Page 117 of Succubus

I wince and stay silent, my brain turning like a sluggish washer, wet thoughts plastering its sides.

“What, you gave up your virginity for him or some shit? The succubus got seduced? Man, that’s a twist.” He laughs, a rich, angry sound. “Gotta respect the guy. He played you.”

I push myself up. I stand, wobbling. He needs to leave. I need to get him to leave. I don’t know how.

Dick Face falls back a step. He doesn’t want to be anywhere near me, either.

“Okay, I don’t have time for this crap,” he mutters. “Tell me where to find him.”

And suddenly, I have to. I feel his request like a fiery bar, prying my brain open. The information he wants will spill out. It’s right there at the top. It’s the first thing.

I grit my teeth against the onslaught. But I can’t stop him. I’m not strong enough.

I hear my voice telling him Joel’s address. No, no, I think.

He smiles—maybe it’s a sneer—and turns to go. I am sitting on the bed again, groping for my phone. I have to warn Joel.

Dick Face snaps back around. “Good thought,” he says. And he holds out his hand. I find the phone, stand again, hand it over to him. My brain burns. I am falling to ash.

He is going down the stairs. I have to stop him.

I stumble after him.

“So this is the backup dancer I knocked up?” he asks casually, gesturing to Mom where she stands frozen behind the kitchen counter, one hand on the Brita pitcher. “Or was she a groupie?”

I don’t answer. I am focusing on staying upright. Colors swirl in front of me.

“Not bad, not bad,” he says, surveying her briefly. “Kept herself up. Could be worse.” He seems to be giving himself a compliment.

Dee is frozen by the door, her expression blank. Ella is on the couch, her book in her hands, looking up unseeingly. They are like life-size dolls. I check as I follow him out the door in my flannel pajama pants and baggy EMPOWERED BIRTHING SUMMIT T-shirt: Dee is breathing. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper to her. “I love you.”

Dick Face glances back at me on the porch, snorts. “You’re losing it. You’re gonna keel over on the sidewalk.”

“Stop,” I say. I’m barefoot, instantly freezing, every muscle trying to tense against the cold.

Only a few leaves still cling to the branches of our maple tree. Last night’s storm has laid our yard—the whole neighborhood—bare: scrawny twigs no longer hidden by fluff and color, the brown vine wrenched from above our porch and dangling like a carcass. Everything is abruptly exposed.

“Actually,” Dick Face says, thinking, “you can help me out. Take me there. Little daddy-daughter date. Hop in. I’ll drive.” There’s a very red, very low sports car—I don’t know what kind—parked crookedly at the curb, facing against traffic. No doubt stolen.

I manage to get in. We screech into motion—I am flung back against the seat, my body just a loose sack of collateral damage. Off we go, my father and I, to finally kill the demon hunter.

CHAPTER 39

The sky is lush, violent. The sunset seems premature and disruptive, even this far into the season. I recite directions to Dick Face as he swings the wheel with visible relish. I can almost feel the amped-up strength radiating off him. I recognize it. I felt stronger than I had any right to be, too, recently. It isn’t possible to recall the sensation of it. You can’t remember what it’s like to feel well while you’re sick; they are opposing forces. I am oddly grateful, for a moment, that I got to feel that wellness, though, even if briefly. Even if under terrible circumstances.

Dick Face slams the car into park a block away from Joel’s house. The engine growls to itself until he shuts it up with a nonchalant push of the ignition button. “Watch and learn,” he tells me, over his shoulder. He’s already out of the car, on the sidewalk, rolling his shoulders like he’s going into the boxing ring. I claw at the door, unable to find the handle for a slippery moment. Then I do, and I spill out and go down on my hands and knees in the sodden lawn—grass pricking my baby-bird skin, my bones crying out their suffering.

How will he do it? Does he even know? Or will he draw inspiration from the moment?

He begins to hum. A warm, inviting sound, a sweet melody. He turns in a slow circle, smiling pleasantly. The hum evolves into a song, a phrase. “Come on out, now, everyone,” he sings. “Come on out now, everyone, and join the dance. . . .” It’s catchy—the chorus of a vaguely familiar rock song. Probably his own. He raises his voice and now doors are opening all down the street. People come out of their houses, onto porches, down onto the grass. They don’t follow the lines of their front paths or the sidewalk. One middle-aged man is in nothing but baggy boxer shorts and socks, hairy belly on display. Two teenaged girls trail after their mother, who is holding a calendar in one hand, a pen in the other. Everyone is smiling, everyone looks a little bit blissed out, unreachable. They don’t seem to feel the cold, the wind that’s clicking together the smallest branches of the trees that line the sidewalk.

Dick Face revolves toward me. I have gotten to my feet again, am staggering toward him. He winks and then he’s walking to Joel’s house, his tiny army of blank-eyed followers filing after him. I feel the pull of his song, too. I feel my body’s response to it, the willingness of my muscles to nudge me after it.

Don’t be there, I pray. Don’t be there. You went out. You went to the grocery store. Please don’t be home.

But he is home. I know when we are three-quarters of the way there. I can hear the cello through Dick Face’s song. The baritone roll and hurry of a triumphant, virtuosic piece with flying runs, a hundred notes pressed into them, muted to something milder by the walls and closed windows. He sounds happy. I feel, arrogantly, that it is because of me.

All of this is because of me.