Page 127 of The Succubi's Choice

Miri stares at him, hard, for a few seconds, an idea seeding itself in her mind. There’s no way she can carry Jacqueline out of here, and she can’t charm her into wakefulness, and she needs medical attention besides all that. She has to wait out the twenty minutes, wait until her Archdemon can come and get them.

And Katya handed her the recorder, already three steps ahead of her.

She relaxes, ever so slightly, rocking back on her back feet, an intentional de-escalation, and he matches her unconsciously.

Because even people who know what she is respond to body language.

“It matters to me that you hurt someone, it matters to me that you used her as bait,” Miri says, lowering her voice into something neutral and encouraging. “That’s against all sorts of regulations.”

“It needed to be done,” Vincente says, and he’s already boasting and she just changed tactics. “Sometimes people have to be hurt for rogue monsters to be brought in.”

She’s not sure if the monsters refer to her or to the Archdemon, but either way she doesn’t like it.

She ducks her head down, towards the standard tile that lines this little personal hell of a medical room, so he can’t see the reaction in her eyes. She’s always been too easy to read, too easy to understand from her expression.

“And the torture?”

“Are your feelings still hurt from that?” He asks, a bit incredulous. “Really?”

This time she does snap her head up, does look at him. “Are you kidding?”

He shrugs, but his hand is still on the gun, as if keeping it there is some sort of small intimidation toward her. As if it’s assuring him of his power and superiority in this conversation. “It’s not torture if you’re not human,” he says, glib, and beneath the pain and the horror of the statement, a little fission of victory. That little statement, that little bit of casual admittance, that’s enough. “Getting the Archdemon’s little girlfriend under control is worth it.”

“And your boss?” She asks, sharp. “She sits in on the same meetings my boyfriend does.”

“There’s no better way of knowing what your enemy wants than letting them believe you are one of them.” It’s so pat, it’s so neat, it sounds like something right out of a handbook on how to be villainous. Like he honestly believes it.

She breathes out hard through her nose, and next to her, Jacqueline shifts in her sleep, ever so slightly, capturing both of their attentions.

“So why the bait?” She asks, not fishing for a good statement, not fishing for a recording to bring him down, just angry. “If you knew I’d be coming, why all this?”

The barest hint of a sneer, like the one she saw on him so long ago when they first brought her in for questioning, and his hand tightens over the gun. “Because you should be stopped.”

Casual, as if it’s nothing to him, he draws the gun, and Miri stills. He’s a few steps away, too far to lunge, too far to do anything, too clothed to be able to easily charm.

“Well that’s sinister,” she snarks, words falling from her mouth in a last defense. “You don’t even know what I’ve done—that could be very stupid.”

Outside of her control, her charm sparks, finding only dead air in between them, and his nostrils flair in barely concealed rage. Or hate. Something. Slow, ever so slow, he points the gun away from her, training it on Jacqueline. “I’m sure I can convince you to undo it.”

“I wouldn’t even know how,” she breathes, and the power has shifted in their little medical room, and by the triumphant smile on his face, he knows it. “You can’t kill her, I wouldn’t know how to change it, that’s not fair.”

He shrugs. “Then she’s not so useful, is she?” And his finger tightens on the trigger, and she twitches, can’t help herself, and his smile is slow and wide on his face. “What can you do to make her useful?”

And at that moment, her timer sounds.

He jumps, the gun going up and away from Jacqueline, and Miri lunges, throwing herself at him, clawing at his collar.

He flails at her, an elbow going into her sternum, knocking her back, but she hooks her hand into the edge of his collar, trying, reaching, anything to get to his bare skin, and —

The barrel flashes. A concussive force, so close to her ears, she reels back, a wet sticky spray across her shoulders and arm, but her fingers graze, grab at the skin around his jaw and —

“Stop!” Her charm flashes up, into his eyes, and he stills. He’s panting, his eyes wide, but she can’t look away, she won’t look away. “Drop the gun.”

Her voice rasps, outside her control, and she can feel the world tilting on its axis, but his hand unclenches from the blood streaked mother of pearl, and it falls from his grip, clattering onto the floor.

The runes over the doorway, bright and hastily written, are clear. Only people invited can step through the door, and everyone else will be stopped.

Katya can’t help her, even if she wasn’t ducked right out of view.

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