better light than what humans believed.
“Next you're going to tell me that you’re Satan’s daughter,” Vaggie murmurs and this causes Charlie to beam with pride.
“Lucifer’s daughter actually. Humans mix them up a lot but they’re two different people.”
“Then that makes you–”
“The Princess of Hell, at your service!” Tiny fireworks bloom from her fingertips with a snap, and Charlie adds a cutesy twirl to complement the theatrics.
Vaggie simply stares in shock, and whatever progress Charlie thought they were making is thrown out the window as Vaggie once again becomes catatonic.
Charlie is certain she’s traumatized Vaggie at this point, and if she wasn’t receiving therapy before for her depression, she would be now. Her dad’s advice rings through her ears: Remember to wap-bap-boom, alakazam, apple slice! (Thanks, dad.) Fuck, why did she listen to him?
“I don’t want your service,” Vaggie says quietly after a prolonged silence.
“...But you summoned me–”
“No. No, no.” Vaggie draws her knees up to her chest, hugging herself like a scared child. “I-I didn’t summon anything.”
“Oh,” breathes Charlie. Her heart aches for Vaggie. She’s heard about accidental summons before; they never ended well–innocent souls damning themselves to hell for all of eternity over one simple mistake. It was unfair. “I need to call my dad.”
Charlie steps into the bathroom and closes the door behind her. Her dad picks up on the sixth ring.
“Heeeeey, Char-char! How’s your first summon? Earth treating you well?”
“Dad, I have a huge problem.” Charlie worries at her lip, doing her best to maintain her composure. The last thing she wanted was for her dad to be disappointed in her for failing to fulfill a contract with a human. “Is there a way to break a blood pact?”
“Sweetie, you know there isn’t. Why? Are you getting cold feet?”
“No, it’s nothing like that. You see, Vaggie–um, the human that summoned me–well, she didn’t really mean to summon me.”
“Oh. Well, that’s awkward! Can’t return ya now, it’s past 30 days! How hard is it to draw the right pentagram?” Lucifer’s words are laced with exasperation, and Charlie pictures him gesturing wildly as they speak. “What kind of deal is she looking for that you can’t fulfill anyway?”
Charlie groans. Leave it to her dad to misconstrue the important details. “Dad! That’s the problem! She doesn’t want to make a deal!”
“Doesn’t want to–ohhh.” Lucifer falls silent. A duck squeaks faintly in the background.
“What do I do?” Charlie’s tail swishes in agitation as her legs start pacing on their own.
“Well, you can’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. Gift of free will and all, haha!” Charlie doesn't miss the bitterness that seeps through his laugh. 10,000 years still wasn't enough time for it to stop being a sore topic for Lucifer. “Maybe try giving her some friendly suggestions?”
“Okay… yes! I can do that!”
“Go get her, tiger.”
Charlie ends the call and steps back into the bedroom. Vaggie is sitting on her bed, burning sage in a smudge bowl. A ring of salt adorns the carpet below her.
Her tail whips in slight irritation. She thought they’d moved past this.
“Vaggie–”
“You’re not welcome here, demon.” Vaggie’s icy tone jolts Charlie as if she’d been drenched with a bucket of ice water. Being spoken to so coldly by someone she desperately wanted to befriend… hurt. And made her hate her demonic features. She wishes she could retreat them like she could in Hell, but due to the nature of summonings, all demons were forced into their true form.
“But–”
“I said leave!”
Choking back tears, Charlie retreats into the darkness. She reminds herself that it isn’t personal, that Vaggie just needs time. After all, it isn’t everyday that a mortal summons the Princess of Hell herself.