Grace had little recollection of anything that happened after she threw up on-set during a live television broadcast.

She blinked, staring up at the ceiling over the bed in that dreadful room in Vee Tower. She'd been returned there, possibly sedated. She had no idea how long it had been since she was made to participate in that dreadful televised announcement.

With a lengthy exhalation, she hoisted herself off the bed and went to wash her face in the bathroom sink.

What the fuck was I doing when I got so rudely interrupted? Oh. Right. Trying to make a run for it. Well … that failed spectacularly.

Ok. What was before the attempted prison-break?

Grace dried her face brusquely with one of those dreadful Voxtek-issue towels.

I was exploring my gilded cage.

She'd actually managed to get to the first floor uninterrupted.

And so, whether the result of tenacity or stupidity, Grace grabbed the steak knife she stashed away from one of her meals and sneaked out of her room once more.

Once the elevator arrived, rather than pressing the button for the lobby, she selected the button with the highest number.

Thirteen? She thought, staring at the lit-up round button. Really? I was certain the sky scraper was taller than that!

The first area that Grace actually recognized during her exploration was the Vees’ conference room.

She stood at the doorway, looking in, clutching the handle of the steak knife in her white-knuckled fist. It was so tempting to take that knife and gouge the ever-loving shit out of the conference table’s pristine varnish.

Or to carve the fuck out of the leather on Vox's chair.

And then an even better idea came to Grace. She slipped into the conference room without turning on its overhead lights, skulking through the darkness and then dropping to the floor at the end of the table. 

Grinning ear to ear, she crawled beneath it, found a good spot in which to sit cross-legged, and then took the tip of the steak knife to the underside of the table. Though she couldn’t see in the dark, she knew well in her mind’s-eye what she was carving into the wood: two perpendicular arrows with single hash-lines bisecting each arrow from the point they crossed each other.

Carving one of Alastor’s vèvès into Vox’s conference room table was Grace’s silent act of rebellion against her current Demon Overlord.

With each passing day, Velvette stole Grace for fashion show preparation shortly after breakfast. Upon being returned to her room, Grace sneaked out to explore more of the tower. And each time she went out, she stopped by the conference room to add a different vèvè to the underside of the table. Those vèvès became to Grace like the hashmarks carved into jail cell walls by inmates. 

It didn’t take long for Grace to realize by his absence that Vox had ample time that he couldn’t attend to her; during press conferences, Vox 2 Nite broadcasts, and the like. So she took advantage of that by creating a mental map of her gilded cage.

One week into her captivity, she was back again in the conference room, adding the fourth vèvè beneath the wooden table.

More vèvès for the Vees, thought Grace with a wicked grin. She hoped, somehow, that they’d invoke some of Alastor’s power from afar to undermine the Vees—or at the very least, Vox.

Her heart dropped when the elevator dinged to announce its arrival and the door slid open. 

The lights flipped on. As Grace blinked to adjust to the sudden brightness, in walked several pairs of shoes. She recognized Vox’s leading the way, followed by Valentino’s, Velvette’s, and—and—the fourth set of shoes was unfamiliar.

She quickly scooted back toward the middle of the table until she could no longer see them.

They took seats at the far end of the table, a little too close to where Grace had scooted to get out of their line of sight, so she crawled back toward the elevator. She couldn’t make a run for it or they’d know she was there. So she breathed as quietly and shallowly as she could and listened.

The beginning of the meeting was shit that didn’t concern Grace. In fact, she had no idea what any of it was about. 

The Vees do any actual business in Hell? 

Color me surprised.

Then Vox changed the subject abruptly: “Has anyone been listening for the Radio Demon?”

Velvette scoffed. “I have better things to do with my time, Vee.”

“Oh, yeah, right, that fat demon fashion thing?”

Fat.

Demon.

Fashion.

Thing.

