Succubus in the City (22 page)

“Then jump,” Desi said. “All of us will go together. I’ll call my travel agent as soon as I get back to the office. Can everyone get Friday off?”

We all nodded. And then, much to the waiter’s relief, we left.

chapter
EIGHTEEN

Being immortal and one of Satan’s Chosen has many, many advantages. Being rich is one of them. I could afford to just say yes and have Desi’s travel agent book a first-class vacation at the last minute. There are always seats available for people who are willing to pay full first-class fare, always a few of the most expensive suites in the best resorts open at the last minute if one doesn’t care about paying a little above the going rate.

I had a confirmation from Desi’s travel agent in my e-mail before I got the next note from Nathan. Which was probably exactly what the girls had planned because I certainly would have seen him if I hadn’t just plunked down my credit card for round-trip airfare (business class) and a deposit on a five-star beachfront resort. To say nothing of the fact that my girlfriends would totally kill me if I bailed on them—if the Burning Men didn’t get there first. And truth was, the memory of the holy water on my hands was enough to make running away for a weekend that could be dangerous sound better even than Nathan’s invitation.

Nathan’s e-mail was for dinner Saturday night at some restaurant I’d never heard of and live music at some club in Williamsburg.

Okay, so they call Williamsburg the new SoHo. It can’t be. Nothing can be SoHo, but I did give him a few points for being a little ahead of the curve.

Still, it worried me. Williamsburg is in Brooklyn, where our ersatz Templars had their headquarters. It could be coincidence. Or not. Whatever, it worried me just a little bit, which made it easier to tell the truth. Which is, I had prior plans with my girlfriends for a girls-only weekend.

Maybe Eros (and Desi and Sybil) would be disappointed in me, but I did say that I was sorry and that I would love to see him, and maybe he’d be interested in doing something when I returned. So even if I asked, I was playing by the rules. I hoped.

I’d hardly had any time to work out some accessory ideas for a shoot one of the fashion editors was putting together when I got a reply from Nathan. He was invited to a gallery opening in Chelsea a week from Wednesday and would love me to go with him.

Okay, so Williamsburg was proving that he was cutting edge and in the artistic know, not dragging me out into questionably demon-killer territory. My faith was restored and now I had two events to anticipate. Aruba
and
a date with Nathan.

By the time I was ready to leave the office, having chosen at least ten handbags and seventeen necklaces for two different photo shoots, I had a dinner appointment with Mephistopheles, too.

My friends and I might be among Satan’s Chosen, but Meph is one of the Great Old Ones. He was created in the Hierarchy before there was a humanity to tempt. There are only a very few like him—Beliel and Moloch and Baal-Beryth are the others—and then some of the Old Gods, who were also members of the Hierarchy but were actually worshipped as deities in other places, like Marduk. If what had happened to us was a result of politics in Hell, there were two possibilities. One was that a junior demon had attacked us, either out of piqued jealousy or to get Satan’s attention. The other was that there were some machinations among the Old Ones, whose power and power politics went back before the Jurassic.

Some of the old gods didn’t like reporting to Satan, had never liked answering to anyone, and resented their overlord. Others were content with Satan but had issues with other departments over what I’d call turf wars. Who got which allotments, budget, prime office space, pencils. All the things that people and demons snipe over inside an organization.

Sometimes I think that is one of the primary reasons that my friends and I are Satan’s Chosen. We don’t care about those things. We’re not gunning for the next promotion, the corner office, the bigger staff, the high-visibility cases. We are the demons we are. Period. I don’t want to oversee all three hundred twenty-seven succubi in North America, let alone the entirety of the Western Hemisphere. We don’t use our relationship with Satan to bludgeon other demons with our access and power, and we don’t ask Her for anything except Her company—and advice on caterers and decorators.

It was easier to get time with Meph than I’d anticipated. He had a reservation at Butter the next evening and his intended companion had canceled. So there we were, with a reservation and an opening and, well—I jumped. I was glad that I could talk to Meph so quickly. I’d been worried that it would take a long time to get an appointment. He’s an important guy.

