Page 111 of Succubus

He’s staring at me, bemused and silent, letting me talk and talk.

“No, you’re probably not,” I decide. “You’re too perfect to be boring. Perfect. Perfect!” I have lost control. “It’s ridiculous! Even the fucking cello! Why couldn’t it be, like, a trombone?”

He laughs again. “Tempest— ”

I hold up both hands. “No! Don’t say anything. Don’t say my stupid name. Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands, then pull them away. My face doesn’t deserve such protection. Not when it keeps talking like this. “I know what you’ll say. ‘Is this another one of your games?’ No. It’s not. It’s just me, humiliating myself. It’s just me, ruining everything. If this can even be ruined! What even is this? It’s my curse. It’s just my curse. And even with it, you don’t like me.”

You don’t like me? I have regressed to early childhood. I spend too much time with a seven-year-old. I don’t have a real job. “You want me. You have to want me. Because I’m a monster. But you’ll never like me. You’ll never forgive me. And I shouldn’t forgive you! I don’t. I don’t forgive you!” I’m standing too close, I take a wild step back from him.

“Wait.” His hand closes around my arm. “Just wait a second.”

I transmogrify. I am in a Greek myth—I can’t remember which one because I didn’t read the damn thread Grub sent me—and he has turned me into a tree.

“Of course you don’t forgive me,” he says. “And I don’t forgive you.”

“Right,” I agree, swamped with misery, drowning from the roots up.

Some women are afraid they might poop in front of other adults while they’re giving birth. Some women apologize for yelling during labor. I always try to make them comfortable enough to break the social code. But right now I am very clear on why that code exists. It’s to prevent us from coughing up the frantic interior of our thoughts in a parking lot.

I try to twitch out of Joel’s grasp as my excited skin turns to a flock of tiny birds under his fingers, fluttering toward flight.

“Your timing is terrible,” he says. “Look at where we are. The day it is.”

I nod, agreeing and agreeing. It begins to rain more earnestly, a drop hurrying down one lens of his glasses. The evening smells strongly of wet leaves, pine sap, decay. Mist drifts, nearly invisible, where the colder water breaks against the warm face of the asphalt. Individual raindrops are strung into beaded curtains, glittering gold around each utilitarian lamp. Joel’s hair attempts to curl more tightly, is flattened by the rain, curls back again.

“I can’t resist you,” he says, and now his grip is iron, and I am being pulled against him. His other hand commandeers the back of my head, which gives itself over instantly, and he tips my face up to his. “You taste so fucking good.” The shock of the harsh word in his gentle voice makes me shiver. Even though I have heard him harsh, heard him raging and hateful. But this Joel—this is the Joel I fell in love with, before everything.

“You smell so good,” he says, and he bends forward, his mouth grazing my ear as he breathes in. “I can’t look at you without touching you.” His voice is low and hot in my ear. “I want to— ” He pulls back. “I know it’s your power. I know you’re a succubus. But I wanted you before you ever tried to use it on me.”

I wanted you before you ever tried to use it on me, my brain repeats. My brain begins to compose a constitution, a new system of governance based on these foundational words.

“I wanted you because I— ” And here he hesitates as though about to confess something dangerous. Something much more secret than what he’s already said. “Because I liked you. Because of the way you are with Ella, with your clients. You’re so . . . good. Were. Are. God.” He closes his eyes briefly, wincing. “You’re the opposite of a monster, Tempest. I still can’t—I can’t hate you enough.” He takes a breath and now I can’t think at all. I am going to cry and I don’t want to cry; I don’t want to do anything to alter this moment.

“I think that’s why it didn’t work,” he concludes, rushing a little now. “Why you didn’t die.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had never touched a demon I cared about. It might . . . it might not work as well because of that.”

I know he’s wrong—him caring about me won’t save me—but I don’t tell him.

The problem is love, Al said.

Joel can’t hate me enough.

I can’t hate him enough, either.

I don’t know what happens next, what happens now. Or maybe I do know, but I can’t stop, anyway.

“You won’t hurt them, will you?” I ask, my voice shaky, emotional. “The two people you told me about.”

He hesitates. He shakes his head slowly, No. “You made me tell you things.” Not exactly accusing, more a statement. “You broke into my mind.”

“I know.”

The rain puts its back into it, and I shiver but stay where I am. A few people come outside, umbrellas bursting into bloom.

“I walked here,” Joel says. “Would you be able to drive me home?”