The devil, knelt beside her on the floor, waits for her to finish.

If she were in a movie, Emmelia thinks, with a curious sort of distance, she would scream right now.

Instead, she puts her hand over her mouth, bites down on it hard.

"...no," she says, slightly muffled. "No! Not right now," and immediately wishes she'd made the Sign of the Cross or really anything other than yelling at the devil to leave.

"...another time, then."

(There's nothing that looks all that unusual about him, nothing that sounds unearthly. He could easily be a man from down the street, if he weren't so obviously and unmistakably himself.)

He looks up at the icons, at the twisted body in the sketch beside them.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

And then he's gone, as silently and quickly as he came.

She thinks about telling her confessor. But there are visions, and then there are hallucinations brought on by stress and grief, and -- the devil doesn't really go away because you yell at him.

He certainly doesn't kneel in prayer.

Emmelia goes to her classes, mostly. There's no such thing as compassionate leave for "my best friend died," but she's a good enough student to get away with skipping once in a while. She prays, a lot. She cries over the sketchbooks he left her; she tries not to linger on certain pages (the violent, the pornographic), but it's not as if she can bear to tear them out.

There's a heavy overlap between the violent and the pornographic, in the earlier ones, bloody flogging and ecstatic dismemberment, boys impaled or wrapped in thorns, suspended in bliss. They're scattered between studies of faces and models, the little still lifes scratched in mechanical pencil, the occasional parody of Saint Sebastian. (One of the sketchbooks has a post-it note in the front – sorry about all the gay sex, written in his angular chicken scratch.)

In the later ones, months into his treatment, the splashes of red ink disappear, as does the pleasure. There are more gruesome self-portraits – rotting from the inside, surgically mutilated, mouth and eyes sewn, burnt alive, hanging from a cross by ribbons threaded through the gaping holes in his palms ending in neat bows. Some have wings, and some have halos.

Through it all, growing more frequent and more confident and more accurate and kinder in the eyes as time passes, there are sketches of the devil's face.

It's not hard, at least, to keep from lingering on the images of her best friend's inner horrors.

As for the other thing -- she must have seen Z sketching that face. Glanced over his shoulder, forgotten about it. It's not even improbable. She's seen so many of his drawings.

(It's harder than she thought it would be. The images of Z's suffering keep making her cry, but she keeps looking at them, long after she's managed to put all the gay sex into a box under her bed, like poking at an open sore.

She prays for her friend, over and over, lying awake at night, even when all she can think of is his eyes hollow in the searing light of a halo.)

Two weeks later, someone answers.

There's no one, and then there's the devil, sitting at the foot of her bed with his hands clasped.

"I don't suppose this is a better time."

"No!"

"I'm not sure how long this can wait, Emmelia."

She scrambles out of bed, crossing herself.

"Go away -- in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost--!"

"–well, all right."

And he's gone.

Emmelia tells her confessor, this time.

She's pretty sure that he doesn't believe her, which is probably reasonable. He counsels her to pray often, to choose improving media rather than books or movies with disturbing or occult themes, to have frequent recourse to the sacraments, to spend time with her family and friends. He asks her, gently, how she's coping with the death of her friend.

At home, she opens up a text document on her computer, writes the date and time and then an account of what happened. Two days ago I saw the devil. He looked like this -- and a cellphone picture of one of Z's sketches. I told him to leave me alone and made the Sign of the Cross and he vanished. I was in bed but I was wide awake. I've had sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations and false awakenings and none of them were anything like this. I saw him once before, a couple of weeks ago, and that time I wasn't in bed. He left when I told him to that time, too.

It's not as easy as it should be to follow the priest's advice. She deletes her bookmarks of a couple of dubiously legal fanfiction sites, immediately regrets it, manages to reconstruct the address of one from memory, regrets that too. She looks at Z's drawings just as much, but now she feels guilty about it. She calls her parents and tells them she misses them but she's doing all right. Her abstract algebra professor sends her a concerned email about how much she's skipping class, and she deletes it without reading past the subject line.

It's another thirteen days before she comes back from brushing her teeth to the devil sitting in her desk chair.

"May we please talk."

She should make the Sign of the Cross again, abjure him by the Holy Name to leave.

There are so many stories about saints being tempted by the devil in the semblance of a man. Emmelia can't remember a single one where the saint was wearing pajamas. She's pretty sure it's the pajamas, somehow, which do her in, leaving her wondering for just a moment if he has something to tell her -- something from -- no, she doesn't believe he's in --

"What."

"Thank you."

"I've been asked to come here and speak with you. As a personal favor."

"Have you."

She's backed up against the wall, arms folded protectively over her chest, one hand clutching at her scapular. This conversation is such a stunningly, spectacularly bad idea, and yet here she is having it anyway.

"Yes."

He doesn't react to her, keeps his eyes lowered.

"He'd like you to know that he's – well. In a better place, I suppose."

