by Jackie May
Finally, I spot Dario’s firm jaw and shaved head in the throng. Naturally, he’s picking his way toward the bar—and not just any place at the bar, but a place in the vicinity of Cecile, the succubus I don’t hate, because at least she cheats fair.
So, interesting thing about foxes: we’re technically like dogs, you know that, but unlike our coyote and wolf counterparts, we foxes actually behave much more like cats. We’re solitary. None of that pack hierarchy and alpha crap. We’re small, we play nice with humans, we’re nocturnal, and even have vertical pupils like cats for night vision. But what’s applicable at the moment, as I track Dario through the suffocating chaos, is how we hunt like cats. Wolves have the advantage of numbers and size and speed—they surround a deer, challenge it, chase it down. Big deal. How hard is that?
But foxes. We use stealth. We stalk, able to track prey even without seeing it, just like I don’t see Dario now. He’s lost in the crowd, but I’m still locked onto his trajectory. I know exactly when and where our paths should converge, and that’s when, without warning…I pounce.
Breaking between a pair of men grinding on each other, I pitch myself forward into the path of Dario, who is right where I calculated he should be, thank you very much. My plan was to bump into him, only he’s slightly more solid than I anticipated, and my body is flung from his pillow pecs as if they were spring-loaded. Reeling back, feet tangled, I ricochet off some lady’s huge chest and hit the floor flat on my back, ankles in the air, with my little black skirt bunched up at my belly. And to answer the question that just popped into your mind: yes, I am, and they’re also black lace to match the dress.
Some idiot bends over me, throws his arms out wide, and calls, “Safe!” Which is the only time ever that I don’t appreciate a baseball reference. However, I do appreciate Dario shoving the guy away and hauling me up with strong hands on each side of my rib cage, effortlessly, as though I’m made of papier-mâché. Gently, he places me on my feet. I’d have attempted to salvage some dignity with a great hair flip, but we’re so close I don’t want to risk whipping him in the face. I allow the next best thing, which is to let him push the mess of red hair away from my cheeks. He looks concerned, until he sees that I’m trying not to laugh.
“So that happened,” he says.
I can hear him just fine over the music, but placing a hand on his bicep, I lean in to him and shout, “What?”
We’re so close, he has nowhere else to put his hand but on my hip. He does it tentatively, a gentleman’s touch. “I said, are you hurt?”
“Oh good, I thought you said ‘nice underwear.’”
He blinks, unsure what to say, which speaks volumes to me about him. He’s not a bad boy, or he’d have immediately smirked and said something like, “Meh, I’ve seen better.” And he’s not a perv, or he’d have gone with a lurid smile and said, “You showed me yours, it’s only fair I show you mine.” But with his blank face, I start to dread that maybe he’s the too-mature, overly serious type, which I can handle, sure, but not as well as other types. Because, like a black lace dress, I only pretend to be serious. Luckily, his mouth quirks into an easy smile. With a shrug, he says innocently, “I didn’t notice.” And his eyes sparkle.
Ohhh, maybe he’s a sweetheart. Awww, I adore sweethearts. We make such good couples. The quiet-but-earnest lover is the perfect foil for my snarky, sarcastic spaz.
I peel myself away from him. “Well, everyone else here has officially seen too much of me tonight, so I think I’ll go.”
“Where’s your friends?”
“Oh.” Fake blush. “I’m not here with anybody.”
He shrugs. “You’re here with me.”
Not so fast. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to keep you from your appointment with Cecile or anything.”
Another blank look. “Cecile?”
“Uh, yeah, she’s the succubus you were just making a hard beeline for when you almost ran me over?” I’m aiming to be hard-ass but can’t pull it off, and my lips pull back into a full, toothy grin. Oh, my word, I’m hopeless. This kind of thing just…even when I’m on the job, I can’t help but thrill with the hunt. Flirting with guys like him, there’s no rush like it. My heart is absolutely hammering.
Meanwhile, Dario’s just been busted, and he knows it. To his credit, his smile only gets wider with a hint of embarrassment. Oh boy, definitely a sweetheart. “Well,” he stammers, palms turned up. “I just…Cecile…”
“Oh, uh, erm, Cecile. Yeah?”
