Chapter 1: Last Call
The Low Note closed at four, which in Pentagram City meant nothing, because the sky stayed the same bruised red no matter what the clock said. You closed it anyway. A bar needed rules. A woman who had died owing everything needed something that was hers.
You were stacking chairs when the jukebox changed songs on its own.
It had been playing something modern, a cheap synth thing one of the imps had paid for with a bent coin. Now the needle on a machine that did not have a needle hissed, and a big band swing tune from a century ago came crackling out of the speakers, all brass and pops and warm static, like a broadcast coming in over a storm.
You set the chair down very carefully.
"We're closed," you said to the empty room.
"Oh, I know, my dear." The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, filtered and bright, a radio announcer leaning into his microphone. "I've always admired your sense of punctuality. So rare, down here. Most sinners couldn't keep a schedule if you nailed it to their foreheads." A laugh track tittered from nowhere. "And some of them, I have!"
The shadows in the corner by the jukebox stood up.
That was how it always looked to you: like the dark had decided to have a shape. Then the shape had a red pinstripe coat and a bow tie, and long thin hands folded over the head of a microphone cane, and a smile that took up more of his face than any smile should. Red hair tipped in black. Two soft red ears among the strands, flicking once. A monocle catching the neon from the window. And the eyes, red on red, warm as a fireplace you could never sit near.
Alastor. The Radio Demon. Overlord, cannibal, celebrity, nightmare, and for seven years the silent owner of everything you were.
"Hello, darling," he said. "Did you miss me?"
You had imagined this moment a hundred ways. In most of them you were braver.
"You haven't been here in four months," you said.
"Has it been that long? Time flies when one is being disemboweled by angels." His smile didn't move, but the static under his voice hitched for a second like a skipped beat. "I've been convalescing. Terribly dull. Charlie insisted on bringing me soup."
You'd heard. Everyone had heard. The Radio Demon, bleeding black on the hotel steps after the Extermination, the most feared Overlord in the Pride Ring limping home on his cane. Vox's channels had played the footage on a loop for a week. You'd watched it with the sound off, behind the bar, and told yourself the tight feeling in your chest was concern for your investment.
"You look better," you said.
"I always look marvelous." He strolled forward. His shoes made no sound on the sticky floor. "But thank you. You were always kind. Even the night we met, in the middle of all that screaming, you were kind." He tilted his head, considering you. "Do you remember what you were doing?"
You remembered. The first Extermination after you'd died. You'd been in Hell less than a month, still in the clothes you'd died in, and when the sky had opened and the angels came down with their spears you had run into an alley behind a burning record store and crouched behind a dumpster and, because you were too terrified to scream, you had sung. Under your breath. An old standard your grandmother used to play on Sunday mornings. The only thing you could think of.
And a voice from the dark had said, That is a lovely set of pipes, my dear. It would be such a shame to lose them.
"I was singing," you said.
"You were singing." He sounded delighted. "And I offered you a deal. Protection during every Extermination, for as long as you remain in Hell. A little establishment of your own." He gestured around the bar with his cane, at the mismatched chairs and the neon sign you'd fixed yourself. "And in exchange?"
You didn't answer. You didn't have to. Something warm unfurled around your throat, light and loose and bright green, a chain of glowing links that hadn't been visible in seven years. It slid over your collarbones like a silk scarf, and the other end of it trailed through the air and wound itself around the long fingers of his left hand.
"Your soul," Alastor said softly. "Signed, sealed, and delivered."
You made him a drink. You didn't know why. Habit, maybe. Or something to do with your hands that wasn't shaking.
He sat at the end of the bar where he always sat, on the rare nights he came, and watched you pour. In seven years he had come in perhaps once a season. He'd order a whiskey, neat, and never touch it. He'd watch the room, and you, and listen when you sang on Fridays, and leave without a word. He'd never asked you for anything. You'd half convinced yourself he'd forgotten.
