Succubus in the City (6 page)

Vincent smiled. Oooh, Martha does pick the cuties.

Anyway, much as having Satan’s minions in the lobby can annoy me, they really do take care of a lot of my needs. And they’re always eye candy, and I’ll bet would happily be more than eye candy if I asked. And since they’re already dead and in Hell I don’t have to worry about the incendiary consequences.

Hmmm, so why had I never considered dating another demon? There were more than a few that were cute and smart and fun. It wouldn’t make me mortal, though, wouldn’t change me from being a succubus because a demon doesn’t count as a man. Not worth the bother.

I managed my keys between the flowers and the bag with my Ben & Jerry’s and a take-out box from Benny’s Burritos on Fifth and Avenue A. Yeah, it was a bit out of my way, but I’d really been jonesing for one of their steak-extra-cheese burritos in salsa verde, and none of my posse were really Benny’s freaks. Which I do not pretend to understand. Sybil doesn’t like Mexican at all, and Eros only wants the very elegant stuff. Benny’s is too low class for her, though she’s all over the Cowgirl Hall of Fame (though I think it’s the roasted garlic there that she can’t resist). Desi likes burritos just fine but thinks that if she’s going to the East Village she really would prefer Indian food on Curry Row, which is what everyone calls that one block of East Sixth Street between First and Avenue A. A number of guidebooks have called it the best-smelling street in New York, and if you’re in the mood for Indian food that’s probably true.

So Benny’s is a solitary delight for me. Since tonight is a delivery night, I could have hit Benny’s on the way out for service and sit-down, but I don’t like to eat alone in public. Maybe because when I know I’ll have my mojo on, I won’t be left in peace. The prey will swarm around and I won’t be able to just relax with my burrito and chips before hitting the clubs. Besides, I’d been busy at work and I wanted to catch up on MagicMirror before going out.

It was one of those nights. At particular times, which are predicted by a complicated formula that includes the aspects of the Moon, the Earth, Venus, and Mars, along with specific hours not only of astrological conjunction but “witching hours,” I am irresistible. I am lust incarnate, and any man who sees me desires me. On those nights I am demon succubus, the deliverer into Hell of whomever enters my bed. That’s in the contract.

The hours are specific and limited. Ten to three a.m. on the nights when the particular astrological alignments are in the correct degrees. Once upon a time it took a fair bit of work for me to calculate the time; these days I’ve just got it running on my computer, all neatly entered into my calendar in red. Hunting nights.

What makes me irresistible during these particular and limited times are my pheromones. During the correct astrological windows, whatever changes about me specifically affects the subtle underlying scent that is more instinct than actual attraction.

But not for a couple of hours yet. So I nuked my burrito and booted up the laptop in the living room. I ate while I read the blog and caught up on the doings of Hell.

Okay, so I got a little distracted. It happens online. I’m reading and there’s some really exciting food porn that just makes me salivate. This time I ran across a flamewar in Marduk’s topic about the Orders of Precedence, and whether Mephistopheles ranks Marduk. Well, easy enough to imagine what Marduk thinks about the situation, but there is good reason for Meph to get top billing even if Marduk is another Babylonian, so I spent some time composing a conciliatory post pointing out that really the incident did take place in Meph’s territory and that Marduk shouldn’t take it personally. Marduk is the head of the Treasury of Hell, after all, and if he’s no longer a god he’s got one of the top gigs in the Underworld. Along with Beelzebub, Beliel, Moloch, and Meph, he’s in the next layer of organization directly under Satan Herself. Though Moloch’s specialty isn’t really directly in line politically, he’s mostly included out of courtesy because Satan has been so pleased with his performance.

I like Meph, truth be told. He’s smart and interesting and a lot of fun, to say nothing of being Satan’s second in command. Marduk can be a stuffed-shirt prig, and I don’t dare drop him from my friends list because he’d whine all over Hell about it. But he expects my support because he was a Babylonian deity and I did at one time pay him homage. That was back before I knew the Orders of Precedence of Hell and got to hang with him one on one. Face-to-face, Marduk is a has-been who can’t change with the times. It’s surprising that he’s on MagicMirror at all—I always thought he’d be one of the Luddites who refused to master the tech. And hey, maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he’s impressed one of the newly delivered (and I certainly could supply enough of them myself) to do his setup. Maybe someone’s made him a cuneiform keyboard.

