Page 5 of Succubus

I sigh. “Come on, kid. Take care of yourself.”

“For fucking what?” he says without vitriol. I know he likes being babied. He’s only a baby, after all. Sixteen years old. Zombie-walking through school, locking himself in the basement the rest of the time. Grub calls himself one of the Nazgûl, Tolkien’s undead riders who sow terror and pain wherever they go, because his DP is that he causes everyone he cares about to become depressed. His mom developed severe postpartum depression after his birth, and he ended up a ward of the state until age five, when she reclaimed him. She’s been struggling ever since, so he tries his best to avoid her. We’ve been friends since he was ten, though only through our phones.

“For me,” I say. “For when we figure out how to break the curse.”

“On it,” he says, knee-jerk sarcastic. He is on it. “Why do you want to know about healing? Did you deep dive on that Greek myths thread I sent you?”

“I heard about a doctor around here who’s healing people who were supposed to die.”

I can almost hear the lighter sparking in his brain. He brightens. “Probably just hyperbole.”

“Probably. But I’m trying to Sherlock a little myself.” His term.

“Nice.” He gives a quick, rare smile, showing charmingly crooked teeth. And then, “The healing thing could be an angel.”

“Did you just say ‘an angel’?”

“Yeah. I read something somewhere. Can’t fucking remember because it was at like four AM like three years ago.” He’s annoyed at himself anyway. “Some super old guy was talking about it, and one of the pagans wrote it down.” He calls all the New Age, Wicca, astrology people “pagans.” As far as we can tell, none of them actually have any magic.

“He said these soldiers in his unit or whatever were healed by this angel. I mean, who knows what they’re really called, people say angel for everything. But this one nurse had some kind of magic touch, and even the ones who were supposed to die got better—like, someone’s brain was coming out of their skull.” He smirks at this thought. “But it couldn’t have been, like, a lot of their brain. Like, if you lost your whole face or your intestines were physically out of your body with your shit coming out of them because they ripped—”

“Thanks, Grub.” I cut him off. There are a lot of things on the internet. Every other person has been touched by either an angel or a pedophile.

He shrugs. No problem.

I can’t help adding, “But I guess a lot of people wish healing stuff was real.”

He shrugs again. “Yeah. The story was just, like, more specific than you’d think. Not the usual religious stuff or whatever. No God in it.”

“If you thought it might be real, why didn’t you say something?” I ask. “If it was, it’d be the only good power we’ve heard of.”

A third shrug, this time just one bony shoulder, a lazy poke at the air. Shrugging is this kid’s native language. “I didn’t believe in it. You gotta track this doctor down.”

I blanch. “I mean, I don’t actually know who it is.”

“You just said you’re gonna Sherlock more. You literally just said that.” His eyes narrow. “Also, are you lying?”

I’m a bad liar. I’m bad at all forms of normal manipulation. I either kill you or I’m very unimposing to be around.

“I have to go, Grub. Dee’s working late and my mom’s . . . date is coming over any minute.”

I glance at the time, and at that moment Mom calls, “Barry is here!” in the singsong, half-an-octave-higher voice she switches into the second a man is nearby. Especially a man she’s sleeping with. Which is basically every man her age she meets and a few inappropriately younger ones.

“Damn it.”

“Is it the plumber?” Grub wants to know. “That dude was lit—with the truck that had the giant picture of the toilet on the side?”

“I shouldn’t have told you anything,” I say. “Love you.”

“Hey, wait! Lorelei! Be careful when you go out. I told you—”

“I know, I know. The banker.” An evil banker. (I can’t help thinking of Ella’s vaguely socialist folktales-from-around-theworld podcast.) Grub’s been obsessed with this news story about a private equity gazillionaire who died a few months ago. He’s convinced the guy was Dpow and got killed by the “demon hunter” he’s been steadily inventing over the course of his ongoing “investigation” into the “murders” of various high-profile potential fellow cursees. I try to discourage this type of thinking, since it’s obviously bad for him.

“He was right in your area.”

“The city is over an hour away, Grub.”

“People were like ‘I felt like I would do anything he asked me to.’ Like he was hypnotizing them. Creepy shit. Our kind of shit.”