When fuckery is afoot, it tends to inspire one of two sets of sensations.

  The first and most common of the two is a series of sharp starts—the kind that begin in your eyes, cracking them wide open (in case you blink and miss the purple… something slinking between the trees).

  Then they bulldoze their way down your throat, forcing down the gasps that threaten to escape (what if they mask the sound of radio static crackling through the night?).

  The feeling ultimately settles down in your gut, making your tummy do the Watusi* (so that when you take a break to soothe it, you just so happen to hear a mechanical whir in the distance).

  But the second set, the one reserved for those who are a bit more… seasoned in the ancient art of mischief, is far more subtle.

  It’s an eye roll (when a twig snaps right behind you). Or a mumbled snarky remark (when the bushes start to rustle just as you walk by them).

  But in the case of our Lucifer, faced with the next flap of the night’s fuckery, it manifested as a slow blink (when a violet, glowing treasure chest suddenly cascaded from the sky, disrupting the golden path of footsteps that were (allegedly) leading him to help).

  Lucifer nudged at it with his foot, triggering a New Item notification.

  [New ??? Item!

  ★★★★★

  A Gift

  Open it… or don’t. Your choice~]

  Great, Lucifer thought, eyeing the gleaming question marks. Another one.

  Lucifer stepped over it and back to the path. Then, remembering his manners, he said, “I appreciate the gesture, but no thank you, angel.”

  Not even a half minute passed before there was a rustle from above. In the next instant, another treasure chest broke through the trees, crashing down before Lucifer, as if someone had hurled it from close range.

  [New ??? Item!

  ★★★★★

  A Gift

  No, really… I insist ?]

  He started to step over it again, but when his leg was hooked over the lid, the treasure chest began to expand. In a matter of seconds, the thing had grown to twice, no, thrice, its size. His body was beginning to look dangerously similar to a capital ‘K.’ And it hurt.

  “Fine, fine!” Lucifer shouted, snatching his leg out of the air. Pleased, the treasure chest immediately shrunk back to its original height. He crouched down, cracked it open—and.

  It was empty.

  But from somewhere deep within—far deeper than anything ever should be in a treasure chest—Lucifer heard the faint hum of electricity, growing louder and closer as the seconds passed by.

  It wasn’t long before a monotonous voice crackled to life, greeting him as its body came to the surface.

  “Good evening, esteemed customer.”

  Out of the darkness came a pair of purple, googly LED eyes, trained on Lucifer. Its body followed, in all of its scrap metal and bowtied glory, settling in at Lucifer’s eye-level. “According to my records, you are the last customer of the night. It is my honor to serve—”

  “You!”

  Recognition set in. Lucifer’s memories from last night came rushing back—the glitter, the bodies, that robot… the man monitoring from behind its eyes… his bindle!

  Lucifer yoked Dale up by its boxy shoulders and shook it like it owed him money. “Robot! Summon your Master, immediately!”

  On cue, Dale’s “pupils” dilated widely enough to eclipse its purple orbs**, revealing the scene behind the plastic. The camera was trained on a neatly dressed kitchen table, set with one teacup and no Master in sight. There was, however, low, off-pitch singing coming from off-screen.

  “Hello?” Lucifer called out impatiently. The crooning stopped and one bug eye peeped into the frame.

  “Oh, pardon me, Lulu… You don’t mind ‘Lulu,’ do you?” It was that man again. His voice was honeyed, though rushed and ragged, as if he were out of breath. Dishes clanked and water ran in the background. “I thought I had a few more minutes to prepare…!”

  Prepare? Lucifer crossed his arms. What kind of third-rate angel offers a gift they haven’t prepared?

  But then. Wait.

  What?

  “I-I’m sorry?” Lucifer stuttered, wiping away a cold sweat. “What did you call me? Lulu?”

  The faucet squeaked shut and the soft padding of feet on a hardwood floor came through the speakers. The man—the creature, really—took a seat across from the camera. It had bulging, unblinking purple eyes that covered the vast majority of its face. The only other discernible feature was the creepy smile sitting where its nose ought to have been, little more than a lowercase ‘W.’

  Jesus. Lucifer grimaced at the sight of its grin parting to reveal its tiny set of teeth.