The bar at Butter is long and narrow. The seats are low and appear to be hewn out of rough logs with deep leather upholstered cushions on the inside to contrast with that glazed bark exterior. Everything is shades of golden wood and yellows, autumn in the woods, and, well, butter. It was a quarter to nine so I was a little early, but Meph outranked me and I should not keep him waiting. The protocols were just as strict among demonkind as they were in the palace of Babylon, and I wasn’t going to stint on the proprieties. Especially not when I had requested the meeting and I was asking for aid.

Butter is an interesting place. It’s a high-end restaurant upstairs but a club with a DJ in the basement. Mostly I’d been here to eat lunch or down in the club, which is very popular in its own right. While I know the food is wonderful (all those lunches, yum!) I usually don’t think about this as a place to go for dinner, and I remembered to dress differently for the occasion. I kept that in mind when I chose a suit in a coppery and olive tweed, with a slender skirt to the knee and the new boots. I sat at the bar nursing a glass of champagne. He arrived precisely at five past and I walked to the hostess station to greet him. Of course they had his table ready and it was in a quiet corner near the mural of autumn leaves that dominated one wall.

Mephistopheles, like a very few of the most elite of Hell, can change his looks to some degree as he might wish. Being ancient and powerful, he tends to appear in more different shapes than those of us for whom this takes more energy. He always walks in the body of a man, usually in early middle age, naturally very fit and excruciatingly handsome. Vanity is a sin, after all, so it is almost a requirement to indulge. Mostly his look is fairly consistent and he’s had the same face the last four times I’ve seen him.

In the most recent iteration, Meph is about six feet two of pure muscle. He moves like a dancer and has the same firm abs and arms, broad shoulders and developed butt as any of the men in the corps de ballet at ABT who appear fifteen years younger. His hair is thick, abundant, in a rich brown with just the barest hint of silver at the temples. His navy wool suit came from Brioni and cost about what Eros just paid for the apartments she’s buying.

Mephistopheles exudes power and wealth the way I embody sex when my mojo is on. Only his mojo is always on. Heads turn whenever he walks into a room, in Hell as well as in New York. Even here in New York where people make a virtue of ignoring the outrageously famous.

“At least in New York no one asks for my autograph,” he said, responding to my unvoiced thoughts. Most of the time it’s too easy to forget that Meph can read thoughts—sometimes. Not always, which makes it difficult. But he is the most powerful denizen of Hell after Satan.

I nodded. “I really appreciate you seeing me, and especially that you made time for me so quickly,” I said immediately. With a demon of Meph’s stature, it’s always best to acknowledge the favor quickly and often.

Meph smiled benevolently. “Oh, for one of our dear Prince’s favorites I can always find a little time. Especially for such a delicious creature as yourself, Lily. I was quite distressed when our Master told me about the attack, and I was glad to read in MagicMirror that you had suffered no lasting harm.”

“Satan was most generous,” I demurred. “I expect you know that She’s appointed me to help investigate the attack, which is why I wanted to consult with you.”

He nodded once, graciously, a royal in an expansive mood. “I am only too happy to help if I can,” he said. “I don’t know that I have anything useful to add. Certainly I don’t know the creatures who would attack such lovely, hardworking demons as yourselves.”

Our waiter materialized even more magically than Meph, and laid open menus in front of us. I glanced down, looked up at him and smiled. “Could we see the dessert menu as well, please? I just can’t plan an entire dinner without knowing what’s for dessert.”

The waiter immediately complied. Mephistopheles laughed deeply, his eyes crinkling with delight. He raised his water glass to me. “You are perfect, Lily. I have never even thought to look at the dessert menu before ordering, and that’s so clearly utterly brilliant.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “But how else would you know? I don’t know who started the idea of not putting the dessert on the main menu. It’s horrible. I need to make sure I have room for all the dessert I want. I don’t want to fill up on salad when there’s something like—oooh, look at this. Now I’m really glad I asked for this first. Maybe I’ll just have it for my entrée and again for dessert.”

Meph raised an eyebrow. There it was, the very first dessert listed. “Look at this, honey tangerine crème caramel with lemon sorbet and ginger crisps. Is it really as good as it sounds?” I was drooling. Suddenly the wild salmon in a ginger crust or the Colorado rack of lamb with rye berries didn’t sound nearly as tempting.

