Succubus in the City (19 page)

So he took me home and I had just enough cash to pay the fare and include a very generous tip. I staggered out of the cab and through my lobby, where a strange young man in a doorman’s uniform looked at me suspiciously. I showed him my key and he called the elevator for me. I would have felt better if Vincent had been there.

When I got in I wanted to call Nathan so badly it hurt. I wanted to talk to him, wanted to hear his sane, soothing voice. It was one in the morning. I didn’t need Eros’s rules to know that this was not the time for me to call.

So I did what any reasonable, sane New York woman would do on a late Saturday night when she has just barely avoided being abducted to New Jersey. I ran a very hot bath with a bath bomb and settled into the fizzing steam with the two men I could always trust, who would never let me down. Yes, Messieurs Ben and Jerry know how to soothe the wounded and care for the downtrodden.

There is nothing, nothing at all in this world, like eating a pint of Napoleon Dynamite in a very hot bath up to your shoulders. It almost makes all the disgusting creeps of the world disappear.

chapter
SIXTEEN

Sunday morning I went through my usual routine. No delivery this time, no bag to dump down the disposal, no check-in from the doorman, no leftover clothing to clean up from the night before. By eleven thirty I was on my second cup of shade-grown fair market Kenyan. The radio said it was cold out today, in the twenties, so I pulled a heavy sweater over my jeans, restocked my wallet, and made it out the door with six minutes to spare.

Vincent was in the lobby, looking perfectly well rested though I knew he’d been out late the night before. “Good morning, Lily,” he said when he saw me. “Cab?”

For once, I was not the last one there. Eros and Desi were waiting at the entrance, and they immediately dragged me in. “Come on, let’s get a table. Sybil will be here in a minute, I guess,” Desi said.

“What happened to you last night?” Eros asked after we’d been seated. “I went to look for you and you had completely disappeared.”

So I started to tell the story of my near abduction and they were properly horrified at the thought I could have ended up in Hoboken with no way home.

“So what happened with you guys? What about Sybil?” I asked after I’d finished. Sybil was never this late. “Vincent was on duty when I left this morning.”

Desi giggled. “He didn’t get any sleep then, I’ll bet. He and Sybil were still on the dance floor when we left.”

“They were the only ones on the dance floor when we left,” Eros specified. “Romance.” Eros practically spit the word.

“What’s so wrong with a little romance?” Desi asked. “I love romance.”

Eros shook her head. “That’s not what I mean. Sybil falls in love too easily. Too often. But before now it’s always been with mortals, so it wasn’t going to last. But with a demon? Disgusting. Demons do not have torrid passions for each other. The point is that humans have torrid unrequited passion for us.”

“But Sybil’s not a sex demon,” I pointed out in her defense. “Her specialty is greed, when she isn’t telling the future. And isn’t knowing the future a form of greed no matter what people ask?”

“Greed is every bit as good a sin as lust,” Desi chimed in on my side.

I was about to go further in my defense of our colleague when she came in the door. And every thought I had about protecting her fell apart when I saw what she had with her.

There, on her shoulder, was the cutest wicker Kate Spade bag with bronze leather fittings.

That was my bag. I had seen the picture a week ago on my desk and I didn’t even think that they had them in stock. How had she managed? The spring collection wasn’t out yet. I knew that; it was part of my job.

First my doorman, then my bag. I felt betrayed. I couldn’t even look at her. My eyes were riveted to her bag.

“Don’t you love it?” she was ingenuous enough to ask.

“How did you get that? That’s this spring’s collection.” I’m not sure I managed to keep all the venom out of my voice.

“I just wandered into the shop yesterday and there they were. Not even on display yet, but the salesgirl showed me when I asked. They had just arrived, they were still in the cardboard packing box. There were so many colors and it was so hard to choose, but I thought this would go—”

She looked at me, and suddenly her mood fell. “Oh, no, Lily,” she said, throwing her hands up to her cheeks. “Oh, Lily, was this a bag you’d been planning on?”

