Tracy was out at a coffee shop, studying for what would hopefully be the last finals she ever had to take, when a letter, written in gold on red paper, appeared by her hand.
She ignored it until she stood to get more coffee, and dropped the note into the recycling on the way.
Another appeared moments later.
She threw that one away too.
The third one served as a coaster when her coffee cup proved to be less than water-tight.
The fourth one mopped up the remains of the spilled coffee.
The fifth one joined the first several in the trash.
She had been finding the red notes in her things for the last two days, and was having none of the demonic idea of letter-sending. It wasn’t from one of hers, and so she wasn’t interested. If they wanted her attention, they could come over and introduce themselves properly.
And if they caused problems, well, it was Glowbat, working as a barista behind the coffee counter, and he had been brewing the coffee with holy water since Tracy arrived. Zuk was beside him, cheerfully flirting with anyone who bought something, and Achel must have been taking lessons from Blake, because everyone he spoke to bought a cookie.
Low grade temptations. Tracy smiled and let them have their fun. They were only here because she mentioned that some help with the rent would be nice.
So naturally, all sixteen cats went off and found jobs in under an hour. She would be bothered, except that they all seemed genuinely happy with the work, and the money served to buy them the goodies they were finally brave enough to buy themselves. Tracy approved completely and insisted on each one of them getting something nice for themselves out of every paycheck.
It wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it. On nineteen incomes, counting Tracy’s freelance work and Angelika’s Heavenly stipend, they had more than enough to go around.
It was Trill, holding another of the letters. She looked scared, and Tracy hugged her until she took a slow breath and calmed down. Poor Trill. She was shy and easy to spook. Tracy made a point of snuggling her a lot. Whenever Blake didn’t beat her to it, anyway. Trill was his favorite of the Cats.
“Who’s it from?” she asked when Trill was in a state to answer. “Did they threaten you?”
“No, Mistress,” Trill said softly. She was honestly the best spy among the Cats. She was so quiet that she tended to go unnoticed even when she was in plain sight. It was a particular talent, and Tracy, now that she was making herself a target, was using to her advantage. “I don’t know who it was from. It appeared in my pocket.”
“Okay,” Tracy said and took the note, before looking around, her newly-changed vision useful for spotting demonic presence in the room. There were her Cats, and she hadn’t noticed Roux and Pookie in the corner but she smiled when she saw them. But there was also a barely-there man-shaped glimmer in the farthest table from the bar. “Go off to the others. I need to see a man about a letter.”
So saying, she neatly folded the note into a perfect paper airplane, caught the man-glimmer’s eye, and lofted it into the trash without getting up.
Trill looked between her, the empty space where she was staring, and made herself scarce.
Tracy went back to her books and waited to see if whoever-it-was would actually show up to have a conversation like a reasonable person.
Demons. All drama. Letters. Really.
The chair across from her scraped on the floor, and Tracy didn’t look up.
“It’s not nice to scare my Cats,” she said mildly, highlighted one more paragraph, and closed the book. “Now, what do you want so bad that you sent six notes to me?”
The man across from her was polished and gorgeous, but now that she got a good look at him, she didn’t think he was a demon. Or, he wasn’t precisely a demon. He looked different than the other demons she knew.
There was a sense about him, of immeasurable size, like he didn’t quite fit in his skin. Tracy hadn’t noticed anything like that around the demons she knew, but then, her demons were all relatively minor or, in Blake’s case, didn’t bother with a monstrous true form. And her brush with Astaroth was before she knew how to spot a demon.
He ran a fingertip around his coffee mug and considered her for a while. Tracy dumped more sugar into her coffee and stared him down. If she was doing this, tossing her name into a war that had been raging for millennia, she was going to do it right.
Maybe that semester of game theory classes was worth the money after all.
“You’ve taken something of mine,” he said finally, voice low and lined with silk. “I wanted to see for myself the mortal who thinks to challenge Hell.”
“I’m not challenging anyone,” Tracy said, and stirred her sugar into her coffee even as she considered praying to Gabriel. Instead, she caught Roux’s eye and nodded once. He vanished out the door at a run. The rest of the Cats were terrified, huddled together and ashy-grey with fear. That alone told her who this must be. “Nice to meet you, Belial. I hear you took a vacation recently.”
As it turns out, rent is really high in Heaven. It’s not great in Hell either. An angel and a demon come to an agreement that works for them both.
Their human housemate still hasn’t decided whether or not to help them, or kick them all out of her house. After all, Grad school is hard enough without the Great War making it worse.
Sparklers and Demon Smiles
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