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The Dance Dance Revolution machine was, to the imps, nothing short of incredible. When the machine was activated, the arrows on the mat radiated with electric energy. That was uncommon even in the underworld’s twelve hells. And when Lord Nightfall cried out the name of a song, the song was, somehow, selected.

And the gameplay! It featured actual, near-automatic gameplay! To be precise, it had a glass screen, and behind that screen was a single very very very very long piece of parchment paper, back-lit by electric light. When whatever mysterious forces motivating that machine chose a song, they also chose a piece of parchment. That parchment scrolled, moving arrows onto the screen. If Lord Nightfall’s feet couldn’t hit the right buttons, the score at the end—which was recorded as hundreds of tally marks on a steel log—showed how well or poorly they’d done.

Neither Felicity nor Dodd could hit the arrows reliably. They had to do what their lord referred to as “shitty breakdancing.” Their scores were both in the fifties, and yet they left the dance mat exhausted.

Lord Nightfall sat on the pool table taking swigs of peachy wine mixed with rat milk (not a very heady brew) as their imps danced. Now that both were panting, their master took another big gulp, sighed, and stood again. “Alright. Let’s count up our scores, then.”

“My lord, the winner is clearly you,” said Dodd, tongue lolling out of her mouth. “There should be no need to count anything.”

“Well, I wanna count my score. It’s good for my self-esteem.”

Felicity yawned. “I’ll use this time to sleep if you don’t mind, highness.”

“But demons don’t sleep,” said Dodd.

“Oh yeah,” said Lord Nightfall. (But Lord Nightfall did.)

Their lord, ignoring that exchange, opened a hatch in the back of the miracle machine and pulled out their log. They began to count: “One, two, three...”

The sound of them contentedly counting all those hundreds of points would haunt Dodd and Felicity even after they returned to the servants' quarters.

Or it would have, at least, if the time they spent waiting uselessly in the game room hadn’t dragged on longer and longer, and longer still.

Lord Nightfall’s eyelids were getting heavy, and the imps could read it on their face. Plus, they’d had some bigger-than-usual energy expenditures today—along with bigger wins than they’d experienced in a long time. Yet they were still up and at it. They pushed the foosball table away, revealed a wall-hatch that the imps hadn’t known existed, and pulled out a shining bag of chips. Both the imps could tell there was an entire mountain of chips in there. Had Lord Nightfall made all of these themself, or hired an outsider to make them? And where could such things even be made? Again, the mystery deepened.

The demon lord demanded karaoke. There wasn’t a karaoke machine, there was only a recording of Lord Nightfall’s mouth making mouth sounds that played in the background as the three of them struggled to put some written lyrics more or less on the beat. None of the Gaian classics were here—which was a shame, because Lillifal and Arkadia actually had some pretty killer war anthems. Instead, there was assorted nonsense that, according to their lord, was titled “Easy Lover,” “Party in the USA,” and “Get Your Head in the Game.”

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With the last song, Dodd fell off the beat immediately. The lyric sheet crinkled in her hands. “I’ve gotta get my...get my head in the...in the...game,” she recited. “You’ve gotta get your...get your...get your...” But she got lost in the dust of Lord Nightfall’s beatboxing. “At least this one has a positive message,” she said.

Their lord didn’t sing the lyrics, or even speak them. They belted, singing so loudly that the imps feared all the neighbors might hear it despite the castle's enchantments. They sang loud and proud. Never in any universe was there a more passionate intonation of the “S,” or even the “A,” in “USA.”

And they weren’t embarrassed until they started crying. Tears flowed down their cheeks and blotted their leotard. Then they broke down in sobs and grabbed the ratwine bottle like one would a security blanket, drinking like there was no tomorrow.

“It’s so stupid!” they wailed. “So much fucking Earth stuff! I hate this!”

The imps stood frozen. They could tell that Lord Nightfall was now, at last, embarrassed to be seen like this. At the same time, they knew that looking away would be like abandoning them. So they compromised and looked at each other, sharing an incredibly awkward moment.

Now their lord was hiding their face in their hands, crying silently. Dodd grimaced. Felicity shrugged her shoulders.

Felicity tried a whisper: “I actually liked that last song,” she pretended.

Lord Nightfall didn’t respond immediately. But a few seconds later, they rubbed their face off and raised their head high again. They glared at their imps, scowling.

“Neither of you are leaving this place,” they said. “And this—all of this—it stays with me. I take all of this to my grave. Got it?”

What does an imp—a lowly vassal, lowest of the low—even say to that? Nothing. The two imps kneeled and lowered their heads as far as possible.

Their lord sent them back to their room until morning. The star of the night, meanwhile, would stay in the game room and keep sulking.

***

Demons, as you know, don’t sleep. They can enter a state like stasis or an insect’s torpor, but the change is almost entirely physical, not mental. It’s much harder for a demon to lose consciousness than it is for a mortal.

Felicity chose to spend that night sitting in silence on her straw pile, her face turned to the wall. She liked to say she was meditating. It was obvious by the ever-shifting look on her face that she was running over her day's complaints tens of thousands of times.

Dodd, however, had some new plans and findings to think about.

Though she didn’t keep any belts or purses on her, she had managed to slip what Dobie gave her underneath the mat in the master bathroom. She’d taken that with her into the servants’ quarters. She cradled it in her hands and looked at it now.

The twelvetype card. It still had a faint twinkle to it. Now instead of showing three images—three possibilities—it had changed into one. It could have been either the Spy, the Chameleon, or the Impostor. Turned out it really was the Impostor, as Dodd had long suspected. If Lord Nightfall had been the Spy, they would’ve been pulling off this ruse with panache. If they’d been a Chameleon, they would've well and truly transformed—they would be a complete, total, not-at-all-shameful demon.

Instead, they were a fluke.

Plus, they were from Earth or something (?).

Dodd slid the twelvetype card underneath an old rusted shield. Now it was just her on the straw pile...her and Dobie’s second gift, one even more last-minute than the card.

She rubbed the fine, ashen coat of a ticket back to Hellfloes.

If Felicity had been holding it, she’d see nothing more than a chance to go find a better, more natural job. But Dodd was feeling more...detective-y.