Succubus in the City (3 page)

“I’m going over there,” Desi announced. She got up, turned, and walked past the table headed for the Ladies’. The room was noisy and crowded, and even if the first wave were leaving it was easy for Desi to pass just a little too close and manage to drop her (open) handbag at an advantageous moment.

“Eeeep,” she said, and leaned over to start picking up her fourteen lipsticks rolling under the cute cop’s feet along with her handkerchief, keys, Treo, Luna bars, and just about anything a person would need in an emergency (including a collapsible cup, a bottle of Motrin and a tiny travel-size bottle of Scope). With amazing luck, neither her wallet nor her Tampax left the deepest confines of her Coach bag.

Desi bending over in her jeans is a sight to behold. Her legs go on forever and her butt is the product of not only supernatural tampering but hours in the gym. And her cleavage was displayed to excellent (but discreet) advantage as she tried to gather up her things.

The cop immediately understood his role, and began to chase stray lipstick cases that had gone astray on that helpful flagstone floor.

“Oh, thank you,” Desi said breathlessly as he handed her the four that had gotten farthest under the table. “I really appreciate it. I would have felt like a total idiot scrambling under that table.”

“No problem.” He smiled at her and held out his hand. “I’m Steve Balducci. And you are?”

“Desi,” Des answered, shaking his hand.

I had a sudden jealous flash. No one ever smiled at me like that. When they smiled at me it was all loaded with lust, not with warmth or kindness.

“By the way, let me introduce my uncle, Franco Massilano, who designed the new annex to the Brooklyn Museum, and his wife Paola. Aunt Paola is a textile designer.”

“Very pleased to meet you both,” Desi said in her most demure and proper voice. “I would invite you over to our table, but my friend was just complaining about her apartment and I know she’d start asking all kinds of questions while you just want a pleasant brunch.”

Sybil gasped and might have said something if I hadn’t kicked her under the table. “Don’t,” I hissed.

“Don’t what?” she whispered back. “What would I have done? I would have liked to have met them, too…”

“To the courageous go the spoils,” Eros said. “Besides, don’t you like the young guy better?”

“He’s hot,” I agreed.

“Desi seems to think so,” Sybil observed, acutely. Desi was standing with one hand on his shoulder as she sorted through her bag, making certain that they had collected all her belongings. Woe be it to all if one of her precious Laura Mercier lipsticks was missing.

Then we were quiet and could actually hear what she was saying again, though I’ll admit that demonic hearing is far better than human. And though all of us share this particular trait, we oddly often forget that the others can overhear us when we’re distracted by attractive masculine company. Naturally, we did the only loyal girlfriend thing: we shut up and listened in.

“I wish I’d met you before. We could have gone to the party last night and you could have seen the designs,” Steve told her.

“But aren’t they on display for the rest of the month?” Desi asked sweetly. “I could still see them sometime.”

“Stop salivating,” Sybil hissed. “It’s not any nicer when you do it than when she did. And green is definitely not your color.”

It’s hard, is all. I want to be all happy for my buds. They’ve been with me through everything, and I do mean everything, and I really want the best for them. In every way I want the best. I want us all to have it.

But sometimes I can’t help being jealous. After all, they are also immortal and perfectly (and effortlessly) beautiful and eternally young. They also have great jobs (both their paying jobs and their unofficial but more important positions in the Hierarchy) and apartments and bank accounts big enough to support both their shoe and handbag habits. They have all the same perks I’ve got, but they can have some romance and love, too.

Me, I just get lust.

I like lust, mind you. I like it a lot. But after three thousand years, a girl just wants a little more sometimes. For my friends, an offer of help or an invitation to coffee didn’t automatically mean bed. For me, that experience would be a huge novelty. A really nice novelty.

So I’m jealous of my best girlfriends, and I hate that about myself. Rule number one, always, is that you’re for your friends. They were all for me. Like Dumas said, “All for one, and one for all.”

Oh, right, they were Musketeers. Our weapons are a little more subtle.

chapter
THREE

If I hadn’t been drowning in jealousy I would have enjoyed watching Desi work. The sheer audacity of her approach, the precisely lowered eyelids—not closed all the way, and certainly never batted—Desi combined seduction and innocence in irresistible proportions.

