Eileen Wilks: Originally Human

"I am not evil."

"I don't think so, but we don't know what you are. That's what Erin will try to find out." Reluctantly, I abandoned cowardice and turned to face him. "Do you understand what a succubus is?"

"The Latin term for a female demon who draws life from her victims through sexual intercourse. But you said you were cursed into your condition, which makes sense." He smiled suddenly, blindingly. "You aren't evil, either."

"Nor am I good. Michael—"

"You do like that name for me. Very well. I will be Michael."

I could feel myself softening—inside, where it was dangerous, and outside, my muscles growing lax and warm with wanting. So I was sharp to him. "Listen to me. I look like a middle-aged woman, and I am one. A good deal more than middle-aged, actually. But I'm also a succubus, and I live off the energy of others. The energy of men, to be specific, which I acquire through sex."

"Do you not eat?" he asked, curious. "It smells in here as if you enjoy food."

My breath huffed out. He didn't seem to be getting the point. "I eat, but I don't have to. Other people need food and drink to live, and enjoy sex. I need sex to live, and enjoy food and drink."

"I'm glad you didn't lose those pleasures when you were cursed. Do you need to sup in your fashion daily, the same as others need to eat every day?"

"Not every day. Michael, you're either painfully naive or deliberately obtuse. I'm trying to explain why you must not flirt with me. I am not safe."

"You're worried about me!" He was amazed.

I rolled my eyes. The young always think themselves indestructible, but Michael should know better, after what he'd been through. But then, he didn't remember what he'd been through. "Yes," I said. "I'm worried about you."

For an instant his face softened, and I glimpsed in his eyes the ragged edges of adult vulnerability, not the untried trust of youth, as if my simple words had sliced deep into a place that didn't bear touching. "You needn't," he said, and the edges closed up again, hiding whatever memories that deep place held. "You can take nothing from me I don't wish to give."

"What if you wished to give?" My posture shifted as the energy gathered around me, swirling, aching… "I could make you want to give, Michael. You'd want to give… anything."

The door opened. "Molly!" Erin said sharply.

I snapped back. Then just stood there, disoriented, like a stooping hawk suddenly shoved from its plummet. The breath I drew was ragged. "Well," I said as briskly as I could, "what did you learn?"

"Not much." She came in, eyeing me. Erin is a tall woman, bony by my standards but fashionably slender to her generation. Her face was made for drama, with a wide mouth, sharp cheekbones, and a beak of a nose that she considers unlovely but which I quite envy for its distinction. She's supposed to wear glasses, but often forgets or leaves them somewhere. Her hair is a fabulous red bush that nearly reaches her waist. Today she wore it pulled back from her face with a stretchy headband that matched her apple-green t-shirt.

T-shirts are one of the best things about the current age. And bras. Bras have corsets beat all to pieces. "You must have learned something."

She shrugged. "Node energy isn't my area. You knew he came in at a node?"

I nodded. I'm not so utterly insensitive I'd be unaware of a node so close to where I've lived for twelve years. One of the ley lines from it runs beneath my RV. "What else?"

"He's drawing from it."

I glanced at Michael. "Of course," he said. "I could have told you that, had you asked. How else could I heal?"

"And," Erin added, "he came from a long ways away. I couldn't trace him back—the energies are too foreign—but there's a feeling of a great gulf."

I nodded. "I knew he wasn't from this world."

"Not…" She shook her head. "That isn't possible."

Erin is a very good witch and far wiser than I was at her age. But she is young, and thus prone to certainty. "Obviously it's possible, since he's here."

She looked at Michael, eyes wide and suddenly wary.

"Another world," he said thoughtfully, his voice so much deeper than Erin's light soprano. "That makes sense. I don't seem to know much about this one."

"Supposedly you don't remember anything about any others, either," Erin said sharply.

"I don't remember anything, no. But I think perhaps I know a great deal."

"Is that supposed to make sense?" Scowling, she slung her bag off her shoulder and set it on the table of my little dinette. The bag holds her basic ritual apparatus, and is made of heavy black silk. I'd given it to her for Samhain last year. "The realms haven't been close enough to cross between in over five hundred years. Except for Faerie," she added. "And that's closed to mortals. And you aren't Faerie."

"No," he said agreeably. "I'm fairly sure I'm not."

"What about Dis? The place Christians call hell. It leaks into our world sometimes."

"I'm not demonic, either. No more than Molly is."

She looked startled.

"I told him," I admitted. "Not the details, but it did seem he'd a right to know, if he's to stay with me awhile. Now, let's try applying a little reason. Magic is useful, but logic has its place. Michael said—"

"He's remembered his name?" Her eyebrows made a skeptical comment on that.

"I named him, for now."

Erin's eyes narrowed, for names and naming have power, so I hurried on before whatever lecture was simmering could boil over into speech.

"As I was saying, according to Michael, the energies here aren't what he's used to. And he tastes different, unlike anything I've ever—"

"Molly! He's injured."

"I haven't been nibbling," I said, testy. "But I've touched him. I'm sure I've never encountered his like before—and my experience covers rather a lot of ground."

She nodded reluctantly.

"I don't know what he is, but I know some things he isn't. He's not Gifted, not in the sense we use that term, at least. He's not Lupus. And he's not a sorcerer. Last night he unlocked my door without being aware he'd done it, and sorcery requires focus. So does telekinesis. Poltergeists, though—"

"He is so not a poltergeist."

"Will you stop interrupting? Of course he isn't. But he may be from the same place, or a similar realm."

"Or he may be lying."

"No." That came from Michael, who spoke with simple assurance. "I do not lie."

Erin's lip curled. "What, you're from the angelic realm?"

I suspected I knew what lay behind Erin's, antagonism, and it wasn't getting us anywhere. I spoke firmly. "That's what you're going to find out, I hope. Are you ready?"

Her brow pleated. "I don't know, Molly. I'm tied to this world—my knowledge, power, and rituals are all of this realm. He uses node magic, not earth magic. If he really is from elsewhere, how much will I be able to learn?"

"Ritual magic is practiced in forty-two realms," Michael said suddenly. "Many are variants of Wicca. Depending on how one defines the parameters, between eight and seventeen religiously oriented magical systems bear strong similarities to it."

"Forty-two realms?" Erin shook her head. "There aren't that many."

"Where did that come from?" I asked.

Frustration was plain in his eyes. "I don't know. It was just there, but when I try to follow it… nothing." He spread his hands. "I, too, want very much to know what manner of being I am."

Erin studied him a moment, and I suspected she was using other senses than sight—including, I hoped, the compassionate sense of the heart. Maybe she was finally considering the possibility that he was telling the truth. Erin has a problem with good-looking men. "I'll do what I can," she said at last, and began to unpack her bag.

The tradition Erin follows requires nudity only for major workings, when the god and goddess are called rather than simply included in the rite. This was a spell, not an act of worship—though the two are not entirely distinct with Wicca—so she and I kept our clothes on. Michael sat up on the couch with the blanket providing a modesty drape. Not that he had any, from what I'd seen. Modesty, that is. He was well provided with what the blanket was there to conceal.