Succubus Takes Manhattan

by Nina Harper

  Which was a mistake. Twenty new messages, and none of them were spam. From Meph, from Marten, from Nathan, from Sybil and Desi and Eros. From everyone except Satan Herself, thank goodness. E-mail from Satan is always really bad news.

  Even then it was not too late. I could have turned off the computer and gone into the office and thought about beautiful clothes. There were probably new bags and scarves and belts to catalog and coordinate for different editors, there were interns to provide with gossip, and maybe Danielle would even have some shoes to hand off.

  But I’m an idiot, so I opened the first one. And all of my resolve and good mood was immediately destroyed.

  chapter

  TWENTY-TWO

  All the e-mails said the same thing, basically. Where had I hidden Raven? Had I kidnapped her when I crashed the Burning Men’s circle? Didn’t I know she was wearing a wire, in magical terms, so they could find her and the kidnappers? Why had I disrupted their carefully laid plan with my idiot amateur attempts at a rescue? The fact that no one had ever told me the plan was ludicrous.

  Meph, at least, was restrained. Marten wanted to know how I’d done it, after he’d made a talisman tracer so that they could follow her and had it flown up specially to New York from Orangestad. Eros said that I should have trusted everyone else and I never believed that anyone else could take care of things. Sybil said I was a doll for trying so hard, but clearly I had been overtired. Desi asked where I thought Raven might be.

  The truth was, I had no idea where Raven was.

  But since everyone thought I’d messed up, why was it my job to try to save Raven?

  And where in Hell was the girl, anyway?

  I couldn’t think. I couldn’t focus. I managed to get to the office, and given how much I’d done the day before I could handle most of what I needed on autopilot.

  Which was a very good thing because my brain was definitely elsewhere.

  Where was I going to find Raven? And how? I didn’t know if the shirt connection would work again. I wished I could call Marten in Aruba and ask him.

  Maybe I could, I thought. I had his cell number somewhere, but I would have to wait until a decent hour. It was still early for a party animal.

  Then the phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. Nathan.

  How did he even know I was awake?

  The phone did not stop ringing. Why didn’t it roll over to voice mail already? And then voice mail picked up and there was silence. For two minutes. Until my cell phone started ringing.

  There was no way around it, I was going to have to talk to someone sometime. I picked up the cell phone and answered brusquely.

  “I found them!” Nathan said triumphantly even before I could ask what he was doing, calling me at eight in the morning.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wary.

  “I mean I traced the owner of the apartment like I said I was going to. And I discovered that the title is in the name of one Steven Balducci. Ring any bells? And that’s not the only property he owns.”

  The name was familiar. I thought for a moment. “Not that cop who dumped Desi because he’s in with Branford?” That felt like years ago, but it had only been two months since Desi had met a very cute cop while we were all at brunch. And he’d dumped her in Brooklyn in the middle of their first date when Craig Branford told him she was Hellspawn.

  A cop who owned an apartment that large right on Gramercy Park? That seemed a little odd. Unless it belonged to his famous, wealthy uncle. But I couldn’t see how it fit.

  And I couldn’t be the one to ask. Not right now, not when Desi was furious with me. So I told Nathan to call Desi and see what she knew. She must have learned more about him on that date they had than she had told us. And she would have figured out if he was rich. Desi is good that way.

  “And wait a minute,” I said, cutting Nathan off before he could say good-bye. “Can you find out if he’s a cop?”

  “Why?” Nathan asked.

  “Because there was a guy who dated Desi whose name was Steve Balducci but he was a cop. Or he said he was a cop. But cops don’t live in apartments like that, so either it’s a different guy or he isn’t a cop.”

  “Or he is a cop for other reasons,” Nathan sounded huffy and defensive. “He wouldn’t be the first guy with some family money to join the force.”

  Right. And Nathan wasn’t the only almost Ph.D. in Near Eastern History who was playing PI while he figured out what to do with his life.

