Chapter 35: Returning - Part 2

Daniel picked at a loose thread on his sleeve before answering. "I went to the club. The warehouse. Faith actually helped me get in the right headspace for it—didn't take much convincing, honestly. Half the AOR's already chasing shadows over you."

"You told her?" The words came out flatter than I meant them, my arms tightening across my chest.

"Give me some credit." He held up a hand, mild offence crossing his face. "I told her I was using the new vampire perks to poke around places a human agent couldn't. Doors that open easier for my kind. She bought it. Didn't push."

I let my shoulders drop half an inch. "And?"

"Nothing." He rubbed his thumb against the mug's handle, not lifting it. "No trace of you anywhere in that place. It's like you were never there. The only thing anyone remembered was a woman asking after a man matching your description. Left an impression on the patrons, apparently."

"That was me."

"Figured." He looked up, something careful in his expression now. "So. Any idea where a succubus goes when she gets stranded in a human body?"

"No." The chalk dust was still under my nails. I looked at it instead of him. "That's the problem."

Daniel didn't say anything for a moment, and the silence had weight to it, the kind that meant he was choosing his words rather than lacking them. "I don't want to be the one who says this. But you should consider that maybe your body's gone. Not hidden somewhere. Gone. The same moment you ended up in—" he gestured at me, at all of me, "—this."

"That's not possible." My voice came out harder than I intended, the certainty of it filling the room before I'd finished thinking it through. "There has to be a thread somewhere. A way back. Bodies don't just vanish on their own."

"I'm only saying that you have to be ready for the possibility."

"Ready for what, exactly? That I'm stuck like this?" The heat came up too fast, and I didn't stop it. "Could be worse, is that what you're going to tell me next?"

"I wasn't—"

"What's worse than this, Daniel? Tell me. I was a man. A fucking straight man. Now I've got a body that gets wet if someone looks at me wrong, and half the time I don't even notice until it's already happened." My tail would be lashing out behind me, if not for the glamour. "And that's the easy part. You want to talk about living somewhere built out of other people's suffering? Where you're supposed to just walk past it, day after day, and pretend it doesn't touch you—and then one morning you realize it doesn't. Not anymore."

Daniel's face didn't move. He wasn't taking this in so much as bracing for it. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it like that."

The anger burned off as fast as it came, leaving something colder underneath. I exhaled, dragged a hand back through my hair. "No. I'm sorry. That wasn't—I'm not angry at you." I sat down on the arm of the sofa, needing the weight off my legs suddenly. "I'm just scared that by the time I find my way back, there won't be enough of me left to recognize. That whoever walks back into my old life won't actually be me anymore. Just something wearing the memory of it."

Daniel leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and the warmth came back into his face, the particular steadiness he'd always had, even as a kid, even when I hadn't deserved it. "You were always the most stubborn person I've ever met. It's going to take a lot more than this to carve that out of you."

"Thanks." My throat tightened, and I covered it with a short cough, looking away toward the bookshelf instead of at him. "So. What now?"

*

Daniel moved his mug down to the side table, the ceramic clicking against wood. "Now that we've both got that out of our systems, maybe we table the doom and gloom. Regroup properly."

"Sounds like a plan." The tightness in my chest eased a fraction. "What do you suggest?"

"It's late. We're not going to solve the mystery of your missing body at midnight on no sleep." He scratched the back of his neck, glancing toward the darkened window. "I've got a few episodes of Doctor Where recorded. Figure it out tomorrow morning, with actual functioning brains."

"Fine by me." Anything that didn't involve staring at my own hands and wondering whose they were.

He grabbed the remote, and I dropped onto the far end of the sofa, putting the entire cushion length between us before he'd even settled.

Daniel paused, remote hovering, brow creasing as he looked at the gap I'd made. Then something clicked behind his eyes—the memory of a controller clattering to the floor, my tail already halfway up his shin before either of us noticed.

"Right." He said it slowly, nodding to himself.

"Yeah." I kept my gaze on the blank television screen. "No repeat performances. Let's not test how many boundaries this body decides to ignore in one week."

"Probably for the better." He settled back against his own armrest, putting equal distance on his side, and pressed play. The theme music started up, tinny and familiar, and the opening credits rolled over some alien landscape rendered in a budget that hadn't stretched quite far enough.

I watched the screen instead of him, spine straight, hands folded in my lap like that alone could keep the rest of me in line.

*

The alien on screen delivered its threat with the gravitas of a man reading cue cards, and the effect landed somewhere between menacing and constipated. Daniel lost it first, a snort that turned into full laughter, and I followed a beat later, the tension in my spine finally cracking.

