Succubus in the City (23 page)

“Darwin in action,” I muttered.

Meph raised an eyebrow. “They hurt us, they’re eliminated. They didn’t understand how to play the game, not all the subtle levels, so they’re out. But they’d better be out before they hurt me or my friends, because I don’t know if we could endure anything else. Sybil, you know Syb is already at the end of her rope. And Desi isn’t far behind.”

“Sybil has that very promising young demon to protect her,” Mephistopheles observed, his voice rich with approval. “Vincent? Very talented. I’m watching him. Don’t let him know. I don’t want to make him nervous, thinking that he’s being observed for higher things when he’s only been dead for five months. We have all eternity, no use letting it go to his head.”

Our second round of crème caramel and ice wine arrived and we took another short break to savor them yet again. And they were just as good the second time around as the first.

“So, is there anyone you can think of who might be in that kind of junior position and trying to rise through the ranks?” I recalled Meph to our topic from wherever out in the astral the experience of honey and tangerine had sent him.

He blinked rapidly, recovering. “There are two demons, maybe three, who come to mind,” he confessed. “But I wouldn’t want to accuse anyone until I had a better idea of which one it might be.”

Great. But that left me and my friends sitting in a trap.

The thought must have showed on my face. “I’ll be watching them very closely,” Mephistopheles reassured me, and there was steel in his voice. “Trust me, if any of them even thinks of endangering you or your friends again, I will intercede before anything happens. And that I vow to the Prince of Darkness.”

Which is as solemn and serious as it gets.

And then Mephistopheles picked up the check.

“Oh, no,” I protested. “I asked you, I begged you for your advice. The least I can do is pay for our dinner.” I was junior to him; I had asked him for a favor and he had given me his time and his thoughts generously. He had also promised to look out for us in the future, at least if the threat was coming from his department. That was far more than I could have hoped for, and he offered it all freely. By all the protocols of Hell, I had to pay for the dinner.

And the truth is, we both have enough money that it hardly matters.

“Not at all,” he said gallantly, handing his American Express Black Card to the waiter. “You are Satan’s Chosen and under Her protection, which means you are under my protection as well. What is valuable to our Master is mine to guard. So I am very grateful that you brought this matter to my attention, and I am glad to serve our Prince in this and in all things.”

Mephistopheles has class. He’s a gentleman of the old school, and I felt safer than I had in days.

Meph got both of our coats from the coat check, helped me into mine, and escorted me to the door. “I’ll help you catch a cab,” he said, “and then I’ll return to the office and do a little investigating on my own.”

I felt so good, so safe. I leaned against him as we exited into the chill of Astor Place.

As usual, outside there was a line to get into the downstairs club. I had stood on that line enough times in the past, though usually we could get through to the bouncer and get in before most people, and I had always been glad of the privilege. Now I walked down the line with Meph holding my elbow, feeling sorry for the ordinary hip New Yorkers wanting only to spend an evening dancing in a popular club. The cream of single young New York was waiting to get in here—or at five or six other clubs in town, if they weren’t taking an evening for a facial and a foot massage.

I thought briefly about hunting. It wasn’t a mojo night so I wasn’t required, but I was angry enough at whoever had attacked us that the thought of luring and killing some obnoxious male was appealing.

“Lily!” a familiar voice called out from the line. I had been so wrapped up in my own concerns that I hadn’t even noticed people in the crowd as individuals.

And there was Nathan Coleman, decked out in his Communist overcoat and thin leather gloves rubbing his hands together to keep circulation in his fingers.

“Nathan,” I said. Then I realized that Mephistopheles had me by the arm.

I wanted to melt into the pavement. Nathan looked Meph over as if he were in the Armani trunk show, trying not to let the jealousy and hurt show. “Nathan, this is my old friend Meph. Meph, Nathan Coleman. I think I’ve told you about Nathan. He reads Akkadian.”

“Indeed, Lily has just been singing your praises,” Meph said as he extended a hand.

Nathan reached over the butter-colored leather rope and shook it, his face sternly disciplined. Both of them had such class, such good manners, that my insides twisted up.

“I look forward to seeing you at the gallery opening next week,” I said lamely. Only it was true, it was entirely true.

“Lily, I need to get back to the office,” Meph murmured. “Shall I see you to a taxi?”