Fuck you, Vox. Grace closed her eyes, focusing on keeping her temper at bay and her breathing silent through the flare. Fuck you, you fucking fuck!

“Val?” Vox asked in Velvette’s silence.

Valentino snapped, “You stole my toy from me!”

That helped Grace simmer down. Her mere presence was sowing the seeds of discord; maybe there were things she could do with little effort to incite more strife.

“There’s nothing to listen for,” the fourth demon interjected.

Who the fuck is that? Judging by his voice, it wasn’t Vox’s weaselly little assistant.

“What do you mean?” Vox snapped.

The fourth demon coughed for probably at least a minute before he was finally able to draw a deep enough breath to respond. Grace recalled that was how Angel Dust had described her husband. 

Travis?! His voice sounded so different now. 

“He’s been off the air,” Travis finally responded, then punctuated that statement with several additional coughs. He sounded deathly ill.

Grace hoped he was somehow at least as sick as he sounded.

“You don’t suppose this is the beginning of another seven-year absence, do you?” Valentino said, unable—or unwilling—to hide the enthusiasm in his voice.

Vox scowled, “I doubt we’d be so lucky.”

“Do you really believe this is because of Grace?” asked Velvette.

“I keep telling myself anything related to the Radio Demon and Violet is coincidental,” Vox replied.

“You really should just call her Vomit,” interjected Travis. “And trust me when I say: It absolutely is because of her.”

The room fell silent; Velvette, Vox, and Valentino physically shifted in their chairs to face Travis.

“Vomit has a remarkable way of driving men crazy.”

Once upon a time, that kind of remark would’ve hurt.

Now? Now, she wore it as a badge of honor.

Travis added, “And it sounds like this one was already batshit crazy before meeting her.”

“Well,” Vox said after a few moments, “keep listening. Let me know the moment that radio silence ends.”

Valentino hissed, “Excuse me! First, you claim Vixen and now you’re usurping my Dick?!”

Grace pressed a hand to her mouth, desperately trying to keep from laughing. The concept of what she’d inadvertently caused between the Vees was funny. Valentino’s phrasing was hilarious.

“No, excuse you,” Velvette interjected. “I was the one who brought Grace here. Vox stole her from me.”

“And I found Violet before the both of you,” snarled Vox. “Before the Methuselah of Modern Media even did! I know her gifts and potential better than anyone!”

“Methuselah of Modern Media?” Travis echoed.

Vox sighed, “The Radio Demon, you fuckin’ rube.” After a moment, he turned his chair toward Valentino and added, “You don’t need to worry about me usurping Dick, here. He’s too stupid to be useful to me.”

"Ex-fucking-scuse you," Travis scowled. "None of you would have Vomit if not for me!"

Chairs swiveled in silence back toward him.

"She wouldn't be dead yet if I hadn't stabbed her in her cheating heart!" explained Travis. "Fuck, if it was the adultery that landed her in Hell, you can thank me for that, too!" 

A smile spread across Grace’s lips as she watched Travis tuck his hands beneath the table top, curling them into fists. Good, good. Let the hate flow through you.

“Are we done here?” Velvette asked impatiently.

“Yeah. Get the fuck out of my sight. All of you!” Vox snapped and they all filed out of the conference room, Vox bringing up the rear.

He hesitated at the door, pivoting on a heel to face the conference room table.

Grace held her breath, her heart pounding. What had he noticed that made him double-back? 

Finally, he exited the room.

She waited a while before she felt it was safe enough to sneak out.

Preparations for the fashion show ramped up in the following week. They did numerous dress rehearsals, several different, experienced models giving Grace a crash course in how to walk a runway. Although Grace still felt like a clod, at least now she was closer to feeling like she would live up to her name. It was also getting harder to deny that this Curvaceous Couture line wasn’t a ruse to bring Grace back to Vee Tower after all.

Instead of sneaking out after breakfast to add to her carvings in the conference room, she had to sneak out, instead, in the middle of each night to made accommodations for Velvette monopolizing her time. 

