Chapter Text
Angel makes a beeline for the front desk when he gets back. “Rosie still here?”
Husk lifts an eyebrow and then shakes his head. “Not her. For some reason, Alastor brought Carmine back with him. She’s with the kids now.”
Angel ogles at him. “Carmilla Carmine?!”
Husk shrugs. “Better than a literal cannibal, man.”
He puts his hands on the desk and raises his eyebrow again, then asks if Angel wants a drink. Angel sits down heavily on the stool and sighs a yes.
They are passing a bottle of mezcal back and forth as the sun starts to come up, and Angel is feeling hopeful. “Maybe they just needed to sleep it off,” he says. “And they’ll be back to normal now.”
“Don’t get my fuckin’ hopes up, asshole,” Husk replies, taking the bottle from him.
Angel frowns. “I don’t like ’em being so… weak. They’re so vulnerable. Anything could happen to ’em. What… what do we do if something happens?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen.” Husk sips pensively. “Our resident overlord’s gonna find Lucifer, and then those kids’ll be untouchable.”
Angel sags onto the counter with his chin on his arms. “He better find him soon. He’s been out all night.” He traces a pattern on the countertop, and then he smiles. “They are freakin’ cute, though.”
Husk snorts. “You like kids? You couldn’t be PG-rated if you tried.”
Angel rolls his eyes. “Can too. I’ve done great so far. Also, their age – I think they’re more G-rated.”
“What’s the fuckin’ difference. That rating crap was all after my time.”
“Ooh, did you die before movies were invented, old man?”
“Nobody called them movies. They were talkies,” says Husk huffily, though Angel thinks he’s just trying to get a reaction.
So he laughs and snatches the bottle back just as someone clears their throat from the direction of the stairs. Carmilla Carmine is standing with one hand on the railing and the other bunched up in front her chest. Like she’s… nervous? Angel’s eyes dart around her, looking for evidence of children.
He stands suddenly, no longer tired from the long night nor tipsy from the tequila. “Where are they,” he asks, feeling deadly.
Carmine visibly swallows, and Angel feels sweat break out over his back. “I don’t know,” she says calmly. “I thought they may have snuck out to see you down here. You haven’t seen them?”
“No, we haven’t fucking seen them,” Husk says, outraged, but Angel doesn’t even bother with the oncoming argument.
“Charlie!” he bellows, striding around the lobby and looking underneath the sofas and tables. “Vaggie! This isn’t funny, come out right now!”
“You do not need to yell,” Carmine says, and Angel suddenly finds himself towering over her, in her space, glaring down at her.
“You lost them,” he says, feeling an icy numbness wash over him. “So guess what? Your opinion doesn’t fucking matter anymore.” He turns away from her and starts jogging for the stairs. “Charlie!”
“What I mean,” Carmine says, “is that I am fairly certain they are no longer in the hotel—”
The front door bangs open.
“What did you just say?” Alastor asks from the doorway.
“Alastor,” Carmine says, and now her calm voice is slipping. She sounds afraid. Angel, for all his worry for Charlie and Vaggie, takes a bit of grim satisfaction in hearing little Ms. Calm, Cool, and Collected crack in front of their resident overlord. "I can explain."
The room is suddenly thrown into shadow, the only light coming from the walls in jagged patterns of neon green light. Alastor morphs into a thing of red and black nightmares and bears down on Carmilla, who stands straight and still but looks terrified. Angel feels a hand on his arm drawing him away, and looks down to see Husk, whose eyes are wide and fixed on Alastor.
Husk is shivering. Angel lets him pull them both back toward the bar.
“We had a deal,” the Alastor-thing growls with many voices. “You were to keep the children safe. You have broken your end of the deal.”
“I did everything I could,” Carmine says. “She must have used her portal ability—”
“While you were doing what?”
Carmine inhales as though to answer, then hesitates.
