Free Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead Page A

books, completely absorbed.
    I crouched down beside him. “What are you looking at?”
    He flinched slightly, startled by my proximity, and tore his gaze away from his find to look at me. This close, I could see that his eyes were actually more of a golden-amber brown, his lashes long enough to make any girl jealous.
    â€œAndrew Lang’s fairy books.” He held a paperback entitled The Blue Fairy Book . On top of the stack near him sat another called The Orange Fairy Book , and I could only assume the rest followed color-coded suit. Seth glowed with literary rapture, forgetting his reticence around me. “The 1960s reprints. Not as valuable as, say, editions from the 1800s, but these are the ones my dad had, the ones he used to read to us from. He only had a couple, though; this is the whole set. I’m going to get them and read them to my nieces.”
    Flipping through the pages of The Red Fairy Book, I recognized the titles of many familiar stories, some I hadn’t even known were still around. I turned the book over and looked inside the cover but found no price. “How much are they?”
    Seth pointed to a small sign near the shelf he’d obtained them from.
    â€œIs that reasonable for these?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s a little high, but it’s worth it to me to get them all in one go.”
    â€œNo way.” I gathered up part of the books, rising. “We’ll talk him down.”
    â€œTalk him down how?”
    My lips turned up in a smile. “With words.”
    Seth seemed dubious, but the clerk proved an easy target. Most men would eventually cave before an attractive, charismatic woman—let alone a succubus who still sported a residual life force glow. Besides, I had learned bartering at my mother’s knee. The guy behind the counter didn’t stand a chance. By the time I finished with him, he had happily lowered the price by 25 percent and thrown in my cookbook for free.
    Walking back to my car, arms laden with books, Seth kept glancing at me wonderingly. “How did you do that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
    â€œLots of practice.” A vague answer worthy of one of his.
    â€œThanks. I wish I could repay the favor.”
    â€œDon’t worry—hey, you can actually. Would you mind running an errand with me? It’s to a bookstore, but it’s a scary bookstore.”
    â€œScary how?”
    Five minutes later, we were on our way to see my old friend Erik Lancaster. Erik had been ensconced in the Seattle area long before me, and he was a well-known figure to almost every immortal entity around. Versed in mythology and supernatural lore, he regularly proved to be an excellent resource for all things paranormal. If he had noticed that some of his best patrons never aged, he wisely refrained from pointing that out.
    The only annoying thing about seeing Erik was that it required a visit to Krystal Starz—a stunning example of New Age spirituality gone wrong. I didn’t doubt the place might have had good intentions back when it opened in the 1980s, but the bookstore now touted a barrage of colorful, highly commercial merchandise more weighted in price than any sort of mystical value. Erik, by my estimation, was the only employee with legitimate concern and knowledge of esoteric matters. The best of his coworkers were simply apathetic; the worst were zealots and scam artists.
    Pulling up into the store’s parking lot, I immediately felt surprise at the number of cars there. This many people at Emerald City would have constituted a signing, but that sort of event seemed odd in the middle of the workday.
    A heavy wave of incense poured over us as we entered, and Seth appeared just as surprised as me by all the people and stimuli. “I might be a minute,” I told him. “Feel free to look around. Not that there’s much here worth seeing.”
    He melted away, and I turned my attention to a bright-eyed