Succubus Revealed gk-6

by Richelle Mead

  Regardless, days like today were clear reminders of why I chose gainful employment. If I’d had nothing but free time on my hands, I would’ve spent the rest of the day ruminating about my fate and the potential transfer. Assisting Walter-as-Santa—as absurd as it was—at least gave me a distraction while I waited to hear from Jerome. Vocation gave purpose too, which I’d found was necessary to mark the long days of immortality. I’d met lesser immortals who had gone insane, and most of them had done nothing but drift aimlessly throughout their long lives.

  A new elf—one whom Walter had christened Happy—had joined our ranks today, one who was certainly helping pass the time if only because of how much she was grating on my nerves.

  “I don’t think he should be drinking at all,” she said, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I don’t see why I have to learn this schedule.”

  Prancer, a veteran elf, exchanged glances with me. “None of us is saying it’s right,” he told Happy. “We’re just saying it’s reality. He’s going to get a hold of liquor one way or another. If we deny him, he’ll sneak it in the bathroom. He’s done it before.”

  “If we’re the ones giving it to him,” I continued, “then we control the access and amount he gets. This?” I gestured to the schedule we’d drawn up. “This isn’t much. Especially for a guy his size. It’s not even enough to get buzzed.”

  “But they’re children!” Happy cried. Her eyes drifted off toward the long line of families trailing through the mall. “Sweet, innocent, joyful children.”

  Another silent message passed between Prancer and me. “Tell you what,” I finally said. “Why don’t you make them your priority. Forget about the liquor schedule. We’ll handle that. You go trade places with Bashful at the head of the line. She doesn’t really like working with the public anyway.” When Happy was out of earshot, I remarked, “One of these days, someone’s going to report us all to the mall’s HR office.”

  “Oh, they have plenty of times,” said Prancer, smoothing out his green spandex pants. “I’ve worked with Walter for three years now, and Happy’s not the first elf to have moral qualms about Santa getting lit. He’s been reported lots.”

  That was news to me. “And they haven’t fired him?”

  “Nah. It’s harder to fill these jobs than you might think. As long as Walter doesn’t touch or say something inappropriate, the mall doesn’t seem to care.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Good to know.”

  “Georgina!”

  Beyond the gates leading to Santa’s pavilion, I saw someone waving at the edge of the crowd. Hugh. My heart rate sped up. This mall was actually right around the corner from his office, so he’d come by before for lunch. In light of recent events—and the look on his face—something told me he wasn’t here for a casual meal today.

  “Hey,” I said to Prancer. “Can I take my break now?”

  “Sure, go for it.”

  I cut through the crowd and met up with Hugh, trying not to feel self-conscious about wearing the foil dress. Hugh had come from the office and was dressed impeccably, playing up the role of successful plastic surgeon. I felt cheap beside him, especially as he and I walked farther from the holiday mayhem toward some of the mall’s more upscale shops.

  “I was on my way home from work and thought I’d stop by,” he said. “I figured you weren’t taking many calls while on the job.”

  “Not so much,” I agreed, gesturing to the tight dress and its lack of pockets. I caught hold of his arm. “Please tell me you heard something. The transfer’s a mistake, right?”

  “Well, I still think it is, but no, I haven’t heard anything back yet—not from HR or Jerome.” He frowned slightly, clearly not liking the lack of communication. Underneath that, I also sensed another emotion in him—nervousness. “I’ve got something else for you. Can we talk somewhere . . . kind of private? Is there a Sbarro or Orange Julius around here?”

  I scoffed. “Not in this mall. There’s a sandwich place we can go to.”

  “Sandwich place” wasn’t entirely accurate. They also sold gourmet soups and salads, all of which were made fresh and packed with enough prissy ingredients to make Ian happy. Hugh and I snagged a table, my appearance gaining the attention of some children there with their parents. I ignored them as I leaned toward Hugh.

  “What’s up, then, if not the phantom transfer?”

