Chapter Text
“There’s a baby,” Evilyn says, filing her long black nails into razor-sharp points as she talks and ignoring Mickey’s every move to get her to look at him, “This vile little thing.”
Mickey picks up her bowl of beetles and starts squishing each one between his fingers, grinning at the squish they make.
“Franny is her name—” He pulls a thread loose on her stupidly fluffy fur-lined throne.
“She’s going to be the key to everything—” Mickey scuffs the floor in front of her with his booted foot while Evilyn examines her nail bed.
“She’s the one that will bring Tierney to her knees—” He starts picking at the skeletons hanging around her.
“She’ll create a force that even Tierney can’t influence. But she’s young—” Mickey jumps into the air, glides upwards gracefully, and starts scraping crevices into the stalactites of the cave with the tip of his wings, whipping his tail around in the process.
“But she’s important—” He digs a little too deep into one, and it goes crashing down through the air to slam right at Evilyn’s feet.
“Mickey!” She bellows and finally looks at him, fury and heat in her eyes. She grabs the stalactite and hurls it, nearly hitting him right between his beautifully polished horns; he squeaks and falls to the ground.
Evilyn rolls her eyes hard. “Demons,” she hisses and turns to sit back on her throne, a long black dress flowing around her.
Mickey makes a grumbling sound but rushes forward to sit at her feet, “What, oh my beautiful queen, what should I be doing for her humble majesty?” Playing her up with the sarcasm in his voice.
Evilyn sighs and turns her gaze down to him. She frowns and taps her nails on the side of her throne where a piece of tar-covered bone is sticking out.
“I’m going to send my very best demon,” Evilyn starts slowly, “to watch over this girl, to teach her evil as she grows. She’ll decide when she’s older which path she will follow. And if she chooses us, all hell will reign loose on Earth.”
Mickey’s eyes twinkle, and he twitches his tail. “Is it me? Am I your best demon? Oh! Tell me it’s me. Please. Tell me it’s me!”
Evilyn rolls her eyes. “Who do you think it is? Kendra? Of course, it’s you. Of all the seven hells, you,” she reaches forward and grabs his chin, smiling at him, “are the most conniving and the most vengeful. You are the most insane and the most sadistic—the most prideful and the most annoying. So I’m sending you,” Mickey beams up at her as she speaks, “But, a warning. You’ll have your work cut out for you. I am sure that Teirney is sending one of her own Franny’s way, as well. It’s not going to be a simple walk in the park. It will be a grand battle, as old as time itself.” Mickey grins wickedly, “Evil vs. good. Demon vs. angel—”
Mickey laughs and spins out of her hold on his chin, flapping his wings as he goes. “Angel? Please.” He floats right in front of her, so she’s forced to look at him. He preens. “As if that’s going to be any match for me.”
Her wicked grin matching his.
***
Mickey stands in front of the mirror in a shitty tiny apartment—in the middle of fuck-knows-where Illinois—turning this way and that as he examines his figure through the grime that’s layered on the glass like it hadn’t been cleaned since the 80s. Behind him, in a corner, the body of Steve Lishman is getting stiff and cold, and Mickey will have to remove it soon before it begins to smell. He hopes that Evilyn is pleased with his offering of the new soul shot down to the netherworld like a bullet from a machine gun. He also hopes he can offer her many more in the coming days.
Mickey turns to his side again. Through the grime, his skin shines with just the tiniest bit of a red tinge. He flaps his wings, all graceful leather with dark bone structures running through them. He flips his tail, thin but oh so strong. And of course, his horns, long and graceful, protruding from the front of his skull at his hairline in curving sweeps, standing easily a foot above his hair.
“So sexy,” he tells the mirror and runs his hand over his chest. “Mmmm.” He bites his lip. Maybe he should take some personal time, appreciate each dip and curve—
No. But this wouldn’t do. He has a mission, and he doesn’t want to scare the kid—well, not right away—and besides, depending on the situation, he might have to let a human or two see him, and this just isn’t the look for subtlety, now is it? He frowns and then, with one incredibly violent move, shakes himself. Red dust flies off of his skin and envelops him in a sea of smoke. When it clears, Mickey grins to himself.
