Succubus Takes Manhattan (28 page)

“What’s up?” I asked innocently as both of us scanned the room to make sure that none of the interns or graphics people had come down for chicken soup.

“I have not seen Lawrence for days,” she said, shaking her head. “Do you think he has left
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?”

“I can hope,” I said fervently.

The waitress arrived with our food, a sandwich that could feed a small village in Africa, a pile of fries that could induce altitude sickness, and two gloriously thick chocolate milk shakes made with U-Bet syrup and tasting like nothing else on earth. For a full ten minutes we savored one of New York’s great local cuisines, reveling in the crisp fries and the salty deli meat on real rye bread with a hard crust. We held the shakes for last, for dessert, for pure sinful indulgence.

I wondered idly as I ate whether Meph, foodie that he is, had ever had a chocolate shake made with U-Bet. He generally specializes in gluttony with gourmet food, the very finest restaurants with crisp tablecloths and silent waiters who refill the glasses just as they get within two swallows of empty.

“What are you fantasizing?” Danielle asked sharply, breaking into my reverie. “Is it about those men you are dating?”

I shook my head slowly and smiled. “No. I was wondering if my gourmet uncle had ever had a milk shake in his life. And if he hasn’t, I should take him here sometime. He never goes to places like this.”

“I didn’t know you had family in New York.”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t live here, he just comes in on business sometimes. So what do you think is up with Lawrence?” I distracted her easily.

“I do not know,” Danielle admitted. “No one knows anything. This is very mysterious, is it not? Do you think we should try to discover what has become of him? Something terrible could have happened to him. He has no family here.”

And then the demon part of me just exploded. “No,” I told her. “We hate Lawrence, remember? And if he doesn’t have anyone looking for him if he really is missing, then that’s his fault. He hates Americans, he says so all the time. He trashed my office, remember that? And have I just become the finder of missing people? Is that my new job title?”

“What do you mean? Who else is missing?” she asked with some confusion.

“My doorman,” I said hotly. “He was kidnapped, but now he’s back.”

Danielle rolled her eyes. “I did not know that you had to find your doorman. He is your . . . doorman. And who would kidnap a doorman? Surely he had no money. Unless—is he the member of a powerful family, incognito, posing as a doorman for some reason? Perhaps he is with the CIA and is staking out the place because there were threats of terrorists. Lily, do you have a terrorist living in your building? On the Upper East Side? That is insupportable.”

That’s what I love about Danielle. She can take a few facts and weave them into a story that would run John Grisham around the block. “Danielle, that sounds like a plot for an international thriller. Sounds like half the best-seller list.”

I thought she would laugh or shake her head gravely. Instead she went white. “I have told nobody! I keep it a secret and even my boyfriend, even my mother does not know. Lily, how do you know?”

“Know what?” I asked. “I mean, that’s an amazing story you made up about my doorman. Who isn’t from a powerful family and isn’t in the CIA and isn’t a terrorist. So I was just saying that you have a great imagination! You should write a novel.”

“I have written novels,” she admitted. “Six of them.”

“You’ve written six novels?” I squealed. “Are they published? Why are you still a shoe editor?”

Danielle flapped her hands in what appeared to be despair. “They are published, yes, but the money is not so good. Not enough to live in New York, at least. And—where would I get new Manolos and Jimmy Choos and Christian Louboutins if I were not a shoe editor?” she asked very reasonably. “I could not afford to buy all of them retail.” We both shuddered delicately. I could afford it and I still didn’t like to contemplate the collateral stuck in the back of my closet.

“But tell me about these six books,” I said, fascinated. “Do you write under your own name? What kind of books are they, and are there great shoes in them?”

“Of course there are great shoes, and beautiful clothes,” Danielle said. “They are romantic thrillers, about CIA or sometimes the FBI, and mostly they are about American women on holiday in Paris who fall in love with wonderful Frenchmen, and then there is international intrigue with terrorists and crime families. You will not tell anyone? I don’t write under my own name. I think everyone will laugh at me,” she admitted.

