While I'd been pretty confident in telling Seth that Dante had likely skipped town, I nonetheless stopped by his shop the next day. It had never been very prosperous looking to begin with, but now the signs of abandonment were clear. The neon PSYCHIC sign was gone. The blinds were also gone, showing a room even barer than before. The FOR LEASE sign on the door was probably the most telling clue that Dante was gone for good.
In the wake of what had happened with Seth, it was hard to know what to think about Dante. My heart almost didn't have the energy for it. I had cared about him, absolutely. He'd suited my decadent phase, and despite his blackened soul, there were parts of him that were likeable. And above all, it appeared that he'd cared about me, misguided or not. I wasn't happy about the deal he'd made with Grace, but I was glad he hadn't been there to face Jerome and Mei's punishment. No one deserved that, not even Dante. I hoped wherever he was, he'd try to start a new life-maybe one that could lighten his soul a little. I well knew, however, that humans with damned souls rarely recovered.
Later that evening, I drove over to Capitol Hill. Peter and Cody were hosting a cocktail party to celebrate Jerome's return, though I half-suspected they simply wanted to drink away the sorrows of losing the sun.
"How can we celebrate Jerome being back when he's not even here?" Tawny wanted to know. She was back to her normal, Amazonian blond self and was holding her martini glass in a precarious way. Peter couldn't take his eyes off it.
I was nursing a gimlet out of politeness. The vampires had gone out of their way to get Grey Goose and fresh lime, but truthfully, I was a little burned out on alcohol. It seemed like I'd been perpetually drunk these last four months. I was not burned out on cigarettes yet, but I was trying very hard to break the habit once more.
"Jerome's got plenty to keep himself busy," I said. "We're just drinking in his honor."
"But he is staying, right?" asked Cody.
We all turned to Hugh. Like the rest of us, Hugh'd had his abilities restored, and I'd honestly expected him to be a lot happier having his imp vision back. Instead, he seemed very serious, and I could have sworn he was watching me when I wasn't looking.
"Yep. He and Mei schmoozed the corporate guy pretty good and pulled in enough favors to get backing from others. Cedric and Nanette both swore up and down that no one else was better qualified to run Seattle than him."
"Nanette finally caved, huh?" I swirled the ice around in my glass. "Of course, knowing Jerome owes her now probably makes her feel secure in her territory."
Cody shook his head. "Still. Grace went through an awful lot to try to pull this off, between the Canadians and all the wheeling and dealing. And Dante." He shot me an apologetic look that I waved off.
"I don't know," said Peter. He finally seemed convinced that Tawny wasn't going to ruin his upholstery. "She's a middle management demon with so-so power. Doing what she did-seizing the opportunity when she thought Jerome looked weak-was probably the closest she'll ever get to ruling over an area like this."
"What do you mean? Would she be stuck forever? Never have her own domain?" asked Tawny, frowning.
"She might have eventually gotten assigned control of some nonexistent town in middle America, but I doubt much more." Hugh still looked oddly speculative. "Clearly, she didn't want to. Neither does Mei, from the looks of it."
"So much for it being better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven," I said, pleased with my own wit. "Of course, I think we're going to see a lot more in Mei's career. She might be so-so in power, but she's got a plan."
"Have you noticed how she's a lot less scary alone?" asked Cody.
"It was the matching clothes," said Peter sagely. "When they dressed alike, it was too much like those girls from The Shining ."
More laughter and conversation ensued, though I eventually grew quiet and simply listened. Maybe I could be the life of the party, like Seth had said, but this group could do okay without me. I took a certain amount of contentment by being back with them and having our lives returned to normal-such as they were. I could never be human again, but these were the people I wanted to be damned with.
At one point, I got up to trade my empty glass for water and discovered Hugh had followed me into the kitchen. He still looked troubled. The others were laughing and talking, providing cover for our conversation.
"What's going on?" I asked. "I thought you'd be happy."
"I am, I am," he said. "Believe me, I am. God, that was miserable."
I couldn't help a smile. Hugh had hit his stride with being a lesser immortal. He was past the novice stages of Cody and Tawny and could fully reap the benefits of his position. However, he wasn't old enough to have acquired all the jaded centuries Peter and I had. Out of all of us, I didn't doubt that Hugh had suffered the most.
"Then what's going on?"
He hesitated, and again, I was struck by how out of character he was behaving. "Georgina, has Seth done anything...bad lately? Rob a bank? Cheat on taxes?"
"Of course not," I said, more confused than ever.
"Has he...or well...did he do anything, uh, bad with you?"
To my chagrin, I blushed. You'd think nothing would make a succubus self-conscious, but I still tried to maintain that line between my private and business sex lives. My silent response was enough for Hugh.
"Fuck."
"What?" I asked. "We did it when I was in stasis. I didn't take any of his energy. I didn't shorten his life. And we haven't done it since Jerome came back. It's over. He's back with Maddie."
