#ep004

They arrived outside the school gates, and Natalie was feeling a little nervous. Even though the school was not exactly the tightest on security, she didn’t really want to get caught out bringing a strange child onto the premises.

“Right, make sure you act like an average teenager, okay?” she turned to Satan. She couldn’t help talking to him differently because of his younger appearance, something that he pretended not to notice.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know what an ‘average teenager’ is like? This ain’t exactly my usual haunt, girl,” he responded in his usual condescending tone, which didn’t as much match his visage. His eyes, now hazel-coloured, darted around the concrete forecourt, taking in all the faces of the kids who walked past. He grunted in bitterness realising that, to pass for sixteen, he could have allowed himself a few more inches of height.

“True, true. Just copy what I do, and don’t talk to anyone!” Natalie began strolling through the gate in the most peculiar fashion. Her elbows seemed to be reaching for the sky and her knees came up at such a strange angle. Lucifer witnessed the least natural view of someone acting ‘natural’, he walked behind her exaggerating the motions, waiting for her to turn and spot him mocking her.

Unfortunately, Natalie wasn’t the first to see him marching.

“Yo, Pearson!” called a boy in uniform, tugging on his friend’s arm. Satan glanced and noticed they were pointing at him and his escort.

“Ha! Oh my fucking God, freaks!” his friend laughed in respond. Now, Natalie had been at this school since she was eleven, she was well used to the banter between school children. If any of it were ever aimed at her nowadays, she had obtained a wonderful ability to block it out. Satan, on the other hand, didn’t take to humiliation so well.

“Oh, damn. It’s Ms Carmichael, she’s the headteacher and if she sees-” Natalie broke off as she span around, seeing that Satan was no longer at her heel, “eek! No!” she panicked as she saw him striding over to the offending children.

“Say that to my fucking face, asshole!”  Natalie couldn’t believe things had gone this wrong so quickly, she was a little afraid to intervene. Satan was furious as he squared up to the kid, fists clenched.

“To your face? Alright,” the stupid kid had apparently accepted the challenge, “fr-“

“THERE YOU ARE,” Natalie interrupted, but Satan looked at her and snorted, “come on, Kelvin, we need to get to class,” she placed a hand on Satan’s shoulder, which shrugged it off instantly. Satan turned and walked away so he didn’t witness the boys go back to their snickering. Natalie could feel the heat from his body coming through the navy cardigan and decided to keep her hands to herself, “wow, dude, you’re really burning up.”

“Keep this contract going for longer and I assure you I can do much worse,” he knew it wasn’t the best idea to be beating kids in public, and he didn’t need some stupid girl babysitting him. He will have only broken his nose, after all.

“Miss McAllister,” Natalie looked up to see the headteacher towering over her, and from the way she looked at Satan, Natalie knew where this was going,

“Good morning, Ms Carmichael,” Natalie gave a wide, fake grin as Ms Carmichael managed to completely ignore that Satan was staring her dead in the eye.

“And who are you, young man?” she returned Satan’s look. Harder and without fear (for, to her, he was just a young schoolboy trespassing).

“This is my… cousin… Kelvin,” Natalie stammered,

“I assume you don’t mean a first cousin, Miss McAllister. As you and I know full well you have no aunts or uncles,”

“No, not first cousin. Like…third-cousin, once-removed? My grandfather is Kelvin’s great-granduncle,”

“That would be second-cousins, once-removed,” Ms Carmichael replied, “now, I’m not sure why you’ve brought a strange child, cousin or not, kitted in our uniform into our school but we can play this two ways. Either Kelvin can go home or to his own school and we’ll speak nothing of it, or I can call your father and we can have a chat about it in my office at lunch time.” Satan had absolutely no interest in this interaction.

“Right, so I’m going ‘home’,” he said, and gave a look to Natalie that showed a request for permission, which was joined by the noise of him grinding his teeth. He was not enjoying this contract one bit.

“Oh, okay. I’ll walk you to the gate, Kelvin. Sorry, Ms Carmichael!” Natalie called back and chased Satan who had already nearly made it there, “slow down,”

“I’m just going back to your house, goddamnit. Fucking hell, kid,”

“Excuse me, but you were the one who wanted to come with me!” Satan’s face dropped when he realised she was right and this was his own fault, which made him angrier.

“I wouldn’t be here if you had decided what you wanted to do with the contract!”

“Maybe I’d have decided if you’d stop putting pressure on me!”

“Bullshit, I gave you all weekend,” the school bell rang.

“Okay, okay, okay. It’s not exactly an easy decision. And I don’t even know the terms. My father always said you need to read the fine-print before you make any kind of deal. You don’t go making bets willy-nilly based on feelings – you have to think them through.”

“So it’s my fault for not explaining everything to you! Jeez, kid, couldn’t you have worked some of this out yourself? Are you thicker than I thought?”

“It’s not like I was planning on summoning the devil! But now you’re here I want to make the most use of it,” Natalie’s voice began to get very hushed even though all the children had gone to class and there was nobody to hear them.

“What does ‘make the most of it’ mean?” he asked softly, hoping to get an answer, but Natalie chose to ignore it.

It was becoming more and more frustrating to Lucifer that he couldn’t manipulate her. She was scared of him, but it didn’t sway her. She wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, though not particularly stupid, and she had something up her sleeve. He could ask softly, he could ask aggressively; but it occurred to him that if she didn’t want to say something they she wouldn’t say it.

“I don’t want you in my house while I’m at school. Sometimes my dad comes home for lunch and we haven’t worked this thing out yet,” she breathed deep, “there’s a park around the corner,”

“Whoop-de-fucking-shit,”

“Go and sit in the park,” she said, still thinking, “That’s an order. I’ll come and find you after school and we can talk,”

Satan began to walk away, so Natalie turned to go back through the school gates.  She deeply hoped an order was enough to keep him in one place for six hours. She didn’t focus on her work for a single minute the whole day because it kept crossing her mind that she didn’t know what she’d do if he wasn’t there.

At the end of the day, Natalie saw her friend, Naira, to the bus as she usually did (who gave her a big hug since something was clearly on her mind). She even ran off before anyone else, including her best friend, had a chance to say goodbye. Legging it around the corner to the park she heaved a sigh of relief to see Satan, still as a teenager, sat on a bench. She approached, gasping, and he turned his head very slowly around to see her.

“It rained,” the tone of his voice implied that he’d really had enough of this day,

“Did it? Sorry,” nobody wants to be caught in the rain, “let’s go.”

“I have one thing to say before we go anywhere,” Satan stood up and Natalie nodded for him to go on, “Kelvin?”

“Oh yeah, it’s all I could think of on the spot. I couldn’t introduce you as ‘Satan’ could I? And ‘Lucifer’ isn’t exactly a common name, either; is your name actually Lucifer?” It felt weird calling him that,