Chapter Nine
With four women down, Tabitha was over halfway through the challenge, and while so far it had felt like some of them had been trickier than others, the entire ordeal had also somehow been less difficult than she'd expected it be when she'd started. That could only mean that there were much more herculean things to come.
One of the lessons Tabitha had learned the hardest growing up was that when things felt like they were on Easy Street, Rough Road was just around the damn corner, and it would always be upon her before she even had a moment to consider it. She'd learned that if there was a quiet spell anywhere along the way, that was when you took the opportunity to study, to plan, to research, to do any preparatory work that might prove useful in a pinch.
When Tabitha had asked Veronica for the rules of the competition, the demoness had provided them to her, but not in any modern or easily usable format, because why would they be in something convenient like a PDF or a Google Doc? They had been given to her on a giant vellum scroll that had to be read in sections, and Tabitha had begun doing her best to decipher, decode, decrypt and decomplicate all of the verbose and antiquated language, which was written centuries ago. Thankfully, this particular version of the scroll had been translated into English, even if the writers had a tendency to use fifty words when five would do.
She hadn't expected the angels and demons to have made the competition easy to comprehend, but she certainly also hadn't expected that they would have so many layers of complications that it made modern contracts look like memos. The language of the celestial beings, it seemed, was filled with ambiguities, and anything that would leave wiggle room was expressly being stricken out during event after event. It seemed like each time the game ran, one side or the other had certain stipulations they wanted added to future versions of the game. The addendums and clauses section of the document was twice as long as the original document itself, something Tabby couldn't decided if she was pleased or bothered by, as it meant there was more and more things for her to have to keep track of, but it also meant that the remaining loopholes tended to leap out to her eyes more easily.
"I told you," Veronica said, sliding down into the chair next to her as Tabitha continued to scrawl her notes on her fifth yellow legal pad of paper. "It's a lot to take in. All the various changes and minutiae we've had to add over the years."
"Do I even want to know what to this section here about tortious interference via non-mammalian methods refers to?"
Veronica giggled a little bit, shaking her head. "Probably not. It's a long, weird, complicated story and the pay off isn't all that great, but it did involve me getting to see an angel yelling about how our side had always been using reptiles in interesting and dangerous ways, and that if we didn't stop, they were going to exterminate the lot of them. 'It's always the thrice-damned reptiles!' became a punchline in Hell for a long while."
Tabitha joined in the laugh. "The angels seem like they're all pretty uptight."
Veronica shrugged slightly. "I get that they're 'the enemy' and all that but they aren't that bad when you get right down to it. A little snobby, maybe, but some of them have been known to relax and let their hair down now and again. They just need to be reminded that even though they're God's preferred species, they aren't flawless, and just as capable of error as any other being. But they're just trying to do what they feel like is their job, and we're just doing what we feel like is ours. So, I try not to get too annoyed with them, even if many of them desperately need a stick removed from their ass."
"That's awfully enlightened of you, Roni."
"At the end of the day, boss, when you get right down to it, we're not very different on a molecular level," she told her. "In fact, genetically, we're almost identical, despite the generations of separation we've had to evolve away from one another. Almost all the differences between angels and demons are ornamental or decorative. Shy of an actual blood test, there's no real guaranteed way to tell us and them apart."
"Lemme get this straight," Charlie said, wandering over to them dressed in camisole top and boyshort panties. "She's
actually
a demon? Like, that wasn't some game we were playing but like, genuine actual demon?"
"That she is," Tabitha confirmed.
"And, you're, like, the for real daughter of the Devil or whateva?"
"That's what she tells me." Tabitha waved her hand over the giant amount of vellum before her. "And what all of this confirms, basically. I can't imagine they'd give me all this shit if there wasn't a great reason to do so. It's an ass ton of paperwork to do for a ridiculous prank."
"Does being the Devil's daughter come with any perks?"
"I might die in a few weeks if I'm not careful," Tabby joked.
"That doesn't strike me as much of a perk, per se," Charlie pouted.
"Well, if I
don't
die, I think I gain dominion over a very large swath of Hell, to do with as I see fit, for whatever
that's
worth."
"What would you
do
with a chunk of Hell to call your very own, Mistress?" Kelly asked as she came over to join the conversation. It seemed like now that Tabitha had stopped focusing on the paperwork, it was open season for all her women to come and pepper her with questions, not that she minded.
It was good to see them starting to get along with each other and spending a bit of time with one another. Tabitha had been bringing them under her wing, but she hadn't been sure she'd been giving enough thought as to getting them to mix. But the three of them had seemed to fold naturally together without much direct intervention from her, falling into the roles of the performer older sister, the athlete middle sister and the artistic little sister, although it was good that they
weren't
sisters, because Tabby had seen them each making out with one another on a couple of occasions. Kelly had made it a point to give both Charlie and Emily the most intense kisses she could upon their arrival at the house.
"Haven't given it all that much thought yet," Tabitha replied. "I want to remain living first and foremost, and it seems like a plot of land in Hell comes along with that living. I'm going to figure out how not to die in this competition, and I can worry about what to do with my portion of Hell when they give me the title for the land in question."
"You could open up a Hell soccer league," Kelly suggested. "I can be the star player, or the coach, or both! We can all play soccer all the time!"
"That'd certainly be my own personal Hell," Charlie said. "Having to do physical activity for the rest of eternity."
"Mine too," Emily agreed, "although it might be funny if you tried to open an orchestra in Hell, Charlie, and made me and Kelly play instruments in it."
"Hey!" Kelly laughed, pointing a finger at the former pro gamer girl in objection. "Shows what you know! I took two years of trumpet back in high school!"
"And were you any good at it?" Charlie countered.
"Fucking
terrible
