Chapter 4: From Leeches to Lightning Bugs and Every French Delicacy in Between

Sleep eluded Grace while she was unable to get Alastor’s description of his childhood summer activities out of her head. Because somehow feeding small frogs through a meat grinder was worse than hacking numerous people to bits. Eating them. Tearing souls apart and broadcasting their screams for everyone to hear. But apparently Grace’s threshold for human decency was amphibian mutilation.

She could justify that those people probably deserved what they got. The frogs? The snails and ants? Not at all.

Well, okay. Maybe the ants did, too. The Argentine ants in Southern California had a taste for Grace every bit as much as Alastor’s leeches, and contrary to what a Google search once attested, the bites she sustained between her toes did, in fact, hurt. No, y’know what? Fuck those ants. Fuck every last one of ‘em with  a lit match.

In loving Alastor, Grace felt like she was betraying the memory of Lily and Hoperbole, a pair of Amazon milk frogs she had as pets for nearly a decade. The more she thought of it, the more disturbing the disparity between Alastor and her became.

At nine, Alastor was torturing and killing these poor little creatures. 

At ten, Grace had created the ultimate 30-gallon BioActive vivarium that could rival the local zoo’s displays and had gone so far as to have a small wedding to celebrate the nuptials of Mr. and Mrs. Padd.

In retrospect, they were probably Mrs. and Mrs. Padd, and Grace had been exceedingly progressive for the era, encouraging a lesbian union.

She wanted to assume her differences from Alastor were the result of drastically different upbringings. If what Vox had told her was true, Alastor’s sadistic disposition could well have been the result of his father’s abuse—in both nature and nurture contexts. But it wasn’t like Grace had an ideal upbringing, either.

Visits with Grampa Bedgood were probably the only good thing about her adolescence. Not only did those visits remove her from within the reach of cousins who didn’t seem to believe inbreeding could be an actual, real concern, but Grampa Bedgood was also who got her started with her frogs.

And of course, she would never forget sitting on his knee and listening to his old radio with him.

For the first time since they’d started sharing a bed, Grace had slipped out from beneath the covers before he did, hating herself because after she finally gathered the courage to convince him to put a bed in his room, she couldn’t even last the full night in it with him.

She’d sneaked to her room around four in the morning and proceeded to curl up in her own bed and cry for a bit. After another failed attempt to sleep, Grace bathed, dressed for the day, and cursed her black eyes a bit before heading downstairs.

“Wow, Grace. You look like shit!” And now Angel Dust greeted her with a blunt, cruel, and astute observation.

“Yeah, well.” Grace rubbed her eyelids brusquely although she knew it was merely exacerbating the puffiness and dark circles. “If you’d had a night like I had, you’d look like shit, too.”

Kofax popped an earbud out of her left ear, peering at Grace over the edge of her laptop screen from across the dining room table. “You okay, Amazing Grace?”

“Do I look okay? No. I look like shit. Ergo, I am not okay. I’m shitty. Existentially shitty.”

The cyberpunk fox shrugged. “That tracks.” 

Moments later, Grace’s phone buzzed in her pocket.

One disgustingly chipper Charlie Morningstar bounced into the dining room. “Good mor—oh, Grace! What happened?”

“It’s not important.” Grace took a long, deep breath and exhaled it in a short, sharp burst. “I need coffee.”

“Can I get in on a coffee, too?” Angel Dust chimed in.

Charlie smiled at Grace, her forehead creased in concern. “I’ll see what I can do for you two.” She glanced at the Hacker Demon. “Kofax?”

“Nah I’m good,” Kofax replied with a wave. “But if you see Husk, tell him I want a Bloody Mary.” 

“Oh,” Charlie said. “Okay.” She excused herself from the dining room.

“Kind of early for a drink like that, isn’t it?” Grace asked.

Kofax cast a pointed glance at her. “I can drink all the booze in Hell right now. I actually slept last night.”

Grace typed out four different sentences trying to put her feelings into words and when none of them rung true, she gave up and stuffed her phone back into her pocket without any further explanation.

Kofax got the hint to leave her be.

Alastor strode by the dining room without so much as glancing in.

Angel Dust and Kofax exchanged silent looks. Grace swallowed a cringe. 

