He stared at the girl: she was pale, her eyes scared, her hands were shaking. Kharon unwittingly thought that the girl was about to faint with fear. To be on the safe side he embraced her.

Victoria was staring at a point not moving and breathing. Her fingers squeezed the man’s hand seeking for defence and support. Her fingers were so cold and tenacious. Her heart was beating in a crazy way, her chest heaved pushing out the air. The girl was looking at him whom Kharon didn’t see.

‘Is he here?’ the demon asked the girl in a low voice.

She nodded silently, being unable to tear herself away from the spirit.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Looking. Pointing at his neck…’ Vic held back tears.

‘What does it mean?’ Kharon glanced at the girl carefully.

‘What the hell do I know!’ she sobbed. ‘It hurts so much inside me. My heart hurts. It’s empty and broken. I’ve been betrayed by someone. It’s exquisite pain, suffocative and pressing. I’m at the end of my teether. I can’t bear to live…’ Victoria closed her eyes. ‘A girl. She is very beautiful. Big light-blue eyes… like a doll’s ones. She’s happy and loves her life. Love. My heart’s full of love for this girl. My heart beats only because her heart does. I can breathe only because she does. How gentle and tender she is…’

‘Vic…’ the demon whispered, understanding nothing.

The girl hanged in his hands like a deflated balloon. Her eyes were closed, her lips were dry and a silent mask of desperation and sufferable pain on her face.

‘Victoria,’ Kharon called louder. ‘Stay with me… Hey…’

‘That morning, I’m coming into the flat. She’s with him. She is with him. In my bed. Pain. It hurts. Emptiness. Sufferings… She left me for him. A loop on my neck…I don’t feel pain anymore. There’s no desperation. There’s still emptiness… and peregrinations.’

Victoria opened her eyes. Tears were running down her cheeks like hails, her eyes were washy and lifeless.

‘Hey, dear…What’s wrong?’ Kharon touched her forehead.

‘I don’t know, Kharon…’ the girl looked up at him, weary.

He took her up at his arms and sat down on the wide windowsill, being worried that she would faint.

‘I’m sick. I have no strength to move, breathe. I’ve got such a feeling as if I went through an awful lot.’

‘I’ve lived with you all your emotions you got through. With you I’ve got through and felt it… But I don’t understand what it was. I feel almost the same every time when I see past of a person. But I don’t know what it was with you.’

‘I saw his past. By his eyes. He hanged himself because of her. Can you believe?’ Vic looked at the demon. ‘Kharon, can you believe how much he loved her and what she did? Poor guy. How much it hurt him… Why can’t you see him? You’re…very powerful.’

‘I work with people. With women. I don’t need to see the dead, stuck between two worlds. Lucifer can see all of them, but he doesn’t pay attention. He absolutely knows who of them are alive and who aren’t.’

‘Why can I see them? Is it because of the deal?’

‘I don’t think so. Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t understand how it works and what benefits people can have while they contact to the dead. What’s he doing now?’

‘He’s gone. He showed that he hanged himself in your bathroom and disappeared… Jesus I can’t live here knowing what happened here.’

The demon frowned, got gloomy like a thundercloud, pursed his mouth and shook his head.

‘Why are you looking at me like this?’

‘Don’t speak his name in my presence.’

‘Whose name?’ the girl was surprised.

‘His one.’

Victoria was looking at her beloved man with her blank eyes, trying to understand him a bit. Maybe he went crazy? Could demons be crazy?

‘Sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re speaking about.’ Victoria embraced him, pressed her forehead against his chest.

Kharon took a sigh and glanced at the street.

‘Stay with me.’ He asked quietly.

‘Here?’ Victoria doubtingly exclaimed in surprise.

‘Yes…’

‘There’s a dead man with the loop on his neck here…’

‘You’re with me, remember?’ he kissed her cheek. ‘He’s not a threat to you while you’re with me. I’ll be with you everywhere. Stay with me today.’

The lifted her eyes at him and realized that no matter how scared she was in that flat, she was unable to decline his ask. Her tongue didn’t obey her. It couldn’t say “no” anymore.

‘I know and hear you making yourself decline my ask. But you can’t. You can’t. Don’t tease yourself nor me. Here’s the phone, call your mum, tell a story that Vasilisa and you’re at her place… Tell her…’

Victoria did everything that Kharon told and under the weight of his kisses she didn’t make neither head nor tail of what was going on. The demon didn’t leave her alone for a single moment.

‘What’s that?’ Victoria jumped down from the windowsill, after she had noticed something bright and shining under the table.

‘Where?’ Kharon followed her with his eyes.

‘There…’

Vic pulled the long feather from under the table and occultly looked at it with the finding. The eyes hurt so much, the feather reflected bright-blinding light. Victoria screwed up her eyes, wiped them, but continued looking at the piece of unheard pureness.

‘Don’t look…’ the demon stopped speaking seeing Victoria carefully and pretentiously examining Lucifer’s part.

The girl pressed the feather to herself, closed her eyes and sat down on the floor. That’s all. All hell broke loose. Close-ups were flickering before her eyes. Time was running, pictures were flying, memories were going…

Beauty. Light. Tenderness. The soul is happy. Respect. Charming love. Obedience. Taste of rivalry, bitterness and insult. He’s not been understood. By no one. Falling. Long, heavy, insufferable falling. Everything is falling down quickly. An unheard speed. The light swoops down. Collision. Pain. Ground opened wide because of the collision, letting the light inside. It didn’t fade away but flared up, getting into the depths, lightening them. Stop. No awareness. Insult. Despair. Betray. Hatred. Exaltation. Subordinates and army. Admission of lordliness. Overall love. Respect. Pedestal. Equality… Indifference.

Kharon was listening with no moving. Victoria was sitting on the floor with half-closed eyes, firmly pressed the feather to herself.

‘This is the part of Lucifer…’ she whispered when she opened her eyes. ‘He lost it in the people world. He had to take it but forgot.’

‘You saw the history in pictures. You saw those things that even I didn’t see… Thank to you I’ve done it now… But no people can see it.’

Kharon stopped speaking. He didn’t want to tell that no one could live in a usual way having such knowledges. You would need to pretend a mentally deficient to get rid of other or to keep your mouth closed. To be silent all your life.

The demons weren’t a great expert of human lives but even he clearly understood that no good would go if Olga Vladimirovna heard Lucifer’s story which had passed through her daughter’s mind.

‘I wanna keep it.’ Victoria ordered, getting up from her knees. ‘Lucifer was here. When?’

‘Victoria. No…’

The girl smiled and reproachfully shook her head. She was fun with uncovered lie of the man.

‘I didn’t know that such thing could happen.’ The girl said, touching the feather, trying to look through her screwed up eyes. ‘I’ll keep it, Kharon. And…I’m not asking any permission. It’s out of the question.’

The demon was at his loss: he had never seen the same. Certainly, for all his centuries-long existence he had deals with witches. They called him into their beds. They knew what to wait and never objected to him. Some of them tried to do magic on him but they died. Their graceful self-confidence destroyed their lives.

But Victoria was different. The demon liked the girl. He liked her embarrassed inapproachability, her filthy mind, easy acts and golden smile, her hard temper and childish naiveté.