Succubus in the City (37 page)

“You’re drunk, Lily. You’re very, very drunk. But even drunk off your ass, you’ve made your point. Taken. Thank you. Now I’ll see you tomorrow. I happen to be at work, in case you had forgotten.” He got up and let himself out, and I managed to peel off my clothes before I collapsed back onto the couch.

Friday was another overcast slushy February day. My weather clock said the high today was expected to be in the twenties. I hadn’t realized how badly I was ready for winter to end. Part of working in fashion is that you’re always out of sync with the season.

We’re putting together our summer issues at the end of the winter and looking at spring clothes in October. When I look at the photo spreads for the issue we’re working on, I get all excited about clothes that won’t be available or make sense for six months.

I’d been away in Aruba and then I’d been too tired and distracted to concentrate on my job since I’d returned. Even though I wanted to spend the day mooning over Nathan and figuring out the problems with Sybil and the Burning Men and dealing with my hangover, I did have to pay attention to work. And that was a nice thing, because I got all wrapped up in the shawl feature and helping a fashion editor choose luggage for a four-page spread on what to bring for a weekend in the Hamptons. I forgot about Nathan and Sybil and Vincent. I even forgot Satan and Aruba and Azoked. For just a few hours I forgot everything but suitcases.

There is a special satisfaction about doing one’s job well. I’ve had enough of them, jobs that is, in my life. And while I often hate the time and necessity, especially since I don’t particularly need the money, I enjoy being challenged and able to solve a problem for someone else. I enjoy being competent at something besides sex.

That was true even when I was a girl, why I really wanted to enter the Temple rather than be married off. My mother wasn’t high enough for me to be useful in a diplomatic marriage, but there were more than enough families that would have been thrilled by an alliance with the royal household. I had had some choice in the matter, and it was my own desire to become a Priestess. I wanted the opportunity to do things myself, and that pleasure has never changed. In three thousand years I’d learned a lot about sex and about life, but I still loved being competent in a completely different world.

So work on Friday left me happy and fulfilled, feeling smart and capable and ready to take on the challenges of the world. Even if said challenges were only luggage.

I was so entranced with my own creative energy that I decided to pick up some take-out Chinese and play around with some project ideas a little more when I got home. I didn’t have any plans for the evening, and while we’d changed our brunch to Saturday, I didn’t want to think about the problems with Vincent and Nathan and all.

No, I wanted to put together a great feature idea and send it off to Amanda and eat egg rolls and Crispy Orange Beef in my pajamas. I picked up my takeout a block from the office and caught a cab home, happily anticipating a quiet evening indulging in my own company and being a slob. I would wear my Ozzy tee shirt and fuzzy slippers. I would eat out of the cartons! I would pig out on Ben and Jerry’s! I would watch my
Pirates of the Caribbean
DVD and drool over Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. Sounded like Heaven to me.

chapter
TWENTY-NINE

I entered the building smiling, anticipating the heavenly-smelling takeout. Vincent was on duty and he was sticking to his job. No acknowledgment of my drunken tirade of the night before, even though it would have been entirely justified.

Nor did he tell me that there was a surprise waiting in my living room.

Azoked sat shedding on my sofa, licking the last of the Cherry Garcia. That was two strikes against the evening’s success. The program had not included going out for more supplies. Strike three, my dinner would get cold while she said what she was here for, though no doubt the real reason she had showed up was to torment me. Sadistic librarian.

She looked at me and took a deep sniff, her whiskers quivering.

“Oooh, good, Crispy Orange Beef is my favorite,” she said by way of greeting.

I have been trained to have good manners. In nearly a hundred different societies in thousands of years I have known how to be a good hostess, a good guest, make people feel at home, and be polite in any situation. I lost all of them at that moment.

“This is my dinner. I don’t recall inviting you,” I said sourly. “And you just finished off all my ice cream and I wanted that. So why don’t you just tell me what you came to tell me and then get out? If you want Crispy Orange Beef, you can get your own.”