Slowly I nodded. “I didn’t think they’d be out yet. And I didn’t think that was quite your color.”

“I’ll take it back,” she offered immediately. “I’ll exchange it for the pink, or maybe the orange. Those will go with more of my clothes, really. Or the lighter gold, that’s better with my coloring anyway.”

I felt really awful. Sybil was being a real friend, and I was behaving like an idiot. “No way,” I insisted. “That’s a great color with your stuff. It doesn’t match but it coordinates perfectly. I can get the smaller one. I’ve been trying to carry smaller purses anyway, since my shoulder started to hurt.”

“That’s because you put too much into the big bags,” Eros said. “If you didn’t stuff them full of papers and magazines and old shopping receipts your shoulders would be fine.”

But really, it wasn’t about bags at all. It was about me and Sybil. She looked at me very gently. “You know, Lily, I think you really need this bag. And it really isn’t my color anyway. Not to mention a wicker purse is pretty silly when it’s twenty-six degrees out.”

Suddenly I began to laugh. It was like the dam broke and all the tension and misery from the night before, and all the worry about the rules and Nathan and my friends, all of it just dissolved.

On the table, as the waitress brought our mimosas and took our orders for banana stuffed French toast and sides of sausage and bacon, Sybil unloaded her bag. Lipsticks, wallet, keys, sunglasses, sunscreen, and tissues (in a cute little quilted packet embroidered with penguins and baby ducks) all lay on the wooden table. The purse was empty.

“Here,” she said, presenting the bag to me with both hands. “For you.”

“No, no Sybil,” I protested. “You can’t. You don’t need to. I mean, why can’t we both have the same purse?”

She smiled broadly, honestly, as if she were really, truly happy. “Lily, I don’t need this purse. I can get a pink one. If I think about it, I really wanted the pink one more and couldn’t admit that I made a mistake when I made that poor salesgirl sell me something that wasn’t even checked in yet. And it’s too early for wicker anyway. I want you to have it, really I do.”

She would not take no for an answer. She stuffed the lipsticks, the keys, the tissues and all the credit cards into her coat pockets. I started to cry.

There is nothing and no one like a true girlfriend.

Monday was terribly busy at work and still cold. And when I arrived there were six Kate Spade purses on my desk from the spring collection. I nabbed a wicker with hot pink leather trim and a metallic gold and pink tote for Sybil and the turquoise for myself. They hadn’t sent one of the bronze.

There were also piles of photos to go through, the month’s column to prepare, and sets of accessories for the upcoming shoots. Fashion editors might arrange the shoots, select the photographers and models and the outfits, but I arrange the purses, jewelry, and other accessories for each feature spread. Really, that takes much more of my time than working on my own column and the accessory page in every issue. Mostly I feel like I’m at the beck and call of the six editors and stylists who put together the photo spreads that make our magazine so popular.

On Monday Samantha was putting together the beach issue so I had totes and sunglasses along with the usual jewelry. Danielle came in with piles of sandals and espadrilles (tied with gossamer ribbons this season, some of them decorated with beading). Samantha laid out the swimsuit and cover-up that she had chosen, and then I suggested sunglasses, tote, jewelry, and maybe a hat, and Danielle would add the shoes. Then we would critique the completed set, swap pieces in and out, and think about who hated whom at the moment and then go over the whole thing and think about the overall composition. Had we gone too much for the blues? Were the sunglasses all too heavy? Were there too many bikinis and not enough maillots? Had we included enough flat sandals? Danielle was often hard pressed to show a shoe with under a three-inch heel.

“They make your legs look like potatoes,” she had pronounced once upon a time, but really it’s hard to walk in the sand in stilettos. So Samantha and I insisted that at least a few of the heels were wedges that could possibly navigate a beach.

