Chapter 41: Trouble in Succubus Town

The cab sat at the kerb two streets short of Daniel's with its engine ticking over and its hazard lights going. The rear windows had fogged on the inside. I got out and shut the door, and the bang of it carried down the empty road.

Felix had both hands on the wheel. His shirt was buttoned one hole off at the collar, and he hadn't noticed yet.

I came round to the driver's side and he wound the window down. I put my forearms on the sill and leaned in. The heater was still blowing, and warm air pushed my hair back off my face.

"Thank you for the ride."

"Any time." He tapped the wheel with a thumb. "Proper any time. Middle of the night, whatever."

"It was really..." I let it hang, and watched him wait for it. "Enjoyable."

His ears went red first. Then the rest of his face followed. "Pleasure was mine. Honest. All mine."

I smiled at him with one side of my mouth and held it there. He coughed into his fist, looked at the meter, and looked back at me.

"Do me a favour," I said. "Take it slow for the rest of the day. No more fares. Go home and sleep."

"Sleep?" He started to laugh, and the laugh turned into a yawn halfway through. He rubbed his jaw. "Funny. Now you mention it, I'm knackered. Like I've done a double."

"See?"

"Yeah, all right, doctor." He blinked twice, slowly. "What is it you do, again?"

"I look after people." I reached in and fixed the button at his collar, pulled it out and pushed it through the right hole. My knuckles brushed his throat and he went still under them. "So look after yourself. I'd hate for anything to happen to my favourite taxi driver."

"Favourite." He grinned at the windscreen. "I'm having that on a sign."

I straightened up off the sill. The wet had soaked through the sleeves of my blouse where my arms had rested, and I pushed them up to the elbow.

"Listen." He leaned towards the window, one hand still on the wheel. "Vera. Would you fancy getting a drink some time? Or food. Not in the cab. A proper table, with chairs and that."

He meant it. He had both eyebrows up and his mouth half open, ready to take it back if he had to.

A girl rang him when she needed a lift and climbed into his lap in an alley, and he had built a table and two chairs out of that. So far I had only used him, from where he sat it might have looked different. Still in a week or a month I would be back in my own body, if the world let me, and Vera would stop answering her phone.

The laugh came up from low in my stomach and got as far as my throat. I swallowed it. He was still looking at me.

"I can't this week," I said. "I'm going to be busy."

"Right. Course."

"Maybe later."

"Oh." He nodded at the dashboard. "Okay. Yeah. Later's good. Later's fine."

"Take care of yourself, Felix."

"You too." He lifted two fingers off the wheel. "Ring me. For lifts. Or whatever."

I stepped back onto the pavement. The window went up, the hazards stopped, and the cab pulled out and went down to the junction, indicating left though nothing else was on the road. I watched the tail lights turn the corner. Then I started walking.

The terraces on this stretch had their curtains drawn, and the lamps behind them were orange through the fabric. Somebody's television was on loud enough that the laugh track carried. A cat sat on a wheelie bin and watched me pass without moving its head.

I was halfway down Daniel's street when I smelled it on myself. Sweat and seat leather and Felix, in my hair and on my skin, under the blouse.

Daniel would know. He'd be polite about it. He'd open the door and ask whether I wanted prawn crackers or not, and he would not look at me for longer than he had to. I stopped by his neighbour's hedge.

The glamour was already running. It held my horns down to nothing, and it could hold a smell if I asked it.

I pressed the change out through the skin, and pushed it further down than usual. The streetlight on the back of my hand went soft. The edges of my fingers smeared and settled. When I lifted my wrist to my nose, it smelled of lavender, and nothing else.

I went up the three steps to his door. Through the frosted glass the hall light was on, and a coat hung crooked on the newel post. I filled my lungs once, all the way down, and rang the bell.

*

The door opened before the bell had finished. Daniel stood in the hall in a grey jumper with the sleeves shoved up, a tea towel over one shoulder. He breathed in, and his eyebrows went up.

"Have you got perfume on?"

"Hello to you too." I stayed on the step. "Kind of. Is that so surprising?"

"Come in." He stood back against the wall to let me past, and the tea towel slid off his shoulder. He caught it. "And kind of, yeah. You used to think deodorant was a luxury."

"Hey. I never smelled bad."

"True." He shut the door and turned the key. "Still. The point stands."

