Lydia looked around the place. Beetlejuice just sent them somewhere.
"This'll be fine for a short time," he said to each of them. "Welcome to limbo."
"Where are we?" Astrid asked. She didn't recognize it.
Lydia didn't either. The place was covered in weird burgundy velvet. Like the tuxedo he tried to marry her in twice. It was small. There wasn't anything there except one single chair, an end table and a newspaper. And a uh? She coughed. A foul odor. "Where are we?"
"Limbo," he said again.
"No." Lydia shook her head at him. "You need to be more descriptive than that."
"Ah." He nodded. "Were in the model."
"On the inside of it?" she asked.
"Yeah. It's home." He gestured to it. "It's my grave. Goes with me everywhere in limbo."
Oh! Oh.
"This is a grave?" Asterid asked. "You stay in your own grave? That explains so much."
"Deal with it. Right now, you're my luggage," he told Lydia.
He wasn't just being funny when he hung out in the gravesite of the model. Ugh.
"You have to live in your own grave?" Astrid asked him.
"No, but I get to." He looked pretty offended. "Maybe you missed it, I don't know. There are a lot of ghosts out there. Real estate isn't cheap."
"But can't you just make something appear?" Astrid asked.
There was probably a reason that wasn't possible. None of his magic that he performed actually stayed that way. Even with the huge changes for the marriage on the house in Winter River. There were a lot of changes. It all reverted. She didn't know if that's because he left the living world, or if everything simply stayed for only so long.
It was something she had wondered about. An actual conversation with him. She hadn't done that since she was young. There was too much adrenaline to talk much to him when she needed to get her daughter. Nothing but very quick contract stuff she had to do.
Regular conversation with the guy that caused her nightmares. "Mmm . . ." She scratched behind her ear. Had to at some point. "Does your juice only stay for so long?"
"Most times. It's not supposed to have long term effects. It lasts longer in the Neitherworld, less long in reality," he said. "Ergo. Yeah. I don't have a gigantic mansion sitting on the side of a pool."
Oh. "Barbara and Adam had their house."
"Yeah, good for them. Over a hundred years, pretty sweet," he said. "After that, they would have left the house for a lot longer. Gotten a real taste of the Neitherworld. Great thing they found a loophole."
It was a good thing, they might not have enjoyed that as much. They thought they would move on after that, not just move on to losing the house.
"If you aren't cursed, then do you get a house?" Astrid asked him.
"What's wrong with my grave?" He pointed out. "My juice lasts longer here. I'll have you know, it's a fun size. Portable."
"Right, you weren't always in the model before Barbara and Adam." So then? "You choose limbo?"
"You two? Are boring as hell right now," he complained. "You learn all the boring stuff when you die. Just, go with the flow, alright?" He picked at his ear. "Be happy you are my luggage." He started to check out a nearby drawer for something, muttering.
"What about your wife?" Astrid asked him. "She can't come here, right?"
"Ex-wife. There's a good question. Not directly." He pulled something out of the drawer. "She would have to reach the real world, and that's hard enough. Even if she does, staying in it is out of the question, so figuring out I'm in a random model in a house upstairs probably isn't going to happen." He closed the drawer. "Not at first. She is smart."
"Then that means the contracts can't find us here either?" Lydia asked him.
"Another good question." He didn't speak as fast. "Mostly."
Mostly? "People can still find this place?"
"Well, some bioexorcists might know. I might have dropped where I was once or twice in a random bar. Haven't moved in awhile." He rubbed the base of his chin. "Yeah. If the old Mrs. takes one of them, then she gets the information they had."
Ooh.
"She's not out yet. I'll know when she comes out," he pointed out.
"The grave home would be okay if it wasn't so bad," Astrid said bluntly. "If it had beds too."
"Oh, that's easy." He juiced up two beds. One was a single, the other a double.
"That's not going to work." Lydia knew he could fix that.
He put in three singles. "Funner the other way."
Still an odd demon. At least he wasn't changing her body this time.
Nevermind, he did. She looked at herself and at Astrid. No fancy wedding dress.
PJ's. Green PJ's with patterns of black skulls.
"Get some sleep. I need to go do some stuff," he insisted. "I'll be back."
