by Nina Harper
For MRF, on the occasion of (soon to be) ten years
Acknowledgments
No writer manages to create a book alone. Many wonderful people have helped me with their knowledge and concern, their support and their unstinting advice—this book never could have been written without them!
Thanks are due to Sheeri Cabral for making an introduction, Cecilia Tan, Vandana Singh, and Sarah Smith for writer geeking on the finer points, and Karen Marcovici for shelter and research assistance.
A very special thank you to Aaron Macks for Akkadian. I have never met Aaron except by e-mail, and he has answered endless questions very quickly with amazing patience. Any mistakes are clearly my own.
chapter
ONE
Venice is my favorite city to visit in the world. I love living in New York, but when I’ve been scared and hurt and need to hide and heal, Venice is where I want to go. The constant presence of the water calms me, and many of my happiest memories were made here. After the second love of my life dumped me unceremoniously on a Sunday morning, my best girlfriends bought me a first-class ticket to Venice.
Even better, they called my boss and arranged a week off, even though I had only recently returned from a long weekend in Aruba. Fortunately, I had been on top of things at work, where I am the accessories editor at a fashion magazine.
No, not that magazine. I am the accessories editor for Trend, a magazine that real women all over the world rely on to find clothes and looks that those of us who are not Paris Hilton can afford and wear. But I had already put together my Accessories pages for the next two months. I had my special feature on shawls in with a writer and at the fashion houses who would provide samples so I could take the week off and not worry about deadlines.
I was looking in the window of a jewelry shop on the Rialto Bridge when my Treo rang. It was the middle of the night in Venice, but it was late afternoon in New York. Fortunately, the shops on the Rialto are open late and hordes of tourists keep the narrow streets around the great stone bridge vibrant and safe.
The caller was Danielle, the shoe editor at work. “Lily, when are you coming back?” she wailed.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. Danielle is my best friend at work, and since she does shoes and I do accessories, we’re natural allies. She’s French and has great respect for the brokenhearted, and she strongly encouraged me to leave New York and try to find some pleasure elsewhere in the world.
“Lawrence Carroll is making me crazy,” she sobbed. “You must talk to him. He is insane. Please, Lily, I tell myself over and over that I must not kill him, that I look dreadful in orange and a jumpsuit wouldn’t suit me at all.”
“What’s the problem, Danielle? What specific nutcase thing has he done this time?” I had to keep her focused on the single event or else I would never get to the bottom of this. And much as I did not want to talk to Lawrence Carroll, or remember his existence, I owed Danielle in a major way for covering for me.
“He is arranging a feature on the white shirt for fall, the one that he has talked about ever since he arrived,” she said, half sobbing. I knew the feature. We all knew in great detail far more than we ever wanted to know about Lawrence Carroll and white shirts for fall. “He is crazy,” Danielle whispered. “He has taken every belt in the building and laid them all out across the corridors and he’s screaming the whole time. And no one can walk anywhere. If we try to pick up a belt he screams to put it down and that no one can touch any of them and that they’re all ugly and that it’s all our fault that he can’t find the belts he wants. I think Mary Elizabeth will push him out the window soon. I wish to assist her.”
“Can you put him on?” I asked.
“I do not know,” Danielle whispered. “He is insane. He may stab me, I think. I suggested a very nice pair of Donna Karan boots and he waved a letter opener in my face and said I was his enemy. Because I am French and he is British and we never stopped fighting over Agin-court and he doesn’t know if he hates us or Americans more. The interns have locked themselves in the ladies’ room, including Robbie. If you cannot talk to him we will have to call the police and have the hostage rescue team come in.”
I thought that might be overstating the case, but maybe not. Lawrence Carroll came to us from that magazine’s London office, and prima donna didn’t even begin to describe him. Which was weird, because his old colleagues in London said he was a great guy, easy to work with, and supportive of the team. Maybe they’d just wanted to be rid of him.