I slipped my shoes off by the radiator and set them beside his trainers. "I wanted to try something new."

"Well, it's an improvement." He went ahead of me down the hall, towards the kitchen. "Definitely beats that ready-to-be-bedded smell you had going on before."

I chuckled at the foot of the stairs. "Sorry. This body is literally built that way." I put a hand on the newel post, next to the crooked coat. "Did the AOR do anything after I left?"

"Not much." He stopped in the kitchen doorway and leaned on the frame. Behind him a white carrier bag sat on the table, knotted at the handles, with two foil trays showing through the plastic. "Mostly asked questions. Who you were, how long I'd known you, whether you'd done anything to me. Then they left." He folded the tea towel in half. "Tea or coffee? And what about your end?"

"Coffee." I let go of the post. "I explained things to Morgana. I don't know if you know her."

"I know who she is." He said it to the tea towel. "Go and sit down. I'll bring it through."

The room hadn't changed much in the last few hours. One lamp was on, and the throw on the arm of the sofa had a dent in it where he had been lying. I sat at the other end and found the remote down the side of the cushion. The television came on to a man in a fleece standing in a field, talking about drainage.

"For now it's only Morgana," I said, loud enough to reach the kitchen. "She knows. Nobody else does. How long that lasts, we'll see."

Something clinked against the counter. A cupboard shut.

"Oh, and I got level two clearance while I was there."

"Level two?" The kettle was not on, but he shouted anyway. "They didn't even give me level one! You're lucky."

The man in the fleece knelt and pushed his hand into the mud. I pulled my feet up onto the sofa and tucked them under me.

"I don't think it's luck," I called back. "I think it's mostly about whose daughter this body is."

The coffee machine hissed in the kitchen. It ran, stopped, and ran again. Then Daniel came through with two mugs, steam streaming sideways as he walked, and held one out to me handle first.

"That was quick."

"Bought a coffee machine." He sat at his end of the sofa, and the cushion between us stayed flat. "Pods. I know. Don't start." He blew across the top of his mug. "So who are they? The parents."

I had the coffee halfway to my mouth. I lowered it. "Oh. Right. You don't know."

"I don't know."

"I'm technically the daughter of the rulers of Hell."

He did not drink. He held the mug against his chest with both hands and looked at me over it. "What?"

"Lucifer and Lilith."

"You're serious."

"I'm serious." I drank. It was too hot, and I drank again anyway. "That's one of the reasons I didn't want more people to know. What if it gets back to them? That their daughter's been possessed by some random bloke from Earth."

Daniel put his mug down on the floor by his foot and sat back. He rubbed his face with one hand, from the forehead down to the chin.

"That wouldn't end well," he said.

"Exactly what I thought."

He laughed once, through his nose, and shook his head at the ceiling. "Lucifer."

"He's very polite."

"Course he is." He picked the mug back up. His hand was steady on it. "Course he's polite."

I turned the remote over in my fingers. The battery cover was held on with a strip of tape, and I pressed my thumb along it to flatten the curled edge.

"Have you got anything to watch?" I said. "Before I go back."

"When are you going?"

"Tonight. As late as possible."

He nodded at his coffee and took the remote from me. "What about The Hexer? I've not started the second series. I was saving it."

"For what?"

"For you, idiot."

I kicked my feet up onto the cushion. "Sounds good to me."

He found it and pressed play. The food stayed in its bag on the kitchen table, going cold, and neither of us got up for it. I held the mug in both hands and watched the opening titles.

*

Three episodes in, the clock on the cooker through the kitchen door read ten to midnight. I put my mug on the floor and swung my feet down.

"I should go."

Daniel paused it. "So soon?"

"I'd rather be back before anyone complains."

"You could've done a few more hours." He had his feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankle, and he didn't move them. "Nobody's timing you."

"Somebody always is." I pulled the hem of the blouse straight where it had ridden up under the seatbelt earlier. "And if I stay much longer my friends start worrying. The ones I'm meant to bring next time."

"I remember. The two of them." He swung his feet down. "Oh, hang on. We need another circle. The Agency scrubbed the last one off."

"Don't worry about it. Just have one ready for next weekend. I can draw the return myself."

"Have you got chalk?"

I turned my hand over and closed it, and when I opened it there was a stick of white chalk across my palm. "Got it. Where do you want it?"

