Succubus Heat (Georgina Kincaid #4)(10)

 

 

I smiled, not entirely sure what to say.

Cedric clasped his hands in front of him, face turning serious. "So, let's get down to business. You're here to spy on me."

My mouth opened, but nothing coherent came out right away. "Um … "

He waved his hand. "No, no, it's fine. You don't honestly expect me to believe Jerome would do me a favor without strings attached? Whatever. I don't have anything to hide. He can keep his territory-I'm too busy watching my own. You can tell him whatever you want so long as you do what I need you to."

"Right," I said, finding my voice at last. "Your embarrassing Satanic cult."

He grimaced. "God, those guys are such a pain in the ass. What do you know about them?"

"That they aren't Satanists like the usual groups, not like Anton LaVey's followers or the anti-Christians." I felt like a student reciting in front of a class.

"They think they're anti-Christian, but mostly, they're just ridiculous. Just some flakes in search of identity who got together and thought it'd be cool to be evil. They have meetings in robes and keep making up secret handshakes."

"And that's a problem?"

"Nah, I don't care about any of that. They can play dress-up all they want. What's annoying is that they're doing all the things people think evil people do but don't actually do. They ripped up a bunch of bibles once and left them on this church's lawn. They also appear to have a fondness for spray paint."

"I heard about that."

"They keep writing stupid stuff like 'The Angel of Darkness is Lord' and 'What Would Satan Do?'" Cedric rolled his eyes. "Yeah, like that's original."

"I can see why you'd be embarrassed," I admitted.

"No kidding. The worst part is that they're attracting some media attention-especially among local churches. So, now those guys are doing their own sort of backlash and triggering a whole bunch of demonstrations about faith and light and all that stuff. Not what we need. Kind of defeats our purpose, really."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Kristin hangs out with them sometimes. They know her and recognize what side she works for, but frankly, she doesn't have the people skills to manipulate them. She'll take you to them and give them some bullshit about how you're high-ranking in the ways of evil or something equally absurd. Then, I want you to hang out with them and just be part of their group. Stop them from doing more stupid things. Get them to go back to their role-playing in the basement. Hell, if you can convince them to disband, go for it." He eyed me. "You're a succubus. You've been around for a while. You should be able to talk them into anything." 

I nodded. "I can."

"Good. I'm tired of them. I'm not allowed to interfere directly, and my own people are too busy." He stood up and walked toward the door. I took the hint and followed. "Do whatever you want the rest of the day. Kristin'll take you over to them tomorrow. Check them out. See what you think. I've got some appointments in the morning, but stop by anyway and give me your impressions of those fools."

"Is there anything in particular you want me to find out for you?"

"Yes," he said. "In addition to keeping them out of trouble, I want you to simply observe them. They're not just attracting media attention-they're attracting attention from my superiors." Ah, yeah. Hell could get pissy about that kind of thing. "If someone's purposely manipulating them, I want to know."

"Okay."

He gave me a narrow-eyed look. "And I hope it's not Jerome."

He still had that mild, businesslike exterior, but I heard the stern note in his voice. I shivered but gave him a smile anyway, trying not to think about misdirection.

"I hope not either."



I was a bit surprised at how short my meeting with Cedric had been. I was more surprised still that after all the grief Jerome had given me about the urgency of this trip, I now had nothing to do. Of course, if he was trying to get rid of me, this was as good a way as any. My bad attitude and I were out of Seattle.

It was dinnertime when I got back to Robson Street, so I found food at an Ethiopian restaurant a few blocks from my hotel and lingered over the remains of my meal with a novel I'd picked up a few days ago. Afterward, I wandered up and down the street, looking at various shops and designers, but eventually had to stop after passing two T-shirt stores. One sold retro stuff and had a dark purple Quiet Riot shirt in their window. Another sold Canadian souvenirs and displayed a shirt showing a map of Canada in red with a map of the U.S. below it in blue. The caption read: "Canada Likes It on Top." If I'd still been dating Seth, I would have bought him both. He would have shaken his head and given me a slight quirk of the lips as he tried to hide his smile.