Sugar and spice and everything nice.

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Vanessa Ravenswing went to a private school out on the other side of the river. It took me a little while to compose myself when I realized that it was a Catholic school, but I supposed it made sense. Catholic schoolgirls are little Hellions all of a special breed.

She met me at the school office and walked along beside me as if there was nothing at all unusual about me coming to collect her after school. When we got to the car, she waited for me to open the door, and then I had to close the door after her as well. Hellions, I tell you.

“Your father said for me to take you straight home and then wait with you until I had more orders. You don’t happen to know anything that might be going on? Any trouble your father might be having with someone?” I asked it casually as we left the school grounds, and I could feel that odd little stare searching me and trying to determine what I had meant by my questions.

“Are you a police officer really?”

“Really a police officer, you mean, and yes. After a fashion. I work for Interpol, so I’m more a criminal agent. Does that mean that your father is in trouble, and he needs my help?”

“No. I just wondered if you wore a uniform.”

What the Hell could I say back to that? The connotations of a Catholic schoolgirl asking an older man about a uniform… my brain fled from the thought, and I focused on driving. I didn’t need to get myself into any deeper messes when it came to Ravenswing. “Well, if you know anything about what your father might be doing, and you feel like sharing it, I might be able to help.”

“Oh, I doubt you can. It’s Grandfather.”

Something told me that I didn’t want to know, but to my own horror, I felt my lips open and heard the words fall out. “Oh, your Grandfather, is it? Does he live around here then?” I knew the answer wasn’t going to be a yes, and the sane part of my brain was busy screaming SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP at the front of my brain.

“He lives in Hell’s Kitchen.”

Manhattan. Or Hell. One of the two, possibly both. I knew it entirely too well, but I kept that to myself. “Then he’ll be gone a day or so. I hope your Hellhound likes me.” That triggered memories of my nightmare, and I could sense my day going from bizarre to hideous.

Vanessa looked at me in a long glance out of the corner of her eyes, a purely feminine move that when perfected would strike terror into the hearts of men. “Abaddon went with him. It’s probably why Father wants you with me; to protect and entertain me. Do you play games?”

Oh Christ. “I play some games. Go, checkers, most of the old classic board games. Parcheesi really needs more than two players… and I know of some card games, though most aren’t suitable for a young woman your age.”

“I’m eight, not three.”

Right. Eight. I was doomed.

“Do you have a two?”

“Go Fish.”

Her little hand reached into the pool of cards between us and unerringly pulled a card from the depths. She lifted it, looked at it, and triumphantly placed it and its partner face up on the table. The pair joined six other pair, and at this rate, she would win within three more rounds.

I had one pair and a hand full of useless cards. “Have you got a Jack?”

“Do you have a Jack, and Go Fish!” She’d been correcting me since I’d absently corrected her in the car, and at this point, I was ignoring it. Without a reaction out of me, she’d eventually stop, right? I fished a three out of the pool and looked at it for a long moment before adding it to my hand. At some point, statistically speaking, I’d have to create a pair.

“Do you have a three?”

The card hadn’t even had a chance to get warm in my hand. I handed it over and she matched it to the other three in her hand and dropped the two threes on top of the other two, successfully making a book of threes. I should never have agreed to play Go Fish with her. “Do you have a four?”

She gave me another one of those purely feminine looks and handed over a card. I matched it to its partner and placed it on the table. I had two pair now, compared to her five pair and one book. I didn’t need to be a mathematical genius to figure the odds of my winning this one. I was almost willing to entertain a phone call from Xelander just to put an early end to my Go Fish misery.

“Have you got an Ace?”

Oh, the infernal cheek. I handed her the card without comment, and waited for her to make her second book before asking her if she had a seven. I fished in the pool, coming up with the seven, and made my third pair. It went much like that until she took the final card – the Jack – from me and won the game. I didn’t bother adding the points; it wasn’t worth the effort.

I knew better than to attempt another round of Go Fish, and I scrabbled around in the back of my brain for another card game that was remotely acceptable for an incredibly precocious eight-year-old. Most of the card games I knew of were the kind played in the back room at Bella’s Pizzeria, and weren’t safe for most grown men, let alone a demongirl. Somehow, I couldn’t reconcile myself to the thought of teaching Vanessa how to play Poker, Rummy, Blackjack, or any variant of Presidents.

