There are two chapters left after this!

“Oh! Oh, holy fucking shit!” a paramedic exclaimed as a group of them spilled into the conference room. “That’s the Radio Demon—”

They immediately attempted to retreat out of the room.

Grace whipped around, staring the nearest hard in the eyes. “You will help him! You will save his life!”

The paramedics, stupefied, promptly went to work on stabilizing Alastor—or at least making a fair attempt at doing so. They loaded him onto a stretcher with great care and hauled him out, guided by Kitty, who’d been waiting silently at the door.

Grace’s last view of Alastor was of his paled face, blue-tinged lips, and glassy unfocused gaze turned to the fluorescent lights overhead.

Once the paramedics departed with Alastor in tow, Grace turned to Vox.

Vox.

“Stupid. Fucking. Piece of shit. Overlord.” She’d intended to think that thought but it came out of her mouth, instead. It seemed to have zero effect on said stupid, fucking piece of shit Overlord.

He was the very reason she stood at the precipice of losing everything, losing all she’d spent her lifetime and her afterlife seeking.

Fury flooded her body anew. “Now,” she growled as she stood slowly, her feet squishing in the blood-soaked carpet. 

Grace turned to face him fully. “What to do with you.”

He was as incapacitated as she was filled with hatred for him. If she’d had the Angelic Steel beskad in hand, she would’ve gleefully decapitated him in that moment, then shrieked with laughter as she run him through the heart with it.

There was no more time to waste, which really only left her with one option—to force Vox to free her of their contract with that ridiculous idea she’d dreamed about.

She leveled an intense stare at the Overlord and spoke with every ounce of conviction: “You coerced me into this soul contract by forcing me to agree to it while you had me hypnotized.”

“Y-yes-s-s, I d-d-d-id,” he agreed.

“In any court of law, that would invalidate the agreement.”

Vox stared with his equivalent of a slacked-jaw.

Grace pulled one of the chopsticks from her bun and—moving swiftly, knowing that speed in action was the only reason Vox had managed to stab Alastor—pushed it firmly into his neck against his carotid artery.

What she could see of Vox’s eye widened in the remnants of his screen.

The high shine of the chopsticks had the desired effect; Vox’s response made it seem as if he believed the metal was Angelic Steel. But for the simple fact it wasn’t, Vox’s existence would be spared.

“Do you know what I did in my lifetime?” Grace asked Vox.

“Who the f-fuck cares-s,” he replied with little emotion. It was odd to see him under her hypnosis but still with enough control over his faculties to be able to answer freely.

“I was a nurse.”

“Ha. How-w ev-ven the m-mighty f-f-f-fall.”

“My education left me with an intimate knowledge of human anatomy. Great for helping to heal.” She maintained his gaze, her wicked smile twisting into a sneer as she dragged it up and down along his carotid artery like a sensual threat. “And helpful for knowing just the ideal placement and angle of a weapon to make a swift kill.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a silent swallow.

“And the way I see it, you’ve just taken from me the single thing I care about here. I’m never getting redeemed so I have absolutely nothing stopping me from killing you.” His gaze flicked down to her hand as she pressed the chopstick into his neck harder for effect. Perhaps she’d spear him with it a little bit, anyway. Just on principle. “I have absolutely no qualms about removing you from existence. Permanently.”

Vox lifted his dazed gaze to her slitted eyes. 

She hoped the humiliation of being at the mercy of one of his minions would linger in the dark recesses of his RAM for the rest of eternity; however long his would last, anyway.

He glitched, “What-t-t-t do you w-w-ant from me-e-e-e-e?”

“I belong to Alastor,” Grace scowled. 

“Well the-then you bbb-belong to a d-dead man-an-an-an.”

It took every last shred of self-restraint not to embed the chopstick in his carotid artery. But she knew if she did that now, he’d know she was bluffing about the nature of its metal. 

“Release me or I lance your neck with an Angelic Steel pick!” she yelled.

His voice still flat with lack of emotion, Vox replied, “I f-f-f-f-free you of our-our-our contra-a-a-act.”