He looked at the chalk and then at the ring. "Kitchen. Tiles wipe down. I'm not scrubbing the floorboards again."

"Sure thing."

The kitchen was colder than the sitting room. I pushed the two chairs in against the table to clear the floor, and knelt on the tiles. They were the old kind, red and black in a diamond pattern, and the grout lines gave me a grid to work against. I set the first anchor point at the corner of a black tile and drew the outer ring in one pass, my hand going round from the shoulder.

Footsteps came down the hall. Daniel put my shoes on the end of the counter, heels together.

"Don't forget these. You'll turn up in Hell in your socks."

"Right." I stood, stepped over the arc I had finished, and sat on the edge of a chair to pull them on. The left one pinched at the toe. I worked my foot in and went back down to the floor.

He leaned on the doorframe with his arms folded. "You're quick at that. The circle I mean."

"Practice." I laid the inner ring inside the first. "And some of it's in the hands already. Whatever she knew, the body kept a bit of it."

"Any other kinds of muscle memory?"

"Nothing worth much." The chalk squeaked on a glazed tile and I eased off the pressure. "Bit of instinct for magic. Flying."

"Flying." He said it slowly. "That sounds brilliant. I've only just learned to do things with my blood."

I stopped with the chalk on the tile. "Do things with it?"

"Shape it. If I cut myself it doesn't just run out, I can pull it back in, or make it go stiff." He held up his right hand and turned it, and there was nothing on it, only the knuckles. "Don't know what it's for, really. Apart from not bleeding to death."

"You could make a weapon of it."

"A weapon for what?" He laughed. "It's the twenty-first century. There's nothing out there to hit. And if I did it in public the VCD would be on my arse before I'd put it away."

I closed the last glyph into the ring and sat back on my heels. The chalk had worn down to a stub with a flat face on one side. I put it in the ring and wiped my fingers on my jeans, which left a white streak on the denim.

"It does sound fairly useless if you put it this way." I said. "Anyway, time I went."

He did not come off the doorframe. "Good luck, then."

"See you next weekend." I stood up in the middle of the circle, and nodded at the boxes still on the counter. "Eat that before it goes off."

"Yeah, yeah."

I put my palm down flat on the anchor point, and the chalk began to glow.

*

The light went down off the walls and the floor under my palm was black marble, warm from the pipes behind it. I was back in the bathroom of 413. The circle I had left from on Friday was gone. It didn't matter. The one on Daniel's kitchen floor had done all the work.

"Lily?" Aria's voice came through the open door. "That you?"

"It's me."

"Oh, thank fuck. I was like, totally starting to think you wouldn't make it back before Mournday, and then I'd have to sit through Morrigan on my own and pretend I'd read the—" The sentence went up into a long moan and stayed there. "Sorry, babe. I'd come and hug you, I would, but I'm in the middle of something super important."

"Yeah, yeah. I can hear that."

The top button of the blouse was already warm against my throat. I undid it and the rest, and peeled the jeans down with the socks inside them. Everything went into the ring, shoes last, before the heat in here could work its way in.

Then I let the glamour go. The horns came back first, a weight settling at either side of my forehead, and my hair slid down past my hips. The tail uncurled from wherever the illusion had kept it and swung free behind my knees. It was the same as getting home and pulling on old joggers.

I left the bathroom as I was. The room smelled of oil, something with cedar in it. Aria lay on her belly across her bed, which had spread itself out to king-size, her arms folded under her cheek. Bellas knelt beside her with his hair tied back, working his thumbs up either side of her spine.

"Welcome home, Mistress," he said, and did not stop.

I sat on the edge of Aria's bed. The silk was cool under my thighs.

Aria opened one eye. "Well. Someone had fun."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, come on." She lifted her head an inch off her arms. "You've got that whole recently-fed glow going. Your skin's doing the thing. So how many?"

I let out a breath. "One."

"One." She dropped her head back down. "Okay, so clearly not that much fun. Was he nice, though? Tell me he was at least nice."

"There are other ways to have fun than sex."

"Babe. We're succubi. This is literally what we were made for."

"Isabella would disagree."

"That's because—" Bellas leaned his weight into the small of her back and she broke off into another moan, longer than the last. Her toes curled against the sheet. "—because you both need to loosen up."

The chuckle came out of me. "We need to loosen up about as much as you need to tighten up."

