I met with Lucifer the next day or what passed for day in Hell. You don’t get days and nights like one does when alive, but you get used to it after a century or two. Infernal clocks have their own rhythm.

 

The rest of the retirement party went as expected: demons drinking, fighting, and then eviscerating each other for fun, capped off with Anastasia climbing atop our table when the bartender cut her off and attempting to throw herself from it.

 

We’ve talked about this numerous times since our reconciliation. I keep telling her she can’t just throw herself off any flat, raised surface every time she’s thwarted. She then proceeds to stand on the nearest chair and jumps off it before I’ve finished.

 

We’re still a work in progress.

 

I left Anastasia to sleep the party off and met Lucifer in his surprisingly modest office. It overlooked the great, teeming city of Dis, offering an unmatched view of the burning Hellscape and rivers of magma that illuminated it.

 

He gestured for me to sit.  I folded my large frame into the toddler-sized chair indicated, my knees nearly touching my chin. Terribly uncomfortable but mild in terms of hellish torture. Lucifer leaned his shoulder against the glass, the very picture of ease despite the threat of defenestration—one of the many perks of wings.

 

Today he wore impeccably tailored pants and white dress shirt. Slits in the back allowed his wings mobility, a welcome departure from those odious cargo shorts.

 

“What’s this nonsense about retirement?” I asked, my old despotic self slipping into my tone. It’s difficult to sound commanding when you’re folded up like complicated origami, but I’d done more with less. If I didn’t know that he did things like this deliberately, I might’ve been embarrassed.

 

He tutted, pushing away from the window to lean his palms flat against his desk, the better to loom over me.

 

“So suspicious,” he admonished, a sly grin creeping across his haughty features. “It’s a reward, Vlad.”

 

I narrowed my eyes. Lucifer didn’t give out rewards, not real ones. He might reward someone with disembowelment, drowning, or drawing and quartering, but he did not award someone a gold watch and a party.

 

There was more to this than simple retirement but if he wanted to play coy, so be it.

 

Lucifer spread his arms wide and a map of the world appeared in the air.

 

“Where would you like to go?”