The morning of the show, dressed in the last outfit to appear on the catwalk and with her makeup and hair fully done, Velvette walked a circle to appraise her last model. “You’re gonna be a household name, Grace. Everyone on the street will recognize you.”

“They already do,” Grace grumbled, “thanks to Valentino.” Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of all my dumbass choices!

“Well. We’re gonna fix what they know you for.” Velvette paused. “You know your call time?”

Grace nodded. “Four PM.”

“Don’t make me have to hunt you down.”

“Might help if I had a clock or watch or something. It’s pretty challenging to tell time when there’s basically no time to tell.”

Velvette pointed at Grace with a roll of her eyes. The fashion show outfit was replaced in a blink by Voxtek themed loungewear and a matching watch on her left wrist. “Take that off before the show.”

“Yep,” Grace said stiffly. She glanced at the time now that she had access to it. What a strange thing to withhold from your captive. Like seriously, why?

It was 10 AM. 

She’d been awake already for what had to have been hours; considering her nighttime activities in the conference room, it was no surprise that she was so drowsy. A nap wouldn’t be out of the question.

“Four,” Velvette repeated sternly. “Don’t be late. Now get the fuck outta my sight.”

Grace happily retreated to her room for that nap.

But for the first time in days, her room was not vacant when she entered it; Vox was waiting for her.

“Voxtek blues suit you,” he said by way of greeting.

Grace replied with the first thing that came to mind: “Oh, how I envy the souls who haven’t met you.” Under her breath, she added, “Fucking egomaniac.”

Adding insult to injury, Grace couldn’t even accurately use her old favorite barb on him: He’s one of those people who’d be enormously improved by death. The absolutely audacity that he’s already dead.

With a crazed look in his eyes, Vox snapped and a chain materialized between them. 

Grace gasped and recoiled. 

The chain she’d shared with Alastor had a way of making her uneasy—and that was despite how she felt about him when times were good. 

This made her despair unlike any despair she’d experienced. Her throat closed up as if the collar pressed against her airway.

Vox unabashedly ate up her reaction so she did the first thing that came to mind: she gathered the chain around her hand and yanked hard enough to cause him to stumble closer to her. 

Parting from Alastor was one thing; being kept from him like this was quite another.

Grace grabbed him by his flat face and scowled into it, “I don’t know how and I don’t know when but I will escape you.”

Vox’s gaze narrowed on her, his hands covering hers in a disturbingly, disgustingly sensual way where they touched his screen. She hoped beyond all hope that the action was meant to turn her stomach.

“Once I figure out how to beat you, and mark my words, I will, they’ll never find your body.”

“Oh I'm so scared,” Vox replied flatly, rolling his eyes.

“They’ll be recovering you in bits and pieces and shards for three months.”

“You're making me shake in my black-rhino-skin boots.”

Grace spat, “And you'll be alive for at least two of those months.”

They stared at each other, Vox clearly trying to figure out how much of a threat this otherwise innocuous little lilac demon was, Grace silently challenging him to test his luck.

“Why are you in Hell?” he asked seemingly out of the blue.

She had no idea why she answered, but she did. Honestly, for that matter: “Probably all the men I slept with after I got married. And the ones I slept with before that, too.”

“Does the Radio Demon know you love him?”

“Jesus Christ, Vox,” Grace laughed, her sneaking suspicion all but confirmed. “You're obsessed with him. You’re so pathetic!”

“As if you aren’t obsessed with him too?” he countered.

“The difference between us?” She deliciated in taunting him: “I’ve fallen asleep in his arms. I’ve felt him inside me. I’ve done so many things with him that you’ll never get to experience no matter how long your afterlife lasts. No matter what deal you make, he will never submit to you.”

Vox yelled—a wordless fury before calming himself. Static overpowering his voice, he repeated, “Does the Radio Demon know you love him?”