Nice. He studies the mirror again. His red-tinted skin has been replaced with a nice tan, and the wings on his back along with his thin flippy tail have disappeared. Instead, he stands there looking human and average: dirty blonde curly hair, blue eyes, slightly on the short side, nice jawline...but oh, this won’t do, either. It’s so dull. Mickey snaps his fingers and watches as his hair grows darker and longer black locks, his skin lightens and his eyes go an icey blue.
“Always liked the bad boy style,” he says to himself and lets the clothes he’s wearing morph into black skinny jeans with rips at the knee, black boots and a tight maroon shirt under a plaid flannel. He flips his wrist to accessorize with thick leather bracelets and plugs in his ears, winking at himself, batting his long eyelashes.
“Beautiful,” he compliments his reflection. “Don’t you think so?” He turns and addresses Steve’s body, but it remains stubbornly silent.
“Hmm,” Mickey shrugs, “he was a lying bastard anyway.”
***
It’s been a long time since Mickey looked human, he thinks. Long ago, in another life, he even was one. But he made his choice to let Evilyn turn him into his beautiful demon self, and there’s no point in reminiscing about his past now. So he straightens his shirt and reaches up into his hair, slicking it back. His fingers bump across the two tiny horn buds he’s left lodged in his hair, and he grins to himself, teeth pearly white and sharp. “Now, this is a look.”
With a click of his heels, he leaves the apartment. On the third floor, a drug dealer is arguing with his latest client. Mickey snaps his fingers and turns all his crack into sugar. On the second floor, a couple plans a robbery, and he whistles and blows away all of their good luck. And on the ground floor, there’s a creepy jackass getting lucky with a prostitute, who Mickey quickly gives herpes.
He loves his life. So very, very much. Wreaking havoc is his favorite pastime.
The apartment is not that far from the good side of town, and it’s within perfect walking distance to Lincoln Park, which just so happens to be the outdoor destination of little Franny and her mother, Debbie, every afternoon at about three. Mickey skips his way there and observes as he approaches the park for any sign of the godawful walking-beam-of-light angel that Tierney has sent Franny’s way.
Mickey has no idea what the angel looks like, but angels aren’t that good at blending in in his experience. They tend to wear white, silver, or gold, they tend to be crying in happiness or praying, and they tend to look like the stick that’s perpetually up their ass has fused itself to their spinal cords. Mickey’s not that much of a fan.
He pauses at the edge of the park under a willow tree and scans. Mothers and their children roam around with the occasional father tagging behind. Puppies and kittens frolic, and butterflies swim through the air like some fucking Disney movie. Opposite of the park the traffic moves steadily, a taxi honking at a sedan, a motorcycle zipping through traffic. Debbie, for her part, pushes the stroller with Franny through the park, the shade of the trees rippling in the breeze.
Mickey keeps his narrowed eyes on them, waiting for someone to approach. It will be easy to spot the angel, he thinks. Franny will be able to see whoever it is, and Mickey will too. But Debbie won’t. She’ll see neither of them for Franny’s whole life, not unless they want her to. She won’t be privy to the ways that Mickey will make Franny his little monster, won’t be witness to the angel’s unexpected failure to turn her daughter into some moral fuddy-duddy.
So all Mickey has to do is wait until someone walks up to Franny and Debbie doesn’t react. But no one does. No one at all. Mickey frowns as he waits. Angels are punctual bastards. Surely this one isn’t late. No way the underworld doesn’t have the upper hand here. But as the afternoon draws on and Debbie starts her second round through the park, nothing happens.
Whatever.
Mickey stalks from the willow tree and makes a beeline for the mother and her daughter. He falls into step next to Debbie easily, who, of course, doesn’t react. Franny glances up at him and bounces the toy she’s holding against her stomach.
“Hey, little monster,” Mickey coos at her, bending down and talking as he walks, “My name is Mickey.” He reaches out and watches as Franny curls her hand around his fingers. Debbie doesn’t even blink, “I’m your personal demon, yes I am. We’re going to have so much fun, aren’t we?”
Franny giggles and Debbie leans down to talk to her. They pause next to a park bench, and Debbie pulls out a blanket. She lets Franny lay on the blanket in the grass and sits next to her daughter. Mickey grins evilly.
“Crawling age, are you?” he asks. Franny blinks up at him with her baby blues. Mickey snaps his fingers, and Debbie looks away.
