Page 53 of The Succubi's Choice

The waitress hands a tall, opaque, glass to Miri without saying anything, before swinging out of the tall ornate doors again, and she stares at the glass in her hand for a few seconds.

“It’s non-toxic for you, will give you a mild buzz, nothing extreme.” Not-Thomas’s voice is low, like a soothing blanket. “It’s something they designed, so everyone here can enjoy themselves.”

“What should I be doing right now?” She whispers back at him, her skin crawling with the abrupt change.

He settles deeper into the couch, looking all too comfortable for the tension she felt earlier. “Conversing, if you feel like it. Observing, if not.”

She blinks up at him, and he gives her the same cheery, self-satisfied smile as before, as if he’s finding her floundering very, very amusing.

But before she can think of something to say, the other succubi leans close to her, with a shifty glance to Not-Thomas, as Not-Thomas turns and engages in conversation with the smoke ensconced creature on his other side.

Leaving her to fend for herself.

“What are you doing here?” The other succubi hisses, his voice canting upwards at the end in panic. “First you show up at my house, then here, and —"

“They’re not related,” Miri says, interrupting him to stop her heart from pounding. “We had an anonymous tip for your house, things we are obligated by law to check up on.”

He has an identical drink to hers in his hand, and he drinks it, obviously flustered. “And you moonlight as his date on your off hours?” His eyes flicker down her, and with a jolt she realizes he’s checking for obvious injuries or bruises. “You know who he is?”

Somehow, in this smoky, warm room, some sort of kinship seems to be guiding him more than anything else.

Miri doesn’t break eye contact. “Only somewhat.” She dips her voice to match his. “He invited me.”

The other succubi’s eyebrows do something weird, some sort of waggle, like he’s impressed but very concerned at the same time, and he gives the lounging Archdemon a cautious look. “That’s unorthodox of him.”

“I tried explaining that to him, but he was quite insistent.”

He takes another drink, and she tries to gauge his reaction to the concoction. “Little sister,” he says, his voice so low she has to lean forward. “Tread carefully. There are too few of us left to risk whatever whims he may have.”

“How many are left?” She asks, and a spasm of pain crosses his face.

“Your job doesn’t track it?”

“I don’t have access to information regarding other succubi, that’s not allowed,” she says, struggling to keep her voice even and low. “If we had known you were in that house, they wouldn’t have sent me.”

He levels her with a steady look. “If you are here with him, surely you see the errors of your job,” he says, and the only tick is that his voice wobbles. “You should be careful with what you say here.”

She nods, taking the advice for as it is meant; a warning and a plea. “I’m gathering that.”

He sits back, then gestures at her drink with his. “It’s a pheromone enhanced wine, it doesn’t, you know.” He gestures at his chest, to the obvious heartburn and stomachache they would get with actual alcohol. “Don’t get sloppy with it.” Then, as if to demonstrate, he takes a sip.

She copies him. The drink is pleasantly fizzy, slightly tart, and slightly syrupy, cold on her tongue but warm in the back of her throat, and her eyebrows flash up. “I take it I can’t just purchase this on my own?”

The other succubi gives her a grin, like he’s got his feet back underneath him. “Not easily,” he says, then, “you left out my husband. In the report.”

It’s a quiet, stated fact, and Miri takes a moment before nodding. “I take it they visited?”

“I got a slap on the wrist for charming an officer, but they didn’t look further,” he says, smoothly. “Why leave him out? If you were just doing your job.”

And again, they’ve slipped into treacherous territory. Territory where he holds all the cards and she has to guess what she should say. “I’ve never seen it before, one of us with a human,” she says, her eyes drifting around the table, where no one else is paying them any attention. “Or one of us in...anything resembling a marriage.”

“And that is why we do not like your Organization,” he says, and he smirks. “Because we are like any other, and we need love just as much.”

She breathes out of her nose, looking across the room, at the gathered people and the strangeness of being so surrounded. And, out of the corner of her eye, she sees the succubi’s face soften. And she hates it, hates that he has that look, as if she is the one missing out in the world and the one that should be pitied.

“Here,” he says, and pulls out a business card. “So you don’t have to look it up on your work computer.”

She takes a beat, because if she takes it, it feels like an acceptance of what plagues her, an acceptance that there is an issue, and an acceptance that she needs help. But…

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