He looks at Anil, frozen in time. They have ten long years of friendship between them. Billy remembers the long month when he was trying to not get drunk every day; he doesn’t really remember it all that well but he does remember it, and what he remembers, mostly, is Anil being there, endlessly being there, bearing huge cartons of greasy Szechuan takeout which Billy would eat like it was the only thing to live for, reading Billy interminable segments of the Mahabharata, sitting with Billy at the tiny kitchen table and playing round after round of canasta. Canasta to 50,000 points, to 500,000 points. Epic games that did not ever need to end because the point was not really who was winning. The point, Billy knows, was to get Billy to look away from the void, the sucking void that he had been skirting the edge of for a year, watching in terror as more and more of his life got dragged down into its maw. If he could just look away, it seemed, he could be yanked out of the range of the void’s inexorable pull. And he did, and he was, and in his heart he knows that Anil was responsible. Sometimes, in his rare moments of focus and quiet reflection, he thinks Anil saved my life. Sometimes he has a feeling that he is maybe obliged to do something with the extra life that he was gifted. You get one life for free, to do with what you will. Waste it if you want. But when someone goes to the trouble of helping you get a second life you kind of have an obligation to that person to do something good with it.
This, maybe, is as good a thing to do as anything. Someone saves your life, you save his. It seems fair.
And so he says to Lucifer: “Yeah. Sure.”
Lucifer nods the tiniest nod, indicating satisfaction at Billy’s choice, maybe even the faintest glimmer of something bordering on respect.
And without further preamble, Billy kneels. It’s sort of an astral kneel, or something, because he can’t move, because Lucifer is doing his thing with time, but Billy wills himself to kneel and can feel himself psychically go down in submissive prostration.
“Like this?” Billy says.
“That’s good,” Lucifer says. “Now, repeat after me. I, William Harrison Ridgeway—”
“I prefer Billy,” says Billy.
“I know,” Lucifer says. “But just this once. It’s important.”
Billy considers this. Sure. Why the fuck not. “I, William Harrison Ridgeway—”
“Do solemnly swear fealty to Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of Hell—”
“Do solemnly swear fealty to Lucifer Morningstar, Lord of Hell—”
“To whom I cede agency over my will and my being—”
“To whom I cede agency over my will and my being—”
“And whom I agree to serve as my master, and, in doing so, return to the purpose for which I was bred and born.”
“And whom I agree to serve as my master, and, in doing so, return to the purpose for which I was bred and born.”
“Amen.”
“Amen.”
And when Billy says that — that satanic amen — he feels something happen in him. There have been times in the past when he’s said I just died a little inside but he’s never actually felt it happen, not for real, not like this: he’s never actually felt a whole wing of his spirit — in this case, the entire part of him that wants to kick and fight and resist — just crumble and expire without so much as a gasp. He wants to feel sadness for it but he can’t even find the way to that anymore, as it would be in violation of his vow. He has returned to the purpose for which he was bred and born. He serves the Devil. Period. There is no reason to be sad about it. It is simply a valueless fact, like 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans.
“So,” Lucifer says. “Let’s get back to it, shall we?”
He releases the invisible mote of time he’d been holding onto and everything speeds up again. Anil, still ablaze, crashes into the wall. Lucifer slowly closes his open hand into a fist, and completion of the gesture utterly snuffs the hellfire, leaving nothing behind but a heavy pall of sulfuric reek. Anil keeps grappling with the extinguisher in its bracket for a second, not quite realizing that he’s safe.
“Anil,” Billy says. “It’s okay. The fire. It’s gone.”
Anil pauses, looks back over his shoulder, trying to get a look at the extent of the scorching. His work shirt is ruined, but his undershirt only has a few quarter-sized holes in it, and the skin underneath seems fine. Still, it was close, and Anil’s face loses some of its color.
“Motherfucker,” he says, softly, sinking down into a crouch, resting his wrists on his knees. He looks like he might vomit.
“Anil,” Billy says, “this is Lucifer Morningstar, the Judeo-Christian Devil.”
“Nice to meet you,” Lucifer says.
Billy interposes himself between the two of them, crouches down to look Anil in the face. “Anil,” he says. “I have to go. I hope you could do me one last favor, though.”
Anil’s eyes are wide, lambent with the gleam of fear. Billy assesses that it will pass. He rummages in the pocket of his jumpsuit and finds Laurent’s card. He presses it into Anil’s slack hand.
“I need you,” he says, “to call the number on this card. Go to the address if you can’t get through. My dad should be there. Tell him I went with Lucifer. Tell him not to look for me.”
Anil gives one jerking nod.
Billy thinks for a moment. “I guess I have one other favor to ask as well. Sorry to keep adding them on. I’m still an asshole, I guess.”
Anil blinks out of his shock long enough to crack a smile. “You are,” he says. “But what? What is it?”
“Tell Denver. Tell her — tell her that I’m sorry.”
He still doesn’t feel any pity for himself — he still feels like his servitude to the Devil is an immutable fact — but he recognizes that sometimes the facts hurt people. Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by oceans. There’s sadness in that, if someone you love has drowned in them.
“Billy,” Lucifer says, dropping his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “It’s time.”
“I know,” Billy says. He rises.
“Wait,” Anil says. “When are you coming back?”
But Billy doesn’t answer. He leads Lucifer out through the service entrance and they advance through a greasy back alley lined with rotting produce, making their way magisterially toward the street. Pigeons scatter before them.
Something occurs to Billy. “What about the others?” he says, helpfully. “They went to the Right-Hand Path headquarters. It’ll be harder to get them. They’re defended against you.”
“Billy,” Lucifer says. “When the Right-Hand Path catches me by surprise, they may be able to momentarily deter me. But when I come for them? In my full splendor? That is a moment when they stand revealed as the rank novices that they are. You worry about my ability to get the others?”
They emerge from the alley into the slanting sunlight of a late November afternoon.
“I got them first.”
And Billy sees, before him, gleaming golden in the light, double-parked on the sidewalk, hazards blinking, attended by a Traffic Enforcement Agent who is already printing a ticket for it, Jørgen’s Trusty Econoline Van.
Lucifer pushes the parking agent gently aside with the back of his hand. The agent turns, looking pissed, mouth already forming the first phoneme of what would surely be an impressive string of abuse, but Lucifer fixes him with a stare, a soul-accounting stare, and he is harrowed, shaken into silence. He moves back. He is maybe beginning to cry a little.