by Nina Harper
It takes great service and loyalty for Satan to grant a boon. Okay, if some mortal could uncover who had stolen major funds, who was gunning for Her lieutenants and had targeted Her Chosen, She would probably be moved to be very generous. But it was a very long shot.
So who was Marten, I wondered? He wasn’t immortal, but he could be approaching centuries, he could be quite old. There had been a number of famous magicians in the past century or two. I wondered. But none of them had been Dutch . . .
I took my clothes into the bathroom and put them on. Using the bedside pad, I wrote Marten a quick note saying that I had to be at work early in the morning and didn’t want to disturb him, but that we were still on for the evening and left my cell number.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to date Marten (though I wasn’t sure that I didn’t want to date him, either), but I was dead certain that I needed to see him. Now that I knew vaguely where he stood, I at least knew the questions to ask.
chapter
TEN
Work. I wasn’t lying, I had a lot to do and I was dead exhausted. A date, no sleep, great sex, sounds like the right life for a demon to me. Only the getting up, getting dressed, and actually doing any work was not easy under those circumstances.
“Lily, your eyes are puffy,” Danielle said when I dragged into the office at ten with two grande doubleshot mochachinos that I bought on the theory that the double boost of caffeine and sugar would get me through the morning. What was left of it.
“Yes, I know,” I said and shrugged. “It happens.”
She gave me a long penetrating stare and then smiled. “Oh, indeed. Well, that is good, I expect.”
Then she disappeared behind the closed door to shoe-land and I was in my office. Which had, since I’d left on Friday, filled up with parcels that someone had thrown all over my sofa and coffee table.
I sighed and started unwrapping belts, beaded earrings, and bags. Lots of bags. I sat down, cradled my head in my arms on my desk and tried to ignore the universe.
Unfortunately, the universe seems to know when it’s being blown off and doesn’t like it much. The phone rang. I wasn’t going to pick up, but I didn’t want anyone thinking I was taking a second sick day.
“Where have you been?” a familiar voice started without even a greeting. “Do you know how bad Sybil is? Why didn’t you pick up your phone this morning?”
It was Eros, and I had no idea what she was talking about. “What do you mean?” I asked. “We saw Sybil yesterday at brunch and everything was fine.”
“Vincent disappeared this morning,” Eros informed me. “He was supposed to go to Syb’s right after his shift ended last night and he never showed up. He isn’t answering his cell phone, and she needed to check with you to see if you’d seen him or heard from him, and you weren’t answering.”
“Wait, wait,” I said, and dug through my purse.
It was off. I hadn’t left it off, I was certain. I tried to turn it on and there was the culprit: low battery. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t thought about recharging the thing.
“Look, Eros, I haven’t been home and forgetting to charge my phone is not a hanging offense. I’ve had some extra work, okay? And a date. How was I to know that Vincent would go and disappear and Sybil would need me? How about you fill me in and I’ll call Sybil,” I suggested.
“Sybil is over here now, where she’s been since seven thirty this morning when Vincent didn’t show. We went by your place and there was no trace of you or him,” Eros informed me. “We were afraid you’d both disappeared.”
Did they think we’d run off together? I wanted to laugh but that would only make Sybil and Eros more upset. It isn’t like Eros spent every night at home.
“Put Sybil on, okay?” I asked.
“Hi, Lily,” Sybil said, sniffling. “I just wanted to know when was the last time you talked to Vincent, or saw him. You didn’t see him this morning or late last night, did you?”
And then I remembered that I hadn’t seen him when I’d left the night before. I hadn’t thought anything of it at the time—Vincent works a regular shift rotation and sometimes he had time off, so it didn’t alarm me when he wasn’t there. “I didn’t know he was supposed to work last night,” I admitted sadly. “If I’d realized he was supposed to be on I could have alerted you then.”
I felt awful. And afraid. Demons, especially talented, capable demons like Vincent don’t just disappear.
“I want to find him,” Sybil said.
“Of course,” I agreed. “Of course you do. But he’s probably fine. I want you to admit that, that he’s probably just fine.”
Sybil broke into tears again. “I don’t know that he’s probably fine. I keep thinking of him burning in holy water or being held in a salt triangle and being tormented and commanded by some ceremonial magician.”
“The only ceremonial magician I’ve met in a hundred years is on our side,” I said reassuringly. “And if Vincent had run into him, the two of them would be more likely to be in trouble for their bar tab than anything else.”
“Stop making fun of her,” Eros yelled into the mouth-piece. She must have grabbed the phone from Sybil, who I could hear sniffling in the background. “You are—what’s happened to you, Lily? You know Sybil isn’t up to your humor at a time like this.”
Sybil is the most fragile of the four of us and we all know it. For centuries, Desi, Eros, and I had all conspired to take care of her. Keeping Sybil from being hurt yet again was our sacred duty as her friends, and our duty to each other as well.
“Find him,” Eros ordered me. “You. Now. Find Vincent and make things okay for Sybil. Or I will curse you. I am still a demigoddess, and you still have the roots of a mortal.”
