Almost four years ago.

~Lionel

The day had been long. There had been a fire, and using my power to make the dead talk after they had been burned, their skin black, the fetid stench of burnt flesh saturating the air…

Fires were never a good scene to be called to.

My ears were ringing from all the magic I had used as I drove my car home from the station on spring’s twilight gleam. I kept under the speed limit, holding the wheel at ten and two and feeling like I hadn’t slept in two days while simultaneously being high on espresso.

The stench and a crime scene that was both charred and waterlogged and most certainly a grand reason to make sure I’d had my tetanus booster was the reason for that and also, there had been many bodies to go through, their confusion about being dead clinging to me like yet another layer of that stench of burnt life.

All I wanted was a good long shower, but I was also hungry. Long days were usually ramen days for me, but as I hit the brakes for a red light, my stomach churned at the idea.

“I need some real food.” I tapped the wheel while I waited for the light to turn, wondering where to sate my cravings.

Cooking something simple was an option, but it would entail going shopping—my fridge had an echo and some hot sauce and nothing else—and then preparing whatever I’d bought.

My tired mind wasn’t going to be able to handle such a complicated endeavor, and anyway, I had no illusions about my culinary skills. However, there was a pizzeria on my way home, and getting some takeout there wouldn’t take me all that long.

I didn’t normally splurge on eating out, but fuck me if raising burned bodies didn’t entitle me to something nice. I sped up when the light turned, determination almost making me go as fast as I could. My mouth was watering. Calories would be wonderful, and then I could enjoy the food coma in the comfort of my own home. With any luck, Christine—Detective Rice—wouldn’t wake me from it with her usual spiel, murder.

The pizzeria’s neon sign was broken, flickering like a heart about to give out. That made me think of the sounds of limbs moving under skin that had grown flaky as pastry, and I shuddered as I put my Honda into park.

Hunger had me jog toward the entrance, but also, the evening air was chilly, and my jacket had absorbed too much of the smoke slick air. I’d dumped it in the trunk and was wearing only my second nicest hoodie.

Walking into the pizzeria came close to a portal fantasy, but the one where you’re dropped into something so mundane it’s actually really comforting.

The place smelled good, food, oil, and spices, and while it was small, just four tables with red and white checkered table cloths and wooden chairs, there wasn’t a single burn mark here, no unstable flooring I needed to watch out for.

They had a menu up on the wall behind the register. Next to the register in a big glass bowl, there were fortune cookies in shiny wrappers. Off brand for Italian food, but I wasn’t going to judge anyone if I got a free fortune cookie out of it.

I smiled at the man behind the register who’d been scrolling on his phone.

“Hi.”

He nodded in a supremely bored way. “Hey. Know what you want?”

I skimmed the selection of pies. “Veggie lover. The big one.” I’d have leftovers, aka breakfast. Look at me planning ahead like a pro.

He punched that into his register. “Any extra toppings?” He didn’t so much as look at me. All of that was fine. The last thing I needed today was small talk.

Behind me, someone else came in through the door the moment I said, “Nah, just the basic pie.”

“Nelly, is that you? How unexpected.”

I froze. The server looked up from entering my order, his eyes widening and his cheeks taking on color. He smiled though not at me.

I turned, needing to confirm I wasn’t hallucinating random immortals as an aftereffect of raising a whole family burned to death in their own home, but no, I wasn’t.

It was the Devil, in the flesh, wearing nice clean clothes, not a soot stain anywhere, and that deceptive smile that seemed to say, hey, I’m just a normal hot guy, come hither.

The guy behind the register cleared his throat, getting ready to do some hithering all right. “Welcome. What can I do for you tonight?”

I rolled my eyes. Talk about good-looking people having it easier in life.

The Devil smiled like a cat being presented a really fat canary on a silver platter. “I haven’t decided yet. Let me get in line while I think about it.”

With that, the Devil walked right up behind me, put a hand on his hip and smiled down at me.

“Sure. Let me know if—”

I went for one of the fortune cookies, letting the paper crinkle as loudly as I could. “How much do I owe you?”

The server glanced at me as if he’d forgotten all about me, then frowned at his screen. “Twenty-eight seventy. Feel free to wait at a table while we get your order ready.”

“Sure.” I went for the wallet in my back pocket—only to realize it wasn’t there. “Shit. Sorry. I left my wallet in my jacket and—my car’s just outside. I’ll go grab it real quick.”

The guy looked less than thrilled, his annoyance plain in the way his mouth turned down when he fixed me with the most eye contact he’d given me ever since I’d walked in. I should have just gone with ramen. Ramen never judged me.

A hand landed on my shoulder before I could even turn. “That’s fine, Nelly. I’ve got you. You can owe me.”

Lucifer’s hand was warm. Then again, it was possible I was just cold.

I looked at him. “I really don’t want to owe you.”

