Chapter Text
Not to start things with a cliché, but this whole shit-show had kicked off the minute Charlie had decided that what the hotel staff needed was a field trip.
It had been such a long week of filling out forms, cleaning up rooms, and responding to questions and complaints and offers from the influx of new guests that the response to this announcement had almost been eager.
Angel Dust had instantly suggested the Lust Ring, whilst Husk had half-heartedly thrown in Gluttony - both of which were seconded by Cherri, and subsequently were very quickly shut down by a certain spear-wielding moth. Lucifer (after adamantly informing them all that travel between Rings would be out-of-service until he, himself, had gotten back in touch with the other Sins, so no one was to hold their breath) had loudly proposed 'LuLu World', which only a few of them recognised by name.
As expected, though, Charlie had waved them all off with a nervous laugh, claiming that she’d already chosen where they’d be going. This had been met with a series of groans, which were all firmly smothered once she announced just what it was they'd would be doing.
Cleaning out the royal palace’s garret.
And, as if that comical sentence alone wasn’t enough to knock them all off their feet, they then realised that she was actually being serious when she asked her father to open up a portal straight there.
Alastor had promptly, and without another word, slunk off into the shadows, presumably to go run some errands that involved things none of them, barring Niffty, wanted to know about.
“Look, I know it sounds boring, guys, but I promise there’ll be sooo much awesome stuff up there!” Charlie had claimed to try to appease them all, grabbing onto her girlfriend like a slightly overgrown stuffed-toy. "Besides, Vaggi and I talked, and we think it would be good to do a bit of deep-cleaning before Mom gets back so she's as impressed as possible!"
"Why does it involve us, though, if it's not the hotel we're deep-cleaning?" Angel had wondered out loud, and was flatly ignored.
“If we manage to get more than a quarter of it done by mid-afternoon, you can all keep one thing you find each,” Lucifer had thrown in to better the deal, wearing a shit-eating grin he usually reserved for taking the piss out of Alastor.
After taking a moment to imagine what batshit insane things Hell’s royals must keep in their attic, they’d all finally, though reluctantly, surrendered to being dragged along.
“Ohhh, this is so exciting! We’re gonna have a blast!” Charlie grinned triumphantly, before unceremoniously shoving everyone through the portal.
-
“This blows,” Angel groused, staring at the stacks upon stacks of unpacked boxes they still had to deal with. “I’m thinkin’ of calling a Anti Slave Labour Helpline if we ain't getting paid after all this.”
“Do we even have one of those in Pride?” Vaggi asked with an arched brow, elbow-deep in a box of old remotes. “And suck it up, we could be talking about our feelings right now instead. We all know how much you love that.”
It’d been just under an hour, and the hotel crew had only gotten through about twenty boxes so far, between them. The ‘throwing out’ pile was rapidly growing in size; Lucifer had already had to magic away two of them. Just where exactly he'd magicked them to was unknown, but the answer was probably some eerie shit like a void, or into one of the fiery pits of Wrath or whatever. Plus, considering that the room was nearly the same size as the hotel lobby and nearly filled to the ceiling with junk, it was unlikely that any of them were going to be allowed to keep any of the (disappointingly few) cool things they'd found by the end of it. Who knew kings and queens hung on to so much of their useless garbage?
“I’m fairly sure I just found what used to be a nursing bottle,” Husk said grimly from where he was hunched over a bunch of baby stuff.
“Better than the bunch of kiddie books I just tossed,” Angel muttered. “There were two-hundred-year-old dead bugs crushed between some of the pages.”
"Bugs," Niffty whispered to herself, sweeping at a stubborn patch of spiderwebs in one of the corners of the attic, having effectively eviscerated anything in the room that was smaller than your average Sinner in the first fifteen minutes.
“Nah, this thing's got teeth marks in it."
“Don’t most baby bottles?”
“Not like this one; looks like someone wearing a blindfold’s been jamming a serrated knife into it.”
Charlie shot him a small, guilty smile. Then, with a loud, sudden gasp, she freed from her box a small, rectangular, moth-eaten blanket that was mostly just a bunch of patchwork and holes.
