"Mr. Carter?" Surprise registered across his features. "I've known him longer than I have you. If any of those 'suspicious and secretive' customers can be trusted, he is certainly first among them. I'd place my life in his hands."
No surprise there. If Carter could fool Jerome, he could surely fool a mortal as well.
Shifting gears, I asked: "Do you know anything about fallen angels?"
"I would think you are already familiar with that topic, Miss Kincaid."
I wondered if he referred to the company I kept or the old myth that succubi were demons. For the record, we aren't.
"Never ask a practitioner if you want to learn about a religion's history. Save those questions for outside scholars."
"Very true." He smiled, thinking as he brought the cup to his lips. "Well. Surely you know that demons are angels who turned away from the divine will. They rebelled, or as it is commonly referred to, 'fell.' Lucifer is generally accredited as being the first, and others left with him."
"That was in the beginning, though, right? One mass migration to the other side." I frowned, still wondering about the technicalities of when angels fell. "What about later? Was that the only time it happened? Just that once?"
Erik shook his head. "My impression is that it can happen still and has happened in the past. There are even documents suggesting—"
The door opened, and a young couple walked in. Erik rose and smiled at them.
"Do you have any books on tarot?" the girl asked. "For beginners?"
Did he ever. Erik had a whole wall of them. The interruption frustrated me, but I didn't want to disrupt a chance for him to do some business. I gestured him toward the couple, drinking the rest of my tea. He led them to the appropriate section, energetically explaining certain titles and questioning their needs in further detail.
I picked up my coat and purse, along with a box of the Desire tea. Erik watched me set a ten-dollar bill on the counter. "Keep the change," I told him.
Pausing from his discussion with the couple, he remarked to me, "Check... let's see, I believe it's the beginning of Genesis 6... verse 2 or 4 perhaps? There might be something to help you in there."
"Genesis? Like in the Bible?" He nodded, and I glanced around the book-lined shelves. "Where is it?"
"I don't stock it, Miss Kincaid. I suspect your own resources will be more than adequate."
He returned to his customers, and I left, marveling at a man who could pull up biblical verses by number but not have a copy on hand. Still, he was right about me having ample resources, and my shift started soon anyway.
I drove back to Queen Anne and found the street parking full. Digging my permit out from the glove box, I hung it on my rearview mirror and pulled into the tiny, private parking lot bordering an alley behind the bookstore. So many employees wanted to use the lot, I generally tried to avoid it when I could.
As I walked toward the store, I caught sight of two cars pulled hood to hood and a redheaded figure leaning over them. Tammi. I liked the teenager a lot, but she also had a tendency to chat. Not wanting to delay my biblical search, I stepped into some shadows and shape-shifted into a nondescript man she wouldn't know. I then walked on past her, barely getting a second glance as she jumped the car.
I changed back to my normal body once I was out of sight again. A momentary sense of windedness hit me, gone just as quickly as it had arrived. Cross-gender shape-shifting always took a bite out of me, which was why I had resisted Peter's silly haircut-modeling suggestion. I had probably just lost a few days' worth of my Martin-induced energy surplus. That left me with a couple weeks at least, but I felt the succubus feeding need stir slightly within me anyway, no doubt agitated by my perpetual longing for Roman.
The bookstore hummed with normal weekday business when I arrived. Immediately, I sought out our religion section. I had directed people to it on a number of occasions; I had even pulled select titles from it. What I had not done was pay close attention to just how many Bibles existed.
"Jesus," I muttered, staring at the various translations. There were Bibles for women and men respectively, Bibles for teens, illustrated Bibles, large-print Bibles, gold-embossed Bibles. At last I caught sight of the King James Version. I knew little about it, but at least I recognized the title.
Pulling it off the shelf, I flipped to Genesis 6 and read Erik's passage:
And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
And the LORD said, 'My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.’
There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
Well. That cleared everything up.
I reread the passage a few more times, hoping to get something more out of it. I finally determined Erik must have given me the wrong chapter number. He'd been distracted, after all. This passage, by my estimation, had nothing to do with angels, falling, or even the cosmic battle of good and evil. What it did seem to be about, however, was human procreation. It didn't take a biblical scholar to figure out what "the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men" meant, especially when children followed in the next phrase. Sex had sold books back in the old days, just as it did now. I wondered if Erik had given me the passage number as a joke.
"Are you finding religion?"
I looked up first into a Pac-Man T-shirt, then into Seth's inquisitive face. "Found and lost it a long time ago, I'm afraid." I shut the book as he knelt down beside me. "Just looking up something. How are Cady and O'Neill today?"
"Making good progress on their latest case." He smiled fondly, and I found myself studying the amber-brown of his eyes. I'd had a few more e-mail exchanges with him in the last few days and enjoyed my mininovels, though our spoken conversation had seen little improvement. "I just finished a chapter and needed to take a break. Walk around, get something to drink."
"No caffeine, I presume." I had learned Seth didn't drink caffeinated beverages, which I found both frightening and unnatural.
"No. No caffeine."
"You shouldn't knock it. It might increase your writing output."
"Ah yes, that's right. You don't think my books come out fast enough."
I groaned, remembering the day I'd met him. "I think my own words came out a little too fast that first day."
"No way. You were brilliant. I'll never forget it."
His quizzical mask slipped briefly, just as it had at the dance lesson, and I once again saw male interest and appreciation cross his features. Crouching beside him, I again had a momentary sense of naturalness, like I normally had with Doug or one of the immortals. Something friendly and soothing. Like Seth and I had known each other forever. Maybe I had, in a manner of speaking, through his books.
And yet, at the same time, being this close to him proved disconcerting as well. Distracting. I began noticing things like the lean muscles in his arms and the way his messy brown hair framed his face. Even the gold sheen of light hitting his facial hair and the shape of his lips held my attention. Turning away, I felt the base thirst for life energy twitch in me, and I repressed the urge to reach out and touch his face. The outside shape-shifting had caused more damage than I realized. I still didn't really require a true refill of energy, but the succubus instinct was getting irritable. I needed to squelch it soon, but certainly not with Seth.
I stood up hastily, still holding the Bible, wanting to get away from him. He rose with me.