Fashionably Forever After

by Robyn Peterman

  She looked at me for a long moment. The Shelia was no one’s fool. The Fairy might be promiscuous and prone to violence, but she was not an idiot. She was highly aware that I was on the brink of destroying her. Not really fair, but I wasn’t known as an equitable kind of guy.

  “It was thousands of years ago,” she said, keeping her eyes glued to mine. “I met a woman. She had been beaten by Trolls and was severely injured. I snuck her to my home in Zanthia and nursed her. However, she needed to go home to completely recover and wasn’t strong enough to make the journey alone.”

  “The woman?” I asked, feeling strangely like I was having déjà vu. Like my meeting with The Shelia was truly fated.

  “A Siren,” she confirmed what I already knew.

  “Her name?” I pressed, quite sure it was my Elle. It could have been Sadie, but I knew in my gut it wasn’t.

  The Shelia laughed. “Well, it took her a few days to give me her real name. This gal had a real penchant for lying through her teeth. Beautiful girl and tons of fun. She did steal a fair amount of my jewelry, but I don’t regret helping her at all. I was glad it was me who had discovered her. Sirens were killed on the spot back in those days.”

  “Her name?” I repeated, getting antsy.

  She squinted her eyes at me and slowly grinned. “It appears to me that you already know of whom I’m speaking, Devil. Why don’t you tell me her name?”

  “Adrielle Rinoa,” I whispered, examining the Fairy in an entirely new light. If it hadn’t been for her, there would be no Elle and me.

  “You got it, bad boy,” she said with a laugh as silver glitter sprayed all over the room. “And I’m guessing that is the very same one who took your fine ass off the market?”

  Nodding, I realized even though The Shelia had no clue how to get back to Kismet, there was no way in Hell I would harm a hair on her horny head. I’d have to find another way. It was a long shot, but I had a scheme.

  “I’ll transport you to Hell with me,” I told her. “I have one more idea of how to find Kismet. Hell is lovely this time of year. And more importantly, Demons are hornier than you are. You can have your pick.”

  “So we’re still going to Kismet?” she asked, brows raised.

  “We are. The ramifications if we don’t are devastating,” I replied shortly.

  “For you? For Adrielle?” she pushed, wanting to know exactly who she was putting her life on the line for.

  “Both,” I admitted. “However, the future of mankind is also in question. Fate has fucked up one too many times. Her end draws near.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” The Shelia said, fanning herself with her hand. “All I can say is thank you for pulling me from my enchanted prison. It would have sucked ass to die as a sin bed for Gnomes. I’d far rather bite the big one saving the world. Gnomes smell like shit.”

  Strangely, the talkative Fairy reminded me of Astrid. It made sense that they would have gotten along. They were both nuts.

  “I’ll have your brother and Gemma come to Hell to greet you,” I said, standing up and checking the office to see if there was anything to pilfer. I would have been stealing from myself since I owned the establishment, but it was still fun.

  “Gemma?” she questioned.

  “His gal pal and someone you should meet,” I said cryptically. “She’s the one who insisted I release you from your curse.”

  “And what did you demand in return?” she asked, knowing the Devil did nothing for free.

  “I get you, Gemma and The Kev to come to Kismet with me.”

  The Shelia nodded. “You’re an insane one.”

  “Your point?”

  “No point. Just an observation. You have vibrators in Hell?” The Shelia asked as she stood and made ready to depart.

  “Darling woman,” I said with a laugh. “Where do you think they were invented? We have an entire section of Hell devoted to carnal pleasure. I’m quite certain you’ll be satisfied.”

  “I like your style, Devil,” she said with a wide grin and a delightful laugh.

  “Likewise, Fairy. Just don’t get into too much trouble. We’ll leave for Kismet tomorrow.”

  “You think you can find it?”

  “I do,” I said with far more confidence than I felt.

  I would find it. There was no choice.

  At all.

  Chapter Twelve

  I didn’t have to see her to know she was here. I felt her bone deep. She was my other half—my destiny. I had no intention of only being with her in my dreams. It was time to play dirty.

  “Truth, or dare?” I inquired, not looking at her.

  “Seriously?” she asked with a groan. “I was thinking of something more physical.”

  “Is that all I am to you?” I asked, glancing up at my Siren with a grin.

  “Yep,” she said, crossing to my bed and sitting on the edge. “You’re a fabulous lay.”

  “I am,” I agreed. “World’s Greatest Lover.”

  “You’re my lover,” Elle corrected me. “And only mine.”

  “But alas, I only have you in my dreams,” I reminded her as she frowned at me with displeasure.

  “You agreed that this would be enough if it was all we could have.”

  Sitting up and pulling her to me so she didn’t disappear in a huff, I wrapped my arms around her. “I agreed to nothing. For now this is fine. But it is not our future.”

  She tried to wiggle away, but I held her fast. Both of us knew she could leave any time she wanted. It was a game we were playing—full of addiction, lust, insanity… and love.

  “Lucifer,” she said on a sigh as her body relaxed and she laid her head on my chest.

