I leaned toward him, incredulous. "Of course you do! Do you not want to tell me? Why?"
He sighed, his hesitant expression turning typically annoyed. "Because those kinds of people get pissed off if you start advertising their names."
"What, you're afraid they're going to come beat you up?"
"No. Not exactly. But there's sort of…a professional courtesy in these circles."
"I'll be discreet. I won't tell them where I got the information."
"Most of them already know we're together. They'd figure it out. They keep an eye on those kinds of things." He turned considering. "Of course, in that same vein, a lot of them know you as a succubus and might just think you knew through your own connections."
He still seemed hesitant, so I played a mean card. "Well, I can always go ask Erik if you're too nervous about it."
Erik was another mortal in town who dealt with the occult and paranormal. Unlike Dante, who was a practitioner, Erik simply studied and built up knowledge of the magical undercurrents in the city. He had a psychic's gifts and was attuned to what most human eyes didn't see. Sometimes he could even see what immortals couldn't. He and Dante had an old, old grudge and didn't enjoy being around each other, to put it mildly.
My attempt to bait Dante didn't work, though. "Don't even try it, succubus. Making me jealous of the old man won't make me help you."
I looked up at him pleadingly. "What will make you help me?"
He traced the outline of my lips with his fingertip, gray eyes wicked and thoughtful. "Not sure it's anything you can do while cut off from your super-secret powers. You're not a sex goddess anymore."
"Hey, I don't need super-secret powers to be a sex goddess."
Just then, three twentysomethings stumbled in, staring wide-eyed at the shop as they tried to stifle nervous giggles. They undoubtedly had the same kind of potential that high teens did. I gave Dante one last frantic plea. "Please? Just give me the names. You don't have to do anything else. And I won't say anything. I swear it."
Dante scowled, glanced at me, at the potential customers, and then back at me. He told them he'd be with them in a minute and then hastily jotted four names down on a scrap of paper. Two of them I recognized.
"Thank you," I said. I beamed, and to my surprise, something in his cynical expression softened a little.
"God, that smile," he muttered. "You might just be right."
"About what?"
"You really don't need any powers to be a sex goddess. Your hair's a little messy, though." He walked around the counter and gave me a quick half-hug. "Be safe, succubus. Don't test the limits of that not-dying thing."
"And buy some condoms?" I teased.
He shrugged. "You're the one who was having prophetic dreams about having kids a little while ago." Turning away from me, he put on his jovial con-man persona and beckoned the group over with pitches about palms and Tarot.
He'd spoken the words in a light, off-hand kind of way, but as I slowly walked back to my car, they slapped me in the face.
Prophetic dreams…
Nyx's dreams.
The things she'd shown me during that time had been so vivid that they seemed almost more real than my own life. The thing is, by almost all accounts, Nyx had a grasp on the future and could show people things that would happen to them. That was how she spread chaos in the world, by showing people these visions and making them think they knew how their futures would unfold. Unfortunately, while the visions came true, they never came true the way their victims thought they would. She'd led a lot of people to their deaths that way.
Nonetheless, it seemed fairly clear that the dreams she'd sent to me had been distractions, not destructive images of what would come. In my visions, she'd shown me-over and over-with a daughter, waiting for a man I loved to come home. The dreams had consumed me, almost making me want to sleep and have my energy taken each night. As I'd noted while holding Kayla, there was no way any piece of the vision could ever happen to me. I couldn't have any sort of relationship like that. And I certainly couldn't have a daughter, not of my own blood. Immortals didn't reproduce. When I'd sold my soul for immortality and shape-shifting, I'd given up certain aspects of my humanity. There could be no child for me. Not ever.
And yet…
I came to a stop on the sidewalk, still about a block away from my car. What if Dante had inadvertently stumbled onto something? What if being in this stasis had altered that piece of me that had lost the ability to conceive? Cedric had said I was still technically immortal, but he'd also said my body would respond and heal like a human's. What all did that entail? Would unprotected sex lead to conception? Is that what Nyx's visions had been pointing to? She'd sworn she'd shown me the truth. Had she?
I was breathing fast again, though at least this time, I knew I didn't have to worry about giving myself a heart attack. Okay. I needed to calm down. This pregnancy possibility was as distracting as the hooking-up-with-Seth possibility. I'd never get anything accomplished if I lost myself in fantasies.
With a sigh, I glanced down at Dante's piece of paper, now crumpled in my hand. I'd clenched it into a ball without even realizing it as I walked. I'd been too preoccupied to even notice…
Babies and Seth. The things I wanted most.
I forced myself to keep moving toward my car. But as I unlocked the door, I had to wonder ruefully if maybe I shouldn't be so quick to get Jerome back after all.
I started following up on Dante's leads the next morning. Leaving my place was a little harder than I'd expected, though. Despite the fact I got ready plenty of mornings without shape-shifting, my closet seemed terribly small. And while my hair seemed fine when I finished it, I had a feeling it'd be frizzy the next time I checked the mirror. The only bright part was when I found Dante's watch under the bed. I thought I'd lost it yesterday, so at least my accessories collection was still respectable. Nonetheless, I had a feeling I was soon going to discover just how much I'd come to rely on my abilities.
Locating addresses from Dante's list of names required a little sleuthing here and there, but for the most part, I didn't have much difficulty finding them. Unfortunately, once found, these magicians weren't exactly helpful.
One of the ones I visited knew me. She was familiar with Hell's local servants, and while she gave me a small degree of respect, she was as hesitant to answer questions as Dante had insinuated. Two of the other names were people who didn't know me, and that immediately created a problem. With my succubus powers shut off, I had no immortal signature, and both of these people were the types who could sense that. Me coming in and claiming to be a succubus was met with scorn and disbelief. I managed to glean some information from them but nothing of any use.
Equally difficult was that not only could they not sense me, I couldn't sense them. Admittedly, a succubus didn't have the same ability to gauge human power the way a full-fledged demon could, but I could occasionally sense magic around a person or object. Today, I was completely blind. I had to rely on my strength to read people, but these dark magicians were as good at cons as Dante. They were well-versed in the art of concealing the truth.
It was almost noon by the time I visited the last name, a guy named Greg. I felt pretty discouraged by this point and even cracked and had a cigarette along the way. Greg had no storefront like Dante and mostly worked his spells out of his house, a small bungalow in Wallingford. When he answered the door, his disheveled state told me I'd woken him up. On the bright side, he recognized me, which meant I wouldn't have to convince him I was a succubus.
"What do you want?" he asked suspiciously. He was built big and could have had an impressive physique if he'd ever gone to the gym. It was obvious he hadn't.
"I wanted to talk to you about demon summoning."
"I don't know anything about it."