Morgenmuffel: Composed of morgen, 'morning,' and muffel, 'grouchy,' the term describes a person who is grumpy in the mornings. It is revealed in this chapter that one of the characters is a total morgenmuffel.
Also, I'm so sorry about the first scene. In my defense:
A) I can't escape my roots with some of my favored tropes (let's see if anyone can figure out which trope wormed its way in here);
B) My alpha reader was smitten by it and quite insistent I not remove it.
We're over 1/3rd of the way through this fic. How are we enjoying it?
Recommended Listening
No illustrations in this chapter. Have a time-lapse sketch of Alastor I drew, instead.
Charlie’s half-baked redemption-activity-of-the-day was to role-play scenes involving the sins committed that led the hotel residents to Hell. Surprisingly enough, everyone was present and even if they obviously thought the whole thing ridiculous and awkward at best, most of them participated.
Alastor, of course, watched in open amusement.
Grace held back to observe in silence, slinking into the comforting shadows on the upstairs overlook.
The perpetually smiling Radio Demon had to have tells regardless of the permanent smile plastered on his face. His eyes changed, widening when delighted, narrowing in suspicion or fury. His brows furrowed in consternation or leapt upward in mirth. He’d sit back, crossing his legs comfortably or lean forward, rapt. His ears told tales all their own; flattened to his head in anger, she had seen—unfortunately. Twitching, swiveling. And cutest by far, standing fully erect. She’d seen that once before and couldn’t figure out what it meant.
Whatever, it’s fucking adorable so it can’t be a bad thing.
With time and nothing to distract her from her distant examination, Grace learned that Alastor was indeed far more expressive than she initially believed; she thought she might be able to get a halfway decent bead on him.
And that? That felt like one enormous victory.
Once the activity ended, everyone gathered around the bar as they typically did. Only then did Grace make her presence known.
“We missed you at today’s activity,” Charlie said with a pout.
“Oh, well, you know … I had … was … otherwise engaged.” Grace tried to not cringe visibly, regretting that she had not thought through an excuse.
“I’m so glad you’re here!” Niffty piped up. “I made something for you!”
“You did? That’s so sweet!” Grace replied, blindly grabbing the glass Husk set down beside her.
Niffty disappeared for a few moments. She returned, climbing up the stool and Grace’s back to place a circlet around her head. “I dub thee Queen Roach!”
The group fell silent suddenly, all eyes on Grace.
There are roaches.
They are dead.
There are dead roaches touching my hair.
And everyone is staring.
Niffty was genuinely excited about her project. While Grace wanted to shriek in disgust, she tossed back her drink, setting the glass down hard on the bar. She raised her right hand and announced, “I, Grace Bedgood, do solemnly swear to rule over the Roach Kingdom with honor and insanity—” She grinned and gave a small, maybe even crazy little laugh. “Integrity.”
Niffty whooped as she jumped back down to the floor. “Long live Grace, the Demon-Tamer!”
Demon-Tamer? Where did she get that?! Grace’s cheeks heated up.
Naturally, nobody questioned Niffty and Grace sure as shit wasn’t about to ask.
While the group raised a toast in honor of this Roach Kingdom’s new reigning monarch—more than likely it was because she was being a good sport about the dead bugs in her hair—she cast a casual glance at Alastor.
He watched, a charmingly crooked smile playing at his mouth.
“Grace! Grace, Grace, Grace!” Angel Dust pounded on her bedroom door at early o’clock the next day. “Graciiiieeee!”
She rolled out of bed and wrapped herself in a robe on the way to answer him. “What,” she snapped in greeting.
“Oh wow, you are not a morning person, are you?” He replied with a dazzling grin.
“I’m not an any time person.” That had been the case when she was alive, and it had only gotten worse in Hell.
“Throw on a suit. Everyone’s hanging at the pool!”
Grace was about to politely decline.
Then she considered impolitely declining.
And then she thought, everyone? She almost asked Angel for clarification but knew it would arouse his suspicions.
Clearly unwarranted suspicions.
His grin widened. “Well? You comin’?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, nodding and rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “I’ll be down there soon.”
Angel Dust retreated down the hall and Grace leaned out of her room to call after him, “There’d better be coffee waiting for me!”
