Page 114 of The Succubi's Choice

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Miri swallows past the lump in her throat at the sudden movement. “How many people can you erase memories from?” She asks, even though that feels like an irrational question, like not enough of an idea.

“Not enough,” he says, sitting at the computer and logging in, each keystroke slow. “I was able to take the alert, but I can’t get rid of the emails that were sent out. At the most...at the most I created confusion.”

She leans against him, watching as the login boots up, until the familiar portal pops up, the one she uses every day at her job. “So they want to arrest me,” she murmurs, against him, and she can see the look he flickers back to her, before he’s looking back at the screen.

From this angle, she can see his eyes as the pale blue, but the red is reflected in the screen, and she doesn’t really know how his eyes work, but it sends a chill down her spine.

“Before we got to her, before we deleted the record, Beatriz must’ve issued it. From her phone.” His voice curdles in disgust, curls around her, somehow soothing in its fierceness. That someone else was so angry, for her sake. “Says you are a danger to humans and to others.”

She doesn’t answer him, until he twists to look at her. “They shouldn’t be able to do it,” she says.

He reaches a hand to hers, brief, before he resumes typing, as if he gets how difficult it was for her to say that. “You’re entirely right,” he says, light.

“How long,” she starts, but her throat closes up for a second at even comprehending what she’s about to ask, before she forces past it. “How long would it take you to make it impossible to do that? In the system?”

He stills, his hand pausing over the keyboard, before he turns to her again, wrapping his arms around her midsection and pulling her to him. She goes, willingly, and she sits on his knee and he presses his face into her shoulder.

In that motion, in the press of him against her, she can just feel the exhaustion and the desperation and the lasting effects of the scare on him, like he is much more affected than he lets on, and she takes her hand in his hair.

“I can ask Thomas,” he mumbles into her shoulder. “But, there would need to be a crisis at the downtown offices. Something that would take the attention of their security team.”

She threads her fingers through his hair, and he presses against her a little bit harder, a little bit fiercer. “How’d you do it last time?”

“Manipulated a ghost into attaching to an item and taking it there and planting it in the server room,” he says, pulling away so he can look up at her. “It was very messy, and there wasn’t much time, and —"

Miri halfway remembers a shortage of services, one that caused her and Katya to go out for smoothies instead of doing any actual work, and hearing rumors of ghosts later. “So you need that distraction.”

He nods, slow, as if not liking where she’s going.

“From someone with an ID?”

“No,” he says, before she can say anything. “You’d be in danger, and...” He trails off, as if not finding any other reason.

“I can bring the gun,” she says, quick, her heart racing. “And I can charm my way in, charm into the center, do something —"

He blinks at her, eyes large, as if somehow willing her to stop talking. “And then you would never be able to work again,” he says, and she knows that, but it doesn’t make the idea of it any easier. “Not until the entire apparatus that keeps you that way is down, and...” He trails off again, looking at her, something a hair closer to calculation hitting his eyes.

And it delights her, that calculation, that small validation that what she’s proposing isn’t exactly wrong.

Miri exhales, slow, because she’s proposing doing something that would detonate her life as she knows it, and she’s substantially less afraid than she thought she would be. “How long will it take Thomas to set it up?”

He stands, sudden, but still cradling her like she’s something precious. “I don’t want to keep you here,” he says, gentle, like that’s the part she would object to. “Allow me to take you somewhere safe, while I find out the answers to your questions?”

He waits for her to respond, which she wasn’t quite expecting, so she shakes her head, quick, relieved at the choice. “I don’t want to hide away,” she says, soft, and his face crumples for a brief second before he smooths it away.

“I can’t tempt you to?” He asks, his arms wound around her, his voice low. His hand spreads on the small of her back, an ever-present heat against the smooth fabric of the dress.

It feels like too many things has happened all in one day, and the trip to Romania feels like an age ago.

“Do you have more people who can charm someone?” She asks, not wanting him to release her but not wanting him to put her somewhere and do everything himself. “Especially someone who knows security codes?”

He opens his mouth to respond, thinks of it, then closes it, the hand caressing her softly on the back of her dress. “Well,” he says, after a long pause, the sort of pause where she can see him weighing answers, “I could probably manipulate Grant, but I doubt it’d be easy.” He raises his eyebrows at the computer, looking, for all appearances, a little bit overwhelmed. “I might be able to get someone to just cause a disruption, but...”

She touches him back, sees him lean into that little touch, like he needs it more than she does, like he’s been without for so long. “What exactly are you planning on doing to the system?”

“Well, if he can, I want Thomas to delete that chunk of the code,” he says, his brain kicking into gear. “I had planned it, but a long time out, but...” He trails off, before visibly gathering himself. “That’s easy, according to Thomas, but putting in firewalls to prevent them from restoring the code will take longer, requiring the disrupt at the location.”

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