Succubus Takes Manhattan

by Nina Harper

  For a moment I considered just saying that I had a prior engagement. But the only prior engagement that carried any weight with Meph would be with Satan Herself. No way around it, I had to reschedule with my buds. I sent out the e-mails and told Raven particularly that we would go out on Saturday and get our nails done. I doubted that she had ever taken care of her nails and it would be a treat for her as well as an introduction to decent grooming. I had to send everyone an e-mail and try to reschedule with that sinking feeling that things weren’t going to work. The only thing that saved me was knowing that they all knew that I had no choice. Hell is not a democracy. We’re a top-down organization, and when the second in command requires your presence, you are present. The end.

  But I hate hate hate having to bail on my friends.

  Then, knowing there was no way out of it, I looked back at Meph’s e-mail to see where the meeting was taking place. He could not make me leave New York again, not when I had just returned.

  The meeting was not in New York. It was not on Earth at all. It was in Hell. Specifically, it was in the Treasury Conference Room.

  The week flew by in a blur. All I could think about was the meeting. I wondered if Marten would be there, I wondered if he had found who was stealing from Satan, and I wondered what to wear. The latter was the easiest since that was entirely under my control. On Wednesday I got an e-mail from Marten saying that he was going to be at the meeting and would I like to have dinner with him afterward.

  Which I found odd, but then I remembered that the meeting was in Hell. He could use Hell as an entrance and exit point to any place in the world. It wasn’t easy and it took a whole lot more energy than to simply buy a plane ticket, but I figured that Meph would be spotting some of the energy. Which made this something of a subsidized trip.

  I would have said yes even if he hadn’t suggested Per Se, the hottest foodie mecca in the city. Only a little trendy, the place catered more to gourmets than the glitterati. Meph had blogged about them at least three times, raving over some exquisite dish or stunning preparation in each review. I was interested to try the place, though it wasn’t as popular in my crowd. But then, I’m not a proper gourmet. I adore food, but I want more than just exquisite flavor. I want fun people and buzz and a parade of elegant outfits to liven up the atmosphere.

  Still, I was impressed that Marten suggested it and I wanted to go. And I wanted to be with Marten, even if we were only going to Ray’s Pizza. Truth to tell, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him since I’d gotten to the airport in Aruba. If we could use magical transportation between destinations this might even be workable. I was so full of hope and anticipation that I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I spent most of the day staring at the wall wondering what Marten would wear and where he was staying. My biggest decision was that it was truly time for him to come to my apartment. No more hotels—that was crazy. I even called my cleaning lady to see if she could fit in an extra visit before Thursday.

  The next day I felt effervescent, fizzing with anticipation and dread. For all I wanted to see Marten I was worried about why Meph wanted me at the meeting. I was so distracted that I hadn’t noticed that the office was unnaturally quiet on Thursday. I had holed up in my office going over proof sheets for the July Accessories page (totes and sun hats) and ignoring my phone. With the thick walls I was protected from the world and I wanted it that way, so if I happened to drift off into a daydream nobody would notice.

  I didn’t even notice Lawrence in the elevator when I got on after a coffee run. There I was trapped in an elevator with the scourge of the magazine, with two grande lattes and a cardboard tray full of pastry.

  “Nice to see you, Lily. Isn’t it a lovely day?”

  The lattes did not fall at my feet, but it was a close call. “Uh, yes, Lawrence, it is. Did you have a nice weekend?”

  His lip curled and he squinted strangely. “The best weekend in ages,” he said, and suddenly I realized that the unfamiliar expression was an attempt at a smile. “I never did thank you for introducing me to Roman. And . . . thank you, Lily. We both thank you. And we were thinking of having you in to dinner sometime in the next few weeks. Roman loves to cook for company. He is so talented. He cooks, he reads, he has a classical education.”

  “I’m so glad you’re both happy,” I said, utterly astounded. I would have thought that Roman would have delivered him immediately and had done with it. Apparently not.

