“Yeah, pretty much,” I said in relief, since he at least didn’t seem to be angry. “Except there’s a complication.”
“Oh?”
I’d thought about this a lot over the past couple of days. The conclusion I’d come to was... well... completely ridiculous, really. But it was also the solution that worked for me—my conscience, my self-respect.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “My grandfather may have been an incubus, but I grew up as a human, and I have no interest in meaningless sex with no emotion behind it.”
I swallowed the ache that stabbed through me at those words, but even if our sexual exploits had only been a bit of fun and a temporary escape for Rans, they’d meant more than that to me. I wasn’t about to turn into a tramp with no standards, just because it was the easy way out.
Li Wei shrugged. “Many of the older humans here share a similar outlook. What are you asking me, exactly?”
Taking a deep breath, I began to outline what I’d come up with. “I’ve noticed there aren’t many women here, compared to the number of men. I’m guessing that’s because most of the Fae changelings have been male, so they took male human babies in exchange?”
I still wasn’t completely certain, but my impression on Dhuinne had been that Unseelie Fae were male and Seelie Fae were female. If so, it made sense that the Unseelie changeling presence on Earth was male, and so were the human tithelings they’d replaced.
“Yes, that’s right,” Li Wei replied. “With a very small number of exceptions, our women and girls were all born here. And with so few women to start with, there aren’t many natural-born children in Hell.”
I nodded. “So, the question is, what would the attitude be toward some kind of public display with erotic overtones? Would men come to watch, knowing that I’d be drawing a small amount of animus from each of them, but that I wouldn’t actually be having sex with any of them afterward?”
Li Wei snorted. “I assume you were actually acquainted with some human men on Earth, yes?”
“Uh... yes?” I answered.
He shook his head at me, clearly amused. “I think it’s a near-certainty that many of the younger men here would flock to such a spectacle.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “In fact, I’ll send someone here later today who I believe might be interested in helping you with such a thing.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks. I honestly wasn’t sure whether to expect orgies in the street, or the threat of stoning.”
He laughed aloud. “Neither, I’m afraid. People here get up to whatever they like behind closed doors. The women tend to have their pick of partners, for the most part, and many of the men seek relief with other men, even if it’s not their natural preference, because of the population imbalance. But I daresay you’ll be able to work something out. As long as everything is aboveboard and you don’t drain enough energy from any individual person to weaken them, no one here cares what you get up to. And as I said, I suspect gaining an enthusiastic audience for whatever you have in mind won’t be a problem.”
Well, at least that was something.
“Thank you,” I said.
The temptation to ignore my need for other people’s sexual energy and the issues that came with it was strong, but I had a very practical reason for wanting a top-off. I needed to know as soon as possible if I was going to be able to get through the portal to Earth under my own steam, and my best chance of doing so was to strengthen my inner succubus as much as I possibly could.
Luckily, it sounded like I wouldn’t be pissing off the natives by doing so—not if I was careful. My grief over Rans’ rejection of me was being joined by a healthy dose of anger as the days passed, but the simple truth was that I owed the vampire big-time for teaching me how to feed selectively.
Okay. Let’s be honest.
I owed him for a lot of things, not just that. But I was still bitter over how abruptly he’d ended things between us. Yes, that made me a hypocrite, considering how much effort I’d put into guarding my heart against him. And, hey—just look how well that had worked out, right?
Argh.
I was such an idiot.
At the moment, though, I was an idiot who was stuck in Hell with my invalid father—and that observation wasn’t even hyperbole. I had to stay focused on the things that mattered, even though I was finding it increasingly difficult not to just go curl up in an angry, tearful ball somewhere.
True to his word, Li Wei sent me a visitor a few hours later. Sharalynn was a pretty woman a few years older than me, with a bright smile, merry eyes, and skin a few shades darker than mine. She wore her naturally kinky hair close-cut, like a black helmet. I had a couple of inches of height on her, but she had a few pounds of pure muscle on me.
“Hey, girl,” she said, extending a hand and shaking mine with a firm grip. “Li Wei says you’re part succubus and need to get a bunch of the local boys hot for you so you can feed. We’ll need to talk details, but I think you and I may be able to help each other out.”
I liked Sharalynn immediately. We sat in the shade of the hut’s tiny stoop, outlining a plan. Possibly, it would have been more polite for me to invite her inside... but even when he was unresponsive, I drew the line at discussing exhibitionism for the purpose of feeding off random people’s sexual arousal in front of my dad.
As it turned out, Sharalynn was trying to hook up with a hopelessly shy guy that she had a thing for. She’d spent the last few years playing the field, so to speak, but these days she was becoming more interested in settling down.
