“You have a visitor, Cricket,” the front desk girl congratulated her when she went to pick up her mail. “I told her you were out in the vegetable garden. She’s waiting in the North Lounge. A Ms. Dee Lilah.” The girl handed over a business card.
Cricket turned it over, bemused. Black business card with red leaping flames around the name, Delilah. The flames seemed to move. Wow, fancy.
She took a moment to be grateful for the tomato-plant smell on her fingers.
Then she walked into the North Lounge.
“Not buying it. Sorry,” Cricket said, after Delilah had been talking for ten minutes. Girl was a good salesperson, but there were big holes in her story. “If you work for hell, how come you’re offering to pay me? By the way, that’s a really nice dress. Suits you.”
The dress was red leather and very flattering to the woman with one name. She looked to be about forty, green-eyed, with thick, straight, beautifully-cut dark hair, her olive skin slightly weathered but still sleek. She seemed utterly self-possessed.
Delilah ignored the compliment. She lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you’d be more worried about keeping your soul.”
Cricket waved that away. “Nuts. I don’t believe you can take my soul any more than you can take the sky. If you could take it, you’d just take it. You wouldn’t be trying to bribe me. By the way, thanks for the chocolate. Tasty. Have some?”
The smooth young woman stared at Cricket as if exasperated. “How do you figure?” she said weakly. She reached over and broke off a chunk of the fancy-dancy chocolate bar she’d brought Cricket.
“Hah. I watched the advertising industry grow from a peanut. I know you put glitter on the product when the product is something nobody needs. And you use extra sprinkles when the whole deal doesn’t really exist. In my seventies I got a lot of door-to-door salesmen and religion peddlers,” Cricket added. “Who knew that would be such good practice for talking to you?” She was tickled that all those hours killing time with the nice Mormon boys were turning out useful now.
“Most people don’t want to listen to a sales pitch for something they know they don’t want,” Delilah said around her bite of chocolate.
“I like talking to people.”
Delilah sat and stared at her. Cricket could almost see her flipping through flashcards in her head, looking for one that would work on this chirpy little old lady.
Cricket nudged. “Come on. Haven’t you got any more ideas?”
She felt weirdly exhilarated. This was like the second floor conversation, only the opposite. Delilah wasn’t trying to sell her salvation, or eternal life after death, which most people said was all puffy clouds and harps, but which they really believed was like going to Disneyland or the mall, only you never had to pay, and it never closed. Nobody had ever tried to buy her soul with something she actually wanted before. New experiences were meat and drink to Cricket.
“What part of it doesn’t make sense?” Delilah said at last.
Cricket opened her palm. “You know you can’t really buy my soul. And yet you’re offering me all this great stuff—new young body, money, housing, and a job being a—a—”
“Succubus. Sex demoness. Very fancy, very highly paid prostitute.”
“And you get what out of this? People have sex for free all the time. You don’t give them all this stuff.”
“It’s field work,” Delilah said helplessly. “The Regional Office knows you have to pay women to have sex. We have thirteen hundred demon desk workers for every demon field operative. Attrition in the field is crushing. And frankly,” she admitted, “we don’t have the customer base we used to have.”
“You’re saying nobody believes in hell anymore.” Cricket was delighted. She hadn’t had a conversation this crazy since before Seymour Leskin went on those pills.
Delilah shrugged. “Not really.”
“Tell me about attrition in the field,” Cricket said.
“There’s hardly anyone left in the Lust Division. We’re especially low on succubi—female sex demons. That’s the Second Circle of hell if you’re Catholic,” she added.
“Do I look like a shiksa?”
“Male sex demons hang around for centuries. They love their jobs. For some reason, the women don’t stay. Second Circle is just a way station for them. They have stuff to work out, they do the job for a while, they move on. At this point, we have more dead accounts than working field operatives.”
Light dawned for Cricket. “It’s a bureaucracy.”
Delilah whooshed out a breath. “You have no idea.”
“So do you have computers?”
“Ugh,” Delilah said.
Cricket was pleased. Whoever she was, this girl was a sound thinker. “Tell me, do you get anything out of your job? Personally?”
After a moment, Delilah said, “Make you a deal. You tell me what would possibly interest you in my offer, and I’ll tell you what’s in it for me.”
“You first,” Cricket said.
Delilah burst out laughing. “You are such a tough prospect!” She cocked her beautiful dark head. After a long look at Cricket she said, “All right. This is between you and me.”
“And why would you trust me?” Cricket said.
“You have no one to tell. You’ll probably never meet your supervisor. We quit running quality circles with field operatives decades ago, because they wouldn’t put up with it.” She gave Cricket a warning look. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” She breathed in, sighed out. “One of my field operatives has been on the job too long.”
My field operatives, Cricket noted. Not our.
“She’s stuck. She shows signs of getting restless, but I think she needs a little push. To get out of the nest.”
Cricket’s mouth fell open. “You’re running a stealth op inside the Regional Office.”
“What?” Delilah squinted. “Where do you get that kind of language?”
“I watch a lot of old Tom Cruise movies, and don’t change the subject. You are, aren’t you. I bet you’re responsible for all those field operatives quitting. You want me to get this one you’re talking about to quit?”