  “Yes, thank you,” Lawrence said again. “And, Lily, could I talk to you privately for a minute?”

  I nodded and the elevator doors opened. “Your office?” I asked. I didn’t want to return to mine with him. He nodded and I followed him down the hall.

  His office was marginally more organized than when I had been in earlier with the Starbucks to collect a sample. He gestured to the sofa, which had been cleared of jeans, and we sat.

  “Look, Lily, I’m terribly sorry about your office. More than I can say. I don’t know if you’ll accept this or not, but I wasn’t truly myself then.”

  “Oh?” I was completely confused. This Lawrence talking to me seemed stable and sincere. This man was nothing like the raging psychodrama on legs I’d worked with for nearly two months.

  He shook his head and smiled wryly. “I’ll ask you to keep this quiet, please.” He hesitated and stared at his hands before he drew a breath and continued. “Roman explained what you are, so I must believe that you won’t find what I am going to say to be the product of an overwrought imagination. Though I myself still find it unbelievable, even when we confronted the situation and have mostly resolved it.”

  I was shocked into silence. “You know what I am?” I managed to squeak.

  “I know about the Hellspawn, that you are a succubus and Roman is an incubus. I’m considering my own options for the future,” he said, very matter-of-fact. “Most likely I’ll want to ask your advice further later on. But I wanted you to know. And I did want to apologize. I have more to thank you for than you realize. You see, I knew I was behaving horribly. I never had such a temper in my life, but as soon as I started at Trend something came over me, as if I were under a compulsion. You cannot imagine what it was like, seeing myself behave like some bad stereotype. When those tempers came over me, it was like I was locked inside my own head watching as something completely alien came over me. It was Roman who unraveled it. It appears that I was under a geas, a magical attack of some sort. Which Roman broke in a ritual last weekend. I feel . . . like myself again. It’s like waking up from a bad dream, where I was locked in my own body and saw what I was doing but was unable to get out.”

  I nodded. “Geases can be bad,” I said softly. “But who did it, and why? Do you know?”

  “I have some ideas,” Lawrence said. “Roman said he would help me track it down, but he did say that it was done very well. And it is not entirely broken. There are still threads that linger. I was hoping you might help us. He said the magic definitely had a British flavor, and he wondered if I were being used against someone or something in New York.”

  I thought for a few minutes. “That’s possible. Although it seems rather odd if you don’t have any connections to the magical world. You’re not, by chance, a practicing ceremonialist or the member of one of the Magickal Orders?”

  He grinned and rolled his eyes. “If you’d told me such a thing existed before I had this experience, I would have thought you were irrational at best. I wouldn’t want to say what I would think at worst.”

  Seeing Lawrence like this, I got the feeling that I was actually seeing him for the first time. A bad geas is usually placed by a malevolent magician, although Hell-spawn are capable of making this magic. I wondered whether it was tied in with the Burning Men and the Treasury and everything else that was going wrong. I knew the notion was ridiculous. Just because there were traitor demons and Burning Men did not necessarily follow that every act of magic in the Western world was linked to me. Lawrence had probably angered a magician, and it probably
was anger since that was the emotion that he displayed when the geas took over.

  “Yes, I’ll help you,” I agreed. I didn’t expect there to be any connection to my own problems, but knowing the origin of Lawrence’s geas would set my mind at ease. If nothing else, helping Roman might start a dialogue between incubi and succubi, something that was long overdue.

  I thought it was possible that whatever had been done to Lawrence was part of this much larger pattern that I was somehow mixed up in. I couldn’t see how it came together clearly; there was some heavy-duty ritual magic going on, not just among the Hellspawn but among the humans too. Between the magical trap that had caught Raven and Lawrence’s geas, there had to be at least one top-drawer ritual magician out there who was not Marten. Was this person independent, or working directly for Meph’s nemesis?

