Succubus Takes Manhattan

by Nina Harper

  Sybil nodded. “This plot is a lot more complex than we had thought. Someone is attacking Meph and his allies from several directions at once, and Satan doesn’t know about it.”

  “That’s been our work on the investigation while you’ve been running off to pretty boys in Paradise,” Eros added, smiling indulgently. “I’ve pulled a few strings to get Security interested. We had Vincent describe everything he remembered about the kidnapping, and what we think is that it took a ceremonial magician with experience with demons to control him. I’m fairly certain that he was confined in a magic triangle and placed under obligation not to harm any of his captors. Did you ask that magician of yours anything else? You should. He’s the only magician we know of who could do that.”

  “No,” I protested. “Marten is on our side. He’s been working with Meph for years. He wouldn’t hurt us. Or me.”

  “But he might know who could,” Desi suggested.

  “There can’t be all that many magicians in the world who can actually summon a demon with that power, so he may at least have heard a few names.”

  “Des, you’re brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that?” I jumped up to hug her and nearly spilled my blueberry drink.

  “What happened to Nathan?” Sybil asked plaintively. “Didn’t you go down with him? We thought that you two would get back together, that once he saw how you took care of your friends, how smart and hardworking and dedicated you were, he would change his mind.”

  Suddenly the world reeled around me. “You set this up to get me back with Nathan?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “Oh no,” Eros exclaimed emphatically. “But it did occur to us when we thought about hiring a PI. He may be the only PI we know, but it’s not like we couldn’t use the phone book or get a recommendation off the Web.”

  “And even then,” Desi jumped on Eros’s words, “even then we didn’t think of Nathan because we were trying to get you back together. At least I didn’t. I just thought it would be easier because he already knew we were demons. I didn’t want to have to explain that all to someone who might be skeptical, especially since it was an emergency.”

  That made sense. I really would not want to have to explain what had happened to someone else. Plots against Mephistopheles and Satan? Embezzling from the Treasury of Hell? Kidnapping?

  No, the girls were right, we couldn’t have hired anyone else.

  So I told them what had happened in Aruba. How Nathan and I almost got back together and he lost it again and hurt me. Possibly more than the first time.

  “Of course,” Sybil said, patting my arm. “The first time it wasn’t personal. He just couldn’t handle all those revelations all at once. But to be so horrible and hurt you like that? I think he should die. Really, you should have delivered him,” she pronounced.

  “I couldn’t,” I admitted.

  “Because you’re still in love with him,” Eros sighed. “He’s a weak creep who used you and treated you badly. You should have handed him over to Martha. She could use him. He’s pretty. He could be a houseboy. He doesn’t deserve you, let alone you defending him like that.”

  “I couldn’t deliver him,” I said again. “He didn’t come. That’s the way it works. I have to get him to come before I can take his soul.”

  “Of course,” Desi said softly. “I just wish you could have delivered him because of the way he treated you. That’s all. I don’t know how you manage with all those succubus rules. They would drive me crazy.”

  I smiled weakly. “You get used to it. Though the younger demons aren’t choosing to be succubi and incubi the way they used to. They like the less structured specialties.”

  “The young have always been lazy,” Eros said. And she was right. Of course, everybody else was lazy too.

  “Speaking of the young, what would you say if I brought Raven to brunch?” I asked, suddenly remembering. “She’s really presentable and smart. Her sense of style is awful, but I think we can teach her better. I think she’d fit in with us. She was great in Aruba. We started to teach her to bargain, but she hasn’t gotten that far in her coursework.”

  That took some consideration. It’s always special when it’s just the four of us. Even when Martha joins us, which is always a special treat, the dynamics change. But I felt that Raven really fit with us. And once upon a time we had been three, before we’d invited Sybil into our circle.

  “How about we meet her before?” Eros suggested. “You can all come over and we can make s’mores again. It’s been ages and I’d like to use the fireplace again before the end of the season. We could do that Thursday night, hang out, eat chocolate, and meet Raven.”