  “But still, can you find out?” I asked, suddenly interested. What if the guy had lied to Desi?

  “I can find that out,” Nathan said. “Do you want to have lunch today? We can go over what I’ve found and then figure out how to approach the others.”

  “I can’t. I have to work. I’m already in trouble for all the time I’ve taken off and I have got to actually get things caught up. Because if we don’t have an Accessories page in the July issue then I’m going to lose my job.”

  “Dinner? I can bring some takeout.”

  The guy was persistent, I had to give him that. “Okay, dinner,” I agreed. “I want egg rolls and Crispy Chicken.”

  “How about Benny’s?” he suggested. “I could really use a burrito.”

  “Hmmm, a burrito sounds good. I haven’t been to Benny’s in ages,” I said, suddenly wondering if the last time I hit my favorite burrito place it had been when I’d run into Nathan. It brought back memories of how much fun he was during that dinner and how much we had in common.

  “Get me a steak burrito with extra guac and cilantro,” I reeled off my favorite without thinking. “And chips. Get extra chips and salsa and a side of guac. Or maybe two.”

  What can I say? I love guacamole and I’d only discovered it in the last twenty years.

  “You’re on,” Nathan agreed and I could almost hear the smile in his voice.

  For some reason his call put me in a better mood. Maybe because we were making some actual headway with this thing. Maybe because I didn’t have to worry about dinner. Maybe because I was not going to think about this mess for the next eight hours. I was going to pay attention to doing my job. For once.

  I had lunch with Danielle at the deli around the corner, where we indulged in fatty corned beef and French fries and chocolate shakes, the old-fashioned kind where they put the leftovers in a second cup and give you both.

  One of the great benefits of the deli was that no one from Trend would go there.

  “What’s up?” I asked innocently as both of us scanned the room to make sure that none of the interns or graphics people had come down for chicken soup.

  “I have not seen Lawrence for days,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you think he has left Trend?”

  “I can hope,” I said fervently.

  The waitress arrived with our food, a sandwich that could feed a small village in Africa, a pile of fries that could induce altitude sickness, and two gloriously thick chocolate milk shakes made with U-Bet syrup and tasting like nothing else on earth. For a full ten minutes we savored one of New York’s great local cuisines, reveling in the crisp fries and the salty deli meat on real rye bread with a hard crust. We held the shakes for last, for dessert, for pure sinful indulgence.

  I wondered idly as I ate whether Meph, foodie that he is, had ever had a chocolate shake made with U-Bet. He generally specializes in gluttony with gourmet food, the very finest restaurants with crisp tablecloths and silent waiters who refill the glasses just as they get within two swallows of empty.

  “What are you fantasizing?” Danielle asked sharply, breaking into my reverie. “Is it about those men you are dating?”

  I shook my head slowly and smiled. “No. I was wondering if my gourmet uncle had ever had a milk shake in his life. And if he hasn’t, I should take him here sometime. He never goes to places like this.”

  “I didn’t know you had family in New York.”

  I shrugged. “He doesn’t live here, he just comes in on business sometimes. So what do you think
is up with Lawrence?” I distracted her easily.

  “I do not know,” Danielle admitted. “No one knows anything. This is very mysterious, is it not? Do you think we should try to discover what has become of him? Something terrible could have happened to him. He has no family here.”

  And then the demon part of me just exploded. “No,” I told her. “We hate Lawrence, remember? And if he doesn’t have anyone looking for him if he really is missing, then that’s his fault. He hates Americans, he says so all the time. He trashed my office, remember that? And have I just become the finder of missing people? Is that my new job title?”

  “What do you mean? Who else is missing?” she asked with some confusion.

  “My doorman,” I said hotly. “He was kidnapped, but now he’s back.”

