Page 44 of Succubus

“I can’t come home! I can’t come home.”

“T, take a breath! What are you talking about?”

“How was I this wrong? How did I not know?”

“What happened?”

“I thought he— ” I am struggling to articulate anything.

My brain feels broken. “I thought he was good. I thought he was . . . was at least just a person!”

“Who? Did someone hurt you? Who were you with? I thought it was Alice!”

“No, no, I lied. I’m a liar. Always have to lie.”

“Did a man hurt you?” Her voice tightens. “Do I need to call the police?”

I laugh hysterically, more a frantic bark. “The police! What the fuck would they do? No, he didn’t hurt me. Yet. He’s going to. Going to try!”

“Whoa. Who is going to try?”

“Joel!”

“Joel?” She sounds incredulous. “T! Do you have any water you can drink? Are you driving right now? I’m worried about you!”

I glance down. My water bottle is there in the cup holder. I shake it—it’s empty. “Fuck,” I mumble. And then there’s a beep and my phone has powered down. I screech, scrabbling for the charge cord. Nothing can work. Nothing can be even a little bit okay. The phone shimmies out of my grasp, dives into the crack between my seat and the center console.

I scream at the top of my lungs.

I am screaming and crying and stuck in traffic entering the Holland Tunnel and nothing will ever be okay again.

And then eventually, because time—that relentless fucker—never takes a break even for a second, I’m on the turnpike doing ninety and my throat hurts and I can’t scream anymore. My brain has churned itself in a thousand circles and now is stumbling to its knees.

I am realizing that maybe I can’t tell Dee the truth.

When I wasn’t sure if I would make it, when I didn’t know what the point was, telling Dee the truth saved me. But for all her generous listening and sisterly compassion, she didn’t believe me. And if I tell her that Joel is a killer, that he is a murderous mythical hunter of my kind, what will she hear? What does that sound like to someone who doesn’t believe in terrible hereditary curses?

There has to be a line, even for Dee. A line that, when crossed, suggests that the person who has crossed it should no longer be in charge of your child’s upbringing.

If I make it out of this alive, I need to think about Ella. About what I’ve built.

“Think,” I whisper to myself, slapping the steering wheel. “Think!”

Smokestacks in the sprawling postapocalyptic industrial complexes on either side of the highway whiz by in a blur of toxic fumes. Small bursts of open flame make little streaks in my peripheral vision, belches from the belly of hell.

I was right, in what I shouted on the phone to Dee. Even though Joel won’t hurt my family—will he hurt my family?—I can’t go home. I can’t let him hunt me down, whatever that looks like, in front of Ella.

I’ll just stop in to get some clothes and tell Dee . . . something. That I’m hitting a rough patch with my depression and need to take some mental health days? Shit. I’ve already said too much. Now I need to backpedal.

My exit flashes up on the right. I take it like a stunt driver. There’s a sound from behind me like automatic gunfire, but clunkier, and I yelp. Ella’s long-forgotten bucket of chalk is shooting its contents against the door. I am under attack from inside my own car, from inside my own life.

Thank God Ella is asleep when I get home. Mom is out. Dee is agitated. She hugs me and I think I will cry all over again, but then, surprisingly, I don’t. I seem to have run out of tears.

“I need to leave. Just for a little,” I say. And then I launch into the story I composed in the car: I saw Joel, I found out he’d lied to me about being single. He’s still in a relationship. He swore he’s breaking it off. I’d finally felt like I’d found my perfect man, I was considering breaking my vow for him, and of course it was all for nothing.

Lying is easier than it should be. It isn’t just that I know Dee can’t possibly process the horrible truth. As I speak, I understand that I am ashamed. I am bitterly ashamed of my own foolishness. Because, of course, there’s some truth mixed into what I’m telling her. The agony of falling in love with Joel and never being able to have him. That is real. Was real. I truly felt that way for a man who wants to kill me. A man who killed my only ally, my baby brother.

“I’ll take off from work,” Dee says. “We can all go away for a little. We’ll just get on a plane. Get some space.”