2. Chapter 2
Zavian (Milo)
I’ve calculated that I spend approximately seventy-three percent of my work time stamping forms and twenty-seven percent dissociating while wondering whether humans actually enjoy pumpkin spice or if it’s a collective delusion they’re all committed to.
This is probably not what my father meant by focus.
Page seventeen has an article called What Your Coffee Order Says About You. I know it by heart.
Pumpkin spice latte: Basic but confident.
Black coffee: Practical, no-nonsense.
Cappuccino with extra foam: Secretly romantic but won’t admit it.
I don’t know what I’d order. But I know I want to meet someone who’d laugh when I take twenty minutes to decide. Someone who’d tell me what’s good, instead of judging me for not knowing. Someone who’d make not knowing feel like an adventure, rather than another failure.
The Soul Acquisition Department churns with its usual chaos.
Someone’s arguing about commission splits three rows over, stacks of rejection forms teeter across every desk, and Gerald from Eternal Damnation Processing is microwaving fish again.
Oily steam crawls through the area and coats the back of my throat.
Someone’s going to report him eventually. Likely Krell. He reports everyone.
The overhead announcements play hold music between torture-quota updates. Same song since I started here. I think it’s supposed to be ominous, but mostly, it’s annoying.
I flip open the next folder and scan the first page. An appeal. Of course. They’re always appeals.
A mortal in Georgia is claiming he never agreed to the terms of his contract, that the demon twisted his words, and he didn’t understand what he was signing.
The complaint form is three pages long, handwritten in shaky letters that get harder to decipher as they go on. My job is to read it and stamp DENIED.
That’s the position. Appeals and amendments. Mortals begging for mercy they won’t get, and demons requesting permission to make existing contracts worse. I stamp rejections on every desperate plea, and approve anything that increases suffering.
This particular human claims he wanted to win the lottery. The contract specifies he’ll hit the jackpot once, then lose everything trying to do it again for the rest of his natural life. Technically, what he agreed to.
The demon who brokered it submitted a request to extend the mortal’s lifespan by forty years. More time suffering equals more soul-value extracted.
I’m supposed to approve it.
My hand hovers over the stamp. The man’s words are scrawled at the bottom. Please. I have a daughter.
I wonder how old she is. There’s an entire section in one of my magazines about father-daughter relationships, and how they shape women’s attachment styles.
Fascinating stuff. Really makes you think about generational patterns and how humans learn to trust. And, less notably, how I just condemned this specific father to four more decades of financial ruin while his daughter watches.
The chair beneath me creaks. I’m the only demon in the division who requested one. Everyone else perches on stone seats carved into the floor, or they stand, because apparently, looming over your work makes you better at condemning people.
I wanted something comfortable after reading a magazine about ergonomic office furniture from Hell’s Mortal Research Library.
It’s supposed to help us understand humans well enough to exploit them.
Instead, I’ve learned how to repair household items, fix a leaking faucet, and install a ceiling fan.
None of which helps me process soul contracts faster.
Another mark against me in a list that’s too long.
I don’t resemble other demons. My skin is pale pink instead of the deep crimson most are born with. Krell told me once that I look like a sunburned human. I informed him that that was the nicest thing he’d ever said to me. He reported me to HR for insubordination.
At least this hairstyle covers the other problem.
My brown curls fall across my forehead in what I’m pretending is a deliberately casual style but is, in reality, a carefully maintained disguise for my horns.
They’re small. Embarrassingly so. I started growing my hair out specifically to hide them.
Better than the alternative, which is everyone seeing them and having opinions.
Other demons oil their horns until they gleam.
Spend hours at the Horn Care station in the washroom, buffing and polishing.
There’s a department store in Hell’s commercial district dedicated to their maintenance products.
Oils, polishes, strengthening serums, growth treatments.
I went in once. The salesdemon took one look at me and asked if I was shopping for someone else. So I left.
Most demons here wear leather that creaks when they move, or robes that billow dramatically, or literally nothing, because workplace nudity is fine in Hell’s corporate culture. I don’t understand it. Nobody wants to see that. We work in adjacent cubicles. There should be boundaries.
I’m wearing what Cosmo calls business casual.
Light blue button-down, because the color conveys trustworthiness and approachability.
Dark slacks, because they create a balanced and professional silhouette.
And glasses, because accessories complete the look.
That’s what I tell everyone, anyway. Demons don’t have poor eyesight.
It’s not a thing that happens. So nobody needs to know that everything past twenty feet goes a bit blurry without the lenses.
I look like a mortal accountant who accidentally walked into the wrong building and is too polite to leave. Which is exactly the problem, but also the only thing about my appearance I don’t hate.
“Still playing secretary, Zavian?”
The voice cuts into my concentration, deliberately pitched for the surrounding desks to hear. I don’t raise my head, because I already know who it is.
Krell.
His horns are massive, sweeping back from his skull in perfect symmetry. He’s very proud of them. Brings them up in every conversation. I’ve heard his horn-care routine explained seven times. Seven. We get it, Krell. Your horns are big.
Everything about him is massive. He’s built to pull carts or knock down castle walls.
