Succubus Takes Manhattan (12 page)

“But one thing, Syb,” I said before hanging up. “It sounded like Eros was upset with me this morning. Or was she just worried about Vincent and I’m being paranoid?” I knew I had to be politic in asking Sybil; she was terribly frightened, and with good reason, and I didn’t want to make things worse.

Fortunately, I think the question distracted her. “I don’t think it was you at all,” she said after a moment of consideration. “She had wanted to call Beliel right away, before you, and I said that I wanted to talk to you first. I don’t think you noticed, but she spent a lot of Hatuman’s party with Beliel. And I wanted Nathan, not one of Beliel’s Security demons, looking into things. I know Eros is friendly with Beliel, but that whole department makes me twitchy.”

“Me too,” I agreed, thinking about this new information. Could Eros be dating Beliel? That thought was entirely weird but it niggled and wouldn’t leave my brain. Something to look into later, maybe, but a low priority now.

Instead, I called Nathan back, gave him the address, and checked my shoot log. If I was going to disappear for a long lunch with a private detective and a distraught friend, I’d better be caught up on work.

I opened my features book and started to look through at what shoots were scheduled and where an editor had requested bags. While I am thoroughly modern and fully computerized, I keep this record in a spiral-bound notebook. That way I can sketch and color in ideas to have a more accurate image of what the feature is about.

The Fendi was definitely going in the holiday issue and there were a couple from Coach that were just right for Helene’s October spread on plaid skirts. I giggled with glee as the new line fit almost effortlessly into the upcoming issues, practically placing themselves. I pulled out my boxes and labeled each of them by shoot and editor and started filling them with bags.

Of course, jewelry and scarves and other possible accessories (glasses? belts? gloves?) would all be added as I found just the right things for the clothes to be featured. The best part of the process was showing their hand-picked accessories to the editors when they came to show me the clothes. They thought I was psychic because I could so accurately predict what would work best for a particular spread.

Well, okay, I’d been setting fashion for three thousand years, give or take a decade or so. There have been eras when the fashions were just awful. The eighties, for example. Big hair and ankle socks with heels. Who thought of that? Sheesh!

I was so focused on the task, so consumed by the new pieces and the smell of leather that I lost all track of time. So I jumped, shocked, when my office door banged open and a six-foot-two man in exquisite Lagerfeld barged in like a tornado.

“Lily, Lily, save me from this madhouse,” Lawrence yelled, his fingers clutching compulsively at his hair, disarranging his two-hundred-dollar cut and blow-dry from M. Louis. “You are the only sane, reasonable person in this hellhole. These others are insensitive, evil, cutthroat demons out to murder me and dump my mangled body into the East River.”

I blinked. “I don’t think they do that anymore. Especially not with all the work that’s gone into cleaning up the river.”

Lawrence looked like he was going to explode again, so I shifted a few boxes to the floor and motioned for him to sit on the sofa. He looked at the spot as if it might be contaminated, steeled himself and perched on my elegant reproduction eighteenth-century French brocade. I glanced at my mantel clock and figured I had half an hour before I had to leave.

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

“What’s not the problem?” he spewed. “The gross incompetence? The fact that no one can get me the photographer I want on the same day the model I want is available? The fact that the model’s agency objected to the outdoor shoot? Where can I start?”

Classic Lawrence. “Well, do you need any accessories? I can’t do anything about models’ schedules or shooting permits in the park, but if you need a really nice bag I can take care of it. How were the belts for the white shirt shoot, by the way?”

He gritted his teeth. “They were perfect. I still don’t know how you knew . . .”

I smiled perkily. “You told me what you wanted. I’ve got the inventory of belts. It was no big deal. So . . . do you want a bag?”

“No,” he said, pouting.

“Well, do you want some jewelry? Or glasses? I just got in a shipment of new Versace frames, they’re very interesting. Very Euro.”

“Oh, that’s how you categorize us? Euro? That’s so—Americans are so provincial.” His accent was stronger, but I didn’t know if I was supposed to take that as more Euro or that the British were something different from effete continentals.

I just stared at him in big-eyed innocence. In three thousand years, a girl can learn to impersonate a lot of innocence. “I was talking about how great the glasses are.” I paused for a moment to let it sink in. “What do you want? I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what you want.”

