Unlimited

Darina Grotto, 2017

Summer, 2013. Moscow. Just a young redhead girl. Just an amazing and unusual meeting. The meeting which thwarted plans and dreams of the young redhead girl, Victoria. And totally untypical love that got under the girl’s skin. What if she mustn’t love? Horrifying! What if she mustn’t want? Dangerous! And what if Victoria really wanted to love? How to live when suddenly as if touched with a wand everything became unusual including the redhead girl? In a Moscow beautiful summer, one beautiful day Victoria made a mess of things that led her into apocalyptic troubles.Содержит нецензурную брань.

13

^th

June 2013 (Thursday)

Pale-face students were running everywhere, whispering, shaking the cheat sheets, praying. It was a philosophy final examination.

Victoria was sitting near the auditorium with a book, answers for test questions, carefully reading everything that she had had to read within 5 years. She needed just a few theses, just a little about philosophers, two more pages.

‘How’re you getting on?’ Igor, course mate, came up to her.

‘Don’t ask me.’ Vic waved. ‘I remember nothing. If I pass by some miracle, then it’ll be a real miracle. You? Have you learnt?’

‘Partially. I think I’ll say something. That’s a philosophy!’ he smiled. ‘After a party is coming up in case of successful examination…’

‘Successful examination?’ Vic smirked. ‘We’re not even in the auditorium.’

‘Don’t be such a pessimist. We all pass! As you will do!’

‘I hope you can foresee… What about the party?’

‘So, there’s a café at Sokolniky. We’ll pass the exam and then go there.’

‘Are we chipping in?’

‘No. Pay-your-own-way, or you can discuss with guys. Someone doesn’t drink and, I’m sure, they won’t chip in.’

‘Right you are!’ Vic smiled. ‘Fine, if I get through the exam, then I’m in.’

The guy gently tapped on the girl’s shoulder and left her alone.

‘What are you doing here, Drache?’ the prefect appeared from nowhere, ‘Philippych is calling you. Hurry!’

Victoria took her notebooks and student books and ran to the auditorium.

There were five students let inside. Vic came up to the table where she registered her examination card and with no looking at the questions, sat to the table.

The first question was Scholastics. The basic theses. Representatives. And the second question was Marxism philosophy.

Vic closed her eyes. The first question wasn’t so scared as she thought. There was a couple of opening sentences and then she would be ready to say something next.

The second question caused some problems: Vic didn’t have time to read up to the philosophy of XIX century.

Having sat to the moderators, Vic answered the first question with ease. But then fantastic stuff began.

‘Marxism…’ Vic drawled, understanding more that she was going to celebrate nothing at the party.

‘Yes, Vic, Marxism. Let’s start from the definition of Marxism you are going to give.’

‘Marxism is…’ the girl frowned.

The only thought and words that were in her head was what should I do? You couldn’t be silent in such kind of situation. Never. Only words, beautiful words, perfect settled and chosen ones could get universal appeal. Silence was a bad omen that both parts, taking a share in the conversation, didn’t understand.

‘Marxism…’ Victoria was drawling, obviously being despaired, lowered her eyes, which were going to cry out of frustration.

‘Are you ready to provide an answer, Victoria?’ the moderator asked two minutes later.

The girl looked at the man, sitting near the moderator. It was Philipp Philippych. The professor of Philosophy, who could teach his subject in a very interesting and dexterously way, was sitting in shock. He was ashamed for his students. He lost so much time and efforts to give all the history of philosophy to see during the exam faces, dipped into frustration!

Remorse started torching Victoria step by step. She had really time to prepare her examination and had tried to do until she met him.

What would she say to her mother? What would her mother say? What a shame and take-down! She didn’t have any cheat sheets!

Suddenly Vic heard a clear muttered voice: “philosophical, economic and political study. Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx founded it.”

Vic turned. All the students were busy with their own examination cards and preparation to them, they had no interest in faery failure of Victoria Drache. Then who muttered the answer to her?

The girl looked again at the moderator and, is if she were bewitched, she repeated what someone had told it.

‘Good. Marxism conception?’

Vic lowered her eyes and noticed Philippych’s lips silently moving and then a clear whisper went on: “…political capitalism economy, historical materialism, scientific communism. The philosophy centre is a conception of a human subtraction from own labour products…”

Vic was watching the professor’s lips and understood nothing. The whisper, he was speaking, was a whisper but loud. It was so loud so the person sitting next to Philippych, would have absolutely heard what was going on near.