“Okay, I’ll do what I can. Is he in his office?” I asked.
“Yes. Oh, thank you, Lily, you are the only one he will listen to. Especially about the belts. Once we have chosen the belts, then he will understand the shoes. He will agree. The interns will unlock the toilet and the rest of us will be able to pee.”
Being French, Danielle has no inhibitions talking about bodily functions. This often upsets the interns even more than a fashion editor going slightly psychotic, but I was used to it.
“I’ll try to talk to him, Danielle. Just give me a minute, okay?”
I was standing on a bridge leaning on a wide marble ledge, no longer occupied by the display of delicate gold earrings. I took the stairs down to the street and chose one of the several bars because I really wanted to sit down. My very elegant pink D&G stilettos looked wonderful but my toes felt like they were on fire and the rest of my feet were identifying with the Christian saints. The ones who are regularly shown with implements of excruciating martyrdom. If I am ever depicted with the instrument of my torment, it will be a gloriously beautiful designer shoe with a four-and-a-half-inch heel and narrow straps.
My feet were ready to go on strike, I was on vacation, and now I had to talk to a drama queen fashion editor having a hissy fit. I needed a drink as well as a chair and a quiet corner.
I sat, ordered Campari and soda and an ice cream before I hit the address book in the Treo. It was barely after lunch in New York. I waited for my drink and eased my feet out of my shoes gently, not taking them off entirely but lifting just a bit so that the pressure of the straps eased.
The phone rang in New York while an attractive waiter in an ankle-length apron served my drink with a flourish. “Hello?” Lawrence said, his voice full of suspicion.
“Hello, Lawrence,” I said as cheerfully as I could manage. “Danielle told me there was some issue about belts for the white shirt shoot.”
“Issue? There’s no issue, there’s bloody world war three going on in here! I cannot find One. Single. Belt. That gives the right look, the right message. And you are on the other side of the pond and doing no fucking good to anyone.”
I sighed. “Of course, Lawrence. You had talked to me about the feature before I left, and I pulled the belts for it. There are a few nice pieces by Coach and a Kate Spade that will be just right for jeans, and a darling Kenzo for the edgier look. They’re all in my office in a box labeled Lawrence on the top shelf over my computer.”
“How did you know what I wanted?” Lawrence asked, paranoia dripping through all five thousand miles of the connection.
“You told me when we first discussed the feature in February,” I reminded him. “So I pulled the belts then.”
“Why did you do that?” Lawrence asked.
“Because that is my job,” I said slowly, enunciating every word.
There was a pause that might have been transmission or might have been Lawrence’s brain engaging. “I am going now to look for this box. I’ll look in it. If there’s a problem I’ll call you, and I expect there to be a problem. There is not one single bloody belt in this entire benighted country that will make the statement I want.”
I caught the waiter’s eye and pointed to my near
ly empty glass. I was definitely going to need more alcohol to get through a Lawrence debacle. “Go and look. And if you see things you like, call me back, right away, okay? Because it’s the middle of the night here and I’m going to go to sleep soon.”
He hung up without a good-bye. I called Danielle and told her the potentially good news. She had some reservations but reported Lawrence walking down the hall and entering my office. No explosion followed.
* * *
If I could deliver Lawrence I would. It would be a blessing to all of New York and probably London as well, though his old office said he was a great guy. Best guess is that they lied. And I wouldn’t even mind covering up the consequences; unlike my coworkers, I know how to clean a crime scene and I would have no guilt whatsoever in making sure Lawrence arrived on Satan’s doorstep ASAP.
Except he was the only kind of man I couldn’t seduce and eliminate. Lawrence was gay.
I truly regretted that incubi and succubi do not get along. The split had been old when I’d been recruited. Anyone reasonable would think that we’d have a lot in common and would benefit in sharing. I certainly thought so, and I wasn’t the only succubus who held that opinion. And if there were a number of succubi who agreed, there would have to be incubi on the other side who thought that an alliance would be better than current hostilities. Because if I could talk to an incubus then Lawrence would get what he so deeply deserves, and sooner rather than later. I’d so completely vote for sooner.