Hugh raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"I realized how impossible it was for us and convinced him to go back to her. I really laid on the guilt." Just mentioning what had happened made me ache all over again.
"I'm sure you did," Hugh said dryly.
"What do you mean?"
"Georgina..." He sighed. "There's no easy way to explain this. When I first met Seth, his soul was like...a supernova. It lit up a room. That guy had such a generous spirit, it was insane."
Had.
"And now?" The answer was slowly creeping in on me.
"Now, there's a shadow on him. A stain on his soul. He cheated on Maddie with you...and is back with her, keeping that from her..."
The room started swaying, and I forced myself to focus on Hugh. "What we did, it wasn't sleazy. We are...were...in love. It was sweet-that is, it meant something."
"Maybe it did, sweetie. Maybe the planets aligned when you made love. But regardless of what happened between you, he wronged her-and he feels it now. That sin is darkening his soul."
"How dark?" I asked, my voice almost a whisper now. "If he were a hit by a car right now..."
Hugh's face was both hard and sad. "He'd head right to Hell."
"Oh my God." I collapsed back against the counter. "I didn't think...didn't realize..."
Since I hadn't been a succubus, I hadn't been thinking like one. I hadn't worried about shortening his life or exhausting him because there was no need. While I'd known we were both deceiving Maddie and had felt a fair amount of guilt over it, I'd never considered it in terms of damnation. I'd turned off that part of my life, the part of being a succubus that counted and tallied souls-the main part of my job.
Which was stupid of me. Humans didn't need us to sin. They did it all the time on their own and did just as good a job-if not better-than we could. I didn't have to be a succubus to make Seth sin. I could have been any woman, any woman he'd had an affair with. Sin was subjective, too, and different people would feel it differently. For someone like Seth, doing what he did would leave a harsh mark-and me making him feel guilty about it hadn't helped.
"This is worse," I said. I laughed, but it was the kind of hysterical laughter that could segue to tears at any moment. "It would have been better if we'd had sex when we were dating. I'd have taken years off his life, but his soul would have stayed pure-and that's what matters in the long run. Instead, I was so adamant about refusing to do it...and now look. Look what I did."
Hugh caught my hand and squeezed it. "I'm sorry."
"Is there...is there any way he can undo it?"
"You know the answer as well as me. Sure, he can eventually swing the pendulum the other way. But it's hard. Very hard."
"He's a good person," I said stoutly.
"Maybe, but that may not be enough anymore."
"He'd need a deal with God," I muttered.
I stared at the floor, studying the tiles absentmindedly. What had I done? How could I have been so stupid? Had I been so blinded by love and lust that I'd been oblivious to the principles that had dictated my immortal vocation these long centuries?
"Georgina," Hugh said hesitantly. I looked at him. "There's something else...just a heads up. You know this as well as I do. When upright people screw up like this...they do try to rebound in their way. The guilt's got to be eating him. People like that try to do things to make up for it. Rash things. Something tells me he'll be like that."
"Thanks for the warning," I said. "Though I can't imagine he'd do something that could make this any worse."
The imp cut me a look. "Sweetie, he's human. Don't underestimate him."
Hugh was right.
The next day, I went to the condo builder's office and talked more in-depth with the real estate agent that handled their sales. We chatted for a while and talked numbers, though I still couldn't shake the feeling that I was doing this without thinking it through. The pictures were nice, the floor plan was nice, and the options were nice. Yet, I didn't know if this was just some impulsive reaction to the ups and downs in my life.
Then, when he took me to the unit itself and showed me the balcony, I knew. It was a beautiful day, one that wasn't true summer yet but could give us enough hope that winter was just about finished. Puget Sound was deep blue, and the downtown skyline gleamed in the sun against a cloudless sky. To the west, the Olympic Mountains were visible for the first time in over a month, their peaks still heavy with snow. As often happened with this kind of weather, people turned out in droves, treating it like it was high summer. Families came out, shorts came out. This part of Alki didn't have a true beach-that was at a park a little farther down-but the water was still just a stone's throw away from my building, separated only by the small road and narrow strip of grass. I watched the waves break against the shore and realized this was where I needed to be.
"I want to make an offer," I told him.
I knew Maddie would want to know, so I made sure she was the first one I told when I ended up back in Queen Anne later that night. It was early evening, my last day before returning to a real full-time schedule, and I swung by the store to catch her and tell her. Only, she sought me out first, with news of her own.
"Georgina!"
I'd barely entered when she grabbed my arm and pulled me off into the cookbooks. "Hey," I laughed. "Glad you're in a good mood. I've got news."
"Me too!"
Her face was radiant, and after all that had happened, it made me happy to see her like this. I couldn't help a return grin. "What's up?"
She glanced around covertly, then lowered her voice. "You were right."
"About what?"