He gives up with a laugh. “Okay, but I didn’t get to Cecile, did I? I got to you.”
Pretty good. I compliment him by volleying with a twinkle in my eye. “That’s one way to put it.”
His brown sugar eyes linger on mine, then drift down to my lips. “Look, let me buy you a…” And he turns to look at the bar, directly at the human hazard, Nora Jacobs, who is making a cute apology face to some lecherous guy as she no doubt deflects yet another come-on. Dario pauses, staring at her.
And…to complete shit goes my house of cards. If he goes over there and talks to her, it’s game over. I’m telling you, she has some kind of aura that ensnares people, something like a succubus, only not, or else we’d be able to feel her power like we can with all underworlders. Something new, I don’t know. But whatever, if you want to know so much about Nora, go read her life story.
“Nah,” I bluff, “I should just go.”
His gaze snaps back to me. “C’mon, one drink, for the bump on your head.”
More like the bump on my pride. Smack in the middle of a total meet-cute, and he’s still drawn to Nora Jacobs like a tractor beam. How does succubus Cecile stand to have Nora so close, stealing all the flies out of her web?
Dario waits patiently at the crowded bar, and when Nora finally raises her eyebrows at him—What’ll it be?—he leans on an elbow, flashes a sweetheart smile, and holds up two fingers with his order. As Nora works quickly, he gabs at her, and she nods a lot, pretending to be interested. So far, so good. I feel like even a slightly warmer reception would have him waiting at the bar with his tongue wagging until her shift is over. He pays for the drinks, takes them in hand, and just as he’s turning away, Nora flashes him a polite smile, the little tramp. And Dario responds immediately. He not only turns his back to me but sets the drinks down on the bar to chat her up some more.
Well, guess what? I often rely on a little mistress called Good Luck, but when, like tonight, she’s being an ice-cold bitch to me, there exists Nick Gorgeous. The Black Beauty. The man who puts the dark between tall and handsome. I recognize his ebony arm as it reaches out from the crowd to give Dario a hardy clap on the back. The gesture is somehow a signal to others, because most people in the vicinity suddenly clear out of Dodge.
In their wake, one man—a faerie—is left behind. His terrified, pale face suggests that he also wants to flee, but he can’t. He’s pinned to the bar by a large knife—Nick Gorgeous’s knife—stuck through his shoulder. His shaking hands grip a paper sign that reads: I touched the human girl.
Dario reads the sign with wide eyes, while Gorgeous, always the life of the party, always the only one wearing a Death metal T-shirt and cowboy boots, laughs and shakes Dario by the shoulders, trying to get him to loosen up.
Oh, I could just kiss Gorgeous right now.
Nora looks embarrassed, the pinned faerie looks like he’s going to throw up, and Gorgeous tells a joke. When Nick laughs at his own punch line, Dario flinches back, snatches our drinks from the bar, and beats a hasty retreat in my direction.
“Rough place, huh?” he notes.
Seeing my opportunity to pounce—that’s what we foxes do, you know—I don’t hesitate to say, “Let’s get outta here.”
He doesn’t object, just like I don’t object to his ruby red Camaro getting us back to his place in six minutes flat. I appreciate that he never once feels the need to apologize for where he lives. Both the neighborhood and the building are not places a girl hopes to be taken after a posh club. Of
course, I know he can probably afford better, that he only lives here to keep a low profile away from cops, but he doesn’t know I know that. It’s nice feeling that he won’t bat an eye to learn that I live out of my Crap-pile.
He lives in an old brick building with a stairwell crisscrossing up the middle of four outside balconies, like a motel. I follow him up to the third floor, our footsteps echoing in the dark stairwell. He’s number 304, which I know to be the only occupied space on this floor. A few ground-level apartments have tenants, and there are two older women living just below him. Otherwise, the building is empty. And the same goes for all the rest of the buildings and homes on this block. Low rent, high vacancy. At least they still have streetlights.
