II
“Charlie! I’m here to—why is that mutt still here?!”
Charlie shot up from the couch and blinked his eyes a few times.
He adjusted his bent glasses and ruffled his messy mop of dirty blonde curls in a feeble attempt at making himself more presentable.
Lucky didn’t know why. Charlie was always a mess, and dead.
He didn’t need his glasses, his hair would always fall back the way it rested when he’d passed away, and he’d always have the pale complexion of a corpse—though that had been the human’s normal hue before he was punctured by the sharp point of a sports car.
The need to uphold the picture-perfect appearance he’d been required to maintain in life still held him in a vice grip.
In a small way, Lucky understood that pressure.
The hellhound lifted its heads and placed them on the arm of the sofa. The left made a pitiful sound, drool dripping onto the floor as it whined.
“I told you to get rid of that thing,” Lucky reminded.
Charlie pulled his shoulders in.
“Charlie—”
“I’m lonely.”
Lucky’s hands slid off his hips. Of course he was.
How could he not be? This was jarring, terrifying, and overwhelming, and Lucky had mostly kept the priest locked up in the high-rise out of fear of the populace finding out a holy man was living next door until that holy glimmer faded.
True, priests and folks claiming to be good Christian souls found their way to Hell more often than one would think, but they had a reason to be here.
Charlie didn’t. His soul was too pure, he’d be snatched up effortlessly and end up devoured if he tripped up.
Knowing Charlie, it would take him all of two-seconds to find a way to completely blow his cover if the wrong person asked who he was.
Thankfully, the residents around the business center of Hell didn’t pay human thralls much mind, but even the most professional of them would stumble if such a fountain of holy energy walked through the door.
It had only been a few weeks since Lucky had started to try and find Charlie work.
His radiant glow was lessening, and Lucky hoped it would mean he didn’t have to worry so much about constantly keeping an eye on him.
It proved to be a bad idea on all fronts.
Charlie was on the verge of crying again. He needed to find a way to stop it. He hated it when the little mortal cried, it made him feel weird.
“I need you to come with me,” Lucky stated.
A noticeable wave of fear rolled over Charlie’s face.
He slid off of the couch and approached the front door that was hardly clinging to its hinges from the repeated hits in a short span of time.
The young priest put his hands together nervously and tried not to cower.
Lucky didn’t like it. It made him feel… bad?
He felt something. He was feeling quite a lot of things lately, and he didn’t enjoy any of it.
“It’s nothing bad, I promise,” Lucky reassured, noticing the tension in the young priest’s body. “I think… I found you a job. One you can’t possibly fuck up.”
“That sounds impossible,” Charlie mumbled after wincing from the unsavory cuss word.
“Well, you are making it complicated but I think we can figure it out. I think the worst thing you could do is give yourself a paper cut. C’mon, we’re burning daylight.”
“It’s always daylight, the sky is literally on fire.”
Lucky groaned. He clapped Charlie on the shoulder to get him to move, but the force nearly toppled the priest. He scrambled to catch him before he fell face first onto the polished floor, snatching him up by the collar of his button up like a kitten by the scruff of its neck.
He effortlessly lifted Charlie to his eye level and cocked an eyebrow as their gazes met.
Charlie blinked his wide, pale blue eyes and pouted.
Those pink lips looked so full and cute—nope!
Stop it! Lucky shook the thought from his head.
“That was your fault,” Charlie stated when he saw Lucky open his mouth to speak.
Lucky clamped his lips shut again. Every so often, a spark of snark would slip out of the reserved priest’s lips, as if he were getting comfortable.
The Prince of Hell wasn’t sure he liked it.
Not because he didn’t want Charlie to be at ease, but because he shouldn’t have been so at ease.
He shouldn’t have been down here, let alone long enough to feel so relaxed that he could address a literal heir to the underworld with such casualty.
His fearlessness in the face of a devil did make some sense, but he would often address him like an old friend, and it was jarring.
