Page 39 of Succubus

CHAPTER 13

I’m wavering a little. It’s 11:30 AM and I’m reading to Ella on the couch. She’s snuggled into me, her hair knotted and slightly musky, curling against my neck. Her fingers play absentmindedly with the hair on my arm. She needs a bath—I should make sure to do that. Tomorrow, probably. But what if I’m not here tomorrow? What if I don’t come home?

“Titi?” Ella asks when my voice trails off for too long.

“Yes?”

“I was just thinking. Maybe we should try my skateboard again.”

(Someone was skateboarding a few pages back in the book we’re reading.)

I nod automatically. I bought her the skateboard for her birthday, to encourage bravery. She tried it once, fell, and that was the end of that.

“Remember I got that big scrape? And it bled?” She twists up her face at the awful memory.

“I remember.”

“Maybe I can try again anyway, though.” She looks at me, searching my face for the right reaction.

“I love that idea,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Let’s do it.”

“Yeah.” She nestles in closer. “Okay, now read more.”

How exactly am I planning to kill this potentially mythical being? What if he is not even remotely human? Why am I assuming he is?

Because he’s on the internet, writing messages. Or maybe that’s, like, a minion of his. He could be a fire-breathing dragon for all I know.

No. He is probably at least humanoid.

Grub thought the hunter might be one of us. Someone with a DP. He was right so much more often than I gave him credit for. Right in all the worst ways. But why would another Dow want to kill us? Self-hatred? Denial? A megalomaniacal plan to be the only one in the world with powers?

I’ve been thinking about all the other victims. As I read aloud the insipid adventures of The Pretzel Princess, I am cataloging deaths. The ones Grub was keeping track of. I have been trying to remember all the details. What did he say about the grad student in Brooklyn? That he jumped off a bridge. But what about the makeup entrepreneur? Did he say how she died? Is there a pattern?

None of the deaths seemed suspicious. It must be mind control. Like Dick Face.

The very real possibility that I am signing up to die hits me with a lung-flattening thunk. I am inwardly knocked off my feet.

I will need to act very quickly.

How am I supposed to have sex with the demon hunter at an old-fashioned speakeasy?

I won’t need to, I tell myself. I will just need a kiss, if I do what Dick Face said. Which is what exactly?

I need to want him to die. I need to want to use my power against him.

And I know I can do that.

That I am completely certain of.

* * *

Maybe it isn’t really the hunter, I think at 1:15, helping Ella practice violin. Maybe it’s actually a coincidence. A series of coincidences.

Right, my mind says, darkly sarcastic. Like the boys you kissed all dying.

That’s what Dee thinks. That’s what any reasonable person has to think. Because the only other explanation is literal magic.

But I haven’t believed in coincidences like that for a long time.