Grace was trying to find some good, convincing way to say that she didn’t—still, or ever—which would be extra challenging considering she’d never even been able to convince herself of that.

But when she didn’t answer or redirect the conversation for a second time, Vox’s right eye snapped into that hypnotic spiral.

She tried to recoil but he tightened his grip over her hands on the edges of his flat-screened face.

Fuck! “No,” Grace grit out. “I never told him. But it doesn’t matter.” She maintained his hypnotic gaze in challenge and attempted shifting his focus. “I know you won’t kill me, Vox. You’ve convinced yourself that what you do to me affects him, so you’re gonna keep me around.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Vox scowled. He released her hands but wrapped his left over the collar and hoisted her off the floor by her neck.

Grace did everything she could to maintain her composure. 

Vox needed to see her fear and just as Alastor would never submit to him, she refused to yield.

“Everything you do is for him, isn't it?” she ground out, well aware of her pulse pounding away in her throat against his palm. He undoubtedly felt it so she did all she could to keep it from escalating—a feat that was far easier said than done.

When he didn't argue that, Grace caught the change in his eyes. Fear.

No.

Wait.

Not fear.

That's the pain of rejection.

“I bet you have a poster of the Radio Demon over your bed that you kiss before sleep each night like a twelve-year-old girl kisses an New Kids on the Block poster. I bet you bat your eyelashes and swoon at it, and draw hearts all over your shitty sketches of him.”

The blue on Vox's screen just below his eyes darkened and if Grace wasn't mistaken, something shimmered just above that blue.

Was Vox physically capable of producing tears?

There's no fucking way—

So Grace called upon memories of the embarrassing things she’d done as a fangirl obsessed: “I bet once upon a time, you learned everything you could about how radio works just to impress him.”

The glistening along the bottom of his eyes burned brighter as Grace’s intense stare bored holes into his dumbfuck face.

“In whatever history you had with him, he was never interested in you. And you don't have a chance now. Any camaraderie you had was nothing more than your twisted fantasy.” She caressed the edges of his flatscreen head, her lips curling into a wicked sneer. Tears were imminent—and for once, for one blessed moment, they weren't hers.

Grace crooned, sweetly, “Aww, you're not gonna cry, now, are you?” You big fucking baby.

A single tear streaked down his screen from his left eye. “You two fucking deserve each other!”

She smirked. “You're damn right we do. And don't you forget it!”

Vox's hand closed further over her windpipe.

“I just want you to know,” Grace added through clenched teeth, “that anything you do to me with the intent to hurt or scare, he did to me first for shits and giggles.”

And I loved every second of it.

And then Vox did something the Radio Demon decidedly never did to Grace: he punched her square in the face with a right hook.

Grace opened the curtain and sat by the window in her room, nursing a bleeding, broken nose, a split lip, and the most furiously swollen black eye. 

There goes walking the runway for Velvette. 

She glanced at her watch. 3:30. Things would get even uglier for her in a half hour.

Grace had been anticipating that something would interfere with her walking the runway, so she really didn’t consider it much of a loss.

“Hey, Princess Grace!” Velvette greeted her as she let herself into Grace’s room without announcing herself or asking permission to enter. Grace bristled; she’d locked that door. There had been no sounds of a key sliding into said lock and yet the door opened right up. The lock was nothing but a prop.

“I just found something on the floor in Vox’s office by the trash can. I think he was gonna throw it out so I grabbed it for you. I thought you might like it. Kinda figured it’d be a nice gift for you ahead of your first show.”

Grace turned slowly in her spot on the loveseat to see what Velvette was offering her. All she had in hand was a little square of paper. How underwhelming.

“What the fuck!” Velvette bellowed with a flail toward Grace. “What happened to your face?!”

“Vox was here.”

Velvette’s eyes flashed. “Oh, I’m going to bash his fucking flat-screened face in! He did this to you to deliberately screw me over!”