  It felt so perfect. My throat clogged with what I could only imagine was emotion—a very new thing for me. However, it was not the time to bask in newfound feelings. It was war.

  “How’s it going in Kismet?” I asked and felt her body stiffen in my arms.

  “I don’t want to talk about Kismet,” she protested. “I want to make love to you.”

  “I want the same, but all sex and no talk makes for…” I trailed off because I couldn’t think of anything that was bad about all sex.

  “Makes for incredible orgasms bathed in fire,” she finished for me while running her hands down my overheated body.

  Grabbing her hands before she could get to the prize, I pulled them back to my chest and placed them on my heart. Her quick intake of breath displayed her uncertainty with what I’d done. I was going to make her tell me the truth. Our sign was a hand to the heart. Normally, it should be my own hand to my heart, but my Siren understood instantly.

  “Has Fate found you?” I questioned as she tried to remove her hand.

  She failed.

  “No, but she’s getting closer,” Elle admitted.

  “What will she do when she finds you?”

  Elle was quiet for so long I was certain she wasn’t going to answer me.

  “She’ll freeze us in an enchantment for eternity just like she froze the rest,” she said hollowly. “Each time I visit you may be the last.”

  “Unacceptable,” I snapped, and raised her chin to mine. “I won’t let that happen.”

  “It’s what it is. Time shall march on for a while. She will be able to draw on the power of our souls regardless. The lack of balance will eventually tear her apart and the world will finally come to an end.”

  “I have your soul,” I pointed out.

  “And I have yours.”

  Goddamn it, I needed to give it back to her. She could only go a hundred years without it. It might take me far longer than that to find her.

  “How long will it be before the end?” I asked.

  She shrugged and let her chin drop. “I don’t know. That will be left up to fate.”

  The irony of her statement wasn’t lost on either of us. It made me want to kill.

  “We will exchange souls now,” I said, getting up from the bed to get hers.

  She grabbed my
hand. Her amethyst eyes were swimming with tears. “We can’t. In a dream state, it won’t work.”

  “Then tell me how to find you,” I growled. “I have to find you.”

  She slid off the bed and wrapped her arms around me. I felt every nerve ending in my body tingle with foreboding. My skin was heated and my cold dead heart was slowly shattering.

  “It’s not explainable. I would have to take you there and I can’t physically leave.”

  “There is always a way,” I insisted. “Always.”

  Elle turned and paced. Her frustration was evident in the jerky way her body moved. She was unsure… afraid.

  “I hate myself,” she whispered.

  “I love you enough for both of us,” I replied.

  “I’m such a bad person to get you involved in this, but… I can give you a hint,” she said haltingly. “And you’ll have to figure it out.”

  “Alone?”

  A smile pulled at her sinful lips. “No. And that’s part of the hint. No man is an island and…”

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And mother knows best. I love you, Lucifer, and I always will.”

  And on that cryptic note, my Siren disappeared in a blast of amethyst crystals.

  I stood naked in the middle of my room and let my head fall to my hands. Taking deep breaths, I centered myself. I was Satan. I was the Harbinger of Evil. I was the goddamned Devil.

  I was also a broken man and Adrielle Rinoa was the only person that could make me whole again. Her message was odd, but I would take it at face value. Going back to my mother didn’t appeal, but if she held the clue and had kept it from me there was going to be Hell to pay.

  The world might just end tomorrow when I threw a tantrum to end all tantrums in Nirvana.

  Or…

  Maybe mothers did know best.

  Tomorrow would be the end or the beginning. And right now I couldn’t predict which it would be.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “George Clooney?” Lizard asked, reading from a memo he was holding.

  “No. Too gray,” I replied.

  “Brad Pitt,” he tried again.

  “Too blond.”

  “Jamie Dornan?”

  “No. Fifty shades of wrong,” I told him, getting bored.

  Under normal circumstances talking about the casting of my movie would thrill me. Talking about myself or anything that had to do with me was one of my favorite hobbies. Not today. I had far more important worries—the potential end of the world for example.

  “Dwayne Johnson? I love that guy,” Lizard said, looking up to gauge my reaction.

  I sighed and stacked my beloved new notebooks into a tidy pile on my desk. “Too bald.”

  “I’ve got one more on the list Sal and Maury sent,” Lizard said.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “Joe Manganiello.”

  “Nope. I’m far prettier,” I replied, as I watched the Demon eye my notebooks.

  Scooping them up and placing them in a drawer with an impenetrable lock on it, I stared at him. I knew he was simply doing his job as my agent. There was no reason to dismember Lizard because I didn’t like the list Sal and Maury had sent.

  “Do you have any ideas?” I asked him. As he was a font of bizarre information, maybe he could come up with the perfect person to play me in the film.

  “I do,” he said with a grin, smacking his ever-present gum and rolling his bat in his hands.

  “And?” I prodded.

  “You’re not gonna like it, but he’s the only one that would truly do you justice.”

  “Is he good looking?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sexy?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Sexier than me?” I demanded.

  “Equally as much,” Lizard said and then ducked behind the chair as my hands began to spit violent glittering black sparks.