“I constructed a ward,” she says after moment. “It should have been able to hold her, but I underestimated her power. And then I… it had been a long day, the children were asleep, I thought—”
The Alastor-thing whips a black tentacle arm to strike at Carmine, and though Angel can see her bring her arms up across her chest to block it, she still goes flying backward to hit a wall. She lands on her feet and wipes a hand over a thin line of blood at her mouth.
“You fell asleep!”
“I am sorry,” she says. “Our deal is ended, you may have your minion back.” She snaps her fingers once, and suddenly Niffty is standing between her and the Alastor-thing.
Niffty yelps, and then looks around. She peers at Carmine, then she turns to looks at Alastor. “Sir?” she asks. “I wasn’t done yet.”
Alastor holds the nightmare form for a beat longer, then shifts rapidly back to his normal self. He brushes one hand down over his hair and then places the tip of his staff on the tiled floor with a crisp tap. He enunciates through heavy feedback, “Get out.”
Niffty blinks at him, but seems to instinctively know he isn’t talking to her.
Carmine bites her lip and then nods and pirouettes, vanishing into grey smoke.
Alastor is breathing so hard that Angel can hear it from across the room. Husk is still shivering with leftover fear, so Angel puts an arm around his shoulders. But Niffty marches fearlessly up to Alastor, and she sweeps her hands over his coattails as though to dust them off. Alastor leans heavily forward for a moment, letting his microphone staff take his weight, then reaches down to pat her on the head.
Angel decides to risk breaking the silence. “Uh, what did Carmine mean when she said Charlie used a portal? She’s fucking five, she shouldn’t be able to—”
“And yet clearly she can,” Alastor says snarkily, almost seeming like his usual self. “All right, now! We need to come up with a list of places Charlie might have gone with Vaggie, and then search each of them.” He hisses, then darkly says, “Carmilla’s punishment can come later.” He suddenly spins and flourishes his staff. “Any ideas?”
Angel says, perhaps a bit stupidly, “Where’s Lucifer?”
“Unavailable,” Alastor replies, though his smile becomes decidedly more snarl-like.
“What?” Angel cannot believe Lucifer would let Charlie wander around Hell as a five-year-old. “He refused to come help her?”
The snarl gets nastier. “No. If I had to guess, I would say that the King of Hell is currently not within his domain.”
Husk, perhaps through shock, finally stops shivering. “You couldn’t find him?”
Alastor glances at Husk with narrowed eyes, and Angel surprises himself by subtly shifting his weight so that he can easily move between them if he needs to. Huh.
But Alastor simply looks away again and says, “No. I could not.”
“Wait,” Angel says, struck by inspiration. “Charlie wanted to go see her mom. She wanted to see her dad too, but she really wanted to see her mom first. Maybe she opened a portal to their old place! The Queen’s Palace?”
Alastor appraises him with something like satisfaction. “Yes… That’s as good an idea as any. Let’s go.” Then he kneels down to Niffty’s eye-level. “Not you, my dear. Someone needs to hold down the fort, hmm?”
She nods briskly. “The bugs have become brave – too brave – since I left. I’m going to make them regret it,” she says, and cackles evilly before scampering toward the stairs.
Alastor tells Husk to drive and gives him directions, then gets in the backseat of the limo with Angel. Alastor hums discordantly to himself and stares out the window as the hellish scenery passes by in the red morning light. Angel wishes he had sat in the front passenger seat instead of back here.
“It was a good idea to check the old palace,” Alastor says, apropos of nothing.
Angel rubs the back of his neck. “Thanks.” For some reason, he tries for small talk. “You know where it is. Have you been there before?”
There is a slight skip in Alastor’s humming, then it resumes. “Once.”
His tone does not invite further conversation. “Cool,” Angel says weakly, and directs his gaze outside his own window, determined to pretend he’s alone in the car for the rest of the journey.
The Queen’s Palace is not, as one might think, at the center of Pentagram City, but rather at the tip of one of the points, one point over from the hotel. It doesn’t take them long to arrive. They pull up the drive, and it looks… deserted. The windows are all dark (though, notably, none have been smashed – Lilith, despite her absence, still holds a powerful sway over the denizens of Hell) and there are thorny, black vines crawling all over one corner of the building.
