Page 12 of Succubus

“I know I was a dick to him so he’d hate me.” His voice is muffled. “But I just wished for a second . . .” He doesn’t finish the thought.

I see his shoulders shudder. Crap.

“Like, what did I even think?” he mutters. “That he was gonna like me anyway? What a joke.”

“Grub,” I say. “Of course you want him to want to be your friend. You’re human.”

“Am I?” He snuffles, wipes his nose swiftly on his baggy sleeve, turns back toward me, blinking and raw. “Are we, Lorelei?”

“Yes,” I say with conviction. “Kid, I’m really sorry.” I flinch. He hates pity, but it just snuck out.

He scowls. “I don’t know. Maybe Dick Face and my dad were carriers of some alien virus.” Dick Face is the name Dee cleverly invented for my father when she was twelve. Grub’s biological father was a one-night stand his mom either can’t or won’t remember.

He rubs his eye with the same sleeve he wiped his nose on, exactly as I tell Ella not to. But no one is parenting Grub. I doubt he has any tissues nearby. “I still have some alerts for his band,” he mumbles. “Your dad’s. No one talks about them anymore.”

After Adam, I looked for my father again, trying to mine clues from the vastness of the internet before giving up. I wonder how many decades it will take Grub to give up, too. No, I want to believe in Grub’s persistence, in the possibility of answers floating somewhere in that colossal dark.

“Alien virus is a decent theory,” I say, glad to distract him from Nate. “Add it to the list.”

He gives a sloppy salute.

“What do we have now?” I start ticking them off: “Mutant baby, trauma, environmental contaminant— ”

“Higher purpose,” he adds.

“I thought that was the same as X-Men? We’ll save the world, if all the Dows work together on some master plan.”

“We need a leader,” he says.

“You!”

There’s that crooked smile. “I am the Lord of the Dow.” He does a Gandalfy voice and then: “Too skinny. Need to bulk up first.”

“Maybe just wash your hair.”

He shrugs, shoves it back from his forehead, revealing a constellation of pimples, and gets back on track: “What if it’s just, I don’t know, two abilities? Two basic types.”

“Good and evil,” I finish for him. I know which one we’re supposed to be. “We’re not bad, though, Grub. We’re just people.”

“When are you going to try to see the doctor?”

For a disoriented second, I think Grub is saying I look like I’m sick, my weakness is visible. But then I realize with a nauseous squeeze he means Joel.

“It’s worth looking into,” he continues. “What if he knows something? What if he’s the key?”

“Maybe he’s just good at his job.” My guilt throbs, almost obscene. Ella and I have been to Joel’s house three times now. The last time, he’d gotten gluten-free bread because of my anti-inflammatory diet (which is realistically no match for the effects of denying my curse) and her supposed sensitivity (which might in fact be anxiety-induced stomach pain). She brought her violin; we chatted about gardening, and Ella promised in a fit of generosity to give Joel the leftover daffodil bulbs from our planting-for-spring project.

I say, “The angel thing is pretty weak.”

“Lorelei! What is your problem? Do I need to come out there and do this myself?” He glares at the screen.

“Yes, you do.” I smile at him, rebalancing.

I know he won’t. He rolls his eyes, grumbles, “After we get fixed.” It’s hard for Grub to believe that he might not accidentally harm someone he cares about. “First I gotta track your dumb dad down.”

“Okay, go for it.”

Grub relaxes a little. He likes to have a plan. “Wanna watch the rest?”