Ashtoreth and Hunter warped to a runic circle that had been drawn on the front lawn of a small house.

"We're actually staying in a missile silo somewhere," said Hunter. "But they let us out so mom could set her own table." He shrugged. "She really wanted to get back into the house for a night. Come on."

"It's Ashtoreth!"

A small human came running out of the house toward her, then stopped suddenly as she seemed to realize she had no idea what she was going to do when she reached the archfiend.

She stared up at Ashtoreth.

"Hi!" she said.

"Hey," said Ashtoreth, smiling at her. "You must be Raven. I hear you're a witch!"

"Uh-huh!" she said. "Do you want to see some spells?"

"Definitely," Ashtoreth said. "I'm about to start learning some new spells myself. Want a hat?"

She wove a claw through the air and created a glamour of a wide-brimmed witch hat in what she thought was Raven's size.

The child's eyes widened. She reached out and took the hat. "How did you do that?"

"I've got glamors," she said, weaving her claw through the air once more. She formed a tiny figurine that looked just like Raven, then handed it to her. "Check it out!"

"Woah!" Raven said, holding up the mini. "I'm an action figure!"

"Say, want me to light you on fire?" Ashtoreth asked.

"Uh…"

Ashtoreth laughed. "Don't worry, it doesn't hurt or anything!"

An older woman had appeared in the doorway to the house, then moved out to join them. The resemblance between her and her children was obvious.

"Ah," she said uncertainly. "Maybe let's hold off on the, uh, immolation?"

"You must be Hunter's mom!" Ashtoreth said, unforming her claw and holding out her hand. "I'm Ashtoreth!"

"It's lovely to meet you, Ashtoreth," Hunter's mom said, taking her hand and shaking it. "Call me Morgan. And thanks for saving the planet—now come in, come in!"

She ushered them inside, where Kylie, Frost, and Sadie were sitting on the television-oriented furniture.

"Dazel's not coming?" Kylie asked when she saw them. Her mouth quirked into a smile. "You'd think he was avoiding someone."

"He said no," said Hunter. "I figured he'd be with Ashtoreth, and she'd talk him into it."

"He said no?" Ashtoreth asked. "One sec. I'll get him."

"Will it take long?" Hunter's mom asked, looking from Kylie to Ashtoreth. "Supper's almost out."

"A few minutes!" Ashtoreth said. "I just gotta call him, one sec."

"I'll warp you, it'll be faster," Hunter said, standing.

Ashtoreth moved toward the door, then reached out with her telepathy to find her familiar.

Dazel, Ashtoreth said through their telepathy. Come to dinner.

Hm?

We're having dinner at Hunter's house. You're actually one of the few people who can eat, so you should come.

I'm, uh, a little busy right now, boss.

Doing what?

Oh, you know me. Just uh, enjoying leisure activities.

You're making preparations for if the humans come after you now that they know I've got you under contract.

Dazel's voice came back uncharacteristically frustrated. Yeah, Ashtoreth, that's exactly what I'm doing. You just told them everything I told you back in Morax Tol. Ignoring, for a moment, the humiliation of knowing that the humans are poring over my past even now… the humans are probably more than happy to look at killing me as doing you—and themselve—a favor.

Ashtoreth's mouth briefly became a hard line. I'm not apologizing for anything, Dazel.

I didn't ask you to. We're infernals, Ashtoreth. It all makes perfect sense… even if this time around, I'm the one who's getting the shitty end of the stick.

She could've rolled her eyes. Dazel's chronic self-pity was like a disease. Come eat, she told him. You're probably safer with the rest of us anyway. We're going to meet Hunter's family.

Dinner at the Wolfhard residence is not a priority, boss. Not compared to minimizing my risk of death or capture.

I'm not going to let them hurt you, Dazel. You're my source of spells.

Well, at least you gave a sensible reason for keeping me around.

I'm trying to speak the language I know you understand, she said. Is it working?

No.