Delilah turned red. “How—wait, what—?”
“Well, you said, ‘one of my field operatives,’ and you said she needs to get out of the nest. You hate the bureaucracy. I bet you’re not even in their computer, not properly. But you put people on their payroll. So you’re sucking them dry financially, too.”
Delilah eyes narrowed. “I’m not telling you anything.”
“That’s okay, dear.” Cricket reached forward and patted her hand. “I didn’t think you were anyway.”
Delilah laughed. “Your turn,” she said firmly.
Cricket folded her hands on her lap and stared off into the distance. She had tried not to think about her future on the second floor—much—except between three-forty-five and four-fifteen in the morning—but when she did, it was always in terms of her physical capability. Mobility, autonomy, agility. She was so accustomed to being grateful that Delilah’s million-dollar offer had completely surprised her, in spite of the ridiculously long bucket list.
This was a whole new kind of list.
“Well,” she said, staring through the North Lounge wall at the world full of things she would never, let’s admit it, Cricket, ever do. “I want to bungee jump. I want to dye my hair purple and green and pink and orange. I want to roller skate. I want to dance again, and learn some of these new dances. I want—”
She stopped and stared harder through the wall. Delilah’s offer was very specific. Fancy young new body and all that money and stuff for sex.
It occurred to Cricket that she’d left a lot of things off that bucket list.
“All my granddaughters used birth control by the time they were seventeen. My great-granddaughters have studs in their tongues.”
Delilah didn’t answer that. Cricket liked that she kept quiet so a person could think this through.
“It’s not that I
haven’t had fun. Because I have. I had three husbands and four kids of my own and six step-children, and I have twenty-four grandkids, almost forty great-grandkids. That’s a lot of fun.”
“Sounds like a lot of work to me,” Delilah said bluntly.
“Of course. Fun is work. The only fun that isn’t is drugs, and that gets old fast.” Cricket waved a hand. “What I’m saying is, I did all the things I was supposed to do. I had the fun a good girl has.”
“Ah.” Delilah looked as though she could see that flashcard clearly now.
“I don’t take harps or hellfire seriously and I’m not interested in keeping score. But it seems to me—” That new bucket list unrolled in Cricket’s head. Stuff she hadn’t thought about since Irving died. The rest of her might be pretty rickety, but her heart was young.
Delilah leaned forward. Here it comes, thought Cricket. “We can walk out that door right now. You won’t ever have to come back.”
Cricket heard the elevator doors open down the hall. Someone went by, pushed in a wheelchair by an orderly. The patient was wearing bulky white mittens.
“What are we waiting for?” she said.
Cricket told the front desk girl that her new friend Dee Lilah was taking her out to lunch. No point overloading anybody with information. They got into a really nice black BMW sports car and Delilah drove them away with the top down.
Cricket let the wind blow in her eyes and mess up her hair. She didn’t care if this was all a hoax. She was having another adventure. And at a time when she’d thought all her adventures were over!
Delilah was talking on her phone.
“Hello, Pog? Delilah. I’m bringing you another girl this afternoon. I realize that, Pog honey, but it was kind of an emergency. I’ll square it with Ish.”
Cricket realized she hadn’t called anybody before leaving the Loriston Home. Her own phone sat heavy in the jacket pocket of her bunny sweats.
“No. Sorry. I can’t take her back. I promised her she wouldn’t have to stay there another minute. It was life or death. You’ll see when you meet her. She’s a hoot.”
That was nice of Delilah. Cricket wondered how long it would take someone on staff at the Loriston Home to notice she wasn’t there.
“Thanks for understanding. Great. Bye.” Still driving one-handed, Delilah slid the phone back into her discreet red alligator handbag.
Cricket frowned. “Is this a bad time?”
“Not at all. Besides, Pog owes me. That reminds me, please don’t mention my name to these people. The Regional Office has insanely security-conscious regulations about recruiting officers.”
Cricket began to feel a little odd, and more than a little alarmed. She made her voice sound tough and nonchalant. “When do I get my new body?”
Delilah smiled. Her perfect dark hair was blowing all over in the wind coming over the windshield. “You already have it. I’ll show you.”
Abruptly she swerved off the street and gunned the car straight through a cemetery’s open gate. Cricket squealed. They roared along a winding road among trees and tombstones, but they were going way too fast to make the curve up ahead.
Delilah didn’t even slow down. She threw the hand brake just before the curve.
The car stopped on a dime and bucked.
A split second later, Cricket was catapulted out of the open car and flying. She was half-aware of Delilah soaring beside her. Then she hit a tree and blacked out.
It seemed only a moment later that she found herself sitting up, leaning against a tombstone in the grass beside Delilah’s sports car. Delilah was reaching over the door, doing something—turning off the engine? No, taking something out of the glove box. She walked over to Cricket.
“Did you pee your pants? Here.” She handed Cricket a packet of tissues and a bottle of water. “I thought I might, but I didn’t.”
Cricket sat very still, the tissues in one hand and the water bottle in the other, taking inventory. Her heart was beating hard. It felt kind of good, actually. The only times she felt it go like that anymore were when she visited friends on the second floor. Her bunny sweats had a rip in one knee. She opened the water and drank some, looking around.
