Succubus Revealed

“Um, thanks,” said Seth.

Jerome turned back to me, like nothing had happened. “As I was saying, I wanted to hear about your Las Vegas weekend.”

“How considerate,” I said. Beside me, I felt Seth shift restlessly. I knew my other immortal friends made him uncomfortable in just a weird sort of way, but Jerome unnerved Seth in a whole other way. No, it was more than unnerving. Jerome scared Seth, which made sense because half the time, Jerome scared us too. “I’m sure you have enough eyes and ears to tell you exactly how my weekend went.”

“True,” said Jerome. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy getting your insight.”

“Right,” I said. “Because my happiness means so much to you.”

Roman crossed his arms over his chest and fixed us with an irritated look. “Sorry to interrupt, but do you want to practice or not?” He gave no indication that he’d grilled me on every detail of the aforementioned weekend. From his expression now, you’d think that was the last thing on his mind.

“Certainly,” said Jerome magnanimously. He gesture toward the lane, like some monarch kicking off a celebration. “Begin.”

Roman rolled his eyes and then turned to us Unholy Rollers. “Okay, first, let’s see what level you’re all at.”

Roman’s lessons hadn’t stuck with me over the last year, though I acquitted myself well with six pins on my first roll and two on the next. Cody surprised everyone with a spare, and Hugh, after first rolling a gutter ball, matched my eight. Peter created a perfect split on his first roll and hit nothing on the second. Seth, in a rare moment of bravery, leaned toward Jerome.

“Are there going to be handicaps in this tournament?”

“That,” said Jerome, dark eyes on the gaping hole Peter had made, “is an excellent question.”

Even Roman seemed a little surprised at how all over the map we were. He jumped into his role as coach, helping each of us with our own specific problems. Cody was the only one of us who needed little assistance and threw strikes and spares pretty regularly. I proved surprisingly correctable and was soon throwing spares about two-thirds of the time, which I thought was a decent rate. No amount of instruction seemed to help Peter, whose rolls were increasingly bizarre and erratic. Hugh improved slightly but still had a tendency to always throw right, which he just couldn’t shake.

“Here,” said Seth, standing up as Hugh was about to finish a frame. “Can I do it? I used to roll exactly like you do.”

Hugh relinquished the ball willingly, and Seth stepped up to the line. I sat up with interest, never having seen Seth bowl. He showed Hugh his technique first, miming a throw that curved slightly left. Then Seth threw for real, releasing a fast, neat ball that cleaned up Hugh’s leftover pins.

“Jesus Christ,” said Jerome in disgust. “I’m going to have to see if Nanette will let me put mortals on the team. It’s the only way I’m going to save face.”

“Hey,” said Roman. “Give them a chance. I can work miracles in a week.”

Jerome stood up. “Miracles generally aren’t in our repertoire. I’ve seen all I need to. I’m going to go drink now in a futile effort to wipe away the memory of this debacle. When I show up for your next practice, I expect to see significant improvement in all of you. If I don’t, you’re all going to learn a new definition of teamwork through your shared misery and suffering.” He turned abruptly on his heels and nearly ran into a waitress approaching us. She yelped in surprise when she saw the furious look on his face. “Do not serve them alcohol,” he warned her. “We can’t risk any chance of this getting worse —not that that’s probably possible.”

We watched them both hurry away. Once Jerome left the bowling alley, Roman exhaled in relief and sat down with us. “Okay, now that he’s gone, can we dispense with this bowling nonsense and get down to business? Cody, we need to talk to you about Milton.”

“Whoa, whoa,” said Peter. “Was I the only one who heard that part about ‘shared misery and suffering’? We need to practice.”

Roman waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll get back to that.”

“What about Milton?” asked Cody, looking puzzled for any number of reasons.

“You told him,” said Hugh. “Shit.”

“What’d you expect?” I asked. “You had to have known I’d do something about it.”

“Milton’s a hit man for Hell,” said Roman.

“Milton . . . not Milton that asshole vampire that was here a while ago?” asked Peter incredulously. “A hit man? Come on. He was a fashion nightmare, but that’s about it.”

“We have good reason to think he really is an assassin,” I said slowly. “He travels a lot, and when he’s in town . . . people die. Like Erik.”

“Erik was killed by a robber,” said Cody. “There was no sign of a vampire.”

“Well, of course not,” said Roman. “Hell doesn’t want its murders to look obvious.”

“Yeah,” said Peter, “but that implies Hell had a reason for killing Erik.”

“Hell did,” said Roman. He nodded toward me. “Her. Erik was investigating Georgina’s contract when he was killed.”

I swallowed, taking a moment to find my voice. There was a small, small comfort in thinking there was a reason for Erik’s death and not just some random chance of the universe. But that comfort was negated by the fact that I was the reason.

“Roman thinks there’s some nefarious explanation for me being transferred. Some larger plot. And that Erik’s death was part of it,” I said at last.

Seth stared at me in astonishment. “I thought you said this was routine.”

I shrugged, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.”

“It isn’t,” said Roman fiercely. “There are too many things going on, too many things that don’t add up. Erik got too close to something, and Hell got rid of him. Which brings me back to my original point. Cody. You and Gabrielle followed Milton around, right?”

“I . . . yeah . . .” Cody was still in shock. “But I mean, we didn’t see him kill Erik! We didn’t see anything like that.”

“Did you ever see him in Lake City?” I asked. That was where Erik’s store had been.

Cody shook his head. “Never that far out. We just followed him mostly to some clubs. It was a game, that’s all. She wanted to see a vampire, so we watched him for a while. We never followed him outside of downtown.”

“I did.”

Everyone turned to stare at Peter.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he demanded.

“I didn’t know about that,” said Cody. “Why did you follow him?”

Peter snorted. “Why do you think? He was in our territory. I was seeing if he was really just on vacation like he claimed. I had to make sure he wasn’t out hunting victims.”

I grew so complacent sometimes with the idea of my silly, laid-back friends that it was easy to forget their true natures. Peter and Cody were the most deceptive of all sometimes. They were goofy and absurd in most of their normal living, but at the end of the day, they were vampires.

“And?” asked Roman, getting that zealous look again. “Did you see him in Lake City?”

“No. I followed him once to the Eastside and once to West Seattle.”

A chill ran down my spine. “West Seattle? What was he doing there?”

“Nothing,” said Peter. “He drove though some neighborhoods, sat in his car for a while. I figured he was stalking prey but saw me and gave up. Which he was smart to do.”

“He might very well have been stalking prey,” I murmured. “Erik lived in West Seattle. Do you remember the neighborhood?”

“If I saw it, maybe,” said Peter. “But I couldn’t lead you back there. I’m sorry.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Roman. “This is all we need. This is enough proof.”

“It’s circumstantial at best,” argued Hugh. “Which I told Georgina initially. And it doesn’t explain why Hell would want him killed—especially after he helped Jerome. I know, I know.” Both Roman and I had started to