"How was it?" Sett asks one night, while they're lounging in the afterglow, seemingly out of nowhere.
"Hmm?" I hum in question, unsure about what he's going on about.
"When you sold your soul. Do you remember it?"
I open my eyes to look up at him, he's drawing circles on my shoulder, but his gaze is lost in the horizon. Curious, I ask "do you?"
"I've tried to remember but there's a wall I can never seem to get past," he says, frustrated. "I keep trying to go back, to get a feel for those other selves but they're locked somewhere deep within me that I cannot get to."
My heart clenches at the words. I normally try not to think about my previous life, as I have begun to call it, as a succubus. It's not because those years were something terrible to be hidden —in fact if I hadn't lived all those lives I wouldn't be here with Seth right now—, the real problem was trying to reconcile the good years I lived with the many lives Seth had lived in his search for Georgina.
While Georgina's lives always ended in heartbreak, Seth's lives ended in tragic deaths that Georgina can see now as an attempt by Hell to keep both souls apart after their fuck up with the contracts.
"Well, do you remember?" Seth asks once again.
"I try not to, but yes," I reply.
"Why?"
"Because the reason I sold my soul was to make everyone forget me, forget her, the woman I used to be. Sometimes it feels like I'm still her." The words spill out of my mouth before I can think them through. When I glance at Seth, he's frowning.
"You are Georgina," he says, as if it's as simple as that. "You don't have to tell me about Letha if you don't want to."
When Seth says Letha, his voice flat, almost dinterested, he turns his most earnest look on me. He means it. If I never want to talk about her again, he will let it rest. But I also know Seth is dying to know more about the woman I was all those years ago. I have given him bits and pieces of our past selves over the years, clearly enough to get his insterest, but I haven't mentioned much about the one who started it all.
"What do you want to know?"
His faces relaxes as a smile begins to form. "What did you do first? After you became a succubus, of course."
I lean my head on his shoulder and start talking.
The woman who came to her when Niphon left was beautiful. She was also every bit as dangerous as she looked. Like a snake. She told Letha she could become anyone she wanted, that all she had to do was to will the flesh.
Letha was a tall a woman for her time. Naturally, the first thing she did was fix that.
A moment later, she stood at a more reasonable height, almost level with the mysterious woman.
"Be ambitious," she said. "Become the most beautiful woman you can imagine."
Letha thought the most beautiful woman she could imagine was a Goddess and she didn't dare challenge any of them. She closed her eyes and imagined her hips and breasts filling just right, her skin becoming tan and rich, her hair falling over her eyes in blonde curls.
She sincerely hoped no Goddess was watching.
The woman laughed.
"Letha, when will you realize that no Goddess can do what we can. We're better than God himself."
"What did she mean?" asks Seth.
I look up for the first time since I began my story. "I don't know. Lilith was always cryptic as fuck."
"That was the Lilith? The first woman Lilith?"
"Yeah, did you think that Hugh's daughter of Lilith jokes were metaphorical?" I lean back to get a better look of his serious face.
"I feel like I have to revise all of my interactions with your previous clique to make sure I didn't ignore a major revelation on the history of humanity," he says.
"Impossible," I say sitting up. "Only Peter and I were old enough to add anything impressive to the conversation."
"Wasn't Hugh alive during World War I?" Seth asks.
"So?"
"It seems like his input may have historical value after all," he jokes, smiling at me.
I roll my eyes at him. "Did you have more questions?"
"Did they tell you what you had to do to survive?" he asks, pensive.
I huff. "Yeah. She was pretty adamant that I fed soon as well."
"How did that go?"
"Let's say I'm not sorry about the guy going to hell," I say, a non-answer that doesn't go unnoticed.
"Georgina."
"Seth," I say calmly.
"I don't like to think of any harm coming to you," he says, reaching to put a strand of hair behind my ear.
"Then you may want to fast forward a couple of years." I lounge with my back against the pillows, using my hand to trace lazy patterns on Seth's skin. "I started at the bottom. I had no money, no connections, no education to speak of. All Lilith said was that I needed to get souls or I would be sent to Hell until I learned. The threat of Hell made me risk it on Earth."
"What about the first time you enjoyed it?"
"Oh I enjoyed sending those men to hell, Seth. I had no qualms about murdering men who harmed me or other women. It felt good."
"Good."
"But if you want to know about the first time things went well, it was three years after I sold my soul. I'd been a rich woman's servant for a year and I had a bit of a reputation in the palace…
Fulvia was shorter than Letha —all of Georgina's past selves had been. She had bright blue eyes and pale skin. When she arrived to that city, she said her family had sent her from the countryside to civilization so she could find a job and support them, which earned her sympathy from people early on. The devoted daughter working to feed her parents. Fulvia had been proud of her own imagination when she invented that.