“This is a nice cemetery,” she observed. “I like how they don’t chop a tree down just because it lost a limb.”
“They’re broke but gracious,” Delilah said.
“Does the car still work?”
“Of course. I wanted you to see how your new body works. You hit that tree hard enough to break a dozen bones. How do you feel?”
Cricket worked her neck, which was always a little achy since she moved into the Home. Neck felt okay. She climbed to her feet and flexed her bad foot. That felt pretty good, too. She realized that she felt better than she’d felt in maybe forty years. Maybe ever. With a glance around, nope, nobody in sight, she pulled down her sweatpants and looked at her ancient C-section scar.
The scar was gone.
Delilah came around the car and took both Cricket’s hands. “This is really Pog’s job, showing you the ropes. But I felt you needed to get away from that place. Shall we go on? The Lair is less than a mile away.”
“Okay,” Cricket said. She sat in the car again and buckled her seat belt on extra-tight. She didn’t say a word all the way to the—Lair?
Delilah drove her to the door of a factory building and got out with her.
“This is where I’m supposed to live?”
“It’s an adventure,” Delilah said. “Remember?” She rang the doorbell. “Now knock ’em dead, tiger.” She embraced Cricket warmly. Her hair smelled really nice. Cricket closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Delilah was gone, the BMW was gone, and the factory door was opening.
“Hi, I’m down here,” Cricket said from her four-foot-ten-inch height. Her heart pounded. “I’m new.”
A tall blonde young goddess stood there, giving Cricket a puzzled look.
Cricket said with more calm than she felt, “The recruiter just dropped me off. This is the Lair of the succubi, right? Hi.” She stuck her hand out. “My name is Cricket.”
The blonde took her hand in a strong squeeze. She looked Cricket up and down, glanced behind herself into the echoey darkness of the Lair, and began to smile. “Come on in,” she said in a half-resigned, half-laughing voice. “I’m Amanda.”
AMANDA
It was a gorgeous day at the Lily Show and it was torture. I was experiencing once again all the reasons why demons don’t survive long as field operatives.
The Lily Show was Beth’s idea. We had teamed up for the hunt today. Beth prowled beside me, every nuance of her outfit saying something or other about class and money to the people here who cared about class and money. She loved it.
I suffered intensely. The lily stink was getting to me. Also, I smelled eighty kinds of perfume, new leather handbags, face powder, moisturizer, fresh manicure, and manly deodorant. Tourists jostled my shins with their baby strollers, and I smelled baby food in their bottle bags, baby barf on their bibs, and poop in their diapers. Photographers butted me in the back with zoom lenses longer than a sex demon’s dick. To me the sound of all those heartbeats was a cacophony of drums out of sync. A dozen languages battered my ears. Thanks to a field upgrade on this fine demon body, I understood every word, and they were all saying the same things: What’s the name of this one? Didn’t my mom have this lily in her yard? Junior, don’t eat that. My feet hurt. Where’s the bathroom? Honey, I’m going out for a cigarette.
Plus, if anyone in this room had a boner right now, I knew. The succubus body came with laydar.
This was why demons flaked out in the field, failed in battle, went AWOL after a few days’ active duty, went native, or just went nuts. Spend even a year down there in the Regional Office, and if you came back to the field, where mortals live, the sensory overload was intense.
My teammates didn’t suffer like this. None of them had worked for years in the Regional Office, as I had. They were recruited
from among mortals right here in the field. They were used to it. Mortals of course were completely desensitized to the kaleidoscope of sights, sounds, smells, sensations, and emotions that battered them every day.
But desk demons became re-sensitized, because there’s nothing to feel in the Regional Office. That was kind of why they stayed at their desks.
Okay, it was why I had stayed.
I’d spent ten years down there.
I could always go back. Back to my crappy chair in my turd-beige cubicle, back to my cracked beehive monitor and endless meaningless reports to crunch, back to stale chips and tasteless cupcakes from the vending machine, and a mug full of steaming hot cats’ pee at my desk.
Even in the middle of Lily Show hell, I shook my head. This was better than that.
Besides, I’d been here two months, and I hadn’t freaked out yet. Not so anyone could see, anyway. There were advantages to growing up Army. Huh. Never thought I’d be thinking that.
About then a toddler in a stroller leaned over and threw up on my calf. He also pooped simultaneously, although nobody but him and me knew it.
“I’m outa here,” I murmured to Beth.
“I’ll come too.”
We slid away toward the exit.
Beth followed me as far as the corner of the building outside, a safe distance from the door, where bored husbands stood snitching a smoke. Now she would sort through them for the man she could turn into a notch on her demon belt.
I wiped the puke off my calf, tossed my tissue in the trash can, slithered past the smokers, and retreated down the promenade alongside the rose garden. The scents of roses and trees and freshly-cut grass were just as intense outside as the smell of lilies and tourists inside, but I was spared the noise and claustrophobia of the crowds. The people noises faded. My nerves settled.
Coed Demon Sluts: Omnibus: Coed Demon Sluts: books 1-5 Page 59