“Oh Hell yesss! Dad! Dad! Do you remember this thing?” she yelled over her shoulder, jumping to her feet ecstatically.
‘Yeah, there’s a good chance the answer to that’ll be ’no’,” Cherri muttered mostly to herself, wildly unhappy with how the day's events were panning out, before extracting what look like the filthy, chewed-up remains of a ringmaster-themed rubber duck. “Okay what the fuck is this?”
“Ahahah, yeah, sorry guys, you might find quite a few of those in here,” Lucifer chuckled sheepishly, using his magic (lucky bastard) to sort through his things more quickly and efficiently. “What was that, sweetie?”
“It’s my baby blanket, Blankety!” Charlie gushed, before pressing the scraps of the ‘blanket’ to her face to take in what was likely supposed to be a deep, nostalgia-triggering breath - before instantly collapsing into a violent, coughing fit. Vaggi grimaced as though she'd expected this and hopped up to pat her girlfriend’s back soothingly. The princess’s watery eyes and reddened face were twisted as she managed to splutter out, “D-dusty-“
“Well, seeing as it’s probably two centuries old, toots, there’s no wonder.” Snickering at her antics, Angel got up to move to another unopened box. Then, “Oooh! Hey gang, forget about those rags and check out this funky thing!”
From the new box, he tugged out a large, crystal ball that was almost entirely see-through and had a diameter that was about the same length as his forearm. “Damn, you’d think this shit'd weigh a ton, but it’s super light. Hey, Short King, what is this, anyways?”
Lucifer glanced up with a ‘hm?’, squinting at the sphere quizzically. Seconds later, his jaw dropped and his eyes shot open wide. “Ohh, I completely forgot about that old thing! Hey, pass it over, would you?”
Angel did as he was asked, confused, whilst the others abandoned their own stuff to wander over, crowding around the King curiously as Lucifer turned the whatchamacallit this way and that, inspecting it for… well, something.
“So… what’re we lookin’ at here, exactly?” Husk asked eventually, furrowing his big, red, feathery brows as he peered over Vaggi’s shoulder at it.
“This is what I call a Looking Glass!” Lucifer grinned, sticking his face up close to the sphere so that his big, golden eyes were comically magnified through it. “I used to use it all the time back in the eighteen-hundreds, before videos cameras and all that become a big thing. It can act as a portable CCTV, or it can let you see into different periods of the past and the future, and even show you a heap of the expected outcomes of an event. Pretty neat, right?"
“So it’s basically the Ultimate Spy Tool,” Vaggi concluded dryly, though even she looked rather interested as he described its uses. “Why’d you ever put it away?”
“Ah, well, y’know, Lily never really liked me using it. Said it was just another excuse for me to be ‘nosy’,” Lucifer chuckled wistfully. If any of them noticed the slightly sad look that flashed across his face for a split second, they had the decency to let it go unmentioned. He then shook his head, ridding himself of any unwanted thoughts, and continued at a slightly faster rate, “Also, uh, around the end there, it kinda started… I dunno, malfunctioning, I guess? I’m sure it’d be fine now, ‘cause it was probably just faulty from a bit of overuse, but I must’ve just put it away for safe-keeping and completely forgotten about it.”
Charlie bit her lip. “Could we… could we maybe try it out, Dad?”
“Oooh, yes, can we, can we please?” Angel began to beg, eyes alit with excitement as he clasped his hands together as if in prayer (and honestly, why did people keep doing that sort of thing in front of Lucifer and expect it to work? It obviously wasn’t going to sway his opinion by any means - at least, certainly not in the way they’d want it to, anyways).
“Pleasee, Mr Ultimate Bad Boy! I wanna see the magic ball,” Niffty grinned maniacally. Whilst this was, unfortunately, only one of the odder things she'd said today, the upside to this was that she for once wasn’t muttering about doing terrible things to cockroaches and their immediate family. A win in everyone’s book, if you asked around.
Lucifer hummed thoughtfully for a few moments, appraising the Looking Glass with pursed lips, before he shrugged. “Ah, alright, why not? Let’s take her for a spin.”
