The car continued through the evening traffic, while Marvin remained at the center of two very different kinds of affection—one bright and youthful, the other calm and deeply assured—and accepted both with the effortless composure that had long since become second nature to him.
The SUV pulled to a smooth halt at the curb outside the private entrance of the Miramax screening facility in Tribeca.
Before Gordon could even open the door, Marvin's brick phone began to vibrate in the inner pocket of his suit jacket.
He pulled it out, glancing at the glowing green caller ID. A knowing smirk touched his lips. "You three go inside first and get seated,"
Marvin instructed, looking at Lindsay, Jeff, and Amy. "Gordon will escort you. I need to answer this. Give me five minutes."
Amy nodded, herding a reluctant Lindsay out of the car and under Gordon's black umbrella.
Marvin stepped out into the hot air, leaving the chatter inside the screening building behind.
The concrete corridor along the exterior wall was empty, washed in long shadows cast by the parking lot lights.
His phone vibrated again.
He glanced at the display. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. Scarlett.
He answered. "Hello."
"Marvin!" Her raspy, unmistakable voice burst through the speaker before he could say anything else. "You finally picked up!"
He could practically picture her bouncing around the hotel room. "I just heard it on the radio!" she rushed on without waiting for a reply. "Tell me the truth—is that song mine?"
Marvin leaned one shoulder against the brick wall, slipping his free hand into his pocket. "Of course it is."
His voice dropped into the warm, intimate tone. "I told you I'd take care of you." He smiled faintly. "Think of it as another present for my lovely Scarlett."
There was a tiny squeal on the other end. "Hehe! I knew it!"
She laughed so hard she almost lost her breath. "Hehe I knew it was mine! I made Mom turn the volume all the way up."
A muffled voice echoed somewhere away from the phone. "Scarlett, I only turned it up twice."
"You turned it up all the way after that!" Scarlett shot back before returning to Marvin.
"I've already listened to it like... five times."
"Five?" Marvin asked.
"Only five?"
She gasped dramatically. "I've been busy!"
Then she lowered her voice conspiratorially. "...Okay, maybe seven."
Marvin chuckled. "I'll accept seven."
"It really is beautiful." Her excitement softened into something quieter.
"I don't know..."
She hesitated. "It just... feels different when I know you wrote it."
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Marvin asked, "Did the paperwork finally go through?"
"Yep." She sounded proud of herself. "Everything's signed. And guess what?"
"What?"
"I officially got the final script for *An American Rhapsody*. I start wardrobe fittings next week. I even met Nastassja Kinski today."
Her voice filled with genuine admiration. "She's gorgeous. I mean... seriously gorgeous. I kind of forgot what I was supposed to say when she walked in."
Marvin searched his memory. "I remember her."
"So do I." Scarlett laughed. "Hard to forget. But she was really nice."
Then, after a pause— "...She's still gorgeous."
Marvin smiled. "She is. But she's thirty-eight."
"So?
“So time isn't kind to actresses." His voice remained calm. "The industry worships youth until it doesn't."
He paused. "As for beauty..."
"I think you're far prettier than she is. The industry is cruel to time. In terms of pure, vibrant beauty, she can't even begin to compare to my Scarlett at any age."
Scarlett snorted. "You're biased."
"Completely."
"I am."
"And?"
"Hehe...I like that you're biased." Scarlett couldn't stop the delighted, throaty laughter from bubbling over the line.
He could hear the grin in her voice.
"You know…” She said after another moment, "I almost called you before the song even finished."
"What stopped you?"
"I wanted to hear the ending." She laughed again. "And Mom said maybe you were actually working instead of sitting around waiting for my phone calls."
"Your mother was right."
"I know." A beat. "...That doesn't mean I listened."
Marvin laughed quietly. "No."
"I didn't think you did."
She sighed happily. "I miss you."
"So do I."
"When are we meeting again?"
"Soon."
"You always say 'soon.'"
"And I'm usually right."
"Mm..." She accepted that with surprising ease. "Fine. But when you get back, you owe me dinner."
"I owe you dinner?"
"Yes. And ice cream. And don't try to talk your way out of it. Mr. Hollywood!"
Marvin considered it seriously. "That's a very expensive contract."
"It is."
"But you already promised to spoil me."
"I believe those were your words."
"I don't recall saying that."
"You absolutely did."
"I have witnesses."
Marvin smiled. "I'll have my lawyer review the evidence."
She giggled. "You are the lawyer."
"Not yet."
"Close enough."
Another comfortable silence settled between them.
Then Scarlett spoke again, quieter this time.
"...Thanks."
"For what?"
"For remembering. You always remember."
Marvin looked out toward the California sky. "I told you."
"I take care of the people who belong to me."
The words settled warmly over her. "I know."
Her reply came almost as a whisper. "I really do."
After chatting for several more minutes—about the wardrobe fittings, the hotel she was staying in, and the fact that she'd already started imagining herself performing the song live one day—Marvin glanced toward the screening room entrance.
Marvin expertly stroking her ego.
"I should go."
"The screening's about to start."
"Oh." She sounded disappointed, though she quickly recovered.
"Okay."
"But call me later?"
"I will."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"Good."
A smile returned to her voice. "Bye, Marvin."
"Good day, Scarlett."
"Good day."
The line clicked dead.
Marvin slipped the phone back into his pocket, pushed away from the wall, and headed toward the screening room, the faint echo of Scarlett's delighted laughter still lingering in his ears.
Nastassja Kinski lingered in his thoughts.
Even by the standards of his previous life, she had been unforgettable, she had been breathtaking. There was a reason the European press had spent years calling her one of the continent's most beautiful women.
