Son of a Succubus Series Collection

by Dorie, Sarina

  * * *

  Gertrude dressed Lucifer in attire she found in the school’s lost and found. Magical creatures came in all shapes and sizes, but the limited selection from the lost and found were all either too big or too small. Lucifer settled on a school uniform a smidge too snug in the crotch and a shirt so loose he might have been accused of being a poet in another decade. He would have worn one of the girl’s pleated skirts as a kilt, but Gertrude wouldn’t let him.

  She wagged a finger at him. “The more unusually you dress, the more you’ll stand out.”

  He squirmed in the gray pants. “I bet a skirt is more comfortable.” He couldn’t remember whether he’d always hated human clothes. They were as confining as a flea collar.

  Still, he supposed she was right about not wanting to stand out. Abigail had always done her best to appear as a normal human in the Morty Realm. He forced himself not to lick his hand and swipe it against his unruly hair as he would have as a cat.

  Trying on clothes and preparing for the journey seemed to take forever. Lucifer was anxious to go to Abigail’s home in the Morty Realm before he turned back into a cat. He didn’t know how long he had this time. There were things he needed from her house, like the alphabet board in case he returned to being a cat and needed to communicate with Gertrude.

  More importantly, he wanted to go to her home and be reassured by the familiar presence of her furnishings that things would be normal once again. Once he rescued her and brought her home, he wanted everything to be perfect for her. He didn’t want her to come home to a refrigerator full of moldy food and plants that were dead because they hadn’t been watered.

  At dusk, Gertrude used a portal spell to transport herself and Lucifer to the Morty Realm so that their presence would be less likely to be noticed. It was a different kind of magic than he was used to. Not that he was used to much. She held an open library book in one hand, her wand in the other, and she read out loud from Pride and Prejudice. Gertrude said she had selected this book because she knew Abigail had a copy in her house. He held on to her elbow as she had instructed, but once the words of her magic tingled over his skin, he circled an arm around her waist, feeling as if he might be blown away from her. Words from the book wavered in front of him, dancing in the air and caressing his skin. He couldn’t tell whether he liked the magic or not.

  A few seconds later, Gertrude’s room vanished, and they stood in someone’s house. It took Lucifer a moment to realize it was Abby’s house, but it didn’t resemble the place he considered home. All her plants were gone, and boxes and giant garbage bags were piled in the living room. His footsteps thudded through the house, the echo hollow in the emptiness. He didn’t like the odor of bleach and other chemicals Abigail avoided.

  “We should look for some clothes that might fit you better than these,” Gertrude said. “Do you think Abigail has any male clothes around her house?”

  Lucifer didn’t answer. He strode through the house, noticing the framed photos of family was missing from the walls. There wasn’t any food in the refrigerator or freezer. He had hoped to at least taste one of her biscuits once again.

  Someone had cleaned the house of everything that made it Abigail.

  “Someone has been in my Abby’s house and is throwing away all her treasures.” Lucifer’s voice came out a growl.

  She’d taken years to grow those orchids.

  Gertrude remained paces behind him.

  He removed photos of Abigail’s family from a box.

  He stomped from room to room, his temper building as he noticed more of her missing from this house. Her environmentally friendly car was gone from the garage. Where the car should have been, the missing potted plants were stacked up in a heap. Those prized orchids she adored so much were shriveled and dead.

  He couldn’t imagine who would do this to Abigail. Not Clarissa surely. If it had been her, she would have taken greater care of her adopted mother’s plants.

  He turned to Gertrude. “Who did this? Was it Felix?”

  It seemed like Felix to give up on someone before he knew they were dead, to try to remove all traces of their existence.

  “I imagine it might have been a Realtor.” Her voice was quiet. “There’s a sign out front that says the house is for sale.”

  The potted philodendron was surprisingly alive among the graveyard of flowers. He removed that plant from the heap and hugged it to his chest before moving on to the boxes. He dug out her favorite books and movies. In her bedroom, he found her family photo album and her favorite jacket, apron, and sweaters. He heaped Abigail’s favorite things into Gertrude’s arms.