‘Have you told anything, Professor?’ Victoria asked unexpectedly.

‘I’ve asked you to give Marxism conception. Philipp Philippych is silently waiting for the answer.’

The moderator was speaking, and Victoria saw Marxism conception coming out of his mouth. It was just in tune with his announcements! Simultaneously!

‘What’s the hell?’ Vic asked herself under her breath, touching her hair.

‘I beg your pardon? Are you ok, Drache? You don’t look like yourself.’ Philippych asked quiet. ‘You’re pale, sweated… Shall I let you go to the nurse?’

‘No,’ she whispered in replay kept on looking at the moderator’s lips muttering about Marxism conception. ‘I’ll go on.’

In a trembling voice, Victoria re-told everything that the moderator said and got good mark, and looking round, she left the auditorium.

‘So? How was it?’ group-mates came up to her.

Vic came along the hall, speaking and listening to nobody. She washed her face with cold water, trying to wash off madness that had attacked her. She couldn’t still believe what she had seen was true. How was it possible to believe in such things? And on the other hand, how was it possible not to believe? Knowing nothing Vic passed the final philosophy exam because the moderator himself had told her the examination card! What a nonsense!

Cold water streamed. Refreshing. Victoria refused to believe in what had happened. It was too much. There was no such a thing.

In fifteen minutes, she left the WC room, forced herself to smile. She had to speak a lot about how the exam was, how she was lucky, that she remembered the correct answer, that professors weren’t mean. Vic tried to calm her course mates down, infused hope into them, saying that everything would be okay, and everyone would pass.

‘Vic, have you passed?’ Olga Vladimirovna spoke in a voice touched with emotions on the cell.

‘I have, I got a good mark. Don’t worry.’

‘Oh, thanks god. When are you going home?’

‘In the evening. Maybe at night. We’re gonna to a café with mates.’

‘Okay, try to be at home earlier, will you?’

‘Mum!’ a reproachful note appeared in Vic’s voice. ‘I’m not a baby!’

‘Yes, you aren’t, of course. You’re a child. So be careful. Are you listening to me, Vic?’

Victoria looked angrily at the ceiling, holding the cell away from her ear not to listen to the talk.

‘Okay, mum, okay. I got it. See you.’

‘Vic, I’ve not…’

Her mum was speaking something when the girl hanged up the cell. She didn’t want to listen to any moralizing. After Vic had seen the professor saying her the examination card and nobody but Vic could hear him, she wanted to relax a little bit. It didn’t matter what people it would be around. The main point was not to be alone, especially at home.

After the exam all students went to a café at Sokolniky. They chattered bragging of their achievements and call luck bad names, telling how they had passed.

The moderators turned to be very severe. The Ministry Chairman was almost physio. He failed every student, having fun. If Philippych hadn’t been there, not everyone would have passed. Philippych got it hot and strong — the Chairman made fun of him and of his badly educated students. And if Victoria thought that Philippych answered the question himself, then the moderator wouldn’t have done the same.

She remembered those terrible whispering lips, the blank, whitish look, getting pale skin. She couldn’t get the face disfigured by indifference out of her memory.

Everyone was celebrating the successful examination while Victoria was meditating, making herself sure that her subconsciousness projected recollections in the shape of the whispering professor.

After she drunk two or three glasses the girl started relaxing and losing herself in dreams. If it was madness then damn with it, she could do nothing anyway. If mind got ill, then it was the end. When you were drunk, you better recognized and got over your own hopelessness than when you were sober. It was easier for the girl when her course mate embraced her, laughing in unison with her. It was easier to see his face imagining no Kharon’s face. And, of course, it was easier to kiss him back because there was nothing similar in comparison with the demon’s kisses.

As soon as Victoria felt the miserable embracing with a perishable human body of male sex, being very annoying, pleasureless, she left the café when no one saw her.

There was metro ahead and having gone a little distance towards the underground kingdom of marble and granite, Vic stopped. The big park behind her offensively looked at her. There were fresh young leaves, embracing students and loving couples on benches, drunkards, were going to sleep hat in hand to the strains of tree crown murmurs on the warmed ground. The lanterns were fabulously lightning, along the carefully done paths, giving the atmosphere of Peter Pan fairy tale.

Without a second thought Victoria went back to the park, understanding nothing, why she was doing it. The only thing she understood the unreal smell of adventure. She walked on the smell…until she stumbled and fell into the bushes.