And just like that, she felt the stinging electrical power slip from between her fingertips. She collapsed in a heap on the carpet, lifting herself back up on trembling arms. It wasn’t until that moment that she realized how much energy she’d been exerting all that time.

“What—the—fuck—” Vox gasped, broken-faced gaze locked onto the shattered glass glittering in his palms under fluorescent lights. Judging by his tone, what little hypnosis she’d had over him had broken along with their contract.

Despite her exhaustion, Grace knew she had to get out of there before he retaliated. Sticking him with a stainless steel chopstick like the pig he was would only buy her so much time. Time she needed for other, more important things.

She sprung to her feet and sprinted out of the room, hearing Vox curse her name and bellow for his IT minions.

Once Grace started running, she couldn’t stop. She ran through the burning in her muscles, through the fire in her lungs and the threat of shin splints. She ran through the rest of her bun unraveling now with only one chopstick left in there to hold it. She didn’t stop to collect the chopstick when it clattered to the pavement behind her.

No physical pain could hold a candle to the emotional pain of not being with Alastor, wherever he’d ended up.

Grace found her way to the nearest hospital, hoping that this was where he’d been taken, and expecting to be told upon her arrival that the patient she was there to see was in the morgue. Or whatever Hell’s equivalent to a morgue would be.

But Grace was escorted down hallways covered in paper hearts in various shades of reds, pinks, and lavenders. Oh. It’s February. Right. It still surprised her there’d be any hint of such a holiday in Hell.

The patient access representative deposited her without any words of solace or reassurance at an otherwise vacant waiting room.

She took a seat and glanced at the monitor mounted above the door in the corner of the waiting room. It bore a list with three columns: times, quadruple-digit numbers, and room codes. It was like the department of motor vehicles waiting list, only for souls at some point in the process of receiving medical care.

The options included preparation, operating room, and recovery.

Grace had not received what she sullenly thought of as a claim number; she had no idea which of these patients was Alastor or if any of them were. 

For all she knew, she’d been escorted to the room so that hospital staff could avoid confrontation. 

If they knew what she’d done to Vox, she maybe wouldn’t have blamed them for wanting to avoid her wrath.

Her intrusive voice whispered that Alastor had been DOA.

Were there even chaplains in Hell? And if there were, would they be sent to speak with someone like Grace over what they would view as the timely demise of someone like the Radio Demon?

If word of his passing got out, would there be celebration in the streets?

Grace buried her face in her hands with a loud sob, willing that horrible voice to shut the fuck up already.

When her mind finally quieted some time later, she rubbed the tears from her burning eyes and glanced up at the screen for its useless updates.

Three patients now in prep, one in the O.R. Four in recovery. Grace’s gaze traveled down the list, trying to see if there was any indication of an arrival time. There was nothing.

The current time was listed in bold white digits along the bottom of the screen: 3:07 PM.

And below that, the date: 

2.14.2025

Her head fell back and smacked against the wall behind her chair. She groaned.

Are you even shitting me, it’s Valentine’s Day?!

What a fucking way to spend it.

Not that such holidays would matter to a demon like Alastor, who had no romantic bones in his body, and wouldn’t know romance if it kneeled at his feet in submission and sucked what remained of his dark soul straight out of his cock.

An hour dragged by. Then two.

Grace had ample time to lament that she hadn’t gotten the opportunity to fuck with Vox as she’d really wanted to. Like leaping from his face and then back into it. Torment him with the possibility of being stuck in an infinite loop where she’d interrupt his every intimate moment, hear every private conversation. If he wouldn’t have released her, he’d never be a second without her—in the most miserable way possible.

The patient information on the monitor in the corner of the waiting room updated every so often. Maybe this was all just randomly generated strings of nonsense characters to give patients’ loved ones some sense of progression during an otherwise intolerable wait.

Two patients in prep, two in the O.R. Four in recovery.

Five patients in prep, none in the O.R., six in recovery.

