How to Hack a Wedding ft. Lucifer (ONC 2024)

9. mammon & luci

Lucifer was rich, and he knew fashion. He was the perfect person to go shopping with.

I did wonder how he made his money, but he just kept a finger on his lips (which my eyes most certainly did not linger at for long) and said he had his own secrets.

To be fair, had I been around since the beginning of time with no money, I would have gone insane. Life was already too tough on us mortals in the sixty-seventy years that we spent on Earth, and half of it was wasted worrying about money. 

I would not want to go through a hundred such lifetimes entirely broke.

If he made his earning through bargaining with people who summoned him then I was immensely glad that I could get away with a single date, and no other scratches.

"No, I want something bolder," Lucifer tutted, making the saleswoman's eyes glaze over, "No pink or yellow or orange or blue, unless it's a metallic blue, and even then judge it before getting it outside!"

The entourage responsible for my fitting waited patiently for Lucifer to start picking dresses for me to try. In the past hour and a half that we had been sitting here, eating finger sandwiches and drinking bubbly champagne, I had tried a whole of zero dresses.

To no one's surprise, Lucifer was well versed in concepts of fashion. He threw away more than a dozen dresses with just one look, claiming they would wash out my skin or clash with my hair.

I hadn't even known of the existence of such a posh boutique, but Lucifer had insisted that his date to Lilith's wedding was going to wear the finest material and the most gorgeous design.

Madame Devereaux's Design House, as it was called, did not appear as grand from the outside, but the clothes they had displayed and showed us so far could only be made for royalty and nobody else.

An ice blue dress with silver lining and the shine of handwoven threads had instantly caught my eye. It was the kind of dress I would have wanted to gift Paris for her wedding. Another dark green dress with actual emeralds studded in the bust fabric reminded me of London. 

Neither of my sisters had ever worn something so refined, and I felt like this was the type of place I would have wanted to come with them had we made that much money to afford even one dress amongst the all those offered.

They had no price tags attached to them, of course, but the salespeople present seemed to know them by heart. Hearing their market values made my hands shake. I did not even want tot ouch them with my poor hands.

Lucifer had no such inhibitions.

"Luci!" A man exclaimed, pulling me out of my thoughts.

Lucifer turned in the direction of the new voice and his face broke into a wide grin, knocking the breath out of me.

If Lucifer had looked beautiful before, he looked downright stunning when he smiled. Those perfect teeth were out on display, and crinkles formed near his eyes. 

A musical laugh erupted from his lips, and the girl standing behind me, responsible for filling up our glasses with champagne, sighed. She looked around instantly, hoping no one had heard her, and I raised my eyebrow when her gaze fell down at me. She blushed, and I grinned back.

She had saved me from spilling the champagne on my clothes. The sight in front of me had made my grip slacken. 

"Why are you shopping for women's apparel in this form?" The man asked. For some reason, the way his question was phrased made me wonder if Lucifer shopped for himself as a woman.

Was Lucifer gender fluid? 

If he could turn into a snake, an animal that wasn't even a mammal but a reptile, it couldn't be that difficult for him to turn into a woman.

They hugged each other fiercely before taking a step back and falling into easy companionship. This man did not look anywhere close to Lucifer when it came to looks, but he was so impeccably dressed, with a sharp pinstripe blue suit and set black hair, that I could easily see women fawning over him and his charms.

Lucifer pointed towards me, stretching out his hand, and the mysterious stranger turned to face me, making me gasp.

Until this moment, I had only been able to see the right side of his face. When the left came into view, my jaw dropped.

An angry red scar travelled all the way from his forehead to his chin, cutting his eye into half. The injured eye was blue in colour, whereas the other one was brown. The heterochromatic condition would have been beautiful, if it wasn't for the gash. It somehow managed to look like an old wound and a fresh one at the same time.

He smiled ruefully, "Not what you were expecting, huh?"

"What happened?" I whispered, reaching my hand out to take his. If he was surprised at my actions, he didn't show it.

"I was fighting demons," he winked. The girl behind me sighed again, but I kept looking at the scar. The man blinked in surprise as he realised I believed him entirely even as I took his words at a face value.

He looked back at Lucifer and an unspoken discussion passed between the two before he threw his head back and laughed. 

Lucifer suddenly looked anxious to get back to the dress fitting.

"I'm Mammon, my lady," he extended his arm, "But everyone just calls me M."

I shook the hand he offered, "I'm Sydney. Why did you just laugh when you looked at 'Luci'?"

Lucifer, who had taken up to emptying his champagne flute, choked on the liquid.

M grinned, his scar stretching painfully, "No beating around the bush?"

This man was clearly another celestial like Lucifer. His name sounded familiar, but my late night research had all gotten mashed together in my head. I couldn't quite place him, but if he knew Lucifer, then he was my next best bet at getting some information.

About Hell, of course, but more importantly about Lucifer. And why I had managed to summon the ruler of Hell instead of some regular demon. I refused to believe that coincidences such as being in the right place at the right time randomly occurred with a supernatural being like him.

To M's credit, he recovered quickly, "Well, if you're here buying dresses, it must mean you're his date to Lilith's wedding, and I'm sure you already know this, but Lilith has asked us all to bring a docile demon, male or female, as our date. Nothing threatening enough to take away her spotlight, and certainly not a human woman. Lucifer happens to be the third one going against her wishes so openly, but if I may, he might just be bringing a time bomb with-"

"That's enough." Lucifer interrupted, glaring knowingly at M, who chuckled again. "Sydney needs to start trying dresses."

"What dresses?" I gritted, too put out at having my first remotely reliable source of information being rudely cut off. "You haven't picked a single dress that you thought was worth trying."

"I actually did." He snapped his fingers and a saleswoman rolled in a hanger full of dresses. I knew for a fact that he had just turned down half of those, and had been in the middle of turning down the rest, too, before M interrupted him.

"But you said-"

"Up pup pup!" He shushed me, again, "Go try them on!"

I rolled my eyes at his behaviour, but got up anyway. M had been about to tell me something important. Was he calling me a time bomb? There were other 'human' women involved, but somehow he had picked me out in a weirder fashion than the rest, hadn't he?

The last thing I saw before the curtains closed, separating me from them, was a furious Lucifer having a heated discussion with an equally riled M.

I needed to figure out what was going on. 

I was going to get some answers, and I was going to use all my tricks if Lucifer so dearly wished to challenge me.

Game on, Luci.