“Come on,” Mickey says and starts walking backward, motioning with his hands for Franny to follow him. She giggles and crawls forward, stumbling into the grass on wobbly knees, heading in a beeline for a little puppy.
Mickey stops just shy of the puppy, who’s sporting a purple collar with the name Daisy on the tag. Mickey cackles to himself.
“Pull the tail,” he tells Franny. She sits up and stares at the puppy, then puts her hand in her mouth.
“Come on. Pull the tail,” he tells Franny again. Franny looks at him and gurgles around her—now slobbery—fingers.
“Pull the tail, little monster,” he says a third time, a toothy grin stretching his lips, and this time, Franny reaches out, grabs the puppy’s tail, and gives it a firm yank.
The puppy yips and jerks around. Mickey watches as it goes for a bite, but he pushes it back with a shove but Franny’s eyes well up with tears anyway.
“Oh, no!” Mickey says, “What a bad dog, trying to bite little Franny!” He stares at the puppy, who looks confused and apologetic. “Oh well,” Mickey says as he flips his wrist and the dog wanders off, “we’ll get you a real hellhound someday.”
Mickey watches as the puppy walks to the edge of the park and then straight into traffic. He grins at the squeal of brakes. “Bad doggie!” He says to Franny, who giggles. “That’s a bad, bad dog.”
“Franny!” Debbie suddenly shrieks and jumps up from her spot, rushing to grab the crawling baby. “What has gotten into you?”
“Is she okay?” a passing man asks all muscles and broad shoulders, bright green eyes, and short red hair. Mickey rolls his eyes. Pretty boy—what a pussy.
“Yes,” Debbie says, holding her close. “I don’t know why she did that. She’s not usually a crawler.” Debbie coos and cuddles Franny, taking her back to the stroller and thanking the man, who promptly heads off in the opposite direction.
Mickey grins and stands up, brushing invisible dust off his knees. Today was such a good start. The little tyke has potential. He kicks up his heels and heads back to his apartment, walking alongside the road. As he does, something darts out in front of him—a golden blur and a purple collar.
“Daisy!” he hears a young girl call from further in the park. “Where’d you go?”
Mickey frowns and looks around him, doing a quick sweep of the area. He narrows his eyes, waiting for something to pop out at him, but nothing does. The golden little dog barks and starts playing fetch, the moms and their kids keep chattering away, and the butterflies keep flitting about, disgustingly colorful.
***
Mickey is bored. Being bored is really the bane of his—and any demon’s—existence, considering that there’s so much out there to do in the world. He sighs and thinks about whether he should go bother the drug dealer on his floor who’s now sporting two black eyes and a broken rib due to customer complaints. But he decides that’s so yesterday, so he just keeps on staring up at the bumpy ceiling of the apartment.
He’s cleaned both the grime off the glass and the body from the corner, so the apartment is now spic-and-span and liveable, which means that Mickey can see his reflection from where he’s lounging on the bed.
And damn is he sexy! He tilts his head so that he can thoroughly examine himself. He pulls his head back and stretches his neck out taut. Nice . He lifts his hips. Mm . He rolls his hips. Fuck yes .
Ah, fuck it. What does he have to do anyway until the afternoon when Debbie and Franny take their stroll? He shakes himself out, going from his natural human appearance to his full-on demon glory, then he lays there naked on the bed and touches himself.
He closes his eyes and imagines the filthy, dirty things he likes to do—the rolling and the fucking and the sucking and the biting. He arches his head back, and his horns knock hollowly against the headboard. His wings twitch as they’re captured under his back, and his tail swishes anxiously, wanting to join in—Mickey grins and lets it.
His tail curls around the nightstand’s handle and pulls open the drawer, drawing out a bottle of lube he placed there. He grabs it with his right hand and pops the bottle while fondling himself with his left and then watches, gasping, as he squirts lube onto the tip of his tail. It’s mushroomed in fashion, with soft edges instead of hard, and really, when you come down to it, it’s the absolute perfect appendage for what Mickey wants to do to himself.
He watches in the mirror as his tail teases at his opening while his hand speeds up its work on his cock, “Such a naughty, naughty boy,” he says to the mirror, and demonic blue eyes twinkle excitedly back at him. He pushes his tail inside, squeezing his muscles just right to create pressure and a good solid sting.