"You aren't supposed to leave far, you labeled us as luggage," Lydia reminded him.
"Yeah, but, everyone forgets their luggage at home sometimes," he said.
"Hey!" Astrid went over toward him. "Don't mess with us with your juice. I don't know how you know my dimensions, but I want my old clothes back, and don't do that again without my permission."
Oh, Astrid. That wasn't a good idea. Times had changed above to be more respectful of personal things, but Beetlejuice had been dead for who knew how long. All that was going to get her was-
A bunny costume. Then it changed in a puff of smoke to a duck costume. Then it changed in a puff of smoke, to her regular clothes. Then it changed in a puff of smoke, to the pj's he juiced on her before.
Astrid being Astrid though. "You're such a jerk."
"You have no idea," Beetlejuice answered her. "Living world freedom isn't here, Kiddo, get it straight in your head. Gotta be more careful when speaking your mind. Know who your speaking to first, what power they've got against you, and then figure out your next move."
"Just, don't juice things on us, you already said they don't last forever," Astrid tried again.
"Clothes last a long time," he said. "Small things are easy, they last weeks."
"Really?" Astrid's voice lifted up. "So you can make us custom clothes?"
"Yeah, it's easy."
"Well? Just make sure you ask first," Astrid said.
"Astrid." Lydia tried to reel her back in. She was talking to the demon like he was an average guy. "This isn't a hill to die on." She didn't recognize the phrasing of what she just said, until after she said it.
Beetlejuice started to laugh. "Actually, this is the perfect hill to die on. See?" He juiced the ceiling open and revealed the sky. Well, the room.
Lydia could see the old Winter River house. It hadn't been bought yet. "That house belonged to my dad and Delia in the end. When this house sells, this model might get torn apart."
"Then I find a new limbo," he said.
"Everything is so giant," Astrid said. She saw an easy walkway. "Can we go out?"
"Sure."
"Astrid." No, no.
Astrid walked up some and looked behind the top of the ceiling. "This is a tombstone with your name on it. We are in a tombstone." She came back down. "It really is a grave." She gestured around. "We need some deodorizer for this place."
No, no, no. Astrid was getting too familiar with him. She still didn't understand what he could do. "It's fine. We'll rest while you go and do what you have to. Please close the door of your tombstone." He gave her a funny smirk right before he vanished. Finally. Now? "Astrid, why are you pushing a demon's buttons? He kills people for fun, this isn't the time to get upset about clothes or ask for a tour."
"We are going to be here for some time," Astrid reminded her. "We have to get to know him. The more he thinks of you as an actual person, maybe the less he'd treat you like a commodity."
"Wishful thinking." Lydia sighed.
"Mom?" She seemed to want to say something. "I asked him if he wanted to marry me instead to save us."
"What?!" How could she be so stupid? "What were you thinking?!"
"That he wouldn't say yes, and he didn't," Astrid said as she went toward the bed. "He's only interested in you."
Astrid. "Please don't take unnecessary risks."
"I think you should take more," Astrid said instead. "The demon's in love with you. Don't let him throw his weight completely around." She smoothed out the bedding. "The PJ's are bones, and the bed sheets are skulls."
Lydia looked at the headrest. They were skulls too. They were metal silver beds with skulls on the top. That's so radical. She'd never say it out loud though.
"You know you love them," Astrid said bluntly as she climbed in her bed. "Not where I thought I'd go to bed tonight. It's better to feel safe though."
Feel safe? How could she feel safe? She was resting in Beetlejuice's grave. Lydia moved toward her bed, knowing that she should get some rest. "Just, don't take as many chances, Astrid. He may seem fun or silly, but-"
"He kills people. I know," Asterid said. "I know you don't get it. I don't either."
No, she didn't get it. "Astrid?" Her daughter wasn't answering her anymore. She had already drifted to sleep. It was late. They went through a lot, but sleeping in basically the demon's den.
It would be anything but peaceful.
—
"I know there's more." Beetlejuice was getting his men to gather any information on all of the bioexorcists, while he was trying to get the requests for marriage in. He looked at the door. His ex-wife Delores wasn't coming through yet.
He knew Wolf would be ready. He knew there was a good chance the afterlife would deal with her separate pieces since she was seeking immortality. He didn't know for sure though, and he didn't want to take chances.