The Devil smiled, his hand sliding away and leaving only the echo of warmth behind. “Then it will be my treat. Forgetfulness might be a symptom of head trauma, and—”

“I’m fine!” My hand balled around the fortune cookie I’d taken, making the vacuum sealed wrapper pop loudly.

“Hey, you’re only supposed to take one of those after you pay,” the server said, being the least helpful he’d been all night.

“I’m paying for him,” said the Devil, and smooth as a snake slithering through an oil spill, he handed the guy his fancy credit card. Of course it was black. None of the legends about the Devil had ever mentioned humility.

I could feel the heat rising to my face. “I’ll pay you back.”

The Devil smiled. “You don’t have to.” He cocked his head. “Do you even remember who I am?”

I didn’t have a mirror in front of me, but I could feel my color deepen. Yes, it was only ever going to be ramen from now on. My low effort meal had turned into a cognitive exam, administered by none other than the Devil his own damn self. Fuck my damn luck.

“Lucifer,” I said.

His face fell, that left eyebrow pointing skyward. “It’s Lucy. Lu-cy. Have you been forgetting things a lot since that night I dragged the zombie off you?”

I would have told him to go fuck himself, thank you very much, but there was a civilian here, plus the Devil had just paid for my food. As it was, I could already hear the guy mumble zombie?! as he handed the card back over to Lucifer.

“My memory is fine, but I don’t have to prove that to you.”

“Hmm.”

“I just want my damn pizza, okay? And your address. So I can pay you back. I don’t have cash on me right now.”

The server piped up. “Hey, if you were going to steal that pie—”

I spun. “I wasn’t! It’s not like he’s the only person with a credit card, okay? Mine’s in my jacket I’m pretty sure. Do you want me to show you?”

The guy was giving me the look. I knew it well. The last time I’d been given it had been at a funeral home where things had gotten unsavory in the extreme and I’d ended up with…fluids all over me. At least we’d taken the murderous embalmer out in cuffs. And Detective Rice had given me the rest of the day off when the funeral guests had either given me that look or…fainted at the sight of me.

“All good, man. Your food his paid for, okay? Chill.”

He glanced away as if he didn’t want to deal with me, as if I was unhinged or something. I didn’t get the chance to push back on his false perception of me, because Lucifer was dangling a business card in front of my face, holding it in his long, neatly manicured fingers.

“It’s Milton Avenue. Where I live. It’s printed on there so you can’t forget.”

I snatched the card from his fingers and narrowed my eyes at him. Damn, but he was tall. “My memory is fucking fine, okay?”

“Okay. Say, what’s my name?”

I groaned and stomped away to one of the empty tables where I plopped into a chair. Lucifer chuckled while I did my best to ignore him, turning my attention to the fortune cookie that was still whole in its wrapper.

I was hungry enough to not care what anyone thought about me devouring the damn thing, so I did. I crunched down on the last of it, doing my best to ignore the Devil placing a complicated order where he substituted one thing for another. The fortunes in these cookies were all bogus anyway, but I turned my attention to the tiny piece of paper in the interest of ignoring the Devil.

Life is like licking honey from thorns, the fortune read.

I stared at the paper, then tore it into even smaller pieces.

“Did that cookie to anything bad to you?” asked the Devil.

I looked up to see him standing over me, his own fortune cookie in his hand and smiling even as he cast me in the shadow of his broad shoulders and wide chest and—

Lionel Hawkes, get a fucking grip. Immortals are not for fucking, period.

“I think my pizza is almost ready.”

“Are you planning on eating alone?”

“Yeah. People do that. They eat alone all the time.”

Lucifer shrugged. “And Sometimes they eat together.”

If I didn’t keep my eyes on his immortal ass, this guy might just eat me. It was bad enough that I was owing him money, possibly worse that he knew who I was. And he had run into me in this area of the city, which was potentially even worse still.

“Do you live around here?” I blurted out, my subtlety gone like the windows and wallpapers in the burned-out house.

Lucifer frowned. “Nelly. You know where I live. I just told you my address, don’t you remember?”

“I don’t have fucking amnesia, I’m just not a walking compass. I don’t know every road in this city.”

“Hmm.”

He tore the wrapper of his cookie without looking. He was looking at me instead, sort of in a concerned way. Maybe he was waiting for me to realize I didn’t know my name and had no idea where I was. If so, boohoo.

“Did anyone tell you that you smell of foul flames and burned things, Nelly?”

That made me actually self-conscious. I wasn’t a stranger to getting smells on me. Dead people could go smelly, and I was fine with it so long as I could give them a voice, but there were always other people, the living kind. On days like this one, being among other people really sucked, and I recalled fondly the calm and peace I’d had on the shore of the river with the dead zombie on top of me, pre-devilish intervention.

Lucky for me, the server called my order. I was up in a flash and squeezed around Lucifer to grab my food and hightail it out of there.

“I’ll pay you back asap, Lucifer,” I said, more or less running out of that pizza place I wouldn’t ever set foot in ever again.

#