“Oh, baby,” he moans, “harder.” He obliges himself—pushing his tail in and out, rubbing it against his prostate deep inside. He strokes himself firmly and uses his other hand to fondle his balls as things get tighter and deeper and harder and ready.
“I’m going to come,” he moans to his reflection. “Yeah, you do it, bitch. Watch what you made yourself do? Oh, hell.” He bites his lip as he arches up on the bed, holding on for just a few more seconds.
“Not yet, not yet. Mm,” He bites his lip again. “Look at yourself. You’re so sexy. Fuck, baby.”
He makes eye contact with himself in the mirror, “Yes, yes, yes!” He cries, letting himself go, pumping for all he’s worth, and watches as he twitches and then finishes, thick white strings coating his stomach and getting all over his hand. He grins and then laughs to himself, flopping down bonelessly. He really is the only one that can make himself finish like that. He smiles to himself.
***
Mickey saunters up to the park for day two and finds Debbie pushing the stroller the same as the day before, with no angel insight. He hums to himself but follows her and Franny around, making faces at the baby as they go. Franny giggles, and Debbie leans over to coo at her daughter, naively thinking it’s herself that’s making Franny so happy. They arrive at a sandbox this time, and Debbie sits Franny down with another girl—baby soft blonde hair with a pink bow attached to her head. Mickey sits cross-legged beside them.
Franny plays with the sand and grabs a truck that’s put out for the kids to play with. She knocks it against the ground and pushes it around, moving it as best as she can with her chaotic baby limbs. The other baby spies the toy and gets jealous, makes a reach for it, and tears it from Franny’s hands. Her eyes tear up, and Mickey watches her wave her baby fist. He grins. He is always a man of opportunity.
“Punch her,” he tells Franny and swings his fist through the air in mockery of the action.
“She stole your toy, so you punch her,” Franny’s frown turns into a full-on angry grimace, and she beats at the air with her closed fist.
“That’s my girl!” Mickey cackles, “That’s my little monster. Punch the bitch. Do it.”
Franny puts a scowl on her face and crawls over to the other girl, snatching the truck away. The other girl cries and reaches for the truck again, but Franny wields it like it’s her personal avenging hammer and smacks the girl in the face with the full force of plastic fury. The girl goes down, and Mickey sees blood.
Soon the parents are shrieking and crouching over their infants. The little girl’s mom is speaking a mile a minute, holding her daughter’s face between her hands and crying, “It’s broken, it’s broken, I think her nose is broken,” over and over again. Franny, for her part, is sitting down with her truck, happily moving the wheels through the sand.
“Franny,” Debbie says and takes the truck from her. “No, no. We do not hit.” Franny starts crying, and the blonde girl starts crying harder, and the parents start arguing. All in all, Mickey is about as happy as a clam.
That is until the father of the blond girl cuts through all the shrieking to say, “Amanda! Look, she’s fine.”
Fine? That girl was not fine. Mickey swings his head with a glare to see the blond girl smiling, a trickle of blood still caked to her lip, but otherwise no worse for the wear.
“Kids, huh?” the man tells Debbie and scoops up his daughter. “Just try to be more careful next time.”
Debbie nods fiercely, “Of course. I’m so sorry about your daughter. I don’t know what’s gotten into her. These last two days, she’s been a terror.”
The man shrugs. “Terrible twos coming early, I guess.” He smiles, and he and his wife head off out of the park.
Mickey pouts and looks around for the offending force, which just has to be the angel. But he finds nothing except fluttering insects, bouncing dogs, the shriek of children, and the far-off hum of a motorcycle.
***
The days tick by the same. Mickey spends his life cooped up in his apartment except for the afternoon stroll out to the park. He encourages Franny to hit other children, spit on adults, and pull the tails of all of Tierney’s creatures, big and small. He walks in front of the stroller and snaps his fingers, making strangers trip on their own two feet or letting their dogs off their leashes. Franny laughs at the antics and Mickey laughs at her laughing.
She gets older, bigger. The fall colors fade into the pastels of winter, and the snow starts to sprinkle the ground. Franny arrives with oversized, fluffy coats and hats with puffballs on top of them. She stumbles around the park, causing mayhem and ruckus. Mickey follows her, bad luck coursing behind him like a river.