Grace was going to go even crazier at this rate so she dropped her gaze to her lap, only now noticing that her hands, shins, and shoes were all coated with Alastor’s blood. It had to have crusted in her hair, too, from when he’d loomed over her. She had to look a fright to the souls she and the patient access representative past in the halls.

This whole nightmare couldn’t possibly have been any more her fault and tearing her attention from the monitor proved far worse than watching it.

An owl Demon doctor dressed in blood-spattered scrubs stepped into the waiting room. 

Gotta wonder what she did to be sent to Hell. Grace thought back to a story she’d heard about a doctor who didn’t give her patient anesthetic to fix the collapsed lung his girlfriend had given him after finding out that her patient had assaulted said girlfriend, first.

The doctor sat in an empty chair across the waiting room from Grace. The badge on her lanyard stated: Dr. Hu.

Grace held her breath.

Finally, Dr. Hu greeted her: “You here for the Radio Demon?”

She couldn’t find voice enough to reply but suspected the anguish in her expression was affirmation enough. 

“He was just moved to recovery. First soul I’ve ever seen with an Angelic Steel wound like that to survive it. Kinda makes me think God does exist. That blade went through his heart and punctured his lung.”

Grace nearly vomited hearing this. She bent forward until her head was between her knees.

Dr. Hu continued despite Grace’s obvious distress. “But by the time we got him into surgery, he was already healing.”

Grace lifted her head slowly and took a deep, steadying breath before asking, “Can I see him?”

“Well, he’s still pretty heavily sedated. The anesthesiologist was prooooobably a little more generous with the anesthetic than was necessary. But … Radio Demon, y’know? We weren’t about to take our chances with such a volatile soul even if he was essentially dead upon arrival.”

She shoved that thought straight out of her mind to keep from falling to pieces again, but this time with an audience. “I’d like to be with him when he wakes.”

“What?”

She repeated slowly, “I want. To be there. When he wakes.”

Dr. Hu shrugged, her feathers ruffling in the motion. “Your funeral. We can’t save you from his radio show, you know. We’re physicians, not God.”

With a weak laugh, Grace replied, “I guess that’s a chance I’ll just have to take.”

“Aha.” The doctor studied her for a moment as she got to her clawed feet. “You must be Little Fawn.”

Grace felt like all the air had been knocked from her lungs. “Huh?”

“I’ll have his nurse come get you.”

“Wait. Please.” Grace stared up at the doctor as she turned toward the door. “Were you the one to operate on him?”

“Sure was.” She chuckled stiffly. “Didn’t have that on my 2025 Bingo card!”

“Thank you.”

Shortly after the doctor left, not one, but two nurses arrived in the doorway and beckoned for Grace to follow them.

They guided her to a recovery room and left her there in the doorway.

As they retreated, they speculated quietly over if this was the woman the Radio Demon was reading those romantic poems for on all those broadcasts over the last few weeks. Doctor Hu, one of them commented, was quite insistent that this was the ‘Little Fawn.’

They said her nickname in hushed tones like she was some sort of celebrity or some creature of myth and legend, like she was a god-damned deity.

Ignore it. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Better than being known as a porn star. No offense, Angel, but better you than me. Having inadvertently become one, Grace learned that that vocation was not for her.

She turned toward the inside of the room but remained rooted in the doorway, holding her breath. 

Alastor lay motionless in the hospital bed, looking horribly wrong. Vulnerable. She hated seeing him like that and knew if he knew how he looked, he’d hate it just as much as she did—if not more.

Certainly more.

And yet Alastor smiled just like always, his ears down and tucked against the pillow behind his bed, glassy-eyed stare not-exactly-focused on the plain, white ceiling panels above him.

His smile was either the result of the sedative, painkillers, or he was really damn committed to his whole smiling bit. Of maybe he was feeling relief about still being here in spite of everyone and everything.

It could also just as easily have been any combination of those things. Whatever it was, she found the familiarity in that smile comforting.

He’s high as a kite being flown by someone in a hot air balloon. He’s probably so high that he’s in a totally different circle of Hell. She was a bit jealous that she, too, wasn’t zonked out of her mind, body, and soul. This whole experience would be a lot more palatable that way.

