Alex turned his head a bit to indicate his curiosity, but he didn’t ask out loud.
“Demon,” Lorelei said quietly. “One that will surely sense my presence.”
“Like Gorge?”
“No.” Her expression grew darker. “Much worse. One like me. Her name is Lydia.”
His brow furrowed. Alex felt tense already. “You can tell one from another?”
“I know this one…Gorge told me she was in Seattle.”
“What else did he tell you?”
Lorelei nearly answered, but stopped. “I believe now is not the time. There are a thousand ways this could go poorly. A week ago it would have been no issue, but in my current state this is dangerous. Will you follow my lead?”
“Yeah. Of course.”
“I cannot hide us. She knows I am here and will discern much. Our only option is to walk out quite brazenly.” She looked at him seriously. “Remember all that you have overcome, Alex. Fear no evil.”
Alex took a deep breath and nodded. She was about to rise, but he held up a quick hand. He got out of his seat, helped her out of hers, and took her arm.
They didn’t have far to go. Alex wondered just how far Lorelei had fallen from her original state. He knew what had been taken, and that she had only thus far recovered her devil’s tail, but that gave him little perspective. He considered it all one hell of an incentive to have more sex.
If we make it out of here, he thought. Fighting Gorge had been a knock-down, drag-out brawl with three of his friends at his side, and two of them were about the toughest guys he knew.
At the corner between the dining room and the foyer, they came face to face with the hostess, three men in suits and a dazzling blonde. She wore a flattering black party dress and long black gloves. Her brilliant green eyes stood out from her flawless skin, matched by lustrous emerald jewels on her ears and neck.
The three men were all Latinos. Two were tall, broad-shouldered men. One of them, Alex noticed, had a pair of teardrop tattoos under one eye. The third man wasn’t exactly small, but he looked to have perhaps a decade on the other two guys, and he walked arm-in-arm with the blonde.
She stopped in her tracks. “Lorelei?”
“Lydia.”
The blonde looked her over once, simultaneously curious and disdainful. “You look awful,” she declared. “What on Earth happened to you?”
“You two know each other?” asked the man on Lydia’s arm.
“Oh, we go back a long time,” Lorelei answered, her eyes on Lydia. “I heard you were in town. You’ll forgive me for not seeking you out. I didn’t have anything new to say.”
Lydia frowned. “Ah. Dear Robert has been gossiping about me, has he? His lips grow so loose and indiscriminate while he’s out whoring. I’ll have to speak with him.”
“Good luck with that,” Lorelei replied.
The Latino blinked, sensing obvious tension. Lydia slid off of his arm to bring her hands together as she spoke, throwing out some other hardly-even-veiled insult. Almost unwillingly, he glanced at the young stranger with an unspoken question in his eyes.
Alex quickly went from dread to grim amusement. He would probably die over this, he realized, or at the very least he was in for a severe beating. It made for the fourth time he’d faced certain doom this week. Five if he counted that first, anguished night and day spent in fear of what could happen if he took the succubus up on her invitations. At this point, his entire life just seemed absurd.
To top it all off, the man trying to catch Alex’s eye was almost certainly marked for death-death by sex, no less. The man leaned in and asked, “Do you know what this is about?” He had a subtle but distinct Mexican accent. He wasn’t irate, or demanding, or much of anything but confused.
Suppressing a grin, Alex matched the Mexican’s lean and said, barely above a whisper, “I dunno, but I don’t see how this could possibly go well. They’re wearing the same outfit. Chicks have to brawl if that happens, don’t they?”
The Mexican’s eyebrows rose as he took Alex’s meaning. Apart from their jewelry, the two women were dressed alike.
“Maybe we should break this up and go our separate ways?” Alex suggested.
“Really, Lorelei, you seem so much more haggard than usual,” Lydia said, casting off only a little of her venom in favor of genuine curiosity. “What did you do to yourself?”
“Divorce can be brutal,” Lorelei shrugged. “I am on the mend. I already feel much better for having shed so much baggage. You should try it. You’ll feel much lighter. In your case I imagine it would feel like having shaved off an entire cow.”
“Divorce? Well, you do look like you belong in one of those quaint women’s shelters.” Lydia turned her attention toward Alex. “Oh, but who’s your escort for this evening? He looks so young and innocent. And he’s already met Carlos. Introduce us?”
Those sultry green eyes bored right into him. Her grin twisted wickedly as she stepped close. Her beauty couldn’t be denied. Nor was she weakened like Lorelei.
Lydia slid up against him, looked deeply into his eyes, and breathed against his lips. Carlos and his companions pointedly said nothing. They watched with a mix of reluctance, arousal and fascination. Carlos hated it when Lydia did this, but he could do nothing to stop her, nor could he turn his eyes away. Nothing stopped Lydia from pressing her luscious, perfectly curved body into Alex’s with a predatory grin.
“I hope you don’t mind a little catty talk between old girlfriends,” she purred. “It’s no big deal. I’m Lydia. You almost look familiar.” She stared into his eyes, and as she spoke one gloved hand slid around to tease her fingers through Alex’s hair.
Onyx’s warding salts had fallen through that same spot in his scalp hours before. The salt washed out in the shower, but the warding spell would last until morning. Though the spell could not block Lydia’s supernatural charm, it nevertheless blunted the intensity. The rest fell to Alex’s natural willpower.
“I’m someone who’s already got a much hotter blonde in his life than you,” Alex replied. “Now would you back up a bit? You’re steppin’ on my dick.”
Her eyes went wide with shock. Lorelei masked her surprise, but not her grin. The three Mexican gentlemen in Lydia’s company all looked on as if the universe had just turned itself inside out and started playing the bagpipes. From her watchful position nearby, Rachel clamped her hand over her mouth, spun around the corner, and bumped her head against the wall twice to stifle her laughter.
The blonde succubus slipped back, still completely stunned. Alex held her gaze, wanting to turn away and get the hell out but remembering his lover’s counsel. “Weren’t we leaving, Lorelei?”
He held out his hand. She took it. “A warning, Lydia, for old times’ sake,” Lorelei said. “This is a dangerous city for our kind. The natives sometimes bite back. Not everyone respects the balance. You may even wind up on a new leash that you will find less pleasing than the one you wear now.”
Together, Alex and Lorelei stepped past Lydia and Carlos, both of them still taken aback by the scene. The two large men in their party remained in the way, but only until Lorelei politely asked them in Spanish to move. They both blinked and made way for the couple.
Almost half a minute passed before the hostess recovered her wits. “Um. Would you like me to show you to your table?”
“Carlos,” Lydia said with a voice full of sweetness and adoration, “that little brat and his whore insulted me. Shouldn’t they have to say they’re sorry?”
He hesitated, unsure of how to tell her to just get over it, or whether he even should. As always when it came to Lydia, he opted for the path of least resistance. Carlos turned to his two bodyguards. “Well?!”
* * *
The roads were all dark, wet and hilly, but at least traffic was light in downtown Seattle late in the evening. Paco didn’t care for being behind the wheel here, but better him than Chuy. His partner in the passenger seat provided a solid extra pair of hands and eyes, but not much else.