It's such an obvious ploy, Emmelia actually laughs.

"I don't believe you," she says, fear entirely forgotten. "I command you, by the Holy Name of Jesus, get out of my house and go. the. hell. to. hell."

He reappears, roughly ten seconds later, looking slightly ruffled.

"–excuse me."

She scrambles up to stand on her bed, snatching the crucifix from the wall above it to brandish like she's trying to slay a vampire.

"Go away, go away, go away -- Jesus, Mary, Joseph! -- I, I abjure you...!"

"Oh, for–"

She wraps herself up in a cocoon of blankets, still clutching the crucifix, and falls asleep with the lights on.

The next morning, she writes up her notes in a new text document, puts them both in a folder.

If anything justifies skipping class, she thinks this probably does. But she has a midterm, so she goes and writes in her blue book for an hour and a half about the allegorical significance of something she doesn't care about in a book she didn't actually read.

When she returns from class that day, he's there again.

"–I will tell you his exact words if I must, but I will not enjoy it," he says, very quickly.

"My best friend is not in Hell," she says, and throws the crucifix at his head.

He ducks.

"I should hope he hasn't left since last I checked!"

"You know what? I'm not doing this tonight. I'm getting a B in my graduate seminar. I need to study."

Emmelia pulls a book off her shelf, flips through it, sets it open on her bed, sits cross-legged in front of it.

"A B?"

"It's a B plus," she says, defensively.

"You're going to spend your night ignoring the physical manifestation of Satan because you have a B plus."

"If I want to get into a good grad school, I need a recommendation from this professor!"

"Your dedication is admirable."

"Wow. Flattery. I'm flattered."

She turns the page.

"He's recovering."

"La," she says, putting her fingers in her ears, "la, la, la, la..."

He'll wait.

She gets tired of "la, la, la" after a while, and carries on with the quality of mercy is not strain'd, and then is this a dagger that I see before me, and then the noble gases, and then the Our Father in Latin.

Halfway through the third repetition of the Our Father, he sighs, and

vanishes.

She doesn't notice, for a while, because she's doing math.

When she does, she pulls out her laptop and writes down her account of what happened. Then she calls the parish.

It turns out, no one answers the parish phone at eleven-thirty at night.

Requiem aeternam dona Z, domine, she prays, covers over her head because that definitely means the devil can't get her, et lux perpetua lucet ei. Resquiat in pace. I know You love him more than I do, Lord, and I wish nothing but peace and joy upon him. Receive him into Your light...

She tries the phone again in the morning, on her way to class.

It turns out, none of the numbers the automated message tells her to press are for "the devil keeps talking to me." Probably this is because it would just get lots of crazy people pressing it. Possibly she is a crazy person. Possibly she should do something about this.

When she comes home from class, he's waiting there again.

"Tell me," she says, tossing her backpack into the corner, "did you fall in the first instant after your creation, or the second?"

“...pardon?”

"Saint Thomas Aquinas thinks the demons couldn't have fallen in the first instant of their existence, because then God would have effectively created them already sinning. Duns Scotus thinks they could have."

"...it took quite a while longer than an instant or two, actually."

"Huh. Most of the theologians I've read take for granted that angels' mind are, you know, unfettered by mortal limitations. So you can think it all out instantaneously."

"Think it all out, yes. But the world only moves so quickly, and not all of us are Lucifer."

"The angels fell before literally anything else even existed."

"You're quite confident about that."

"I mean, it's not strictly doctrine, but it's a pretty standard interpretation of that one bit of Genesis."

"It's also a wrong one."

He steeples his fingers.

"Some of us had a little patience."

"All right, so what did you fall over, then? The Incarnation?"

She's reheating leftovers, now.

"Personally? I fell with man. Or...just after, really."

"Cute."

The microwave dings. She takes out the sizzling macaroni.

"What's even your goal here? Convince me you're real nice, and then...?"

"My goal is to keep our mutual friend from barreling up here to visit you and spraining his own psyche. His is...complicated, I'd wager."

He eyes the macaroni with some suspicion.

"Want to try one that's not a blatant lie?"

"I'll admit to being partially motivated by spite."

"I am really not such a spectacularly holy person that I expect the devil to harbor personal spite against me."

The silverware drawer is empty. She fishes a fork out of the depths of the sink and washes it off.

"Not against you in particular, my dear, against your belief system."

"I'm not your dear," she says, automatically. "Shouldn't you go harass the Pope or something, then?"

"I'm not sure it would do any good."

"Because this is so productive."

She sits on her bed and eats macaroni out of the tupperware.

"Which brings us back to my first motivator."

He keeps looking at her sink.

"Is something bothering you over there?"

"It's possible."

"My kitchen is bothering you. Not my home altar. My kitchen."

"How long has it been since you emptied that?"

"Well, let me see." She makes a show of counting on her fingers. "Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday, Sunday ... sometime before my best friend died, asshole."