Desi is the reason people buy Ralph Lauren. She personifies Old Money, the Upper Crust and the Upper East Side. She is, after all, a desire demon, and what do people desire more than beauty, youth, and wealth? She makes navy blue box-pleated skirts look sexy. Her hair is smooth and toffee-brown, just the color for the country club or the executive suite. It’s thick with only the subtlest hint of wave, just enough to give it volume and bounce without ever looking messy like mine. Which has not always been an asset—back in the French court of Catherine de Médicis she frizzed her hair into a fashionable mass of burned curls, a fashion statement wisely discarded until an unfortunate revival in the 1980s.

Because she personifies desire in its many forms, she is also intelligent and powerful.

But now, with this hunky example of New York’s Finest, she was all interest and confidence and carefully ambiguous glances. Mr. Detective never had a chance.

“The museum’s open late on Thursday,” Steve was saying. “If you’re free that evening we could go over there and take a look, and maybe catch a drink on the way back if it’s not too late.”

“Thursday?” Desi asked, as if she hadn’t a clue. “I’d have to check my calendar. Hmmm.” She thought for a few moments, then pulled a ladylike filigree gold Mont Blanc out of her bag. Interesting that that pen hadn’t appeared on the floor with the lipsticks.

She pulled out a scrap of paper from her wallet—it looked like a grocery receipt—and scribbled something on the back. Whereupon she handed it to Detective Steve with a flourish. “My e-mail address,” she announced. “Send me a reminder tomorrow or something, and I’ll check and see if I’m free.”

Honestly, the poor guy looked like he’d died and gone to heaven. Hmmm, given the context he was going to be very surprised where he ended up when this was all over.

Uncle Architect had watched the entire byplay as Aunt Mimosa pointedly ignored the interaction, but as Desi handed over her e-mail the Great Man cleared his throat. Apparently he had been out of the limelight too long, and had to direct the attention of his ravening fans back to where it belonged. Namely, on him.

Detective Steve remembered that the good people of New York were paying him for his time as he flirted with Desi and excused himself. Desi smiled innocently, like a schoolgirl. Like a nun. Steve was about to be toast—well, metaphorically speaking. I’m the only one who toasts them for real, and I make good and certain to eliminate all traces of evidence.

“So, what do you think?” Desi asked breathlessly when we were certain that Hunky Steve was really gone and Important Uncle was paying the bill.

“About what?” Eros asked. “He’s just some guy, after all.”

“He seems really nice,” Sybil said. “And he’s employed.”

“He’s got a great butt,” I added, and the others glared at me. “Well, he does. It bears listing in the catalog.”

“He has yummy eyes,” Sybil sighed.

“Would you like anything else?” the waiter (who also had a cute butt and great eyes, and would probably say he’s an actor if you asked what he did) mumbled by rote as he laid the bill on the table.

“How about a hunky guy with a cute butt?” Eros quipped.

Desi looked mortified, but the waiter laughed. “Honey, I’ve been waiting on your table all brunch. And you’re saying you haven’t checked out my butt even once. After all that time in the gym, too.” He pouted. Cutely. Had to be an actor.

I laughed. “Baby, what’s the good of looking at what I’m never gonna get?”

“Well, you didn’t specify a straight hunk with a cute butt,” the waiter positively flounced. “Talk about picky, difficult customers. I’ll bet you wanted the butter on the side, too.”

We all laughed and the tension broke. For all that life can be rough, I’m lucky and I know it. I’ve got three great girlfriends, a sympathetic uberboss with impeccable style and no worries about my figure. With all those advantages, any woman should be totally happy, right?

So why did I still have this sliver of sadness inside? Mostly I knew life was wonderful, but I was lonely and had been for too long. So what if I was beautiful and thin and immortal and lived in New York and had fabulous shoes? No one loved me, not in the romantic way that had led Sybil down the aisle fifteen times.

We paid and left, and even left a decent tip. I wasn’t in the mood to go home and I felt restless. I didn’t know why nothing sounded like fun.

“Do you think Steve will ask me for a date today?” Desi asked.

“I just want to get my mind off feeling like I’ll never have a real date. Ever.” The dark mood had struck and I was wallowing, I admit it.