The angel doesn’t show itself, but Mickey knows it’s there. The woman with the skinned knee finds a twenty-dollar bill. The girl who almost falls into the freezing lake suddenly catches her footing just in time. The man who is caught ogling his son’s babysitter makes a save as he gives his wife a dozen roses. In short, all of Mickey’s hard work is for naught. It’s sickening.
And it’s predictable.
This means the days are getting more and more boring by the second. Mickey paces in his apartment while the wood creaks, the wallpaper uninteresting and expected. His reflection no longer excites him quite like it used to. Franny’s giggles are no longer as endearing, the faces of a man who lost his wallet no longer worthy of Mickey’s full attention.
He needs change.
But all he has are four walls of a shitty apartment and a park that he visits for two hours every day. This day is no different than the countless others that have come before. This time, Debbie is wearing her pink sweater, and Mickey makes a gagging motion at himself for being able to pick out Debbie’s closet by now. Franny is wearing pink, too—one of her oversized coats and brown booties are perfect for the cool weather.
Mickey walks beside them as he always does, silent and frowning. He’s pretty sure that his grumpiness is contagious and that Franny is catching it because she’s fussy, too. It’s effortless today to get Franny to tell her mom no and throw a walnut in her face, and it’s especially easy to get her to smack her mother when she gets in trouble.
Debbie gives her a swat on the hand for misbehaving, and Franny wails like a banshee, but her cries of pain don’t excite Mickey. In fact, none of Franny’s little sounds of agitation send a thrill through him anymore like the sounds of others tend to do. The rest of the city can cry and shout and bemoan, but not his little monster. She deserves the world. So as they pass a ten-year-old with a lollipop, Mickey swipes it as easy as taking candy from a kid and hands it to Franny, who gurgles in happiness at her personal demon.
Franny sucks on the lolly, Debbie ignores it, and Mickey walks. Same old, same old. He sighs and casts his gaze about for the angel as he tends to do every day on autopilot. He finds himself hoping that this will be the day that he or she pops out of nowhere and engages Mickey in an evil-vs-good fight to the death. After all, everything is so very, very dull, and Mickey is getting, well—he’s getting lonely.
***
Mickey sifts through his options but finds he has none. His usual circle is full of other demons—Kendra mostly, even though that does him more harm than good.
But he’s damn sure that Evilyn isn’t going to like him flying down to the netherworld for a social visit, and every demon that he knows on Earth is deep into their assignments of creating conflict in the Middle East or working on political campaigning. So Mickey sucks up his pride—all million and a half gallons of it—and knocks on the drug dealer’s door.
His name is Colin, and he’s a young little pissant who tries to make everyone happy all at once and only succeeds in making the world suspicious and pissed at him. Mickey holds up a six-pack and offers free beer if he doesn’t ask any questions, so he’s let into Colin’s one-bedroom, roach-infested digs and shown to the T.V. and some city vs. some city ballgame.
Colin tries to make conversation, and Mickey wants to throw himself off a bridge. But this is what he came for, isn’t it? Company that’s older than a year-and-a-half and who can mostly control his drool. So Mickey sighs and concedes.
Colin pulls out a little baggie filled with white substance and proceeds to make a line on his coffee table. Mickey rolls his eyes and wonders if the guy is a walking pharmacy. “Want some?” Colin asks. “Got some killer E, too.”
Mickey shakes his head, “Nah, not my vice.”
Colin shrugs and goes back to fixing his drugs just how he likes them, “What is?” he asks casually.
Mickey scoffs, “Got seven. Which one you want?”
But that one seems to soar right over Colin’s head, or maybe he didn’t hear Mickey over the loud snorting, but either way, the conversation turns south.
“Did I ever tell you about that job I had down in San Antonio?” Colin asks as if they’re buds who spend Sunday evenings together. Mickey grunts, and Colin must take that as a no.
“So, this guy. Really macho gang type, yeah? Asked me for this god-awful amount of stuff. Said he was going to give me half a mil, can you believe that? So I show up—” Mickey’s eyes go a little glassy. Is this what humans have to deal with every day? It’s so agonizingly biting, “—and there’s this car, right? This unmarked car and this guy gets out with these sunglasses, just like in the movies, dude.” Mickey knows just how many bones are in a man’s body. He wonders which one he could break to make it hurt the worst.