Old habits, it seemed, did die hard: while he hadn’t yet acknowledged her presence, Grace observed his vital signs monitor from afar. 67 beats per minute. Blood pressure 115/65. She took consolation in that. 

Normal. Normal is good. Grace exhaled quietly. Normal is miraculous considering how he was before the paramedics got to him.

Alastor’s uneven, glassy-eyed stare finally swung toward her. It suddenly looked far less glassy-eyed and his smile turned from dazed to genuine. His gaze, however, somehow remained uneven. Why?

Grace’s eyes stung with tears.

I almost lost him. 

Oh, my god, I’ve never loved someone so much, and I was almost gonna have to spend the rest of my afterlife without him. Eternity with a broken heart. 

Hey, dipshit: tell him you love him.

“You know, you really should smile more,” he croaked. And to no surprise, the radio filter was off his voice.

They intubated him. Of course they intubated him. Grace would have been surprised if they hadn’t. Regardless, the confirmation of that reality made her die all over again. 

Her voice shaking, she managed to reply weakly, “Give me reason to.”

“It’s rude to lurk in doorways.”

Why was she so afraid of being near him now? She leaned against the doorjamb, crossing her arms over her chest, hoping she came across as calm and collected but needing the doorjamb to support her cooked-noodle legs. “As I seem to recall, that etiquette applied only to creepy men.”

“I’ve also heard if you stand in doorways for too long, you get ten years of bad sex.”

She looked away, biting down hard enough on her lip to draw blood. 

“And I, for one, won’t stand for that.”

Despite everything, she couldn’t resist smiling. “Fucking asshole,” she muttered. His sheer audacity to make light during such a dark time.

“Grace.” Raspy, weak. 

But that tone: she knew it all too well. She loved that tone and despite the current situation, she broke out in goosebumps because of it.

He finished the reprimand: “That was rude.”

She didn’t wait for him to demand an apology. “Sorry.”

Tell him you love him, dumbass.

“Come over here.”

I can’t. I’m terrified. 

When she didn’t move fast enough for his liking, Alastor repeated—equally raspy, equally weakly, yet equally sternly: “Come. Here. Grace.”

After further hesitation and a steadying breath, Grace closed the hospital room door behind herself and reluctantly approached him, feeling like her very presence would somehow shatter him, and the closer she got, the more damage he’d weather.

She realized why he looked so weird: his monocle had been set on the tray table beside the requisite styrofoam cup of ice and plastic pitcher of water. Grace picked it up and gingerly positioned it on his cheek where it belonged, immediately confirming that it did, to some degree, help him with his lazy eye. “That’s better.” 

Nothing’s better. I love you so much it’s killing me.

His gaze locked on hers. “You have such lovely eyes.”

Her lip trembled and she couldn’t even muster a single word of gratitude for his compliment.

He reached out for her with his left hand. The sight of the IV secured to the inside of his elbow nauseated her; not because she was squeamish by any stretch of the imagination, but because it was in him, and served as another unwelcome reminder of his current condition.

Take his hand. Take it, don’t give him any reason to ask about this. So she did, as gingerly as possible. And fucking tell him you fucking love him for fucks sake.

In her silence, he rasped, “That hurt.”

She tried to recoil—assuming he was referring to her touch—but his hand closed around hers. He glanced pointedly down at his chest.

“Well, yeah,” Grace whispered. “Angelic Steel pierced your heart. You had a collapsed lung. No shit that hurt.” It was entirely possible the treatment for the latter hurt worse than the injury, itself.

“It still hurts.”

It still hurt, and this was even while he likely had every painkiller Heaven, Earth, and Hell had to offer pumping straight into his veins. In addition to sedative enough to take down a bull elephant. From the sounds of it, enough sedative to take down every bull elephant in Africa.

She replied softly, “It’s Angelic Steel. It’s gonna hurt—”

He rested his right hand over his heart. “I meant emotionally.”

