Page 105 of Succubus

Is God here, now? Maybe God has always been here, the whole time, just quieter, more diffuse.

I manage to look at Dee, and her face is blanked out and wide open with awe. She is someone seeing something impossible, witnessing a miracle. She is someone who will never be able to go back to seeing the world the regular way, the non-miraculous way, again.

And as I watch her, she glances at me, and I know that something has changed between us. That she believes me now. But it doesn’t matter.

Nothing matters except for Ella.

I have the sense that time has paused to pay better attention. The sky has fallen still, the night has drawn a breath that it won’t release until Joel is done.

It wasn’t anything like this in the hospital room.

Is this what he is, underneath, always?

Could be an angel, says Grub in my mind. I can see him for a second as though we’re in the same place, as though we’re together for the first time, but it’s natural, because we’ve always been together. His greasy hair straggling from beneath the cap, the wide gap between his eyes that made his face look babyish, permanently sweet, no matter how hard he tried to be surly.

Ella’s cheek has reknit itself beneath the film of blood. A separate filigree of blood is spread over her forehead, across her nose, speckling her teeth, which show through the frightening laxity of her lips.

The glow recedes with tidal slowness, and the dark reestablishes itself hand over hand. The moon, which was meaningfully bright before, seems to have been reduced to the smolder of a dying flashlight.

Joel moves. He lifts Ella in his arms, and it seems for a moment that she has moved, too, curling inward toward him. He’s sitting there, bent over her. Her feet seem different— there is potential in them.

For a moment, the three of us—Mom, Dee, and me—are all standing there, in a ring around Joel and Ella. Then Dee reaches out, says, “Is she—?”

Joel says, his voice fibrous and ragged as though he hasn’t spoken in a long time, “She’ll be all right.”

“Is he bleeding?” Mom asks me.

And at that moment, Joel wavers, starts to fall forward. Dee is right there, grabbing Ella. Joel catches himself with a hand flat on the stone.

“He needs to go to the hospital,” I say.

“I’ll take him,” Mom says.

I remember something Dick Face said. “Why can’t you heal yourself?” I ask him.

“Too tired,” he mumbles.

“We should take Ella to the hospital, too,” I say.

“No.” That’s Dee in her boss voice, being firm. “We’re going home.” Just as Ella says, soft as a leaf settling on the ground, “Mama?” the way she did when she was a toddler.

“Where’s Al?” says Mom abruptly. “And who was that woman?”

I spin around, but I don’t see anyone in the field. “He was right there.”

Joel makes it to his feet, wobbly. He will need to walk all the way to the road. I move reflexively toward him.

“T, your hands!” says Dee, startled. A second later, she’s directing Mom to get the knife from the ground, the one with Joel’s blood on it, and cut me free. Mom does it. I shake my hands out gratefully. I reach toward Joel.

“Tempest,” he says, his voice a gravelly blur, and something inside me flutters at my name in his mouth. Even here, even now. “I don’t think you should.”

“What— ” I start.

“Unless you want it to really work this time.”

I yank my hands back. He’s right. If I touch him now, in his weakened state, I probably will kill him. Mom takes his arm, they go down the steps. Dee carries Ella and they follow, me alongside them. Exeunt. The bloodstained stage will soon be silent.

Dee says to me, “Don’t ever fucking do that to me again. That thing you did, where you controlled me.”