Part of the problem is that since Pride is the greatest sin, most of us minions excel at it. Which means that there are a lot of prickly egos out there on MagicMirror, and it’s very easy to rub someone the wrong way unwittingly. Emoticons just don’t replace the smile and the sarcasm that can take the sting from what might appear to be a personal affront.

Really, it’s not so different from a human business office, except that you can’t quit and everyone has a memory that goes for millennia. And even among the immortals, there are always a few who don’t twig to that and end up making everything much more uncomfortable for the rest of us.

Then I remembered that I hadn’t bothered with the Ben and Jerry’s and I craved at least a taste. After that I had to get dressed to go out and hunt.

I may have the pheromones from Hell, quite literally, but I still dress the part. I don’t have to, really, though the more skin I show the more my succubus scent permeates the area. If I wanted to damp it down I could wear layers of clothing that covered me from head to toe, but Satan doesn’t approve. This is my mission for Her, and while She’s the greatest big sis in the world, I do have a contract with Her.

So I tried on four different outfits, all of them a little short, and finally settled on a silk Prada slipdress that was cream-colored but had a subtle pattern in a metallic purple that hinted of copper in the right light. I had a bag in the same metallic purple that I threw on the bed to make sure I didn’t forget it, and was hesitating between copper sandals and dusky purple stilettos when the intercom rang.

chapter
SIX

I buzzed. “A Nathan Coleman to see you,” Vincent informed me from the lobby.

Oh, damn, not
now,
I thought. The mojo was on. He would fling himself at me and protest and say he was in love, or at least overwhelmingly in lust.

I could, of course, just take him. That would be the easiest thing. I wouldn’t have to go out and I wouldn’t have to make a decision about the shoes. And no one would know but Vincent.

But unlike some guy in a bar who couldn’t be traced to me at all, this Nathan Coleman had come looking for me. More than once. He must have made notes somewhere. Maybe he had told someone.

Maybe I was being paranoid.

No matter. It paid to be paranoid. Remaining untraceable was getting harder all the time, and I needed the cooperation of Hell and the support of Satan’s power to do it. Someone who had been trying to track me down and had my address (almost definitely written down somewhere where a hunky detective like Desi’s new Steve could find it with his eyes closed) was not prime succubus bait. Not when he had come directly here. Not when someone might know where he was.

“I’m going out,” I said into the intercom.

“Too late,” Vincent said. “You said send him up, so I did. Do you want me to get him and bring him back down?”

“I may need help to get him out of here,” I admitted. “I’ve got my mojo on.”

“Wow,” Vince said with admiration. “Maybe I should come up just in case.”

“I’ll call if I need you,” I said and cut off the intercom.

Actually, knowing that Vincent was ready to come and help me out was a great comfort. But I’ve been a succubus for three thousand years and I’ve learned some tricks of my own. I went back to the bedroom, stuffed my bare feet into oversized fuzzy slippers and threw a heavy, full-length terry cloth robe over my tiny dress that covered me up fairly thoroughly. I tossed a towel over my hair, as if I’d just come from the shower. Hair is especially rich in the succubus scent during my power windows, so covering it up would definitely damp down the attraction.

Okay, it wasn’t perfect. He would still find me unbearably desirable. But I’d be able to get rid of him. And if I couldn’t there was always faithful Vincent waiting down in the lobby to play the White Knight of Hell.

The doorbell rang. I looked out the eyehole. In the fish-eye lens it was hard to tell for sure, but he seemed awfully attractive. Pity to have to send him away. I opened the door a crack and kept it on the chain. Not because I was afraid of him—I did plan to invite him in or at least open the door more onto the hall—but because he would expect that. A woman who lives in the city alone does not just open her door to a stranger, not even in a building with a doorman on duty.

“Yes?” I said through the inch-wide gap in the door. I made sure my voice dripped suspicion.

“I’m really sorry to bother you, but I was hoping that you could help me,” he began.

“I’m not buying anything and I’m already a member of the Sierra Club.” I cut him off.

He held up a laminated picture of himself. And yes, he was indeed very handsome. I knew I would do so much worse if I went out. I had a sudden deep urge to throw open the door, throw off the bathrobe, and drag him inside.