And now Grace felt as though she’d had her heart impaled by an Angelic Steel arrow. She glanced around the room, looking for something to ground her, anything to ground her. She found nothing but the standard hospital room equipment. 

Her gaze once more fell upon the vital signs monitor. 96 BPM.  That caused her pulse to increase, in turn.

Tell him. Do it. Tell him now and then call a nurse for that pulse. C’mon, you coward. Fucking say the fucking words: I love you, Alastor. 

How will you live with yourself if you lose him before you can tell him? 

That’s too hard! 

Okay, four words are too much? How about three? Just ‘I love you.’

Grace was panting.

“Might help if you kissed it.”

Grace’s brain fizzled to static.

And now I’m hallucinating?

Cool, cool. That’s fine. This is fine. Everything is fine.

She choked back a sob.

Nothing is fine!

“I know I owe my afterlife to you,” said Alastor. “I know that as bad as this is, it would be so much worse without your intervention. No amount of spite would have kept me here.”

All moisture wicked from Grace’s mouth. She shrugged, unable to find anything else to say. Her voice strained, she replied, “Yeah, well, that’s neither here nor there.” Just like those words she’d spoken. 

I can’t fall to pieces in front of him. I can’t show him how I felt. How I feel. He needs me to be strong right now.

No; he needs to hear that you love him.

“I’m sorry I didn't apologize,” Alastor said quietly.

Grace fought back tears. “That's still not an apology for betraying me, you asshole.”

Good job telling him you love him. Bravo.

“I never meant to betray you. That was meant to be a part of the games we play. I never would have done that had I known what would come of it. Grace … I wouldn’t have made our deal with that as your stipulation if I’d had any intention of ever breaking it.”

“How was it a part of our games?” She again tried pulling her hand from his. His grip tightened in response.

“You called me a dingbat on New Year’s Eve and then suggested the next morning that I punish you for it.”

“I meant spank me, you dingbat, not reject me!”

“How was I to know that? You never told me what rejection does to you.” 

“I said it hurts too much.”

“Everyone feels that way about rejection. I didn’t know it would literally break your heart.”

Grace struggled to swallow. In her silence, he continued, “So I was going to let you pursue me and I’d reject you when you finally did, which would lead to you begging me. I was going to make you do something degrading. Maybe make you kiss my feet. My tail. Lick the ground I walk on. And then I’d give you everything you wanted … That kind of game.”

“Oh.” She took a steadying breath. Wow, I fucked that up. I was so focused on the things he was keeping from me that I never realized I kept the most important thing about myself from him. This whole damn thing was my fault, all along. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“Please … kiss it?”

Grace met his gaze but didn’t move, didn’t say a word. She wasn’t even breathing by that point.

“There’s no painkiller in all of creation that can hold a candle to the press of your lips.”

What little air remaining in her body whooshed from her lungs as she whispered, “Ohgod.” After a statement like that, she supposed Valentine’s Day might mean something to that Demon, after all.

Alastor’s smile turned watery and he guided her hand to press against his chest. “Please? Don’t make me beg, Little Fawn.”

At that, Grace wept. “Beg, then.” She gasped between sobs and a failed, attempted smile. “Beg for me to help you.”

“I want you to kiss me more than I’ve wanted anything in my entire existence. Please? At least briefly? I’d bow at your feet but … the doctors probably wouldn’t recommend that kind of movement fresh out of surgery.”

She brought the back of his hand to her lips. “Oh, Alastor,” she whispered against his skin.

He twisted his hand within her grip, cradling her face and brushing her tears away with the pad of his thumb.

I love you so much I can’t stand it. Grace thought that with such conviction, she was sure he’d somehow heard it.

But again, telepathy seemed to fail her. Probably for the best; these words should be spoken, not just thought.

“Ease this pain?” asked Alastor, his voice soft.

She nodded, pulling her hand from his.

Alastor cupped Grace’s cheek as she reached for the blanket covering his chest. For lack of better conversation—because I love you just wouldn’t suffice, for whatever incomprehensible reason—she murmured, “I’ll have you know this is incredibly unsanitary.”

