Page 59 of Succubus

She says: “Didn’t click? Usually patients love him!”

“No, no,” I say numbly. “We, um, clicked.”

And then I think I laugh.

Back in the car, I remember to fold the knife. I try to think things through. It’s very hard to think at all.

My vagina is stunned and swollen, disturbingly pleased with itself, disconcertingly hungry for more. I can still feel his hands on me, the urgent pressure of his touch. The curling hair on his chest and stomach, the warmth of his skin, the way he tasted. I shudder, grit my teeth, snarl at myself.

Adam didn’t react until the fifth time we slept together. He must’ve gotten a little weaker each time, more permeable, more at risk. Even with all my ill intent, Joel was too strong. This time. But I wonder if I have weakened him, too.

I call Dee as soon as I get reception again, which is a block from the office building. “Let’s go home.”

“Yeah, I’m definitely done,” she says, sounding like she’s at her wits’ end. And then, “Did something happen?”

“I got things under control.” I think of how his voice changed, how afraid he was to touch me. He doesn’t want to kill me. He thinks he should. But he doesn’t want to. I am picturing the way he looked at me, at his dining table, when his gaze confessed to me against his will. He’d told me he couldn’t date me and I could tell he wished he could. I could tell there was more to the story.

“T, what are you talking about?”

“I’ll meet you at home,” I say.

CHAPTER 19

Are you still alive? I text Joel.

He doesn’t respond.

Maybe he isn’t.

Or maybe he’s slowing down, maybe he’s declining.

“When are we going to see Mr. Button and Joel?” Ella whines, being psychic at me in the kitchen. No, not really, she’s already asked about fifty times. But I startle anyway.

“Sorry, baby. He’s pretty busy these days.”

It’s good to be home, making my veggie quesadillas, which Ella likes, even though typically she considers avocado “too slimy.”

“He told you that?”

Why is she so suspicious? Are little kids supposed to be this naturally distrustful? Once Joel is dead, I need to read another parenting book, maybe that one everyone is talking about called Tribal Baby. Who has time to read about parenting while parenting?

“Yes,” I lie.

Once Joel is dead.

I think of his hand on the table in the restaurant, the way he bent reflexively toward me. We would’ve kissed. How desperately I wanted that kiss.

And I’d gotten it.

No. I’d gotten something very different. A corrupted, corrosive thing.

But still—his face in my hair, at the end, his breath in my ear, the confused, delirious moment when neither of us moved. There had been an echo in it, a tint of our former connection. Or maybe not.

“Why is he so busy?” Ella asks.

“I guess he has a lot of doctor work,” I say, sounding like the bad actor I am, someone who got cast as a tree in the only play I ever auditioned for. (Second grade, but even so.)

She squints. “Too busy for us?”