He looked back at what he had. "It's the afterlife, there's a lot more than this." He was going to have to find each of them and steal the contracts away, or kill them before they could go out and kill Lydia and Astrid.
While killing was pointless, the waiting room was on average a good year to five year wait. Sometimes it was so dead that it was super fast, and they'd be out in a few months. All they had to do was keep them away long enough for contracts to expire.
He was pretty buddy-buddy with a few. Traded missions with some of them. "Oooh. That's a nice one." One of his crew just handed him a sweet assignment. Double the usual amount, and just one human. He could probably get it done in fifteen minutes.
Time was a strange thing though. He better not risk it. "Okay. Call me if we find more." For now, those two were fine. It was his ex-wife he was worried about. She was eaten by a sandworm, not chopped up and stored in separate boxes. When she made it through, he'd have days if the afterlife was too lazy to fix her in separate boxes. "Probably going to be moving limbo, so stay in touch." He couldn't risk anyone finding out where he went soon.
He returned to his grave. Both of them were actually sleeping. Crazy. His grave was comfy to him, but he was surprised they were sleeping so soundly. Astrid's senses and suspicions were throwing tests on him.
Lydia didn't sense anything differently. Yet. He might even be in her nightmares right now. "Ooh, good idea." He should check. He moved closer to her.
"Why?" Why that dream again? She banged on the window. Everyone was dead in the delivery room except Astrid and Beetlejuice's inner child. Astrid always looked happy about it. Why?
Then? She was outside? A lovely day. Astrid was over in the corner, with a picnic basket. What? She saw Beetlejuice's inner child scamper through the grass and then leave the area.
Only for Beetlejuice to show up himself next to her in his stupid therapy outfit he wore last time. "Hey."
She closed her eyes and looked away.
"Now, now. Didn't we talk about closing thing's off?"
"Don't spill your guts to me," she insisted. "Keep your inner child away from me."
"Okay? How about this instead?"
Lydia looked down and saw herself in a red dress. It wasn't a wedding dress though. "What's this?"
"I don't know. Um. Gift," he said. "Sorry I scared you. You pissed me off a lot."
Pissed him off? Wait. "Did you enter into my dreams?"
"Guilty," he said. "It's funny you don't get that dream yet."
"That my daughter births the same thing that I did from you?" What was she supposed to get from that?
"Nah. My inner child kills everything around it for a good time, except you two," he pointed out as the environment became a ball room. "There's another big hint in it, staring you right in the face."
"Oh. Yeah. That's better." Really? "Your playing mind games with my mind. Please leave my sleep."
"Make me," he teased her.
She looked around herself. Astrid was gone. They were just in a huge empty ballroom. "What do you want now?"
"Wow." He took a monocle and looked closer at her face. "Never saw someone so exhausted in their dreams. Life got you down? Death isn't much better. How about a dance?"
A dance? "You just said how exhausted I had been, and you want to dance?" Oh, she couldn't help it. "Betelgeuse, everything is bad enough, leave me alone!"
"Hey, hey, there's some of the old Lydia I finally see bubbling forth again," he said as he spun her around, and pulled her back. "You know, the one that actually talked to the dead guy in the model?"
"That Lydia didn't know better."
"Well, that Lydia was in the middle of trying to end her life too," he pointed out.
"You didn't help, saying you could find Barbara and Adam for me." She got spun out again, and then spun back in.
"Nah, but I did manage to keep you from leaving the house to jump, oh, to 'plummet' off the bridge like them," he reminded her.
How did he-? "You don't get credit for that when it was just a coincidence of when you used me."
"Who made that rule?" he said. "Not me. I hate rules."
"Why are you bothering me in my dreams? It's bad enough you get involved in my life, that you are yanking our will around with your power, you even dress us! Quit it!" Ugh.
"That's why," he said as he continued to dance with her perfectly. "That rebellious side I liked. Your mind is tired in your sleep. You can't help but speak your mind, and your damning the consequences."
Oh no. "I'm gonna regret what I do in my dreams?" She couldn't think clearly right now. Then?
She woke up. She saw him right next to her bed.
"Yeah. Like telling me what to do, when I'm clearly right beside your bed?"