  “No one is as sexy as me,” I snapped, appalled that he would even suggest such a horrible thing. As much as I enjoyed Lizard, today would probably be his last day in Hell—or anywhere else for that matter.

  “Who is he?” I bellowed. If there was someone that rated higher than me, he needed to be taken down a peg or two. Maybe given a few warts or a limp or a unibrow…

  “It’s you,” Lizard shouted before I could reduce him to ash. “You should play yourself. No one else can play it the way it should be done. And I’ll bet my balls that I can get you an unheard of salary.”

  I froze. It was an intriguing idea. Of course, I didn’t really have time to shoot a movie since I was the fucking Ruler of the Underworld… but it was intriguing nonetheless.

  “How much?” I asked, warming to the idea.

  There was the issue of getting to Kismet, saving Elle and her mother, and reducing the power of Fate to nothing, but having something to look forward to wasn’t a bad idea. My Siren might find it arousing that I was a movie star in my spare time.

  “At least a hundred million,” Lizard replied, slowly stepping out from behind the chair.

  “Make it two hundred million and I’ll do it.”

  “Not a problem,” Lizard said with a smug smile.

  “You think Sal and Maury will go for that?” I asked, impressed with my Demon’s self-confidence.

  “Hell no,” he shot back with a laugh as he pulled a package from his pocket and held it high in the air. “But I have gum.”

  “You’re a dastardly Demon,” I told him with a grin.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said with a respectful bow.

  “It was meant as one. Go to it, man. We’ll leave for Kismet later today. I just have to run a quick errand.”

  “You know how to get there?” he asked.

  “Not yet, but I will very soon.”

  And I meant every word I’d just said. I was going to get to Kismet no matter the price.

  The penalty of losing far outweighed what I would have to pay upfront.

  “I find that wildly fucking insulting,” Mother Nature snapped and stomped her foot causing a small earthquake in Nirvana.

  “So you don’t have any clue how to find Kismet?” I demanded for the third time, risking an avalanche on top of the earthquake. Honestly, I didn’t care how much damage my mother caused. We were at her house, not mine. The cleanup was not my problem.

  “No, I don’t,” she shouted as a flock of orange and purple birds squawked in terror and flew around like they’d swallowed a vat of speed.

  “But Elle said ‘mothers know best and that no man is an island’,” I told her, pacing the garden and trying not to blow something up.

  This was not going as planned and I had no other options. My frustration level was at an all-time high and I needed an outlet. Violence was my normal go to, but my mother could be even more destructive than me when she was backed against a wall.

  Maybe… just maybe I was going about this wrong. I was never wrong, but there was always a first time.

  Sucking back my pride, my ego, and the desire to wipe Nirvana off the face of the Universe, I sat down on a massive log and patted the space next to me. If I couldn’t shout and get my way, I would try charm. Not my usual course of getting information… most of the time I resorted to torture. However, torturing my mother would end very badly.

  “I need you to help me figure this out,” I said. “Elle and her mother are now only part of the equation. If Fate is left unchecked, the world will come to an end.”

  “That’s certainly some shitty news,” Mother Nature said with a grunt of displeasure.

  “Clearly,” I shot back sarcastically. “But Fate will end it.”

  “You do realize the double entendre there was quite profound,” she commented.

  “I’m good like that,” I replied flatly.

  “And how do you know all this horrid information, my child?” Mother Nature asked as she calmed herself and took a seat beside me.

  “My Siren is a Dream Walker. She’s come to me.”

  �
��Are you sure she told you the truth?” she asked, placing her delicate fingers under my chin and forcing me to look at her.

  Nodding, I closed my eyes and let my chin rest in her hold. As much as she drove me to want to perform mass destruction, I adored this batshit crazy woman. She was my mother. For better or worse, I was stuck with her.

  “You have to tell me everything,” she stated pragmatically. “If there’s a clue I will recognize, it will be in actions of your recent past with Adrielle.”

  Her request made sense which was highly abnormal. But to my mother’s credit, I wasn’t always the most detail oriented guy.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked with a slight wince. “Intimate details?”

  “Umm, no,” she said with a giggle. “Let’s try the non-intimate details first and then get to the ones I really don’t want to hear if all else fails.”

  “Fine.” I heaved a sigh of relief. In the past bragging of my conquests was delightful to me. But with Elle… my time with her was mine. I didn’t want to share it. “So basically there are three Fates. Fate has been pulling power from the souls of Elle and her mother for thousands of years.”

  “Disgusting,” Mother Nature hissed.

  “I agree,” I said. “And apparently the Sirens are not extinct. They’ve been frozen in an enchantment on Kismet. Fate has pulled from their power as well.”

  “But she can’t exist without Elle and Sadie if they are truly the other part of the triad.”

  “Correct. However, she could freeze them and pull on their power.”

  “That bitch is going to be in so much trouble,” my mother snapped and stood up she was so angry. “When I get my hands on her, she will regret the day she was hatched.”

  “Yes, well, I have to find her first,” I reminded her.

  “Go on,” she said as she continued to move distractedly about her gardens.

  “One of the many fucking problems is that Elle can’t live without her soul for more than a hundred years.”