Most of them cheered happily, following after him like a bunch of ducklings as he carried it over to an round, marble table that sat in one of the corners of the garret. He placed it down in the centre, then conjured underneath it a small, golden bowl with a flat bottom to hold it in place. Once he’d cleared his throat and cracked his knuckles dramatically (both of which were apparently crucial steps in a process like this), Lucifer held his hands out, an inch or two away from either side of the crystal ball, and, when the other's talking had fully stopped, began to recite several phrases in an ethereal, unrecognisable language. It was beautiful, in an archaic, otherworldly way, shaping his words to sound almost like fire; crackling and flowing and licking against the edges of their bounds like flames against metal all at once.
After he'd finished, a moment passed in which absolutely nothing happened.
A very long, awkward moment.
Just as Angel was about to whisper in Charlie's ear that they should've gone to 'Consent' instead-
The ball began to light up.
Gasps rang out, along with a soft 'Holy shit' from Cherri, and they all leaned in closer, trying to get a better look at it around the petite ruler's frame. From the centre of the opaque crystal, a small, pearly-white light seemed to be expanding outwards - like a balloon being filled with air - until it reached the inside surface of the ball.
“Let’s see what she’s got for us today,” Lucifer murmured, bringing one of his hands up to the top of the sphere and beginning to move it round and round in slow, circular motions, as if he were trying to create a little whirlpool in a small body of water. Before any of them could ask the blatant question, 'Wait, does that mean that you don’t get to choose what it shows?', the light in the crystal began to shift into a flicker of different colours and shapes; in seconds, it was running through images too fast to make out, similar to flipping through the pages of a picture book. Shockingly, the images shown in the Looking Glass then slowly began to show up on the wall behind it like a life-sized projection, allowing the awe-struck group to step back from their little huddle and watch from there instead.
With a snap of his fingers, Lucifer kindly conjured them up some chairs, which they all gladly seated themselves in. At this point, the whole set-up felt alarmingly like a home theatre.
Excitement and anticipation grew in all of their chests as they wondered what it would show. Would it be of all of them? Just one of them? If that were the case, then who would it even be? Would it be in the past or the future? Would they be able to see if the hotel really could succeed? Numerous questions moved through everyone's heads, but they waited in silence.
Gradually, after about a minute or so, the flickering slowed down. It lingered on a few different scenarios as it 'made its decision', apparently, though none for long enough for the select audience to truly identify them, before settling on-
Husk blinked, ears flicking back in surprise and bemusement. “Wait a sec, is that-?”
However, he was swiftly cut off as loud, rhythmic, jazzy music began to play out of nowhere, as clear as though they were hearing it from a regular old TV speaker, mixed in with the vibrant sounds of chatter and laughter and yelling.
Then-
A bustling street, full of old-fashioned cars and lined with sidewalks packed with several newsies of different ages, women in lovely frocks or fluffy coats that were certainly not suited for this sort of weather, and men in pressed suits or worn pants and wide-rimmed hats, was brought into view. It was the middle of a bright, blue, summers day, and, by the looks of things, the seasonal warmth had been manifested in its entirety. As the image panned out, revealing vintage-looking shops, restaurants, bars, theatres and a number of other buildings, the area was unmistakably swarming with sheer liveliness.
“Oh, oh, oh, this looks like it’s on Earth!” Charlie squealed, bouncing up and down in her seat excitedly. “Ohhh, are we gonna be watching someone’s past, then? Do any of you guys recognise this?”
A few ‘nope’s and ‘nuh-uh’s rang out - all except for Husk, who was staring at the image with a growing realisation. He slowly mumbled, voice low and tone indecipherable, “I think I might know where this is.”
Everyone looked over at him, perplexed by this ominous statement, but before they could even begin to question it, the scene (recording? Video? Flashback? What actually was this thing?) shifted to something else.
In the middle of a now black background, the white text "New Orleans, 1931", briefly flashed across the projection. This lasted for several seconds, before it switched once more.
A different street - visibly more low-income, but by no means destitute - with dirt roads, aging shotgun houses, narrow two-stories covered in peeling paint, and the distinct air of a close, tight-knit community. Many people lingered out on their porches even in the scorching heat, smoking or drinking or fanning themselves in their rocking chairs, spreading laundry over railings, or chatting with passing neighbours as they did, and several young, dusty children tussled together outside, yelling and kicking rocks about as they played amongst themselves.