“You have plenty of dates,” Eros said snippily.

“I mean the kind where they wake up in the morning,” I moaned. “I am sick of deadbeat dates. Emphasis on the dead.”

Suddenly Desi yelped and pulled out her Treo. “Can you believe it, he’s already sent me an e-mail about Thursday night!” She could barely contain her glee. “Now I’ve got to think of something to wear…”

“What? Thursday?” Eros had not been paying enough attention in the restaurant, clearly.

“Steve. Famous uncle, cute butt,” I reminded her.

“Have you told him you’re going yet?” Eros asked pointedly.

“Oh, she couldn’t possibly do that until Tuesday,” Sybil replied blithely.

“Maybe Monday night,” Desi said, almost pleading.

“Tuesday,” Sybil announced firmly. “You can’t appear too eager.”

And suddenly, surrounded by wallpaper pattern books that specialized in English floral pastels, I started to feel terribly sad.

Last night. Brad. He wasn’t the worst I’d ever delivered, either. When they were awful I felt fine. I didn’t care about the creeps, the ones I took home and turned to ash as soon as they’d gotten naked (or near enough to it that I hardly noticed). But Brad had just been some ordinary guy, the kind who didn’t respect women or maybe just didn’t know how. He probably hadn’t had much of a bank account, either. He’d come in from—now I forgot, was it New Jersey or upstate?

Maybe I was getting old. Maybe I’d been at this too long. They were pathetic, the guys I found.

Most of them were lousy lays.

But Brad hadn’t been one of the worst, which may be why I was so sad this time.

I was also sad about the fact that he was one of the better ones that I’d had in hundreds of years. At least Brad had tried. He had used his fingertips on my breasts instead of kneading them like bread dough.

I wouldn’t have felt sad about one of the kneaders.

They incinerate at the moment of their climax, not mine, so most of the time I’m not only sleeping alone but I’m still frustrated and have to finish myself up, too. Alone.

Yeah, I was always going to look like I was twenty-eight. My hair might be messy and I have a few freckles from before immortality but still—I find men. When I’m on, they can’t resist me. Succubus pheromones are completely compelling to the mortal male. They can’t help it. Even the nice guys can’t say no.

It’s no compliment to me. Their interest isn’t because I have almost as much green in my eyes as brown, not because I can talk about movies or new media or where to find the best cocktails in New York. They don’t notice the elegant bleached hardwood floors in my apartment, or the Philippe Starck Louis Ghost chairs around my dining and worktable. They don’t recognize the Scalamandre silks on the windows or the thousand-thread Frette sheets. My taste, my mind, my personality are all irrelevant. It’s just pheromones, magic, and lust.

To have sex with me without loving me—and without satisfying me—is to turn to ash and go directly to a minor level of Hell. With a signed contract, Desi’s and Eros’s and Sybil’s prey are condemned to a major level. Some of my deliveries can even end up in Purgatory if the only wrong thing they ever did was go with me. I haven’t done a Purgatory delivery in over a hundred years, and I hope never to do one again. I don’t get any points for those.

The men I deliver usually become simple souls in torment in Hell. If they happen to be exceptionally good (except for sleeping with me), they may reside in Hell for a time before moving on to Purgatory. They never become demons. A person must make a contract with Hell, knowingly and deliberately, to earn demon status.

I do have one option that I have exercised at times. If I have sex with a man and he is generous and attentive, if he makes sure I have pleasure before he does, I can let him live. In all the thousands of years I’ve lived, there have been only a few men like that. And they never want to actually date me. We have mind-blowing sex and they never call me again.

I want someone to think I’m special, not just for my perfect body or my Pantene-ad hair. Someone who’ll think I’m special even in the morning before I put on my makeup, even on the days when I feel fat and frumpy, someone who won’t ditch me because I get PMS and who thinks that I should go shopping when I’m feeling down.

In short, I want a boyfriend, a real boyfriend.

Satan has agreed. If someone falls in love with me and dates me without having sex with me for at least a month, and knows that I’m a succubus and loves me anyway, then I get back my soul and can be a mortal again. That’s in my contract.

Big if. In a few thousand years I’ve never even come close.

“You seem to be in some kind of mood,” Eros noted. “What’s wrong?”