"–pardon me, no offense meant – "

He looks deliberately away from the kitchen.

"...it's okay." She pokes apathetically at the pasta with her fork. "Sorry for snapping."

(The devil is capable of apologies. This is theologically fascinating.)

"I couldn't fault you for it. You've lost a loved one, and the devil has been bothering you after class."

"Nice of you to admit, I guess. I don't suppose this means you're going to stop bothering me?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Fine."

She gives up on the macaroni. The tupperware, and the fork, go in the sink.

"Are you planning on getting around to trying to tempt me at some point?"

"I suppose it depends on your definition. I have been told that you hate to be wrong."

"You can't seriously be expecting me to listen to theological arguments from the devil."

"Not particularly. But I do enjoy being able to complain to someone."

The devil is lonely.

Okay. Sure. Why not. He's probably lying but she would feel really, really stupid if he wasn't lying and she acted like he was.

"Do you actually play chess?"

"On occasion."

"I have a set somewhere."

It takes her a minute to find. She gives him white, because the alternative seems vaguely racist, or something.

"Not playing for a wager, I assume?"

"I'm really not under the impression that I'm going to win."

"I wouldn't count on it, no."

The devil is, in fact, excellent at chess. He seems to have a slightly difficult time resisting the urge to give her lessons.

She is not excellent at chess, but she's respectable enough.

Halfway through the game, she starts asking questions like "what should I have done there?" and "how could I have prevented that?"

He is an enthusiastic teacher, if a little prone to going off on tangents. (She's not the only mathematician he's played chess with.)

Eventually she is well and soundly defeated.

She offers him her hand. "Good game."

He shakes it.

"Well played."

(It's a little warm, a little undefinably odd, but not all that different from shaking hands with a human.)

"I have an eight AM tomorrow," Emmelia observes, checking her phone.

Being shy about nudity in front of the devil seems pointless. He can presumably see her naked any time he cares to. Also, he's a spirit and not attracted to human women. So she undresses, and finds her pajamas on the floor near her bed.

He doesn't seem particularly bothered.

"I suppose I'll see you in the afternoon, then."

This is consistent with her theory!

"I suppose so. Good night, uh -- do you have a name?"

"A few, really. I've been partial to Valentine, lately."

"--what, like the saint?"

“If I ruled out the name of everyone who’s ostensibly gone to heaven, there wouldn’t be many left.”

"There's a handful of names Shakespeare invented which aren't associated with any saints yet."

“None that have called to me, I’m afraid.”

"Fair enough, I guess. Good night, Valentine."

She kneels to say her evening prayers.

"Good night, Emmelia."

He watches her, for a moment,

before he goes.

She skips class, in the morning, to call the parish and set up an appointment for next Monday with a priest.

Her afternoon class runs long. Instead of going home afterward, she goes to the church and sits in the back pew, first to pray, then to quietly do her homework.

When it starts to get late, she tries the doors of the empty confessionals. On one side, the penitent's door has been left unlocked. She slips in, closes it after her, scrolls nervously on her phone as the sacristan walks past outside, locking up the empty church.

Pews aren't very comfortable to sleep in. She tucks her backpack under her head and tries her best.

There's someone sitting next to her, briefly backlit by a searchlight shining through a stained glass window.

She sits upright, clutching her backpack.

"Z...?"

He looks different.

One side of his head is shaved, showcasing a row of new metal rings down the shell of his ear, a stud through his eyebrow, a ring in his lip. He's wearing clothes that actually let on that he has a body, tank top and tight jeans, and it looks – healthier, like his body, still pale and scarred down the arms but not softened by hormone treatments and half-starved.

"...hell of a place to show up, huh...?"

He hasn't managed to look straight at her, yet – his eyes are fixed on the altar.

"...it -- seems appropriate."

He glances at her backpack, at the locked doors.

"...I am pretty into trespassing."

She giggles.

(Tears spring to her eyes.)

"Are you -- can I hug you?"

"Uh – not...totally sure yet. First time being a ghost."

He opens his arms, though, after a moment of hesitation.

She tries, very nervously.

There's just a single moment of contact, of solid warmth,

before it gives like dissolving sugar, and her arms pass right through him.

"...gotta work on that, I guess," he mumbles.

"Is this -- might it -- are you--"

"--am I going to see you again, then?"

"...yeah."

He pulls a knee up to his chest.

"I mean, I'm still kinda on house arrest, and I dunno what kinds of exciting ankle bracelet technology they've got in Hell, but...pretty sure."

"Purgatory," she corrects, patiently.

"...I'm pretty sure it was hell."

"It's a reasonable mistake to make."

"Dude. I drew a pentacle with my own blood and slit my wrists so the devil would come take me home. I'm pretty fucking sure."

"God loves you even more than I do. And I wouldn't have sent you to hell for that."

“I’ve been hanging out with Satan.”

