Succubus Dreams Page 0,87

such a new perspective on life? Would this have happened anyway?

Yasmine's signature suddenly filled the room, and I looked up just in time to see her and Vincent materialize in front of me. Immediately, Seth left my mind.

"Hey, Georgina," Vincent said. "I got your mess - "

"I know about Nyx," I blurted out.

Astonished silence hung in the air. I couldn't say for sure with nephilim, but I knew angels were rarely caught by surprise. Yasmine clearly had been.

And, being an angel, she didn't try to deny anything about Nyx. She simply asked, "How?"

"Because she's using me to do her dirty work." Their looks of amazement grew. "Only...I'm not exactly sure how she's doing it."

The two of them glanced at each other, then back at me. "Start from the beginning," said Yasmine. "That's usually the way to go."

And I did, first telling them about the dreams and the energy loss. After that, it was on to my weird knowledge of tragic events and the residual feelings of Nyx's activities. Finally, I explained how Erik and Dante had pieced it all together, linking what was happening to me with all of those unfortunate news stories.

Yasmine sat down in a folding chair, tipping her head back as she thought. It was kind of like what Vincent had done in the hospital while ruminating. I wondered if it was one of those unconscious gestures couples sometimes picked up from each other. "Hmm...brilliant. That's how she's doing it without us finding her."

"I never would have even thought of that," agreed Vincent, pacing. "Which, of course, is the point."

"You know what she's doing to me, then?" I asked eagerly. The not-knowing was killing me.

"Yep," said Yasmine. "But let's get the others first."

"The other - "

The question faded from my lips as three figures materialized in the room: Carter, Joel, and Whitney. Angelic auras crackled around me. I couldn't help a little envy. It might take me days to hunt down higher immortals, but Yasmine could do it with a thought.

Carter smiled when he saw me. Joel looked outraged. Whitney looked confused.

"What's going on?" Joel demanded. He seemed as angry as the last time I'd seen him. It was a good thing he was immortal, or he probably would have died from high blood pressure ages ago. "Why have you brought us to this...this...place." You would have thought he stood in an opium brothel, as opposed to a tiny office with badly painted walls.

Yasmine leaned forward in the chair, hands clasped under her chin and elbows on her knees. Her dark eyes sparkled with excitement. "We've got her. We found her - or rather, Georgina found her."

Joel and Whitney appeared flabbergasted. Carter didn't. From the look on his face, I felt like he'd been expecting it.

"I can't believe it took you this long to figure it out," he joked.

Whitney was not amused. "Explain this."

Yasmine did, and when she was finished, the others were as impressed as she and Vincent had been earlier. Even Joel looked a little less pissed off.

"Ingenuous," he murmured. "Every time she escapes, she always thinks up a new way to elude us."

I looked from face to face. My emotions were raw after the blowout with Seth, and I was really low on patience at the moment. "Will someone finally tell me how I fit into this?"

Carter walked over to me. He wore a beat-up blue flannel shirt and a Mariners baseball cap that looked like it had been put through a wood chipper. He was still smiling.

"You must know by now that Vincent's a psychic. He's attuned to our world and in some ways has a higher sensitivity to supernatural activity than some of us do. It happens with humans sometimes." It was true. Angels weren't omnipotent and didn't possess all gifts. I nodded along, not letting on that I knew Vincent was actually a psychic nephilim. "Normally, he'd be able to find her trail pretty quickly. When she runs amuck feeding off mortal chaos, there's a kind of, I don't know...magical residue left where she's been. The energy she steals only sustains her; it isn't actually enough to obscure her. Someone like Vincent can..."

Vincent helped him out. "...sniff her out. I'm a paranormal hound." Yasmine snickered.

"He hasn't sensed anything so far," Carter continued, "which is why we were having to do more mundane searches, like looking for telltale patterns in the news."

"So...she was hiding her trail." I shrugged. "How do I fit in?"

"She was using you to hide it. In a couple