  The alphabet board was still under the bed, unnoticed. He tucked it under his arm and searched for Abigail’s special shoebox of magic items. She’d saved a spell and some good luck charms along the years and hidden them from her husband and children. He couldn’t find it in the closet or the boxes. He was about to start in the garbage bags full of treasures the Morties had deemed uninteresting when his skin started to prickle. Cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck. At first he thought it was a symptom of his anger.

  After the nausea rose in him and the lance of fire began in his limbs, he realized what was happening. He rushed past Gertrude, nearly bowling her over on his way to the restroom to vomit into the toilet. She held his hair back from the bowl as he expelled his earlier dinner.

  “It’s all a little too much for you, isn’t it, pet?” She stroked his back. “It’s terribly romantic how devoted you are to her.”

  His voice was a rasp. “I’m changing back.”

  She frowned. “It didn’t last very long this time. I suppose that means we didn’t have enough sex.” Her brows raised with hope. “We can try again later.”

  Disappointment weighed heavy on his heart. It was difficult to say which pained him worse, fighting the change or his helplessness to solve his problems. “I need to be a man so I can rescue Abby.”

  Gertrude rested her hand on top of his head, her eyes mournful. “I’m afraid no one can rescue Abigail. She’s with the Raven Queen.”

  It was torment enough returning to a cat. Hearing those words added another burden to his soul.

  * * *

  Lucifer spent the next several months refueling his magic. As a cat, he came and went as he pleased, hunting or sneakily visiting Imani and other students who were kind enough to pet him—and avoided the students who were the most likely to set his tail on fire.

  He was pleased to see Imani had returned from summer vacation unscathed after leaving school with her Fae guardian. She appeared just as cheerful and happy as she had been when the school year ended. Lucifer grudgingly acknowledged Prince Elric probably hadn’t done anything unscrupulous. As wicked as Vega Bloodmire could be, if she truly was engaged to Elric, it was possible she wouldn’t allow him to do anything to her students.

  When Lucifer wasn’t cuddled up with teenage girls who passed him around to be fussed over, he wandered through secret passages and went hunting in the forest.

  Fueling his affinity wasn’t his only mission. Being disguised as a cat enabled him to spy on students and staff and eavesdrop on conversations he wouldn’t otherwise have been privy to.

  “Did you know Vega and Prince Elric got married over the summer?” Imani asked her friends.

  “Oh barf!” Greenie said. “I bet she’s going to make us start calling her Princess Vega now.”

  Maddy elbowed her. “You be nice. Ms. Bloodmire is a good person. She wouldn’t be helping me fulfill my bargain with the Fae if she wasn’t.”

  Lucifer didn’t know what this supposed bargain was, but he knew Vega Bloodmire did nothing that didn’t benefit her in some way. Her generosity wasn’t free.

  Occasionally they spoke about Clarissa Lawrence in hushed tones, though they said little more than that she was ill. Lucifer spent hours composing a note to Imani, asking her what had happened to Clarissa and whether she knew where Abigail was, bu
t when he brought her the notes, she was too concerned over the book he had torn the paper from—using magic to erase his ink splattered attempt and mending it into her textbook before she could read it.

  His second attempt she only squinted at and tried to read. Apparently, using his claw as a quill was a skill that had worsened since the time he’d written his note to Gertrude the year before. He worried his soul was turning feral, and he couldn’t even communicate as a human anymore.

  “Is this important?” Imani asked him.

  “Meow,” he said and nodded his head.

  She scratched him behind the ears. “I’ll take it to Mr. Thatch. He’ll help me read it.”

  He snatched the note out of her hands and shredded it. No way was he involving that traitor brother in his affairs.

  He avoided his brother when he saw him skulking around the school. Felix was as gloomy as always.