His place is tidy. He hadn’t simply taken out the garbage earlier. The counters are wiped. Vacuum lines are still visible in the carpet. “You didn’t clean up just for me, did you?”
He smiles, revealing dimples. “Naw, for Cecile, remember?”
Okay, I like him. A sweetheart with a hint of sass? Who is this guy?
Heading past the kitchen toward a back room, he says, “Hungry, thirsty? Stuff in the fridge, if you want.”
I hear a light flick on and a door close. I know it’s a bathroom door from the echo of tile inside. I’ve got about thirty seconds. Plenty of time to work. By the smell of rust and metal polish, I know exactly where to go, and it’s not like he’s tried to hide it anyway. In a spare bedroom right off the front area, through a door hanging wide open, I find what amounts to a small fortune in stolen goods. Most of it’s from cars, so he might have been able to pass himself off as simply an auto collector, if not for the boxes of Nutella stacked in the corner. I’m dead serious. Nutella—that chocolate peanut butter crap—is expensive and in high demand online. A staple of career thieves.
Along one wall are wire mesh shelves like the ones all guys have in their garages for power tools and such. These are lined with catalytic converters, shiny rims from various street racers, and even a full-size red, white, and blue light bar off the top of a police cruiser. Ballsy. It’s not like you can just order those online. I can see chipped paint on the mounts, from being ripped right off the roof of a patrol car.
On a bottom shelf are thick plastic buckets covered in sinister warning labels. Chemicals. Powders. And next to these, a backpack full of cell phones. Now see, this could go two ways: meth cooks need chemicals and phones for their drug trade—nothing horrendous. But so do terrorists who want to make bombs.
Either way, Dario likely has no idea what this stuff is destined for. He’s just a “get me” guy, a guy who gets you stuff, anything you need. Just give him a shopping list and get ready to pay with a lot of cash. I’m a “get me” girl myself, only I’m my own client, and I’m usually just trying to get me a hot meal or an odd job. Or, tonight, a peek at a set of custom-made brushed gold aluminum wheels that used to belong on a certain pearl black Ford Mustang. Here they are, stacked neatly by twos. Mission accomplished.
And that might have been that—I’d have been free to enjoy the rest of my evening—except that on the wall behind the shelves, I notice parts of a circular pattern painted in dark red. It’s big, so I back across the room to take in the whole wall. Even with the shelves in the way, I know what it is, and I suddenly know what Dario is, and I know that the dark red paint isn’t paint at all. It’s blood.
A demon sigil. Symbol of fealty to a horde. This sigil looks like East Side, but I’m no expert in demons. Nobody is, that I know of, because mostly we can’t stand the bastards. With the exception of enchantrics—succubi and incubi—most demons are nothing but trouble for the underworld, living only for death and destruction, mayhem and vice. I suppose I should be scared of Dario now, but all I can manage is disappointment. A demon with dimples? That really is evil.
He emerges from the bathroom with his shirt unbuttoned and some amazing scent obviously designed to rev my engines. An incubus aura? No, just a lotion. He’s still rubbing it into his hands and wrists. When he lights a candle in the kitchen, I look around, wondering if the lights were this dim when we entered. My heart sighs, but my head, clear and focused, doesn’t hesitate to punch my heart in the face and take charge. I need to leave. Too risky to stay, when I could find out too late that he’s a warmonger, or a sadist, or worse, a rotter, which feeds on death. I don’t want to be dead or food in the morning, and definitely not both.
I gesture to the bathroom, where I know from my surveillance that there’s a window to the fire escape. “Do you mind if I…?”
He looks at me, and I can tell he’s picked up on something different in my voice, or my face, or my posture—I don’t know, pick one. I’ve stared down poker champs with an entire year’s pay on the table and less than a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Where’s that steely nerve now?
“Sure, go on,” he says, jamming his hands in his pockets like an insecure teenager. He watches me edge past him, then adds in a gentle voice, “There’s a window in there. Out to the fire escape.” And along with that get out of jail free card, he gives me a wan smile.
So he knows that I know. Time to throw our cards down on the table. “Incubus?” I ask hopefully.