Angel’s heart aches at the thought that Charlie might have teleported into such a depressing place, with her mother nowhere to be found.
They all get out of the car and Alastor sweeps a hand toward the door, which opens for them. The darkness within is forbidding, so Angel clears his throat and says, “Uh, could we get some lights too?”
Alastor looks at him – Angel pretends it doesn’t scare the piss out of him – and snaps his fingers. Sconces on the outer walls light up, as well as loads of the lights inside that make the windows glow golden.
They hear a high-pitched scream from inside. Husk and Angel run in, but Alastor melts into shadow, clearly heading directly for the source of the sound.
There is suddenly more screaming. “He scared the girls,” Husk growls, annoyed.
“Come on,” Angel says, and grabs his hand.
They find a staircase and follow it up to a short hallway that ends in an open door. The door leads to an enormous bedroom, with the bed on the far wall. It’s decorated in reds and pinks, with many pretty flower patterns and two golden pegasus-shaped lamps on the bedside tables. It is clearly a little girl’s room, if the little girl in question were immensely rich. Or royalty. Or both.
So, it’s Charlie’s old room.
In the center, on the floor, are Charlie and Vaggie. Vaggie is crying and trembling with one of her hands gripping Charlie’s, and she is staring at Alastor, who stands a couple of feet away with his hands slightly raised, placatingly. She must be the one who screamed, because Charlie is unconscious beside her.
“What did you do!” Husk roars at Alastor.
Alastor ignores him. “I can help, my dear,” he says in a calm voice to Vaggie. “I’m terribly sorry the lights and my sudden appearance frightened you. Now you need to let me see to Charlie, so I can help her.” He holds out a single hand, palm up, inviting.
“N-no!” Vaggie cries, and then she catches sight of Angel Dust. “Mr. Angel!” she says, and bursts into fresh tears. “H-h-help, sh-sh-she… won’t w-w-wake uh-uh-up…”
Angel collapses to his knees beside her and hugs her. Her little arms wrap back around him, and his chest feels like one of Alastor’s nightmare tentacles are crushing all of the air out of it as she sniffles against his chest. “I’m so sorry, Vaggie. You’re safe now. Mr. Radio is gonna help Charlie, okay? I promise. I promise, sweetheart. We are so sorry we scared you. Okay?”
Vaggie buries her face in his shoulder. “I want to g-go h-home!” she wails.
Angel pulls her tightly to him and keeps telling her soothing things as he looks back over his shoulder at Alastor and nods to him. Alastor steps closer and kneels by Charlie as Angel stands with Vaggie in his arms.
“Hey, baby,” Husk says from beside him, and Angel, for some reason, blushes. He could not more clearly be talking to Vaggie, what is my problem?
Vaggie hiccups repeatedly as she focuses on Husk. “Hello,” she says after a moment.
“Can you tell ol’ Husker why you and Charlie left the hotel?” Husk says, in the same soft voice.
Vaggie takes a big, shuddering breath, before producing new tears. “A… are we in trouble?”
“No!” Angel and Husk say at the same time. “Not at all, Vaggie,” Angel continues. “We just wanna help. If you tell us what you were doing then maybe we can help you with it.”
She sniffles, her little fists tightening their grip on Angel’s jacket. “Charlie said she’d take me to see her mom. So I can g-go home. I’m not supposed to be here, I’m supposed to be in Heaven.”
Husk nods to her sagely. It’s kind of adorable. Who knew his bartender-mode would be good for dealing with kids? “Very sensible of you. Now…” Husk gives Angel a very brief warning look, “can you tell us how Charlie got hurt?”
Angel preemptively starts patting her back in a way he hopes is soothing, but Vaggie whimpers and starts up her crying again anyway. “I don’t know I don’t know, she opened the-the-the… door in the air. And she was sick, and she fell down, and she didn’t wake up. I don’t know.”