He waved an acknowledgment over his shoulder with his upper right hand while the lower one tucked behind his back, flipping her off.
Grace quickly prepared for her day, dressing in the skimpiest bikini Charlie had made her and its complementing sarong that she tied loosely over her hip bone. She paused at the mirror, muttering under her breath, “‘Too fat to model,’ huh, Velvette? ‘Add an udder and you could do milk ads.’”
Whether or not it was true—she was no size zero, not by any stretch of the imagination—Velvette’s venom-filled address had triggered Grace terribly back to the point she hadn’t wanted to eat since then. She could do nothing about being too short to model. But the insult about her weight? Grace couldn’t dismiss that so easily.
That whole interaction was a detail she’d failed to share with Alastor, knowing he would neither understand nor care.
I should’ve told Velvette to kiss my fat ass.
Nonetheless, this would take some mental acrobatics from which to recover. She’d done it once before; she could do it once more.
Grace was the last of the usual hotel residents to arrive at the pool. She stepped out onto the deck, passing a demon reclining, with his legs crossed at the knees on one of the lounge chairs overlooking the pool.
It didn’t register at first that that was Alastor, dressed very much not in his usual attire. In favor of the red pinstripe coat and black trousers, he wore a red and white collared Hawaiian shirt with solid red board shorts. The red monocle typically perched in front of his right eye had been replaced by Costa Tailfin sunglasses.
In shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, Grace noticed his limbs all faded from relatively pale near his body to dark grey at the extremities. He had red, cloven hooves to match his red fingertips.
He has hooves.
He has hooves?
He has hooves!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah he has hoovies!
Hoooooooooovieeeeeeeeeeees!
Grace’s brain did the thought-equivalent of a keysmash.
Thoroughly distracted by the unwelcome and beguiling revelation, Grace proceeded to walk right into the leg of another lounge chair. She swallowed a pained yelp and sat down on said chair heavily.
Are you fucking kidding me that is so cute, what!
Calm down, Grace.
Jeez.
They’re just hooves.
I have them too. Probably most of us do here. No biggie.
She glanced around. Yep. Charlie also had hooves.
But unlike Charlie’s, Alastor’s were stupidly adorable in the same unfair way his little crescent-shaped horns and pointed, upturned nose were adorable.
Cherri’s voice cut through her pitiful internal dialogue: “Grace looks seriously bangin’ in those bathers! Now let’s get ‘er legless!”
“No, let’s wake her up!” Angel Dust replied, overly loudly. “She’s mean when she’s sleepy.”
They saw what she’d just done. Grace lost any hope she wouldn’t be teased relentlessly about it by Messrs What’s-With-All-The-Sudden-Interest-In-Alastor?
“No,” Grace interjected, her cheeks warming rapidly. “Let’s stop talking about her in the third person as if she isn’t right here!”
“Angel said you wanted coffee.” Vaggie laughed, leaning over Grace to offer her a mug. “Who’d have taken our Grace for a little bit of a diva?”
“I’m not,” Grace muttered, accepting the coffee and trying not to scowl. “I’m just grumpy before my caffeine.”
“You’ve been pretty grumpy after it, too,” Husk pointed out with a wry smile from his spot on the pool’s steps, his wings draped into the water behind him.
At a loss, Grace stuck out her tongue at him before knocking back her coffee.
Kofax, seated at a nearby wrought iron table beneath a red umbrella, didn’t raise her eyes from her laptop screen, yet remarked, “Don’t let these chumps tease you like this, Grace. You be your sassy, grumpy little self all ya like. It’s endearing.”
As if everyone hadn’t just watched her be a total klutz, Grace set the mug down gently beneath her chair and approached the pool by way of Alastor’s chair. A slight tug to the sarong’s tail undid the knot at her hip and she whipped the garment off, tossing it at Alastor with a laugh as she sashayed past.
Alastor tore it off, his face twisted into a smiling scowl.
Oh wow. What the fuck? Rather than showing her disappointment in his reaction, Grace stepped into the pool with an unruffled shrug. “Old fogey can’t take some gentle teasing, I guess.”
