Page 83 of Succubus

“After Adam died. I remembered what my grandmother had said. My cousin did this oral history project, too. Recorded her talking about being a healer, a guardian. I tracked that down. Listened to the whole thing. She had been dead for years then. If she had been alive . . .” His words dissolve into bitterness for a moment, maybe loneliness, too, and I imagine him digging through the recording, desperate for answers, as alone in his strange, impossible power as I was in my own. As I still am. I don’t want to think this way. It feels slippery, dangerous.

He manages to continue, his voice thick. “She’d predicted the healing. So maybe she was right about the rest.”

“When did the healing start?”

“In med school, but it wasn’t clear. Just felt like I was lucky. Then, after he died—that patient—it got stronger. I started saving people who were really badly off, people who should’ve died.”

“And then?”

“And then Adam.”

I take a breath. I almost can’t ask the next question, knowing that he will tell me the truth. I still don’t want to know, after all this time. But I ask anyway. “What happened to him?”

“He was in a coma,” says Joel. “I tried to heal him.” He has regained control of himself through some painful internal process, and he speaks without inflection, as though measuring out just enough breath for each word. “I woke him up, but his mind was compromised. Broken.”

I resist the sudden childish urge to cover my ears. I asked. Now I have to listen to the answer.

“He couldn’t focus, couldn’t remember things, couldn’t do his work. He seemed to get worse and worse. I kept trying to heal him; it was like there was this block. Like a poison I couldn’t drain.”

No, I think. No. Although of course I know it’s true. Of course I’ve always known.

“It was . . . sapping me. I wasn’t doing as well with other patients.” He takes a precise breath, his face rigid with the effort of containing himself, of concealing his emotion.

“I asked him about everyone he’d interacted with, trying to figure it out. His memory was getting worse, but he told me about you—this woman he’d met at a concert, who he’d . . . he’d liked. A beautiful voice, he said. A beautiful speaking voice.” His voice finally breaks as he says this. “I should’ve known. It is beautiful. Even when you’re just talking.”

The air stutters in my lungs.

I killed him. I killed Adam. This whole time, it was always the truth. It had always happened that way.

I knew.

My hair had thickened, my hands had felt strong and limber. He had been in a coma.

Of course I knew.

“I didn’t want to know,” he continues, speaking quietly, helplessly now. “I think that was it. I didn’t want to think that about you.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” I stroke the back of his neck. This is part of it, the touching, I tell myself. It’s part of my plan. My hand is shaking.

He shudders. “It’s going to be his yahrzeit,” he says. “The anniversary of his death. This week.” His voice lowers. “And I’m sitting here with you. The woman who destroyed him.” His shoulders cave in.

“I’m sorry!” I gasp before I can stop myself. “Joel, I’m so sorry.”

“Why would you be sorry?” His tone is acid.

“You can believe me,” I say. “I’m not lying.”

“I don’t want to believe you.” His voice gets suddenly louder, threaded through with rage. And then it trembles. “I do want to believe you. I’m not—I’m not sure if I want to believe you. She told me we are the only ones left. She was right about me even before I knew.” His voice pulls tighter as he talks, the words spinning like beads on a string. “We have to eradicate— There’s evil in the world. That’s the whole point of this gift.”

“I know,” I say. “And if you killed those people, and they weren’t really evil . . .”

“Then I’m just a killer,” he finishes for me.

“Some of them are evil,” I say. “My father. I think he is.”

“I don’t know what he is, exactly,” he says. “I don’t understand how it all works.”

“Me, either,” I say.