Then there was darkness. There was nothing before her eyes. She didn’t understand if her eyes were open or not. There was just coldness gently touched her body. The dream wasn’t a dream and reality wasn’t a reality. Nothing was understandable. She had a cramped consciousness, dancing in alcoholic delirium. It was busy. It had no time to look after reality. It was still rushing having forgotten the mind. Time was happy: nobody watched it! A rustle… Another one. The mind was tired. It wanted to back to reality, but all the attempts were in vain. An abrupt movement. A blaze was before her eyes… Pain. Violent pain. She wanted to cry. Her mind had been still apprehending existence out of the bounds of subconsciousness, remembering the sly consciousness.

Someone’s hands. Warm. Strong. Zero gravity. That was what meant to hover over the ground. The breeze… The beginning of the way.

Vitoria opened her eyes. The darkness. She couldn’t understand who she was. The girl tried to move her hands and legs: they worked. Pain! Here was it! On the upper eyelid of the left eye. Vic blinked and the pain was gone nowhere but got stronger.

‘You landed on a sharp knot…in the bushes.’ A sudden quiet voice brought Vic to life a bit.

In her fright she jumped up and fell on the floor… that wasn’t her one. The darkness still covered the truth and with vigour, Victoria was still feeling for little pile on the floor.

‘Where am I?’ she asked under her breath, sat on her knees, with no result looking into the night dark.

The silence was in response. Vic was turned her head like an eagle-owl, peering into forward. She carefully got up and faltered ahead like a year-old baby.

‘Hey!’ she shouted, going like a zombie, stretched out her hand. ‘Who’s here?’

Consciousness was coming back slowly into reality, then dragging fear, which always said no. It was exhausted already to come every day to that girl.

‘Have you forgotten yet?’

The hands were the same, strong and warm, gently touched her palms, holding the girl not to let darkness make her fall.

‘Kharon.’

Victoria didn’t know what to feel: fear? Blissfulness? A scare? Enjoyment? She was losing in her feelings.

‘Is that really you?’ she asked with fear, stepping back from his hands. ‘Where am I?’

‘Well what if I say that you are at my place? Would you be glad?’

‘At your place? Your home? What time is it? Jesus…mum’s gonna kill me!’ Victoria stared round.

Despite her eyes were used to the darkness, all the same she saw nothing but the dark silhouette. No furniture was seen there, nor street lamps light through the curtains. The windows seemed not to exist at all.

‘I called her and said that you would come in the morning or afternoon…’

‘You…What did you do? Perfect!’ Victoria came up to Kharon, trying to give a sever look at his face. ‘How should I explain a man who called her? How to introduce you? The demon?! Kharon the Demon? Just Kharon? Incubus? Or just to say that Victoria is a crackpot?’

‘Are you blowing up me?’ Kharon was surprised.

He had a velvet and silky voice, but his intonation scared the girl.

He snapped his fingers and wall luminaries, awkwardly spread over the wall, lit with a languishing pale light, filling the room with a weak glowing. Vic stepped back. Kharon wasn’t supposed to appear like that: an unbuttoned white shirt, let out of his trousers, blinding the eyes, the shoes, combed hair, barely visible bristle and the black eyes full of outrage and true wonder.

‘No.’ The girl said quickly and folded the jacket about herself. ‘No. I just wonder what I’m supposed to do next… And what did you say my mum?’

Vic stopped speaking, starring at the unbuttoned shirt. A slight smiled played across his lips and he started buttoning the shirt. The girl’s burning in red cheeks made him cheer up.

‘That’s all?’ he asked as he did the button over his stomach.

‘What?’

‘That’s all what you want to know?’

‘No.’ Victoria became severe unexpectedly. ‘I want to know what you’re doing here? Or what am I doing here if you forbid me to summon you?’

‘You answered your question: I forbid you! But no one forbid me to appear according to my will and of my own free choice. By chance, I saw your body in the night wilds and as I am sure that sooner or later, I will get from you what I want, I decided to save your body. I did it. As for your mother,’ Kharon started speaking in as the same voice as Victoria did, ‘mum, don’t worry, I’m staying at Vasilisa, I’ll come tomorrow.’

Vitoria hanged on his words, looked at him and she didn’t understand how he was capable of doing what he was doing. His voice sounded identically like hers.