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  “Well, what do you prefer, my morning star?” The angel purred over the airwaves. “Cici? Say-say? …Tanny. The kids were calling you ‘Tanny’ down there, weren’t they?”

  “No, they weren’t. They wouldn’t dare.” Lucifer said firmly. Then, when the angel began chuckling, he tightened up. “Because none of those are my name, of course. My name is Johnn von Wrinklestein.”

  The angel hummed. “Johnn von Wigglestein… right. That name does ring a bell. And what’s your Soul ID again, Mister von Wigglestein? A little birdie told me it begins with ’666…’”

  Drat.

  Lucifer closed his eyes and started furiously rewinding his mental reel, tuning into the moment when 60th crouched before him, trying to feed him answers. 100 thousand? Or was it 100 million? Lucifer gnawed on the inside of his cheek. Did it start with a 2?

  “Right. Now, look, Luci… Can I call you ‘Luci?’” Lucifer declined, but the angel didn’t seem to care. “Level with me, won’t you? You owe me, after all.”

  “Owe you? I beg your pardon, sir, I gave you a priceless Tayt original, only for you to label it as—”

  “Polyester. Precisely, darling.” The angel shook his head. “Imagine my disappointment... I skipped on over to Lower Heaven’s finest connoisseur, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, then I hear,” the angel took on a husky Scottish accent. “‘What’s this Jeeves? You takin’ the piss?’”

  A wearied sigh came through the speakers.

  “Embarrassing, to say the least. But I’m willing to let bygones be bygones, Mister Satan. In fact, that leads me to the gift I’m offering you. A clean slate, clear conscience… All for the low, low price of—”

  Lucifer promptly slammed the treasure chest shut, relishing in the sound of the wood meeting Dale’s dome in a resounding clap. “How foolish,” he muttered angrily to himself. He stomped ahead, nearly outpacing the golden steps. “His minion breaks then steals my bindle, he tries to sell it to black market traders, then has the gall to attempt to rob me again.” He scoffed. “Angels these days.”

  Another sigh, muffled by the treasure chest this time, caught his attention.

  “Oh dear, what a mess…!”

  Lucifer sped up.

  “Only if he knew ~??”

  Lucifer plugged his ears.

  “I just wanted to talk… To enjoy some tea… Get acquainted…”

  Lucifer picked up a sizable rock and aimed it at the treasure chest. He missed.

  “And see if he knows anything about this certificate I found.”

  Lucifer had picked up another rock, but just before he let it loose, he hesitated.

  “Baby blue ribbon, Heaven's crest… Looks official. But oh well. I’ll see what the black market traders think.”

  Lucifer doubled back, tripping over logs in his haste. The treasure chest was disintegrating, its purple haze starting to devolve to pixels. “Wait, angel!”

  The treasure chest’s lid flew open. Dale emerged like a bat out of Hell, only stopping when its eyes were pressed up against Lucifer's eyelashes. From his vantage point, he could see that this Jeeves character was still seated across the way with that infuriatingly a coy smile playing on his lips. But now, there was an extra teacup on the table, and the angel was busy rifling through a large, revolving display of teabags.

  “Yes, my little bottlecap~?”

  Lucifer grit his teeth. “Let’s talk.”

  ...

  Dale’s eyes were on Jeeves. Jeeves’s eyes were on Lucifer. And Lucifer’s eyes were on the revolving display of teabags. But more specifically, they were on the colorful tags attached to them.

  Mindless Obedience

  Blind Submission

  Undue Devotion

  Then, his gaze dropped to the tag dangling from the angel’s cup. Green, it read.

  Lucifer ignored Jeeves’s insistent blinking in favor of taking a look around the home, if it could be called that.

  The angel’s quarters looked a lot like the trailers he’d parked in the backlots of Purgatory, where sequel after sequel of My Life Flashed Before My Eyes was shot, chopped, and aired for the Recently Departed. It was a single room, cut into three distinct regions.

  The first was the kitchenette they were sitting in, which housed nothing but rack after rack of teabags and Live, Love, Laugh decor.