Instead I made myself study the card he displayed. It appeared to be a PI’s license, though I didn’t trust anything of the kind. There are plenty of novelty shops that will make up all kinds of realistic-looking credentials for fifty dollars.

“Look, I’m really sorry to come by so late. I sent you an e-mail and I tried to come by earlier, but you weren’t home and you didn’t reply to my e-mail,” he pleaded. “This will only take a minute.”

“Okay,” I said, keeping the door on the chain.

He sighed and handed a paper through the crack. Then he blew his nose loudly and I was flooded with relief. A cold! He had a cold! He might not be entirely immune to my pheromones, but with me covered up as I was and with his cold he wouldn’t fling himself through the door and at my feet. I wasn’t entirely safe, but I was much more in control. No wonder he hadn’t battered the door down already. I had started to worry that I was losing my touch.

I plucked the paper from his fingers. It was a picture of a fairly nondescript man. Cheap haircut, medium sandy hair, mustache, watery blue eyes.

“Look, this won’t take long but it might be easier if you open the door. I’m not going to attack you.”

“I’ll bet that’s what all the serial killers say,” I muttered back. Not because I was worried, but because worry was expected.

He laughed. “Fair enough,” he agreed. “But could you look at this picture and tell me if you’ve seen this man in the past two weeks? He’s disappeared and I’m looking for him.”

I looked at the picture carefully and really, truly, to the depths of my highly mortgaged nonexistent soul, I could not say if I’d ever seen this guy or not. He wasn’t Brad. He wasn’t any of the ones in the last week, I was pretty sure of that. But more? I didn’t remember. And he was so terribly ordinary.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “At least not recently. Why would I have?”

“Your name and address were in his Palm Pilot.”

“What? Was he going to see me? Did it say why? Could you tell me his name? Because really, I don’t recognize him,” I answered perfectly truthfully. And, feeling utterly innocent and completely candid, I slipped the chain off the door and opened it more widely.

This Nathan Coleman was much better-looking in person than in his laminated license picture. Though his nose was red and there were dark circles under his eyes that attested to his current viral state, his wide mouth turned up with wry humor and his eyes were a startling blue that I told myself probably came from colored contact lenses. The dark hair contrasted with his very pale skin, which made his long lashes and straight eyebrows look strong and direct. Dark hair, pale skin, blue eyes—I wondered if he might be black Irish, though his features didn’t look Irish at all.

He blew his nose again, into a monogrammed linen handkerchief. My heart melted. He was wearing an Armani overcoat, but it was the monogrammed hankie that made me go all weak in the knees. Real men do not use Kleenex. The very best use fine Irish linen with woven tone-on-tone stripes around the outer edge, just like Nathan Coleman’s. And the crème de la crème have thick, elegant monograms with all three initials, custom embroidered and not bought twelve to a package with just a cheaply stitched single letter for the last name. No, these had a big
C
in the middle with a stylized
N
and
R
on the sides.

I wondered whether the
R
stood for Robert or Richard, or maybe something a touch less ubiquitous like Ryan or Roger. I almost asked, but that would be nosy and would keep him around too long.

I pretended to study the picture more carefully. “I can’t say that I’ve ever met him,” I said honestly. “I have no idea who he is or why he might have my address. He doesn’t look like he’s in the fashion industry.”

“No,” Nathan agreed immediately with a slight smile. “He’s certainly not in the fashion industry. His name is Craig Branford and he’s a pharmacist from Huntington, Long Island. He was last seen on February tenth boarding an LIRR train for the city. We’re checking out everyone he might have known to try to find him.”

“I’ve never been to Huntington,” I said weakly. “I went out to the Hamptons for a couple of weekends last summer, and for a party in October.”

The entire situation was ridiculous. Here I had been all concerned about someone tracking down a missing man because I’d possibly delivered him, and it turned out to be someone I truly couldn’t recognize. Not that I would have recognized all of the men I’d delivered to Satan, but this would have been in the past two weeks at most. That would include Brad, who had been clean-shaven and nothing like this guy, and someone named Derek, who’d had a shaved head and tattoos and had said that he was a DJ. There had been one more, chubby and balding but with a scraggly ponytail all the same, the week before. But he’d been some kind of computer guy, not a pharmacist. He’d offered to set up automatic wireless syncing between my Treo and my computer, but only after he’d had sex with me. Which meant it never got done and I could really use an automatic sync program. That was my total for the past ten days.