Angel Dust looked none too impressed. “Speaking of old, that was the oldest trick in the anals of flirtation.”
“I think you mean annals,” Grace replied, her already warm cheeks getting hotter yet.
“No, I don’t.”
Husk shook his head in clear disdain, commenting to Grace, “Denial: it’s not just a river in Africa.”
“And that’s the oldest adage known to man,” she quipped right back at him.
“Aw!” Charlie—who’d been a silent observer up until then, sitting on the edge of the pool with her legs in the water—kicked in glee. “Look who’s getting all cheeky with us!” She sang, “That can only mean you’re comfortable here!”
Comfortable enough to show some of her true colors? Yes.
Comfortable enough to trust any of them not to take it any-sort-of-way if she asked them to see if Alastor was watching her? Absolutely not.
Why did her interest in the Radio Demon have to be interest?
“So,” Charlie continued, to Grace’s relief, “I’ve been trying to think of our next group activity and I thought maybe I’d outsource this one.”
“To who?” Angel Dust asked warily.
Charlie opened her arms in a big sweeping gesture. “You! Who’s got ideas?”
Kofax reluctantly spoke up in the long, ensuing silence. “How about something with water? Like … a hose or water balloons? Dad used to love spraying me and my sisters with the hose. He’d claim it was therapeutic.”
Charlie straightened in her spot, her eyebrows lifting. “That could be something fun, for sure! I’ll have to think about how to turn that into a team-building exercise.”
“Hey, y’know what we should do?” Cherri chirped. “We should play truth or dare!”
It relieved Grace when several sinners groaned at the suggestion; at least she wasn’t alone in detesting that idea.
“Are we back in high school?” Grace snorted. “Yep. No doubt in my mind we’re in Hell, then!”
Cherri ignored her. “You first, Angie. Truth or dare!”
Angel Dust laughed. “Dare. Always dare!”
Oh, to exist with that kind of fearless confidence!
“Okay. I dare you … to …” Cherri thought for a moment. “Oh! I know! Eat a banana without using your hands.”
He rolled his eyes. “That was a softball dare.” Nonetheless, a dare was a dare, and clearly he wasn’t about to back down.
Angel Dust, having successfully—and easily—completed the task, returned to the pool.
"I didn't say you needed to be on your knees for that,” Cherri said through her laughter.
“But ya didn't say I couldn't be on my knees for it." Angel replied with a wide grin. He then turned to Grace. “Truth or dare?”
Grace considered her options. She could be royally screwed over if she chose ‘truth.’ What if they asked about her trip to Vee Tower? About her so-called talent? She really didn’t want to discover there were consequences to the unspoken “or else” of Alastor’s suggestion that she keep her gifts just between them.
What was the worst they could dare her?
Grace swallowed. “Dare.”
Angel Dust practically squealed in delight before wading over to her and whispering in her ear, “I dare you to decorate Alastor’s horns.”
“What?” Grace cried, pushing him away. “Are you nuts?”
“That’s your dare.”
“And what, exactly, do you propose I use to decorate them?”
“Y’know what? That’s entirely up to you but I'm partial to tinsel, myself.”
Grace grabbed Angel by his upper arms, pulling him close and hissing, “He will kill me!”
“Come on. He hasn’t killed you yet, has he?”
She shook her head, although Alastor’s voice echoed in her head, ‘Keep provoking me, my dear, and see what that gets you.’
“Please, Angel! Give me anything else!”
“If you don’t do that,” Angel replied slowly, “then … you have to answer my next question honestly.” He grinned wickedly, pressing his cheek to Grace’s before he whispered in her ear, “Do you like Alastor?”
Grace knew he knew the answer. And she knew he knew she knew it, too. “That was a waste of a question.”
“Answer it,” he said in a taunting sing-song voice.
She glanced over her shoulder at Alastor, her heart slamming against her ribcage at the mere sight of him, as if answering the question on her behalf. God. Dammit!
In defeat, Grace told Angel Dust just as much as she was finally admitting it to herself: “Yes.”
She hoped maybe he would assume the interest was platonic, but knowing her luck—and Angel Dust—he took it exactly the way she was starting to feel it.
Stay sane, deer friends!
Hoooooooovies!!!