Please? she said, drawing the word out.

A pause. Really, Ashtoreth?

Please come to dinner? she asked. Look, I know you're a former cosmic wizard-warlord suffering the temporary embarrassment of soul-slavery, and I know this probably isn't your scene, but that just makes it a crazy new experience! What if you never get a chance to do this again?

You're not going to leave me alone, are you?

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Ashtoreth smiled. If he needed to act like he was just doing to avoid her pressure, she'd be happy to play along.

Nope!

Ugh. Fine. But if the humans come to put me in a cage…

I'll protect you, she said. Come on. Where are you?

He sent her the image of a rune circle, and within a minute they'd warped across the world to where Dazel was apparently carving runes into the pavement of a city that looked like it had been abandoned for decades.

"Where are we?" Hunter asked, looking around.

"Doesn't really matter," said Dazel. "The point is that abandoned settlements provide a better spell focus for non-detection spells than untouched wilderness, if you know what you're doing. Anyway, let's go."

"Why's he hiding?" Hunter asked Ashtoreth.

"Paranoia," said Ashtoreth. "He's worried that the humans might come for him now that they've read my mind and seen how low an opinion I have of his moral character and how high an opinion I have of his magical skills."

It was a lie, of course, but it was at least plausible. Hunter didn't know about the contract—and she couldn't tell him in any case.

Hunter accepted this answer with a shrug, and within a few minutes they were back at the Wolfhard residence.

"Are they here?" Hunter's mom asked from somewhere in the kitchen. "Good—we can get started."

They gathered round the dining room table and sat. Raven insisted that Ashtoreth take a seat beside her, and Dazel stayed in Ashtoreth's lap.

Hunter's mom brought out a steaming chicken pot pie and a bowl filled with buttermilk biscuits, then began to serve everyone.

"It smells absolutely delicious, Morgan," said Frost. "Though I hope you know…"

"I know, I know," said Hunter's mom. "You can't eat. Hunter said you undead folks can drink, though, so I got you some ice wine that I bought in Niagara Falls last autumn. They're very nice. Sadie, would you grab those?"

She pointed, and Sadie fetched some tall, slender bottles from the countertop and set them in the center of the table.

"Can you drink, Kylie? I know about the vampires, but you're the other one, aren't you, the, um…"

"I'm a lich," Kylie rasped. "And you're very considerate, Mrs Wolfhard, but I'm afraid I only consume raw power, now."

Hunter's mom laughed. "Mrs Wolfhard is my mother. I was never married."

"Our dad's a lousy shit!" Raven said enthusiastically.

"Raven," Hunter's mom said calmly. "Don't say that in front of our guests."

"But you said that with dad, it's okay."

"It is. Just not in front of guests."

Well this is a shocking development, Dazel said to her privately. Who'd have thought that Hunter lacked a strong male role model?

Ashtoreth smiled faintly. Was poor Dazel too nervous to talk out loud?

"Well I at least hope that all this mana and blood you undead folks are eating is satisfying," said Hunter's mom. "I can't imagine a life without food."

"I don't really miss it, but Frost does," said Kylie. "Kind of strange to me, since blood is apparently really delicious."

"It feels off, though," said Frost. "When you eat a meal and it hits the spot, there's something natural about it. With blood? The thing that tastes great is the life force and experiences of the creature you're drinking. It's… not a comfortable way to feel euphoric."

"Ashtoreth probably doesn't mind, though," said Kylie.

Ashtoreth let out a little laugh and tried not to think of the peanut butter. "Well, I didn't really have to give up my old diet when I became a vampire, so it's not really the same."

"What was your old diet?" Raven asked, leaning forward and staring at Ashtoreth intently.

"Well, the thing with fiends is that we dine on the flesh of the unworthy," said Ashtoreth. "Demons, too. Just like how vampires can drink power out of someone's blood, only we eat it out of their flesh."

"But not the devils?" Raven asked. "Just the fiends and demons?"