I nodded mutely. Why didn’t Nathan ask me to join him? I could have gone out clubbing with him, even if I was dressed more for business than for dancing. There was nothing in the world I wanted more at that moment than for him to ask me to join him in that line. If I had a choice of immediately catching the demon who’d betrayed us and Nathan asking me to step over the rope and join the line, I would have taken Nathan’s invitation in a heartbeat.

I wondered if he were meeting someone at the club. Maybe someone female and beautiful and not a demon, and that made me even more upset.

I hesitated, and I’m afraid that I wore my hope too naked on my face. Eros would kill me and she’d be right.

Nathan smiled, though not as deeply as he had on Saturday. “Yeah, see you when you get back from Aruba.”

And then Meph whisked me into a taxi and I was on my way uptown—away from Nathan.

chapter
NINETEEN

“Aaaawww, baby,” Sybil said, putting her arms around me.

“You are not, I repeat,
not
going to ruin our trip to Aruba because you’re moaning over this guy,” Eros insisted. “It’s good that he saw you with someone else. They think you’re more desirable if they think they have competition. Trust me, this is the best thing that could have happened.”

I sat in my living room furious and upset. I was afraid I’d start to bawl like a baby, like Sybil, and I was a lot bigger and scarier than that. So I decided I wanted to smash crockery instead. Only—I really like my dishes.

Vincent had been on duty when I arrived in the cab and he saw my condition immediately. Without asking, on his own initiative, he called Sybil and told her that I needed her. She, in turn, had called Eros and Desi, but Desi had been out. Still, both Syb and Eros had rushed over to find me on the sofa contemplating mass destruction of Kate Spade dragonfly china. On the one hand, it would be a fabulous relief. On the other, I wouldn’t have anything to eat off of and it would take six weeks if I ordered a replacement set yesterday.

Eros and Sybil arrived, ice cream in hand, just as I was weighing a bowl and thinking of hurling it at the door.

“Don’t do that,” Sybil said immediately, taking the bowl from my hand.

“Why not?” I snarled.

“Because we are going to need this to eat ice cream now,” Eros said reasonably. “If you need to throw something, throw the dinner plates. They’re more satisfying when they smash and you hardly use them anyway.”

Having just eaten an extravagant dinner and just having my heart broken, I couldn’t possibly think about food. Not even ice cream, not even Chocolate Dinosaurs.

“Eros is right, you know,” Sybil said softly. “You haven’t done anything wrong and there’s nothing to worry about. He doesn’t know what’s going on with you and Meph and he’ll wait for you to tell him, but he couldn’t ask you to come out with him. You were with someone else and that would have been horribly rude.”

“Meph could have challenged him to a duel for that,” Eros observed.

“Nathan isn’t a demon and humans don’t fight duels anymore,” I said. The image was amusing enough to make me accept a bowl of ice cream. It was Chocolate Dinosaurs, after all.

“You have been on all of one date. No matter how much you like each other, it’s too early to even think of being exclusive,” Sybil continued.

Eros snorted. “Lily can’t be exclusive. She’s a succubus.”

“Not if Nathan loves me,” I protested. “That’s my retirement clause. If a mortal loves me and does not have sex with me for a month, and I can prove to Satan that he loves me for myself and not just for sex, then I don’t have to be a succubus anymore.”

“Why would you want not to be a succubus?” Eros asked, incredulous. “You get all the sex you could want and none of the complications. Every man and not a few women can’t do enough for you in bed. What more could you want?”

Her complete lack of comprehension was entirely honest and heartfelt. But then, Eros was never human. And I’m not sure that Eros believes in love. She called it a pathology once and has boycotted every one of Sybil’s weddings.

“I want love,” I protested, standing like a politician delivering a speech. “I want this one guy to love me and want to see me without my makeup and to want to cuddle me when I’ve had a bad day. And to want me to make him happier on days that are hard for him. I want to be together with him and I would like to have sex with him more than once.”

Eros’s eyes opened wide and I knew I had her. “You see, if you only have sex with a guy once, he doesn’t know how to really make you happy,” I said, and I saw her nod. “Yeah, there’s all the excitement of the first time, but I never get a second chance. And with some of them, well, I don’t always pick the most appealing guys, you know. Mostly they’re selfish in bed.”