She pulled her phone back out of her pocket and distracted herself by playing Clusterduck.

Several notifications buzzed through. Judging by the look on Kofax’s face in Grace’s periphery, they were from her.

Ignore that notification.

Hatch an egg.

Ignore that notification, too.

Hatch two more eggs—what the fuck unholy mutant duck is this?!

Grace’s skin prickled. The feeling was unusually spicy and she clenched her whole body to keep from shuddering. When she lowered her gaze from her phone, she caught sight of shadows gathering around her feet; she shuffled them vigorously against the dining room carpet, attempting to shoo them away from her.

That was weird. Sure, Alastor had stepped up beside her but somehow those shadows hadn’t felt like they were his curling around her. She couldn’t explain how or why but they felt like they had originated from her own body.

Alastor leaned over her shoulder and set a full mug of dark brown liquid in front of her before taking the vacant seat beside hers and scooting it unnecessarily close.

Out of the corner of her eye, Grace caught one of Kofax’s eyebrows darting upward.

Angel Dust stared in silence.

Grace calmly set her phone down in favor of the drink.

“You might feel more rested if you didn’t leave our bed at two in the morning, you know,” Alastor remarked casually.

Angel Dust’s stare turned into a silent gape.

“It was four,” Grace snapped without looking at Alastor. “I deserve extra credit for the two additional hours I stuck that nightmare out.”

Now both of Kofax’s eyebrows were sky-high.

“Next time, don’t badger me with questions if you’re not prepared for the answers. Unless you want me lying to you.”

Grace refused to lose this — whatever this was — she was doing with Alastor right now. Was this an argument? Was this flirting between two supremely fucked-up souls? She didn’t respond to him, instead bringing the cup to her face, cautiously sniffing it.

“What is this?” she asked. Essence of ground poison dart frog with whipped leopard gecko ganache for garnishment?

“It’s New Orleans style coffee. I figured you could use it after the night you had.”

Oh. Shit. No. Please don’t do this, Radio Demon. Don’t be so considerate after those heinous things you said last night. Let me think of you as a monster for at least a little while longer?

Buzz.

Buzz!

BUZZ!

Not that the phone’s vibrations could actually get more desperate but Grace was pretty certain they were doing exactly that. Without having tasted the coffee, Grace set the mug down in favor of her phone. She then moved it to her right beside her thigh where Alastor couldn’t see the screen and opened her texts.

Alastor took a sip from his ‘OH DEER’ mug, glancing at Grace with a cocked eyebrow. “At least taste it before you determine that it’s poison.”

Knowing he watched her closely, Grace set her phone face-down on the table and lifted her mug with both hands. She couldn’t decide whether it would be better to like or hate the coffee he’d given her.

She took the teeniest, tiniest, tentative little taste she could muster.

It was coffee but also somehow not-coffee, with the standard nutty taste reminiscent of java, but with an added woody quality that evoked memories of the fine cigar boxes Grampa Bedgood kept beside his old radio, and the homemade crème brûlée her mother made on special occasions.

She liked it.

Point of fact, she liked it far more than she wanted to let on and so she savored its bouquet of complex flavors under the guise of reluctant sipping.

With the rim of the mug pressed to her lips, Grace glanced at Alastor out of the corner of her eye.

He watched her with a triumphant grin.

Dammit. He won. He knows he’s won.

She bristled and grumbled nonsense and continued to enjoy his New Orleans style coffee.

“If I have another bad night because you do something stupid—”

Alastor scowled.

“—does that mean you’ll make me another one of these?”

With his eyes still narrowed on her, Alastor opened his mouth to reply.

“Oh holy shit holy shit holy shit oh my god holy shit you guys!” Kofax cried from behind her laptop screen. “The Vees are doing a radio broadcast!”

Alastor’s head whipped toward Kofax. “What?” he snapped through clenched teeth and the thick static of his filtered voice.

“The Vees are doing a radio broadcast! From Vee Tower!”

Charlie stepped back into the dining room with Grace’s and Angel Dust’s requested cups of ristretto. Hot on her tail was Husker with Kofax’s Bloody Mary. And behind them was Vaggie with a big serving plate of breakfast pastries, and Niffty pulling up the rear.

And Lucifer. Because of course he’d be there. 