When my cell phone rang, I could have kissed it. It wasn’t Ravenswing, but I knew the number and answered it anyway. “Shestin, go.” What? That’s just how I answer the phone. Beats ‘Yo, dog’ or ‘’Sup’ by a long shot. And don’t get me going on how my Canadian acquaintance hangs up. I mean, ‘Cheers’ is something you say before a drink, not when you’re getting off the phone.

“The good news is I found your Civic. The bad news is that you’re in the market for a new car,” Kelly’s voice crackled over the line, and I could hear road noise behind him. A horn blasted, and I winced at the loudness. When it had passed, he continued. “We’re off of Sam Rittenberg; do you want to come out, or look in on it in the impound lot tomorrow?” The fact that he was offering me a chance to see it meant that he’d not been yanking my chain about working with me.

“I’m on assignment right now, so I’ll take a look at it tomorrow. Clearly, then, it isn’t drivable?”

“The only thing left in it is the tape deck, and I’m guessing that’s only because it’s so old that no-one has those things anymore.” There was a sound of a car door closing, and I heard the radio talking behind him. He answered, and then came back to me. “Anyway, swing by tomorrow and we’ll go over the car and paperwork.” He almost sounded… friendly.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Right; will do. Tomorrow. Have a good one.” I hung up the call and turned to see Vanessa watching me with steady green eyes. In that moment, she looked less like a little girl and more akin to a cat: unfathomable in nature and as changing as the tide. I looked to her, raised my eyebrow, and as I put my phone away, I saw that it was near on to dinnertime. “So, I suppose you need food…”

“Father usually cooks.”

Wait, what? Valen Ravenswing? The Demon Lord who… No. Way. The words tripped on the way to my mouth, ending up as a jumble of syllables and inarticulate sounds. “Haaa… uh? Coo? Cook? He cooks?”

She blinked at me, gave me another one of those feminine looks, and shrugged. “He makes good scrambled eggs.” And with that comment, she flopped down on the sofa and crossed her arms, sulking. Oh… great.

“Well… I’m not overly handy in a kitchen, but I can do a few things.” Things like make holes in the walls and monstrous spaghetti explosions. Eggs on the ceiling and bits of baked potato plastering the oven walls. “Why don’t we go see what I can come up with, hmm?” This was not going to end well.

She led me through the house and once we were in the kitchen, I felt immediately and conspicuously out of place. I knew that the surrounding room was going to dim at any moment and a brilliant white spotlight was going to illuminate me in my moment of ineptitude, but it didn’t happen, and I found myself poking about the contents of the refrigerator.

By the look of things, there is a lot of meat in a demon’s diet. I don’t eat meat. I was looking at things that were less alien because I knew what it was… but I had no idea how it was cooked. At that thought, a truly terrifying idea sank into my mind. It’s a demon household… and no-one said anything about cooking the meat. Praying that the parcel of sliced meat I’d selected wasn’t going to bleed all over creation, I turned to Vanessa with a smile I was certain seemed frantic.

Yes, I’m an assassin. Why, yes, I came to in a warehouse drenched in my own blood. But I have a problem with blood, and that was one primary reason for my choice in vegetarianism. There were other reasons too, but let us not go in that direction while I was holding a pound of flesh and wondering how the Hell I was going to render it into something remotely edible.

While I was standing there, pondering this lump of meat, Vanessa walked into the kitchen, pushed me out of her way and stuck her head into the refrigerator. When she leaned back out, she had a bowl of something in her hand which she put in the microwave and hit a button after she closed the door. It leapt into life, and I put the meat back into the refrigerator and closed the door, watching the microwave and half expecting it to explode.

It beeped.

I’ll admit it; I jumped.

Vanessa ignored me. She opened the microwave, pulled out the bowl, took the top off, grabbed a spoon from the cup of spoons next to the sink and then took her soup back to the table. I stood there like a right fool idiot that was so far out of his depths that he might as well be trying to breathe water. I shook my head and followed her to the table and sat across from her. “So… you eat like this often, then?”

“No,” she ate several mouthfuls before she continued. “Father got rid of the staff. They were here when I was kidnapped, and he got angry. He’s pretty scary when he’s angry.” Her attention changed from her soup to me, green eyes curious. “Has he ever scared you?”

Every question that this child asked me was a dual-edged sword. If I answered her that yes, Ravenswing had scared me on multiple occasions, what would she think? While not the full truth, it also wasn’t a lie, either. And if I told her that no, he wasn’t all that scary, how much validity could I give the statement? “Your father has an enormous power of presence. While I consider myself lucky to have been spared most of the impact of his abilities, there have been moments.”