The inside of a lovely, well-lit parlour came into view, cosy and neat and tidy - though not particularly large, and full of old, slightly worn furniture. The limited establishing shot showed a round, wooden coffee table atop which lay a chipped pot and two half-finished cups of tea. Neither person sitting on either side could be seen yet.
“Well then, if that’s all, I suppose you shall be hearing from us rather soon," concurred a gruff, posh voice out of frame that sounded like it belonged to someone with a perpetually stuffed nose, before a pudgy, white, wrinkled hand was shown to stretch over the table. Not a moment later, it was clasped by another - this one long and slender, with honey-brown skin and buffed nails - and they briefly shook before the lighter hand practically snapped away.
Husk scowled as he recognised the familiar action, starting to put the pieces together as he watched.
Everyone else strained to listen, trying to figure out who the voice belonged to, to no avail.
The vision cut to a wider angle. The darker-skinned man was shown from behind, sitting in a heart-backed chair across from the sofa that was being occupied by the other man. From here, it could be seen that the place contained, aside from the bistro set, a few rickety console tables here and there, a gramophone that was sat next to a modest fireplace to the right, and two bookcases filled with hardbacks and trinkets against the wall adjacent to the front door. Through the window sitting to the right of the front door, they could see a brief flash of the kids outside as they sprinted by.
The group squinted at the 'screen' in an effort to decipher what exactly it was that they were watching. All they could see of the faceless man was the back of his head and the narrow line of his torso; he was smartly dress in a deep, fitted red vest over the top of a white, long-sleeved button-up, held up by black sleeve garters. Not one of them could figure out who it was.
Aside from, of course, Husk. Who had visibly gone incredibly still and quiet, eyes wide and glazed as he felt sweat gathering in his palms and under the pads of his feet.
The white man (short and stout, with beady black eyes, a curling moustache that would've been impressive under any other circumstances, very little neck to speak of and a grey, receding hairline), who was standing up from the crimson, art deco-esque sofa, looked very much like he’d just landed the deal of a lifetime, and was feeling very smug about the whole thing.
“It been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Williams,” the unseen man chirped, gracefully pulling himself to his feet and loping over to grab the man's coat and open the door door for him.
As that voice, that tone - flamboyant, cheery, drenched in fake, transatlantic charm - echoed throughout the room, they all instantaneously froze in place.
“No…” Charlie started, mouth opening and closing uncontrollably.
“...fucking…” Vaggi breathed, sounding suddenly as though the wind had been knocked out of her.
“… way…,” Angel finished, all eight of his eyes as round as saucers. “This is not about to show us who I think it is, is it?”
Lucifer had, miraculously, gone even whiter than he was before, gawking at the projection with a growing sense of dread. “No… no, definitely not, there’s no way, it can't be-“
“We’ll keep in touch, Hartfelt,” Williams said - no, asserted - as he stepped out into the muggy air, obviously thinking he was every bit the cat that caught the canary. Pulling a handkerchief from his breast pocket to dab at the vast spread of his forehead, he reiterated, “Now, do try to remember that I am going out on a limb for you here, boy."
Then he turned slightly to look back at the owner of the house, piggy eyes glinting with something cold and predatory and mean as he did. “So do not make me regret this by sullying both my reputation and yours by flopping it.”
The view switched to an extreme close-up of the darker-skinned man’s hand where it was held behind his back. As these words were uttered into the air between them, this hand squeezed shut so tightly that his bones audibly gave a sickening creak. However, the laugh he let out in response was polite and even. “Oh, you know I never fail to impress, Mr Williams. Bye-bye, now!”
At this point, here was no denying it. They all knew that voice.
That was Alastor, the host of the Hotel - the murderous, cannibalistic, talkshow-host deer demon they'd known for nearly two years now - who was talking on screen.
Which could only confirm one thing.
There were about watch the human, living life of their shadiest, most secretive, cagiest friend - the Radio Demon.