"Lily, honey." She propped her chin on her wrist and gave me the full look, both eyes, very patient. "We're young. Being all tight and proper can wait a century or two. After we've had our fun."

"You're irredeemable."

"We're demons." She wiggled her shoulders under Bellas's hands. "There's no redeeming us. That's, like, the whole point of the place."

I laughed again and put a hand on her hip. "Move over. I need a massage as well."

She rolled sideways towards the wall, dragging half the pillows with her, and patted the warm patch she had left on the silk. "That's the spirit."

I stretched out on my front in the space she had made. Bellas reached for the oil.

*

Mournday came in hot. By the time we were on the long colonnade that ran along the eastern wall, the flagstones had soaked up enough of it to warm my soles through the boots. Aria had my arm. Isabella walked on my other side, half a pace ahead, her wings folded tight.

"Lily." Aria tugged my elbow until I looked at her. "Next week. I'm not taking no for an answer, we're going with you."

"I already promised that."

"I know." She swung our linked arms forward and back. "Just making sure you remember."

I looked past her shoulder at Isabella. "A little help here?"

Isabella did not turn her head. "She is right, you know."

"Not you too."

"Thank you, Bella." Aria let go of me long enough to blow her a kiss, then hooked back on. Her tail flicked against the back of my knee. "Anyway. You think Valentina's going to fight the professor again?"

"I don't know." A first-year stepped off the path to let us by, and I nodded to her. "Not after getting face-planted ten times in a row last time. Anyone normal would give up."

Aria shuddered against my side. "Ugh, don't remind me. By the end there was bone sticking out of her arm... It was poking through, Lily. I saw the end of it."

"She was persistent," Isabella said. "I will give her that."

"Kara can be brutal." I rolled my left shoulder. It still caught at the top of the swing, where Kara had put me into the ground on Thursday and kept her knee there while she explained what I had done wrong. "My shoulder still aches from the last session."

"It is necessary." Isabella reached the end of the colonnade and stopped at the top of the steps to wait for us. "No one survives here on beauty alone."

"It's a shame they can't, though." Aria let go of my arm and did a little turn on the top step, skirt flaring. "Imagine. Just walk into a fight, look amazing, everybody falls over. Done. Lunch."

I laughed through my nose. "That would be too easy, wouldn't it?"

"But I like when things are easy."

"We know," Isabella said.

The Combat Training Hall stood across the yard, three storeys of dark stone against the perimeter wall. Both doors were propped open.

*

Kara waited at the centre of the arena with her arms folded and her tail tapping the obsidian. The class had gathered in a loose half-ring around her. Aria dragged me to the front, and Isabella took the spot on my other side.

"Today is light." Kara's eyes went down the line of us. "Footwork, a few drills, nobody leaves on a stretcher. I need you in top shape for your assignment."

A hand went up near the back. "What kind of assignment, Professor?"

"The kind where you risk injury." She paused. "Or your life, if you are extremely unlucky."

Somebody gasped. Two girls beside me stopped breathing and looked at each other.

"Relax." Kara's mouth twitched. "I mean it when I say extremely. The worst you get is the pain of reformation. Pick your spot well, though. Get interrupted halfway and you end up dead for real."

Aria leaned in until her horn bumped my temple. "Okay, this is getting interesting," she whispered. "What do you think she'll make us do?"

"No idea." I kept my eyes on Kara. "Monster hunting, maybe."

"Ooh."

"Both of you," Isabella said, without turning her head. "Be quiet and listen."

Aria pressed her lips together. Her tail swished against my calf in protest.

"The task is simple." Kara began to walk the line, heels loud on the stone. "The Headmistress wanted Ardorkeep's officials to handle it. I decided it makes a better lesson. For the duration, the curfew is lifted for this class. You will find what is behind the undead sightings."

"I knew something was going on with the undead," Aria breathed.

"You didn't care until they shut you out of your bathhouse."

She stuck her tongue out at me. I almost smiled.

Kara stopped in front of us. If she had heard, she gave no sign. "Understand me. I do not care much whether you find the cause. I care what you do on the way. You will be graded on how many undead you put down, and what kind."

"Groups?" someone called.

"Group up if you like. Your points shrink with every body in the group." She turned her back and walked towards the weapon racks. "Choose your company accordingly."

Aria's fingers closed on my sleeve. I looked at Isabella. She was already looking at me.