She nodded, as if that was enough to satiate her childish curiosity, and then she swirled the spoon in her soup. “He’s scared even you. He’s the best father ever.” And with that proclamation, she dedicated the following few minutes of silence to eating her soup. “What’s your father like?”

I was an orphan, a foundling raised by a woman who had an entire village at her command. Oh, sure, there were men who helped raise me… but only one ever had held the title of Father to me. “He was a good man, not terribly kind, but he probably meant well.” He wasn’t a parent of any type, but I opted not to tell her that.

“You didn’t get along with him.” She was matter of fact, distant in her proclamation of my interactions with the man I described. “I don’t always get along with Father, but ‘mine is not to question why.’”

Mine is but to do or die. My mind finished the old poetic reference, and I felt my lips twist into a bitter smile. Tennyson had always been one of my favored poets, and I followed the poem for a few more lines in my head before I let it fade. I’d marched into that valley with Xelander, and it had been the mouth of Hell. I doubted she knew the origin of her quote, and I knew better than to mention it.

She finished her soup and pushed her bowl away, looking at me as if I was going to attempt to entertain her again. In all honesty, I hadn’t the first clue how. “I suppose I ought to find out if you have any homework, then?” After all, if I was in for the duty of babysitter, I might as well keep up appearances.

If looks could kill, I would have been dead several times over. Fortunately, her look couldn’t kill, not that I could have died anyway. “I have maths. They’re making me do sums.”

“Then you’d best go get your books and get started. After you’re done, I’ll check them over and then bath and bed for you. I don’t know what time your father sends you on, but I call bedtime at eight-thirty. The faster you get through your sums, the longer you have to bath and play before bed.” She blinked at me, and then without complaining, rose to collect her books and bring them to the table.

The sums didn’t take her long at all. One hundred, various arrangements of a double digit plus two single digits. She’d finished them while I washed her bowl and spoon, so I sent her on to her bath. While she was gone, I checked her work, and found no errors. She probably hated doing them because they were too easy. If she were my child, I’d have her tested for a higher math class, but she wasn’t, and I had no real business thinking like that.

She returned a little later, wearing a Disney Princess nightgown, with the ruffled hem too long on the floor. “I’m smarter than the other kids but they won’t put me a grade higher because I’m too small. You didn’t need to bother checking my sums.” As if she’d be a decent target for a bullying Fourth grader. She’d be the one likely holding Court and having the bullies dance to her tune within minutes.

“Call it a prerogative.”

“What’s a prerogative?”

“It’s a privilege. In this case, it’s because I’m your guardian for the night. Did you brush your teeth?”

“Call it my prerogative.”

And with that, the little minx went to bed.

Ravenswing returned shortly after two in the morning. I’d found a chair and parked outside of her room like the guard dog that wasn’t there and was reading news articles on my phone when there was a distinct sensation of a Gate opening. Shortly after that, I heard him speaking quietly to what I could only surmise was the Hellhound. I waited at her door, silent.

It wasn’t long before he walked into the hallway and found me, nodding once in greeting before looking in on his daughter. “Was she trouble?” The Hellhound ignored me completely, bounding into the girl’s room. I was certain the thing would wake her, but it curled at the foot of her bed and seemingly went to sleep at once. She didn’t as much as stir.

“Not at all; no trouble at all, best behavior and all that. You’ve got a bright girl there; you must be very proud.”

He looked at me, his pale eyes glittering in the dim light, and after a few uneasy heartbeats, he inclined his head. “Vanessa is gifted and intelligent. Often times it makes her… difficult. She must have decided she likes you; the last two who assisted her left after an hour.”

While I’ll admit the child didn’t strike me as entirely normal, I didn’t see anything in her behavior to warrant not wanting to stay beyond an hour. “I would have stayed, regardless, for that was my job, but she wasn’t any more trouble than an above average and highly precocious child. If she were mine, I’d insist that her school advance her two levels, but she isn’t.” I watched his face, and saw no shift, no emotional response in the slightest, and sighed softly. “Right, well. Job done, then. Do you need me for anything else?”

“That will be all. Good evening.”

Thus dismissed, I took my leave of the Ravenswing estate, heading back out to the highway and the Peninsula. I’d said I’d call Xelander, but that was hours and an assignment ago. My phone had remained silent, and though I had considered sending him a text message, my thumb kept hitting the delete key instead of send. I just didn’t know what I could say to him, if anything, and I knew that silence would be better than that ill-fated awkwardness that seemed to entangle us both.

I pulled into my parking spot, slipped into my townhouse and called it a night. I’d earned it.