“The same reason why I can’t go to the cops about this,” Alice said. “He knows things he shouldn’t. It’s too risky to involve them, you know? So, let’s leave it at that.”
“I’ve been down that path before.”
Like Belyana. She went missing and her mother didn’t call the cops, out of fear that their illegal immigrant status would be discovered. That and demons were involved.
The more I looked at Giovanni’s face on the photo that idled on my desk, the more I started to piece together in my head what could have gotten the poor guy in trouble. A man that had run-ins with powerful and strong demons, survived only to get into trouble now? There was more going on. Whoever these demons were, they weren’t your small fry demons out to make trouble in the streets. These were the organized ones, the ones that forged alliances with people like the Russian mob, or perhaps were what remained of Lucifer’s faction now operating solo. I’m pretty sure I didn’t kill every single one of them just yet.
“I need more to work with,” I said to her. Her dark red lipstick covered lips formed into a grin as her legs crossed. I wanted to bite my knuckle. “What does Giovanni do?”
“Can’t tell you that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Give me something. Names and photos aren’t enough.”
She pulled out a pen and notepad from the handbag on the floor, wrote some stuff down, then tore off the page, pushing it across my desk to me. “This is where he was last seen. That’s all I can give you. You’re gonna have to figure out the rest, hun.”
“If I take the case.”
“You’ll take the case,” Alice said assertively. “The more the Russians offer fixers to kill you, the harder your life becomes, and you know that. This reward is your only way out. Who knows, maybe you’ll see Jim again.”
My hand stopped ahead of the paper she pushed me, as I glanced up at her face shooting her a frown. The Russians, Jim’s disappearance, and the location of my fucking office, Alice knew way too much. She and her brother were either affiliated with the criminal underground or the paranormal. Or both.
My inner succubus started whispering lustful words into my head. Words like how would Alice look naked, what would it feel like to hold a fistful of her breasts, oh and she was taller than me. That meant miles long legs.
I got up from my chair, so did she. I reached into my bag of tricks from the spirit element, accessing my succubus lure. Just like that, anyone within a limited range would find me the most desirable specimen on the face of the planet. I also picked up the charm talent a few weeks ago, you know, that one Lexi slash Lilith used on me. Yeah, one kiss, my hand running down their back, or through their hair and anyone I want will become my love slave while their heads get full of fake memories and uncontrolled burning lust to get inside of me.
I needed more from Alice, I needed to know the information she was withholding from me. Making her quiver at the thought of bedding me should get that information out from her when I ask. Normally, I wouldn’t use this skill on potential clients, but I had to know more before I accepted this case. All the other possible cases we had piling up were fixers trying to fish us out into the open. This was possibly the one not-a-fixer set up case waiting for us. It was also the one that could lead us down a path we were going to regret.
With the lure active, my inner succubus was released. I became a relaxed sensual woman, looking into Alice’s green eyes with a longing desire to play with her all night long.
“You might be all tough on the outside,” I said with a smooth voice, “but on the inside, I bet you’re a sweet playful thing.”
She licked her lips. “I can be.”
“Playful girls like you like to chat after some good sex, share secrets, gossip.”
I went to stroke her face gently and then stood up on my toes, moving to press my lips against her red lipstick covered ones.
She pulled away at the last second.
Alice whispered. “Your succubus trickery isn’t going to work darlin’.”
Denied.
If there was one thing I learned since going succubus mode on her, was that she knew of my powers and she had the power to resist my lure and charm, just like Gabe. That’s two people that can mysteriously resist me. It gave me more to think about, not that I did much of that while my lure was active. As long as my inner succubus was out of her cage, the only thinking I did was on the subject of how else I could trick someone into playing with my body.
I ended the lure’s ability. It was a pointless drain on my Umbral energy reserves at that point. I wasn’t going to get anything out of her by seduction. The sound of her handbag falling rattled the two of us. A tabby cat bolting off into the bedroom was seen fleeing the bag. Here’s hoping Alice didn’t know about Emily’s shifting ninjutsu, though, Alice reaching into her bag pulling out a business card suggested, not really.
“You can call me at this number,” Alice said, handing me the card. “Keep me updated on your progress.”
I stashed the card into my pocket and then asked the critical question. “What about payment?”
“Like I said—”
“I mean the cash part,” I corrected myself. “Still got bills to pay you know.”
Using that same pen and notepad, she wrote down a figure, handing me the torn off page. My guess was she had a feeling she was being watched and kept certain deals unspoken, written on pieces of paper. How do I know? Because I’d fucking do the same.
I gave the figure she wrote down a look, a nice long look. It was a lot of money. Too much in fact. I almost felt guilty for accepting it.
“Two things,” I said, keeping my eyes on the paper held in my hands. “One, is this figure, right? Two, how do you know so much about me?”
There was no answer. Looking up, I saw why. Alice had left. I didn’t even hear her step away and open the door. If you told me she used a magic trick to do that, I’d probably believe it.
I went after Alice, charging out into the hallway of the apartment. “Ah, for fuck sakes!”
By the time I found her, she was stepping into the elevator, pressing the ground floor button. Alice shot me smile and wink. It was the last sight of her stunning face I got to see before the doors slid shut.