"Yeah, well, who hasn't?"

“I heard you threw Jesus at him.”

"I threw a crucifix at him. I did not desecrate the Host."

"...he gave me a house. I don't really know what to do with it."

"You can have that proper workshop you kept talking about."

She slides closer in the pew, so that she'd be sitting cuddled up to him if he were solid enough to make that possible.

"I've been thinking about it. Gotta get through the phase where I trash my living room a lot first."

"Are we talking plates-at-the-wall trashing or spray-paint-art trashing?"

"Smashed the windows, ripped the guts out of my couch, set it on fire..."

"Does it magically regenerate, or does your living room look like the Hulk went through it?"

"I can get it fixed pretty quick. But I like hanging out in the wreckage."

"You would."

"I did have to ask for a redo when I burned the whole place down."

"Pyromaniac."

"They promised me more fire."

"Somehow I feel like in your case that might fail to serve its intended purpose."

"Close enough, right?"

"Sure, we'll go with that."

He lets his neck relax, head lolling back, and stares up at the ceiling.

"...sorry I couldn't say goodbye in person."

"Well. You have now."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Did they let you have any of the stuff I left?"

"Yeah. I got your notebooks. -- Do you not hear it? When I pray to you?"

"Uh – I...don't think we get great service in the pit."

She actually looks a little shaken by this.

"...you have to come back often, then."

"...promise."

He reaches for her hand – there's a moment of warmth, gentle pressure, before it once again gives way to nothing.

"You know me. Reigning champion of sneaking out."

"...don't get yourself in trouble."

"Isn't this supposed to be, like...the maximum amount of trouble? Cosmically."

"Why would you say that," Emmelia asks, fondly despairing. "Under what possible circumstances would that seem like a good idea to say?"

"I'm a glutton for punishment. You know this."

"It's honestly impressive how good you are at multitasking deadly sins."

“I’ve got a gift.”

"I suppose you could call it that."

"Yeah. Well. Better than the alternative."

He looks back at the altar.

"You're not bad at multitasking heavenly virtues, either."

He turns back to her.

"––I'm done, okay?"

His arms cross in front of him.

"Everybody did their very fucking best, and I couldn't take it, and then I fucking killed myself and went to hell, so you can stop trying to make me a good person!"

"I'm not trying to make you a good person! I think you are one!"

She's whisper-shouting; it echoes in the empty church.

"...no, you don't, Em."

"I'm not the one who thinks you're in Hell!"

"Em. I fucked guys. I hated the Church. I never repented and I died mad about it. What about that doesn't sound like Hell to you?"

"Do you love me?"

"Yeah. I do."

"Then you're not in Hell."

"You're not God. Don't know if you noticed."

"There's no love in Hell."

"How would you even know."

"That's what Hell is."

"So...the devil is running Purgatory because..."

"...maybe he's lying about being the devil. Or about being in charge. Or it's a Job sort of situation and God is letting him be involved. Or you got the Scared Straight purgatory program. I don't know, do I look like a theologian?"

He laughs. It's ugly.

"Jesus, you had to pick those exact fucking words."

"Which -- oh. Shoot. Look, I didn't name it."

"Pretty fucking appropriate, though."

He slides down on the pew and pulls up his other knee, hugging them to his chest.

"...I really hope you're wrong."

Well this is a sucky reunion with her dead best friend.

"...no one ends up in Heaven or Hell except by their own free choice."

"...yeah. They say that about a lot of things."

"Miss you anyway."

"Miss you too."

She's not going to cry. She's not the dead one.

"Look out for yourself. Okay? I'm not – it's kinda hard to watch your back from here, you know?"

He grabs for her hand again, comes up with nothing.

"I -- yeah. I'll do my best."

You too doesn't make any sense. He's in Purgatory, he doesn't need to look out for himself, he's not in danger.

"...I love you too."

He opens his arms and drops his knees and leans in all at once to throw his arms around her, and there's another moment where it feels like he's really there in the flesh, like he's come back from the dead –

and then he's gone, and the church is empty.

She cries, and cries, and cries, and prays, and cries.

Eventually she sleeps.

In the morning, she goes to class, like a responsible person who didn't spend the night hanging out with their dead best friend.

She can't stow away in the church every night. But she can look up local perpetual adoration chapels, and sleep in the back pew of a different one each night, halfway propped upright against her backpack, starting awake most hours at the change of shifts, only leaving to attend classes.

It's not the most restful sleep she's ever gotten. But she only has to make it until Monday.

On Friday morning, someone is waiting for her at an otherwise deserted bus stop. He has an iron grip on the handle of his umbrella, and is leaning on it slightly as if for support.

...you know what, the devil has a right to public transportation the same as anyone. She's just going to turn around and walk to a different bus stop.

She is now being followed by a very put-out looking demon. He's not particularly fast – the umbrella is, apparently, standing in for a cane – but he is, apparently, motivated.

