Succubus in the City (2 page)

“You are so strong,” Desi said, patting me gently on the shoulder. “I couldn’t have managed that. I’m allergic to Drakkar Noir.”

“We’re all allergic to Drakkar Noir,” Eros announced. “And I’m starving. Pancakes and French toast and Bellinis, everybody.”

There are advantages to being an immortal succubus. To make up for the miseries of vigilant doormen (named Vincent or otherwise) and being required to take home men who wear drugstore perfumes and polyester, I can eat all the cake and chocolate and steak and French fries I want. The body is a requirement of the job so Satan has given me a permanent size four. At least until the style changes. One hundred years ago I weighed two hundred pounds and was considered exquisite. And I had a collection of Worth gowns that were the envy of more than one duchess. Well, some things don’t change.

We were seated in ten minutes and had our order in less than five minutes after that. For a few minutes I simply savored the glory of fluffy blueberry pancakes swimming in sweet wine sauce and relished my poached quince, a crisp counterpoint to all that gooey goodness.

“So how many this week, Lily?” Desi asked me.

“Three,” I answered. “What about you?”

Desi smiled. “Oh, for me it’s not numbers, it’s all the little provisions of the contract I get them to sign. I have to bring them along, you know, before they’re ready to sign up for eternity in Hell. So I’m still working on Peter.”

“The one from last week?” Eros asked. “The investment banker with the mole on his hand?”

Desi rolled her eyes. “Yes. That’s the only Peter at the moment.”

“Well, I certainly hope that’s not the only peter,” Eros replied tartly.

We all laughed. Maybe the Bellinis made it funnier or maybe just being in the company of friends made us laugh at the lame joke. Knowing them for hundreds of years and knowing that they wouldn’t abandon me no matter what was about the only thing that had kept me sane.

I know, I know, no one has any sympathy for the immortal sex demon. Especially if she doesn’t have to diet and gets to wear Jimmy Choos all the time. Which is why we all need each other, because my girlfriends know that my life is not all Prada. There are the polyester guys. And there is the fact that no man acceptable to Satan has loved me, not since I was mortal. And I don’t think I want to tell you how long ago that was. Suffice it to say that She was known as Ashtoreth back in those days.

Satan is like our den mother and we are Her Chosen. No one can help but admire Her—everything about Her is so perfect. Her clothes, Her apartment, the hors d’oeuvres at Her parties, everything is just half a second before the fashionistas pick up on a new trend. When She’s in feminine form She’s really one of us, only better, more pulled together, more in charge. Kind of like what I imagine a big sister is when you’re a sorority pledge. So when She’s being the supergirl-friend and ultimate fashionista we call Her Martha. This decade, anyway. Once upon a time we called Her “Jackie,” and before that “Peggy.”

“I’m just flattered you like my taste,” Martha said once, chuckling softly, when we were ooohing and aaaahing over her latest place, a penthouse on Lexington in the East Seventies. “I sometimes wonder if I’m a little, you know, too classic.”

There’s no such thing as too classic, and I told Her so. I wish I looked that sophisticated and elegant in Chanel. Martha can wear a Chanel suit like no one else. And She is the only woman I’ve ever seen who makes an Hermès scarf look like a scarf and not an advertisement for the size of her bank account.

We all have our own styles and best looks, and while we all envied Satan’s perfect polish, I, at least, have learned that I do best sticking to what suits me. Which tends to be au courant, mostly Italian, and not tailored. I have vaguely messy hair and lots of it, very dark auburn with natural copper streaks from the sun. I look silly in a suit, but great in jeans or a little slip dress.

And while I adore cutting-edge fashion, I can’t pull off Comme des Garçons or Issey Miyake the way Eros can. But then, she’s got the very willowy, dare I say almost spiky, figure that is perfect for the avant-garde designers. Of course, that four-hundred-dollar haircut that looks so elegantly hacked and bleached that it could be on the cover of
Vogue
does help. Her pointed face and pointed hair are
très moderne
; no one would believe that she hasn’t been a goddess for two thousand years. Well, demigoddess, but who’s counting?

As demons, our job is to tempt humans into giving their souls to Hell. We cannot tempt those truly obedient to God, but most people have their iffy moments and we are there to exploit them. We can offer what our prey want, so long as they’re willing to sign over their immortal souls (in blood). Except for me. I don’t have to get willing consent with a contract and a signature. I tempt men with sex they can’t resist, and deliver them when they come.