There was no point in chasing. Alice was a woman that wanted to be seen on her own terms, and those terms had come and gone, just like her.
I fetched for the business card she gave, the last clue into who the fuck she was. It listed her as some head botanist at a greenhouse. The number and address was most likely the greenhouse itself, and not her place.
My client was a botanist, searching for her missing brother, who supposedly had a run in with powerful demons. She had the ability to make the Russians and fixer hit men go away, and the power to resist my lure and charm, just like Gabe.
“Emily, get your ass in gear,” I shouted, returning back into the office. “We got a new case.”
Chapter Five
Emily meowed at me as I shut the door, locking it behind me. I reiterated she needed to get ready. She meowed again, drawing my attention to what lay on the floor beneath her. It was a single rose, and I’m pretty fucking sure neither of us brought it in.
She slipped under her pile of clothes on the floor, returning to her humanoid form as I gawked at the business card, and typed in its address to Google Maps. It was a greenhouse all right, located just outside of Central Park, not far from where we were. After that, I picked up the second address given to me, the handwritten one written on the first note Alice gave me. Damn her handwriting was flawless. Google Maps pointed me to an address out in Hell’s Kitchen, one that seemed familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Reika,” Emily called out to me after covering her nakedness. “What would you have done if your lure and charm worked on her?”
Was that a serious question? Shit, I jammed my thumb to the bedroom. “Pretty sure my other bedroom is back there.”
She made a noisy exhale cr
ossing her arms. “Really?”
“That was a joke.”
In truth, it wasn’t. When my succubus half was let loose, it was hard to regain control of myself. It would have taken a lot of willpower not to sleep with Alice, and then feed on her soul as she orgasmed and moaned to the touch of my fingers. Emily would have to step in and use excessive force to pull us lusting girls off each other. When I went succubus mode, I became a different woman, and so did the people that were graced with my seducing magic.
“The old Reika wouldn’t have used that on a client.”
“Yeah, well, the new Reika needed some fucking answers, and Alice wasn’t gonna give it up by me asking nicely. What did you want me to do about it?”
She bent over quickly, scooping up the rose that was on the floor. “You should have let me handle it.”
My eyesight shifted away from the laptop’s screen, fixing on the rose in her hand. “Where the fuck did you get that?”
“It was stashed in her handbag in an unsecured way.”
“And you wanna fucking grill me for mistreating a client?” I rushed to Emily, reaching for the rose she held. “You fucking stole from her!”
Emily leaped back without a sound, damn those ninja reflexes and speed. She kept her feline eyes down at the red petals of the rose, almost mesmerized by it. “It’s a rose, Reika.”
“Yeah, no shit. Maybe it was a gift to her.”
“Nobody stuffs a rose in their handbag like that, think about it.”
She had a point. Taking a random and delicate rose that like and stuffing it in your handbag seemed pretty careless. “You left the other valuables in there; I guess there’s a reason for that?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, still gawking at the rose. “This rose is fucking strange, like the tree I was in the other night.”
“Eh?”
“Remember Central Park? When you went to teach those goons a lesson in not burning down a house with a puppy in it?”
It came back to me. Emily had shifted into her cat form and leaped into a tree. “What’s the big deal?”
“That tree felt weird, Reika,” she explained. “Couldn’t quite explain it, but holding this rose? It’s the same feeling.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the tree earlier?”
“I tried; you were too busy being MIA for three fucking days.”
Come to think of it, there was also a surge of energy that hit me from behind when Emily leaped out of the tree. I didn’t follow up on it because I was too focused on getting back to the Taylor family. And then I went off the grid for three days.
I took the rose off her hands, holding its stem in my mine, embracing the weirdness Emily spoke of. She was right, there was something strange about it, something only demon girls like the two of us would sense. It felt like there was energy escaping from it. My first thought was Umbral, but it didn’t feel like it. My scanning talent agreed, there was no Umbral energy radiating away from it. Yet, there was something … unnatural about it, like it was a rose that didn’t grow by conventional means. Magical maybe but again, without the presence of Umbral energy that kind of ruled out that idea.
“You’re right,” I finally spoke, handing her the rose back. “This motherfucker is strange. Is that all you got?”
“Yep! So, our client has a strange rose in her bag, knows a lot about you, and has enough reach to make the Russians stop targeting you.”
“She didn’t seem to know much about you, Emily.”
“That means I do my job well. I’m just a stray cat that’s always around.”
“Except the times when you’re not.”
“In which I become the silent ninja. So, I say again, I do my job well.”
I moved back to my desk, handing her the notes and photo. Emily was in her cat form when all of that was exchanged. “Know anything about this Giovanni guy?”
Emily’s feline eyes took a long glance at the photo I handed to her. “He’s probably loaded.”
I snorted. “Did you your thief senses tell you that?”
“No, it was the Armani he’s wearing,” she said, flicking the photo back at me. “And the Rolex. Reika, holy fuck, we might have hit the jackpot with this. We gotta find this fucker.”
“Don’t bother robbing him,” I said, then pointed out the dollar figure that had been offered for the case. “That’s how much we get paid.”