  Danielle rolled her eyes. “I did not know that you had to find your doorman. He is your . . . doorman. And who would kidnap a doorman? Surely he had no money. Unless—is he the member of a powerful family, incognito, posing as a doorman for some reason? Perhaps he is with the CIA and is staking out the place because there were threats of terrorists. Lily, do you have a terrorist living in your building? On the Upper East Side? That is insupportable.”

  That’s what I love about Danielle. She can take a few facts and weave them into a story that would run John Grisham around the block. “Danielle, that sounds like a plot for an international thriller. Sounds like half the best-seller list.”

  I thought she would laugh or shake her head gravely. Instead she went white. “I have told nobody! I keep it a secret and even my boyfriend, even my mother does not know. Lily, how do you know?”

  “Know what?” I asked. “I mean, that’s an amazing story you made up about my doorman. Who isn’t from a powerful family and isn’t in the CIA and isn’t a terrorist. So I was just saying that you have a great imagination! You should write a novel.”

  “I have written novels,” she admitted. “Six of them.”

  “You’ve written six novels?” I squealed. “Are they published? Why are you still a shoe editor?”

  Danielle flapped her hands in what appeared to be despair. “They are published, yes, but the money is not so good. Not enough to live in New York, at least. And—where would I get new Manolos and Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutins if I were not a shoe editor?” she asked very reasonably. “I could not afford to buy all of them retail.” We both shuddered delicately. I could afford it and I still didn’t like to contemplate the collateral stuck in the back of my closet.

  “But tell me about these six books,” I said, fascinated. “Do you write under your own name? What kind of books are they, and are there great shoes in them?”

  “Of course there are great shoes, and beautiful clothes,” Danielle said. “They are romantic thrillers, about CIA or sometimes the FBI, and mostly they are about American women on holiday in Paris who fall in love with wonderful Frenchmen, and then there is international intrigue with terrorists and crime families. You will not tell anyone? I don’t write under my own name. I think everyone will laugh at me,” she admitted.

  “Why would anyone laugh at someone who has published six novels?” I asked. “I think we should go out sometime and celebrate your next book. You should be proud of them.”

  “But really it’s not something I want people to know,” she said modestly.

  I just stared at her. The things you don’t know about people. I had worked with her for four years; she’d been my best friend at work all that time and I’d had no idea.

  “What else haven’t you told me?” I asked, half joking. “Are you also an agent for Interpol, or maybe in line for the Russian throne?”

  The waitress chose that moment to start clearing our dishes rather loudly. “Can I get you ladies anything else? Dessert? Coffee?” When we shook our heads, she slammed the check onto the table and stood over us as we fished for the money.

  Danielle and I returned to the office chatting about nothing, pretending that nothing had been said and everything was normal.

  Nothing was normal. I closed my office door and sat behind my desk but I couldn’t even see the purses I’d lined up before lunch. I had intended to assign them for various shoots and I was even fairly certain of a few. I tagged those mechanically as I thought about Vincent and Raven and Marten and even Lawrence. Everything was a mess; nothing made sense. And yet I had this feeling that there was something much bigger going on, something that was just out of reach. It was like seeing something out of the corner of my eye, a flash of movement where I couldn’t actually see the culprit.

  My hands had worked while my brain had been involved in other things, and suddenly the bags were all gone, in various boxes, and I didn’t even remember which I’d assigned to which article.

  I wanted to call Desi. I wanted to talk to her about Steve. But more, I wanted to just talk to my friends again. I wanted them to tell me that it was okay and I was okay, and I could ask them about why this was all happening. Why had they kidnapped Vincent? Why had they wanted me? I had managed to shove those thoughts aside for a while but they kept intruding as I contemplated the new twists. I really needed to talk to one of my girlfriends, one who was a demon who knew about Hell and Vincent and the Burning Men. Much as Danielle was a real friend at work, there was too much else about my life she didn’t know.

  Then the phone rang, and it was Desi on the line.

  “Lily?” she said hesitantly. “Look, I just talked to Nathan about Steve and he told me about the two of you trying to rescue Raven. That was really brave of you and I wish I’d been able to help. But what happened?”

