Succubus in the City (18 page)

“That’s just for mortals or the lower order of demons,” Eros said, sweeping her hand grandly. “We’re cool.”

Vince was clearly confused. “Well, if you say so…” Clearly he didn’t quite believe us.

“Really, Vincent, it’s okay. We’ve done this before,” Sybil reassured him, holding his arm and curling up against his chest. “And when you’ve gone beyond the intermediate level tutorials you’ll start to see exactly how we do control the etheric forms, and sometimes a bit of alcohol is useful. And we’re doing a specific Hell working here, since I want to make sure that nothing of the Holy gets anywhere near this place.”

With that, she pulled out a few thick, smoky gray candles. She showed Vincent where the big brazier was hidden, and he lugged it to the center of the room after Desi and I moved the coffee table, which weighed far less than the brazier. In fact, either one of us could have taken it alone, but it wasn’t well balanced and we were being lazy and didn’t want to take all Sybil’s knickknacks and big art books off the top. Eros marked the cardinal points, arranging the candles and checking the incense. Two passion fruit mojitos didn’t make her appear even the slightest bit inebriated.

Then we each took a quarter, with Vincent standing in the doorway in the shadows. “No, no, you take the North,” Sybil directed him. “I have to be the priestess.” Which was not strictly true, but it didn’t hurt to have a full complement.

Since I was West, Vincent was next to me. “You know how this works?” I whispered. He nodded, and Sybil began. She lit the incense, a kind of nonentity aroma whose main ingredient I think was lavender or soap. She carried the smaller basin around the circle and lit each of our candles, starting in the West and circling South, East, and then North. She returned the small censer to the central brazier and took a chalice of salt water, which she sprinkled in the same circle.

The interior of the circle changed. The light had a different quality and there were darting bits of color and lights that blazed like incandescent miniature fireworks. Tiny creatures flitted at the edge of our vision, and something like wind chimes sounded just at the edge of hearing. This was the etheric level of existence, the Realm of Yesod, if I were trying to use geekspeak. This was the world of energy and magic, where thought and desire were real and created a template for what was expressed in the physical world.

Sybil threw something into the brazier and I could see her apartment as it appeared in the etheric world, brilliantly lit in greens and golds, a shimmering beacon of magic. There were other beacons around, some far brighter and others very pale, all pulsating different hues and humming different notes. It was very pretty and easy to get distracted here, easy to wonder what that soft shimmering pearl blue represented and what was the blazing orange sun. At times I’ve been known to get a little too close, and sometimes one can penetrate and sometimes a demon can’t. Some of those points of light are cults and secret organizations, and some are Esoteric Orders who study high magic and work on this plane. If we had time to drift and watch and look around, we might find the pinpoint that was the Burning Men’s focus. We might find it and we might not; it was dangerous in any case.

We weren’t here to hunt. Sybil, true to her nature, wanted only to hide.

And so we constructed a veil around the soft green-gold light that was Sybil’s place. The gray candles were the antithesis of light—we held them and circled around, each time shrouding the beacon that was Sybil’s address. Around and around and around, layer after layer of protection we wove so that Sybil no longer appeared in Yesod.

It was clearly effective, though I thought a bit wrongheaded. The Burning Men could find us in the physical. They could use Google as well as the rest of us. And they could find us through the threads that seemed to disappear into the soft haze where Sybil’s place had shone before.

Personally, I thought that it was easier for enemies to identify the absence or hiding wards as easily as the normal etheric presence. There are so many entities in Yesod—and none of them look like they do in physical manifestation—that I think this exercise is entirely counterproductive.

Well, counterproductive in any real sense. It was really about reassuring Sybil. So long as she felt she was safer and wasn’t hiding under her bed all the time, the exercise would be a success.

Finally the tiny glow that had been Sybil’s place faded entirely, a rubbed-out negative space in the shimmering that is Yesod. We circled our candles into the center and snuffed all of them in the giant brazier in the middle of the room. Sybil poured the rest of the salt water over the glowing coals, extinguishing them as she completed the ritual.

