Succubus Blues (6 page)

“Hugh…how do you know if a demon is lying?”

There was a pause, then he emitted a soft laugh, recognizing the old joke. “His lips are moving.” We leaned against my counter, and he studied me from his greater height. “Why? Do you think Jerome's lying to us?”

“Yes, I do.” Another pause followed.

“Tell me then.”

“Jerome told me to be careful, said I could be mistaken for a vampire.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“But Peter said vampire hunters can't kill us.”

“You ever had a stake driven through your heart? It might not kill you, but I bet you wouldn't like it.”

“Fair enough. But Jerome claimed vampire hunters find other vampires by following their prey. That's bullshit. Cody and Peter are the exception. You know how most vampires are—they don't hang out with other vampires. Following one generally won't lead to another.”

“Yeah, but he said this one was a newbie.”

“Jerome didn't say that. That was Peter's theory based on the stake.”

Hugh gave a conciliatory grunt. “Okay. So what do you think is going on?”

“I don't know. I just know these stories are contradicting each other. And Carter seemed awfully involved, like he was in on some secret with Jerome. Why should Carter even care? His side should technically approve of someone picking off our people.”

“He's an angel. Isn't he supposed to love everyone, even the damned? Especially when said damned are his drinking buddies.”

“I don't know. There's more here than we're being told…and Jerome seemed so adamant about me being careful. You too, apparently.”

He stayed quiet a few moments before finally saying, “You're a pretty girl, Georgina.”

I started. So much for serious talk. “Did you drink more than that beer?”

“I forget, though,” he continued, ignoring my question, “that you're also a smart one. I work around shallow women so much—suburban housewives wanting smoother skin and bigger breasts—who have no other concerns but their appearances. It's easy to get caught up in the stereotypes and forget that you have a brain in there too, behind your beautiful face. You see things differently than the rest of us—more clearly, I guess. Sort of a bigger picture kind of thinking. Maybe it's your age—no offense.”

“You did drink too much. Besides, I'm not smart enough to figure out what Jerome isn't telling us unless…there aren't really succubus or imp hunters out there, are there?”

“Have you ever heard of one?”

“No.”

“Neither have I. But I have heard of vampire hunters—independent of pop culture.” Hugh reached for his cigarettes and changed his mind, remembering I didn't like smoking in my apartment. “I don't think anyone's going to put a stake through us anytime soon, if that's what's bothering you.”

“But you do agree we're being left out of the loop?”

“What else do you expect from Jerome?”

“I think…I think I'm going to go see Erik.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Last I knew.”

“That's a good idea. He knows more about us than we do.”

“I'll let you know what I find out.”

“Nah. I think I'd rather stay ignorant.”

“Fine. Where are you off to now?”

“I've got to go put in some after-hours time with one of the new secretaries, if you catch my meaning.” He grinned, dare I say, impishly. “Twenty years old, with breasts that defy gravity. I should know. I helped install them.”

I couldn't help but laugh, despite the grim atmosphere. Hugh, like the rest of us, had a day job when not furthering the cause of evil and chaos. In his case, the line between occupations was a little thin: he was a plastic surgeon.

“I can't compete with that.”

“Not true. Science can't duplicate your breasts.”

“Praise from a true connoisseur. Have fun.”

“I will. Watch your back, sweetie.”

“You too.”

He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead and left. I stood there, alone at last, staring idly at my door and wondering what all this meant. Jerome's warning probably had been overkill, I decided. As Hugh had said, no one had ever heard of imp or succubus hunters.

Still, I clicked my deadbolt and fastened the chain on my door before going to bed. Immortal I might be, but reckless I was not. Well, at least not when it counted.

I
woke up the next day, determined to go see Erik and get the truth about vampire hunters. Then, as I was brushing my teeth, I remembered yesterday's other crisis.

Seth Mortensen.

Swearing, I finished up in the bathroom, earning a disapproving look from Aubrey for my profanity. There was no telling how long this tour thing with him might take. I might have to wait until tomorrow to see Erik, and by then, this vampire hunter or whatever could have struck again.

I set out for Emerald City, wearing the most nonattractive outfit I could muster: jeans and a turtleneck, with my hair pulled severely back. Paige, all smiles, approached me as I waited for Seth in the café. “You should show him Foster's and Puget Sound Books while you're out,” she told me conspiratorially.

Still waking up, I took a sip of the mocha Bruce had just made me and tried to reason out her logic. Foster's and Puget Sound Books were competitors of ours, though not major ones. “Those places are dives.”

“Exactly.” She grinned at me with her even white teeth. “Show him those, and he'll be convinced we're the best place for him to do his writing at.”

I studied her, feeling seriously out of the loop. Or maybe I was just distracted still about the Duane thing. It wasn't every day one had his immortality revoked.

“Why…would he do his writing here?”

“Because he likes to take his laptop and write in coffee shops.”

“Yeah, but he lives in Chicago.”

Paige shook her head. “Not anymore. Where were you last night? He's moving here to be closer to his family.”

I recalled Seth mentioning his brother, but I had been too caught up in my own mortification to pay much attention. “When?”