  The next was the angel’s trophy room, labeled with a half-dead LED sign reading, Jeeves’s Museum of Things. It was composed of items Lucifer had to assume were acquired in the same fashion as his bindle, given that “Achilles’s Heel Calluses” were hung right next to “Satan’s Used Hanky.”

  The final room was an elaborate surveillance set-up, decked out with an unfathomable number of the tiniest screens Lucifer had seen in all of his days. The scene was a jumble of black, white, and gray pixels that Lucifer was sure would look like something if he just leaned out of his chair a little…

  “Esteemed customer,” Dale’s voice boomed, straightening Lucifer out instantly. “It appears that our offering of Naive Potential Slave blends is not to your liking. May I interest you in our Stubborn Potential Slave blend?”

  Lucifer looked to Jeeves, but the angel had no shame, nodding at him encouragingly.

  The display screeched as Lucifer sent it back across the table. “Ah, no. I’m fine, Dale, Jeeves. But thank you.”

  Jeeves frowned.

  “Well, what can I offer you, dearie? I can’t enjoy my tea without my guest. It’s ungentlemanly.”

  “I had a quite filling dinner—” his stomach interrupted, remembering its “filling” meal of twigs and mystery sap. “So just my Certificate of Rehabilitation will do.”

  Jeeves stirred his tea slowly. “Is that a favor you’re asking for?” His big, bulging eyes darted to Lucifer’s lap, where his Ordered Steps rested.

  “No, angel,” Lucifer said firmly. “I’m simply requesting that which has been stolen from me.”

  Jeeves raised his eyebrows, eyes still on the OS. “I’d take a moment to think things over if I were you.” Gone was the cloying sing-song voice the angel had slicked on; his natural dry, gravelly tone had returned. “I’ve already started working on its frame in my museum.”

  Lucifer only needed a second to do the mental math. Satan plus The Help Desk minus Certificate of Rehabilitation equals…

  Jeeves slid his hand across the table for Lucifer’s OS. But keeping a protective hand over the device, Lucifer asked, “Jeeves, would you mind showing it to me first?”

  Jeeves’s smile flattened. He finished up the rest of his tea, then muttered, “Of course.”

  The angel stood up and escorted Lucifer to the far end of the trailer. Lucifer took care to tuck his OS in his back pocket before moving.

  From behind, Lucifer couldn’t help but notice Jeeves’s rail-thin, bruise-purple body drowning in his black-and-white satin pajama short set. His arms were so long that his overgrown fingernails nearly nicked Lucifer with each swing of them.

  This form, these proportions, Lucifer wondered. Sure, that brat said it’d been a century … But how long has it truly been since these angels saw Heaven?

  Because back in Lucifer’s day, God gave them a tune-up, an update, if you will, at least once a season. Twice, if they had worked especially hard. After all, He had to keep their skin tight somehow; no one wanted to be jump-scared by an angel with its face flab permanently blown back from flying down to Earth at high speeds.

  But from the looks of Honey and Jeeves, uncanny and grotesque, times had changed.

  It wasn’t long before Jeeves was settling in at the surveillance desk, scouring the screens. Lucifer hovered behind him, lips parted as he took in the spread.

  The angel had cameras covering damn near every inch of the Greater Eternal Circuit. Stairways, break rooms, storage closets. And right in the center was a close-up of the back of Lucifer’s head—Dale’s view.

  “Now where was it…” Jeeves muttered, honing in on a certain section of the display. The connection between the scenes wasn’t obvious to Lucifer. Some were completely white, some completely black. There was an aerial view of an oasis, a wide shot of a waterfall in a meadow… someone’s living room?

  “I don’t intend to offend, angel… is all of this legal?”

  Jeeves waved a hand at Lucifer. “Legal shmeagle. Last time I checked, God didn’t say not to—Ah!”

  Jeeves leapt out of the chair, rapping a spindly finger against one of the screens. Lucifer leaned in and sure enough, there it was. On a cluttered desk, splayed wide open for anyone to see, sat his Certificate of Rehabilitation.

  “There.” Jeeves rose up with his little smile tacked back on and hand outstretched. He sniffed a little, as if he could smell Lucifer’s surrender before it was uttered. “Now, your OS, if you don’t mind~?”

  A video of the Watusi, for reference

  Orbs... shouts to FF.net ??