A Sale (For a Change) - Emmy / Leah
Submitted with Tim's permission, of course!


After finishing her meal at the Lighthouse, Leah made her way over to the reason for her visit to Searchlight.

Her first impression as the hybrid pushed open the door and stepped inside was that the bookstore looked very similar to a few small independent shops she'd been in back east. Rows of bookcases held books stacked floor to ceiling, a section for knicknacks was up front by the counter, and what looked like a small reading area off toward the back.

She'd never spent much time in places like this, reading wasn't something she did for fun. When she did visit, it had normally been on the arm of some hunk who had pretensions of intellectualism.

There was one major difference between those bookstores and this, which Leah began to realize as she eyed the titles Prophecies of Anlashok? Summa Theologica? New Hermetics? How was she supposed to find what she was looking for if she didn't have a clue where to start?

Leaving the shop in Liam’s care was never a good idea, or so Emmy had begun to think after arriving back to her little shop many times to find no one but a customer wandering the books. The diminutive demon had a knack for neatness and a flair for organization, but no real talent for interacting with the customers.

One day, Emmy thought, she might actually hire someone new. Maybe.

Pushing open the door, juggling a stack of books and a bag of newly dressed candles, she muttered an obscenity or two regarding her demon helper under her breath and headed straight for the front counter to release her burden.

Leah was completely bewildered. The longer she browsed the stacks the more confused she got. Half the titles were in written in Alphabets she didn't even recognize, let alone be able to read what they said.

The door opened and closed, and sounds of someone dumping bags on the counter caused the Hybrid to pop her head around the nearest bookcase and glance back that way. A pretty brunette had unloaded a large bag and a stack of books onto the counter, and there was something about her body language that suggested she belonged here.

"Excuse me," Leah called out, "but do you work here?"

Emmy laughed softly; that was the rallying cry of a new customer. If she heard it once, she’d heard it a thousand times. Luckily on this particular occasion, there was no condescension in the voice.

“Yes, in a manner of speaking,” she called back, searching out the new face hidden among her books. Spotting the woman looking terribly lost, she beckoned for her to move out into the open storefront. “Is there something I can help you with? I do apologize for it being empty just now, it seems my assistant stepped away.”

So. The woman was the manager, or maybe even the owner of the shop. Excellent!
Leah moved out toward the counter, giving the other woman a relieved smile. "That's all right. I thought I'd try and browse your books on my own first," the hybrid shrugged and her smile turned rueful, "but then I realized that I can only read English, and even then there were words I didn't recognize."

She waved her hand back toward the stacks in a vague gesture, "You really do have an impressive selection for a shop in the middle of nowhere." The moment the words were out of her mouth Leah realized that they might be offensive, but stood her ground. Searchlight was in the middle of nowhere.

“We specialize in some of the more… archaic languages,” Emmeline replied after a moment. She often forgot how telling her book selection could be, ranging from the usual Latin and Old English to demonic texts and ancient pictographs.

She laughed, and gestured towards the stack of books she had placed on the countertop only moments before. “The market for this sort of thing is so scattered that I could set up shop in the middle of the desert and it wouldn’t matter. Most of my business is done through the mail. The storefront is more or less for my own amusement. Is there anything in particular you would be looking for?”

"Yeah..." Leah wasn't sure how to go about explaining what it was she was looking for. "I've recently had reason to try and look up information about creatures like succubi?" the last word was phrased as a question because she wasn't sure she was pronouncing it correctly.

"I had this friend who thought she was a witch, and wanted to come down here. I'd agreed to come with her, thinking maybe I could learn something, but we hit a snag along the way last time." A snag that involved her nearly being raped by one of the ugliest and most terrifying creatures she'd ever seen in her life, and seeing Betty nearly eaten alive by some bizzaro world version of Erato.

"She had some kind of conversion experience, and now she's in a convent and I had to make the trip solo."

Emmy shook her head, forcing off a wave of tongue-clucking that had threatened to spill past her lips at the mention of a wannabe-witch finding herself scarred for life. Silly little girls getting mixed up in what they didn’t understand, always getting themselves hurt or even killed. It was sad, really.

