Page 52 of Succubus

I don’t know how to do a come-hither look. I don’t own sexy clothes, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have brought them with me to our hideout hotel. I only have one bra.

I can’t believe it’s all come to this. I’ll have to actually use the terrible ability that I’ve been running from my whole life. I’ll have to lean into it, to own it.

Which he will of course be prepared for. Maybe not there; he won’t expect me in his exam room. But he will in general expect me to try to seduce him. I’m a succubus. This is exactly what he expects.

So how the hell will it work?

I have to stop him. I don’t know who else is out there. How many other Grubs. How many kids my horrible father has sired with women he doesn’t deign to remember. Some of them, maybe most, are despicable like him. But some of them must just be people—just bewildered, lonely people with no instruction manual for life with a dark curse and a hunter on their trail.

I’m the only one with access to that hunter.

My phone buzzes by the sink and I snatch it up. He’s written back!

Tell me where your father is and maybe I will let you live.

Generous, I write, my heart pounding like I’m being chased. Maybe I am being chased.

You don’t want to die and leave Ella, do you?

Is this him backing out of his threat to kill me? What am I supposed to do?

What would a seasoned spy do? Or maybe a hostage negotiator. That one excessively disheveled and recently divorced guy from every TV show who always knows the exact psychology of the criminal mastermind.

I write: I don’t know where my father is.

I may be disheveled but I am not that guy.

You have three days, he writes.

Fucking psychopath, I reply. It autocorrects to ducking but I catch it before sending. Phew. That would’ve been embarrassing.

I don’t need three days, I think at him. You’ll be dead by tomorrow night. And I won’t shave my armpits. No fucking way.

CHAPTER 17

My appointment to kill Joel isn’t for another five hours, and I am attempting to stake out my own house. It has occurred to me that I should be around in case I get a demon delivery.

I’ve left my family arguing over whether to attempt Giraffe River in conjoined tubes, Dee looking faintly tortured but resolute, Ella insisting she will almost certainly fall in and it might be too deep.

I drive slowly around the block a few times, then park. Everything looks the same, except more beautiful; every maple tree is a declaration, oranges and reds triumphant. Ours is drag queen flamboyant, shedding neon leaves like feathers from a boa. The porch vine drifts a little in a breeze, waving hello. Or maybe warning me off. Maybe screaming in a tiny viney voice: He’s in here! He’s waiting for you in your bedroom closet! He has a machete! Run!

I shiver. I wish I had binoculars. Do they sell those at Walgreens? Maybe not. Definitely Home Depot. But that’s twelve minutes away, and I’m already here, and what if I miss the demon in the twenty-four minutes of travel time plus, let’s say, eight minutes of shopping time? I squint at the house. It looks expressionlessly back at me.

I text Joel: You killed a child. A good, innocent boy. He wasn’t an abomination. He was a human with a curse. You are wrong. You don’t know anything. And his blood is on your hands.

He doesn’t respond.

I throw my phone down on the passenger seat. I need to stop.

I pick it up again. My thumbs hover.

Enough, T. Just stop.

I hate you, I write.

His hand, reaching toward mine on the tabletop. The way he looked at me, his mouth that wanted to taste me. He seemed so genuinely interested; he seemed to feel the same way I did. Could that have been real?

God.