  “I did the whole ritual right, I know I did. I was in that room and she was gone. Just gone, like she’d been snatched magically. Through a salt triangle, too, which is how I got trapped,” I told Desi.

  There was some dead air on the phone before Desi continued. “When I heard about what you had done I was afraid for you. And I know that Eros and Meph were too. I think they were more angry that you had put yourself in danger than anything else. We were scared, Lily.”

  “I was scared too,” I told her. “We need to get together, all four of us. And Meph too, at some point. But we’ve all got to work on this and make a plan, not just react to what the Burning Men do.”

  “Meet me at Public,” she said. “After work. We’ll all meet at the bar and have a drink before it’s time for strategy.”

  “Nathan is coming over with dinner,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t want her to think that Nathan was more important in the scheme of the universe than she was. But he was also the prior commitment.

  She thought for a moment. “We probably want to know whatever Nathan’s discovered,” she said finally. I considered the options. “How about this? I call you when Nathan leaves. I don’t think he’ll be long, things are kind of uncomfortable between us. So I’ll call and then you and Sybil and Eros can come over and we can have ice cream and plot.”

  Desi laughed, not the somber or forced laugh but one that was light and musical with pleasure. “A pajama party! We haven’t had a pajama party in ages. I wonder if we could make s’mores?”

  Yes. A pajama party. To remember that we were all stronger together than any of us was alone. And to also remember that we needed one another. Danielle was my friend, but she was mortal. We demon women have to stick together.

  chapter

  TWENTY-THREE

  When I got off the phone I wondered how bad my apartment looked. I couldn’t remember how I’d left it, if I’d cleared the dirty dishes off the coffee table, if I’d left a pile of laundry in the back hall, if I’d hung the towels up in the bathroom. I didn’t worry so much about Nathan seeing it—he was my ex and my employee. More important, he’s male and somehow men do not see dirt. Clutter, yes, they notice clutter, but they don’t really track on dirt.

  Women do. I knew I would want to at least vacuum before the women arrived, and time was going to be very tight.

  I concentrated on work for the next three ho
urs, and when I go into overdrive I can be very productive. I needed to be very productive because I was in for a long evening and I didn’t know how late I would show up tomorrow.

  No one makes provision in regular jobs for time off for magical emergencies. Women even have trouble getting time off to take care of sick children, let alone have severe metaphysical crises. And there was no way I could explain any of it at work. The only thing I could do was make sure that I was as prepared as possible.

  In three hours I managed to sort and arrange accessories for every shoot on the schedule for the next two weeks. I was a whirlwind of efficiency, so I was able to hop a cab by six with enough work done that, should I need to, I could sleep tomorrow away on the office sofa and no one would notice.

  So I managed to get home by six thirty and Vincent didn’t start until seven. Roger, the doorman on the day shift, helped me with my portfolio, my bag and my mail. Which, I was glad to see, consisted only of junk mail and catalogs. Nothing in that stack could be sabotage from Branford and his coterie.

  I stepped out of my olive stilettos as soon as I hit the door. Threw the purse and the portfolio on the coffee table and grabbed the vacuum out of the front hall closet. In ten minutes I’d managed to get the worst off the rug and the dust bunnies out from under the sofa. Given that my cleaning lady wasn’t due until Thursday, the place was pretty presentable.

  I had just stowed the vacuum, picked up my shoes, and wondered whether I should change out of my plaid Prada suit when the intercom rang. I told Roger that Nathan was welcome to come up, and he must have stepped directly onto the elevator because he rang my bell not a minute later.

  I could smell the Benny’s from behind the closed door, so I opened up to see him with a large bag of food in one hand and a bulging briefcase slung over his shoulder.

  “Did you look?” he asked without even a greeting. “Did you know who it was? You live in this city, you should know that you never ever open the door without checking who’s there.”