Oh, give me a break. I was mortal three thousand years ago, and while I was never as powerful as Eros, I am not entirely without strength. Besides which, Satan has favored me on several occasions. Even among Her Companions, Satan has shown me particular affection.
Besides, where did Eros get off giving me orders? If she were so much more powerful she should just find Vincent herself. Eros pretended to always be so cool and above it all, but she was overreacting as badly as Sybil. I knew that, and I knew that Eros always put on an imperious front to cover up for feeling afraid.
“Give me Sybil again,” I sighed. Talking to Eros was useless until she calmed down.
“What?” Sybil asked through her sobs.
“Has Eros tried to find Vincent?” I asked.
“Won’t work,” Sybil whispered.
“Speak up,” I said. “I can’t hear you. And why wouldn’t it work? Why do you think that I could do it if Eros can’t?”
“He likes you,” Sybil confessed.
“Oh.”
I had no idea that Vincent hadn’t liked Eros. I also didn’t know what his liking me had to do with me possibly being able to find him.
“But how do you expect me to find him if you and Eros can’t?” I was definitely confused.
“You know a detective,” Sybil said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “And he told you about Branford showing up again, so maybe he knows where the guy is. Maybe he’s seen Vincent. Could you call Nathan?”
Now it all made sense.
Call Nathan. He’d called me, to warn me. It would be reasonable, natural even, for me to call him about Vincent’s disappearance. That’s what private detectives did all the time, right, find people? And he was the only private detective any of us knew. Oh, sure, there must be a few million in service to Satan, but we didn’t know any of them personally. And they might not understand all the issues with Branford, what he had done and what he was trying to do.
Nathan was an obvious choice.
My mind went blank. It should be so simple. And this is just what I had wanted, a sincere and legitimate reason to talk to him.
I said my good-byes to Sybil, and hit speed dial for his cell phone.
He picked up on the first ring. “Lily, are you oka
y?” Concern warmed his voice and I knew he still cared.
“I’m fine,” I reassured him quickly. “It’s not me, it’s Sybil. Well, Vincent, the doorman at my building, is missing. And he’s been dating Sybil and she’s afraid that Branford caught him. Or something else bad happened to him. So can you find him? As a detective, I mean. We can pay.”
“Let’s take this one step at a time. Do you have any reason to believe that he’s been targeted by Branford? What’s his relationship to Sybil? Start from the top.”
I calmed down, at least enough to talk. “Vincent is a demon. He’s very junior, but he’s doing well and has a lot of promise. And he’s been dating Sybil. I always have a demon doorman who runs errands and sometimes helps cleaning up after my deliveries.”
“Wait a sec,” he interrupted. “Do other succubi have demon servants? Or only you?”
I thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “But Vincent is hardly my servant. He’s more like my keeper sometimes.” I heard his sharp intake of breath and I recanted. “Okay, not really like a keeper. But he does keep an eye on me, pass messages, help clean up and so on. It’s a low-ranked position, but Vincent is better than almost anyone in his class. Meph is impressed with him and he’s going to rise in the Hierarchy. We think he’s headed to at least a deputy chief.”
“So he’s a talented young demon on the rise,” Nathan said, very matter-of-factly. I wish he had been so professionally calm when I told him about what kind of demon I was. But he hadn’t believed in demons then.
“Exactly,” I agreed. “And he’s been dating Sybil. Which we think is a little inappropriate because Syb is one of Her Companions and Vincent is just a junior newbie with a lot of promise. But they’ve just started dating officially and now he’s missing. He said he was going over to Sybil’s when he got off duty this morning, and he never arrived. And I don’t remember seeing him last night when I left, either, so it could be that he never even made it in to work.”
“When does his shift end? When did Sybil expect him?” Nathan was all business now.
“I think he gets off at seven in the morning. And Sybil said she started to worry at seven thirty.”
“Hmmm,” Nathan said, and I could see him rolling the pen between his long fingers as he gazed out the window, thinking. “And Sybil’s place is?”
“Only five minutes away by cab. I can walk it in heels in fifteen minutes. So half an hour including time for him to pick up coffee and finish signing out or whatever they do,” I said wearily. “So can you do it? Can you find him?”
“I can try,” Nathan said briskly. “I should also talk to Sybil, and she or you or whomever needs to sign a contract and give us a deposit. And there are more details I should get and a picture, also, if you have one. When can you come in? Or I can go over there, no problem.”
“What day?” I asked. It was hard enough for me to talk to him on the phone. The thought of seeing him in person was terrifying. Excruciating. I had to remind myself that there was no hope. Still, deep inside me I believed that if I got to see him, if only he thought and listened, he would reconsider.
“Today,” he replied firmly. “The sooner the better. The faster I can pick up his trail the more likely I am to find him.”
“Before anything bad happens,” I whispered.
“We don’t know that anything bad is going to happen,” Nathan said crisply, and I could tell that he had made this little speech loads of times. “It’s only been a few hours, and there could be a perfectly good explanation. He could have decided to stop home and shower, he could have decided to go shopping and gotten distracted, he could have run into an old friend. We don’t know. I want to talk to both of you as soon as possible. Just let me know when and where and I’ll meet you.”
