Succubus Dreams Page 0,77

why? Niphon's risking getting both of them in a shitload of trouble if Jerome or anyone else finds out. He's gambling a lot just to stick around and annoy me. And if Hell thinks Tawny isn't doing her job, they'll recall her."

Hugh gave me a funny look.

"What?" I asked. "What's that for?"

"You didn't read the book, did you?"

"What book?"

"The succubus manual."

"You know I didn't."

"And I even got you the abridged one," he said, sounding wounded.

"Hugh," I growled. "What's your point?"

"The point is that as her mentor, you're accountable for her actions. If she can't bag a victim, you're the one they'll call in."

"What? That's ridiculous."

"Those are the rules now."

"So, what, I get slapped on the wrist for her screwing up?"

"Slap on the wrist? For being a succubus who can't teach another one to have sex? It's so ludicrous, it's probably never happened before. I don't know what they'd do. Censure you at the very least. Transfer you to work under a senior succubus."

"I am a senior succubus."

He shrugged.

"But if she's lying..."

"Then prove it."

I rubbed my eyes. "This is utterly insane. Why does Niphon hate me so much? He already bought my soul, for God's sake. What more is there?"

I expected some smartass remark. Instead, I received silence. I looked at Hugh. "What? What is it now?" He pointedly glanced away. "Hugh!"

"I don't know, Georgina." Hugh rarely called me by my first name. I was usually honey or sweetie. "Sometimes we make deals, and they seem airtight, but something goes wrong."

"What do you mean?"

"I worked with another imp when I lived in Dallas. Raquel. She brokered this one deal with a guy who was pissed off when his wife left him because he found out he was sterile. Couldn't have kids." Hugh helpfully illustrated the meaning by pointing down toward his lower torso.

"I know what sterile means, Mr. Wizard. Get on with it."

"So, he sold his soul under the conditions that his ex-wife couldn't have kids either. He was bitter and into the poetic justice thing, apparently. Wanted to punish her with what she'd punished him over. So, he gave up his soul, and our side gave her some kind of inflammation thing that totally destroyed her fallopian tubes and scarred up her uterus. I don't know. Girl stuff." I had to hold back an eye roll. Hugh might feign ignorance about 'girl stuff,' but he'd found time in his years of corruption to go to medical school. He knew more about this than I did.

"Harsh," I said. "But fitting from the guy's point of view, I guess."

"Yeah. Should have been a done deal, but something went wrong. Or, well, right. Her ovaries still worked - she was making eggs, even if she couldn't carry a baby. She and her new husband found a surrogate mother. The wife donated eggs, they mixed up a Petri dish cocktail, and the surrogate carried the baby. Bam!"

"The wife had a child after all," I mused. "Wow. Hell gets defeated by science. All those philosophers from the Enlightenment were right."

Hugh scoffed at my joke. "It was stupid. Someone - by which I mean, Raquel - should have thought of that when they picked the infection as a way to make that lady infertile. Raquel fucked up. The guy was able to take his case back to Hell and won his soul back for breach of contract."

"Oh, wow," I said. "I bet that went over well. What's Raquel doing nowadays?"

He grimaced. "I think we're all happier not knowing."

I agreed. "But what's this have to do with me? That's kind of a rare case."

"Eh, it happens more than you'd think. Most of the time, the seller doesn't even notice something got messed up. But if the imp or someone else in authority catches it, I've seen them move Heaven and Earth - no pun intended - to fix it."

"So, you're implying that Niphon's here, finagling all this stuff with Tawny, because he did something wrong in my purchase?"

Hugh spread his hands out. "I don't know. All I know is that when an imp shows up and is going to this much trouble over something, the evidence suggests it's big. Maybe not a situation like Raquel's, maybe not a breach of contract, but something."

"My contract's long since done," I murmured. "Everyone it involved is dead now. If there was a problem, I would have had to bring it up back then."

"Like I said, I don't know. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions."

"Could you look? Could you get a hold