Page 30 of Succubus

He thinks the hunter can kill him.

“Crap,” I say to myself. And then, “Why don’t you just brainwash someone and send them— ”

“Doesn’t work like that! Smart thinking, though! Very smart. But I gotta be close. I gotta be right here, so close. . . .” He leans forward like he’s going to touch his nose to mine. I reel back.

He laughs like I’m funny, then looks thoughtful. “There’s one other thing I could try. Should summon it. Shoulda summoned it already! But you don’t mess around with that shit, y’know?”

I do not. I know nothing about that shit.

“G’night,” he says before I can ask what he means, if I’m even going to ask. I’m not sure yet.

“Crap,” I say again. He manages to get us inside, and I bring him up to the penthouse. He types the wrong code into the keypad twice before he gets it right. I maneuver him to the couch, a sprawling leopard-print atrocity that curves around into a half moon. There are giant windows that probably overlook the ocean—it’s too dark to tell—empty pizza boxes piled on the floor. It smells like booze and garbage.

I straighten, exhausted. “I’m going.”

He lifts a fluttering hand in farewell.

I think of something. “One more thing.”

He groans.

I have to, though. I have a feeling I need to ask everything right now, just in case.

“Do you know if there’s any way to break it? To break the curse? Is there any way for me to be . . . a regular person?”

My mind leaps to Joel: my hands on his face, pulling him toward me. The sweetness in his eyes. Please, God, I am praying. Please. Let me touch him.

My next thought, which comes a little guiltily, is of Grub. I should’ve thought of him first.

Dick Face is silent. I think he might be considering, but then he snuffles loudly, and I realize he has instead fallen asleep for a second.

He laughs thickly, and I can already feel the sharp ache of an old, desperate sadness in the hollow of my stomach when he says, “Of course not! Didn’t I tell you her whole thing? A bass! She was a bass.” He gestures in my face, like, Don’t be an idiot. “It’s eternal. Unbreakable! That’s some solid shit!”

I leave, my head strobing. I stand in the lobby for a long time, trying to make myself check my email, find the address of the motel. I’m abruptly starving, woozy. I’m parched, my throat cardboard. No one ever brought me any water at that damn bar.

* * *

The next morning, when I show up at his building, Dick Face doesn’t answer the bell.

I stand in the lobby for only a few minutes before a delivery person lets me in. I go up to the penthouse and the door is wide open.

A serpent swallows my heart, works the still-beating organ through the sickening curve of its throat.

I am too afraid to step inside.

CHAPTER 10

I almost feel something gathering in the shadows of a hallway deeper into the apartment. Someone. Waiting there. Waiting for me. The demon hunter.

Is he following me?

The skin on my palms is peppered with tiny needles; I have to pee with sudden ferocity.

It isn’t likely, I tell myself after a stock-still while. I am waiting like a mouse in a field of short grass.

It’s very unlikely.

How the hell do I know how likely or unlikely it is?