“I want Sonia available on the same day as Jackson Keefe.”

Okay. Fine. What precisely did he want me to do about that? I’m the accessories editor. I don’t book models. Sometimes I choose photographers, but except for my very few features (like my shawls and wraps special, where I already had a commitment from the selfsame Keefe) I have nothing to do with scheduling. Mostly I do my accessories page every month and support the fashion division.

I shrugged. “I don’t know how I can help you with that,” I said softly. “Really. I do accessories. You know that.”

His eyes narrowed and turned sly. “And you’ve got Keefe on the roster to do your shawl shoot. On a day that I’d already booked for Sonia.”

Uh-oh. I could see where this was going and it was very bad.

“But that’s a cover story,” I said softly. “Accessories gets a cover story maybe once every other year if we’re lucky. And I booked Keefe a month ago.”

Lawrence glared. “Fashion is more important than accessories. My feature on emerging British designers is more important than shawls.” Somehow he managed to spit the word “shawls” as if it were a curse.

“When is your feature scheduled?” I asked quite reasonably. My shawl story was set to run in November, and if he was after that I could possibly negotiate.

Lawrence waved his hand in the air. “No definite date yet.”

Oh. That had to mean that it hadn’t been approved yet. A thought quivered in the back of my head.

Carefully, deliberately, I kept my face and voice perfectly innocent. “Did Amanda just approve the feature? Because I don’t remember it at the editorial meeting, but I was out of the country for a while . . .”

Lawrence stood up, all six foot two of him towering over me, and glared down his nose. “You will sign over your booking to me,” he ordered in exactly the same tone my father the King might have used.

I smiled at him. “I’ll be happy to do that,” I told him. “When Amanda confirms your cover article and the date.”

“You do not say no to me!” he yelled, moving menacingly close. “You do not contradict me. You do exactly as I say and you do it right now.”

I am not a princess of Babylon for nothing. I stood up and stared him down. “I report to Amanda, the same as you.” I kept my voice soft and even, but the threat underneath was clear. “And you’d better think twice before you start ordering your colleagues around as if we were your personal servants. No, Lawrence, we do not have to do what you tell us to just because you want something. Your article isn’t approved yet. I don’t think you’ve even proposed it yet. You want to go in with a complete setup to make it harder for Amanda to turn you down, but trust me, she doesn’t like being manipulated that way. I’d recommend that you propose the article through proper channels and schedule your model and photographer through the right office. Now, please leave.”

Lawrence bellowed. When I wouldn’t drop my gaze, he picked up one of the boxes I’d so carefully set up and hurled it across the room. Then another, and another. Bags flew, cardboard broke. I ducked behind my chair as a Gucci bag weighted with hardware flew at my head.

Large bangle bracelets bounced off the chair and broke, leaving pieces of jagged metal and plastic in the carpet. Lawrence bellowed again and emptied a box of assorted gloves and scarves for the outerwear issue over my ficus and kicked the plant.

Then he spotted my spiral-bound notebook lying in the middle of my desk. In his rage he picked it up and tried to tear the entire thing across. When it wouldn’t tear, he began ripping pages out and tearing them and throwing them like confetti around the room.

I picked up the chair and held it in front of me.

It’s made of Lucite, both light and see-through so it worked just like police riot shields. As he yelled and stampeded I turned it around so the legs pointed toward him. “Get. Out. Of. My. Office. Now.” I said as I drove him toward the door with the chair.

My office was a shambles, bags and costume jewelry scattered across the floor. Lawrence cast around but couldn’t find any more ammunition.

“I will have you fired,” he threatened.

“I don’t think so,” I replied, nudging him the last few inches.

There was nowhere else for him to go. With a roar of rage, he left. I locked the door after him and surveyed the wreck of my office, and sank to the carpet in shock.

I don’t know how long I sat on the floor. The phone rang insistently and finally I couldn’t ignore it any longer. At least he hadn’t trashed my desk. The phone sat where it always did, untouched. I pulled a tissue from the glass box on the windowsill, blew my nose, and picked up the phone.

