Page 106 of The Succubi's Choice

She leans against him, a little bit more, not sure if it’s for him or for her.

“He’s still a demigod, they’re rare, they could annihilate any of us in this room,” the woman says, but, her eyes flicker to the Archdemon, the one person in the room that’d be of question. “He’s gone half mad, we could set him off somewhere, and he could destroy everything we hate about the Organization. Like a bomb, leaving destruction in his wake.”

She’s saying this, but she’s in control of at least part of the Organization. Like she’s trying to cannibalize it from the inside.

Miri wishes she has Katya’s recorder, suddenly.

“Or he could kill us all,” the vampire says, leaning forward slowly, features sharp. Like a predator, a more obvious one than Miri and Grant. “He and his brother almost did.”

“And his brother was brought down so easily,” Not-Thomas murmurs, but all attention snaps to him. “Why would we bring back someone so unstable?”

“You didn’t know him,” the woman says, still looking like a comfortable middle-aged mother speaking to her friends, and the disconnect is startling. “I doubt he’d fall for the same trap.”

“They were half mad before his brother died, I wouldn’t doubt he would kill us all for little benefit,” Grant says, but there’s an undercurrent of indecision in his voice. “I don’t know what he could do now, that we aren’t positioned to do without him.” He obviously doesn’t look at the Archdemon, but the undercurrent is there.

“He was brought down by a mere employee, a pencil pusher who got lucky with a knife,” the Archdemon says, and she’s almost insulted on Katya’s behalf, if it weren't for the fact that he’s been trying to get in contact with her for the purpose of also not getting killed by her. “I think we’ve moved past that.”

Grant’s eyes flicker to Miri again. “I think we all know that Katya is a bit more to reckon with than a pencil pusher.”

“Her own Organization is trying to deny her promotions,” Miri says, and all eyes immediately go to her with various degrees of surprise. “She doesn’t want the promotions, but they’re trying to deny her. Keep her out of things.”

There’s a moment of silence, as that hangs in the air and she tries not to feel like she’s betrayed everyone, betrayed Katya, and betrayed her work.

The woman gives her an appraising look, like she didn’t anticipate Miri speaking up, and the look has something approaching respect in it.

“That’s beyond stupid of them,” Grant replies, breaking the fragile bit of silence, and he says that a lot. “If they had one iota of sense, one bit of self-preservation, they would put her at the top.”

Katya would hate that beyond belief. She’d be suffocated, quickly, under the amount of scrutiny and the lack of ability to connect with people.

“The entire thing is full of people who just want more prestige than her, want more fake power,” Beatriz says, and she’s not wrong, but it crawls up Miri’s spine. “Katya is irrelevant to them, and should stay that way.”

“The point is, he was outsmarted,” the Archdemon says, and he’s treating it like it’s a competition on who can sound the most uninterested in the conversation, but the tightness of his body against hers is anything but. “And any hope for world domination—or whatever he promised you—is unequivocally squashed.”

Grant nods, and the ghoul as well. “With all the promises, we have nothing.”

“We have nothing right now,” Beatriz cajoles, and her eyes stray to Miri. “Our only hope is an Archdemon who’s courting a lowly succubi.”

She sits back, as if she’s expecting people to respond emotionally, but no one does. The biggest reaction is Grant, who raises an eyebrow.

Like Miri hasn’t been expecting this sort of thing since the moment this started. Like she hasn’t received that sort of language before. Like she hasn’t been cc’d into worse emails from coworkers.

Like she hasn’t found a place in that expectation and learned how to use it.

Grant shifts, and she’s willing to bet he’s gotten that sort of thing as well, and he’s somehow in this secret cabal of power players.

“And?” Not-Thomas says, languid.

“And I’d like to invite him in,” Beatriz says, coy, like this is what she’s had planned all along. “See what he has to say. See if he has any insight.”

“Would he even say yes?” The ghoul says, voice a bit wondering. “The surviving one had less patience for us, wanted more help than we could give.”

“We have no guarantee that the bomb we set off wouldn’t kill us instead.” Grant leans forward, and any trace of niceness is gone from his face. “How would you contact him?”

“An associate in Denver reached out,” Beatriz responds, giving the least amount of information possible, and they all think she’s just part of the mob, has control that way, and a hard little plan starts to form in Miri’s gut. “Said there was some unexplained things, I sent some investigators, and...” she opens her arms, expressive. “Turns out he found something, deep in the Rocky Mountains.”

Miri opens her mouth to speak, but her Archdemon’s arm tightens around her, a clear warning, and she falls silent, fast.

He looks down at her, serious, but she can see the machinations going in the back of his mind, see how he’s putting things together, practically see him formulating plans.

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