Page 34 of The Succubi's Choice

JACQUELINE (11:02 AM): Gabe says you say it’s NBD?

MIRI (11:04 AM): It’s a little bit of a deal, but the guy was fine. And he was threatening me, so I appreciated it.

JACQUELINE (11:04 AM): ?????? Really?

MIRI (11:05 AM): It’s complicated.

BLOCKED NUMBER (11:08 AM): Roommate says you’re responsible for my ruined shirt?

That one gives her pause, as she scans a pile of papers into PDFs to send to funding. She had given him her phone number, and…

LUNDY (11:15 AM): Continue texting with him. Let him open up.

MIRI (11:16 AM): Fuck off.

Still, she thumbs over to the message.

MIRI (11:17 AM): Well that’s misleading of him.

BLOCKED NUMBER (11:18 AM): I’m still scratching my head on how you two met.

She doesn’t know what to say, so she lets her phone sit, the message burning into her pocket.

* * *

Lundy’s waitingfor her when she gets off work, standing outside of his minivan and eyeing her and Katya as they lock up the office.

Katya eyes him right back, with open skepticism that borders on antagonism, but doesn’t say anything.

“They kicked down to me that you can feed starting again tonight,” Lundy says in lieu of a greeting, and Miri’s knees almost sag in relief. “I don’t know why, I disagree with the sudden lifting of security precautions, but they’re the ones doing it and you look horrible.”

“Thanks, I feel peachy.” She throws her purse into her car, and the resulting thud is enough to resound through her head. “I’m pretty sure this is unhealthy.”

“It is, but you’ll live.”

And there it is, the opening, the place where she could tell him about the interaction, about the texting, about the memory change, and her skin crawls with the consequences.

“Promise me you won’t be mad?” She blurts out, before she can stop herself with things like logic and self-preservation.

Lundy just crosses his arms and squints at her.

“Gabriel took me out and we walked around a mall late at night just to get out of the house cause I was going stir crazy and the demon showed up and threatened me and then made me promise to keep in contact with him and then disappeared.” She doesn’t so much pause for a breath as grab a ragged one. “I think that’s connected with the loosening precautions and that’s weird.”

To Lundy’s credit, his expression doesn’t change much. “Threatened?”

“More like showed up and was intimidating,” she says, cause if she can be closer to the truth it would be better. “He...commented on me not being able to feed. That’s why I think. That.”

The eyebrow raises a little, and he purses his lips, and he regards her not as an errant child, but as someone who could have good information, and that’s much worse. “Did you try to contact me?”

She nods, and even that movement feels wrong, her head sloshing around.

“Let me guess, I responded, then when I presented an immediate problem I just drove away?” His voice is much, much cooler than she anticipated. Much less rage and hellfire, much more calm data collection.

She nods again.

“Yeah, he does that, we’ve found.” Lundy briefly scowls, before visibly shrugging it off. “Get in the car, I’m taking you hunting.”

* * *

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