“Are you ready now?” I asked her.
Again, she nodded. Then she released her stranglehold on the crossbody strap of her battered pumpkin purse before letting her arms fall to her sides. Before presenting herself like a sacrifice… “So, should I just… stand here?”
More silence passed between us. I didn’t want to tell her yes or no. In truth, she didn’t have to do a thing. But I couldn’t be cold to her in this moment, not as I had been before. Flora, perhaps, had a point about my behavior.
So I lifted a skeletal hand, beckoning Helena with a finger, keeping my voice as soft as I could make it. “Come here.”
I’d meant for her to step toward me, to deplete the distance it would take for me to reach her, to eliminate the need for me to catch and draw her to me as I’d done before like a spider callously snatching up its prey. Instead, Helena rushed me as she had in that alley behind the library, again wrapping her arms around my shoulders, as if the impulse to embrace me was something she had, until this moment, been trying to rein in.
I swept her up into my own arms, and in the same motion, I plunged my dark, cool essence into her chest and seized that sunshine soul, wispy tendrils lashing and wrapping her pale gold essence, tongues of darkness tasting—relishing—the heat of her.
“Grim, I—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish before I shifted her soul that small degree, loosening it just a bit, just enough.
The resistance I’d expected, warned her about, didn’t occur.
She surrendered to me, bodyandsoul. I held her just like that for a moment, overcome by a debilitating feast of foreign sensations. Her warm body weighing hardly anything in my cold bony arms, her softness killing me by fitting itself between my ribs. That searing liquid-gold soul molten and malleable in the desolate, ravenous grips of mine.
I could have remained with her like this forever. Lost in the scent of her skin. Beguiled and bewitched by the gentle weight of her. Drunk on her scalding spirit, the heat of which burned simultaneously too hot and not hot enough.
I’d never let another human touch me before, but I suspected no other would have made mefeelthe way she had. Almost as if she’d dragged life into the quiet rot where I belonged.
That was a dangerous thought, and the temptation to keep her with me—held this way, like she wasmine—forever would consume me if I let it.
She was not mine to hold on to. And could not be.
Ihadto let her go. In every sense of the phrase. I had to.
So I forced myself through the portal, gliding into her living room, the invisible membrane separating our worlds rippling away behind us.
I had to halt when, unexpectedly, her soul grew tendrils of its own. Like new shoots on a tender vine, those wisps began to wrap and creep along the invading tentacles of mine—heightening everything.
God, this intoxicating creature.
The spiritual taste of her alone, bright and sweet, simultaneously petal soft and biting, crisp as white wine yet hot as molten honey, forbade me from releasing her. To have her winding me like this had me again questioning the need to let her go, even though I should have released her spirit the instant I had her safely through the portal.
Instead, while I once again moved through her home, I caved to the overpowering urge to keep her in my grasp, giving in to her hold on me. Drugged and addled, yearning for an even deeper draft of her, all but wrecked by the sensation of her gentle and curious searing spirit climbing and coiling around mine, I fought the impulse to return her wanderings.
With enormous effort, I denied this hunger, this thirst. Already, I’d done enough to disturb her peace.
Helena’s head lay on my shoulder as I carried her through her living room with its cream walls and yellow-upholstered furniture.
Unlike the last time I’d been here, clutter covered most surfaces, including the floor.
A testament, no doubt, to how out of control she must feel.
Her smiling stuffed pineapple now lay on the floor next to a fuzzy blanket she must have kicked off at some point. Empty mugs littered the surface of her coffee table along with several books and a few food wrappers. Stacks of novels and picture books lay strewn across the floor around the table along with a small collection of hand puppets.
A bra dotted with lemons draped the back of the couch.
Lost in the bliss of her, I only loosely took in the details of our surroundings as I turned a corner—passing photos on the walls, apile of mail on the kitchen counter, sunflower notepads scrawled with looping, bubbly handwriting.
In moments, Iwasgoing to have to release her. Then I was going to have to leave. And not come back until this was over.
Next time I did see her, I would also have to do what I should have from the start.
My job.