“Why would anyone laugh at someone who has published six novels?” I asked. “I think we should go out sometime and celebrate your next book. You should be proud of them.”

“But really it’s not something I want people to know,” she said modestly.

I just stared at her. The things you don’t know about people. I had worked with her for four years; she’d been my best friend at work all that time and I’d had no idea.

“What else haven’t you told me?” I asked, half joking. “Are you also an agent for Interpol, or maybe in line for the Russian throne?”

The waitress chose that moment to start clearing our dishes rather loudly. “Can I get you ladies anything else? Dessert? Coffee?” When we shook our heads, she slammed the check onto the table and stood over us as we fished for the money.

Danielle and I returned to the office chatting about nothing, pretending that nothing had been said and everything was normal.

Nothing was normal. I closed my office door and sat behind my desk but I couldn’t even see the purses I’d lined up before lunch. I had intended to assign them for various shoots and I was even fairly certain of a few. I tagged those mechanically as I thought about Vincent and Raven and Marten and even Lawrence. Everything was a mess; nothing made sense. And yet I had this feeling that there was something much bigger going on, something that was just out of reach. It was like seeing something out of the corner of my eye, a flash of movement where I couldn’t actually see the culprit.

My hands had worked while my brain had been involved in other things, and suddenly the bags were all gone, in various boxes, and I didn’t even remember which I’d assigned to which article.

I wanted to call Desi. I wanted to talk to her about Steve. But more, I wanted to just talk to my friends again. I wanted them to tell me that it was okay and I was okay, and I could ask them about why this was all happening. Why had they kidnapped Vincent? Why had they wanted me? I had managed to shove those thoughts aside for a while but they kept intruding as I contemplated the new twists. I really needed to talk to one of my girlfriends, one who was a demon who knew about Hell and Vincent and the Burning Men. Much as Danielle was a real friend at work, there was too much else about my life she didn’t know.

Then the phone rang, and it was Desi on the line.

“Lily?” she said hesitantly. “Look, I just talked to Nathan about Steve and he told me about the two of you trying to rescue Raven. That was really brave of you and I wish I’d been able to help. But what happened?”

“I did the whole ritual right, I know I did. I was in that room and she was gone. Just gone, like she’d been snatched magically. Through a salt triangle, too, which is how I got trapped,” I told Desi.

There was some dead air on the phone before Desi continued. “When I heard about what you had done I was afraid for you. And I know that Eros and Meph were too. I think they were more angry that you had put yourself in danger than anything else. We were scared, Lily.”

“I was scared too,” I told her. “We need to get together, all four of us. And Meph too, at some point. But we’ve all got to work on this and make a plan, not just react to what the Burning Men do.”

“Meet me at Public,” she said. “After work. We’ll all meet at the bar and have a drink before it’s time for strategy.”

“Nathan is coming over with dinner,” I said hesitantly. I didn’t want her to think that Nathan was more important in the scheme of the universe than she was. But he was also the prior commitment.

She thought for a moment. “We probably want to know whatever Nathan’s discovered,” she said finally. I considered the options. “How about this? I call you when Nathan leaves. I don’t think he’ll be long, things are kind of uncomfortable between us. So I’ll call and then you and Sybil and Eros can come over and we can have ice cream and plot.”

Desi laughed, not the somber or forced laugh but one that was light and musical with pleasure. “A pajama party! We haven’t had a pajama party in ages. I wonder if we could make s’mores?”

Yes. A pajama party. To remember that we were all stronger together than any of us was alone. And to also remember that we needed one another. Danielle was my friend, but she was mortal. We demon women have to stick together.

chapter
TWENTY-THREE

When I got off the phone I wondered how bad my apartment looked. I couldn’t remember how I’d left it, if I’d cleared the dirty dishes off the coffee table, if I’d left a pile of laundry in the back hall, if I’d hung the towels up in the bathroom. I didn’t worry so much about Nathan seeing it—he was my ex and my employee. More important, he’s male and somehow men do not see dirt. Clutter, yes, they notice clutter, but they don’t really track on dirt.

Women do. I knew I would want to at least vacuum before the women arrived, and time was going to be very tight.

