Nadia and Ian are treating the trip to Vegas as a vacation. They're there as consultants, not active investigators, so they're going to take advantage of every moment they can. Demona, not being an active agent for long, is having second, third, and fourth thoughts about her life choices. The behaviour comes down to beliefs. Demona believes that she will get into Heaven as long as she lives well. She is religious, which I'll get to below, and does her best to be a good person. Ian and, especially, Nadia believe they won't get in because of what they do to keep people safe. Nadia is very much aware that she has shut down all avenues. Thus, Demona is refusing to go beyond her hotel room while Ian and Nadia are enjoying their time in Vegas.
Religion does play a role, at least in the background. Nadia is a semi-practicing Jew who is fluent in Yiddish insults and swearing. Demona is Catholic. Her nature, though, creates problems. Hallowed ground, and it doesn't matter the religion involved doing the blessing, causes problems for Demona. Like, she catches fire crossing a church's threshold problems. When I was creating Demona, I knew she was half-succubus. The other half is Catholic, or so the joke went in my head. And she is faithful; of all of her parish's members, she is well aware of what awaits in the afterlife. Her father raised her as Catholic, and she does go to services when she can. Holy symbols affect her when used against her, as seen in Episode 1.
That's why I had Nadia try to banish her again. I wanted to show that Nadia lost her power. The holy symbol is more a focus than anything else, but if Demona didn't feel the banishing attempt, something is wrong. One of the reasons Nadia calls herself "Heaven's reject", besides the title drop, is because she knows there's a demon waiting for her to fall so he can drag her to Hell. No magic, no protection. No protection, and the demon can grab her when he wants.
Sometimes, writing by the seat of my pants leads to interesting revelations for characters. At the beginning, I didn't know that Demona spent summers with her mother. But her mom did want to see her daughter once she was beyond being a toddler. Custody was easy enough; Hell has the best lawyers. Demona is essentially the team's walking demon wiki, though with the caveat that she knows specific demons, not all of them.
I knew what the payoff I wanted for this arc of the series was going to be when I started it. It was a random whim, but damn if didn't turn into a driving force. I needed to set up the punchline, though, so that it didn't come completely out of left field. The descriptions are important. The missing bodies do have something in common. The reveal is coming, but the body thief does have a plan for her ill-gotten booty.
Friday, Hoover Dam, magical light, and the clock begins, in Heaven's Rejects Chapter 8.
Also Friday, over at Psycho Drive-In, hiatus week.
Saturday, over at The Seventh Sanctum, thoughts on a Battlestar Galactica reboot.
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