“Now, as far as I know. That's why this was his last stop on the tour. He's staying with his brother but plans on finding his own place soon.” She leaned close to me, eyes gleaming predatorily. “Georgina, if we have a famous author hanging out here regularly, it'll be good for our image.”

Honestly, my immediate concern wasn't where Seth would be writing. What freaked me out was that he would not be departing for a different time zone anytime soon, a time zone where he could then forget about me and let us both get on with our lives. I could run into him every day now. Literally, if Paige's wish was realized.

“Won't that be distracting to his writing if his presence is widely known? Annoying fans and whatnot?”

“We won't let it become a problem. We'll make the most of this and respect his privacy. Careful now, here he comes.”

I drank more of my mocha, still marveling at the way Paige's mind worked. She could think of promotional ideas that never would have entered my head. Warren might have been the one to invest capital in this place, but it had been her marketing genius that made it a success.

“Good morning,” Seth told us, walking up to the table. He wore jeans, a Def Leppard T-shirt, and a brown corduroy jacket. The lay of his hair did not convince me he'd brushed it this morning.

Paige looked at me pointedly, and I sighed. “Let's go.”

Seth silently followed me outside, that awkward tension building between us like a solid barrier. He did not look at me; I did not look at him. It was only when we stood outside on Queen Anne Avenue and I realized I had no plan for today that conversation had to occur.

“Where to start? Seattle, unlike Gaul, is not divided into just three parts.”

I made the joke more to myself, but Seth suddenly laughed.
“Seattle peninsula est,”
he observed, playing off my observation.

“Not exactly. Besides, that's Bede, not Caesar.”

“I know. But I don't know very much Latin.” He gave me that quirky, bemused smile that seemed to be his trademark expression. “Do you?”

“Enough.” I wondered how he would react if I mentioned my fluency in Latin dialects from various stages of the Roman Empire. My vague answer must have been interpreted as lack of interest because he looked away, and more silence fell. “Is there anything special you wanted to see?”

“Not really.”

Not really. Okay. Well. The sooner we got this started, the sooner it would end and I could see Erik.

“Follow me.”

As we drove off, I sort of hoped we might naturally flow into meaningful conversation, in spite of our bad start yesterday. Yet, as we traveled, it seemed clear Seth had no intention of carrying on any discourse. I recalled his nervousness in front of the crowd yesterday and even with some of the bookstore staff. This guy had serious social phobias, I realized, though he had made a valiant effort in shedding them during our initial flirtations. Then, I had gone and turned on the
back-off
vibes, undoubtedly scarring him for life and undoing whatever progress he had made. Way to go, Georgina.

Maybe if I could broach some compelling topics, he would muster his earlier confidence and bring back our rapport—in a platonic way, of course. I attempted to recall my profound questions from last night. And once again, they eluded me, so I switched to mundane ones.

“So your brother lives around here?”

“Yup.”

“What part?”

“Lake Forest Park.”

“That's a nice area. Are you going to look for a place up there?”

“Probably not.”

“Do you have another place in mind then?”

“Not really.”

Okay, this wasn't getting us anywhere. Annoyed at how this master of the written word could be so short on spoken ones, I finally decided to cut him out of the conversation altogether. Having him involved was too much work. Instead, I chatted on amiably without him, pointing out the popular spots: Pioneer Square, Pike Place Market, the Fremont Troll. I even showed him the shoddier representatives of our competition, per Paige's instructions. I neglected anything closer to the Space Needle than a brief nod, however. No doubt he'd seen it from Emerald City's windows and could pay the exorbitant fees to visit it up close if he really needed the tourist experience.

We went to the U District for lunch. He followed without protest or comment to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant. Our meal progressed quietly as I took a break from talking, both of us eating noodles and staring out the nearby window to watch the bustle of students and cars.

“This is nice.”

It was the most Seth had spoken in a while, and I nearly jumped at the sound of his voice.

“Yeah. This place doesn't look like much, but they make a mean pho.”

“No, I meant out there. This area.”

I followed his gesture back to University Way, at first seeing nothing more than disgruntled students hauling backpacks around. Then, expanding my search, I became aware of the other small specialty restaurants, the coffee shops, and the used bookstores. It was an eclectic mix, somewhat tattered around the edges, but it had a lot to offer quirky, intellectual types—even famous, introverted writers.

I looked at Seth, who looked back at me expectantly. It was our first direct eye contact all day.

“Are there places to live around here?”

“Sure. If you want to share a house with a bunch of eighteen-year-olds.” I paused, thinking that option might not be so unappealing for a guy. “If you want something more substantial in this area, it'll cost you. I guess Cady and O'Neill ensure that's not really an issue, huh? We can drive around and look, if you want.”

“Maybe. I'd honestly rather go there first.” He pointed across the street, to one of the used bookstores. His eyes flicked back to me uncertainly. “If that's okay with you.”

“Let's go.”