“Just finishing up some administrative tasks,” I mutter, keeping my eyes fixed on the contract in front of me even though the words have started blurring together into meaningless shapes.
Krell doesn’t take the hint. He leans against the edge of my desk, making it shift under his weight.
His deep crimson skin looks almost black at the edge of my vision.
He’s basically naked, wearing leather straps that are more decorative than functional, because they aren’t covering anything.
His dick is just out. Not fully, but every shift gives me an update I didn’t ask for.
By now, I know more about Krell’s lower half than any employee should know about a colleague.
“Administrative tasks,” he repeats, dragging out the words. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Conversations at a few nearby desks die as the other demons tune into whatever’s about to happen. One of them grins, fangs flashing in the firelight.
Krell’s standing too close. He always does that.
I read an article once about personal space and power dynamics.
People who invade it are usually compensating for insecurity about their actual authority, which would make more sense if Krell hadn’t secured four legendary soul contracts last quarter.
Apparently, professional success doesn’t prevent you from spending your mornings bothering me instead of doing literally anything productive.
I slam the stamp onto the next page, the metallic thud echoing across the desks.
“Must be embarrassing,” he continues. “Being Varkhael’s son and still stuck here filing paperwork. What’s it been now? Fifteen years?”
Someone laughs from across the room, and heat floods my face. Every sharp response I should throw back at him tangles before it reaches my mouth. My mind blanks like it always does when I’m cornered.
“Krell, go away.” Sythra sounds exhausted.
She’s three desks down, not even looking in our direction.
Her deep maroon skin catches the torchlight, dark navy horns curving above a face that hasn’t expressed genuine interest in anything happening in this department in at least a decade.
Her chin is propped on one fist, robes shifting with each mechanical swing of her other arm as she stamps rejections at a steady pace without reading them.
“You do this every week. It’s boring. Zavian’s bored.
We’re all bored. Find a new hobby and let him do his job. ”
“Just trying to be friendly.” Krell straightens, pushing off my desk. “Nice hair, by the way. Really covers things well.”
He walks away and the laughter fades into the general noise. The department’s moved on. Demons don’t hold attention for long, unless you’re actively on fire or screaming. Krell embarrassing me at my desk barely registers on the daily entertainment scale.
This is what I’ve been doing since my late teens. Filing paperwork and stamping forms. Sitting at this desk, while everyone else is out in the mortal realm doing the job we’re supposedly trained for.
I used to take assignments, too. I’d stand in living rooms, offices, and dark alleys across from humans who’d reached the end of their options. I was supposed to spot when their resistance crumbled, then move in with the perfect words to claim their souls.
I was terrible at it.
Not because the mortals were hard to manipulate. Most of them weren’t. But because they were fascinating.
They’d tell me everything. Their whole lives, the dreams they chased, the mistakes they made, the people they loved.
What they would change if they had another chance.
And I’d just stand there, thinking about how interesting it was that a human could want something badly enough to trade eternity for it.
I’d ask questions. Too many of them, and all wrong. Failed my first three assignments because I spent more time asking about their childhood than securing a single bargain.
I still think about those people sometimes. The guy in Nevada, and whether he ever fixed things with his wife. The woman in Portland, and whether she found some other way to save her business. All of them, maybe, wondering why the demon walked away without taking their souls.
A sharp knock on the stone archway behind me cuts through my thoughts. I jerk and bang my knee on the underside of the desk.
One of Hell’s messenger demons stands in the archway with his arms crossed, expression blank. They’re trained that way. Can’t tell if they’re delivering good news or a death sentence until they speak.
“Varkhael wants to see you.”
Oh no.
Every pair of eyes within hearing distance locks onto me, and my stomach drops so violently I’m concerned it might fall out. That happens to demons sometimes. Stress-induced organ displacement.
“Now?” It comes out embarrassingly squeaky.
The messenger doesn’t answer. He turns and walks away like he didn’t ruin my entire day with four words.
Someone whistles low from a few desks over. Zerakel. He’s enjoying this too much.
I stand and smooth down the front of my shirt.
Krell smirks as I pass him. “Good luck.”
He doesn’t mean it. Obviously. Krell has never wished me good luck in his entire existence. He’s wishing me spectacular failure.
The department falls away behind me as I move deeper into the administrative wing where the successful demons work. The ones with private offices, legendary contracts, and sons who don’t disappoint them constantly.
Black stone walls close in around me, swallowing the light except for torch flames jittering across the floor.
Offices loom on either side, each arched doorway trimmed in bone or metal, their nameplates getting fancier and more illegible the further I go.
Every so often, a muffled scream or laugh seeps from behind a closed door.
My father’s office is at the end of the hall. Past the mid-level brokers and the senior acquisitions team. All the way up where the real power sits.
The door is heavy obsidian, with an inscription I can’t read because the lettering is in Old Infernal and I never learned it properly. I asked my father once what it said. He told me if I had to ask then I didn’t deserve to know.
Cool. Great. Very encouraging parenting style.
I stop in front of the door, wipe my palms on my slacks, and knock before my nerve gives out.
“Enter.”
The door swings open on what’s going to be the worst conversation of my extremely long existence.