She moved away. She couldn't even get away in her dreams.
Beetlejuice gestured to Astrid. "Out like a light."
Yeah, she had been. "Just don't mess with her. I know any contract you make isn't going to work for our situation but?" She couldn't believe this was happening. "I'll marry you ahead of time, if you just help us in the living world and let us live our lives." She couldn't tell what he was thinking. He didn't answer at first. "We could go right now to any church. Interrupt any wedding and take over?"
That self-righteous grin on his face. "Wow. You are really begging for a wedding now? Reality set in, huh? The fact your sleeping in comfy pj's in my grave just dropped the weight of it all on you."
No, no! Lydia tried to move from the bed, knowing a huge weight would fall with those words. Instead, just little feathers saying 'it all' drifted down on the bed.
"Yeah, it wouldn't be hard in the living world." He rubbed it in. "I could sense ghosts way faster, probably stop them before you knew they were there. You could have had your normal lives the whole time, I could have just been tagging along without you even knowing. Yep. Would have been nice."
He lightly cackled. "Tomorrow? We get to have breakfast together. I'll take you to my office in the call center and you get to hang around it boringly. We get to have lunch. Then we'll head back to the office. Then we'll get supper. Mexican might be great. Then we can relax with a fun game and go to bed. Then, after that? It'll be all over again. Again and again and again until I eventually get this stopped or you two die from old age. One. Big. Happy. Family."
Ngh! The marriage would be so much better than being stuck there. "Just marry me already. I won't run, I promise."
"Promises from you? I don't know, they never work out," he teased. "You don't even have a ring for me. This isn't a fancy setting at all." He lifted his leg and showed off a bridal shoe. "Not so fun now that the shoe's on the other foot?"
"Stop joking around. You want freedom, and I am literally giving it to you first," she pointed out. "It can't be a con this time. The marriage is first."
"Well?" He wiggled his hand. "I would, but it turns out that your a habitual liar and I like Astrid's idea better. Plus, you know, you and me straight to marriage, didn't work out twice. I know I'm insane, but let's not beat the definition down that much."
"Marriage would let you be free in the living world, to escape your ex-wife. It keeps you around to deal with anyone coming after us, without a curse on you." This should be fairly easy for him. It's what he always wanted, why wasn't he taking it? "What was Astrid's idea?" She just caught on to what he said.
"Can't tell you. It's a secret between us," he said.
A secret? "She isn't going to-" She watched something fly across the room and shatter.
"Broken record," he said. "If I do shoot for marriage." He pulled a gun and aimed it at her. He pulled it and it popped out a flag that said bang. "It'll be for you. Not interested in anyone else."
Why? "Why does it have to be me?"
"Also a secret," he said again. "Relax."
"It's hard to relax around you of all people."
"Gonna have to learn." He juiced on his own PJ's, and went over to the last bed. He jumped in the air and fell back on it. "It's gonna take more than a couple nights to figure these problems out, Toots."
Her nightmare. Sleeping in the next bed over.
///Nah. My inner child kills everything around it for a good time, except you two.///
The fear of what he could do was starting to ease up, and Lydia didn't know if that was good or bad. He was a demon, a demon that killed for a job. A demon that made deals. A demon that tried to marry her twice.
But, he also . . . saved them in the car. Saved her when she was dragged out of the house. Revealed the truth what a bastard Rory had been. He made some kind of deal that didn't involve her marrying him, nor did it involve Astrid marrying him either. I don't know how to feel about this. She was depending on him for survival now. Even sleeping in his grave with Astrid.
Trusting one demon, to keep them safe from others. It wasn't the first time she had to put her trust in him though. She made him help save the Maitlands, and she made him help save her daughter. Both times, she shortchanged him, and didn't give him what he wanted. Totally reasonable at fifteen, she wasn't even an adult.
But, at her age now? The second time around? I fully understood what I was agreeing too. I knew the second I ran to that house. I let that loophole Astrid found let me out. I should have just shot myself in the foot the second time and did it. She had no idea this would happen.
Now, they were in serious trouble, and instead of at least staying in the living world, they were going to be dragged around like luggage because he wouldn't marry her. By definition.
Luggage.
Beetlejuice's Luggage.