“Unsanitary behavior never stopped you from touching me before.”

“Sir?” She pressed her lips together hard to keep from smiling. With a sniffle, she reprimanded, “This is a hospital, not the rug in front of your bedroom fireplace.” 

He chuckled and immediately followed that with a visible wince.

Grace finally pulled down the cover to expose Alastor’s chest. She didn’t know what to expect.

Reality was simultaneously better and worse than she anticipated. They’d dressed the wound and whatever incisions they’d had to make to repair it. Duh, Grace. Fucking idiot. Nah they’d just leave that hole wide open. Jesus Christ what is wrong with you?

What’s wrong is that I’m so in love, I can’t think straight anymore. Reason has left the building.

With a shaky breath, she leaned over the bed railing, pressing her lips softly to his chest over his heart.

He inhaled slowly, deeply, and then quietly sighed. “Thank you. That helps.”

“It’s the least I can do,” she replied, kissing him there once more for good measure.

“You make me so dizzy, Little Fawn.”

Despite herself, Grace laughed. “Oh, Spots, that’s just because of all the sedatives.”

He grinned up at her, a look in his eyes she didn’t recognize. “No, it’s not.”

She was unable to reply. He gazed at her in silence, leading her to wonder how she must have appeared to him in that moment, haloed by the hospital lights above her.

Grace allowed herself a moment of weakness and she reached out, cradling his face by the cheek. He turned his head to snuggle into her palm.

Could it be for all those years, what the Radio Demon really ever needed was for someone to treat him as if he wasn’t actually a complete and total prick? 

No; it can’t be that simple.

Alastor said out of the blue, “I was so wrong about you.”

Grace swallowed hard, once more feeling her eyes welling with tears. “How so?”

“You’re not a masterpiece.”

“Oh,” she replied weakly, her voice shaking. “Odd time to want to hurt my feelings, don’t you think?”

“You’re perfection, sweetheart; there isn’t a single thing I could think I would ever want to change about you.”

Grace whimpered feebly. I love you to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. Any further conversation lodged in her throat.

And so he just stared in that heavy-lidded, thoroughly sedated way before covering her hand with his where it rested on the railing of the hospital bed. “Do you miss being a mother?”

Grace’s eyes popped open. What the fuck kind of question is that? It took several moments before she could think of an answer that was both honest and—with any luck—wouldn’t upset a Mama’s Boy who was fresh out of surgery to repair an Angelic Steel wound that would have permanently killed any other sinner. 

“I loved my children,” she said softly. “I’d have killed for them. But … I was too young, too selfish, and too self-centered to have kids. My children deserved better than a mother like me.”

“I very much doubt that.”

Her lip trembled. Did she let him have this delusion?

“You were a nurse. Selfish people don’t become nurses.” His cheeks darkened. “I’ve seen the things they have to do in their line of work. Selfish people don’t do those things.”

Not unless that was their way of atoning for being a living, breathing piece of shit. It was decidedly best to let him have his delusions. Maybe someday if she ever gathered the courage, she’d tell him the truth. Or maybe she could let this soul have probably the last remaining shred of any sort of innocence he had left in him. “I miss my children terribly and … if I never get redeemed, then I pray I never see them again.”

Alastor squeezed her hand. “You just proved it.”

“Proved what?”

“Just how selfless you are.”

Grace’s heart wrenched and it took several moments to regain her composure enough to speak again. “Alastor …”

“Yes, my darling?”

I love you. She inhaled on a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?”

“For all the trouble I’ve caused you.”

“Don’t apologize for that. You’re the best kind of trouble there is.”

Grace once again put on her best imitation of Alastor’s dour tone and told him, “Lies.” Before he could say anything to the contrary, she leaned over and pressed her lips to his.

A series of gentle taps at the door interrupted them and Grace straightened with a guilty blush in time to see the door creep open and a face peer around its edge.