Her eyes widened, and she dropped the note, racing to the closet to collect her gear. “Why the fuck are we still here? C’mon let’s go!”
“Go where?” I said, laughing, shaking my head. “I don’t got any leads.”
“What about that address?”
Right, the two addresses I searched on Google, still loaded on my laptop’s screen. I blame Alice’s going away smile for that.
“Right,” I said to no one in particular, while my hands brought it up again on my screen. “It’s familiar, out in Hell’s Kitchen.”
A closer search revealed why the address seemed familiar to me. The website and photos to Mario’s Old school pizza loaded, it was my old job before my life as a paranormal PI started. No wonder it seemed familiar.
I was pizza girl back then, rolling out the dough, building pizzas and sometimes delivering them. It’s where I met Ryan; it’s where I had the worst fucking boss you could have in life and dealt with the most irritating customers the city could throw at you. I’m still salty as fuck for that garlic allergy pizza.
But that’s enough for a rage-inducing trip down memory lane. I flipped my laptop around, showing Emily the screen. “Remember that time we first met?”
She leaned in, looking at the photos of the pizza joint. “Oh, shit. Guess it’s time to reconnect with Super Mario—”
“Luigi,” I corrected her. “That motherfucker ain’t super.”
“Whatever, I’m still hungry.”
Now that I thought about it, Mario still owed me my last paycheck. I grabbed my keys and trench coat and went for the front door. It was time to collect that cash and find out what Giovanni was up to before he vanished.
Chapter Six
The afternoon sunlight was still shining as we made the drive down. A warm sense of nostalgia hit me when we entered the old neighborhood I used to live in. I saw the bus stop I used to wait for the bus when I didn’t have my car, after that was my old dank apartment that got blown the fuck up by Lucifer and his mooks, when they were trying to get to me. The construction workers did a bang-up job rebuilding the place.
The dark alley where I barbequed that shady stalker passed by after the traffic lights turned green. Damn, there were so many good memories about this place, most of them were from the time before I got my magical powers. You have no idea what I’d give to go back to those days when life was normal and the only thing I had to fear was getting shot the fuck up by the cops for hanging out with the Yakuza.
Crazy how much could change in such a short time, meanwhile, Mario’s Old School pizza remained almost the same as I left it, as we pulled into the parking lot.
Emily and I walked into my old place of employment. The scent of fresh pizzas entering my nostrils was tempting, too bad being a succubus changed my diet, I would have loved to stop for a slice or two. Good old Nick was in the back, making pizzas. The fucking kid was still there working, I thought he’d have gotten frustrated and quit by now.
Mario came up to the cash register, ready to take our orders. His face paused for three seconds when he looked up at me. “Well, look at this,” Mario said. “Look who decided to come back.”
I should have made a bet to see if he’d recognize me.
“Don’t worry, Luigi, I don’t want my fucking job back,” I said and watched his face cringe.
“Wasn’t going to give it to you,” he said with a hint of ‘fuck you’ in his voice. “Business went to shit ever since you and Ryan left.”
“Because me and Ryan made the best pizzas. Now, they must be shit.”
“Speaking of shit,” Emily gr
unted, stepping forward. “I’ll take two slices worth of it.”
Mario served what Emily asked for, and she stepped off to the side tables to eat. Emily adjusted her baseball cap periodically to hide her cat ears, sitting with half her ass on the chair, probably trying her best to not crush her tail she had tucked away in her left pant leg.
I reached for the photo of Giovanni, shoving it in Mario’s face. “You seen this man?”
Mario didn’t need to say yes, his facial expression did it for him. “What are you? Some kinda cop now?” was his reply, also proving he knew him.
“I’m a PI now,” I said. “Close enough.”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.” And just like that, he turned his back on me. So, I reached over the counter and grabbed the back of his collar, pulling his ass back to me. I wasn’t fucking done. He shoved me off. “Seriously, fuck off, or I’ll have your ass thrown out!”
“I’d like to see you try!”
“Reika, this is not the time.”
“You know Giovanni. I can tell,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
“That’s it, I’m calling the police.”
Mario went for his phone and thumbed the 9 on his 911 call.
“Motherfucka, I got the police eating out of my hands,” I shouted. “And as I recall, you still owe me my last paycheck. I’d hate to see what the community would think of the man that kicked out a woman that just wanted money that’s been owed to her for almost a year.”
He lowered the phone, glaring at me with that same angry face he did on my last shift here. “You never came back for it!”
“You could have mailed it.”
“To that burned-down apartment?”
“Have you even tried to get a hold of me?” He didn’t have anything to say about that, of course not, he was a fucking terrible boss and would rather pocket the money he owed me. “Look, you call the fucking cops, and I’ll make sure they know you’re withholding my money. You legally have to pay me for those final shifts.”
Mario slid his phone back into his pocket, and thank fuck for that, I really didn’t want to deal with the cops right now. His head shifted from left to right, scanning the dining area of the pizza joint, searching for unwanted ears I assumed. “I don’t have the check right now,” he whispered to me.
Deception of the Demon Girl Page 3