"You told him he was in purgatory."

"Retro vade, Satana," she sighs, not particularly hopeful.

(She also stands and waits, because the alternative just feels too rude for words.)

"Thank you," he says, when he catches up. "–I would be quite grateful if you would not do that again."

"Oh," she says, dryly, "sorry, spoiler alert."

"This is not canonical material," he says, wearily.

"No, it's capital-T Tradition. What do I look like, a Protestant?"

Very clever.

"The poor boy is paranoid enough."

She crumples, just a little bit, slipping her heavy backpack off her shoulders to dump it on the ground and lean against a fire hydrant. "Yeah. He is."

"I wish you'd leave him alone."

"...his situation would not be improved."

“Come on.”

"You have never seen purgatory."

"I'm aware that there's suffering."

"Suffering is one thing. Do you know the kind of – cremation that boy would have to go through to enter the kingdom of Heaven?"

"Not cremation. Smelting. And I don't think it's so much as you're implying."

"I'm sure he would be thrilled to be the armor of God."

"He doesn't hate God. He hates -- you started it -- the bad fandom take on God."

"What a strange thing for you to say about your own church."

"Look, I'm in lots of fandoms with some problems."

"Yes, I'm aware. As far as I know only one of them claims to be a moral authority, although one could make an argument for some of Pendragon's viewership."

"Hospitals are full of sick people, AA is full of alcoholics, and the Church is full of sinners. What else is new?"

"I'm sure that was a comfort."

"--I know what happened to him wasn't okay. I know that. I'm not a pedophilia apologist either! I'm doing my best! I'm not going to become a flat-earther because some geologists are bad people!"

Wow. She's officially standing on a street corner yelling at nothing like a crazy person. This isn't great.

"...point taken."

He sighs.

"It's not as if the popular alternatives are much help to you, under the circumstances."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, atheism is clearly out, for one thing."

He gestures vaguely at himself.

"I haven't ruled out the possibility that I'm having a psychotic break. Speaking of which, I don't suppose you'd be up for reading some numbers from across the room for me on Monday?"

"–oh, empiricism. Lovely. It's a date."

"I'm not dating you," she feels the need to clarify. "You're like a million years old, and also the literal devil, and I'm in mourning. And anyway I'm focusing on school."

“—oh, no, absolutely not. That would be profoundly unethical.”

"Okay," she says, after taking a moment to process that. "Are you going to go away now? I have psychology class, and we're covering schizophrenia, and I super don't need the cognitive dissonance right now."

“...ah. Yes, that’s unfortunate. I’ll leave you to it.”

Emmelia gets to class and remembers that she forgot her homework.

She keeps sleeping upright in pews, shivering, woken by comings and goings. The circles under her eyes get darker. The hospital chaplain asks if she has family there, and then asks her to leave.

On Sunday evening, commuting between chapels, she falls asleep on the bench at the bus stop.

Someone drapes a jacket over her.

She pulls it tighter around her, half-asleep, before squinting out from under her eyelashes.

"...what do you want."

“It’s very nearly Monday.”

He sits down on the bench beside her.

"Someone needs to introduce Hell to the concept of banking hours."

“To be perfectly honest, I didn’t expect you to wake up.”

"Believe me, when a guy starts taking off his clothes at a bus stop at night and then touches me, I wake up."

She hasn't de-snuggled from the jacket.

“Very funny.”

"The devil," she quotes, "the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked."

She's sitting up, now, still clutching the jacket around her, a little shaky with sleepiness.

“...go home. Sleep in a bed. I won’t bother you until tomorrow.”

She rubs her eyes, pulls out her phone. "...'s gonna be tomorrow in, like. Three hours."

He sighs.

“I will not bother you until tomorrow at such time as you request my presence, or the next day if you fail to make such a request, barring extenuating circumstances.”

"See, when you start getting all legalistic, it just makes me nervous. Because of how you're the devil."

She's looking at her phone, though, pulling up the bus app.

"...I don't suppose all of that carrying-Christ-up-to-the-top-of-the-temple stuff applies, does it? Teleportation powers or whatever? The bus home doesn't even stop here."

"...legal language makes you nervous, but you'll ask me to do magic on your behalf?"

"I am really tired, okay."

"I'm afraid I don't have quite that much diablerie going spare at the moment. I could redirect a cab for you, if you'd like."

She gestures at her shoe. One of her toes is poking out, just a little bit.

"I'm a college student, dude. I don't have cab money. I'll take the bus."

"That, unfortunately, is not something I can fix on the spot."

"Didn't ask you to. Not that stupid."

She stands, hauls her backpack after her -- pauses to glance at his umbrella.

"...do you, like ... need ... a ... ride?"

"...I'm quite all right. But thank you."

"Yeah, uh ... no ... problem."