  He eyed the watchers uneasily and took several moments to begin speaking. “I was calling around today, trying to work connections and see if I could find out anything about you. Like I said, I couldn’t. But I got caught up on all sorts of other gossip.”

  I was kind of surprised Hellish gossip was what he wanted to discuss, more surprised still that it had apparently warranted him coming in person. If he’d heard a rumor about a mutual friend, it seemed like a phone call would’ve sufficed to pass the news. Even e-mail or text.

  “Do you remember Milton?” he asked.

  “Milton?” I stared blankly. The name meant nothing to me.

  “Nosferatu,” he prompted.

  Still nothing, and then—

  “Oh. Yeah. Him. The vampire.” A month or so ago, Milton had visited on vacation, much to Cody and Peter’s dismay. Vampires were territorial and didn’t like outsiders, although Cody had been able to use Milton’s presence to impress his macabre loving girlfriend, Gabrielle. Or so I’d heard. “I never actually saw him. I just knew he was in town.”

  “Yup, and it turns out last week, he was in Boulder.”

  “So?”

  “So, first of all, it’s weird that he’d have two ‘vacations’ in that short time. I mean, you know how it is for vampires. You know how it is for all of us.”

  It was true. Hell didn’t like to give us vacations very often. When your employers owned your soul, they really didn’t feel any need to make your life pleasant. That wasn’t to say we didn’t occasionally get time off, but it certainly wasn’t a priority for Hell. The business of souls never rested. For vampires, this was doubly true because they didn’t like to leave their territory. They also had various complications with traveling, say, like with sunlight.

  “Okay, so, it’s weird. How does that affect us?”

  Hugh dropped his voice low. “When he was in Boulder, a local dark shaman died under mysterious circumstances.”

  I felt my eyebrows rise. “And you think Milton was involved ?”

  “Well, like I said, I had time to make some calls and do some research today. And it turns out that even though he’s based in Raleigh, Milton travels an awful lot for a vampire—and every place he goes, some mortal in the supernatural community ends up dead.”

  “You’re saying he’s an assassin,” I said, intrigued but still not seeing the point. As part of “the great game” we all played, angels and demons weren’t supposed to directly influence mortal lives. That’s where lesser immortals came in, with our offers of sin and temptation. Now, we weren’t really supposed to kill either, as far as the game went, and we certainly weren’t supposed to do it on behalf of a greater immortal’s instructions. We all knew it happened, however, and Milton wasn’t the first assassin I’d heard of taking out inconvenient mortals.

  “Exactly,” said Hugh. He frowned. “He goes to places, and people disappear.”

  “How does that affect us?”

  Hugh sighed. “Georgina, he was here.”

  “Yeah, but nobody—” I gasped, freezing a moment in shock. “Erik . . .”

  The world reeled around me for a moment. I was no longer in an elite mall’s food court but instead was looking down on the broken, bleeding body of one of the kindest men I knew. Erik had been a longtime friend in Seattle, using his many years of occult and supernatural knowledge to advise me on my problems. He’d been investigating my contract with Hell when a freak robbery at his store had resulted in his death by gunshot.

  “Are you saying . . .” My voice was barely a whisper. “Are you saying Milton killed Erik?”

  Hugh shook his hea
d sadly. “I’m not. I’m just laying out the evidence for you, which is compelling—but not enough to form a hard link to Milton.”

  “Then why tell me at all?” I asked. “You don’t like to get involved with anything that questions the status quo.” It was true, and it had been a constant point of contention with Hugh and me.

  “I don’t,” he said. I understood now why he was so uneasy. “Not at all. But I care about you, sweetheart. And I know you cared about Erik and wanted answers.”

