Succubus in the City (25 page)

I was away from all that.

So I was quite surprised when a waiter appeared with a tray that contained a note and served it to me with as much flourish as he brought to my second drink.

All the relaxation, all the safety seemed to dissolve with that slip of paper. I picked it up and started to fume before I read it.

Which, as Desi or Sybil would have pointed out, would have been a complete waste of good anger. Because it turned out that the note was an invitation to dinner from a sister succubus.

There is one permanent succubus resident in Aruba. Her name is Margit. She’d only been here for a few years, since she’d relocated from Amsterdam where I’d met her briefly a decade or so earlier at one of the big fetish parties in her then hometown, and there had been dozens of succubi and incubi from all over the world in attendance.

It could have been a nasty competition, but Margit had turned it into something fun. “Plenty for everyone,” she’d said when I’d arrived at the hotel in Amsterdam.

Then she and I and about thirty other succubi went out drinking in Amsterdam’s famous Red Light district. Several of the girls almost started to bicker over who would bag the most deliveries for Satan, but Margit had squashed that kind of talk. “You are in Amsterdam,” she had announced, as if there were more to the city than we understood. “And there is a fetish ball. All of us will be terribly overworked. There will be so many, many deliveries to be made. We cannot do it all. We may be Satan’s best, but there are not a hundred of us and there will be three thousand attendees to the ball. So I suggest that you all remember to enjoy yourselves! Have a good time! Deliver, yes, but take some time to relax. I will take everyone shopping and we will go to the vendor fair at the ball, and tomorrow night we will have a large
rijstaffel
and you will return home well sated and with many wonderful new things in your luggage.”

That weekend there had been no competition among us for souls. Margit had been right, there had been plenty of spare. Even the incubi, who usually avoid succubi like we were poison, went on Margit’s tours of the old buildings and canals, and they joined us so that our group alone nearly sold out the English-language comedy supper club where she took us after most of the fetish ball guests had departed.

We’d stayed in casual e-mail contact, and she had sent me her change of information when she decided to leave cold, gray Amsterdam for Aruba.
It is still the Netherlands, after all,
she had written in her mass e-mail.

But it is warm and beautiful and I’m sure that all of you will be visiting often. So be sure to let me know when you’ll be in town. I would love to see you.

I’d dutifully e-mailed her every time I’d planned to go to Aruba, but the past three times she’d been away. Where does one vacation when one lives in Paradise? Of course, Margit had to return to Europe to shop.

I didn’t expect to find her in this time, either, but I’d sent her an e-mail as usual anyway. This time it turned out she was in town. She had called at the hotel and invited us to join her for dinner and then drinks on Saturday night in Oranjestad. “Because I know you’ll be so tired and jet-lagged today, and you’ll just need to rest in the sun and near the sea, and have a nice simple meal at your hotel. Your hotel has an excellent restaurant, so you can feel comfortable about eating there. Although it is more American and Argentine food, steaks and lobster, not Dutch food.”

I laughed. That was just so Margit, really, to think that we’d be jet-lagged because when she flew it was always to Europe. In fact, we were in the same time zone as New York. That wasn’t the kind of thing Margit could be expected to know. She never came to New York.

Everyone agreed that the dinner invitation sounded lovely, although Sybil showed some apprehension about Indonesian food. “It isn’t very spicy, is it? I’m such a wimp, and I’d hate to seem all ungrateful.”

“Nope. Lots of peanut and coconut and onions,” I told her. “I don’t remember any hot peppers.”

Sybil sighed with relief and took another sip of her drink. “That’s so lovely of her to invite us,” she said. “I’ll be delighted to go. Greed demons just aren’t as social as you sex demons.”

A waiter appeared to gather up the empty glasses and make sure we had fresh drinks. I asked about a phone and he produced a cell phone for me on the spot. So I called the number in Margit’s note, and she actually answered.

“Oh, Lily, I am so happy you and your friends are here. It will be so much fun tomorrow night to see you. And we will hunt if you like. There are two cruise ships in, and there are all those hotels. Really, can you believe that I could not get one single other succubus down here to help me? And the hunting is so easy. Do you plan to hunt tonight?”

“I don’t know, Margit,” I said honestly. “Really, I’m here for a rest and a vacation.”