“I would have thought you were a better hostess than that,” she sniffed. “I would have thought you would have welcomed me and my information.”

“You’re not my guest when I didn’t invite you,” I groused. “And the people I do invite don’t help themselves to the contents of my freezer without even asking.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked, completely unrepentant. “I knew that if you’d been home you would have offered. And you still don’t have any Florentines, and I specifically asked for them.”

In three thousand years I have not hated many beings. Human and demon, there have been many I disliked and a large number I wouldn’t want to socialize with, but by and large I didn’t go all the way to hate.

I made an exception for Azoked.

“How did you get in, anyway? Did Vincent let you in?” I was ready to kill Vincent for letting this demon into my sanctuary.

“Oh, no,” she giggled.

Disgusting. She actually giggled. And I felt thwarted since I couldn’t really blame Vincent for her presence.

“I manifested here. I have the coordinates and the visualization now. The Akashic is everywhere. Librarians manipulate that record. We can be wherever the record is.”

“So that’s why you stayed at the Royal Sonesta in Aruba?” I wasn’t curious, I was snarky. She deserved it. In fact, she deserved more, but I could smell my dinner and I was hungry and I was not in the mood to share.

“Why don’t you serve me some of that orange beef while I arrange my notes?”

I growled. “I will serve you orange beef over your head,” I threatened, and I meant it.

“I will report you to Satan,” she countered. “Satan won’t like you treating a librarian so badly.”

She sounded just like the kind of smug dancing girl who’d pleased the King for a night and thought she was about to be elevated to a wife. I’d seen it in the women’s quarters enough times, the young girl of no family who started giving orders and herself airs, to later discover that one good night, or even two or three, didn’t make her a favorite. That was one lesson my mother managed to avoid. She knew that a farmer’s daughter wasn’t about to be elevated to wife, no matter how pretty or charming, no matter that she had given the King a daughter. And she had made very certain to teach me precedent and social awareness very young.

“I am one of Satan’s Chosen,” I said carefully. “I am not some lackey sent out to fetch your favorite dinner. You do not have the right to just show up in my apartment uninvited when I’ve been at work all day. You do not have the right to go through my place, eat my food, look at my private papers.”

“Oh, but I do,” she hissed. “I look at everyone’s most private thoughts and dreams. What do you think the Akashic is? Something like a telephone book? No, I see what it is that people think and dream and desire. I know their future and their past, their fate. And I know what is hidden in their souls.”

“I am not a person,” I told her. “I am a demon. I know you can’t access our information. We don’t register in the Akashic at all; even I know that. So maybe if you stopped treating me like a not-so-bright servant, if you tried to respect my home and my privacy, we would get along a lot better. And then we could both do our jobs and try to endure what minimal contact with each other we could not avoid. Why do you insist on being so nasty? I mean, you could perfectly well get your own Chinese food.”

She blinked twice. “Nasty? I’m not being nasty. I didn’t know I wanted Chinese food until I smelled yours. Why shouldn’t I want it?”

And suddenly I understood. She was a Bastform. She was a cat who claimed what she wanted and didn’t think about manners. I let the computer and the talking and the glasses fool me, but her personality was all kitty. And not a nice kitty, either.

Understanding did not make me hate her any less.

But it did mean that I was able to redirect my rage. I hated her and I would have been happy to see her in the worst torments of Hell, but I needed her and I could use her, and that gave me an advantage.

Besides, the orange beef only came in the large dinner-size portion, which usually lasted me for three meals.

“If I give you some orange beef, you will give me the information you came to deliver,” I said. There was no question in my tone. “And you will let me know in advance in the future when to expect you. We will make appointments like civilized beings. What if I had been out hunting?” Bargaining is an important skill in Hell.

“Why should I make an appointment?” she asked, genuinely confused.

“If you make an appointment I will be ready for you and will have plenty of ice cream and cookies. And we will conduct our business efficiently.”

She appeared to think about this as if the idea were new to her.