There was only one more thing she had to do to set the final form. She picked up a small paring knife and nicked her wrist open, letting three drops of ichor drip into the mess in the brazier. We are demons, and our blood seals our pacts with Satan and marks us for what we are. Our blood itself is a magical ingredient, used in some of the more daring works of high ceremony. Very few magicians can call a demon and get enough blood to perform certain workings, which is why most humans think they can’t be done. Not at all true, but if you don’t have the right ingredients you don’t get the cake.

“Well, now that’s done,” Sybil announced with a wide smile. “Thank you, everybody! Now we can get dressed to go to the party.”

Sybil giggled and hugged Vincent. “Except you. You look perfect.”

Gack. It was true, I thought. They were dating, or on the verge of dating. Or at least Sybil had a wild crush on my doorman. And it was all my fault because I sent him to fetch her when she was so scared and vulnerable.

Though maybe Sybil wasn’t so silly, falling for Vincent. The garment bag he had brought from my house had three dresses, one long and pale silver, one sedate black, and a very short one that shimmered in dark green and burgundy with an overlay of bronze lace. And he’d included the bronze shoes that I had bought with just this dress in mind. Okay, the guy was a genius when it came to women’s clothes.

How did he get to be a demon, anyway? Why wasn’t he a fashion designer?

And for Sybil’s sake, I hoped he wasn’t entirely gay. For someone who could see the future, it was amazing that she couldn’t see what was right in front of her face. She would be heartbroken for at least a week before she tried to find someone to fix him up with. Sybil can be so sweet about things when she’s in the right mood.

Dress, shoes, hair, makeup, I looked…okay. Well, much better than okay, but it all felt like wasted effort. There was no one at this charity event that I cared to see me looking so fine. I could hunt—even when my mojo isn’t entirely on, I can hunt and deliver if I have the intention to do so. But I didn’t feel like that, either.

I wanted to see Nathan. I wanted to go back and have our date again and get to stay for dinner and maybe rent a stupid movie together. It had been only a few hours and I missed him already. I wanted to call him.

At the very least, I wanted to check my e-mail and see if he’d suggested a time to get together next week. I knew I could check it on my Treo, only the girls would all know what I was doing. And I could
not
be sending him an e-mail on a Saturday night. Even without Eros’s prompting, I knew that was carrying things too far. It was Saturday night and I was going to a fancy party with my best buds, and I should be happy.

The five of us piled into a cab that Vincent hailed and made it over to Park in ten minutes. As promised, the food was delicious. I hardly tasted it. I looked at the crowd, all beautifully dressed and smiling, sipping champagne and nibbling canapés. It was all a horrible waste of time. Sybil was clinging to Vincent and introducing him around, Desi was chatting to a tall blond investment banker (one of Sybil’s copartners in the firm, probably), and Eros was fending off no fewer than three gentlemen who vied for her attention along with multimillion-dollar accounts.

I hid behind a particularly attractive arrangement of pink lilies and tulips, fuming. And then I wondered why I was so upset, and got an answer I didn’t want to acknowledge. Nathan. It was fine being with my friends taking care of Sybil’s apartment, but here in the social milieu they were each on their own and doing fine. Except me.

And I’d felt so pretty earlier, in the museum, with Nathan’s approving eyes all over me. Here all my friends were getting attention and I was a wallflower. Literally, hiding behind the flowers.

“Hey, babe, what’s a fox like you doing hiding behind the tulips?”

There is very little that turns my stomach more quickly than some total stranger addressing me as “babe” or “baby” or some other insulting diminutive. Lousy come-on, cheap clothes and all, he was precisely what I was in this corner to avoid.

Besides the bad come-on line, he had a toupee and was wearing a shiny synthetic shirt with an ancient double-knit jacket that had pilled. Garments that have pilled belong in one place only and that’s the trash. This combination of unappealing traits just curled around my mojo and I could feel the succubus start to rise.

Yeah, this night was a loss as far as fun went. But delivery—I might be able to make Satan happy, along with every woman who wouldn’t have to listen to this creep again.