I sipped my second drink and contemplated a post to MagicMirror about incubi and succubi. The more I thought about it, the better the idea seemed.
The Treo cut short my rumination. It was Lawrence, sounding suspicious. “The belts were there. You’re right, they are the ones I want. Especially the Kate Spade. But you should know I don’t trust you, Lily. No one should be able to pick out just what I want before I’ve even seen them. Are you sure you’re really American? No one in this atrocious excuse for a country has any sense of style.”
“I’m glad you like my selections, Lawrence. Always a pleasure.” And I hung up.
Danielle text messaged a discreet thank-you and I acknowledged and turned the Treo off before I threw it back into my bag.
The second drink made me mellow. I wondered if anyone had posted anything interesting on MagicMirror while I’d been away. I couldn’t access the demon blog from any computer but my own, or one set up for the Underworld. I no longer had the contacts in Venice, and while I could have made some I was here to get away. Away from my real life and especially away from Nathan.
The first love of my life, Niccolo, had been found floating under one of the ubiquitous arched bridges right here in Venice. He had been murdered and no one had ever found out why. Maybe it was an opera rivalry, or maybe politics involving his patron, the Count. Though that had happened back in 1727, it felt very new.
I had not fallen in love again until last month, when I’d met Nathan Coleman. He had black hair and brilliant blue eyes and a love of ancient history. After almost three hundred years I had begun to trust a man, enjoy his company.
I thought things were good between us. Things had been good between us—until Nathan dumped me. Because I am a succubus. Because I showed him Hell to prove it, introduced him to Mephistopheles and Satan and showed him the souls in torment. He loved me, I was certain of that, but he’d freaked. He couldn’t handle my immortality, and he couldn’t handle the fact that I damn men to Hell for eternity.
I couldn’t entirely blame him.
Still, in three thousand years I had only fallen in love twice.
I wasn’t enjoying the café anymore, so I paid my bill and walked back to my hotel. My feet had rested enough not to protest the heels and the straps. Looking beautiful had again trumped comfort, and it wasn’t that far to Apostoli.
My hotel, the Giorgione, didn’t have the opulence or levels of service I used to enjoy at the Danieli, but it was quiet and the staff were genuinely hospitable and warm. My room was quite pleasant in the overdecorated and ridiculously gilded manner of the city. The double bed, covered in green brocade, ruled in splendor behind two golden twisted pillars. I felt sorry for myself again, seeing that bed and knowing that no one would share it with me. I did not want to bring back prey, not to my temporary little lair. No, I wanted Nathan.
For all that he’d left me and run, I missed him. I wanted him. And I was furious at him for not being able to accept the realities of my life. I’d accepted them for three thousand years. The least he could do was make an effort.
The anger at Lawrence merged with fury at Nathan’s betrayal and I sat enthroned in the center of my green brocade bed and seethed.
Which was not a very satisfying activity.
I was too awake to go to sleep and too angry to do anything fun or useful. I’d already hunted once and wasn’t up for going out again. So I pulled on my Citizen jeans and my extralarge No Rest for the Wicked tee shirt and went down to the hotel computer room. It was late enough that the computer was free and no one was playing pool or cards. I signed in to Worlds of Warcraft and blew things up for a few hours, which made me feel much better. By the time the sun rose I was ready to call it a night.
When I woke up in Venice, I had not been able to forget history (my own and its own) and misery (all mine), and so the only reasonable thing was to go shopping.
Shopping in Venice is as picturesque and inconvenient as anything else in this city, with no wheeled vehicles and hundreds of bridges, all with steps. It isn’t easy to get a water taxi. They don’t cruise like taxis in New York. Gondolas, which had once been used for actual transportation, are now tourist commodities. The gondoliers all have their regular routes and little chats like the people who drive horse-drawn carriages around Central Park. They won’t take you to, say, Barneys.