Grace was about to argue that she’d brought the injury upon herself but immediately thought better of it. The last thing she needed was for Velvette to be pissed off at her. Additionally, this could make for extra fuel to stoke the flames of discord.

Tears sprung readily to Grace’s eyes. “I’m just a pawn,” she said, her voice wavering along with a trembling lower lip. “He said he was gonna ensure I’m of no use to you and then—” she sobbed, “He punched me in the face!”

“The show starts in an hour. You’re not gonna be ready by then.” Velvette hissed under her breath, glancing at the camera above the still-broken television. “Fucking asshole!”

“What’s that?” Grace nodded toward Velvette’s hand, allowing tears to streak down her cheeks unchecked.

Velvette sighed, approached, then handed the piece of paper to Grace in silence.

Grace turned it over. It was an ancient black and white photograph, of who appeared to be a fairly tan man with eerily familiar eyes. He had greased-back hair that looked like a partly successful attempt at controlling unruly texture, and a pair of oval spectacles perched upon a painfully adorable little pointed nose. “Wha—Oh—oh, my god! This is Alastor, isn’t it?”

Velvette crossed her arms over the chest and answered, “In the flesh.”

Grace stared, struggling to reconcile the demon she knew with the man in that photograph. “How did you get this?”

Velvette sat on the bed across from the loveseat, crossing her legs at the knee and ignoring Grace’s question. “Be honest: doesn’t his lazy eye gross you out?”

Why did that seem to bother everyone? It was such an insignificant flaw, one that Grace wouldn’t even consider a flaw at all.

She shifted her gaze from Velvette back to the photo. This was a man she wouldn’t have given the time of day under any circumstance. Just the same, if they’d lived in the same place at the same time, he wouldn’t have so much as batted an eyelash at her. The only interest he may have taken in her was as a murder victim.

She reminisced to when they’d danced in his radio tower and she’d conjured up a perfect night that could never have been: curled up beneath Alastor’s arm and a shared blanket on a cozy plush couch scarcely big enough for them both, listening to a trio playing live jazz in an otherwise quiet café as steady rain beat against the pavement just outside its open door.

That daydream, twisted and impossible as it was to begin with, evanesced in the tears that continued sliding down Grace’s cheeks, the photograph blurring in her field of vision.

“Why are you crying?” Velvette asked.

Grace snapped, “What do you care?”

“I don’t care. Look, Princess Peach, I’m the only thing that matters to me. I will do anything to grow my brand and while Vox and Val are my associates, at the end of the day, my empire is more important to me than they are. Vox and Val rely on me, not the other way around … And Vox just supremely fucked me over, leaving me scrambling to find someone to fill your spot.”

And yet you’re wasting your time here with me right now. Rather than pointing that out, Grace chose the more diplomatic, “You could always just drop a paper bag over my head. Call it Haute Curvaceous Couture.”

Velvette laughed, and then seemed really annoyed with herself that she’d laughed.

“You and I both know nobody’s gonna be looking at my face, anyway. I may not know much about your world but I know that faces aren’t fashion. Bodies are.”

Velvette stood abruptly with a deep breath. “I have better things to do with my time than to piss it away with you.”

She realizes, finally. Grace replied, “Oh, what? Are you afraid I might be growing on you?” She smirked painfully. “Just know this: I’ve broken down Overlords far more psycho than you.”

With a grandiose flip of her middle finger, Velvette excused herself from the room.

Grace sat back in her seat, looking once more at the photograph of Alastor. “‘At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot …’” She glared at the camera above the television. “‘We must ourselves be its author and finisher.’” Her eyes flashed and she could feel her horns grow and twist. “And I will finish you, Vox.”

The next morning, Grace took her time cleaning herself up. She’d slept in the makeup Velvette’s assistants had applied in the morning, mostly because the thought of removing it with a broken nose and a split lip left much to be desired.

