Page 88 of Succubus

“I won’t let it happen again,” I say. “I won’t let myself . . . weaken.” I will take a night off. And then tomorrow, I will be resolved, I won’t hesitate. Otherwise he’s right—I should just let him do it. I should end this, one way or another.

There’s a sharp twinge in my chest.

Al blinks at me, his head tilted. A sweet velociraptor in an extremely body-positive shirt and unexpectedly well-paired fringed jacket. “No. It is good that you can weaken,” he says simply.

I stare at him.

He stares thoughtfully back. “This is the thing that makes you so delightful, Tempest Dunlap.”

“Excuse me?” I am taken aback by that word—delightful. Though maybe I shouldn’t be taken aback by any of the words Al chooses.

“Your father’s children always give in to their blight,” he explains. “It commands them. And then it grows and it makes them more like him, it makes them not as . . . nice. But you. You wouldn’t feed it. Carol Dunlap told me. You are incredible. Incredible.” He puts a hand on my arm, seems unsure what to do once it’s there, taps his fingers on my sweater. “The strength to be weak. The hardest thing. Most of your siblings will never experience it—your father only cares for himself—but you feel for the child, for the sister, for the mother. These are the reasons.”

I’m not exactly sure what he means by “the reasons.” Or maybe, on second thought, I am.

“If you had fed the blight in you, you would be extremely dangerous to others. But you didn’t, you chose goodness instead. I want you to choose goodness, Tempest Dunlap. I was summoned to save something good! That’s very rare. I don’t think you would know that it’s rare. It is! But now . . .” His brow crinkles extravagantly. “It’s all in a knot, because of the angel. You poor human. The problem is love.” He lifts an expressive elbow. “He must be extinguished! Although not by you!” He shakes his head several times. “When we first met, I didn’t understand you as well as I do now.” Which was all of three days ago. He leans closer. “I should not, after all, let you do it. The can’t-ness—that’s the best part of you. You must let me extinguish him, very quickly. Maybe tomorrow or the next day?”

I can’t answer.

He says, “Or a different idea?”

I wait.

“Never see him again. We might be able to do that one. That one might be even better.”

My brain produces a quick, brutally efficient montage:

Joel, leaning forward to whisper to Ella over the chessboard: Don’t tell my rook, but I think he might be able to get you if you go there. . . .

Joel, showing Ella the “fancy” way to cut a sandwich, Ella up on her tiptoes beside him, practically hanging on to his arm.

Joel, drawing his bow across the strings, glancing up at me and smiling as Ella hits a squeaky, off-pitch note.

Joel, in the parking lot, asking me to come back inside and have just one little coconut.

My brain also improvises a few things that haven’t actually happened: Joel, kissing me tenderly, cradling my face in his hands. Joel, in a suit—are we getting married? Give me a friggin’ break! I hate myself.

I nod slowly. Al regards me with great patience, but after a while, when it becomes clear I have nothing more to say, he hurries off toward the cake table. I am still standing in the same spot when I hear his exclamations: “What do you call this? Does it taste like the sunshine falling through silk to you? Do you know silk, male child? What about you, Ella? Have you touched a skein of silk before?”

“We should probably go,” I mutter, mostly to myself. I don’t think I can do this. The stifled, skittery feeling just under my skin is intensifying. I want to run. I want to tear through the trees and leap over logs until the only thing I can hear is the raging of my heart in my ears.

The problem is love.

The feeling I had, the strength seeping out of me, the pain rushing in to fill the gaps it had left. I allowed myself to admit, to myself and to Joel, that I might feel more than just hatred for him, and it immediately put me in danger.

“T!” says Ruth, arriving very late as always. “What did you do with your hair? I love it!”

“Who among you possesses a phone?” Al is asking the children. He says the word like it’s foreign, a term for a sacred ritual, maybe. “If anyone has one of these I would truly love to witness some of the tiny animals inside of it.”

Mom. She showed him cat videos. He is addicted to cat videos.

“No screens, Al!” I yell, hurrying toward the cake table. “It’s a no-screens group!”

We are so out of here.

CHAPTER 28

I do push-ups for a while in my bedroom at the end of another day in which I have again failed to extinguish Joel (as Al would say), to come any closer to figuring out anything important, and also to finally call the pediatric dentist like my to-do list has been reminding me for a solid two months now.