You set the whiskey down in front of him. He looked at it. He didn't drink.
"Why now?" you asked.
"Why not now?"
"Because you've owned me for seven years and never once collected." Your voice came out steadier than you felt. "Because you could have made me do anything, any time, and you sat right there and drank nothing and watched me sing. So why tonight?"
His ears flicked back, just slightly. Then forward again.
"Circumstances have changed," he said. "I find myself in want of certain assets close at hand."
"Assets."
"Mm." He spun the glass slowly on the bar with one claw. "You'll be moving into the Hazbin Hotel. Tonight. I've had a room prepared. You'll be comfortable, I promise you that. Charlie is a wonderful hostess, if a bit relentless about trust exercises."
"And my bar?"
"Will be here when you return."
"When."
"If you prefer." His smile widened a fraction. "My dear, I'm being generous. I could simply tell you to come. I could tell you to do a great many things." The chain around your throat warmed, not tight, just present, like a palm resting at the hollow of your neck. "Shall I demonstrate?"
You should have been afraid. You were afraid. But under the fear there was something else, something you'd been carrying for seven years of Friday nights, of looking up from the microphone at the end of a song to see him sitting at the end of the bar and feeling it like heat from a stove. You'd never said a word. You'd been very careful never to say a word. You knew what he was. You knew he didn't like to be touched, that he flinched from handshakes, that he ate sinners who got too familiar.
You put both hands flat on the bar and leaned toward him.
"Go on, then," you said. "Demonstrate."
For one second the static dropped out of the room entirely. The jukebox went silent mid-note. Alastor went very still, the way an animal goes still, and his red eyes fixed on your face with an attention so total it felt like being lit by a spotlight.
Then he laughed, low and genuine, and the music came back.
"Oh, you are going to be trouble." He rose. In one smooth step he was around the end of the bar, and you heard the chain sing softly as it shortened, link by link, drawing you out from behind the counter until you were standing in front of him. Close. Closer than he had ever been. You had to tip your head back to look at him. He smelled like old paper and cedar smoke and, underneath that, something coppery you decided not to think about.
He didn't touch you. He lifted one hand and held it a half-inch from your jaw, so close you could feel the cool air off his claws. His gaze moved over your face slowly, the curve of your mouth, your throat where the chain lay against your skin.
"Seven years," he said quietly. "And not once did you ask me for anything more than our bargain allowed. Do you know how unusual that is? Every soul I've ever owned has begged. For power. For freedom. For mercy." His thumb hovered over your lower lip and did not land. "You only ever asked what I wanted to drink."
"You never drank it."
"No." Something moved behind the smile. "I never did."
Your heart was pounding so hard you were sure he could hear it. Of course he could. He could probably hear it from across the city.
"Is that what this is?" you whispered. "You finally decided you want something?"
His hand stayed where it was. A half-inch away. The chain hummed between you, green light painting the sharp edges of his face.
"My dear," Alastor said, "I have wanted something for a very long time. I simply make a point of never taking what I can't keep."
"And now you can?"
"Now," he said, "someone else is trying to take it first."
Before you could ask, he stepped back, and the space between you rushed cold. The shadows were already rising up behind him, tendrils of dark curling up from the floor like smoke from a cigarette, and one of them was carrying your coat.
"Pack light," he said brightly, as if the last minute hadn't happened. "Charlie will lend you anything you need. We leave in five minutes."
"Who?" you demanded. "Who's trying to take it?"
Alastor paused at the door. Outside, high on the side of the tower across the street, a giant screen flickered, and for half a second the ad for VoxTek Premium cut to static, and a blue face with a screen for a head grinned out across the city at the Low Note's front window.
The screen flicked back to the ad. Alastor's smile didn't change at all. But the bulbs in the bar's ceiling fixtures dimmed one by one, and his shadow on the wall behind him grew long, crooked antlers.
"Someone," he said, "who is about to learn exactly what it costs to touch what's mine."