“But you will give me orange beef now?”

“Yes,” I said, doing my best not to think of slamming her face through the window. And then maybe dropping her out of it as well. Even if she was immortal. “But you will make appointments in the future. Mutually convenient and agreed-upon appointments. No surprise visits anywhere. Ever.”

“And this will be more efficient for me?” she inquired seriously, as if she were not in danger of imminent dismemberment.

“Far more efficient. We will work together better. And you won’t have to wait for me, and will get all the snacks you like.”

I’m good at bargaining. My mother taught me, and she could drive a hard bargain. The only being I’ve seen who’s better is Satan Herself.

She nodded. I brought my food into the kitchen and dished out white rice and a few pieces of Crispy Orange Beef and a large chunk of broccoli, stuck a pair of chopsticks in the bowl, and brought it back to the living room. She leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me first,” I said, holding the food close to me. I could smell it, and I wanted to scarf even the small serving I had doled out for Azoked.

“Several items. First, there is dissension among the Knight Defenders, since it has been proved that you did not kill the man in Aruba, but Branford is not entirely ready to give up on you or your sisters. They are in a leadership crisis now, but Branford is by no means out of it. They appear to have enough financial backing to dismiss Branford’s expenses while pursuing you, but the fact that his information appears to have been faulty has made the others doubt him. We’ve seen groups like this before. They will regroup and possibly be even more dangerous than before, but whether Branford will last is an open question at the moment.”

I nodded. Fanatics cannot be dissuaded and we had thousands of years of experience of that. They can be distracted by their own internal power struggles, at least until a leader emerges. Branford could be eliminated or he could emerge much stronger, and I didn’t know which would be better for us. We could watch for them now, though it was reassuring to think that we were a bit safer, at least for a few months.

“Go on,” I said, holding the bowl out and letting the scent of dinner waft in her direction. “You didn’t come here just to tell me that. I hope this entire visit wasn’t just about Branford and the Knight Defenders, which we had mostly figured out anyway.”

“Marten in Aruba is a ceremonial magician and believes that you owe him a favor,” she said. “He knows what you are and he targeted you specifically.”

I shook my head. “Old news. I’ve got that already. And honestly, I probably wouldn’t mind doing a favor for Marten. But that’s not it. So spill.”

She ruffled her fur and pinned her ears back. “You know there is a high-level demon involved,” she replied carefully. “Who is giving information to Branford. I cannot access the thoughts and actions of demons. We are not truly alive, and therefore are not inscribed in the Book of Life. But Vincent did not come by his jealousy unaided. If you find out who whispered that he might have reason to be jealous you might find out more.”

The only reason she did not go out my window then and there is that she actually sounded like she was not trying to bait me. “Tell me more,” I said.

She shook her head. “Truly. I swear on Satan’s name. I have a pattern with Branford and Balducci and connections to other groups. There are spaces, blank places, puzzle pieces missing. It would make the most sense if there were more than one source. A higher demon who is using Branford, and someone who is privy to your information. Who told Vincent? Are you certain that it is not Vincent giving out details to someone he wishes to impress in the Hierarchy?”

She arched her eye in a way that looked particularly humanoid. Then she settled the empty bowl gently on the table. “I will leave now. I do not like you, Lilith, nor you me, I think. But we both serve our Master.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I said sincerely. “And if you could make an appointment next time that would make both of our lives easier.”

She nodded and vanished. And I called Vincent upstairs on the intercom.

He arrived and I told him to sit on the sofa. I was acutely aware of my dinner getting colder by the minute on the counter, but some things were more important. My friends, for one. And my duty to Satan above all. “Vincent, why did you think something happened with Sybil in Aruba? Did someone say something to make you suspicious?”

He thought for a moment. “I told a friend in my class, a demon who came in about when I did, that my girlfriend had gone to Aruba with her friends. And she said that I didn’t know the half of what went on there.”

“Who is this demon?” I asked quietly. “And why did you believe her? Does she have any reason to know?”