  “Oh, that’s even better! We won’t have to worry about her silly clothes in public; it’ll take a while to groom her to where she can go out to nice places. And it’ll be more relaxed. Thank you!” Eros always comes up with the best plans.

  When I got home there was a reminder e-mail from the incubus, who signed himself Roman. Though whether that was an actual name or where he was from eluded me. Anyway, I was pleased to see that he had figured out how to use Eudora.

  Which was my only quiet evening at home for a while, given that we’d just made plans for Thursday. Still, I had promised and this was the three-day limit. I thought about where to meet him. I didn’t really want an incubus in my apartment, but I didn’t know where else I should suggest.

  And then I smiled slowly. In the office, of course. Lawrence might be there and we could effect an actual introduction. I could say that Roman was a model—he certainly looked good enough.

  Feeling very satisfied with the incubus, the plan, and the quiet of my own apartment, I treated myself to a long bubble bath and a dinner of Pad Thai delivered from the really great place three blocks away. And a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. Chocolate Brownie or Chunky Monkey was the biggest decision I wanted to make, and I pondered it far longer than made sense even to me. And then I bought Phish Food.

  After that indulgence, I slept excellently well and got up in the morning feeling refreshed and ready to go. Alert and energetic enough that I started to worry about the fact I hadn’t made a delivery in a while. It had all been on Satan’s business, of course, but still—I wouldn’t be surprised if She were a little disappointed in me.

  I needed to hunt. Boyfriends are all very well and good, but I was still a succubus and I needed to deliver a soul or three.

  Funny, I’d never really thought that I liked hunting. I don’t. I’d rather never have to. But there was something in the nature of my calling that made me feel somehow unfulfilled when I hadn’t handed a soul over to Hell in too long. Maybe it was feeling beautiful or desired, and some of it was anger and revenge, too. I missed the hard, clean feeling of the kill, knowing that I’d eliminated one of the bad guys. Knowing that some prime jerk had been sent to his just reward, that he wouldn’t harass or insult or offend another woman ever again. Even in the modern world some people deserve punishment. And I hand it out.

  I didn’t know if I’d have time to hunt after work. Possibly. I didn’t think I had anything on the calendar, though really I could use a quiet evening in. Okay, a short one, then. Later.

  I dressed for work quickly. D&G cuffed trousers with a tweed jacket, very restrained and conservative after yesterday’s Derek Lam. I pulled my hair back severely and surveyed the effect. I looked as powerful as anyone five foot three could look, perfect for any executive boardroom.

  First order of the day was finding something for the incubus, who was due in my office at four. I looked around and thought and I couldn’t find anything that would do. I remembered about getting the belts back from Lawrence and then I thought of something else, something even better.

  I marched down to the Starbucks on the ground floor and got both of us the special for the month, cinnamon dolce. It was hard not to polish it off on the way back upstairs. The cinnamon smell permeated the elevator and by the time I got out on the forty-third floor I was salivating. Wait, wait, I told myse
lf, and went straight to Lawrence’s office.

  I knocked. “I’m busy! Don’t bother me,” he yelled. The door was ajar, so I nudged it gently open with my foot. “I got you one of those new cinnamon drinks,” I announced loudly, giving him a minute just in case he had been doing something that I didn’t want to walk in on. “I thought you might have some advice since I’m putting together the bags and jewelry for your Dazzling Dresses shoot.”

  “Oh, sure, come on in,” he said.

  White shirts and jeans had been thrown over his easy chair and piled on the floor. Wardrobe was going to be angry, but there wasn’t much they could do except launder the pieces and send them back to the designers from whom they’d been borrowed. His worktable was cluttered with sketches and cuttings from sources I didn’t recognize. A red paisley and something with brown and aqua had gotten mixed into the white shirts. I hoped the samples were colorfast.

  I handed him his cinnamon dolce since there wasn’t any place to put it on his desk, and started to drink mine. And oh, it was just as good as I had hoped, all cinnamon and caramel and apple with a nice jolt of coffee. Yum. I hoped it would soften him a little bit.

  “So I had a few ideas,” I said brightly.