"That budget," he managed, wiping his eye. "They spent it all on the theme song."

"I'm fairly certain that was a bin bag with a torch inside it."

He got up during the credits, stretching until his back popped. "Right, I'm calling it. There's another episode but my brain's given up for the night."

"Fair enough."

"Take my room." He nodded toward the stairs, already moving that direction. "I'll take the couch."

"No." The word came out flatter than I intended. "Having tits doesn't upgrade me to bed privileges, Daniel. I'll figure something out."

"Like what?"

"Like going for a walk."

He turned, arms crossing. "It's gone midnight. And you're not exactly built for a casual stroll through this neighbourhood at this hour."

"I don't think a mugger's going to do much against a demon."

"I'm not worried about you." He said it plainly, no drama in it. "I'm worried about whoever tries something and ends up in three pieces."

"If they try something, they'll have earned whatever comes next."

"Fair point." He rubbed the back of his neck anyway, the argument not quite dead. "Still. You should get some sleep before tomorrow."

"I don't need to. Not really. Not anymore." Saying it out loud landed strange, another small erosion I filed away and didn't examine.

"Neither do I, technically." He shrugged. "Doesn't stop me wanting to. If anything I like it more now than when I actually needed it."

"Well, I want the walk." I stood, working feeling back into legs that hadn't needed it. "London's got a different rhythm than what I'm used to lately. Feels almost nostalgic."

He studied me a second, then went to the little table by the door, pulled a key from the dish and pressed it into my palm. "Take these. So you're not banging on my door at three in the morning."

"Thanks." I closed my fingers around the metal. "I'll be back in a few hours."

"You should probably change first, though."

I looked down. The uniform sat exactly where it always did, corset laced tight, skirt riding high, the underboob cut doing nothing to disguise itself as anything but what it was.

"You could've mentioned that before now."

He lifted both hands, all innocence. "Didn't want to be the one to point it out."

I let out a breath through my nose and pushed off the sofa, heading for the bathroom to find something that wouldn't get me arrested on sight before I stepped out into the cold.

*

The door clicked shut behind me and the cold found every inch of exposed skin at once, London damp seeping into my lungs on the first breath. It smelled of exhaust and wet pavement and something faintly rotten from a bin two doors down, and my nose catalogued every note of it. Still better than Ardorkeep's endless heat pressing down like a hand on the back of my neck.

The outfit I'd pulled from the ring was modest by Hell's standards: jeans, a jumper that actually covered my collarbones. A man walking a terrier gave me a look anyway, then a second one when he thought I wasn't watching.

I minded that less than I probably should have.

There was a certain power in it, walking down a street and knowing eyes followed without effort on my part. As a man I'd never once turned a head just by existing. Strange, how quickly the novelty had worn into something closer to comfort.

Temporary, I reminded myself. Once I got my own body back, this would all just be an anecdote. A very strange chapter to leave out of any future biography.

Footsteps fell in somewhere behind me, soft against the wet pavement.

I didn't look back. Kept my pace steady, let my mind wander up toward the sky, where the stars fought a losing battle against the sodium glow of streetlamps. A handful visible, faint enough that I had to actually search for them, and it struck me that in six weeks I'd forgotten how much brighter they burned over Ardorkeep.

Daniel's voice surfaced anyway, uninvited. You should consider that your body's gone.

My jaw tightened, the reaction arriving before I could catch it. I'd snapped at him for that, hard enough that the air between us had gone thin for a moment. But snapping wasn't the same as being wrong to snap. Was it. Or maybe it was exactly what fear looked like when it wore anger as a coat, because if he was right, there was no flat in London to return to, no jaw with stubble on it, no low measured voice that was mine before this one.

If there was no body, there was no going back. Just this, forever. Horns and a tail and crimson eyes I still hadn't fully stopped noticing in mirrors.

The footsteps were still there.

I frowned at the pavement. It hadn't been ten minutes since I'd left Daniel's doorstep, and whoever this was had kept pace the entire time, never closing the distance, never falling behind. London had gone downhill since I'd left it. Or maybe it always crawled with this sort of thing after midnight and I'd simply never had cause to notice.

I scanned the road ahead. A gap between a shuttered launderette and a block of flats, black enough to swallow anyone standing in it, offered exactly what I needed. If he wanted to follow, he could follow somewhere I chose the terms.

I turned into the alley without breaking stride, footsteps behind me matching the shift a beat too late to be casual.