“Did you forget our meeting with Nathan?” Sybil asked, her voice full of confusion.

And that was all it took to break through my haze. “Oh my goodness, Sybil, I’m so sorry. But my colleague barged in here and tried to take my photographer and trashed my office and threatened me!”

“Oh, dear Satan, are you okay? Can you come over now?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, horrified that I’d spaced on the time, and opened the door.

I started to pick up the boxes, wondering how long it would take me to re-create all the selections I’d finished up. They were all carefully recorded in my spiral notebook, the pages of which were torn and scattered among the other detritus.

“Wait.” Danielle stood in the door watching me. “Don’t pick anything up yet. Do you have a camera? We should take pictures.”

My eyes widened at this suggestion. “This is assault,” she said. “Physical aggression. Destruction of property. Harassment in the workplace is a major issue at any corporation these days.”

“I need to go home and I need to do something about this,” I said, waving my arms at the mess.

Danielle shook her head. “Not now,” she said. “Not just yet. Just go home.”

I caught a cab and hit Sybil’s building two minutes after one. I went upstairs to find that Nathan was already seated on the sofa with a thick portfolio open on the coffee table.

Sybil was barefoot, her eyes neon red and her hair carelessly pulled into a ponytail. She wore a pair of Citizen jeans and a Donna Karan cashmere sweater as if they were old sweats. She tried to smile at me but she was too close to tears.

I flung my arms around her, not noticing the last streaks of her mascara on my shoulder. “I’m so scared,” she said as she hugged me and cried again.

“We’ll take care of this,” I said gently. “You’ve been talking to Nathan. He told me that Vincent was probably fine.”

“Yes,” she said. “Probably.” And then the waterworks started again.

I wondered where Eros was. She’d probably gone on to her office now that she’d taken care of Sybil and scolded me and got Nathan working on the case. I wanted to ask, but that probably wouldn’t be a very good idea under the circumstances.

Nathan got up and came over to me. He looked as if he were about to shake my hand and then stopped, confused, because it was appropriate and weird and wrong all at the same time. We stood there awkwardly for a minute until I sat on one of the silk-upholstered slipper chairs.

Nathan sat down and resettled his papers on his lap, looking for all the world like a salesman or an accountant. “Let me go over this,” he said, all business. “Do we know that Vincent left his place of work at seven? Did anyone see him go that you know of? I’ll go down and ask the day man myself, but when did you actually have contact with him last?”

“I talked to him around four in the afternoon,” said Sybil. “And he said he’d come straight over after he finished at seven.”

“We know that he knew about Branford and was dedicated to keeping both of you safe, but do you know if he actually saw Branford? Did he plan to try to investigate on his own? Or did he plan to stay in place to protect both of you? And are there any other obligations he might have had, anyone else who might wish him harm, anyone whom he might want to work with? You’ve indicated that he is quite ambitious. Could he have gone off on his own to try to impress someone? You? Mephistopheles?”

Nathan’s voice remained entirely even. Sybil poured coffee and tried to answer, and I tried to help her. But we didn’t know any more than I had told him over the phone. No, Vincent had said that he was staying at work. And while Vince may well have wanted to go off on his own and be a hero—both for Sybil and his future in Hell—he was also disciplined and careful about his priorities.

Sybil and I just looked at each other and shook our heads.

“What were the circumstances of his death?” Nathan asked, nonplussed.

I shrugged. “I think he was killed in an accident. A car accident,” Sybil said, waving her hands helplessly. “I’m sure there were some enemies, he was qualified to become a demon, after all. But nothing big. And he wasn’t from the city, though I think he’d been familiar with it before he died. I mean, I think he might have come into town for some of the clubs before, but he was never on the Upper East Side. He used to tell me about it. I was teaching him about shopping and what kinds of clothes he should wear, as someone shooting for CEO.”

Nathan’s eyebrows went up. “He was shooting for CEO?”

Sybil winced. Nathan was hopelessly naive about Hell. “No,” she said. “But you should always dress for the role ahead of the one you want. It impresses people. Especially our people. Satan is a stickler for style, especially in Her inner circle. The more powerful and important demons are always physically beautiful and exquisitely dressed.”