Chapter 10
At two minutes past the hour, Effie breezed inside the bar, phone in hand, and threw herself down in a chair at the counter.
“Whiskey, double. I’m not doing this sober,” she said, eyes on her screen, her pesky Reddit app open.
Thanks to yesterday’s hangover and emotional upheaval, she’d forgotten to get any work done, and the last thing she needed was for Harbinger to get on her fucking case because she was slacking off.
Second to last. Worse would be if Harbinger reported to Lucifer that Effie wasn’t doing her job.
Hell forbid he decide to track her down. That would be the worst.
She was about to press send on her post when Finn gave a pointed cough, causing her to drag her gaze from the screen. There, already sitting on the counter, was a tumbler half-full of amber-colored alcohol waiting for her.
“Oh,” she said, taken aback. That was…thoughtful. “Thanks. Let me just finish posting this and we can, you know.” She gestured between them with a wave. “Talk or whatever.”
Finn huffed a quiet laugh. “You could sound less like you’re about to get a root canal.”
“I could,” she agreed, bringing her glass to her lips. “But that wouldn’t be very genuine of me, and I distinctly remember saying I’d tell you the truth. It’s either honesty or enthusiasm, your choice.”
Finn gave a small, amused shake of his head and reached for a mug full of what looked and smelled like black coffee. “What are you working on?”
“Hmm?”
He nodded at her phone. “You said you needed to finish posting something.”
“Oh.” She gave the screen one final cursory glance, hit post, and passed him her phone. “Here.”
r/unpopularopinion
u/Effie1526
I know everyone thinks that Ross Geller was the worst character on Friends, but I personally think he was the best, most underrated character on the show, with the most iconic moments.
Not only was he the funniest character, but I also think he was a decent guy and deeply misunderstood. They were on a break! Justice for Ross.
Finn sipped his coffee while he read. After a minute, he set her phone down on the counter and proceeded to stare off into the middle distance with a frown.
“What?” she asked, swiping the screen to scroll. “Do I have a typo or something?”
“Give me a second,” he said. “I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that I not only married a woman whose favorite Friends character is Ross, but she likes him so much she goes to bat for him on the internet.” He shook his head. “Now I really want to know what in god’s name I was thinking.”
“Ha fucking ha,” she intoned. “Get real. I don’t give two shits about a television show that aged like milk. This is for work.”
“Work?” he repeated. “You’re a demon.”
“Yes, and we can’t all be running around out there making soul bargains. Some of us provide…structural support.”
“Structural support?” He arched a brow. “And you do this on Reddit?”
“Reddit, Quora, 4chan, Yahoo Answers back when it was a thing,” she said.
“I currently work in the Office of Technology and Infernal Innovation. I guess you could call us nudgers. We’re responsible for priming humans and setting up the deals that other demons will eventually make.
My job, basically, is to bait idiots online and plant the seeds within them that will hopefully one day fester into a desperation so great that they’ll sell their soul to get whatever wicked things their rotten little heart desires.
You know, revenge, retribution, money, power, sex, et cetera. ”
“And you really think posting about a TV show that’s thirty years old is an effective method of radicalizing folks to the dark side?” Finn asked, sounding skeptical. “Seems awfully tame to me.”
She scowled and let the black bleed into her eyes. “Watch who you’re calling tame, buddy.”
“Not your buddy, baby.” He smirked over the rim of his mug. “And your eyes? Sexy party trick, don’t get me wrong, but you’re not as scary as you think you are.”
“Careful there.” When she smiled, it was with teeth too sharp to be normal, to be human. “You know what you sound like?”
Finn leaned back against the counter beside the till and shrugged, shameless. “What’s that?”
“You sound like a monsterfucker.”
Breath bated, teeth sunk into her lower lip, biting back a smile, she waited for Finn to balk.
To stutter and flush and trip over his words in his haste to deny it.
What she didn’t expect was for a slow smile to creep across his face or for his eyes to drag up her body and darken, leaving her breathless.
“Now, that almost sounded like you were propositioning me.”
“Propo— Don’t be ridiculous,” Effie sputtered.
“I wasn’t propositioning you, I was— Forget it.
” She huffed and blinked away the black from her eyes, the sharp points of her teeth dulling down to human bluntness.