“Oh, of course,” she purred. “You are certainly not to work if you are on holiday. But if you would like a little, you know, entertainment, there is a gaming room at your hotel that should be just perfect. And you don’t have to go out and get tired. I’m sure the flight was miserable. Moloch is such a genius.”

I assured her that the flight had been every bit as bad as she assumed, got the address of her house where we would meet on Saturday, and agreed on a time. I closed the phone, traded it to the waiter for another blue drink (my third? Or fourth?), and then I settled in to watch the sun set over the water.

I was in Paradise. All my problems could wait until tomorrow.

chapter
TWENTY-ONE

The hotel had something that pretended to be a club. Mostly it was full of overweight Americans from cold and boring places. No one from New York, but then we know what a club is supposed to be like, and that the concept has evolved since the eighties. So has the music, but you wouldn’t know it in this resort.

Really, it was kind of fun.

A quick check in the full-length mirror reassured me that I looked fabulous. Which was a good thing, since my friends all looked wonderful, too. But Sybil was the real standout. Or maybe it’s because we were all used to Sybil as the “nice girl” with the wholesome and sweet style. Normally Sybil wore pretty dresses with full skirts below the knee in floral patterns, or softly draped linen cut in classic lines. In the summer she wore linen ballerina flats in floral prints that matched. It was all we could do to keep her out of Talbot’s, or not let her buy one more Jil Sander or April Connell outfit.

Tonight, no trace of sweet New York Sybil remained. Tonight she was in bold, primary red, in a tight skirt that barely covered (but oh so enticingly depicted) her rear end. She was all curves, dangerous and sexy, with her lips lacquered in brilliant red MAC vinyl that matched the outfit. She must have worked for the better part of an hour on her chignon, her honey-colored hair just barely tousled and messy.

“Sybil, you’re going to put us out of business,” Desi said admiringly. “Satan catches you looking like that, and you’ll get switched over from greed to sex in a heartbeat.”

Sybil smiled so sweetly that she ruined her vamp effect. “Really, you think so?” she almost squealed. “I did it right?”

“You did it more than right,” I said. “I’m a little jealous, or I would be if you hadn’t given me the purse.”

We went to the silly so-called nightclub. The place made me think of a Long Island wedding reception without the smorgasbord. I’d been to a Long Island wedding factory affair once, only that had actually been in the eighties. This club had the same mirror ball. The music included Van Halen’s “Jump” and Michael Jackson. And Bon Jovi.

I was wondering whether they were going to play the hokey-pokey and the bunny hop, and if someone’s Aunt Bernice was going to get drunk and try to drag the DJ behind the potted ficus to attempt sexual assault. But what could one expect of a resort hotel, even a fancy one? Still, if the macarena came on, I was out of there. Some standards are nonnegotiable.

A little before midnight we were ready to leave. Maybe we could still go into Oranjestad, or maybe we could call it an evening. We were on vacation, and somehow a good book or a movie I’d missed at home on Pay-Per-View in the room seemed more amusing than this club. But we’d spent so much effort on looking good and I’d hate to have wasted it. Especially for Sybil. She might go back to flowered frocks forever if she didn’t get ogled by someone more appealing than a fat guy with a gravy stain down the front of his polyester shirt.

Then, at ten to midnight, the wannabe lotharios (who spent their real lives working in cubicle farms, coaching Little League and mowing their lawns) disappeared and a second wave of gentlemen arrived.

Dressed in the Armani beach collection, sporting four-hundred-dollar sunglasses and carefully regulated tans, casual shoes, and carefully sculpted muscles, they screamed Eurotrash from across the room. I smiled and almost purred. Rich hunting indeed. Desi perked up, Eros looked bored. And Sybil’s eyes got very big, as if she hadn’t seen Euro surfer boys before.

“Do you think they’re all gay?” Sybil whispered to the rest of us. “They look too good to be straight.”

Eros turned her concentrated gaze to the newcomers, and there were more all the time. A few came in with women who matched, in tight Italian clothing and towering Italian heels.

“A few may be gay, or bi, but mostly they’re just European,” Eros pronounced. And she always knows. It’s her gift, after all, to know what any human finds most erotic and to either embody that or inspire it. She doesn’t care about minor questions of orientation, other than to make sure she provides the correct stimulation. And since she can entice anyone of any sex or preference, and can subtly shift into a glamour that makes her male to those who will be attracted to her as a man, she has no stake in any human having any preference. But she has a large stake in knowing what that preference is.