  “Key word: wanted. I thought I had them.” My heart still mourned Erik, but I had begun to heal from his loss, moving on with life the way we all must after losing a loved one. Knowing—or, well, thinking—he’d been killed in a robbery didn’t exactly give me peace, but it did provide an explanation. If there was any shred of truth to Hugh’s dangerous theory, that Milton—a potential assassin—might have been responsible, then my whole world was suddenly knocked offkilter. And in that scenario, the big issue wasn’t that Milton had done it. What became important was why he had done it. Because if he was one of those Hellish assassins lurking in the shadows, then someone higher up had given him his orders, meaning Hell had a reason to want Erik dead.

  “You okay?” Hugh’s hand on mine made me jump. “Jesus, Georgina. You’re like ice.”

  “I’m kind of in shock,” I said. “This is big, Hugh. Huge.”

  “I know,” he said, not sounding happy at all. “Promise me you won’t do anything foolish. I’m still not sure I should have told you.”

  “You should have,” I said, squeezing his hand and making no such promises about the foolish part. “Thank you.”

  I had to leave shortly thereafter, returning to assist Happy. A little of her zeal about the pure, magical nature of children had faded in that time. I think it was the six-year-old who asked for a nose job that might have cracked her. As for me, I was in a daze, stunned over what Hugh had told me. Erik murdered. His dying words to me had implied something more was going on, but there’d been no evidence to prove it. Or wait . . . was there? I vaguely remembered the glass pattern of his broken window, the suspicion from the police that it had been broken from within. But what did I do with this theory? How did I get the answers I needed?

  Equally amazing to me was the concession Hugh had made in telling me this. He valued his job and his comfortable position. He really wasn’t the type to try to upset Hell or ask questions about things that didn’t concern him. Yet he’d pursued his hunch about Milton and passed on the news to me, his friend. Hell made desperate, soulless creatures out of its employees—and most certainly liked it that way—but I doubted any of the higher-ups had imagined the levels of friendship we were still capable of managing.

  Naturally, only one other thing could have distracted me from this new development, and that was Jerome’s presence in my condo later that night. I was returning home after work and sensed his aura coming from within as soon as I put my key to the door. My fears and theorizing about Erik and Milton moved to one part of my brain, replaced by all the old speculation about the mystery transfer.

  When I entered, I found Jerome sitting in the living room with Roman, both at their ease and barely acknowledging my presence.

  “And so,” Jerome was saying, “that’s why you need to do this. As soon as possible. Nanette’s people have been at it for a long time, so you’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Set up a schedule—I don’t care how rigorous it is—and make those slackers start putting in their time at the alley.”

  I stared incredulously. “You’re here about the bowling competition?”

  Both men looked at me, Jerome seeming irritated at the interruption. “Of course. The sooner you start practicing, the better.”

  “You know what else might be better the sooner it happens ?” I produced the well-worn HR memo with a flourish. “You telling me if I’m being transferred or not. My money’s on it being a mistake because surely, surely you wouldn’t put off telling me. Right?”

  Several heartbeats of silence hung in the room. Jerome held me in his dark, dark gaze, and I refused to look away. At last, he said, “No. It’s real. You’re being transferred.”

  My jaw wanted to drop to the ground. “Then why . . . why am I only just now hearing about it?”

  He sighed and made an impatient gesture. “Because I just found out about it. Someone jumped the gun and delivered the memo to you before telling me.” His eyes glinted. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t too thrilled about that myself. I made sure they know my feelings on the matter.”

  “But I . . .” I swallowed. “I was so sure there was a mistake. . . ”

  “There was,” he agreed. “Just not the kind you were thinking of.”

  I wanted to sink to the floor and melt away but forced myself to stay strong. I had to ask the next most important question, the question that would shape the next phase of my life.

  “Where . . . where am I going?”

  Jerome studied me once again, this time I think just to drag out the suspense and agony. Bastard. At last, he spoke.

  “You’re going to Las Vegas, Georgie.”

  Chapter 5

  I’d been bracing myself for “Cleveland” or “Guam.” I was too much of a pessimist to think I might be offered something even moderately appealing. If I was already going through the trauma of leaving Seattle, then surely it would be for somewhere terrible.

