Page 48 of Succubus

“Thanks. Cool.”

“Shave your armpits, okay, baby?”

“Seriously?”

She’s serious. “You have the advantage here,” she murmurs. “The woman always does.”

Did you, with my father? I think a little meanly. But no, no one has ever had the advantage with him.

“Joel has been trying to track me down for two years.” I sit on one of the beds, my spine a tangle of mud and thorns. Time for some Advil, which I always have in my purse. I think I’m just about done with this day.

She snorts. “Well, he’s bad at tracking people down, then.”

“I need to sleep,” I say.

But later, in the dark, I’m still awake, staring up at the low, lumpy ceiling that I can’t quite see. Mom is snoring faintly.

“You’ll go over there tomorrow,” I whisper to myself. “You’ll do the thing Dick Face said and he’ll get sick and die.” I ignore the twist in my stomach as I toss off these words, this boomerang of a plan that can curve in flight and come right back at me. I think of Grub. The last time I saw him, his furry eyebrows. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to really see him again, the moving, breathing aliveness of him. Panic clogs my lungs. He’s already fading. He’s already being pressed flat by the heavy laminator of memory, his colors spreading, poorly preserved, his face no longer quite real.

CHAPTER 16

How’s the murdering working with your doctor oath? I text Joel, poolside. Really well? Cool. Thought so.

He doesn’t respond.

Ella stands, her brow furrowed, at the edge of the electric-blue water. She’s reluctantly wearing the slightly too-large giraffe-themed swimsuit Dee bought in one of the many gift shops (since we forgot to bring one). Small children crowd the shallow pool, some in inflatable vests with Disney characters on them, others sporting disturbingly heavy-looking swim diapers. It is apparently a school break—teachers’ conferences, maybe?—so this is the worst possible weekday timing.

I didn’t even know he was my brother until the other day. I didn’t get to tell him.

He doesn’t respond.

Because you killed him.

Nothing.

I hate you.

He’s never going to respond. He’s probably on his way over to our house.

I shiver in the clogged, germy air.

I hate you.

He’s probably outside the brown house right now, waiting for me.

A red-striped waterslide, like a massive mutated candy cane, feeds into the far side of the pool, and boys explode out of its mouth in quick succession, shrieking. Ella cringes and takes a step back. She is only ankle deep.

No, he probably isn’t at our house. And even if he is, would he really kill me in front of my family? That idea is seeming less and less likely to me. It was stupid to come here, but when I suggested to Dee that we probably don’t have to stay, she told me she paid for two nights so we’re doing them. Now she’s hunched over on a work call, covering her free ear with her hand. There’s some emergency with her biggest client.

“Go ahead, bunny. In you go!” Mom is nudging Ella while peering over her sunglasses at a few dads in tank tops. She is wearing a leopard-print one-piece that is barely a complete piece of anything—between the plunging neckline that nearly reaches her navel and the scraps of fabric straining to cover her extravagant breasts.

Adam was wonderful, I write. I never wanted to hurt him. I didn’t know it was hurting him. I thought it was different that time.

I realized in the car on the way home, as soon as I was calm enough to think: It must run in the family. Like my own power. The healing power, the angel thing—Adam must’ve had some of it, too. Maybe a lot less, but enough to keep him alive. It was never his blindness. It was his bloodline. It was his genetic proximity to Joel.

I’m not the monster, I write. You are. I never wanted to hurt anyone.

Maybe he has blocked my number. Would it tell me if he had?