“And he says to me, I shit you not, ‘your buddy betrayed you,’ like fucking SVU, you know? Or is that Law and Order? Are they the same shit?” Mickey imagines his head on a spike.
“And then I’m like, dude . This guy is a cop, right? So I start running like a cheetah. Like zoom,” Colin holds out his hand and smacks it into the second one. “So fast.” The slowest poison known to man, and Mickey recites to himself, is the—
“And this guy just chases me, and I jump a fence—” Maybe instead of sugar, he’ll turn everything into antifreeze this time.
“—and fall right into this sack of garbage, dumpster pile of restaurant leftovers. But you know the funniest shit? Guy stopped chasing me.”
Colin nods over at Mickey, and he refuses to respond except to hold his gaze evenly. Colin puts one finger over his right nostril and snorts with the other to clear his nose. Mickey snaps his fingers and turns him into a pigeon.
The pigeon, for a moment, is incredibly shocked and makes a squawk kind of sound like it’s trying to speak. Mickey thinks it’s annoying, so he grabs it by the wing and throws it out the window, latching the lock after he’s done. The pigeon makes a half-hearted attempt to fly but, upon shitting itself in fear, clings to the ledge like a kid to his mother’s pant leg.
Mickey studies the apartment around him and wonders if he should move. He decides the place is a dump—even worse than where he’s already at.
***
On a particularly warm day for winter when the latest snow has melted into a gray slush that looks just the perfect level of unappetizing and the trees droop down the way Mickey likes, he follows Debbie home.
He needs change desperately. Needs a new pace, a new challenge. The drug dealer is gone, finally having learned to fly, and all the others in Mickey’s building have become just as boring. He’s very quickly learning that the only thing that will put a smile on his lips is the evil giggle in Franny’s voice, so he decides maybe spending more time with his hell-sent charge wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Debbie places Franny in a white SUV after their time at the park and buckles her in soundly before folding the stroller and placing it in the back. While she’s distracted, Mickey sneaks into the backseat of the SUV and crosses his eyes, sticking his tongue out at Franny. She laughs, and Mickey proceeds to make even more exaggerated faces as Debbie climbs into the driver’s side.
The SUV is clean, pristinely detailed, and the white seats make Mickey want to throw up all over them—or maybe tempt Franny into dumping her chocolate milk on them. Debbie turns quickly onto the road because a nice car behind her waved her in, and it’s so sickeningly perfect that Mickey proceeds to make every light Debbie approaches red.
They traveled to a nice, quiet home at the edge of a suburb with perfectly clipped hedges and mowed lawns. Mickey wonders if the local Neighborhood Watch has any other demons he could hang out with because someone had to have sold their soul for this bullshit.
The house itself is decorated with a refined and quiet style, and when Debbie pulls into the garage, there’s no evidence of any other vehicles. But, of course, Mickey knows that she’s a single mom. She never comes to the park attached with anyone, no bored husband or boyfriend scuffing his feet along the sidewalk. She doesn’t have a wedding band, never talks about her love life, even to the girls that she’s started to become friends with as they stroll around the swept clean park paths.
Debbie gets out and grabs Franny before walking into the house. Mickey follows them cautiously—being outside in the open is one thing, but in someone’s home is entirely different. Debbie won’t ever see him, but she could physically bump into him in an indoor setting, so he carefully watches where he steps. Inside, the house is like a picture out of a Home and Garden magazine. The kitchen is sparkling clean, the living room devoid of dust, the nursery is perfectly put up. There are three bedrooms, if you count the nursery, Debbie’s room, and the folded up and creaseless guest room. Mickey is nauseous just thinking about it.
He wonders what Debbie does for a living with as nice of a house as this until he spends some time snooping through the mail and finds checks from a welding company and the childcare payments—some sap named Derek doling out half his wages.
Debbie places Franny in the playpen and goes into the kitchen to do bills or whatever the hell it is that humans spend their time doing these days. Mickey leans against the wall and stares down at Franny as she picks up a chewed and ratty purple elephant.
“Well, kiddo,” he says and looks around the living room, “guess I might stay here for a while. You’ve got to be better company than those crack rats.” He tilts his head and reads down the spine of books on the living room bookshelf, finding absolutely nothing of interest.