“Look, it’s not like I relish rage-baiting dullards on the internet.
I’d much rather be out there making deals. Trust me.”
“Then, why aren’t you?”
She blew out a breath, shoulders slumping. “That used to be what I did, but I guess it would be fair to say I got demoted. Right now I’m on sort of a…disciplinary probation.” She waved her hand. “But whatever. It’s a dumb story.”
“What does a demon have to do to get put on disciplinary probation?” he asked, and she sighed. She should’ve known he wouldn’t be so easily deterred.
“Long story short, there was this demon named Daphne. Super ancient, older than me, climbed the ranks of Hell by making a fuckton of deals fast. See, she had this unheard-of loophole in her contract with Lucifer where if she collected one thousand souls, she’d get hers back.
Obviously he didn’t think she’d pull it off or was, like, counting on her forgetting or not caring?
Whatever. Point being, she excelled at what she did, and he loved her for it, insofar as Lucifer is capable of loving anyone.
It wasn’t romantic or sexual or— He thought of her as his.
The way all demons are his. He’s quite…covetous.
But Daphne, she was, like, his prodigy or something.
Anyway, she made a deal with this human, Samantha, and shocking everyone, they fell ass over teakettle in love with each other in the span of a few hours.
Wild, right? Well, Daphne refused to grant Sam’s final wish so her soul wouldn’t be forfeit, and she left Sam for her own good, blah, blah, self-sacrificing blah.
Sam summoned me with her eau de desperation—demons can sense that sort of thing—and I…
I was really at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I didn’t mean to get involved, but…best-laid plans.
” She shrugged, helpless. “I don’t know.
I saw Daphne get her soul back, become human, and almost die…
and there she was, in the hospital, with no record of ever even being born, no papers, nothing.
She’d gone through Hell and back, literally, and…
I guess I felt bad for her. So I broke into the Social Security Administration and took care of it.
No big. I’ve done worse. But Lucifer found out, and he was already pissed at Daphne for her betrayal, choosing a human over him.
He banned me from traveling to cities with more than fifty thousand residents, and yeah.
Now I work in a tiny cubicle in the bowels of Hell.
See? I told you it was a dumb story. Considering I was dumb and whatnot. ”
Finn blinked slowly, staring at her with a somewhat dazed expression. “Dumb is…not the word I’d use, but all right.”
“By all means, then, regale me with what word you would use,” she dared. “Foolhardy? Impetuous? Brash?”
He rolled his eyes so hard she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d strained something. “Oh, let’s see. Brave? Selfless? Kind?”
“Selfless?” She laughed. “You’re hilarious.”
Finn donned a beleaguered expression reminiscent of how he’d looked yesterday when he’d told her fighting with her was exhausting. “Sometimes I don’t know who you’re trying to convince that you’re this evil, awful person—me or you.”
Effie scoffed. “Um, demon, remember? Evil and awful are pretty much in the job description.”
“You’re more than your job, Effie.”
Oh, please. How trite. “That’s easy for you to say. It’s not so easy to separate who I am from what I do,” she said. “But we both know I didn’t come here to debate my merits or lack thereof.”
“Floor’s yours.” Finn swept out a hand. “I don’t know where you want to start—”
“The beginning would make the most sense,” she said, clutching her whiskey like a lifeline. “Unless you’d like me to start somewhere else?”
He shook his head. “The beginning works for me.”
“Cool,” she said, pausing to steel herself.
“The beginning. Okay. Um, I was born in 1526. The only daughter of a second son, making me part of a cadet branch of the MacLeods. My mother and father both died when I was young, my mother to a virus, some sort of sweating sickness, and my father in battle. A battle against the…well, your clan, as a matter of fact. By the time I was of age, a tenuous peace between our clans had been established, in part because of the arranged marriage between you and me. You were two years older. The first son of a first son. Your father died when you were young, and your uncle stepped in, acting as a…regent of sorts until you were old enough to take over as clan chief. I was twenty when my brother and I made the trip from Dunvegan to Sleat.”
“Did you know that—”
“It’ll probably be easier if your save your questions ’til the end,” she said, not because she didn’t want to answer them, but because they had a lot of information to cover. “But go ahead. Ask.”
“I was just curious if you knew about me. About being promised to one another.”