She had dark copper irises with slit-shaped pupils, an overall bronze skin tone with darker brown and black markings like an undomesticated tabby cat. Her feline ears, however, were exceedingly fluffy and more rounded at the top than the typical house cat’s.

They looked more like an apex predator’s ears. A big cat’s.

She’s a cougar!

“Time for vitals,” the cougar demon announced in a sing-song way, far more blithely than anyone had any right to be at that time of day and in that setting.

Grace hopped out of the way as the nurse swept into the room to do her job, a very thick and long black-tipped tail swishing out from beneath the bottom hem of her long, flared scrub top.

“I’m Alexis, by-the-way,” the nurse introduced herself to Grace with a faded Bostonian accent as she leaned over the railing of Alastor’s bed and inspected the dressing, her ample chest pressed against his arm. “He already knows me,” she added with a purposeful glance at the Radio Demon.

Grace’s eyes darkened, a scowl building in the back of her throat.

“Oh, settle down, Hoodsie,” Alexis said, casting a flirtatious smile at Grace while squeezing her tits together with her upper arms. “He’s not my type.”

Weird time and place for flirtation. Focus on your patient, maybe? But that, along with a million and one ‘I love you’s stayed lodged in her throat.

“’K,” Grace replied feebly. She watched Alexis work and felt a tug in her chest; all things equal, she did miss this job. Even the hard parts of it. So perhaps she wasn’t doing it solely to atone for being a royal piece of shit.

“I should also mention that visiting hours are over at nine. You’ve got a half hour before you’ve gotta leave, Little Fawn.”

“Uh—my name’s Grace, actually,” she corrected with a crack in her voice. It was just so damn strange to hear anyone else call her that.

“And Grace, actually, isn’t leaving my side,” Alastor growled, raspy and weak. He turned a radio-dialed stare on Alexis.

Grace hustled to the opposite side of his bed, placing a firm hand on his arm. “Al. Don’t.”

It wasn’t so much that Grace didn’t want him intimidating or alienating someone whose sole job it was to help him; in actuality, she didn’t want him exerting energy that was better spent on healing a nasty wound, thus extending his stay in the hospital.

Alexis glanced between the two. “Well, y’know … if you decide to sneak into the bathroom when I make my rounds to clear out visitors and I don’t catch you in there, I guess there’s really nothing I can do about it then, is there?” She winked, and excused herself from the room.

“I’ll be right back,” Grace whispered to Alastor as she hurried after Alexis.

“Little Fawn—” Alastor tried to stop her.

“I promise.”

She slipped out of the room and caught Alexis just a few steps down the hospital corridor. “Hey. Um. I’ve got a—an awkward favor to ask.”

“Hmm?” Alexis turned to Grace but kept her distance.

“Please … don’t let it get out that Alastor’s here. Don’t let others know what he’s been through. I don’t want his reputation compromised for being scary as all fuck because of something stupid I did.”

Alexis blinked. And then she laughed. “You shittin’ me?”

Please don’t make me pull full-demon-form on you … for whatever that would accomplish, anyway. “No?”

“You two are jointly the single scariest thing I’ve ever seen.”

It was Grace’s turn to blink but unlike Alexis, she didn’t follow it with a laugh. “Huh?”

“You … haven’t seen the news, have you?”

“No, can’t say that I have. Kinda had other things on my mind? Wait. Why?”

Alexis snorted. “I don’t think there’s a single sinner in Hell at this point who isn’t scared shitless of RadioFawn. The two of you together are more terrifying than getting the message that the other Pentagram City hospital just went on bypass during Extermination Day. He’s completely unhinged and you’re probably an even bigger lunatic for loving him! Please don’t—and I can’t stress this enough—take this the wrong way, but if you were a flock of birds, you’d be a few crows shy of a murder.”

“Oh, I—I don’t love him—”

Alexis laughed and patted Grace’s shoulder with a patronizing, “Sure you don’t, honey.” She turned away and waved over her shoulder. “Use that call button if the Radio Demon needs anything. But also? … Don’t let him need anything.”

Next update will be Sunday, Feb 22nd. I'll see you then, deer friends!