Everything still hurt. She could tell her upper lip and nose were swollen but washing the makeup off revealed spectacular bruising beneath her eyes and a healing split in the skin across the bridge of her nose.

Vox had aimed for her nose—or so Grace thought—but considering their difference in size, his knuckles had made contact with a significant portion of her face.

She dried off gingerly, then redressed in what was available: the same damn Voxtek pajamas she felt like she’d been wearing for the past year. This morning, however, she had to tighten the drawstring of the pants.

Between sneaking out to the conference room around 1 AM and the throbbing pain radiating through her face, Grace hadn’t slept much the prior night and planned on just hanging out in her room, probably napping most of the day away.

In fourteen vèvès’ time, never once did anyone join Grace in her room overnight so she finally figured it was safe to crawl back into that bed. She positioned the pillows so that she had ample support under her head and shoulders and settled in, dozing semi-reclined.

She slept through breakfast and lunch. She would have slept through dinner, as well, if not for the rude awakening of a sharp sizzle and flash of blinding light in her room. Grace opened her eyes to see Vox standing at the foot of the bed.

Before Grace could do or say anything, Vox snapped his fingers to summon his chain.

“What the fuck, man?!” cried Grace, impulsively resisting his restraint. “I was asleep!”

“You have better things to do.”

“Yeah, pretty sure I don’t since you ruined my runway debut—”

Vox grabbed Grace by the wrist and leaped with her into the closed circuit camera.

When she opened her eyes, she was on a studio set—more specifically, the set for Vox 2 Nite.

The studio lights blazed, both hot and bright. She winced against them.

No. Not this. Not again. What more can he do to me that he hasn’t already done?

Vox wordlessly shoved her down into a chair opposite the one he took behind the desk, flashing a wide grin toward the cameras. “I have a special guest on the show tonight. You all know her voice from Valentino’s radio show, A Hot Mic Nooner and her likeness from his soon-to-be-released porn, Artificial Sintelligence, and the up-and-coming brand ambassador for Velvette’s forthcoming Curvaceous Couture line: the inimitable Violet, formerly known as Grace Bedgood!”

Grace froze. Shit. This can’t be good.

“Not only does Violet have the honor of being closely associated with each Vee, she is the one and only sinner to have any relationship worth mentioning with that unremarkable loser, the Radio Demon. Tell me, Vi: what’s it like to be fucked by someone not a single soul cares about?”

Her mouth fell open in a silent huff.

“You know he was gone for seven years and nobody went looking for him in that time. Nobody even noticed his absence. He was brutally injured during last Extermination Day and vanished again, after which nobody went looking for him. Nobody offered to help him. Nobody honored him when they thought he died.”

Oh, holy shit! That was true?!

“Your star is rising, Violet, and his is long extinguished. How great does that power disparity feel, huh? It’s gotta be intoxicating, I’d think. Even when he owned your soul, he couldn’t manage to keep you around. He’s nothing. A nobody.”

Stop! Despite the vehemency of her cry, no sound emerged from her mouth.

“The Radio Demon is an irrelevant waste of air and space that will vanish from memories and record sooner rather than later, and it'll be as if he never existed at all.”

Grace tried speaking. The words were on the tip of her tongue but it was almost as if Vox was somehow censoring them before they even emerged.

“He was his father’s secret shame and his mother’s staggering disappointment. His father teased him mercilessly, nicknamed him ‘daisy.’ Do you know why?”

Grace could barely move, struggled to shake her head even a little. Vox had her paralyzed from horns to hooves.

“That little limp-wristed, lazy-eyed deviant didn’t have a masculine bone in his body.”

And yet without even trying, he scored a porn-goddess demon not even Valentino could win over. She’d tried saying those words, but it was as if the air had been sucked from her lungs. Why can’t I speak?! She ground her teeth together so hard it made her whole face ache, not as though that took much considering she had an only partly-healed broken nose. 