Someone should make an after-school special on the subject.

“Succubi, really? That’s different,” she spoke after a long moment. “Exactly what sort of information were you looking for? Most of our books are… well, don’t take this the wrong way, miss, as I don’t mean to offend with my presumptions… many are quite old and most are very rare. I would wonder just what sort of information you need. Perhaps something I can have copied or translated for you, rather than handing off a volume on its own right.”

Part of Leah was hesitant to get into any detail with this woman, to explain why she felt she needed to know this information. Oh, come off it! Another part of the hybrid succubus snarled back. You didn't have any problem blurting it out to Star, or letting it slip with Connor, what's your problem here?

Leah decided that the voice was right, and looked around to see if the two women were still alone. They appeared to be, and Leah leaned forward. "I've got it on good authority that my birth mother must have been one," the hybrid told the bookshop owner quietly.

“Oh,” Emmy replied, eyes going wide and mouth forming into an O; a rather small-minded gesture for someone so used to the extraordinary and strange, but she couldn’t help it. It was quite possible that she’d never met anyone of such unique parentage.

Of course, the girl could also be lying. Or just plain crazy. That accounted for at least half of her international business, after all.
“That’s… well, it certainly is different,” she said, breezing past and heading for the bookcases, sure that the girl would follow. “How did you ever come across something like that? I’d assume you’d had no contact with the woman since your birth… do pardon me for prying, but you did bring it up.”

"Well..." Leah followed the other woman toward the bookcases, glancing at some of the knicknacks on display as they went. "Besides the figure? Ever since puberty hit I've been...different...from other women, and its only been getting..." worse wasn't the word, as she didn't consider herself cursed or needing to be fixed. Leah liked what she was, she just wanted to learn more about herself and how to exert more control over her abilities. "...stronger, I guess is the best way of putting it. The past six months or so I've started having these cravings... cravings that only one thing can sate."

The girl looked at the other woman evenly, waiting for her to put the pieces together herself.

Emmy snorted. The girl didn’t exactly have to spell it out for her; though not an expert on the subject of succubi, she knew enough to know at least a little of their particular talents. Not that she needed the particulars.

“I was thinking more along the lines of, where did you first hear of succubi, and the like. It’s not a term that comes up often in polite conversation, now is it, Miss…?”

"I guess not," Leah allowed, "and it's Leah, Leah Allen." The girl extended a hand.

"I encountered someone...someone who is much older and wiser than me. They're the ones who recognized what I was and told me a little about it, I'm sorry but I made a promise not to talk about them so I really can't go into more detail than that." Leah liked Erato, at least this realities version of her, and wasn't going to betray a confidence.

Besides, after what she'd seen in the other reality, the last thing she wanted was an angry Erato coming after her.

Emmy paused to shake the offered hand, and smiled in a more formal, proper greeting.
“It’s nice to meet you, Leah. My name is Emmeline… Emmy, if you like.”

Scanning the ancient titles on her shelves, she searched out something that could be of use to the apparent hybrid-girl. New and different maladies and bloodlines seemed to crop up each week; it was a wonder, at times, that Emmeline could find herself in ownership of just the right book. There had been a few misses, of course, but generally, she had done well since coming to Searchlight. She had started with her father’s books, and added the extensive collection bequeathed her by Crystal; soon after, she could buy and sell on the international market, a bookworm’s insatiable hobby turned profitable profession.
“I do understand,” she added after a short moment, recognizing the girl’s further comments. Older and wiser? That could be just about anyone… or anything. “We all have to keep our little secrets…” She trailed off, eyes lighting on a fairly recent book, published sometime during the nineteenth century; compared to some of her other tomes, it was positively modern.

“Perhaps this will help,” she murmured, pulling it down from the shelf.

"Objects of Desire: A Study of the Succubi." Leah murmured to herself as she took the book from Emmy and looked at it. It was a thick book, bound in leather with gold lettering, and the hybrid flipped it open at random. The text was small and tightly spaced. It looked like formidable reading.

