Sympathy for the Devil - Reader X Ghost - Nameless Ghouls & Papa

Ch 24 - Tell Me You Didn't

As I looked around the room, I wondered if I had made the right choice. The weight of my decision rested sorely on the middle of my chest, making each breath a taxing exercise.

"It's not going to be enough for all three. Tell her she needs another van." The roadies chattered on behind me as if I wasn't in the room. I don't blame them. Mentally I wasn't.

I chose to go with Satan.

Of course, I did.

But finding myself back at the ministry organising a new Ghost tour only weeks later made me wonder if I had chosen wisely.

The main entrance to the ministry was a hive of activity. Echoing footsteps filled the room, bouncing off the marble floors. Occasional grunting from roadies struggling to grasp equipment grounded my attention back to earth. It had been so long since I'd been around so many people at once, the feeling was alien to me.

A timid clerk approached me. Usually, they'd have ghouls for this sort of work. However, since the banishment of unearthly beings, their ranks were cut by three-quarters, leaving only a handful of their kind and inexperienced Siblings of Sin to fill in the gaps.

"Erm, Y/N."

Idle hands played with the grucifix charm around my neck, a symptom of my wandering thoughts. I'll admit, I was in a total daze and barely listened to them. My eyebrows raised just enough to allude to some sort of response.

"The roadie guy, the big one. He said the erm, the... more delicate equipment won't all fit."

My lips scrunched. I didn't need another problem, especially one which surely could have been solved by correctly organising everything.

Amateurs.

"What the hell have they got in there? It's a full trailer, even bigger than last time. Tell them to just rearrange things." I grumbled, refusing to even look their way.

The Siblings of Sin didn't deserve to bear the brunt of my bitterness, but I desperately needed an outlet. Despite agreeing to go with Satan, rather than visit the Ghuleh, we had not rekindled our cordial relationship; both of us too headstrong to utter anything which resembled an apology.

From the moment I had returned, Satan had essentially handed me over to Sister Imperator. Upon my return, she had adopted a softer approach to managing me. One that unsettled me more than if she had scolded me for leaving. It caught me off guard. Was it empathy or something else? I still can't say. But what I do know is that she treated me differently. When I refused to work directly with Cardinal Copia she did not ask twice, offering a pitiful nod.

I wonder what Our Dark Unholiness had told her.

Everything around me was business as usual. Just what I was afraid of.

How could three senior members of the church go missing, yet no one think that it was out of the ordinary? That in itself was odd, but even worse was the fact that we were proceeding with the Ghost project despite there being no replacement Papa in the pipeline.

Nothing made sense.

Not even Satan himself could offer me answers. And so, I found myself babysitting roadies who didn't even know how to stack a van correctly.

"Y/N?"

I turned abruptly, expecting the Sibling of Sin from earlier.

Instead, I found Sister Imperator, who flinched as her eyes met mine.

"I just came to see how you were getting on."

I knew her well enough to know that was a lie.

"Well, perhaps if we had the usual ghouls," I sighed whilst glancing back at my never-ending checklist.