The four of us broke apart and each of us started to penetrate the crowd. Rich hunting here, no need to crowd or compete. I could feel the mojo shimmering on my skin, though I didn’t feel any need for pheromones tonight. I could have my pick. And maybe, just maybe, I would even have a good time.

I wanted a cute one. I wanted one who wasn’t drunk or stupid or mean. I wanted to pick up a guy who was actually attracted to me and made me feel nice and like I was valued and not just some random pickup.

And if the one I picked up tonight did anything for me, I decided that I would let him live. He would never know that he’d been succubus prey. I could do that. I was on vacation.

I was so caught up in my own decision that I hadn’t noticed the blond hunk who’d sidled up to me at the bar. He said something that I didn’t understand, and immediately caught my blank look. “Do you speak English?” he asked. His voice held only the slightest hint of an accent, the kind that made it impossible to place but impossibly sexy as well.

“Yes, thank you. I’m sorry, I do speak a few other languages, but not the one you used. Which was?”

“Dutch,” he said. “You are in the Netherlands. You’re American?”

“From New York,” I said.

“And you speak other languages? Which languages?” he asked, and his eyes sparkled.

“French and Spanish and Italian,” I said. Which was true, and Admin left more than that after my last reassignment. But he really didn’t need to know that I also speak Russian, Polish, Farsi, and Arabic. Among others. I don’t speak Dutch, though. Not even German. I’d never lived in the Netherlands and a language for a place I’d never lived wasn’t generally worth owing Admin a favor. Though for this particular specimen I might be tempted to make an exception.

But since he was Dutch, he spoke English better than most New Yorkers.

“Three languages besides English!” he exclaimed and looked immensely pleased. “You are most unusual for an American. Is this your first time in Aruba?”

So we actually made small talk. I told him about the magazine and my friends. He told me that he was an accountant and he’d moved to Aruba two years ago because he wanted to live in Paradise. And then he smiled and asked me if I liked to dance.

We danced.

He was not at all like Nathan. His name was Marten and he was blond and tall and had clear eyes the color of the Aruba sky. His skin was light gold from the sun and he touched me gently as we danced.

“You are so very beautiful, Lily. Just like the flower of your name,” he whispered into my ear between Abba songs. “How long will you stay?”

“I go back Monday morning,” I said. “It’s just a long weekend, and really I shouldn’t have taken that much time off from work.”

“No, you should take forever, the way I did. There is work here.”

“I don’t have useful skills,” I said gently. “But we can spend some time, at least tonight.”

“Tomorrow,” Marten insisted. “Tomorrow night and Sunday, promise me now. We will have a perfect island romance and you will see, you will come back to Paradise.”

“I do have a dinner engagement tomorrow,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t so selfish that he wouldn’t live until morning.

“No,” he protested. “With whom? Is he your boyfriend? I will not let you go to dinner with another man.”

I giggled. Really. Embarrassing, but true. I don’t normally giggle, so maybe it was all the blue drinks with umbrellas. In part, it was necessary to cover up how much his proper use of the objective case made my insides feel all warm and squishy. Most native speakers of English, at least on this side of the Atlantic, had forgotten that the word whom exists, let alone use it correctly at all, let alone when drunk. “It’s not with a man. It’s with a woman friend who is Dutch and lives here now.”

“Oh.” He looked only a little mollified. “Then we will have to meet for lunch and drinks tomorrow before your dinner, so that we will have time for a proper date and conversation before meeting later in the evening. Does that suit you?”

I put my hand on his shoulder. “That suits me fine.”

He got us both fresh drinks and led me over to a table as the music shifted to Europop. There is a great deal to be said for Europe and Europeans. They dress beautifully, have exquisite cuisine, elevated tastes, and comprehensive educations. They are usually far more cosmopolitan than Americans and the men are almost invariably better groomed. (Well, except for Nathan and a growing minority of New York men who have a larger range of comparison. And who don’t define masculinity to mean a beer gut and a baggy tee shirt.) But Europe definitely lags when it comes to popular music. The Brits are great, Americans and Canadians rule, but I just don’t get Abba. Or any of the other bands, but honestly, to me they just all sound like Abba.