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He shrugged. “Suit yourself. Just promise not to blow my cover. If you do, I can’t keep looking for the Scudder witch or trying to find out what’s making Liz Book sick.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “As long as you promise to let me know what you find out.”
“Sure,” he said, sticking out his hand. “You’ll be the first to know.”
I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but I shook his hand anyway. As deals went it wasn’t as bad as the one I’d made with Anton Volkov.
As I walked downstairs to Soheila’s office I wondered if it was naïve to trust Frank. I had no real way of knowing whether he was telling the truth—especially since I couldn’t talk to anyone about his real identity—but my gut told me to trust him. Frank was brusque, opinionated, and sometimes downright obnoxious, but I instinctively felt that he was a good man. Of course, my instincts had been wrong before.
Soheila greeted me warmly with a kiss on the cheek and an offer of tea and almond cookies. “From my grandmother on Long Island. I visited her over the vacation.”
“That must have been nice.”
Soheila shrugged, pulling her bright red cardigan across her chest. “I love seeing my grandmother, but my aunts spent the whole time asking me when I was going to get married. My cousins spend all their days getting their hair done and shopping. I was ready to come back.”
“I had a rather surprising visit with my grandmother, too.” I told her about my visit to the Grove.
“Oh my, they are rather intolerant there. One of my cousins was exorcised by one of their members in the 1890s.”
“You’d think that after all the persecution witches have suffered they would be more tolerant.”
Soheila shook her head. “Often it is just the opposite. Once a persecuted group finds its own place in a culture, their members draw a line around themselves to keep their own places secure. Witches were persecuted in the Middle Ages for their connection with nature spirits and old divinities such as myself—what the Church called demons. While the witches who founded Fairwick continued to embrace their connection to the Old Gods, the witches of the Grove chose to distance themselves and repudiate demons and fairies. The rift goes very deep. There was a battle in the 1600s called ‘The Great Division’ that divided the witches into two opposing groups. Many faded and died. I imagine your grandmother was upset to learn you were teaching here.”
“I think in a way she always expected something like this from me. Apparently it was a big disappointment that my mother married a man with fairy blood. She said it might have compromised my power as a witch.”
Soheila frowned. “I’ve heard that theory before, but I’m not sure if there’s any truth in it. It might be an apocryphal tale meant to discourage such unions. A witch and a fairy marrying always causes quite a stir. Even outside of the Grove. My aunts, for instance, would be appalled if I dated a witch. They were upset enough when I fell in love with a mortal.”
“Angus Fraser?” I asked.
“Yes, Angus.” Her voice softened when she said his name and her toffee-colored eyes gleamed like polished amber. “Mind you they often marry mortals, but to fall in love with one…Well, they said that was foolish for one of our kind.”
“Our kind?I’m sorry, Soheila, I don’t mean to pry, but I’m not actually sure what your kind is. I remember Elizabeth said something about you being a Babylonian wind spirit…”
Soheila smiled. “That was rather a euphemism, I’m afraid, although it’s true that my kind are descended from Babylonian wind spirits. Under the circumstances, Elizabeth and I agreed that it might be best if you didn’t know my more common name. You see, I am a descendant of Lilith, one of the lilitu, or as we are more commonly known, a succubus.”
“A succubus! You mean like a female version of the incubus who invaded my house? But I thought they were always…”
“Selfish? Destructive? Evil? Yes, certainly that’s how they have been characterized in myth and Western religion and, to tell you the truth, most of my sisters and cousins are rather…shall we say, opportunistic? A bit mercenary, even? It’s not entirely their fault. When my kind first came into contact with mankind we were barely conscious and certainly not flesh. We rode the wind…Wewerethe wind. Sometimes we briefly possessed a winged creature. The owls were our favorite hosts, hence our identification with them.” She nodded toward the poster on her office door. “But when we encountered men our interaction with them caused us toincarnate. We took on the shape they dreamed for us. And as we became flesh so we craved flesh…needed it in order to sustain ourselves.” She shivered and drew her sweater around herself. I recalled what Dory had told me about how the fairies had traded their magic for sex, but what Soheila had described sounded like a different sort of bargain—sex in exchange for fleshly existence. And yet it was hard for me to imagine someone of Soheila’s refinement engaging in that sort of sordid deal.
“So in order to stay…like you are…you have to…”
She smiled at my embarrassment. “I no longer have to feed on men that way. But that is only because I was loved.”
“Angus?”
“Yes, even after he learned what I was…learned that I was of the same race that had devoured his sister, he loved me. And I loved him. I thought that because I didn’t have to feed on him we could be together. I didn’t realize he was growing weak from our…contact…until it was too late. He hid his sickness from me until he was too far gone…and then when he went up against the Ganconer he was too weak to fight properly. He died in my arms. Since then I have sworn never to take a human lover.” She shivered again. “No matter how much I might crave the warmth of a human touch, I could never take that risk again.”
No wonder she always looked like she was freezing.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling how inadequate the phrase was. “That must be very hard. Especially if you like someone…”
“I can’t afford to give in to those feelings,” she said so quickly that I knew at once that she must, in fact, like someone very much. “But enough about me. You came to ask me something, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, relieved in spite of myself to change the subject. I put my hand in my coat pocket and brought out Ralph. I held him out to Soheila. “He attacked some kind of shadow creature on New Year’s Eve and he’s been in a sort of coma ever since. Can you do anything to help him?”
Soheila held out both hands and I passed Ralph to her. She cupped him gently in her hands and tilted her head to angle her ear above his chest. Then she laid him on her desk and angled her desk lamp so that it shone directly on him. “See,” she said, tapping the wood next to Ralph. “No shadow. That means he’s travelling in the shadows in the Borderlands. Do you have your spellbook with you?”
“Yes,” I said, taking the book out of my bag. I’d started taking it with me everywhere. “But I’m afraid I haven’t had a lot of luck using it.”