“I’ve got to call Sybil to figure it out,” I said lamely. “Thank you.” And then I hung up.
I was going to see Nathan today. I didn’t know whether I was elated or miserable. I had a date with Marten that evening, Sybil was crying, and Vincent was missing. And me—I was exhausted and confused and wanted more than anything to take a long bath and a longer nap and have the entire world go away.
Instead, I called Sybil back and we agreed to rendezvous over at her place in two hours, which I could call lunch. She had pictures and information there.
“But one thing, Syb,” I said before hanging up. “It sounded like Eros was upset with me this morning. Or was she just worried about Vincent and I’m being paranoid?” I knew I had to be politic in asking Sybil; she was terribly frightened, and with good reason, and I didn’t want to make things worse.
Fortunately, I think the question distracted her. “I don’t think it was you at all,” she said after a moment of consideration. “She had wanted to call Beliel right away, before you, and I said that I wanted to talk to you first. I don’t think you noticed, but she spent a lot of Hatuman’s party with Beliel. And I wanted Nathan, not one of Beliel’s Security demons, looking into things. I know Eros is friendly with Beliel, but that whole department makes me twitchy.”
“Me too,” I agreed, thinking about this new information. Could Eros be dating Beliel? That thought was entirely weird but it niggled and wouldn’t leave my brain. Something to look into later, maybe, but a low priority now.
Instead, I called Nathan back, gave him the address, and checked my shoot log. If I was going to disappear for a long lunch with a private detective and a distraught friend, I’d better be caught up on work.
I opened my features book and started to look through at what shoots were scheduled and where an editor had requested bags. While I am thoroughly modern and fully computerized, I keep this record in a spiral-bound notebook. That way I can sketch and color in ideas to have a more accurate image of what the feature is about.
The Fendi was definitely going in the holiday issue and there were a couple from Coach that were just right for Helene’s October spread on plaid skirts. I giggled with glee as the new line fit almost effortlessly into the upcoming issues, practically placing themselves. I pulled out my boxes and labeled each of them by shoot and editor and started filling them with bags.
Of course, jewelry and scarves and other possible accessories (glasses? belts? gloves?) would all be added as I found just the right things for the clothes to be featured. The best part of the process was showing their hand-picked accessories to the editors when they came to show me the clothes. They thought I was psychic because I could so accurately predict what would work best for a particular spread.
Well, okay, I’d been setting fashion for three thousand years, give or take a decade or so. There have been eras when the fashions were just awful. The eighties, for example. Big hair and ankle socks with heels. Who thought of that? Sheesh!
I was so focused on the task, so consumed by the new pieces and the smell of leather that I lost all track of time. So I jumped, shocked, when my office door banged open and a six-foot-two man in exquisite Lagerfeld barged in like a tornado.
“Lily, Lily, save me from this madhouse,” Lawrence yelled, his fingers clutching compulsively at his hair, disarranging his two-hundred-dollar cut and blow-dry from M. Louis. “You are the only sane, reasonable person in this hellhole. These others are insensitive, evil, cutthroat demons out to murder me and dump my mangled body into the East River.”
I blinked. “I don’t think they do that anymore. Especially not with all the work that’s gone into cleaning up the river.”
Lawrence looked like he was going to explode again, so I shifted a few boxes to the floor and motioned for him to sit on the sofa. He looked at the spot as if it might be contaminated, steeled himself and perched on my elegant reproduction eighteenth-century French brocade. I glanced at my mantel clock and figured I had half an hour before I had to leave.
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“What’s not the problem?” he spewed. “The gross incompetence? The fact that no one can get me the photographer I want on the same day the model
I want is available? The fact that the model’s agency objected to the outdoor shoot? Where can I start?”
Classic Lawrence. “Well, do you need any accessories? I can’t do anything about models’ schedules or shooting permits in the park, but if you need a really nice bag I can take care of it. How were the belts for the white shirt shoot, by the way?”
He gritted his teeth. “They were perfect. I still don’t know how you knew . . .”
I smiled perkily. “You told me what you wanted. I’ve got the inventory of belts. It was no big deal. So . . . do you want a bag?”
“No,” he said, pouting.
“Well, do you want some jewelry? Or glasses? I just got in a shipment of new Versace frames, they’re very interesting. Very Euro.”
“Oh, that’s how you categorize us? Euro? That’s so—Americans are so provincial.” His accent was stronger, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to take that as more Euro or that the British were something different from effete continentals.
I just stared at him in big-eyed innocence. In three thousand years, a girl can learn to impersonate a lot of innocence. “I was talking about how great the glasses are.” I paused for a moment to let it sink in. “What do you want? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you want.”
“I want Sonia available on the same day as Jackson Keefe.”
Okay. Fine. What precisely did he want me to do about that? I’m the accessories editor. I don’t book models. Sometimes I choose photographers, but except for my very few features (like my shawls and wraps special, where I already had a commitment from the selfsame Keefe) I have nothing to do with scheduling. Mostly I do my accessories page every month and support the fashion division.
I shrugged. “I don’t know how I can help you with that,” I said softly. “Really. I do accessories. You know that.”