"Wow," the girl looked back up at Emmy, "this looks like it must be pretty exhaustive. You have books like this on everything?"

Emmy laughed softly. “We have books like this on many things, though not everything. Ran into a spot of trouble drumming up the proper texts on an ancient Mesoamerican demon some time ago. But usually, if we don’t have it, I can find it. I’ve made quite a few contacts over the years, and began with a fairly extensive collection as it was.”

She turned back to the stacks, spotting a much smaller, older book wrapped in sackcloth and tucked into one of the darker corners of the shelf. The desert climate made kept the books happy, but Emmeline always went that extra mile to make sure the most fragile and rare were shielded from whatever might seek to harm them – penance for every novel she’d highlighted in her school days, every spine broken on a midnight paperback reading binge and that one sad, sorry book she had watched burn away to ashes.

“This may be of use as well, though if I recall correctly, it will take a few days of translation on my part.”

The second book looked much older, and was maybe a quarter the size of the other one. Leah took hold of it almost gingerly and looked at the cover once the sackcloth was unwrapped, brown deepened to black from age and tried to make out the title from the letters on the spine. Was it Latin? She wasn't sure, some of the letters didn't look like the alphabet she was familiar with.

She looked up at Emmy, curious. "You can read this? It looks really old, what language was it written in?" Her respect for the bookseller went up a notch, if she were able to translate old languages into English. Leah had never been a strong student in school, but that had mostly been because she never stayed long with any foster family and that had made it difficult to keep up with her schoolwork.

The hybrid stared at the book again and wondered just what it contained, and who had written the tome.

Emmeline’s mouth again dropped into a perfectly circle ‘O’, with eyes wide with shock to match. It was utter horror this time, not surprise that dropped the shopkeeper’s expression into a comically overdrawn visage of despair, hands frozen in mid-air as though groping for the book recently pulled into the hybrid’s own.

Her father had taught her to love books; Crystal had taught her to care for them. Something so aged, so rare, should never be exposed to the sun for long periods, let alone held in the bare, oil and sweat ridden palms of a human being – even if they were only half-human. With the avarice of a selfish child, she snatched the book back, careful not to let her fingers touch anything but the sackcloth, and clutched it tightly to her chest.

“It’s a Latinate derivative that was used for a century or two, by a cult that worshiped a created sex goddess. It mentions succubi. I can translate it for you,” she said quickly, a deathgrip on the tome. “However, it is very very old and very very rare and can be damaged by the oils on your fingertips so it really mustn’t be handled like that. I do apologize for my… my… well I suppose I shouldn’t apologize, for being protective of my books… it is, after all, a rare book store.” She offered a smile that seemed more relieved than friendly, now that the book was safely back in her hands.
"Hey!" Leah protested automatically as Emmy tore the book away from her. "I wasn't going to open it," she sulked sounding more like a spoiled child than an adult, "I just wanted to look at the cover."

Her displeasure evaporated at Emmy's words however, and the hybrid nodded at the explanation. "I guess that makes sense, I wouldn't want to damage it. How quickly could you translate it? I'd really like to read the book." A first hand account of succubi would be a great resource for her. Anything that would help her understand and control her urges and abilities was a vital necessity.

A thought occurred to her, "How much will all this cost?"

Emmeline surveyed the girl with a thoughtful expression, lips pursed as she pondered her answer. Translation wasn’t cheap; a specialist text – as magickal texts and ancient tomes were at the very least ‘specialist’, far above and beyond the usual legal or medical documentation that garnered such a term – of that particular size could, in a realistic international market, price at more than ten thousand dollars.

And those were in straight Latin, not an ancient derivative, that bastard offspring of the Latin tongue and a demonic language.

True, she did eventually plan on translating her entire collection; but, then, this particular book required special care to extract the wealth of knowledge it held without damaging the delicate tome itself.