She did odd jobs until Philomene saw her at the market and decided that she was too pretty to be a milkmaid. Philomene hired her as her personal maid and gave her a roof and three meals a day. Fulvia was happy there. Yes, other women who lived in the house believed she was a whore for going out with as many men as she did, but Philomene didn't care.
In fact, Philomene seemed happy to know that Fulvia had her needs met but didn't intend to leave the palace to work for anyone else. When the sixth month she worked there was over, Philomene taught her how to read and write. Letha already knew how to read and write Greek, so while Fulvia stutter some, she ultimately learned to read and write Latin fast enough that Philomene decided to teach her how to run a house.
By the time her first year was up, she had earned Philomene's complete trust. Everyone knew that Fulvia had as much power as Philomene in the house. That year, a man tried to buy Fulvia's hand in marriage, but Philomene was adamant that Fulvia was not for sale. The man tried several times, until Philomene said "you could offer me all the gold in Rome and I would rather keep Fulvia."
The man left the city that night.
When Fulvia asked Philomene why, the woman said "my darling, don't you know by now that you deserve the world? No man is ever going to give you that. You have to take it yourself."
Not too long after the failed proposal, Philomene fell ill. As soon as the doctors told her she might not make it, she made arragements to leave Fulvia her fortune, on one condition: Fulvia was not to marry until after Philomene died, and if she married then, she was to keep her fortune hidden from the husband.
One night, as Fulvia helped Philomene to bed, the woman said, "Fulvia, will you stay with me tonight?"
When she agreed, Philomene added, "you're glowing, my love."
"I am not," Fulvia said. "You must have a fever, that's all."
"Sweetheart, modesty doesn't suit that face."
With a smile, Fulvia said, "it doesn't suit yours either."
Philomene smiled. "That's more like it. I'm sorry I won't be able to teach you more."
"Phil—"
"Please, my love, we both know it's time for me to go."
Fulvia shook her head. "Don't talk like that."
"Will you help me go, my darling?" Philomene looked at her with glassy eyes. "There's no need to cry. I'm ready."
She didn't notice the ears staining her face until the woman mentioned them. "Whatever you want me to do, I can't do it. I can't even gut a pig."
"I'm asking for nothing more than a kiss." Fulvia froze. "They say a kiss is more than enough."
Her whole world tilted sideways. Philomene knew? She didn't know what expression she worse, but it made the woman laugh. "Please, darling, I can see the colors in your soul and I know you're not of this world."
Something twisted inside her stomach. "Is that why you took me in?"
"I took you in because I can see what you've been through and what you will go through. It will be hard, but you will be free."
She laughed bitterly. "How do you know that?"
"Because no chains could ever hold you down."
Seth is looking out the window, at the first hints of dawn painting the sky gray. They've been talking long enough that they should be dead asleep, but Georgina knows that look, it's the one Seth gets when he has a new idea for a story in his head.
"You can have it," I say, shaking the story from my head.
"Huh?"
"The story. Whatever caught your attention, you can have it."
Seth looks at me, serious. "Maybe you should start your own series of books."
"Pfff, I could never," I snuggle closer to him, drawing the blankets up my shoulder. "You're the wordsmith of this family."
"I'm serious, Georgina. Would you rather Philomene was lost forever?"
"She is dead, Seth. She's been dead over a thousand years," I reply, unsure about what he means.
After a moment, Seth speaks again. "But she's not. Now two people alive today know who she was, what she did for a young woman she didn't know. If you tell her story, Philomene keeps living, on the page, forever."
"Seth—" I start.
"You don't have to do it now. But think about it. You have centuries worth of stories locked in there." He touches my temple as if he needs to clarify where. "Who knows what the world could learn from them?"
I think about it briefly when and idea begins to form.
"Okay, I'll do it."
"Really?" he asks, skeptical.
I smile at him sweetly. "If you do it with me."
"What?"
"What you heard. You want your book? Then you'll have to help bring it to life." I say so with a finality that leaves room to no questions. If I'm right, and I usually am, Seth will drop the matter then.
Except that when I dare to look at him, I can see the wheels turning in his head.
Oh. Oh no.
"That would be an honor," he says. "Do you think Anne Rice will be too mad if I call it Interview with a Succubus?"
I laugh, delighted, knowing that Seth will have real questions ready to go by the time I wake up. He looks like he'll start working on it immediately, almost vibrating out of his skin.
Who knows? Maybe Georgina Mortensen is a writer after all.