Eros nodded. “A lot of men are.”

“A lot of men think that all women want to do is please them. A lot of men don’t have a clue about a woman’s body,” I said flatly. “I’ve had enough of them and let me tell you, they think that you’re supposed to come because they’re doing their best to please themselves. Honestly.”

Sybil sighed and patted my hand. “That’s because you haven’t had sex within a relationship. When a man cares about you, personally, then he cares more about pleasing you. That’s what you’ve been missing.”

“And now everything will be over with Nathan and I really liked him and I’ll never have a chance.”

“Lily, this is the best thing that could have happened for you and Nathan,” Eros reiterated. “You were being too available for him. You weren’t making him pursue you. You were making it too easy for him and you know it. You’ve heard me say it a million times.” She cast a meaningful glance at Sybil. “You know that’s the kiss of death. Don’t call him, and I know you want to. You want to call and tell him that you were meeting with Meph on a business matter, or that Meph is your uncle or anything that you think will reassure him that you’re available. Well, you’re not going to call him, not tonight, not tomorrow, and then we’re going to Aruba and you’re going to soak up the sun and pick up pretty Dutch surfer boys and drink blue drinks. And you are going to want to call or send an e-mail to Nathan and we, as your friends, are not going to let you do it. And come your date next week he will be crazy insane for you.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, weakening. I no longer wanted to hurl the china. The ice cream in my dish looked appealing. I could follow her logic. I had even said similar things when one of my friends had been in a similar situation, and I’d even seen that they were true. The advice worked.

So why couldn’t I take it? Why was I dying to get on the phone or the computer? No, the phone would be better—closer and faster and more immediate.

Not that it would matter, I realized. Nathan would still be downstairs at Butter, maybe buying drinks for the blonde I’d made up.

“Now I am going to run a hot bath and set out the Black Pearl bath bomb and lots of yummy soaps and scrubs. And Syb will cut some cucumbers for your eyes, and don’t you have one of those nice home facials? And you are going to take a bath and lie there with a facial and then we’re going to call out for Chinese food. And then on Thursday you’re going to meet us all for lunch and some shopping because we all need some beachwear and sandals because last year’s are, well, last year’s.” Eros was ticking off all the necessary tasks on her fingers.

“And then,” Eros continued, “I’ll book us all for pedicures on Thursday after shopping because we can’t go to Aruba with naked toenails. Because we are going to go to Paradise and lie out on the beach and have lots of sex with pretty boys who will serve us drinks and worship our bodies. And we will get golden enough to last us until summer.”

Eros marched out to the bathroom to start my bath. Sybil massaged my shoulders. “I’m afraid that the three of you are going to get all the attention,” she said. “Really, you know, it’s always like that. You’re the sex demons and I’m not. I’m not gorgeous like you three are. I always feel so outclassed. The three of you are going to have hot and cold running boys and I’m going to sit alone on my beach chair in front of my laptop and predict stock prices.”

I sat upright and spun to face her. “Sybil, where do you get ideas like that? That’s crazy. You’re stunningly beautiful and you don’t know how many guys can’t take their eyes off you. You’re so feminine and graceful and just…pretty. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Sybil shook her head sadly. “I’m not, not compared to the three of you. Whenever I’m with you, I feel like I’m the official ugly one.”

“You’re insane,” I said. I couldn’t imagine where Sybil had gotten such a stupid idea in her head. She’s got gloriously natural buttercup hair that waves just perfectly, the English peaches-and-cream complexion, and an hourglass figure that any lingerie model would kill for.

Sybil shook her head slowly. “I’m thinking of going to Admin and having a redo,” she said softly. “Maybe get a thinner, leggier look. And slightly more interesting coloring, do you think?”

I looked at Sybil for a few minutes, just studying her. “You know, Syb, you’re drop-dead gorgeous. What I do think, though, is that you’ve got this sweet thing in your head. You need a makeover. Your clothes aren’t doing your face and body justice. I know the Jil Sander is great for Wall Street, but I think you need to just try something a little more elegant. You’re a classic Princess Grace type, really. I always thought that the Laura Ashley look was to disarm your opponents, make them underestimate you so that you could spring a trap. If you don’t want to look like a sweet English rose, you don’t have to. But it’s not you, it’s just the clothes.”