Page 38 of The Succubi's Choice

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KATYA WORK (9:15 AM): Have to call you in on your off day. Have a household who’s refuse entry unless we have a person like them. Can you do today at 11:00 AM?

* * *

When Miri dragsherself out of bed, she feels way better than she anticipated, and way better than she feels like she has any right to be, but in all fairness she’s not waking up fucking starving for the first time in a week and a half, and is instead left with a vague desire for ice cream.

MIRI (9:49 AM): I can do 11. Anything I should know?

Once again, Jacqueline is sitting at their dinner table and grading papers, though she can still hear the shower running. After a moment of not noticing her, Jacqueline gives her a narrowed eyed appraisal.

“You look less shitty,” she says, after a moment of nothing, peering out over her glasses. “Did they let you hunt?”

“Good morning to you too,” Miri says, flopping on her couch next to her purse and digging out the packet of papers that she put together. “Yeah, they did.”

“Good,” Jacqueline declares, somehow making it sound like a moral failing. “They shouldn’t have starved you.”

Miri levels her a glare, because even if it’s ten AM this is still a rough conversation that early for her, and the last thing she wants is a lecture about things she actually agrees with. “Did you sleep over?”

Jacqueline doesn’t blush, but Miri feels like it’s more out of sheer willpower than any indication of her actual embarrassment level. “On the couch,” she mumbles. “My little sister is having a week of sleepovers so there’s like ten seven year olds at my place. It’s so noisy.”

“I’m cool with it, I was just wondering.” Miri thumps the packet of papers on the couch next to her, and that draws Jacqueline’s eyes. “There’s all this official information for you, it’s not flattering.”

“Who wrote it?” Jacqueline still scrambles out of her chair to the couch, picking up the packet.

That’s not something Miri knows, besides the fact that it’s official, so she shrugs and gets the stink eye in return.

“Official information isn’t usually official without having a viewpoint,” she says in a sotto voice. “I want to know the viewpoint before I go in.”

“You realize you’re trying to get me to talk bad about my work?”

“Does your work talk bad about you?” The look she gives her is exactly the reason why Miri didn’t go to college beyond what was required of her, but Jacqueline quickly leafs through the pages, her pile of grading forgotten.

Miri watches her, watches her dark eyes flicker from word to word, faster than any reading she’s ever done. Watches how she tucks her hair behind her ears, how her finger runs along the words with her eyes, how she mouths the words along, lighting quick.

It’s stunning, to watch an academic read and consume information.

Several times, Jacqueline purses her lips, as if she’s seeing something she doesn’t like, but beyond the basic flicker of her eyes up to Miri, she doesn’t speak, and after a few minutes Miri pushes up to get ready for work. Let the academic learn, in rigid language and uncomfortable details, all the things about people like her and how all the regulations on her are technically and legally justified.

The shower shuts off right as she swings through to get her work clothes, and barely, just barely, she gets to hear Gabriel’s awkward greeting to Jacqueline, as if he’s just as surprised that she stayed the night.

She avoids Jacqueline’s questioning gaze as she all but runs out the door, never before being so grateful that she got called in on her off day.

* * *

“There’sat least one human, and three non-humans in the house, with the possibility of one more of each,” Katya says, as soon as she swings into the office.

“Hello Katya, good day to you as well,” Miri says, setting down her briefcase and purse on her desk. “How long has this been put off?”

Katya pokes her head out of her office, opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it. “You were allowed to hunt?” She says, finally, tentative.

“That obvious?” Miri makes grabby hands for the pages in Katya’s hand. “Why’d they want me to go?”

Katya sits on Miri’s desk, and Miri’s getting real tired of people sitting on her furniture. “One of them, the Brownie, used to be an informant of mine.” Miri often forgets that Katya didn’t start out in this small two-person office, but in fact used to do much more mysterious and rough things for the Organization. “But he hasn’t spoken to me for maybe a year.”

“So when the demigods were fucking things up, got it.” She flips to the packet, and the distinctively otherworldly face of an Irish Brownie looks up at her in the picture, with pale skin and sandy brown hair and just enough of something that the average person can tell they’re not human.

Miri is lucky: Succubi were born to fit in. Be beautiful, yes, but fit in. Unless you’re looking through a different set of eyes, they just seem pretty. Brownies, much like most of the fae categorization, don’t. Like bad fantasy cosplay or bad CGI of the 1990s, they just don’t look real, and it’s difficult to put your finger on why.

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