Page 96 of Succubus

I nod. “I just flipped out and hit her.” I turn, and it feels slow, it feels like it takes a long time to get all the way around to Dee. My gaze slides over the blue vase collecting dust on the mantel, the dried flowers Ella and I picked from the front garden last year and put in it. The curling portrait she did of our family, also dried out, the colors bleached by time like old bones in the sun. Mom stands a little bit apart in it, beaming. Ella and Dee and I are bunched together, all of us in gowns as though we are princesses.

Dee, who always has something to say, is silent.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Open them again.

“T,” she says, her voice low and hard. “What— ”

But before she can continue, I step quickly forward. I can’t bear it. I put my hands on her shoulders and look into her eyes.

“Don’t be angry,” I whisper. “Don’t. I can’t do this.”

She blinks, tries to step back but can’t quite.

It has to work. It has to. I feel feral, cornered.

“I’m not angry.” Her voice isn’t quite right. It isn’t quite hers. Not the firm, take-charge voice I’m used to from my sister. She’s uncertain now, her will folded under something else. Under my will. Her pupils dilate. “I’m home early,” she says, and a note of cheerfulness sounds in her words. “Maybe we should all play that unicorn game?”

I back away from her. Ella’s shuddering sobs have paused, as though she’s holding her breath. She senses something is off, something is terribly unbalanced here. At least, I think she might. Her hand is clenched into a protective fist, though she seems to have otherwise forgotten about the cut.

“Wait, actually,” says Dee, bewildered. “I have to run upstairs and send something really quick. I left it on my desk. T?” She turns as though through water, looking for me.

“Yes?” I say, reading my line.

“Can you just watch Ella for a few minutes? I have to do something. Josh needs me to send him— ”

“No.” I have to get out of here.

“That’s okay, Josh can wait. Ella and I will hang out.”

“I’m going out,” I say, already at the door. “I have to go. Out.” I yank my sneakers on, stagger-hop on one foot.

I skid outside, the front door squealing shut in a rusty yelp behind me.

I’m running. I’m running but I can’t get far enough away.

CHAPTER 30

I run down Mercer Street, cut through a neighborhood of graceful almost mansions, wood and stone, over to the Institute for Advanced Study, where, Alice told me, Albert Einstein taught before Princeton University was willing to hire more than a few Jewish professors (she’d read a historical fiction murder mystery). In the open field in front, there are two rows of towering, half-bare London plane trees lining what looks like a promenade for giants, which leads up to the stately building. Everything smells like the late-fall forest, which is just a fringe of purplish brown and dusty orange around the perimeter. This whole town wants to be a forest, is secretly a forest.

I loop back, weaving through the European-feeling labyrinth of campus: slate and ivy and gargoyles with their beaks open in a silent shriek of old-fashioned arrogance. I am thirsty but it isn’t holding me back. Down steps and through quiet courtyards where centuries-old cedar trees lift their lumbering, proud heads. Up steps again. There’s almost no one here—the students must be on Thanksgiving break; they have vanished in a puff like a wizard waved a wand over the place.

It’s probably around 4:30 or 5:00. I forget if I know the time. It still hasn’t actually rained, but the sky is barely holding it in.

I see my hand connecting with Ella’s small face, I hear the sound, see her eyes.

I dash over the bridge that crosses Washington Street, fly by a small herd of shirtless guys running the other way. So not all the students went home; the wizard missed a few. Flick, flick, flick, flick, I make eye contact with each one like thumbing through a deck of cards. I think I can smell their healthy sweat. I feel like a raptor, talons flexing toward them even as my wings haul me obediently away.

The way I changed Dee, manipulated her.

My friend’s husband. I might have done it.

I hit Ella.

I am losing myself, forgetting myself. Replacing myself with this upgraded, jacked-up version who can run forever. Who never tires. Who feels unfulfilled and unstoppable. Who isn’t quite right. Who might kill someone not just by accident but for fun.

Dark is spilling down the sky; the moon comes on like a searchlight as the trees spread into shadows.

I think about Joel’s grandmother. Telling him they’re saving the world, they’re eradicating evil, whatever it was she said to him.