Succubs on Top

"I need you to call every person who's not working today—except for the sick ones. See if they'll come in. Preferably for the rest of the day. If not, we'll take what we can get. Then ask everyone here who's not closing if they can close. Tell them they'll get time-and-a-half."

Andy stared as though he'd never seen me before, but I didn't give him time to question me. I went back to my office, paged Maria, and called Maddie Sato while I waited. When Maddie answered, I explained to her what I hoped she could do for me. She sounded surprised by my request, but she agreed nonetheless. She also promised to make another phone call for me that I wasn't too keen on making myself.

Maria appeared just as Maddie and I hung up. Maria worked part-time and was shy and quiet. She preferred to avoid the registers if she could, being much happier lost in the shelves. She was also an amazing artist.

I handed her a piece of poster board from our supply cabinet. "I need you to make a poster for tonight's event."

"The signing?" she asked. "Er, signings?" Everyone had heard about the double booking by now.

"Not just a signing. It's a literary extravaganza. It's…" I came up with and then promptly rejected several possibilities. "It's the Emerald Lit Fest." Boring, but straightforward. Sometimes that was better than a gimmick.

"Yes. The first a

"Wow," she said. "I didn't know all this was going on."

"Yeah," I agreed briskly. "Me either. Draw it, type it, cut and paste, whatever. Just do it. I need it in twenty minutes. And it needs to look good. "

She blinked and then immediately set to work. While she did, I made phone calls. Print ads were a no-go, but almost everyone had a website. I called the big papers and the small artsy ones. I also called the local writers' groups and convinced them to e-mail their members. Finally, I called radio stations. They were less willing to do anything on short notice, but they were my best bet at immediate advertising. I could have the DJs mention us without a formal commercial. That took a bit of finagling, but we had an account with most of them already that guaranteed payment, and the charitable angle was hard to resist. Okay, I was hard to resist. Even over the phone, I could hear myself wooing and persuading with an unholy skill. Maria stopped working at one point to stare at me with an almost hypnotized look. Shaking her head, she returned to her poster.

Andy popped in with the a

Maria finished her poster just then, and it did look good. I drove to the print shop that usually handled our business and turned the poster over to them.

"No," the manager told me flatly, making my manic flurry of activity come to a screeching halt. "I can't do all that in under an hour. Three hours maybe. "

"Hour and a half?" I cajoled. "It's for charity. An emergency situation just came up."

She frowned. "An emergency literacy situation?"

"Literacy is always an emergency. Do you know how many children in the Puget Sound area struggle with reading due to lack of resources and education?"

Fortunately, being in the book business, I knew all the grim stats. By the time I was done with her, that battle-axe was nearly in tears. She'd do my order, she promised, and she'd do it in my original hour.

While those were being printed, I traveled over to Foster's Books. Locally owned, that store wasn't as big as Emerald City, but it had the same sort of reputation as a local landmark. Technically, we were rivals.

Garrett Foster, the owner, looked up when I entered. "Looking for a job?"

"I've got one for you," I told him sweetly, leaning on his counter. "I need you to get in touch with Abel Warshawski for me."

Abel Warshawski was a reclusive local author who wrote wildly popular books about the Pacific Northwest. He and Garrett were longtime friends, so Abel only did appearances at Foster's.

Garrett arched a grizzled eyebrow. "Abel only comes here. You know that. "

"I do. Which is why I didn't ask for his number."

I laid into Garrett then about how half of Emerald City's staff were in dire health. I talked about charity and literacy statistics. I pointed out that we weren't technically rivals anyway, since he was in Capitol Hill and I was in Queen A

"My God, woman," he murmured when I finished. I didn't think I'd taken a breath during my entire spiel. "Are you sure you don't want a new job?"

"I just want Abel for the night."

He bit his lip. "Think we could get Mortensen over here for a signing some time?"

"Hmm." I considered this. Bartering was in my blood. "That depends. You guys close a few hours earlier than us, right? Think we could get a few of you to help us out tonight? Paid, of course."

"You've got some balls," he muttered. He stared at me, still thinking, but I knew I had him. He couldn't resist. "Okay, but only if we get Mortensen during a hot time— around his next release."

"Done." I didn't like sharing Seth, but lots of big authors made multiple Seattle appearances when a new book came out. I hoped Seth didn't mind being whored out. Oh, well. That was for later.

Before I left, I bought all of Foster's American Mystery and Womanspeak magazines. He hesitated a moment as he rang them up. "Hey…" He looked me over. "I don't suppose you read that story Mortensen wrote…"

"Well," I said with a breezy smile, no longer caring about my doppelganger, Genevieve, "let's just say he's not the first man I've given some 'inspiration' to."

As a parting gift, I also gave Garrett one of our advertisements since I'd had the print shop make me a few to take with me before starting the big order.

He stared at the poster incredulously. "You already put Abel on it! Before you even talked to me!"

I left him gaping and went to pick up my posters. I returned to the bookstore and distributed them among three of the staff, arming each with a list of places to hang them. I sent them off and then managed the bookstore end of things, which mostly involved moving a lot of furniture and assigning employee duties for tonight.

When six o'clock rolled around, it really was like a miracle had occurred. Signings normally occurred in the second floor café. That spot still made up the heart of the show, but I'd had the rest of the second floor cleared out. That meant a lot of shelves and displays got crammed together while the speakers were on, but it didn't matter so much. Most of the people there wanted to hear the authors, not browse books quite yet.

And what people we had. E. J. Putnam and Lorelei Biljan had each drawn in their respective science fiction and literary fiction crowds. That was big enough, but my advertising had drawn in even more. We were packed. We needed every inch of space rearranging the furniture had allowed. I couldn't remember ever having this many people in the store.

Putnam and Biljan had been a little shaken—and initially unhappy—to find themselves in the midst of the Emerald Lit Fest rather than an ordinary signing. I passed off the confusion as a miscommunication with their people and thanked them for helping the charity. I also reminded them this was a good opportunity to show off for people who normally read other genres, and it wasn't even like either writer was slighted…too much. Each of them got to read a ten-minute excerpt and then field fifteen minutes of questions. It was a bit expedited for a signing, yes, but it worked and gave us time to then have a Q&A session with our full panel of authors, consisting of the two headliners plus Seth, Maddie, and Abel. Prize-drawings occurred throughout it all, and I emceed everything myself, not even knowing what I said half the time.