‘Did she believe you? My mum, I mean.’ Vic amazingly blinked.

‘She doubtlessly did… Besides why do you report when you are going to come home? What time and with whom.’ Kharon asked, finally finished buttoning his shirt. ‘What an uneasy thing…’

‘What do you mean why? She’s my mum, she worries what if something bad happens to me…’ Vic tried to explain.

‘So what?’ Kharon gave her a predatory look behind his shoulder. ‘Ah? What? What will she do? What can you, people, do for those you love? If you were pressed with a large-tonnage slab, could she pull it off in a second to give you a possibility to breathe? Could she get you out of a sinking ship in the Indian Ocean if she were on the other end of the spectrum? What could she do if the Death came into the game?’

‘Kharon… Mother love. It is… It’s difficult to explain, I have no children, but I love my mum and if a large-tonnage slab pressed her I would turn inside-out to try to get her out of that… And I can imagine how much a mother loves her child and for what she is ready to do for him or her…’

‘I am sometimes glad that I communicate with living people. You are so funny! Especially your philosophy! None of you could do anything, but the grief is a good start to shed tears over. You have a bad headache, Victoria! What can you do with this?’

‘How do you know…? Jesus, I’m asking this again. I can’t get over the thought that you know everything. To live like this seems to be dull.’

‘No, it isn’t. I told you, people amuse me. So, what are you capable of doing to your headache?’

‘Take a medicine.’

‘Then take it.’

‘I don’t have any.’ Vic got what he was driving at. ‘But you can help me, can’t you?’

The demon smiled. The girl was staring at him, remembering each line, trait and dimple of his. His face was beyond compare, she couldn’t help but look at him.

‘Help me,’ Vic whispered tenaciously, feeling her temples become clenched more and more.

‘Take away your pain?’ he was near the girl, stroked her hair. ‘Make you free from this feeling?’

‘Yes,’ Vic closed her eyes and like a kitten, almost began to purr because of his gently touches.

In a second pain drew off, the warmth spread over the head vessels, enriching the brain with new power.

‘What else, my little mistress?’ the demon cynically asked, holding the girl in his arms.

There were his lips again. His lips were on her neck. The small lightning jumped through her body in reply to his kisses, hotness of his hands, his palms. Passion burnt an insane fire and Vic didn’t have even a drop of water to put out it. Just to agree the deal and her body would get what it was yearning for. But neither her heart nor her soul would get the love, which was described in books, discussed by multimillion budget actors on the world TV. Her soul wanted more than just the lust of the flesh. Vic didn’t want to think for a moment that the demon… Did he know what love was? Was there a germ of the truth in that sharp word for him?

‘Shall I go on?’

His whisper cut through the night, made it scream, growing faint from pain. Victoria opened her eyes.

‘No. I gotta go…’

The girl grasped her head and with horror she remembered her doing. Kharon didn’t control her. He was silent, folded his arms and watched the girl. He didn’t understand her. But what? If there was a great desire, then why didn’t she want to satisfy it? Why didn’t she want to pay and then to get what had been driving her crazy every night?

‘Where’s my shoe?’ the girl asked in a big hallway.

Kharon appeared in the doorway and smiled, languidly gazing at Vic.

‘Shoe?’

‘Yes!’

‘The one that you’ve lost in the bushes?’

‘In the bushes?’ Vic looked in the demon’s eyes in surprise. ‘You couldn’t have taken it with you, could you? How am I supposed to go now?’

An unexpected complaint struck down Kharon. He gave the slightest twitch of one eyebrow, astonishingly looked at her olive coloured eyes.

‘What am I supposed to do, Kharon?’

The empathic voice cut into the head. The demon was silent, with no stopping burning the girl with his amber eyes.

‘You aren’t supposed to leave today…’ he said finally.

‘It’s perfect and wonderful but you didn’t answer my question. How am I supposed to go in on shoe? How couldn’t you have guessed that I’d need both of them? People usually use both. Simultaneously! On both feet! Moreover, you saw it in the bushes! I don’t understand was it really so hard to take it with you?’

Kharon was black as sin and there was a reason for. Women had never ever talked to him in such a way. Dream always obfuscated the reality that all of them were ready and said the only word “yes”. That’s all. They didn’t need to talk further. Then the body language and mind-blowing games came into reality at the forefront of catharsis. But to blow up Kharon for the lost shoe…It was a nonsense!