She takes the bus home. She crashes for fourteen hours. She takes the bus to the parish offices. She attempts to explain to her pastor that the devil has been appearing to her, no, literally, yes she realizes how crazy that sounds, can they please just test it. Please. Please just write down a number and don't let her see it.

Her pastor suggests that she might consider antipsychotics.

She asks him if he's a heretic or just too lazy to conduct one test.

He tells her that he can refer her to the diocese exorcist, if she goes on antipsychotics and they don't do anything.

She suggests that it might make more sense to try one test before going on antipsychotics, which are known to have a huge number of side effects.

He suggests that she might want to lower her voice.

She cries.

He excuses himself, ostensibly for a glass of water.

He watches the man leave from the chair beside her.

"I still want to do the test," she says, quietly enough not to be heard from the other room. "Later. For my own peace of mind. Although I guess I could be hallucinating that, too."

"I would be happy to."

"You're a very obliging demon. Or hallucination. Whichever."

She sighs, slouches down in her chair. "Probably hallucination. This whole thing is a theological mess."

"He certainly seemed very confident."

"He was a nurse. Before he became a priest. Probably doesn't even have a bachelor's degree."

"And you're not precisely a model patient."

He's staring a hole in the door.

"On the other hand, if you dislike him that much, he must be doing something right."

"I'm sure he's effective at his job, by some measures. He certainly does keep things quiet."

Further discussion is interrupted by the return of the priest in question.

Emmelia receives pastoral counseling, which mostly consists of reminders that God loves her and wants her to be happy and also to get psychiatric treatment. Emmelia attempts not to roll her eyes. Emmelia goes home.

She finds a handful of dice, and a dice cup, and summons the devil by looking vaguely at the air and saying "...is it a good time for you right now?"

"As good as any."

He leaves his cane leaning against her desk, and takes a seat.

"Can you -- manipulate physical objects -- or do you need me to roll the dice for you?"

"Not this in particular, I'm afraid. It's a very irritating edge case."

"....oh, something about free will and random number generation?"

"Creation on Earth ex nihilo, actually."

"--oh, hey, if you can move objects just fine, maybe I should make another appointment with the priest and do some levitation."

"That's a bit more of a challenge, I'm afraid."

"I could give you knowledge of a hidden thing or two, if you'd like to make an impression."

"No thank you."

She tosses a handful of dice into the cup, shakes it, slaps it down onto the desk.

"All right, I'm going to stand across the room. You read me out the colors and numbers. Slowly, so I can write them down."

He nods.

When she's in position, he lifts the cup and peers underneath.

"Red, fourteen – purple, eleven – teal, seven – white, five – black, eight."

She scribbles them down, then comes over to look.

"...okay. Well. Either you're real, or I'm hallucinating enough that I can't trust my perception of the world at all. I don't suppose you can do that again on camera?"

"The camera may not survive the attempt."

"I could try to avoid filming you, but ... I don't think I could come up with anything that didn't look fake. Ugh."

"It's an unfortunate set of restrictions."

"No kidding."

She sighs, flops down on her bed, stares at the ceiling.

"Maybe I can get a friend to test the numbers trick with me, go back to the priest with some supporting witnesses."

“It might be helpful.”

He pauses.

“What do you imagine he’ll do, if he’s convinced?”

"An exorcism would be nice, to start with."

"I don't imagine it would be very effective for me to argue. Anything else?"

"...I dunno. This is way above my pay grade. If I knew what to do about it, I would just do that."

"That's very reasonable."

He picks one of the dice up, cradles it carefully in his palm.

"...if you feel inclined to welcome us back afterwards, it may take a bit of extra effort, but it can be done."

"Who's us?"

"Z and myself. You haven't had any other visitors that I'm aware of."

"Oh, fuck you."

She rolls over, draws her knees up to her chest miserably.

"Yes, I know. But I imagine you'll be glad later that I told you."

"Yeah. Super grateful for the blackmail."

She lifts her head just enough to glower at him.

"If I could do anything in particular about it, I wouldn't have mentioned it."

"You have to realize that I don't believe that."

"Oh, yes. I assume that you believe very little of what I tell you."

"I try my best. I should really not listen to you at all."

But who else is she going to talk to about any of this?

"That is the general rule, yes."

"Go away. I'm going to cry about my best friend being dead."

He nods, once, and he disappears.

She cries, for a while.

Then she texts some people. Would they like to help her test something weird -- a psychology experiment -- a magic trick she's been practicing -- the weirdest ESP phenomenon, she swears to god -- whether she's actually having a supernatural vision, this one is devoutly religious, maybe he'll believe that -- ?

He does not believe that. Another one is really busy, maybe another time. A couple don't reply. One thinks it's a joke and can't be convinced otherwise.

One reports her to the administration. Or so she assumes, given the concerned email she gets from the department of student services, reminding her of the mental health support available to all students.

Emmelia stares at the email for a while, before she clicks to confirm that, yes, she would like to make an appointment.