  He glowered, despite his coffee. “I don’t need your ideas. If you can give me exactly what I need without disturbing me, that is all I want from you. The less I see of you secondary editors, the better. I don’t know why we have to pretend that you have anything to offer besides support. Our magazine is about fashion. Not shoes or bags or makeup. Fashion.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I had this model booked as the escort for one of my shoots and I thought you might be able to use him.”

  “Why?” he asked, suspicious. “It isn’t Chad, is it? He’s a useless prima donna and pouts all the time. He won’t do a decent job of showing off a woman. I don’t want him.”

  “No, not Chad. I don’t work with Chad.” None of us worked with him after he threw a tantrum doing an ad series for Calvin Klein fragrances. “It’s someone new but really good, I think. His name’s Roman.”

  Lawrence rolled his eyes. “What a ridiculous made-up name. Nobody’s named Roman.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not the name you’re hiring,” I said. “Well, whatever. He’s a big fan of yours and asked me to introduce him, so I’m asking. He’s going to be in the office at four this afternoon. Do you want me to bring him by?”

  Lawrence made a big show out of consulting his calendar. Enough of a show that I switched our Starbucks cups without his ever noticing. “Four, you said? Okay, bring him here at four fifteen. I should be finished with my three o’clock by then.”

  “Okay,” I chirped, far too brightly. Then I picked up his cup as if it were my own and walked out.

  When I got back to my own office I emptied the rest of the drink into my ceramic mug. The stuff was too tasty to waste. I set the cup on my windowsill next to the pachysandra, as if it were there to water the plant that threatened to take over the next three floors.

  I actually managed to do productive work for the next six hours. Lunch came on the trolley and then it was four and there was a knock at the door.

  Roman had arrived, looking exactly the way I remembered him. Yes, he could certainly pass as a model, except for the suspicious scowl on his face. Though the scowl might work for Calvin Klein and they’d just fired Chad . . .

  I handed over the Starbucks cup. “He drank from that, there should still be residue,” I said. “And, even better, I have an appointment to introduce you in fifteen minutes.”

  “Why are you doing this?” he asked. “We are not allies.”

  “Well, we should be,” I said. “I am sick of this stupidity, succubi and incubi at odds with each other. The argument is over a thousand years old. Were you even in the ranks during the split?”

  He shook his head. I had thought as much.

  “Well, I was, and it was stupid. Honestly, I think Hell lost and since I’m loyal to Satan I think She is better served by having us all cooperate.”

  “Are you saying that I’m not loyal? Or that the incubi are fomenting rebellion?”

  Eeeeck, what era had he come from? And why hadn’t Admin updated his vocabulary? If he couldn’t pull off modern American, Lawrence was going to figure this out before Roman could destroy him. Because I didn’t want Lawrence just delivered, I wanted him utterly and completely in thrall, beholden to Hell.

  And subservient to me.

  “I’m just saying that I think we’d do a better job working together. We’re not the enemy, we’re on the same side. And I’m here to prove it. This is a good lead, this guy belongs in the Legions of Hell, and you’re going to get the credit. So come on, we’ve got ten minutes to get down the hall.”

  The look on Lawrence’s face when I introduced Roman was even more satisfying than I had hoped. One look at the incubus and he was smitten. Totally, completely, utterly in major crush mode. And Roman played it to the hilt, too. I’d never seen a man (or male demon) flutter his eyelashes quite so coyly, smile with just that right degree of shy, project a perfect blend of desire and reticence—perfect for Lawrence, that was.

  “Thank you, Lily, were you and Roman finished with your discussion? Because I wouldn’t want to keep you from your work,” Lawrence said, dripping false respect. “None of us could manage without Lily’s brilliant recommendations,” he said as an aside to Roman, as if I weren’t there. I wanted to hit Lawrence on the head, or at least roll my eyes at the incubus, but I knew better.

  “We were done,” I said. “I’ll see you later.” And with that I left my colleague with a demon of Hell bent upon his destruction.