He gives a regretful little shake of his head. His expression is so Mona Lisa I can’t tell if he’s wistful and resigned, or if he’s a predator congratulating himself for a rare, magnanimous gesture, like a cat who wonders if he’s lost his edge for not eating the cute little canary.
Well, go on, girl, you heard the man. I slip into the bathroom, shut and lock the door, and flush the toilet to mask the sound of the window opening, even though he knows exactly what I’m doing. It’s when I’m backing out onto the fire escape that I see the bottle of lotion he used, a scent called Lovers Gonna Love, and it occurs to me…
Oh.
I climb back inside and open the cupboard under the sink to find rows and rows of bottles of Lovers Gonna Love. And next to those, rows and rows of sensual oils, flavored lubes, sexy soaps, erotic bath salts—enough for lovers who gonna love, like, for a full year straight.
Oh!
He’s a glutton. Contrary to human lore, gluttons aren’t just people obsessed with eating. They’re demons who have developed an insatiable appetite for any particular human pleasure, be it food or money or power, or, as in Dario’s case…sex. Gluttons are the very lowest on the demon hierarchy. Without any powers of their own, they don’t even feed off of energy. They simply enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, same as the rest of us. Completely harmless. Well, unless you get a glutton for murder, but I don’t see any lotions here called Killers Gonna Kill, do I?
Well, hey, you win some, you lose some, and sometimes you’re about to quit when the house suddenly deals you an ace. So you go for it. Tomorrow is different. Tomorrow I have to break in and steal back those brushed gold rims. But tonight?
Pulling the black straps from my shoulders, I let the dress drop around my ankles, and I exit the bathroom in—spoiler alert—black lace panties. Dario’s still there, leaning against the wall. His smile could melt some hearts, but my heart catches fire.
“Good,” he says, placing his hands at my rib cage and lifting me up. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to say ever since I first laid eyes on you.”
I wrap my long legs around his torso, lock my hands behind his neck, and bow my head over his, letting my hair drape our faces like a veil. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Whispering now, our noses touching. His hands slide beneath black lace. “Nice underwear.”
Yeah, so…we have sex for this entire chapter, but I’m not going to write it all out, because 1) then I’d have to put a shirtless guy on the cover, and 2) this chapter would be, like, a hundred pages long.
The problem with driving a Pontiac Crap-pile is that its particular make and model is among the most popular for street racing. So I’m stopped at a red light downtown along the Detroit River waterfront, and the Porsche next to me is just sure I’m a sleeper, meaning a total speed demon o
nly posing as a crap-pile with unpainted doors and no hubcaps. The Porsche’s engine howls to life, begging me to race. Its chassis quakes with anticipation.
On my dash, an Ardee Todd bobblehead doll seems impressed by the challenge. He grins, nodding his head eagerly above a tiny body in a Detroit Tigers uniform.
“Yeah?” I say to him. “You think I can take him?”
Nodding, yes.
“You just like fast girls.”
Yesssssss.
“That’s fine, but we both know you’re in love with only me.”
Oh, for sure, he nods.
That’s when I break it to him: “Even though I can’t watch you pitch tonight.”
He still nods, but his smile seems fake now. A worried grin.
“I know, I just…I have a thing tonight. With a guy. At a place.”
His nodding is way too eager now. Forced. The sarcastic ass.
“No, I’m not telling you his name. You always do this. You always get like this. You smile and nod and pretend everything’s fine, but really you want to break his nose.” Now he just nods to mock me, so I turn away. After a pause, I begrudgingly add, “Whatever, like you even have to worry. It’s not like this other guy’s ever pitched his way out of bases loaded in the ninth inning of the All-Star Game.”
He immediately breaks into a cocky nod. Aw yeah, girl, you know it! Too easy.
The light turns green. The Porsche rockets away with screeching tires as my Crap-pile barely manages a crawl through the intersection. When the Porsche suddenly fishtails across the road into a parking lot, it dawns on me who is driving. I speed up to catch him. We park in neighboring spots in front of a conspicuous brick building. A tiny sign says PAXTON SHIPPING.