“Eating my food and creeping on my private thoughts? I’m going toWhammageddonthem.”
“Is that a karate move?”
“Oh, no. It’s this game we play every Christmas. There’s this Wham song that’s been out since the eighties. If you worked retail hell at any point in your life, you’re sick to shit of that song. You’re supposed to see how long you can go during Christmaswithout hearing that song. I’m about to be singing it in my head this entire lunch. It still counts if it’s a cover.”
“Do they kill you if you lose?” Nero gasped.
“No, but if you work retail, you might want to drown yourself in the toilet if you hear it too much.”
“I wish I could Wham because I don’t want them listening in on my thoughts, either, since I’m in their orbit now.”
“Are there any annoying demon songs you can sing in your head?”
“There’s a really offensive one about Incubus dick. I’m going to sing that. It’s actually complimentary if you’re an Incubus. There’s rumors Abaddon was the one who wrote it.”
“I demand to hear that song if we make it through lunch.”
Nero just grinned at me. Celix and Kujo had stayed behind to listen since, yeah, they were my bodyguards now.
“They don’t usually peek on lower demons, but if your head is annoying, they are going to try to listen to ours. I’ve got my song picked out,” Celix said.
“Okay, so the idea isn’t completely horrible,” Kujo said. “They’ll either leave because they can’t get anything from us or we can use it to shake them up.”
“If their mental shields drop, Dad and I will be listening,” Wrathhog said.
“Okay, we do this,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
I was about to square off against four fallen angels with just a Christmas song from the eighties in my head. It wasn’t the dumbest thing I’d done before. Lucifer’s dining table was obscene. It sat more people than I could gather on an average Friday for drinks. I took the head of the table because fuck them. Until Lucifer came back, this was my house.
Satan and Abaddon chuckled and decided to act as a buffer. Nero, Celix, and Kujo sat next to me. Wrathhog sat next to her dad. Satan and Abaddon sat on either side of the table betweenus and the other princes. I was honestly glad because these men weren’t scared of me, but Satan looked like he could pop their head with those thighs.
My servants brought dinner out and four celestial chickens just ignored them instead of thanking them. They looked atmelike I was insane for doing so, even though Satan and Abaddon didn’t act like this food appeared out of nowhere, either.
And yeah, now that the smell of the Barf O’Rama that was my office was a faint memory and all I could smell was this delicious food, I realized I was starving. It made sense that I needed to eat more now that my body was finally releasing all this stored magic and growing wings.
I just had one question.
“This isn’t roast baby, is it?” I asked, pointing to the meat.
Satan just gave me a small smile.
“When we were banished, this place was empty. We could traverse Hell and we could make brief trips to the mortal realm before our siblings tracked us down and tried to finish us off. We are divine, but once we were banished, we needed food. We stole animals from the mortal realm and bought them there. The atmosphere mutated some of them into predators and Lilith played with some to make demons, but what you’re eating came from ancestors on the mortal realm.”
“Sweet,” I said, dumping a huge portion on my plate.
I honestly didn’t care as long as I wasn’t eating babies or humans. I’d never been a picky eater.
“So, I never personally did, but since you’ve met the man, do all of you say grace and thank your dad for this food?” I asked.
Satan fell out laughing and Belphegor started choking. Mammon started pounding on his back and the rest of the princes looked at me like I personally pissed in their cornflakes.
“No,” Beelzebub hissed. “He’s still a sore subject we don’t talk about.”
I raised my wine glass.
“Toast to daddy issues?”
“Now, you look here?—”