“I need to give you some proper training,” Mickey says and rubs his hands. “There’s a lot of things we can do, I’m sure—chemicals under the sink, butcher’s knives in the drawers.” He wanders over and looks outside to the neighbor’s lawn, where a tabby cat crawls through the grass. “Could poison the neighbor’s cat. Maybe have you catch a mouse and torture it. Hopefully, you have lots of playdates, too. We could give all the other children nightmares for life.”
He laughs and walks over, bends into the playpen, and pinches her cheek. Franny giggles at him and holds out her arms, as wide as the final circle of Hell. “Up!” she says, and Mickey blinks, jerking back on his heels.
Franny whines and holds her hands up higher, wiggling her tiny baby fingers, “Up,” she says again as if Mickey hadn’t heard her the first time.
He frowns. He’s never actually held the thing before. Demons don’t hold babies. And besides, what would Debbie think if she saw her daughter suspended in midair, being cuddled by an invisible force that was spelling out Franny’s fate in big fiery letters? No, Mickey is not a holder.
But Franny’s arms are wide, and her fingers are sticky and grabby, and she’s starting to whine in unhappiness. “I’ll be there in a minute, sweetie,” Debbie calls from the kitchen, but that does nothing to soothe Franny with her arms stretched out like evil little tentacles. Minutes tick by, and Debbie doesn’t come. Mickey starts to hate her for being so negligent.
Slowly, with the utmost care, Mickey reaches into the playpen and removes Franny, holding her at arm's length. Franny giggles and tries to bite at his bracelet. Mickey studies her, and she starts to cackle at him and then smacks her hand down over his wrist hard, and Mickey cackles back.
“There’s my little monster,” he says and pulls her forward, cuddling her to his chest, “There’s my little girl.”
Franny laughs again and tries to pinch his nose. Mickey grins. Yes, he thinks this—this is less boring.
***
Debbie lays Franny down in the crib and shuts the lights off in the nursery, leaving the door only just cracked open. The blanket of the night is quiet out here, away from the city hub. The only sound is the soft clicking of Franny’s mobile as it turns round and round. Mickey shakes himself out, confident that the shadows will hide his natural form. He thinks for a moment about going to the guest bed to sleep somewhere more comfortable, but now that he’s decided to be a full-time guardian demon, the thought of sleeping in a room that doesn’t have Franny seems just plain wrong.
So he takes a minute to get accustomed to his surroundings, and then he flies to the ceiling, flipping himself upside down. He lets his clawed feet grab for a good purchase just above Franny’s crib, and he dangles below, fluffing his wings out before wrapping both them and his tail around himself for comfort and security. He ducks his head down under his wings until he’s just another bat hanging from the ceiling—the only visible part of him is his horns as they poke down like gazelle antlers.
Mickey snuggles in and closes his eyes. He starts to drift off, but after a minute, he hears a soft gurgling. He peeks out from under his wing to see Franny below him, grunting as she tries to stand and grab ahold of one of his horns. She’s on her tippy-toes, one grubby little hand using the railing for balance as she stretches to reach him. His horn is still a good foot from her, so there’s no way that she’s going to get it, but damn, is she trying. Mickey furrows his brow and watches her. He tries to outlast her, thinking surely she’ll get tired, but she gets more determined and unhappier as the seconds tick by.
Mickey frowns to himself and lowers his body down further, stretching his legs out to accommodate the new distance with the horn in mind, Franny grabs ahold of it. Mickey watches her carefully to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself on the pointed end, but she seems fine. She touches it, bangs on it for a minute which causes Mickey’s head to echo violently, and then, to his dismay, bites it. After satisfactorily exploring it with all of her senses, Franny finally flops down onto her back. Good , Mickey thinks to himself, sleep .
He starts to pull himself up to curl away from her, but before he can, her little hand is around his horn again. He frowns and glances down to find the girl falling asleep on her side; her tiny fist curled around the tip of his horn for comfort like some kind of beanie baby. He swallows and bats down the weird nauseating fluffy feeling in his stomach. Franny mumbles in her sleep and starts making soft baby snores.
Mickey arranges himself as best as he can, snuggling into his new position, letting out a self-satisfied sigh and humming to himself as he falls asleep.