Page 89 of Succubus

I text Joel: It wasn’t just me. You were a lie too.

When he doesn’t respond, I continue: It’s the angel blood or whatever. You have an effect on people like me. It’s not even my fault.

The angel blood, however diluted in his veins, is what saved Adam at first. I know that now. Maybe it’s also what drew me to him.

I’m breathing faster as quick new words escape my fingers. I wonder if any of it was ever real with you.

What do I want from him now? I can’t let myself think too thoroughly about it.

He’s typing. It will always be your fault, he writes, and for some reason I’m very slightly happy. Just because he’s responding.

I cried over you, I write, my fingers skidding.

He writes, You expect me to believe you? This is just part of it, isn’t it? This is part of what you do.

I type, I loved you. Then I erase it, letter by letter, replacing it with nothing, with the blinking cursor on the white of the line.

You will always be a monster, he writes.

I flex my toes, stamp my feet. My body is leaning forward, aggressively awake, turned on, thrumming, confused, on the edge of a sea of endless sadness, the pull of its tide sucking at my feet.

What do I do now? I write, but this time it’s to Grub.

The screen stares back at me, infinite and tiny and alien, holding its breath.

You used to be here, I type.

Where are you now?

The floor beneath me feels fragile. Like it will splinter and I’ll fall into emptiness. But maybe that’s just the feeling of being alive.

I jump up, pull on my socks. I run to campus, run around the empty football stadium under the blare of the lights, the plastic ground spongy, childishly soft underfoot. The moon looks slick and forgotten up there on its own, a peeled grape; the silver bleachers sit up very straight in their businesslike stacks. There is an industrial whirring of some giant hidden fan, and the sound seems to arch over the place like a dome, silencing the rest of the world. Who did they leave the lights on for? Me?

Around and around and around I go, thinking about the things Al said to me. How maybe Grub was right—we might have been the nicest ones. We tried the hardest. We starved our DPs. We starved the curse so we could love. Not that we realized we were doing that, really.

I have already cornered Al to ask him what else he knows about Dick Face, about my siblings. But there wasn’t anything more, or at least, he didn’t express anything more in a way I could understand.

I wonder if Grub would’ve made it to college, if he’d survived. If he’d never met Joel. I wonder if we ever would’ve found some kind of a cure. Probably not. How do you cure a curse from an immortal being, put on a philandering, hypnotic rock star? I have to find a way to talk to Dick Face again.

I’m not a detective, though. I never was.

James, I think.

I run by Joel’s house. I know his Japanese maple has senesced by now into a vicious, impossible shade of red, but it looks black as any other tree in the dark.

I loop back around. I won’t let myself go in, but I’ll run by one more time. I hear him playing, faint but unmissable, and slow down. The cello’s thick, mournful voice sings through the walls of the house, catches me. Do his neighbors appreciate how lucky they are?

And then I recognize the melody. Adele. The song I sang for him, the song I mocked him with, later. But he’s added to it—the music travels to a different place, a river gathering up tributaries as it goes, moving more forcefully. I realize I am standing on his front walk. My body has carried me too close to the familiar house, and now I’m trembling there, dangling like a fish on the line of this music. Long, searing, tender bow strokes: I feel them as though they are his hand on my skin, his mouth on me. Then faster, but still with the same yearning, fiery sweetness.

Our song.

He is playing—I’m completely sure for a moment—the way he has been trying not to touch me. He is playing his arms around me for too long when we sat right there on the steps, just the other night, playing the forbidden times when his hands lingered on me, when his gaze got stuck for an extra beating moment on my face. And the need that rises in me in response is a leviathan; if it breeches it will break me into pieces.

I’m so turned on, I want to put my hand down my pants right here on the walkway. I want to kick his door in and wrap myself around him, bury myself in him. But it’s much worse than that. I want to trace the lines of his eyebrows and kiss the corners of his lips and his forehead. I want to make him smile again, that easy, open smile. I want it to belong to me. I want him to hold me. I want his hands to stay on me. I want him to stay on me, in me, with me.

I take a stuttering step forward. I am suddenly aware that it is silent. The song has ended—or he has paused, sensing me lurking outside.

Is he standing up? Is he moving toward the window or even, please, the door?