I didn’t even really get lunch. The three of us, closeted all day over the shoot, ordered from the deli across the street. I don’t remember eating, only that we did just so that no one could say that we had eating disorders. That was important in a world where everyone associated with the fashion industry is accused of driving teenagers to kill themselves in the name of a slender figure. An edict had come from on high (Amanda, our editor in chief) that everyone will eat a lunch or at least take a lunch hour every working day.

When we finished at seven, it was all I could do to get a taxi to take me home. Home. The thought of kicking off my shoes (chosen by Danielle, so they had the requisite heel) and calling out for Chinese sounded like Hell, in the very best way.

Vincent smiled cheerily at me as I entered the building and handed me my mail. Not that he was supposed to have my mail key, and that was tampering with the U.S. Mail, which was a felony. But Vincent was used to felonies; from what I knew he had committed a fair number of them, and very successfully, before he met his demise from a seizure while playing a completely innocent game of pickup basketball.

I opened my door, ready to slip out of my shoes, when I saw her. I had forgotten. And then I wondered how she had gotten in and whether Vincent had let her in, and then I got angry at Vincent for not saying that he had done so. Though, to be honest, an Akashic librarian can probably manifest on the Earth plane wherever she chooses. Maybe, if I were very charitable, it wasn’t Vincent’s fault.

“You’re late,” she hissed. “And there are no Florentines. This is not acceptable behavior and I will complain to my superiors. I am not used to being treated in this manner.”

Thank Satan for MagicMirror. “How about some Cherry Garcia?” I asked with a cheer I definitely did not feel.

“Do you have any fudge sauce to go on that?” she demanded, but there was a hint that she could be mollified.

“I’ve got U-Bet syrup,” I offered. It doesn’t get better than that, and even our evil librarian agreed. She accepted the offer and I fixed her a large helping.

Really, I didn’t want to see Azoked at all, but I was also hoping that she would have some information for me. And she may have even sent me a reminder but I hadn’t had a chance to look at my e-mail since ten in the morning, and then I’d only scanned the work-related information.

I waited while she daintily licked her way through almost half a pint of ice cream, wondering the entire time whether I wanted to order lo mein or orange beef. I was pretty set on the orange beef by the time she deigned to address me.

“As I told you, I have made some progress, though I cannot say that I have completed the investigation by any means,” she began. “In a search of this nature, we of course have to follow the multiple threads of possible threat, past and future, and see where they intersect with those of our demon element. The problem here comes in part because demons are not represented in the Akashic. Those of you who, like yourself, began as mortals, have records of your existence in life. But the activities of the Hierarchy are not recorded, so discovering the intersections is an exercise in looking for negative space.”

“Oh,” I said, trying to look interested. “What did you find?”

She blinked at me, picked up the bowl in which I’d served the ice cream and licked it clean. Then she handed it to me and asked for more.

“How about Phish Food?” I asked. “That was the end of the Cherry Garcia.”

“I do not eat fish food!” Her offended dignity could be heard across the Hudson.

I hit the Intercom. “Vincent,” I hissed when he came on the line. “Did you let the Librarian into my apartment?”

“Yes, of course,” he admitted readily. “She had an appointment, and you were quite late. She arrived at five on the dot.”

So she’d been wandering around my place for two and a half hours. Who knew what she had discovered about me? Not that there was anything Satan didn’t know, but the thought of Her Cattiness pawing through my stuff angered me. There was nothing to be done, though.

“Can you run out, or call out, for another pint of Cherry Garcia? And some Florentines, while you’re at it. There’s that good bakery over on Eighty-ninth—”

“I’m on it,” he answered and hung up.

Miss Priss sat there and refused to say a word until the rest of her dinner arrived. Vincent had gotten not only what I’d asked for, but several other flavors of ice cream and a large bakery box of cookies tied with string that contained mostly Florentines but also included the green and pink leaves stuck together with chocolate and the butter cookies with the maraschino cherries, both red and green, in the middles. He had also included two large lattes.