  No, it wasn’t his usual gloom. It was worse than usual. Clarissa wasn’t with him. She wasn’t teaching at the school at all. She hadn’t returned at the end of the school year with him. Lucifer had assumed he knew what that meant, but he didn’t want to think about it.

  One of Clarissa’s former troublemaker students was in the art classroom, Hailey Achilles, teaching Clarissa’s lessons—albeit poorly. Hailey had been to Abigail’s house several times during winter holidays. She didn’t seem old enough to teach a class, nor had he ever thought of her as an artist—not like Imani and Greenie.

  Felix constantly checked on Hailey and gave her pointers on teaching, most of which she ignored.

  Lucifer hoped his brother wasn’t trying to groom her like a sexual predator might do. He couldn’t help wondering whether that was how his relationship had started with Clarissa. Lucifer snuck into the art classroom at night. Because his claw writing was apparently illegible, he used the magazines and glue sticks to compose a note to her. It took hours to collage a message to be wary of handsome older men who befriended young women. Several times he lost focus and chased spiders across the classroom before he remembered his mission to warn Hailey.

  His spelling was hardly intelligible, but he thought it was an improvement to Hailey’s handwriting on the chalkboard. He even signed the message with his name so she would know it came from him.

  If Hailey found the note, she ignored it.

  Clarissa was Abigail’s adopted daughter, therefore she was Lucifer’s charge. If she had gone to the Raven Queen to rescue her mother, what exactly had happened to her? Was she dead? A prisoner? Vega Bloodmire also was absent from the school this year.

  That didn’t bode well.

  Lucifer tried to be optimistic. Perhaps Clarissa had simply realized how loathsome his brother was and had left him over the summer. Vega Bloodmire had married a rich noble. He assumed this was Prince Elric. She might not even be a teacher anymore.

  He wanted to ask Gertrude, but his attention was stolen when her fingers stroked his fur each time he was with her. It was difficult to focus on anything other than being a cat when she petted him. He didn’t like that her magic made him forget how much he missed Abigail.

  Eventually Lucifer had stored up enough magic that when Gertrude changed into a cat during the full moon and they mated, he was able to turn back into a man afterward. The first words he said to her were, “I need to stay like this so I can help Abby.”

  She showed him then what had happened to his Abigail.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Seeing the Forest for the Tree Nymphs

  Gertrude Periwinkle’s technique for divining the present wasn’t the same as Clarissa’s, but her magic was no less impressive.

  Gertrude was a Celestor and a skilled one at that. She took Lucifer to the roof of the school, where she could be closer to the stars, and fueled herself with their magic to power her abilities of divination. He was surprised she would dress down to her undergarments at a school for at-risk youth, but her knee-length knickers and chemise were probably less scandalous than what humans wore in the Morty Realm with their modern sensibilities.

  Lucifer watched in awe as she drew down starlight and absorbed it into her skin. The air tasted buttery and bright, and she glowed with the power of the cosmos. As she seated herself across from him and poured water into a puddle between them, she conjured an image of Abigail through a combination of clairvoyance and divination.

  He stared into the puddle, examining the gloomy landscape of shadowy trees shown in the vision. The twisting towers of an ominous castle rose out of the forest in the distance. He supposed this was the Raven Queen’s castle. The spindly branches of trees emerged out of pockets of mist as Gertrude’s scrying technique panned through the trees. He expected the scene would shift to the dungeon or someplace in the castle where Abigail was being held, but it didn’t. The vision scanned through the trees.

  Gertrude’s forehead crinkled. She held her hands over the puddle, starlight drifting from her fingertips into the vision, but it didn’t change to the interior of the castle. The perspective only panned around a particular set of trees. Most of them were barren, as though at rest in a winter slumber, but one still had some leaves on it.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s working,” Gertrude said.

  Lucifer squinted at the tree with oak leaves. “Can you focus on that tree?”

  Gertrude pulled at threads of magic and reeled in the image as though it were nothing more than a photograph on the end of a string. Lucifer inhaled the scent of decaying leaves and wet earth from the forest floor. This tree smelled of oak pitch and spring. The air around it tasted of Abigail’s magic.