“He was a twisted predator who, in his life, was felled like prey. The Radio Demon is a psychopath who gets off on hurting others. He’s nothing like the rest of us, and he’s neither wanted nor welcome here. He belongs nowhere and with nobody. The things he’s done have benefited no one but himself. He’s the epitome of selfishness.”

Okay, well, that last bit is maybe kinda true. But still—

Vox flashed Grace a maniacal grin. “You don’t disagree with any of that, huh?”

She screamed in infuriated dissent, yet no sound emerged from her body. This was like the worst nightmare, ever: trying to flee from danger on legs that froze stiff, and trying to yell on vocal cords that could make no noise.

“So now let’s get to know the demon of the hour. My assistants were following your sordid little affair for quite some time now. Sounds like things were going well for you two. Better than well, actually. Great even. Perfect. Like you two had carved out a little slice of Heaven in our miserable place in Hell. And then all of a sudden, he’s become enemy number one to you.

“Tell your audience, Violet: Do you recognize he has no idea what he did wrong, or that he even did anything wrong, at all? I don’t think you turning your back on him could have been any more out of the blue and any more cruel.” Vox started laughing hysterically and barely managed to add, “The Radio Demon fell in love with someone with a blacker heart than his! A whore who no doubt will fall back into her old habits and find someone more deserving of that body … if, that is, she hasn’t already.”

Grace tried so hard to speak that she almost vomited from the fruitless effort. I’ll never find another! I don’t want any other! The only reason I had all those lovers was because I couldn’t find one like Alastor!

Even though no sound came out, Vox acted as if it had and snapped, “Nobody cares about you or what you have to say, little tart.”

And so the sentiment escaped her the only way it could: in the tears brimming along her lower lashes. Each tear that trickled down her cheek was a whispered ‘I love you, Alastor,’ that couldn’t be spoken.

Grace hoped beyond all hope that Alastor wasn’t watching Vox’s show and that nobody who was tuned in would relay to him what they saw. Hopefully they wouldn’t be dumb enough—or brave enough—to.

In her forced silence, Grace considered what the point was of this exercise. 

It seemed like the show went on for days, Vox picking apart every perceived weakness, vulnerability, and insecurity of Alastor’s for all of Hell to see. 

When it finally ended, Grace sagged in her chair, tears flowing readily in silent, breathless sobs.

“What a great show you just put on,” Vox told her once the cameras went off. 

The stage lights were beginning to dim and only then did Grace realize she had developed a migraine in addition to her broken nose and split lip. Though she hadn’t spoken or screamed or done much of anything, her throat ached as if she’d been shrieking non-stop.

She said the first thing that came to mind at that point, surprising herself to actually hear her own voice again: “Why bother having me on your shitty show if you don’t let me speak?”

“Oh, you’re right,” Vox replied, a wicked smile appearing on his screen. “That was a wasted opportunity.” He fixed her with a hypnotic stare and compelled her to say, “I hate Alastor.”

When he let her have control of her faculties again, she snapped, “You’re wasting your breath! Alastor doesn’t love me and none of what you claimed about me matters to him.” All he ever wanted me for was to make himself immortal. And holy fuck did that thought sting. Grace’s voice broke as she added, “I sincerely doubt he’s even noticed I’m gone and wouldn’t give a single shit if I said I hate him.”

“If you hated him. If you said it.” 

She strongly disliked the emphasis he placed on if, as if he was pondering making her do just those things. Someday, Grace would learn to keep her mouth shut.

Maybe.

Vox rested his elbows on the desk, leaning toward her with a wicked glint in his eyes. “You really believe he hasn’t noticed your absence, do you? You truly believe he doesn’t care that he’s lost you. That demented fucker needs dominance and you were the very last thing he could exercise that kind of control over. What you do—who you do—matters to him more than you realize.”

See you back here next Sunday, deer friends!