Some badly dressed men have nice manners, or at least are pleasant people. They can have a conversation with a woman and not treat her as if she is a piece of meat with the IQ of a doorknob. I’ve met some brilliant, interesting, and socially adept men who had yet to figure out that the leisure suit had died back before they were born—or at least should have. And even more charming, personable, pleasant gentlemen who thought that the height of fashion meant that their jeans and tee shirts were clean out of the wash that day.

While I appreciate people who take the time to dress, who understand the niceties of fashion, I know that not everyone worthwhile is going to spend hours every month perusing our magazine to make sure they are at the very cutting edge.

I do expect people to treat each other with some basic respect. I do not expect to be called “babe” by a random stranger.

I smiled grimly. Not that he noticed the subtle flash of canines or the murder in my eyes. He didn’t appear to believe that a woman like me could do anything but worship his powerful manliness.

They all think that, and that’s what condemns them.

“So, what do you say we go off and have a little real fun?” he suggested.

“Oh?” I asked, keeping my tone innocent. I wanted to see how far he would go on his own to condemn himself.

He leered. “We could go to my place and get horizontal.” He’d just done it. Now I wasn’t the evil soul-sucking succubus, I was a member of the Justice League making parties safer for all women.

I smiled wider. “Sure. Lead the way.”

He immediately ran his hand over my backside and squeezed. It was all I could do not to wince.

We got into a cab and he gave directions—to the PATH station.

Oh no. He was taking me to New Jersey. I wanted out. “You didn’t tell me you lived in another state,” I protested mildly. I could still deliver him just as effectively, but I had no idea how I’d ever get home.

“It’s nice,” he assured me. “Hoboken is very trendy, really upper-class, and right on the PATH. Which runs all night.”

I had never been on a PATH train. I didn’t think I’d ever even been to New Jersey. I was starting to get worried about this whole out-of-state thing. Could I get a cab in New Jersey and would they be able to take me home?

The PATH train was nicer than the subway, truth to tell. It was cleaner and newer, and quieter too. Which made me even more suspicious. New Jersey was not a good idea, not for me, not on the spur of the moment in the middle of the night. Probably not ever.

“You know, I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” I said as the train approached the Christopher Street station. Moment of decision here since, according to the handy map over the doors, this was the last stop before the train headed under the river. Leave now or follow Mr. So-Unappealing into another state. I had a split second to make the call as the train stopped and the doors opened, and decide I did. The night had been bad enough without this delivery. I wanted to go home, I wanted to put on my Ozzy tee shirt and watch
Buffy.
I wanted to be anywhere and do anything other than stay on that train and endure one more minute of this loser’s company.

The doors slid open and the moment was at hand and I called it. I bolted out and ran up the stairs and had my arm in the air for a cab as soon as I hit the street.

“Hey, wait, you can’t run off like that.” I heard him yelling after me. It didn’t occur to me that he would get off the train and come after me. But no matter how much I knew he deserved to be delivered into Hell, I could not bring myself to cross running water. Not into Hoboken, anyway.

I heard him running behind me as a yellow taxi pulled up in front of me. I hopped in, locked the door, and told him to take me to East Eighty-eighth.

The man I had abandoned punched the car just as the cab squealed away into traffic. “That guy give you a bad time?” the driver asked in heavily accented English.

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t keep the whimper out of my voice. I felt tired and angry and I wondered if I had enough money in my wallet for the fare. And Vincent was still at the soiree with Sybil, so he couldn’t go up and get my mad money. But yes, okay, I did have the extra twenty squirreled away for an emergency just like this. I’d be fine.

“Mens should be nice to ladies.” The cabbie kept up his one-sided conversation. “Too much I see this, ladies run away. I pick up the ladies. I save them. I do not like these bad mens who no respect their mamas. Every woman be treated like my mama, that’s what I learned.”

“Thank you,” I muttered. So here I was, a damsel in distress saved by the yellow cab knight. It was all so funny, so absurd, that for a moment I wanted to laugh. But I knew that my gallant knight would take it wrong and I wanted to build him up.

My choice. Two thousand years ago I delivered men like this cabbie who were only trying to help me out—more than once. But now, now I think it’s better to let the decent ones live. Who knows when I’m going to need a cab again in a desperate situation?