Page 21 of The Succubi's Choice

Thankfully, the one store clerk scurries out of the dressing room to go get another set of dresses. Miri sits down on the waiting couch next to Katya, who’s prickly in her undergarments.

Her shoulder injury radiates bright red on her otherwise pale skin, the scar ropey and gnarled, and Katya hunches away from it, refusing to look Miri in the eyes.

“Well, we’re discovering you don’t want a corset back,” she points out. “I just think we should get you in something more poofy.”

Katya doesn’t exactly shoot her a glare, but it’s not really a nice look.

“That way you can sneak in a gun. Or machete. Or two.”

At that moment, the store clerk swings back in before stopping cold, her arms full of another set of dresses.

Katya ignores the terrified look with the grace of someone not dealing with the issues. “I can’t sneak a gun into Europe,” she complains, “I’m not going to break international law.”

“Your loss,” Miri says.

* * *

After a tense drive toyet another store in Pasadena and yet another set of failures in dresses, she doesn’t even think twice of accepting Katya’s offer for smoothies afterwards.

Katya gives her a sharp look as she sets down the too-sweet smoothie in front of her. “Promise me you’ll never get married,” she says, sliding into her own chair in the hipster old town cafe.

“Well I’m pretty sure it’s illegal,” Miri says after a second, processing the strange statement from her boss. “And not to mention...not great for the poor chap’s health.”

Katya shrugs, one-sided. “I never want to help plan one of these ever again.” She pulls out a binder, just like the many other binders she carries around regardless of the situation, and flips to a page.

Craning her neck, Miri catches a glimpse of flower arrangements, before she just blinks at Katya. “They don’t really strike me as the whole...flower types.”

“They’re not but there’s this weird political thing going on and I hate it,” Katya mutters, nestling her chin in her hand. “This whole thing is three months out and it’s like...not long enough.”

Miri leans back in her chair, looking past the myriad of plants that crowd the little patio, letting Katya go into a spiral before doing their inevitable paperwork.

Across the street, some distance down, her eyes fall on a familiar shock of dusty brown hair, and her stomach falls.

At this distance, she can’t read his face, but she can tell it’s still, very still.

“Would you say the dress from store eight were a four or a five on the decent scale?” Katya murmurs, her head fully bent over the paperwork in a way that can’t be comfortable for her injury.

“Four, sure,” Miri says quickly, pulling out her phone. “They weren’t bad, just not comfy, you said.” Her heart pounds in her throat.

Instead of giving her an answer, Katya just squints, before returning to the binders.

MIRI (4:02 PM): The demon is here, across the street from me and Katya.

MIRI (4:03 PM): What do I do?

She glances back up at him, and across the busy street he locks eyes with her, and a chill goes down her spine, despite the lovely heat outside.

“Hey Katya?” She says slowly. “I’ll be right back, I see a friend.”

It’s not smart, it’s not logical, but the need to get him as far away from Katya, who’s hunched over with a sore shoulder, drives her to stand up.

Katya doesn’t look up, just waves a distracted hand, so Miri grabs her smoothie as a shield, walking briskly towards the street as if she isn’t scared shitless. As if she isn’t possibly —probably—going to meet someone much more dangerous than her, and going into it armed with only a smoothie.

She approaches the crosswalk, and he tilts his head at her, his face still unmoving, like someone stepped into the body and froze all the parts that make it function like someone with feelings.

The light at the crosswalk takes forever to change, and they stare at each other over the expanse of blacktop and white lines, of the waves of heat in the air, and the cars whizzing past.

She has no way of knowing if he will kill her outright. She knows that demons can do that, can reach deep into a person and stop their heart, without any other symptoms. She knows that they can manipulate things, can reach a hand into the very fabric of reality and twist it, change it to their liking. He could, probably, make it so she never existed, never even crossed into this realm of existence.

---