Alastor growled his direction audibly. 

Grace took a steadying breath, focusing on her cup of coffee as her face heated up. She’d probably never not be embarrassed by the things she’d said to the King of Hell the first time they’d met.

“Well, to be more accurate, Valentino is doing a radio broadcast,” Kofax augmented. “And you’ll never in a million years guess what it’s about!”

“Could that have been any more of a click-bait-y headline?” Angel Dust asked as Husk sat beside him with a warm smile in greeting.

Kofax glanced at Angel, gesturing at her laptop. “You know about this broadcast, don’t you?”

Angel shook his head, confusion visible in his eyes.

“I don’t think it’s a stretch of the imagination to guess it’s something disgustingly pornographic,” Vaggie commented, helping Niffty pass around the breakfast.

“No seriously—” Kofax gasped, her eyes popping open as her gaze flicked to Grace. “Holy shit holy shit!” She whipped the buds from her ears and frenetically tapped the volume key on her laptop.

Grace’s eyes widened, her heart leaping into her throat. No—no way—

A live radio-filtered voice then inquired, “Why is this so familiar? I feel I’ve heard it somewhere before.”

Grace covered her flaming face to prevent it from setting fire to the dining room tablecloth.

“What in the actual literal fuck!” Angel Dust gasped.

“You don’t know?” Kofax replied. “This is a word-for-word recreation of RD’s and Gracenote’s hot mic moment after I took down the Vees’ tech empire!”

“Ohhhhhhh shiiiiiiit,” Grace whimpered, still keeping her hands over her face. Whether or not she could see them, she knew everyone was staring at her.

“Oh my fucking god, Grace! Did you never tell him?” Kofax cried. “Does he not know?”

“Does it look like I did?” Grace replied from behind her hands with not-so-casual panic. “Does it look like he does?!”

Grace moved her hands from her face to her lips and screamed loud and hard into her hands. In the moment, that had been sexy. Even immediately after the fact, knowing that souls around Pentagram City had heard it was exciting. Now? 

Utterly mortifying. The mortification was total. All-encompassing and lethal.

“How dare they!” Absolutely appalled, Alastor-in-reality growled, “That’s slander! I would never say anything like that!”

Kofax looked at him with a single arched eyebrow and a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth.

Hoping to deflect some of the attention away from him and support Alastor’s assertions of slander, Grace interjected with a scoff, “Well, I see they're taking some creative liberties with this program.”

“Ummmmmmm …” Kofax cleared her throat. “Check your phone, my dear, sweet, naïve little Goodness Gracious.”

“Excuse-the-hell me!” Grace cried, smacking her palms on the dining room table and rattling everyone’s mugs seated in their accompanying saucers. “First they slander Al and now me? I did not gag! I am an expert cock-sucker!”

That got quite the reaction from around the table.

Alastor, smiling as always, still somehow looked like he wanted to up and die all over again.

Kofax burst out laughing. “Seriously Gracie I’m gonna piss myself! You just killed me all over again!”

The red-faced Radio Demon shot up from his seat and said stiffly, “Excuse me.”

“Alastor—” Grace turned, reaching for him.

He didn’t slow down or glance back.

Kofax muted her laptop in the lingering silence following Alastor’s departure.

“Soooo …” Angel Dust drawled.

Grace dug her fingertips into her closed eyes and gave a combination cringe and sigh. A crigh, if you will. Whatever that lazy ‘so’ prefaced, it wouldn’t be good for her.

“You and your dom have an ‘our’ bed.”

Grace lowered her head and muttered, “You all—everyone here and in Pentagram City and lord only knows how far and wide—know that we’ve had sex, and yet … that surprises you?”

“You have sex. You share a bed that is something Alastor freely referred to, unprompted, as ‘our bed’ in front of everyone and yet you can’t classify your relationship. And you don’t love him and you think he doesn’t love you.”

“Angel, please! Not this, not now.” Not in front of everyone. “Preferably, not ever.”

Buzz.

Grace snatched her phone from the table. What the fuck now!

Because if Grace didn’t make light of the situation, she’d collapse beneath its gravity.

How's Grace going to get out of this mess, deer friends? Tune in next Sunday to find out!

Chapter 6: Cashing in a Favor