Once upon a time Christians thought that succubi preyed only on good, devout husbands, back when the definition of a good Christian husband was elastic on issues like wife beating. Now any man who responds to my pheromones is valid prey, so I don’t have to select for religion and public approbation. My prey were always sleazebags, don’t get me wrong, and one of my great faves is still to hit up a convention of gospel-quoting hypocrites and deliver a few. But there aren’t a lot of them in NYC, so I tend to target drunks and the kind of men who treat women badly.

Eros used to be a demigoddess and looks it. She’s nearly six feet tall and is always just a little ahead of the curve on everything. Her temptation is eroticism of all kinds, including porn and fetishism. Desi, Desire, is—you guessed it—a demon of desire. She personifies and tempts by a more complex set of desires; sex is certainly part of it, but so are class and social status and sometimes even respectability. Desi is the most versatile of us, but it takes her a bit longer to bring her prey to where they are ready to sign. Sybil’s specialty is greed. She was once an Oracle of Delphi with a true gift from Apollo himself, which makes her the wonder worker of Wall Street, where she is a very highly placed account manager. Which does not mean that she isn’t beautiful—she is—but she doesn’t have to have sex with anyone she doesn’t actually want to date. And, unlike the rest of us, Sybil has been married. Something like fifteen times.

So these are my friends. Being Satan’s Chosen is something like being a lady-in-waiting. We’re Her friends, Her companions when She wants someone to gossip with or to sit with Her during a manicure. We shop with Her, drink with Her, and enjoy Her company. She has favorites all over the world and from every specialty in Hell, of course, but when She’s in New York She enjoys relaxing with us. Why us? Maybe because we’re congenial and adore Her taste and admire Her for who She is personally. We don’t just love Her because She’s Satan, we love Her because She likes Bellinis and clothes and art shows and the Hamptons as much as we do.

“Is Martha coming today?” Sybil asked.

“I don’t know. You know how busy She is. If She drops by, it’ll be later.”

That’s the advantage of being Satan. She never has to wait for a table.

“I want Her advice because I hate my wallpaper,” Sybil moaned. “I sat all morning looking at it and I wanted to throw my coffee all over it just to make it different.”

“Coffee is a very hot color now,” Eros said in that knowing tone she uses when it comes to anything artistic. “But I’d rather talk about guys. Who cares about apartments?”

We all turned to glare at her. Everyone cares about apartments. Especially in New York, where they’re just about impossible to find. A decent building where the pipes don’t make thumping noises and you can’t hear the people upstairs, one with a nice view of the park or the river maybe, or a fireplace, can take decades of careful searching.

The problem is that Eros has the perfect apartment. She found it during the Depression, when no one could afford an Upper East Side co-op with four bedrooms and a separate suite for the maid. The building was built at the turn of the century, and has fourteen-foot ceilings on the main floor with elaborate crown moldings and a fireplace with an Italian marble mantel carved in the Deco style. We all envy her apartment, even if she does invite us up to roast marshmallows and make s’mores on nights when we’re just feeling a little down.

“So tell us about Peter,” I said to Desi. Des is such a romantic, and besides, it would get the conversation off real-estate envy.

Desi sighed. “I don’t know, I think that this one may like me. Maybe,” she said. “He’s an investment banker and has an apartment on East Seventy-seventh Street and a dog. A chocolate lab named Jazz. And he does tai chi.”

“How does he dress?” I prompted, to get away from any description of an apartment in the perfect location.

“He’s a banker. Probably Brooks Brothers,” Eros said dismissively.

“No, Ralph Lauren,” Desi defended her new beau. “Do you want to meet him? I can bring him on Friday.”

Friday was the opening of the Michelos show at the Martindale Gallery. We were going because Eros adores Michelos and promised on the death of her immortal soul that there would be interesting and attractive men there (the fact that she no longer has an immortal soul notwithstanding). If Desi brought her latest it would be counterproductive, but it was her call, not mine.

“Oh, Lily, don’t look so sad.” Desi interrupted my thoughts. “You’ll find someone lovely, I know it. You’ve got the hardest job of all of us and I couldn’t manage it in ten zillion years.”

chapter
TWO

“Ohmyghod, that’s Franco Massilano,” Desi gushed, turning in her seat.