‘Fine.’ Vic took a sigh, being in a shoe. ‘You have to bring me home. I don’t know how you do this, but I have to be at home.’

‘Are you sure about “I have”?’ the demon boiled over when his mind was slowly coming back.

‘Absolutely. I can’t go barefooted. And I’m barefooted by the merit of you.’

‘Okay!’ the demon snapped his fingers before the girl’s nose and between one breath and another they both turned to be at Vic’s small room. ‘You’re at home.’ Kharon confirmed the obvious fact.

Vic looked round, trying to get all that surrounded her was real or it was a made-up world where the demon put her into.

Evert thing was in its place. It was all still there. There were piles of pencils and paints, album pages and map papers. Her mother was coughing in the bed behind the wall. Not a hint that the reality was made-up.

‘Is these all real?’ Vic asked in a whisper.

‘The price is the same. When you calm down your passion collywobbles and it stops irritating beneath your stomach, call me and I shall remember you how it could have been, if you had paid.’

Kharon disappeared and Victoria, failed to manage her feelings, burst into crying.

What was she supposed to do? She fell in love with a monster, completely forgotten that it didn’t have any definitions of a human life. The creature, in love to whom the girl was bogged down in, suggested to have a deal and to all horror Victoria got that if she saw him once again, if he touched her once again, and if his velvet voice sounded in her ears again, she wouldn’t be able to say that impossibly sick word “no”. Damn it for a night Kharon would belong to her and only to her. The girl was almost ready to cry “yes”, when an idea came across his mind.

‘I’ve come, mum’ Vic said quietly looking into her mum’s room.

‘Vic? Is that you?’ half-awake Olga Vladimirovna didn’t understand what was going on. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s early. Sleep. I’m going to bed.’

When Victoria opened her eyes, the day was running under the pressure of the evening. The girl jumped from the bed and went to freshen up, have breakfast and tell her mum what was at the exam and what happened after.

‘What’s your next exam?’

‘That’s all. It was the last one. Then I’ll have a critical design review and voila I am a licentiate and you’ll be happy for me.’

‘When’s the review?’ her mum was drinking coffee.

‘In two weeks and a half. I’m ready for it. That’s not a philosophy.’

‘Fine, then I gotta go to work.’

‘Now?’

‘Sveta’s ill, I’m covering her. And our chief of department is leaving, and his position will be opened. I want to try.’

‘Sure, mum, you’ll get there. Look how many different rewards and recognitions you have. I think you the best resuscitationist!’

‘It’s very cool when you’re supported!’ Olga Vladimirovna kissed her daughter on cheek and went to gather.

Victoria went to her room under colour of preparation to the project review. As soon as the door was closed and her mum left for work, the girl started to make ritual.

She was going to call for Lucifer and went balls to the wall. If Kharon refused then Lucifer would help.

Everything was ready except an agreement and time. The hands of the clock have to point to three am. It was an important condition described in the book. If there was no problem with time, all she needed just to wait, but agreement problems were indeed.

Firstly, Victoria thought of the agreement content. Could it be any legal one? Maybe just a text? Table format? How should it look like?

Secondly, the price. What could she suggest to Lucifer in charge for his services? Victoria couldn’t give her soul. If she gave him her soul it meant she would die and wouldn’t be able to be with Kharon. Then what?

Two questions which the girl was thinking over the whole evening and a half of the night. Finally, she decided to prepare a formless agreement. She just took two pieces of paper and wrote that she would give her voice for Lucifer’s services.

Victoria decided to give her voice to The Lord of Hell. She couldn’t give her ear because she wanted to listen to tender words which Kharon would be whispering to her. To give her eyes was out of the question. Victoria was going crazy just because of looking at the man. She had nothing else of value.

The girl knocked out a simple agreement, pricked her finger and sealed her fingerprint with her blood. She read the text several times, calculated appropriate time to read the spell and three minutes to three am she switched off the light.

There was a burning candle in the middle of the room. There was a pentacle, symbolizing Lucifer and the agreement, enveloped in a thick cloth in the centre of a drawn equilateral cross.

Vic was very nervous, her body became clenched like the universe before big bang, looking forward to meeting the great person. Fear wasn’t far also. To call Lucifer to home and stay calm with no fear would be an impudent lie. If Vic could pretend that Morningstar were her childhood friend, then she couldn’t hide inner panic.

The girl finished reading the spell at three am sharp. She turned around. There was nobody at home. The last candle died out in a second and the room immersed into impenetrable darkness, lightened with barely visible night light from the window.