The empty waiting room has a bowl of condoms, and a flat-screen TV on the wall showing a video of fish, and pamphlets for the suicide hotline and Project Rachel and the tutoring center. Emmelia sits on a plasticky couch and fills out admission papers.

And then the waiting room isn’t empty.

“Hey—”

He doesn’t even quite get the word out before he notices where they are.

"...great timing."

“...get out of here, Em.”

"They're not going to give me hormones, it's okay."

“I’m serious.”

"I love you very much."

"That's probably why I can't let go of you."

"I–"

"Look, I know this sounds a lot like what a hallucination would say, but I'm –" He struggles with words. "—I'm not a hallucination, okay? I'm here."

"Then you won't go away when they put me on antipsychotics."

She brushes away tears.

"How often have I had suicidal thoughts in the last two weeks -- do you think it counts as suicidal thoughts if they're really more like teleportation thoughts--"

"They don't take you off that shit, Em, please –"

"I'm an adult, I can just stop taking them."

He takes a deep breath, and then gets up to pace, lacing and unlacing his fingers.

"Okay. Okay, okay. You know what not to tell them, right?"

"Sometimes I wish I were dead but I don't really want to die, I know that would be a mortal sin and also I have lots of things to live for and it would make my family very sad, so I don't have a plan and when I have those kinds of thoughts I practice positive self-talk or call a trusted friend. I hear voices but I know they're not real and it's distressing but they don't tell me to do anything. I don't like girls, that one's even true."

He nods.

“—yeah. Those.”

He runs his fingers through his bangs. They’ve grown out even longer.

“And you’ve never been really mad enough at somebody to want to hurt them — I guess you’re getting antipsychotics anyway, doesn’t really matter —”

"Oh, yeah, that one's true too. And I know mental hospitals aren't really like they are in movies but I don't think it would be good for me right now because my social support network is very important to me, and my pastor has been very supportive and I feel comfortable talking to him."

"Yeah. And–"

He sits down heavily at her feet, leaning against the couch.

"Only started after your friend died, and he was – struggling, you know, so if you've been seeing the devil it makes sense..."

He swallows thickly.

"No, I'm worried if I say that they'll decide it's just grief-induced and try supportive care before medications..."

There's some tears. She ignores them.

"You don't – have to. You know you don't have to, right?"

"I want to know if any of this is real."

"...yeah. Better not to check the other way, I guess."

He manages a smile just before he lays his head down on her leg. There's a gentle pressure, a static-like pins-and-needles feeling that fades in and out.

"Tell him when it's supposed to really kick in? Just –– so I know when to start bugging you about it."

"Yeah. Of course. I'm sorry, this must suck for you."

“Hey, I’m fine. I’m out. Just...gotta make sure you’re fine too.”

"It would fuck me up if someone I loved didn't think I was real."

"...yeah, little bit. But I'm tough. And I can go cry about it on Satan's PA and then go cliffdiving or something."

"On--"

Her phone buzzes.

"--oh, time for my intake interview. You'll have to elaborate on that another time."

He takes a very deep breath, before he picks his head up.

"...yeah. Will do."

And then, no one.

The intake interview goes great, until she mentions the part where her best friend died a few weeks ago.

Then the therapist starts using words like "atypical grief" and "bereavement hallucinations" and "talk therapy" and "30% of survivors."

I'm seeing the devil, she says. It's scary and distressing, she says. I don't know what's real and what's not, she says.

The therapist starts saying "seven stages" and "antidepressants" and "cognitive behavioral therapy."

He told me to take a gun to class and start shooting, she says. I know where my uncle keeps his, she says.

She gets her antipsychotics. She also gets committed.

In the psychiatric ward, she curls up under her blanket and stares at the calming blue wall, drowses on and off, roused intermittently by nurses glancing in the door.

The devil sits with her in her empty room, under the fluorescent lights.

"I don't want you to go away," she says, softly, still staring at the wall. "Is that messed up or what?"

"My dear, I'm the devil."

He puts his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm not sure I care to judge."

"I have to try this stuff for weeks before I find out if it works. And then if it doesn't, they give me a different one. This could take months. I could miss finals. And I'm too tired to care."

"...you're here looking for the truth. There is very little I can do to make that easier for you."

"But if you want me to stay, I will stay. For as long as I can."

"I shouldn't ask you to stay."

"...I would like to think that I would not judge my child too harshly for the company they kept, at a time like this."

Emmelia visibly struggles, working through the analogy, before she gives up and moves to lie with her head against his leg.

She's asleep in seconds.

He will stay with her as she sleeps, disappearing when the lights come on and the nurse looks in through the door and then returning to sit.

He will stay with her a long time.

She sleeps, whenever they'll let her, sometimes when they won't.

At first, she tries to read the battered romance novels and self-help books in the common room. After spending an hour on a single page of Ghost Spurs To My Heart, she bursts into tears and gives up on reading.