“Who?” Sybil asked.

“Don’t be so obvious,” Eros hissed. “It’s ridiculous. So what? It’s New York.”

“The famous architect,” Desi answered Sybil, turning her back as if he were of no interest to her. After all, we are not only immortal and have lived thousands of years, but we’re also New Yorkers and we’re not impressed by anyone, no matter how famous.

Then Desi pulled out her compact and trained the mirror so that she could stare at the famous man all she wanted without losing cred. I have to hand it to her, Desi has brains and originality to go with her class. Eros really wouldn’t have cared and if I’d known who it was I would have craned my neck like any out-of-towner. But Desi just went straight for the technology. A mature technology, to be sure. I bet she did things like that when she was in Catherine de Médicis’ court in France. Of course, then watching your back was a whole lot more necessary. That crowd made modern NYC look as innocent as an after-school special on the Disney channel.

“Okay, he’s a famous architect, what’s the big deal? Lots of famous people come here.” I never have learned to be ashamed of my inability to recognize celebrities. Really, three thousand years and I still can’t tell who’s actually done something important and who just has a stunning sense of style.

Eros, much put upon, sighed at our ignorance. “Franco Massilano is probably here to accept his award for designing the new annex to the Brooklyn Museum. There was a fabulous party last night to celebrate. I went with Jason, that pretty twenty-something I picked up at Gehenna last month, and he was suitably impressed. All the glitterati were out in their best. Even Martha was there.”

Yeah. Eros gets to go to a fabulous party, even if it’s in Brooklyn, and I’m stuck at a convention bar picking up a guy in a polyester-blend shirt named Brad. Why couldn’t I go to the fabulous party?

“What was Martha wearing?” Desi asked, momentarily distracted from the famous.

“Oscar de la Renta,” Eros informed us. “A cream ballgown in duchesse satin cut down to
there
in the back. And pearls and diamonds.”

I sighed. With her smooth, straight brunette hair and her large dark eyes, Satan had probably looked exquisite. A class act all the way. I’ll bet that dress would look great on me, too. I wondered if She’d lend it, if I had a good enough occasion.

Desi was still looking into her compact mirror. “Oh, come on, Des, he can’t be that interesting. Besides, he’s in his fifties and he’s with a woman,” Sybil said.

“Oh, I’m not looking at him anymore,” Desi replied with some surprise. “But some really cute guy just walked over to his table. Damn. He’s probably gay.”

He did have a great butt and nice shoulders, but then the Armani jacket emphasized the difference between the shoulder and the narrow waist. Desi was right, he was definitely worth a second look.

Sybil, who was seated in the optimal spot for observing, studied the situation. “Maybe. I don’t have good gaydar. But he’s not your type Desi, trust me. He’s—”

She stopped cold and her face went blank. When she spoke again her voice was about an octave lower and harsher, with a bit of an accent making her usually middle-American English sound guttural and exotic, and not in the most appealing way. “He has a gun under his jacket. He will try to get the famous man to leave with him.”

When Sybil used that voice she was never, ever wrong. She could not be wrong. Prophecy was her curse just as being a succubus was mine. She couldn’t control what she saw any more than I could control the way men were attracted to me.

But that didn’t mean that she always had the right explanation for why things were the way she saw them.

We watched the men intently. The younger man talked to the older one at some length, and then gestured widely enough that we could see his shoulders. Yeah, a gun was bulging under his jacket. And yeah, Mr. Famous Architect went with him. The guy was a plainclothes cop. Maybe even a detective.

“What do you think it’s about?” Desi began spinning fantasies. “Do you think he was involved in a drug ring? Or maybe helping the police with a sting of corrupt officials. Or—he’s Italian, isn’t he? Maybe the Mafia?”

“Probably fixing a parking ticket,” I said tartly as the two of them returned to the woman who had waited while elegantly sipping her mimosa. “It wouldn’t do for a famous guest who just designed the newest la-la annex to the Brooklyn Museum to get his rental car towed.”

Both men sat, the older famous one first saying something complimentary to the woman. She smiled and her cheeks got just the soft rosy glow expensive blush tries to re-create.