“I don’t know,” Meph confessed. “I’ve only ever had the cheese plate. It’s wonderful. I love cheese.”

We are demons of Hell. It is our duty to live out all the things that mortals desire in their deepest, most secret fantasies. Meph was being too traditional, too hidebound, and I was feeling very defiant.

“How about this?” I suggested, my voice full of evil anticipation. “We order the oysters and the foie gras and the raw tuna salad and the calamari. And then we have the cheese plate and two honey tangerine crème caramels and the Turkish coffee napoleon.”

“No entrée?” He looked shocked.

I shrugged. “If you want one. I’d rather have three desserts.” I waited for a moment for him to absorb the shock. “Come on, Mephistopheles, we are Satan’s elite demons. You are Her second in command, and I’m Her shopping buddy. If we can’t eat whatever we want and break all the rules, what are we good for?”

While Meph is clearly a traditionalist, he could see the point of my argument. We ordered the dinner I had outlined, and then he chose a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to complement the seafood.

Once the waiter took our order and disappeared, Meph leaned over the three butters in the middle of the table. “What precisely can I help with?” he asked seriously, as if we were having a conversation about investment banking. “I don’t know who these attackers are and I don’t understand what use I may be, but of course I am at your service.”

“We know the name of the group who actually sent the letters,” I told him. “They call themselves the Knight Defenders.”

“Boring and pretentious,” Meph commented.

I nodded and continued, “We know where they are headquartered, even, under the aegis of a Lewis Taggart who doesn’t exist in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. The question I want to answer is how they found us. We aren’t easy to track down, you know. Desi’s date had some kind of prearranged rendezvous while they were at the museum, and he ran into her at our brunch. I would have thought it was really coincidence, but after we all got letters at home I’m thinking that this isn’t possible. Someone had to tell this group where we were and who we are. Someone told them the name of the restaurant. Someone who knows.”

“You think a demon betrayed you?”

I’ll give this to Meph, while he was shocked he was also ready to accept the evidence as presented. Even when it was ugly.

I nodded. “Exactly. Which means that to find that demon we need to know why. Desi thinks that it may be some junior sex demon who’s jealous of us, and we’re looking into that. But I think that it could also possibly be someone in the upper echelons making a political move.”

“Against Satan?” He was alert, considering.

“Maybe. Or maybe against someone else, jockeying for position closer to Satan.”

“Hmmm,” he said, tapping his fingertips on the table. “You realize that would be a plot against me.”

I shrugged. “Possibly. Or possibly a layer or two down.”

The assortment of appetizers, which really had been excellent, were gone. The waiter arrived with my honey tangerine crème caramel and I was not about to permit worry over the possible politics of the attack—after all, this was one out of many possible motives; personally I was leaning more toward a junior sex demon being jealous of our positions close to Satan—to interfere with my enjoyment of this dessert. No. I have my standards.

Fortunately, the crème caramel lived up to my imagination. After three thousand years, very few things do.

Meph smiled and gave the cheese selection the same attention I was giving the crème caramel. And he seemed about as appreciative, too, so I decided to sample a bit of the St. André and a très leches which, I had to admit, were stunningly good. Then Meph took his first taste of the crème caramel and it was all over.

“This is truly…art.” He sighed. Then he signaled for the waiter and ordered two more of the crème caramel and two more glasses of ice wine to accompany it.

“Now, back to your conjecture,” he said when the waiter disappeared with our order and the empty dishes that had held the desserts we had just devoured. “If some demon wanted to advance through the ranks, I normally wouldn’t get involved. It’s Darwinian, let them fight it out, try to destroy each other and protect themselves, and whoever wins rises by merit. But, and this is the central problem, we can’t have demons in one area of the Hierarchy attacking those outside of their direct line. Destroy their competitors, that’s fine. We encourage that. They can weed through the chaff and expel them and we don’t have to worry about screening. But if someone from my division, say, was victimizing you, that would be intolerable. We don’t permit that kind of thing. You, especially, are not pawns.”