“Okay, okay. It’s all right.” Husk and Angel turn back around to where Alastor is…
Where Alastor is sitting, cross-legged, on the floor, cradling Charlie in his arms. His staff lies on the floor beside him. He’s muttering against a background of tinny radio noises, and strange marks of black and green magic hover around him. His smile is barely-there, and Angel thinks his eyes look tired, with heavy lines and shadows beneath them. As Angel watches, one of the hovering marks sinks down onto Charlie’s chest, then glows and vanishes.
Charlie groans.
“What are you doing,” Husk whispers, and Angel thinks he sounds afraid.
But Angel trusts his own instincts. “I think he’s helping her,” he says. “Al, Vaggie just told us that Charlie got sick making the portal. You told us earlier her power was still at full strength. But she’s just a little kid. Is using her power dangerous for her?”
Alastor doesn’t look up to answer him. “Obviously.”
Another mark touches down on Charlie’s forehead. She shifts her weight and her eyes blink open. She and Alastor stare at one another for a long second, and then she smiles widely.
“Mr. Radio!” she says, but her voice is pathetically weak, cracking into whispers.
Alastor is uncharacteristically speechless, but Angel sees one of his hands, the one cupping Charlie’s shoulder, tighten its hold on her. And then, Charlie pushes herself up and hugs him around his neck.
Alastor is completely still for a long moment, but then his eyes slowly fall shut and he brings one hand up and places it against her back. They sit like that for many seconds. Angel finds himself smiling. He suddenly remembers Mimzy calling Alastor a kitten, and while he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Alastor act particularly kitten-like, he’s definitely starting to see the guy’s softer side.
Then Charlie pulls away and tries to look around. “Wait, where’s Vaggie?”
Angel kneels beside them with his charge, and the girls reach out to hold each others’ hands.
“Why’d you get sick?” Vaggie asks Charlie miserably.
“I don’t know,” Charlie says in her whispery voice. Her energy is fading fast, and she sinks back down against Alastor’s legs. She keeps holding onto Vaggie’s hand, though. Angel sees Alastor slide a hand beneath her head to support it. “Did we find my mom?”
“She’s not here, hon,” Angel says when no one else speaks up. “She’s gone away on a trip for a while.”
For the first time since Angel found her sitting on the pavement, Charlie’s eyes well up with tears.
“Why did she leave me?” she says, and starts to weep.
After only a few stressful moments, Charlie cries herself back to sleep. Vaggie, though clearly still upset, is starting to fall asleep again too in Angel’s arms. Angel sees Husk flinch when Alastor begins to stand – but Alastor has Charlie firmly in his arms. He holds her so that her head rests against his chest, and her tiny feet dangle over his elbow. He skillfully kicks his mic staff upward into the air where it dissolves into shadow, and then he turns and walks out of the room. Angel and Husk follow him down the stairs, through the door, and to the car.
When they get back to the hotel, both children are totally asleep, and neither wake when Alastor and Angel settle them back into their beds.
Angel is so tired that he really is going to start fucking up, so he tells Alastor, “I can keep helping, but I need some shut-eye first.”
Alastor seats himself neatly in the armchair beside Charlie’s bed. “How much time do you need?”
“Four hours, if I can get it. Two, minimum.” He thinks about alternatives. It’s hard. “I can also call Cherri Bomb back, she did okay with them last night for a bit.”
Alastor hums. He doesn’t seem tired, except under his eyes where the lines have deepened. But he also doesn’t answer Angel’s suggestion. Sleep pulls at his limbs, and he waves a hand as though to sweep his own words out of the air.
“Take four,” Alastor says as Angel turns to leave. “I will be here.”
“Thanks,” Angel replies, and means it. Weirdly, he trusts the guy. He knows Husk doesn’t, but… well. It’s been an insane twenty-four hours, all Angel really has left is his instincts, and his instincts are saying Alastor won’t let anything happen to the girls. “Oh, and Alastor?” he remembers as he reaches the door to the hall.
Alastor looks up at him and raises an eyebrow.
“When you deal with Carmine later… can I be there to watch?”
Alastor’s smile shows all his teeth, and he inclines his head. “Naturally.”
And Angel heads to bed.