(She doesn't even throw it across the room.)

Therapists ask her stupid questions. She mostly doesn't have the energy to lie.

When she changes clothes, she stands naked in front of the metal sheet which serves for a mirror, pokes miserably at the new curves and softnesses.

He sits with her in her room after she gives up the books, while she cries – he sits with her between therapists and nurses, in the moments the office is empty – he sits with her when she changes, turns his face politely away.

As the world dims and distorts, he remains.

She puts her head in his lap to sleep, sometimes, when she can't remember why she shouldn't.

There's Mass on Sundays, because she's well-behaved. She mostly sleeps through it. Prayer feels beyond her.

She still sees the devil.

They put her on a different antipsychotic.

(No one asks her permission.)

It makes her sway and tap her feet, and not to music. She's too tired to move, and too restless to sit still.

The third drug makes her neck and back twist, violent and rigid and painful, for half an hour at a time, on and off for days.

The fourth is more tolerable, until she finds herself on the floor and they tell her she's had a seizure.

He stays through the restlessness – through the twitching and twisting of her body – through the nights of little sleep and the days of exhausted haze.

He tells her stories that are almost, but not quite, biblical, and again when she doesn't remember them, repeats until she understands.

In the first moment of quiet after the seizure, though, he's replaced.

"...Em?"

"Hey, Em?"

"It's time to get out now."

"...I don't think so," she says, curling up in the one blanket she's allowed, more confused than anything.

"They don't think so. But I do. Okay? It's time to go."

"You have to tell them you're better. Not seeing things anymore."

"...I'm not seeing things anymore," she attempts.

“...nobody’s...in the room, Em, nobody’s—”

He takes a deep breath.

“...okay. I’m...gonna try something. Don’t...freak out. Okay?”

"...okay?" she echoes.

It might be agreement.

He takes her hand, and when his passes through into it, he doesn’t try to grab it again.

He inches forward, slowly, letting more and more of their bodies intersect, filling her with an electric hum of energy.

“...ohh...”

It continues, hum growing steadily stronger, until they've almost overlapped completely – and then –

He's gone.

Her hand turns over – her fingers twitch.

"...okay," her voice says.

Oh.

Weird, but -- good.

(And it's such a relief, to stop trying so hard to fight through the fog, to slip back and let someone else do it.)

"...I'm gonna get you out of here," her voice murmurs, almost too quietly to hear. "Just – hang on in there."

For the next few weeks, she's a very good girl.

She sleeps at night – she struggles through some reading – she takes her medication. She tells her therapists about how the devil hasn't been talking to her anymore, how she doesn't think he ever was – about how her friend is gone, and she's starting to accept that she couldn't have saved him from himself no matter what she did.

She prays, knelt by her bed.

They put her on a new medication, after the seizure. This one half-paralyzes her, until they add two others on top of it, and then it only makes her hands shake and her gait stiff and robs her of half her smile.

As far as anyone can tell, it works beautifully.

They give her back her clothes. Her apartment lease is long expired, her classes long ended; they call her parents to take her back to her childhood bedroom, where there will be people to look after her.

He knew her long enough that he can pretend to be her, even to her parents, when he has exhaustion and antipsychotics to lean on.

(Is it done yet?)

(Is it done yet?)

(Can he go home?)

He sets up a proxy and sneaks brief mouthfuls of information and starts breaking pills in half, spitting the extras into the toilet.

Her parents are loving and overbearing and give her very little privacy. Her mother comes in at eight every morning to open the shades and wake her up with the sun. Her father talks about math and philosophy to her, not expecting a response. Her sisters alternately climb all over her and hang back, anxious.

The door of her room doesn't lock. Computer use, where anyone can see it, wins her insistent 'suggestions' that she read or go for a walk or play with her sisters. Her mother cries on her shoulder about how worried she's been.

It's like he's seventeen all over again.

He goes for a lot of walks. Far. He gets rid of some pills that way, talks to her a little.

(He doesn't leave her body. He doesn't know if he could get back in again.)

He invents elaborate stories for himself about the havoc he's going to wreak on his body when he makes it back to Hell.

The further down he cuts their dose, the more he hangs back enough to let her out.

When he's been throwing the pills out entirely for a week, he locks himself in the bathroom, and kisses the palm of her hand, and then

she's alone.

Emmelia turns on the shower and cries in it for half an hour, thinking about what her best friend did to himself for her sake.

(The hospital -- the medications -- the therapists -- the prayers -- and he had to wear this body through it all, even she hates this body, hates the ways it's soft and the places it bulges, how much worse must it have been for him--)

She can't risk cutting herself. If someone sees it -- if she gets sent back -- she can't squander this gift.

Emmelia washes her face and towels dry and hates the way her hands still shake, the stiffness that lingers in the way she walks.

Very late that night, when everyone else is in bed and the moon is on her coverlet, she sits up in bed and she prays to the devil.