  I wondered whether Marten would know who it might be. After all, there couldn’t be all that many elite magicians running around the world. Like Satan’s Companions, they probably all knew each other, or at least knew of each other. And I liked any plan that meant I had to talk to Marten.

  Instead of going directly to my own office I knocked on Danielle’s door. The second latte had been for her anyway. At her soft “Entrée” I entered her domain and set the Starbucks on her antique Art Deco desk. “Lily,” she said, “you look like you have seen a ghost.”

  “I have. I ran into Lawrence on the elevator and he was, well, he was pleasant to me. He smiled.”

  Danielle nodded sagely. “I think he is in love. He has been civil to everyone, even the interns, all week. He has not had a single tantrum. He was whistling yesterday. And he has left the office before six every night.”

  “Why didn’t I notice?” I asked, curious that she had been so aware while I hadn’t paid any attention.

  “Because you are also in love,” she answered matter-of-factly. “You are in love with two men, I think, and you are too American to simply accept the fact.”

  I thought about it for a minute, but the whole notion made my head hurt. So I tried to drink my coffee instead, but it was too hot. “Do you have a bag that will go with these shoes?” she asked, and we started in on work.

  By the time Danielle and I finished, it was time for me to go home and take a long shower before heading off to Hell. I tried on six different outfits before I was able to settle on something conservative enough for Marduk and sexy enough for Marten all in the same meeting. Thank Satan for Gwen Stefani, though she doesn’t belong to us. Yet.

  Going to Hell is not as easy as it sounds. I had to activate the mirror in the old fashioned way, starting with the sulfur incense and candles and charging it with a smear of ichor (being careful not to drip on the dress). Then I had to draw the sigils in the correct order accompanied by chants that, while not quite so silly as the ceremonial invocations, were certainly a little over the top for the twenty-first century.

  The familiar scent of sulfur engulfed me and the sickly yellow haze blotted out everything else. Something lurched, shifted, and the haze glittered. My stomach coiled up in a knot and I wondered why, with so many geniuses in our Legion, there was not a better transportation system. At least I’d avoided the humiliating handbasket that lower demons had to use for their first fifty years (unless released by Satan or Meph).

  The bilious cloud cleared and I was in a hallway in what I expected was the Treasury. An Oriental carpet ran down the hall, which was richly paneled and hung with portraits of Marduk, Meph, Beliel, Al Capone, Ken Lay and other notables of the Underworld most famed for their fiduciary contributions. Sybil belonged on this wall, only she preferred to recruit souls instead of managing assets.

  A short, round demon with skin like an orange peel bowed before me. “If you please, Lady, I am sent to bring you to the conference room.”

  “Why didn’t I transport there directly?” I was curious. I have rarely seen a hallway or waiting room in Hell. Satan’s Chosen are admitted as first priority.

  “I am sorry, Lady,” the little demon sniveled. “All of our conference rooms and offices are no-transport zones, enforced by Security, so that no one can get into the Treasury. It is a precautionary measure. I hope you can understand and will not hold our department responsible for your discomfort.”

  I shrugged. “No discomfort, really. Lead on.”

  My guide sighed with relief that I would not torture him for making me walk all of fifteen feet down the hall and through an ornately carved walnut door. He remained on the outside, not being of sufficient rank to be admitted, while I sailed past.

  The conference room looked more like a Victorian men’s club than a meeting room for the Fortune 500. Overstuffed leather sofas with plump round arms faced each other, each with a low table for holding papers and drinks set discreetly angled to the sides. A silk Qom carpet in cream, gold, and red looked so soft that I longed to slip off my shoes and run my feet over knotwork fine enough for a dressmaker’s fabric. But with Marduk already enthroned in an oversized wing chair and Mephistopheles in the corner studying a pile of printout, I remained primly shod. The Librarian in the flowing pale blue robes of the Akashic who sat at Marduk’s left was not Azoked, which relieved me greatly. This Librarian was not a Bastform but a demon of the fey, frighteningly beautiful and androgynous, with a steady stare.