I loved used bookstores but always felt a little guilty walking into them. Like I was cheating. After all, I worked around bright, crisp books all the time. I could obtain a reprint of almost anything I wanted, brand new. It seemed wrong to take such visceral pleasure from being around old books, from the smell of aged paper, mildew, and dust. Such collections of knowledge, some quite old, always reminded me of times long past and places I'd seen, triggering a tidal wave of nostalgia. These emotions made me feel both old and young. The books aged while I did not.

A gray tabby cat stretched and blinked at us from her spot on the counter as we entered. I stroked her back and said hello to the old man near her. He glanced up briefly from the books he sorted, smiled at us, and returned to his work. Seth stared around at the towering shelves before us, an expression of bliss on his face, and promptly disappeared into them.

I wandered over to nonfiction, wanting to peruse the cookbooks. I had grown up preparing food without microwaves and food processors and decided it was high time to let my culinary knowledge expand into this century.

Finally settling on a Greek cookbook with lots of colored pictures, I dragged myself away a half hour later and looked for Seth. I found him in the children's section, kneeling next to a stack of books, completely absorbed.

I crouched down beside him. “What are you looking at?”

He flinched slightly, startled by my proximity, and tore his gaze away from his find to look at me. This close, I could see that his eyes were actually more of a golden-amber brown, his lashes long enough to make any girl jealous.

“Andrew Lang's fairy books.” He held a paperback entitled
The Blue Fairy Book
. On top of the stack near him sat another called
The Orange Fairy Book
, and I could only assume the rest followed color-coded suit. Seth glowed with literary rapture, forgetting his reticence around me. “The 1960s reprints. Not as valuable as, say, editions from the 1800s, but these are the ones my dad had, the ones he used to read to us from. He only had a couple, though; this is the whole set. I'm going to get them and read them to my nieces.”

Flipping through the pages of
The Red Fairy Book,
I recognized the titles of many familiar stories, some I hadn't even known were still around. I turned the book over and looked inside the cover but found no price. “How much are they?”

Seth pointed to a small sign near the shelf he'd obtained them from.

“Is that reasonable for these?” I asked.

“It's a little high, but it's worth it to me to get them all in one go.”

“No way.” I gathered up part of the books, rising. “We'll talk him down.”

“Talk him down how?”

My lips turned up in a smile. “With words.”

Seth seemed dubious, but the clerk proved an easy target. Most men would eventually cave before an attractive, charismatic woman—let alone a succubus who still sported a residual life force glow. Besides, I had learned bartering at my mother's knee. The guy behind the counter didn't stand a chance. By the time I finished with him, he had happily lowered the price by 25 percent and thrown in my cookbook for free.

Walking back to my car, arms laden with books, Seth kept glancing at me wonderingly. “How did you do that? I've never seen anything like it.”

“Lots of practice.” A vague answer worthy of one of his.

“Thanks. I wish I could repay the favor.”

“Don't worry—hey, you can actually. Would you mind running an errand with me? It's to a bookstore, but it's a scary bookstore.”

“Scary how?”

Five minutes later, we were on our way to see my old friend Erik Lancaster. Erik had been ensconced in the Seattle area long before me, and he was a well-known figure to almost every immortal entity around. Versed in mythology and supernatural lore, he regularly proved to be an excellent resource for all things paranormal. If he had noticed that some of his best patrons never aged, he wisely refrained from pointing that out.

The only annoying thing about seeing Erik was that it required a visit to Krystal Starz—a stunning example of New Age spirituality gone wrong. I didn't doubt the place might have had good intentions back when it opened in the 1980s, but the bookstore now touted a barrage of colorful, highly commercial merchandise more weighted in price than any sort of mystical value. Erik, by my estimation, was the only employee with legitimate concern and knowledge of esoteric matters. The best of his coworkers were simply apathetic; the worst were zealots and scam artists.

Pulling up into the store's parking lot, I immediately felt surprise at the number of cars there. This many people at Emerald City would have constituted a signing, but that sort of event seemed odd in the middle of the workday.

A heavy wave of incense poured over us as we entered, and Seth appeared just as surprised as me by all the people and stimuli. “I might be a minute,” I told him. “Feel free to look around. Not that there's much here worth seeing.”

He melted away, and I turned my attention to a bright-eyed young man standing near the door and directing the crowd around. “Are you here for the Gathering?”

“Um, no,” I told him. “I'm looking for Erik.”

“Erik who?”

“Lancaster? Older guy? African-American? He works here.”

The young lackey shook his head. “There's no Erik here. Not as long as I've been working here.” He spoke like he'd founded the store.

“How long has that been?”

“Two months.”

I rolled my eyes. A veritable veteran. “Is there a manager around here I can talk to?”

“Well, Helena's here, but she's going to be—ah, there she is.” He gestured to the far side of the store where the woman in question appeared as though summoned.

Ah yes, Helena. She and I had tangled before. Pale-haired, her neck bestrewn with crystals and other arcane symbols, she stood in a doorway marked
MEETING ROOM
. A teal shawl covered her slim shoulders, and like always, I wondered how old she was. She looked to be in her lower to mid-thirties, but something about her demeanor always made me think she was older. Maybe she'd had a lot of plastic surgery. It would be fitting, really, considering the rest of her trumped-up, artificial persona.