Vanity is the devil's darling --
But there are many favorites in Hell.

She stretched her perfect body and yawned luxuriously, as if awakening from a long sleep, when in fact it had only been a blink in her timeline of lives, a timeline which stretched so far back that sometimes it seemed as if she were almost one with time itself. Life after tumultuous life wedged between restful deaths, knowing then forgetting and starting over only to remember again.

"What a bore." She yawned again, looking around at the familiar surroundings of Hell. "Same ol' same ol'." The corporate headquarters for evil, lust and excess was unfortunately also full of corrupt souls like herself. There was no one to use her powers on here, no one to play the delicious game of cat and mouse with. Here, everyone was a cat.

She had recently been released from the formless state that was her punishment for the crime of ingratitude to her Master. But as she had known when the punishment was handed down, it could have been far worse, he could have taken away the only thing she ever really loved. She unconsciously caressed her beautiful face with a graceful hand and swiftly put out of her mind the image that had long ago been her reflection.

And besides, her punishment had not lasted long, because even though her crime was taken as an insult, the Master had a special liking for her, and as many times before, he would want to have her near him again, and would summon her from the long sleep. It had been so before, time after predictable time. A show of seductive groveling and sincerely expressed promises that she never LOVED any mortal man, and only chose to toy with them for pleasure, convinced him to be lenient with her punishment. Love was a dirty word in Hell, but lust and seduction, manipulation, trickery, and making life a living hell for some poor mortal above was meritorious.

Though she dared not give voice to her thoughts, she understood the Master a lot better than he thought she did, and she took some considerable satisfaction in knowing that there had been many times when the Master had allowed her to get away with far more severe crimes. There were such advantages to being his favorite, that when weighed against the disadvantages, it made his demonic attentions -- desirable.

She had no intention of renouncing her powers or her life dedicated to the Master for a puny lifetime as a mere mortal again, she'd been there and done that, and this was decidedly better. But as much as the Master took pleasure in her, she took pleasure in meddling in lives above ground, certain lives in particular, and that often led to the Master's displeasure. If he could just see that her hobby was of no threat to her loyalty to him. She nonchalantly smoothed a blond curl around her finger. If he were not a demon, she might suspect that he was jealous.

Hell is full of mirrors set within the rock walls of the unending passageways, and she stopped to admire her reflection, sliding one hand up her thigh and over her breast, brushing the outline of her smiling full-lipped pout, to finally linger on the rounded curve of her amazing cheekbones. Her piercing gray eyes, the color of the eye of a storm, sparkled with self-satisfaction at the knowledge that men and demon, (though not alike) found it difficult to resist her beauty. She was so much accustomed to the feel of another's hands exploring her body, that her reflection in the mirror frowned at the sensation of something feeling around inside of her mind.

"Admiring the Master's handiwork?"

"STOP it Nicholas!" she hissed.

"My dear sister, do I sense a certain unbecoming -- peevishness -- in the wake of your fortunate release," he taunted from the shadows, "even though you've been restored to your former 'glory'?"

"Do you really think it's possible that any expression could be unbecoming on THIS face?" Angelique dimpled with malicious pleasure, knowing that Nicholas had lost his exalted standing with the Master upon her return, knowing that she was now once again the favorite, and Nicholas -- wasn't. He hated being second best, the suck up.

"There is nothing you can do or say that will spoil my reinstatement, brother dear! Diabolos has welcomed me to his side, and given back my powers." She feigned a pout, "I fear there isn't enough room beside his throne for two."

"Then I hope he's improved your powers this time, my sweet, because they were certainly weak as water before," Nicholas arched his brows with disdain.

No one had ever been able to goad Angelique like her 'brother', and without realizing that she was taking his bait, she snapped her head around and seethed, "My powers are as strong as yours!" Quick to be on the defensive, his theatrical look of amusement and scornful "Hah!" enraged her.

"Your best spells have always run down like wind-up toys and had to be endlessly repeated to keep them working. On again off again," he waved a lavender gloved finger like a metronome. "When has one of your spells ever lasted the lifetime of the fortunate mortal cursed with it?"

"You know perfectly well my spells are everlasting unless I lift them," Angelique's flawless skin prickled at his humiliating derision.

"I'm afraid not, my dear, the last time 'I' looked, your FAMOUS love spell on one particular mortal, namely the totally unappealing Barnabas Collins, bit the dust in a very big way. It seems that while you were 'doing time', and you stopped layering on the spells that created his devotion to you, he recovered from them very quickly indeed and renounced his declaration of love made when you so melodramtically died in his arms. And it wasn't a month later that your spell of rejection sloughed off him like a bad case of mange, and -- ta da -- he found his beloved soulmate once again. You remember, the one you worked soooo hard to make him forget, when he came to Martinique."