  First I walked over and made obeisance to Marduk. Not the full prostration that a mortal would give a god, naturally, but a discernible curtsey and a murmur of greeting in our shared mother tongue. I didn’t look at the Librarian, but from the corner of my eye I noted that he (or she?) appeared to be following.

  “Lilith, first of the lilitu, I greet you and welcome you to our council,” Marduk said formally. “Please be seated among us.” Some people might consider this stiff and overly proper, but Marduk was, in fact, granting me rank in the meeting. I was not simply an observer and a friendly party, but a full participant and a representative of demons (lilitu merely being the Babylonian word for succubus). I took a corner of a couch. Immediately a report and a steaming cup of cinnamon latte appeared on my side table, the former bound in leather with a gilt title, the latter in Royal Doulton with a sterling four o’clock spoon.

  When I picked up the report a matching Royal Doulton plate loaded with lemon scones, melty oversized chocolate chip cookies, a slice of tarte Tatin and a wedge of St. André cheese appeared. The chef was clearly following the new dictates of multiculturalism, or at least pan-European unity.

  The report bore Marten’s name and that was the only word on it I understood. I wished that Sybil were here; she would be able to explain the long columns of figures, income sources and streams, percentages of equities, and the breakdown of expenses. To me it looked like the pile of material I paid her to decipher so I didn’t have to.

  I was so distracted by trying to make out the gist of the report that I missed the near silent opening of the door and footfalls on the luxurious carpet. “Marduk,” Marten said as he entered, and he bowed precisely in the Japanese manner. Marduk nodded and waved a hand, indicating me, but Marten sat alone directly across from the head of the Treasury. For the first time I really did believe that he was an accountant. He wore a plain gray suit with a dark blue shirt and pale blue tie. In the United States it would be cutting fashion, but for a European it was conservative banker drag at its dullest.

  He looked amazingly cute as an accountant, too, as well as solid. I liked that. It was hard for me to pay attention to the meeting while thinking about the delicious privacy we would have as soon as this was over.

  I tried to give Marten a subtle smile of support, but the door opened again and the fifth member of the council arrived. Beliel. Of all the demons of Hell, Beliel was one I had not expected to be here. He had never been involved in the dull details of finance and I wondered at his presence. As usual, he wore a variation of a hussar’s uniform, all in black with a high collar and deep bronze braiding with pants so tight they looked painted on and knee boots polished so brightly they would do for r
itual mirrors.

  Tension flowed between Marduk and Beliel. Marduk would not rise, Beliel would not come forward and greet him. Neither would acknowledge the other first. In Hell they were equals, but Beliel had never been a god and this was Marduk’s territory. Challenge shimmered in the air like a magical sigil ready to explode.

  Mephistopheles turned around just then and took a seat. “Now that we’re all here, we can begin,” he said, taking the precedence of his rank over both the senior demons.

  “It is generous of Beliel to honor us with his presence,” Marduk said, “but I do not understand why he is involved in what is an internal matter of the Treasury.”

  Beliel sat and picked up his coffee cup, added cream, and drank before he spoke. “It is an internal matter that concerns Security. If there is some breach in the Treasury it is our proper province to investigate and aid in any measures to safeguard our Master’s Treasury.”

  “Perhaps we should start with a quick overview of the findings,” Mephistopheles interjected, reducing the tension. “I don’t think that either Beliel or Lily has had a chance to go over the report. Marten, perhaps you could sum up briefly so that we’re all up to speed here.”

  Marten cleared his throat and took a pair of narrow German glasses out of his breast pocket to read over the figures. “Gentlemen, Lily,” he started, nodded at me, “the evidence is that there has been some very subtle embezzlement that has gone on for at least two years here. The figures are hidden in the operating expenses, but done very well. Someone who was not familiar with this form of deception would not notice it, so there is no fault to any of the Treasury clerks who were simply following their normal routines. It would take a forensic accountant to track down the trail here.”