Down in the shopping district around San Marco I bought two Prada jackets, several pairs of Versace slacks that hadn’t shown up in New York, and a pile of Valentino shoes, blouses and skirts. I hauled the packages down to the vaporetto stand and took the Number One public boat up the Grand Canal.
On the boat I saw a face that I was certain I’d seen in Versace, or maybe outside La Perla. Not a particularly remarkable man, not a face I would have noticed except that he bore a strong resemblance to Vincent, my doorman back home. The Number One is the most used vaporetto in the city, I told myself. It is big, a water bus with multiple stops. Probably just a coincidence. But I nervously shredded the ribbon handle of the shopping bag all the same.
It was not far to Ca’ d’Oro, just behind the second bend in the canal. Ca’ d’Oro is one of the most beautiful of the Grand Canal palaces, smaller than some but decorated in the vaguely Eastern and very ornate style that has become the hallmark of Venetian design.
I got off the boat as quickly as possible and walked across the Campo Apostoli to my hotel. If he followed me I should be able to spot him in the open square, but I wanted a running start. Apostoli is open but there is a café, a restaurant, and a church, to say nothing of the tobacco shop on the corner. Plenty of places to hide. I cut through the restaurant tables set out on the cobblestones with their green and white checked cloths and walked close to the building until I hit the gelateria half a block up. Not the best gelateria in Venice, but I could duck inside rather than buy my ice cream from the window. As I ordered and the strawberry ice cream was scooped into a cone, I watched out the large glass door.
He was there, casually perusing the menu at the restaurant where I had tried to disappear. I pressed my back against the wall, trying to watch him while he couldn’t see me. The server had to call me twice to get my ice cream, and I took the cone and resumed my post inside the door.
This could have just been his stop, I thought. He could just be hungry. But when he looked around the square, took a few minutes to read the café menu (which was very short) and then crossed the campo to inspect scarves set out on a rack in front of a shop, I couldn’t believe it was coincidence.
“Is there a problem, miss?” the petite woman behind the counter asked in Venetian dialect.
I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t manage to speak until I’d taken a few deep breaths. “I think that man followed me when I got off the vaporetto,” I said in the same dialect. When Admin changed my identity and gave me American English they had not removed my Italian. I speak it fluently and the Venetian dialect also, which is not really Italian and is unintelligible to anyone not raised Venetian.
The woman came out from behind the counter and looked where I was pointing. She snorted. “Here,” she said, and showed me out the back of the shop into an alley. I circled from the opposite direction and entered the hotel from the side entrance instead of the front. If the man waited for me to emerge in the square he was going to wait a long time, but that didn’t stop my heart from pounding.
I threw the new bags into the closet and they landed on top of several other shopping bags with elite logos. All I had done for days was hunt and shop and be angry. And when I was angry I hunted and made random men pay for my heartbreak. Which, in my opinion, was perfectly reasonable.
Now I was afraid and confused. How could anyone know I was in Venice? Who would possibly know I was here? They couldn’t have followed me, not the men who had hunted us back in Brooklyn. Only my closest friends knew where I was.
I thought about changing my clothes, going out and hunting down the man who had followed me. Hunting him and delivering his soul to Satan. The part of me that was furious with Nathan, the part of me that had been hurt and frightened so many times by the Knight Defenders, who had tried to eliminate all the demons in New York, was all for it. But I didn’t really want to hunt. I didn’t want to get that close, that intimate, with an enemy who was trying to destroy me.
I waited, tense, for a call from the hotel desk. I expected my shadow to come looking for me, but after an hour and a half the call never came. Maybe he hadn’t known where I was staying. The hotel is discreet and down several blocks from the campo; you would have to know it was there. Perhaps he didn’t know.