  “Is that . . . ?” Gertrude bit her lip.

  His voice came out a rasp. “This is impossible.”

  “Magic is at work with that tree, an Amni Plandai affinity.” She carefully avoided saying it was Abigail, as if afraid of what that could mean.

  It had been years since Abigail had changed into a tree. She’d had full command of her powers then, back before Lucifer’s electrical affinity had accidentally drained her. Yet in recent years her magic had slowly returned—in part due to his influence. The same Red affinity that could disable other Witchkin’s magic when actively used—and in large doses—could also draw out the magic of Fae and Witchkin in small quantities.

  If Abigail’s Amni Plandai magic had been drawn out—by a Red affinity more skilled and powerful than Lucifer—it was possible she might have regained enough of her powers to transform herself. Clarissa might have aided her. Or perhaps Lucifer’s brother, Felix.

  Tears filled his eyes. “She’s safe. She’s a tree.” She wasn’t locked away and being tortured in a dungeon. She had found a way to keep herself from the Raven Queen’s clutches.

  From the way Gertrude shook her head, it was obvious she didn’t understand what a blessing this was. “Have you ever seen the painting Primavera by Botticelli? This is like Chloris trying to escape from Zephyrus.”

  “I don’t know art history,” he said. That was Clarissa’s specialty.

  “Doesn’t it worry you what might make her desperate enough to do this?” Gertrude asked.

  He didn’t have to wonder. He knew. He’d seen it in Clarissa’s visions. This was so much better.

  Abigail had always told him how peaceful she’d felt when she’d turned into a tree. She’d never been able to transform this completely, but even in the half-leshi tree-nymph state she’d been able to reach as a Witchkin rather than a pureblooded Fae, she’d been able to restore all injuries. It had brought serenity to her mind as a meditation might do for someone else.

  He leaned in closer. “It looks so clear, I feel like I could step right through to the other side.”

  “Don’t,” Gertrude said sternly. “This isn’t a portal.” She let her fingers touch the surface, the water rippling, and the vision wavering.

  “Can you turn it into a portal?” he asked hopefully.

  She placed her hand on his, her eyes full of pity. “Wha
t would you do if you could get to the other side, pet?”

  “I would go to her.” He could comfort Abigail, let her know he was there for her and that he hadn’t forgotten about her.

  Gertrude frowned. “And then what?”

  He bristled. The impertinence in her tone made his fingers want to curl into claws. “I’d help her turn back into a human.”

  “How?”

  He straightened, his spine rigid with the anticipation of an attack, though Gertrude made no movement indicating she intended to do so. Her expression held no malice, only concern.

  He kept his voice even, lest he give away the raw fury fighting to get out of him. “I was always good at helping Abby return to being human before—back when she had magic.” He couldn’t see why it would be different now. He’d been able to help her remember her humanity when she’d wanted to stay as a tree.

  Gertrude’s blue eyes were full of pity. “You think she’s going to turn back to being human just like that? With you just going up to her and snapping your fingers and telling her to change back before guards from the Raven Court detect a trespasser? They’ll imprison you. Or worse yet, they’ll enslave you and torture you so they can use you for your magic.”

  He fought the urge to lick his hand and smooth it against his face. “Maybe I’ll go to the Raven Queen and strike a bargain with her. I’ll offer her my services in exchange for freeing Abigail.”

  Gertrude rolled her eyes. “How old are you? Twelve? That’s the most idiotic plan I’ve ever heard.”

  He pretended he hadn’t heard and stared at the textured bark of the tree in the divination. He couldn’t see anything of Abigail’s face in the lined surface, but it was so obviously her.

  “Do you understand why Abigail being a tree is so dangerous?” she asked. “She’s completely vulnerable in that state. If you march in there and strike up a deal to try to free her, the Raven Queen will twist that bargain to her advantage—and make a slave out of you in the process.”