“With the first text, which you may purchase outright if you wish, and the translation of that particular portion of this text,” She went on, indicating the book still clutched protectively against the soft lavender cashmere or her sweater, “I would price it at an even three thousand dollars. Exorbitant though it may seem, it is far below the going rate, I assure you.”

Three thousand dollars!? Leah picked her jaw off the floor and kicked herself for looking like an idiot. Of course it would cost money, but three thousand dollars! It was a big chunk of money...she made pretty good money at Fang Noir between wages and tips, along with extras she got from male admirers. But Three Thousand Dollars for two books?! Leah had no idea books could cost that much.

The hybrid stared at the books, lusting after the knowledge they contained. She was visibly torn at the idea of parting so much money, even if it was a discount.

Knowledge or money?

Leah eyed Emmy, wishing for a moment that the bookseller was a guy that she could work her wiles on to get the translation for free. Finally she sighed and nodded, it wasn't a library after all, it was only fair she pay for the books. "All right, I'll pay. How long do you think it would take to translate the book?"

“Provided I can find an appropriate key-text… it shouldn’t be more than a month,” Emmeline replied, mentally estimating the time it would take and adding a week for good measure. She was fairly certain she had a half-translated prayer book in a similar language; the rest wouldn’t be too hard.

She did hate the surprise on the girl’s face at the cost. That was the real problem with her business. Few people knew the real value of the books. Not just the aging, brittle paper, or the elegantly scrolled leather covers, or even the museum quality illumination of the pages. The languages were archaic and dead, the words and the subjects muddled and confusing. It wasn’t easy work, and Emmy barely charged the going rate for the work.

“Though I would require a deposit of at least half the cost, and that way you may take the first book with you.” She spoke carefull and politely, not wanting to offend. The fact of the matter was that she didn’t know the girl at all, unlike most of her customers. Used to borrowing and gifting her books and material, it was always a little strange to make a sale for goods or service.

A month. Leah swallowed her disappointment at waiting so long, but supposed a month for translating such a rare book wasn't that long a wait. The knowledge would be incredibly valuable to her, and it was worth the money and the time.

She pulled out her checkbook from her purse. "I can do that, thank you so much for offering to translate, Emmy. I can't even begin to explain how much this might help me." Leah smiled at the other woman.

Scribbling out a quick invoice in a hurried and yet still neatly elegant scrawl, Emmy filled out all the necessary information, correctly taking the Biblical spelling for the young woman’s name.

“If you could just sign here, and leave a number you can be reached at…” she prompted, wheeling the invoice book around on the counterop so that it faced Leah in the upright position. “I can call you as soon as the translation is finished.”

The hybrid swallowed hard and signed her name to the invoice. If the translation held the knowledge she hoped it did, the cost would be more than worth it. She wrote her cell phone number and e-mail address in the appropriate spots and looked up at Emmy. "Is there anything else?" She asked, picking up the other book.

“Erm… hmm,” Emmy replied, frowning. She gave the girl a brief surveying glance, and thought a quick lesson on caring for an antiquarian book – even one as relatively young as that she was taking with her – wouldn’t hurt.

“Just keep that book out of direct sunlight… erm… no moisture, try not to touch the pages with bare fingers – cotton gloves would do well on that – and do not break the spine. Oh, also? I wouldn’t share it around, if I were you.”

Leah held her tongue, the bookseller was obviously passionate about her books. She got the distinct impression she would rather people not read the books at all, that way they couldn't be damaged. "Thanks for the advice, I appreciate everything. Please let me know when the translation is done, I look forward to reading it."

The hybrid gathered her things and prepared to leave. The forecast called for snow, and she'd like to be back in her apartment before it hit. Vegas was full of people who didn't have a clue how to drive in snow and she didn't want to be out among them.

Emmy shook her head to herself as she watched the young woman go. In her mind floated the horrifying image of an exceedingly rare, exceedingly important text tossed haphazardly onto the backseat of a car for an extended drive and lost among the detritus of cd’s and fast food wrappers. She did her best to clear the image from her mind.

Not everyone was such a barbarian, after all.