Page 100 of The Succubi's Choice

There’s a beat, where he doesn’t return, and Miri turns and looks up at Not-Thomas. “And he is...”

“Strange,” he says, easy. “Grew up raised by fairies, I believe, so he can see through any glamor or falsity. Very useful to keep around, but a very odd person.”

“And he keeps a dress store in Los Angeles?”

The Archdemon looks at her, slightly askance.

“Ohh, we’re not in LA right now, are we?” She asks, her stomach dropping out. “Uh, where...?”

“Romania,” he says, again easily, again like it’s no big deal. “It’s close to 2 AM, but he—" he jerks a thumb towards the fabric wall, “—doesn’t sleep, so he keeps the place open for anyone who can drop by.”

And Miri’s never heard of a human who doesn’t need to sleep—and that sounds super convenient—but then again, she’s never heard of a human who was actually raised by fairies outside of mythology, so…

He looks at her again, sidelong, and she’s now spent enough unreal time with him that she knows when he’s weighing his words. “He’s a very old friend, I’ve known him for a few decades.” There’s something more behind it, but if he’s not going to tell her she doesn’t want to pry.

But then again, most of her interactions are with people from mythologies, that anyone else would think are tall tales and stories about children getting lost.

And she herself is apparently a villain of the Bible, so…

The man returns, with two dresses, one dark blue that seems to be made of shadows, and one a bright, orange-y red that shines in the light.

Without speaking, he gestures for her to follow him in the dressing room and, with a wide-eyed look back at her Archdemon, she follows.

The dressing room is simple, with just fabric walls and a low bench, and the man holds up the blue dress against her body, then the orange-y red dress, as if he’s evaluating and weighing the options.

“You’ll like the blue more,” he says, the lilt of his voice more pronounced the closer she gets to him. “But the red will look better.”

He’s probably right, as her eyes were immediately drawn to the blue, but out of some sort of spite, she holds out her hand to the bright red dress.

The texture is rich, thick, somehow not slippery despite all the shine in the fabric, and she knows it’ll offset the lighter bits of her hair, and make her skin look like she actually has some color in it.

She hates dress shopping so much.

“Sure, I’ll try it on,” she says, trying to keep her voice light.

“You don’t need to,” he says, peering at her with the large beetle eyes. “But you can change here if you wish.”

With a swish of the fabric wall, he exists, leaving her alone with the dress.

As quick as she can, she strips out of the khakis and the polo shirt, stepping into the dress. It fits over her bra, without any sort of adjustment necessary, and the straps slip over her shoulders like they were made to sit there.

It dips low, almost too low to be modest, showing off her tits in a way that she rarely finds appropriate to do.

And he’s right. The dress is magnificent on her, and if they’re in that dimly lit room downtown, she’d light up the room, be a focal point, be something for them to all look at.

And, well, considering how they all looked at her last time, causing the spectacle is a lot better than being the passive recipient of it. If they’re already going to be staring...might as well do something worth actual staring.

“Alright,” she whispers to herself, shoving her khakis and polo into her bag, tucking them around her gun, around the paper towel lined bullets.

All she has for shoes is her plain work flats, but somehow, the dress works with them, flaring out at her hips and falling to her mid-calf. Like it was made for these shoes, made for this exact transition, made for her exact measurements.

And for all she knows, for all the strangeness of these stores, for all the fairytale nonsense of this, it might be. She’s a goddamn succubi, being taken to a high-class store for a dress for a formal event, after all. It doesn’t get much more Cinderella than this.

Miri’s fairly certain that Cinderella never had to carry a gun.

Outside the little fabric box, there’s a whisper of conversation in a language Miri doesn’t know. The Arc demon’s voice is tender, fond, like speaking to an old friend, one he hasn’t seen in a long time.

It makes sense he speaks other languages, if he’s practically ageless, but hearing it in such a fond way makes it a bit odd, and she stands, a bit useless, in the fabric dressing room, unwilling to go out and interrupt.

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