  “Did you say Las Vegas?” I asked, sinking down onto my couch. Immediately, I guessed the catch. “Ah. It’s not Las Vegas, Nevada, right? It’s a different Las Vegas. New Mexico ? Or some other continent?”

  “Sorry to disappoint you and your martyr fantasies, Georgie.” Jerome lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “It’s Las Vegas, Nevada. I think you even know the archdemon there—Luis. Isn’t he a friend of yours?”

  I blinked. “Luis? Yeah. I mean, in as much as an archdemon can be.” That got a small smile from Jerome, though I only barely noticed. I had worked for Luis a long time ago, and if I had to be honest, he was probably my favorite boss of all time. That wasn’t to say Jerome was a terrible one, but Luis—while strict—still had an easy way about him that could sometimes make you forget you were damned for all eternity. “So . . . my orders are to go to Las Vegas and work for Luis.”

  “Yes,” said Jerome.

  I looked back at him from where I’d been staring vacantly out the window. “Is there any way to change that? To stop it? Isn’t there anything I can do to just stay here? And are you sure it’s not a mistake—what with the delivery mix-up?”

  Jerome’s dark eyebrows rose. It was one of those rare moments when he’d been caught off-guard enough to display surprise. “You don’t want to go? I mean, I’m flattered you’d want to stay under my rule, but I’d think you would be pleased with this situation. Las Vegas is perfect for a half-ass succubus like you.”

  I ignored the jab—though he had a point. Las Vegas was such a breeding ground for sin and salvation that it was nearly packed to bursting with servants of both Heaven and Hell. It probably had one of the highest concentrations of succubi in the world, meaning it was easy to slide by with quotas. Here, I was the only succubus, so my number of corrupted souls was scrutinized heavily. In Las Vegas, there’d be plenty of go-getter succubi to cover for slackers like me.

  “It’s not about you,” I said slowly. “It’s about . . . Seth.”

  Jerome sighed loudly and stamped out his cigarette on my coffee table. I supposed I should be glad it wasn’t my couch or carpet. “Of course it is. Because in the grand scheme of the universe, your boyfriend is important enough to make Hell’s HR change their minds about a re-org. Come on, Georgie. How naive are you? How many transfers have you had over the years? Or perhaps I should ask, how many transfers do you know of that were cancelled because someone ‘didn’t feel like it’?”

  “None,” I admitted. At most, Hell would take unhappy employees into account and move them out of places they weren’t being productive. I had requested transfers before a
nd gotten a couple of them. But once HR made up its mind? That was it. The cold truth of this, that it wasn’t a mistake and that I couldn’t stop it, was beginning to wrap around me. I tried to make sense of it another way. “But why? Why did they decide to this? I’ve been a good employee. . . .” Yet, even as I spoke, I grew uncertain. Jerome looked at me knowingly.

  “Have you?”

  “I haven’t been a bad employee,” I amended. “Not exactly.”

  “This isn’t a game. We don’t want mediocre employees who can keep the status quo. We want souls. We want to win. And you’ve spent most of your time here being mediocre. Don’t glare at me like that. You know I’m right. You’ve had fits and starts of productivity, the most notable being when you were under duress. Even that’s been inconsistent.” I’d made a bargain with Jerome a year ago, in which I’d behaved like a model succubus for a while. After I’d helped rescue him from summoning, there’d been an unspoken acceptance of me slacking off once again without getting any grief from him. “If you’d thrived here and turned over large amounts of souls, I doubt you’d be leaving. So, if you’re looking for someone to blame, look in the mirror.”

  “You sure sound smug about this,” I pointed out petulantly. “Like you’re happy about it.”

  “Happy? Happy about the gamble of getting a new employee—or of inheriting Tawny permanently? Hardly. But unlike you, I accept that my happiness means nothing to my superiors. The only thing that matters is me following their orders.” His tone and expression clearly said that the same was true for me.