I concentrated on work for the next three hours, and when I go into overdrive I can be very productive. I needed to be very productive because I was in for a long evening and I didn’t know how late I would show up tomorrow.

No one makes provision in regular jobs for time off for magical emergencies. Women even have trouble getting time off to take care of sick children, let alone have severe metaphysical crises. And there was no way I could explain any of it at work. The only thing I could do was make sure that I was as prepared as possible.

In three hours I managed to sort and arrange accessories for every shoot on the schedule for the next two weeks. I was a whirlwind of efficiency, so I was able to hop a cab by six with enough work done that, should I need to, I could sleep tomorrow away on the office sofa and no one would notice.

So I managed to get home by six thirty and Vincent didn’t start until seven. Roger, the doorman on the day shift, helped me with my portfolio, my bag and my mail. Which, I was glad to see, consisted only of junk mail and catalogs. Nothing in that stack could be sabotage from Branford and his coterie.

I stepped out of my olive stilettos as soon as I hit the door. Threw the purse and the portfolio on the coffee table and grabbed the vacuum out of the front hall closet. In ten minutes I’d managed to get the worst off the rug and the dust bunnies out from under the sofa. Given that my cleaning lady wasn’t due until Thursday, the place was pretty presentable.

I had just stowed the vacuum, picked up my shoes, and wondered whether I should change out of my plaid Prada suit when the intercom rang. I told Roger that Nathan was welcome to come up, and he must have stepped directly onto the elevator because he rang my bell not a minute later.

I could smell the Benny’s from behind the closed door, so I opened up to see him with a large bag of food in one hand and a bulging briefcase slung over his shoulder.

“Did you look?” he asked without even a greeting. “Did you know who it was? You live in this city, you should know that you never ever open the door without checking who’s there.”

“I pay for a building with a doorman for that very reason,” I chided him. “Besides, I could smell the burritos. It had to be you.”

He shook his head as he unpacked the food. I got out plates and utensils while he set cartons on the bag, which he’d flattened over the wooden surface of my coffee table. I was pleased to see his care for my things. I hated it when people just threw food on the good teak without trivets. I liked that table.

He put a foil-wrapped burrito on one of my plates and handed it to me. I peeled off the aluminum cover to find a bit of comfort. I didn’t really want to talk to Nathan and I wanted to talk to him too much. In spite of that, I ate my burrito in silence and then started in on the guac and chips.

“I have found out a few things,” he started when he put his empty plate down. “First, you were right about checking on Balducci. He isn’t a cop. I did some rather interesting Web searches on him and found out that he’s connected to some, well, not precisely standard banks in the Caribbean. I also checked out your friend Marten. Did you ever even Google him?”

I shook my head. I knew I should have, but really, it was a vacation thing. And, of course, Meph had vouched for him.

“Well, I don’t know what he told you he does,” Nathan started and his voice had a bit of an edge.

“He told me he’s an accountant,” I answered. “And I know he’s a magician. He got some kind of great deal out of Hell. And how did you know his name or what to search on anyway?”

Nathan shrugged. “Well, he didn’t tell you the truth. He’s with Interpol.”

“What?” I think my neighbors two floors down heard my shriek. “Are you sure? Maybe it’s someone else; it could be someone else.”

Nathan shook his head. “I checked. And there’s a picture. He’s Interpol. Okay, you couldn’t have gotten that from Google. I had to use the firm’s credentials to check international law enforcement sites. You can figure out what he’s doing in this mess later. Back to Balducci. He does own the apartment, but the down payment was made by his uncle.”

I shrugged. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

Nathan sat back in the easy chair and closed his eyes in something close to a wince. “I’m trying to explain something, Lily. Steve Balducci was not just Branford’s pawn. I think Branford might be under the architect, whose wife is a leading contributor to some rather dubious conservative causes. So they’re in it up to their necks.”

“But that doesn’t tell us where Raven is,” I protested feebly. To cover my uneasiness I scraped the last morsel of guac out of the cup with my finger. I’d already demolished the chips.