"I -- I did have to make him forget the dead wife he was grieving before the love spell would work." Angelique said in a low tone, unwilling to linger on the memory of having been rejected by Barnabas Collins when she tried to seduce him for the first time. He was the only man to ever reject her, all of the others had eagerly become her prey and fallen to her game. But his annoying refusal to 'defile' the memory of the long dead wife of his youth had been difficult to overcome. It had taken both the spells of forgetfulness AND rejection as well as strong potions to weaken his grip on the past and make him reject all memory of her.

"Don't I re-MEM-ber," snickered Nicholas. "Your potions to crush the life out of his memory almost did the same to his body and nearly sent him across to the other side to be with his dead 'true love' before you succeeded. And even after all that, when he recovered from the illness, the memory of her was only shrouded by a black curtain, not wiped smooth from his brain like you wished. Well, big surprise -- she's baaack -- she's got his heart -- and you don't!"

Angelique's brows dipped threateningly. "Liar!" They could be reincarnated a hundred times, and she couldn't disturb the spells I cast. No matter how young and sweet she might be, it is MY beauty that will haunt his mind, she can't stimulate his passions as I have, and she can't make him ADORE her as he does me!" Angelique's features relaxed into a charming smirk. "He will grieve for me as long as he lives."

Nicholas burst out laughing and tweaked her anger to a white hot pitch.

"WHAT!" she demanded through clenched teeth.

"Wouldn't you like to see? Just one little peek at the new Mrs. Barnabas Collins?" Without waiting for her answer, Nicholas turned to the large mirror on the rock wall, and with the merest flick of his hand had the dark reflective surface swirling with indefinite images. When the scene took form, Angelique recognized the master bedroom at the Old House, and Barnabas was standing there with the most endearing, tender expression on his face, looking down at -- at --

Angelique's body froze in place, her mind unable to accept the scene that was playing out in the mirror in the most startling clarity. To her inflexible mind, the gentle domestic scene she witnessed was the unthinkable, the impossible. But with the curse no longer in place, and with her absence from the world of mortals, it was obvious that her last love spells binding him to her had thoroughly disintegrated. By the unguarded look on his radiant face, Barnabas was obviously -- revoltingly -- in love with -- "Impossible!"

Sitting in a rocking chair, softy crooning a lullaby to the tiny infant that was cuddled against her and suckling at her breast, was the last woman in the world Angelique was prepared to see. She watched in shocked disbelief as Barnabas' hand stroked Julia's hair and caressed her neck sensually as it slid down to brush the silk robe from her bare shoulder. He knelt beside her, touching her skin with a lingering kiss, and Julia's eyes half closed and her lips parted slightly in a look of contentment as his eyelashes lightly brushed her collarbone while his lips trailed kisses down the swell of her delicate flesh.

"HER!" Angelique whirled on Nicholas. "He would never choose that CRONE over me!"

Nicholas shrugged. "They've been together as lovers for a hundred lifetimes. They were together when he was a young man, before you met him. It was only her premature death that ultimately brought him to you, but thanks to your inventive curse, she had the opportunity to be reborn and be with him again in the same life span."

"This is not real, this conjure is nothing more than a figment of your obscene imagination!" Angelique sneered. "You always had an abnormal attraction to her that I find pathetic."

Nicholas continued to leer at the image in the mirror and said without turning, "I assure you that I had nothing to do with our dear Julia's little dividend. Not that I wouldn't have liked to take part in the fun." Nicholas' lecherous grin widened at the image in the mirror. "But alas, she only allows the intimate touch of her husband." He finally looked away from the mirror, saying, "If you think this image is my creation, I can take you 'topside' for a more 'up-close' and personal look. You can see with your own eyes that it is oh so true."

"You know I'm not allowed to go above until Diabolos permits it!" Angelique seethed.

"Ah yes, I almost forgot, you're on probation," Nicholas found the opportunity to return her earlier feigned pout. "Too bad your powers aren't adequate to allow you to slip away undetected while he's busy elsewhere. But then we both know the Master is constantly monitoring everything that's currently going on above. There's no way you could materialize today or at any time in the future without him knowing it. I'm afraid you'll just have to play the part of the dutiful 'plaything', while the enraptured Mr. Collins plays house with his wife and forgets you ever existed."

"Deliciously ironic, don't you think?" Nicholas' eyes widened at the mirror, and he said with lecherous glee, "Domestic bliss has captured Mr. Collins once again with his third -- or to be more precise, his first bride." Nicholas jabbed in one more barb, "It appears that Julia's powers over him are stronger than yours, and she's doing it without magic!"

Angelique said nothing, but Nicholas knew that the cold, glittering stare from her icy blue-gray eyes meant she had taken his bait and was mouthing the hook. Now to step out of the line of fire and wait.

to be continued.

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