It was silence.

Vic seemed that an unfeeling wind and some shadows crawled across her room. Steps, a sigh… The girl was turning like a humming top seeking for the invited Lord…

Nobody appeared in ten minutes, in fifteen minutes and even in a half of an hour. Vitoria was alone in her room.

Within three hours, she tried to make the ritual, read the spells with different times and stresses, lighted and extinguished the candles. But nothing happened, nobody appeared. It was about 6 am. Vic was sitting on the floor and looking nowhere. She couldn’t no longer conceal that she was too upset and couldn’t hold back her tears. There was only one question: why didn’t he come? Then another one: what should she do to make him come?

Being depressed, crying, having a devastated hope, Vic was wiping away the pentacle from the floor, cleaning the wax traces, hiding the spell which didn’t work. She didn’t want her mother, holder of Habilitation degree in Medicine, to catch any little hint at something supernatural in her daughter’s room.

At 11 am Vic was awakened by the cell calling: Vasilisa was going to walk over the city and she wasn’t going to walk alone but with Victoria.

However hard the girl tried to refuse to walk, Vasilisa wasn’t going to get back off Vic and she had to agree.

The girl felt terribly bad, slept badly and broken. Only Kharon and all that connected to him lived in her head. Like a zombie, Vic, with half closed eyes, went to the bathroom to freshen up in some way. In a half of an hour Victoria appeared at Tverskaya Street, where Vasilisa had been waiting for her.

‘It’s been a long time and finally we’ve met!’ her friend began to speak loudly. ‘Vic, I’m so happy!’ she started embracing her friend in shock and with no stop to chatter eternally about her doings.

‘How did you pass, Vic? You didn’t tell yet!’

‘I got a good mark. There’s a project review left and I’m ready to work… My life has almost stopped. How’re your exams?’

‘Mine? I’m on thin ice. С is on C and C drives on them. But to tell the truth I don’t care. I want it to finish soon.’ Vasilisa closed her eyes. ‘I’m hungry, let’s go to eat something!’

Victoria shrugged her shoulders. She actually didn’t care where and with whom to go. Vasilisa noticed Vic’s indifference later.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it. He’s not the last man on the earth!’ suddenly Vasilisa said.

Victoria looked at her with blank stare.

‘Whom are you speaking about?’

She knew. Where from? The thoughts were running around in her head, awkwardness was coming closer and her consciousness was getting ashamed.

‘About Daniel, whom else! You’re not yourself after you broke up with him. You’re not that Vic that you were! You were energetic, you laughed and lived and now a pale-faced it is sitting before me. Forget him.’

‘Uh… Daniel has nothing to do with this. I didn’t think of him until you remembered that he actually was.’

‘Say it more often to yourself and you’ll really forget him.’

Victoria took a sigh. How was it possible to speak with people who didn’t hear you? They didn’t want to hear you.

‘Well, it seems you’re right…’ Vic thought of Kharon. ‘Maybe I better let him go.’

‘That’s right! You don’t need him! You’re ok now but you’ve been still moping. Vic, you can’t do this. I know what to love means and how it’s difficult when you’re not loved…’

“If you were, this conversation wouldn’t have taken place now…” Victoria bitterly smiled.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it over. But I haven’t tried all…’

‘What do you mean?’ Vasilisa glanced over her friend in surprise.

At that moment Vic understood that she had put her foot on it.

‘Nothing. What about your new boyfriend?’ to change topic that was Vic thought about.

Fortunately, Vasilisa was so ditz even inconsiderate that’s she quickly switched to a new line of topic, completely having forgotten about her friend.

Victoria didn’t listen to Vasilisa, her attention-getting exclamations and yelling. All she could think was why Lucifer hadn’t come? All had been done correct: agreement in any form, blood, seal, text… What had been wrong?

Vic started suspecting her being normal again. Maybe no Lucifer existed at all? Maybe she made up everything that happened to her?

In the evening, having told her mum a beautiful lie, creating a perfect illusion, Victoria went to her room. The door was locked, and all hell broke loose again: pentacles, candles, spells.

Victoria looked up and down all the books, internet and did everything that was written. But nothing happened. Nobody came. Why? Why not? Kharon did appear immediately even when he hadn’t been waited, he stuck into her heart and then he was sitting there and tearing it from inside. Why didn’t Lucifer come?