Achieving Heaven Through Hell Part 3: Only the Results

Chapter 11: Assimilation

Chapter 11:

Vaggie sat, stooped over the administrator's desk as she pored over the Hotel's expenses; it'd be a lean month, from the look of it. It'd been over a year and they'd still hadn't stopped paying for the damage to the Hotel. Angels and bombs and gangsters, oh my! And now Charlie had gone and invited another potentially destructive demon into their midsts. Just once, Vaggie would like for their clients to be something mundane, like an adulterer or a Wall Street Wolf or the normal kind of assassin. Was that too much to ask? Not helped by Lucifer's reduction in Charlie's allowance. He wouldn't shut the place down personally, no, that would send the wrong message, i.e. the Hotel was a threat. But now that redemption was possible(?) he certainly couldn't be seen patronizing the establishment. On one hand, it meant less reliance on literally the most evil thing in creation, on the other hand it meant that the Hotel was underfunded and unprotected.

Though, given Charlie's recent display of canniness, Vaggie was beginning to worry less and less. Just that night, in fact, Charlie had shown her shrewdness in dealing with the likes of Alastor. The Radio Demon, obviously chafing under his self-inflicted role as a 'specialist', attempted to retreat from Charlie's 'team-building exercises. In reality, she, Niffty, and Charlie were watching rom-coms, painting their nails, and braiding each other's hair. Alastor, of course, demurred and left to do... whatever it was when he wasn't lurking about in the shadows.

Then, Charlie said: 'Oh, it's good enough for Sally, but not for you? I thought you wanted ammo, Al.'

For some reason, this stuck with him and he remained, standing in the corner of room, leering from the shadows, occasionally commenting on the (admittedly frequent) lapses in logic on the part of the characters. The night went well enough, with Niffty and Charlie prattling on about girly stuff, Alastor offering a spiteful running commentary, and Vaggie... failing to unwind. It was something of an ongoing issue, she was willing to admit, but there were worse problems to have besides 'a mild case of anhedonia' as Alastor put it.

Dickhead.

Vaggie could hardly relax and enjoy faff like bad movies and braided hair and such when the Hotel was in the red and powerful demons were crawling out of the woodwork to bring the whole thing down around their ears! She could only really do anything about one of those, but that's what she was going to do!

The door to the office opened and closed with a deliberate slowness, as though trying to escape notice. Vaggie didn't bother looking up from the paperwork, she could tell it was Charlie by the Joy by Jean Patou that wafted in.

"Sorry I bailed on girl's night," Vaggie said, scribbling in the margins. "I just couldn't relax while the budget was–"

A long, shapely leg stretched out on her desk, alabaster skin almost shining in the light cast by the lamp, standing in stark contrast to the dark fishnet stocking criss-crossing it. Vaggie's eye crawled up, and up, and up the leg until it finally ended in a small scrap of blue denim that might have been jeans at some point, mercilessly cut up, their remains now snugly hugging a full, shapely figure. Vaggie looked up to see the Princess of Hell smiling down at her, her chin notched playfully on her wrist, her fingers waving 'hello'.

"Fancy meeting you here," said Charlie, winking at her flustered girlfriend. "Come here often?"

Vaggie's eye darted all over Charlie's form; the make-up, the top (a black Bardot long-sleeve crop-top) even the way she had her hair braided and done up in gold brackets. It was all terribly... familiar.