Two months was too long—an eternity down in Hell—and Lucky was still no closer to finding a way to rid his unholy halls of the pure soul’s presence.
It shouldn’t have been this complicated, yet it was somehow the hardest damn thing he’d ever had to do and his patience was growing thin.
Admittedly, he also wasn’t trying that hard.
“Mr. Lucky?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you put me down?”
Lucky gasped. He lowered Charlie back to the floor and fixed his wrinkled shirt and glasses for him.
He felt as if his large hand could crush the dented frames if he weren’t careful.
Well, he knew it could, he’d literally crushed a human skull before, so it wouldn’t be difficult.
His hand was nearly large enough to cover the whole of Charlie’s face, so he had to remind himself to be delicate as he brushed a wayward, imperfectly tousled blonde curl away from his eyes.
“Okay, new job. Let’s go,” Lucky said as he cleared his throat.
Gently this time, he pushed Charlie toward the door.
He threw an angered glance at the hellhound that had fallen asleep on the sofa, but decided to leave it be.
He felt too guilty to rip Charlie’s only companion away after that soft comment.
He’d figure it out later, and he definitely didn’t want to think about the possibility that the stupid hound had manifested for Charlie.
The prince would never be rid of it if that were the case.
The unlikely duo stepped into the elevator.
Charlie remained quiet. Lucky kept staring a tad too intensely at his face.
Charlie was so… average, and yet Lucky couldn’t stop staring.
He hadn’t been able to for months. It was annoying.
All he could think about was Charlie’s rounded cheeks.
His big doe eyes behind his coke bottle glasses.
His button nose with the little smattering of freckles.
His buck-teeth with their small gap. His big, round ears like a little dormouse.
The stupid sight of the stupid priest and his stupidly imperfect face forced a sigh through Lucky’s lips, one that was heavy and laden with enough excess heat that it sent a puff of smoke out into the gilded box. It stood out against the shiny walls.
The Radiant Reaper was the second nicest high-rise in this circle of Hell, which was saying something when it resided on the level that represented greed in the tried and true naming conventions of evil.
Only the most wealthy, most elite, and/or sexiest could afford it.
The wait list went on for decades, but that was mostly because Lucky was picky about who he allowed in.
Even if Charlie could hold down a job, it wouldn’t scratch the surface of how much he actually owed for a unit in this building.
Lucky simply needed excuses to visit, so he kept pestering him about non-existent nonsense as a way to keep tabs on him.
Admittedly, it was also fun to watch him struggle.
“I’m sorry to be such a bother,” Charlie said quietly as the elevator descended.
“Charlie…”
“I’ll do my best at this job, I promise.”
Lucky smiled, his sharp fangs became visible as his lip curled. He quickly shifted back to business mode, embarrassed by his lack of composure. He lifted his hand and gently adjusted Charlie’s much-too-big glasses with his knuckle before he slid his ring-covered fingers into his pockets.
The elevator doors opened and Lucky stepped out. The staff bowed with harsh, perfect angles as he walked through the lobby with Charlie close behind, mentioning that the door needed to be fixed again so Igor the maintenance imp would need to return and handle it, and to ignore the hellhound inside.
The prince pulled his sunglasses from his half-buttoned shirt front and slid them over his eyes as he walked into the blinding morning light. They stepped onto the sidewalk and he unlocked his car with the fob. It roared to life like a great beast. Fire blew from the tailpipe and the engine revved.
Lucky turned back to Charlie who, somehow, grew even paler.
He followed Charlie’s line of sight and realization hit him as his unsympathetic brain finally comprehended what had made his mortal charge so uneasy.
Of course he’d be terrified of the car. It had literally killed him.
Human trauma was something he’d never paid much attention to—other than making sure it was on the death certificates so the torture team knew how to best handle their cases—but he could imagine it might be hard to look at the thing that ended your mortal life and be expected to climb inside for a joy ride.
Especially with how notoriously unhinged Lucky’s driving was.