  Revenge, as they say, is sweet. I was flying with the success of my plan. While I wanted Lawrence to get his, I also wanted to build a bridge with the incubi. We were more alike than different and we had more reason to band together than remain at odds. I hadn’t been exaggerating; I really did think that we weren’t doing Satan any good by pursuing this very old and very ridiculous split.

  Feeling good and powerful, and brimming with love and loyalty to Satan, I decided to hunt. No waiting for clubs to open, no getting dressed up for the evening. Right here and now I decided that I would claim a soul for Hell. As a kind of thank-you to Satan for how well everything was working out.

  chapter

  THIRTY

  I felt strong and good and—it was time to go hunting. I wouldn’t get any credit for Lawrence’s delivery and I was way behind in my usual schedule. But the idea of going to a club or something at the Met didn’t appeal. Instead, I dressed in jeans and took a taxi to SoHo, where I wandered around the Prada store and Barneys and mostly thought about Marten.

  I wondered what he was doing, if he was at his computer poring over columns of numbers from Marduk. Or whether he was trying to trace tax evaders for smuggling drugs.

  But the Apple store was all lit up and it had been a while since I’d delivered a geek . . . hmmmm. Many geeks are fine and upright people, maybe a bit socially clueless but otherwise decent enough. A few though, some very few, assume that any woman who dresses decently and wears makeup must be a complete moron. I was wearing makeup. This was too easy.

  I walked in to see the preview of the new iPhone. Mobbed by all manner of technosnobs, I found myself thinking more about the phone than about the prey around me. Music and everything my Treo did with the touch pad—I had to love it. I wondered whether I should get one for Marten, too.

  I got into the line to preorder when one of the unappealing geeks used his oversized belly to cut in front of me. His beard was flecked with crumbs and his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days. He wore a Linux tee shirt in a 3X at least and stared at me as if he couldn’t believe I was real.

  Okay, if he behaved better I might search elsewhere. I detest line jumpers, but there are worse offenses.

  “You getting one of those for your boyfriend?” he asked, sealing his fate.

  I smiled. “No, I don’t
have a boyfriend,” I said, and looked away.

  He shrugged. “It’ll be easy to use, though. You want easy to use.”

  I looked into his face, widened my eyes, and took on a breathless expression. “You could explain to me how it works, couldn’t you? Maybe when we get through this line? I would really like that. This one is so hard,” I said, holding my Treo and flashing my manicure.

  “Sure,” he answered. “I can do that. At least you know enough to go with a decent product.”

  I wanted to strangle him, but I reminded myself that better was coming. So I endured the line, the coffee (where he talked my ear off explaining the basics of binary) and his absolute inability to understand why I was taking him home with me. To help me sync my Treo with my computer was the fiction and we both knew that was akin to inviting him up to see my nonexistent etchings.

  At least he was fast once I got him upstairs. Probably hadn’t had sex in years. He came and he went, like all the others. And much as I disliked the act, I felt relieved and moral, glad that I had done my duty to Satan.

  Now that I didn’t have to run around after magicians and kidnapped demons I would have more time and energy to do my actual job.

  I wasn’t even too tired after cleaning up the ashes. I took a good shower, changed the sheets, and then wrapped a towel around my hair and snuggled into my big bathrobe and turned on my computer.

  Sometimes it is a mistake to look at e-mail. Sometimes it isn’t. I had a message from Marten, which turned out to be a lovely, caring inquiry about how I was doing back in New York and to let me know that he hoped to visit again soon. That made me smile, and with the smile still on my face I opened the next message in the queue. Which was from Mephistopheles and written as a formal summons. This was not my friend and quasi-uncle writing, this was the First Lieutenant of Hell, and he required my presence at a meeting with Marduk on Thursday night.

  Thursday! That was the day I was taking Raven by to meet the girls. Pj’s and s’mores and girlie drinks. Much as I adore Meph, I hadn’t had a real girls’ night in ages. I’d been missing it. For all I’d been doing with him, I hadn’t had time for a single manipedi, sitting on the massage chair and gabbing while my feet got buffed and polished.