"Yep!" Ashtoreth said. She paused, thought for a moment, then said, "Well, the devils do eat flesh, actually—but mostly for the same reasons humans eat meat. They don't have a power to reinforce it magically."

"Wait, so everyone in Hell eats each other?" Raven asked, a look of fascination and horror dawning on her face.

"Sort of," said Ashtoreth. "Well… hmm. We're not always eating each other all the time, but it's an option, you know? There's still a hierarchy to it. Fiends never let anybody but fiends eat other fiends."

"Oh," said Raven, nodding—apparently that made perfect sense to her.

"Anyway, the devils had ruled the demons forever, right? And so obviously they knew about the whole demonic [Consume Flesh] deal. But being fed to a demon, for them, was a sort of ultimate insult—it meant that your boss was really disappointed with your performance. You were getting fed to the slaves!"

"Uh," Frost cut in. "Look, Ashtoreth…"

"Mhmm?"

"I don't know if this is the best topic of conversation for dinner," he said, nervously looking over at Hunter's mom.

But Hunter's mom only laughed. "The apocalypse came," she said. "Raven's had to hear about worse, and she's a tough kid."

"Yeah!" Raven said. "Hunter told me all about the hellfire explosions and the ghosts and stuff, too." She suddenly turned to Kylie. "Do you have any ghosts right now?"

Kylie looked like a deer in headlights. "Huh? Uh… not here, sorry. I have a lot of minions, but they're scattered around the world. Mostly right now they're patrolling rural areas, actually. The cities are almost completely clear of demons."

"Ghosts, too?" Hunter's mom asked. "Sorry, Kylie—if Hunter told me what you do, I forgot."

"Kylie's a necromancer," Hunter explained to his mother. "She summons ghosts that go all over the world to kill demons. She basically kills more demons than all of us."

"Even Ashtoreth?" Raven asked.

"Except Ashtoreth," Kylie said quickly. "Who was knocking out bastions until there weren't any."

"How come the cities are clear?" asked Hunter's mom.

Kylie shrugged. "There was more focus on them, at first. They took more damage. With how densely packed and reliant on infrastructure the cities are, the more rural folks can probably make due without services for longer."

"Well I'll believe that," said Hunter's mom. "You should see this place when summer comes around and the cidiots start passing through in both directions. After we paved the bike trail, we had to put an actual metal barrier to stop them from turning onto it because they thought it was a road."

"Their GPSes tell them to turn onto Newton Street," Hunter explained. "But it's hard to see the turn until you get right up to it—so a lot of them kind of panic when they see they've got 100 feet left and there's only the bike trail."

"The bike trail," Hunter's mom continued, "—That, to be clear, is not wide enough for a single pickup."

"It happened more than once," said Hunter.

"Poor folks out walking their dogs suddenly playing chicken with a lifted F150 that's pregnant with two kayaks," said his mom, shaking her head before doing an imitation of what Ashtoreth assumed was a cidiot. "'Is this Newton Street?'"

Several people laughed, and Ashtoreth joined in without really knowing why. What was a cidiot?

Ashtoreth had no idea, but Frost clearly did by how much he was laughing. He started telling a story about a call he responded to at a gas station, and Ashtoreth listened intently, happy to talk about something other than the ongoing war.

Why did you bring me to this? Dazel asked after a little while.

It's nice, she said. We're all together.

I don't know why, but it feels so much stranger than when we make camp…

Raven peppered her with a few quiet questions while Frost told his story. Then, as the conversation reached a natural lull…

"So, Dazel," Sadie said loudly, getting everyone's attention before spending some time to finish a bite of food. "You haven't said much yet. Tell us about yourself! How was life down in Hell?"

Ashtoreth felt him shrink in her lap. "Uh…"

"Like, what what kind of work did you do, you know?" Sadie continued. "Were you more a city demon, or a country demon?" Her eyes practically glinted with malicious glee. "Did you have, like, a girlfriend?"

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