Kinski possessed a rare combination of purity and an aura of seduction. Her on-screen innocence was uniquely alluring, and combined with a great figure, she had reigned as the heroine of countless men's fantasies for a decade.
It wasn't difficult to understand why an entire generation of filmmakers had wanted her in front of a camera.
‘A pity,’ Marvin thought.
Human beauty was fleeting. Time showed no mercy, no matter how famous or adored someone became.
"Time is a fickle mistress.”
Careers faded. Faces changed. The industry always found someone younger to chase.
‘Had fate granted her a few more years within the height of her radiance—or had he arrived a few years earlier—perhaps things would have been different. Our paths might have intertwined once my studio stood complete and my influence reached far enough to draw even stars such as her into my orbit.’
Women like her were exactly the kind of exceptional beauties he'd always intended to win over. It wasn't merely desire—it was an instinct woven into the very fabric of his Incubus soul. Marvin saw no reason to resist it. His Incubus instincts and his own desires were not at war; they were one and the same.
It was nothing like his former demonic instincts, which hungered for war, blood, souls, and destruction. This desire sought beauty, companionship, and something worth protecting.
Perhaps that was especially true now, after he had barely survived with only a small fragment of his soul intact.
His thoughts wandered briefly to Cat People.
To Marvin, her most memorable, visually striking role was in the erotic horror film *Cat People*, where she made a massive, uninhibited contribution to the art form.
Few actresses possessed both the confidence and the physique to commit so completely to a role built as much on sensuality as horror. Kinski had never hidden from the camera. She understood exactly what it wanted from her, and she gave it without hesitation.
Decades later, it remained the performance most people remembered first whenever her name was mentioned.
Then the memory dissolved.
Another face pushed its way into his thoughts.
Another face surfaced.
Monica Bellucci.
Dark hair. Heavy-lidded eyes. A figure that seemed almost rebellious against the increasingly waifish beauty Hollywood had begun to worship. Where others chased fragility, Monica radiated abundance. She possessed the kind of mature sensuality that didn't beg for attention—it simply commanded it.
She was much closer to Marvin's tastes.
Far closer.
She was approaching the age where most actresses quietly began worrying about the next generation replacing them.
Marvin saw something entirely different.
Potential.
Human beauty was tragically temporary. A handful of decades at most, then time began collecting its debt.
The faintest trace of regret crossed his thoughts.
She had arrived at that fleeting point in a human life where beauty reached its fullest expression. Not the innocence of youth, nor the decline that followed, but that narrow, precious window where experience and vitality existed in perfect balance.
It never lasted.
A handful of years.
Sometimes less.
Then time began its slow, relentless work.
For an Incubus, however, flesh was simply another language.
Emotion became mana.
Mana became possibility.
Everything else was merely a question of scale.
Given enough emotions and desires, enough mana, and enough time, he could do far more than smooth wrinkles or slow the passage of years. Mana could drive every cell back toward its youthful prime. Age itself became negotiable.
He could leave someone suspended at the absolute peak of human beauty and vitality for as long as he had mana.
Not yet.
Even for him, rewriting a living body on that scale demanded an absurd amount of power.
His current reserves weren't even close.
But they would be.
Every film. Every bestselling novel. Every platinum record. Every stadium full of screaming fans. Every headline. Every triumph. Every heart turned toward him.
They all fed the same destination.
By the time his fifth film reached theaters, his second studio album conquered the charts, and the world had watched him shatter records on the international stage...
The mana required for miracles like that would no longer be beyond his reach.
It would simply be another tool at his disposal.
He didn't even factor in the mana he harvests from direct sexual acts the oldest way his kind knew.
He had been born a lust demon, forged in the Abyss long before evolution had elevated him into a high-tier Incubus. Desire was only one expression of emotion, and emotion itself was the true feast.
Love.
Hatred.
Jealousy.
Admiration.
Obsession.
Resentment.
His soul devoured them all.
So long as those feelings were directed toward him, his soul devoured them all without prejudice, burning them down into something infinitely more valuable.
Mana.
The being that had crossed worlds was only a splinter of what he had once been. The greater part of that existence had been torn away during fight and transmigration, leaving behind a single surviving shard that had fused with the two human souls inhabiting this body.
Yet even diminished...
...it was terrifying.
Every day, with every heart that turned toward him. He was slowly growing from a weakened, adolescent Incubus back into a deity of Desire.
He wasn't becoming something new.
He was remembering what he had always been.
Given enough time...
Enough people speaking his name with love or hatred in equal measure...
...there would be very little in this world beyond his reach.
The comparison amused him.
For this world, a fully restored Incubus was every bit as terrifying as Project Sundial. So long as he could indulge his nature, take the women he desired into his bed, and keep billions of hearts fixed upon him with any emotions, he could do nearly anything, even end this world.
The difference was that Project Sundial could only destroy a civilization once. Marvin could rebuild it in his own image afterward.
The difference was simple. Weapons destroyed because they had no choice.
Marvin had one. He could reduce civilizations to ash if he ever surrendered completely to the instincts buried in his blood.
Or...
He could spend eternity ruling the world from the top floor of a penthouse, surrounded by luxury, beautiful women, and enough admiration to sustain him forever.
The second option sounded considerably more enjoyable.
Realizing where his thoughts were drifting toward the darker, destructive tendencies of his bloodline, Marvin let out a quiet breath and rubbed a hand across his face.
‘Easy…’
There was no sense indulging the Abyss more than necessary.
He liked this world too much to break it. But that face came back again.