by Jen Klein
My brain fought to push words out through my mouth. “How?” I managed to say. “What did you do?”
He almost smiled. Then he shook his head. “That’s a piano truck. I dropped a piano on him. I didn’t think that could happen in real life.”
As opposed to all the other “real life” things we’ve experienced tonight, I thought.
Sky and I fled by crawling underneath the truck between its wheels. It was all a bit of a blur until we were on the 101 and heading west. For some reason, with me sitting in the passenger seat.
“Hey!” I squawked, once I got my bearings. “I’m the only one who drives my car!”
“Not when you’ve been drinking,” said Sky.
Fair point. “Well, what about you? Driving after zombification by succubus doesn’t seem so wise either.”
Sky smiled. I wasn’t expecting a smile.
“What?” I said, careful to enunciate the word.
“Oh, nothing,” he said. He kept his eyes on the road. “I’m just noting your usage of the word ‘succubus.’”
“What about it?”
“You believe me now. You know I’ve been right all along.”
“What I know is . . .” My voice petered out. “What I know is not a whole lot, other than you’re a crazy person.” I paused, stewing in my passenger seat, thinking back over everything we’d been through in the past few hours. “You don’t think they’re dead, do you?”
“Who?” asked Sky.
“Those big . . .” I faltered, not sure of the right word to use. “Men.”
“No, they’re not dead.”
“How do you know?”
“It would take more than a piano. Descendants of Asterion are notoriously difficult to kill. Their skulls are pretty much unbreakable. Your dad calls them ‘modern day minotaurs.’” Sky shook his head. “Honestly, you don’t pay any attention at all to your father’s lectures, do you?”
Oh, please.
However, I was glad he’d brought up my father. Because it reminded me that people believed what they wanted to believe. Not just suckers, but people like Misty, people who were very dangerous. There could be a rational explanation for everything. For every last part of it.
“FYI, there’s such a thing as makeup,” I said after a moment.
“Makeup.”
“Yeah, makeup. And costumes. And stunt equipment.”
Sky flicked the turn signal to head off the highway. “We were both standing right there when Misty got all up in my face. How do you explain her if she’s not a succubus?”
“A tongue extender.” I nodded, proud of myself for coming up with it off the top of my buzzing head.
“A tongue extender. You actually said ‘a tongue extender.’”
“Prosthetics. Like in the movies.”
“Please, elaborate. I’m curious. How, exactly, would a tongue extender work?”
I shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t work in the entertainment industry. People make a lot of money to—”
“Craft tongue extenders for members of private clubs?”
“Hey, I can’t explain why people do what they do.”
Sky shook his head. “And you call me a crazy person. Then how about the—”
“Descendants of Astronauts?” I interrupted.
“Asterion.”
“Two big dudes who spend way too much time at the gym.” My words felt thin, but they toppled out faster as Sky swung the car onto my street. I wanted to make my point before the night was over—to him or myself, I wasn’t sure. “Bouncers with roid rage. They were crazy with it. They were . . .” I paused, noticing the way his lips were twitching up at the corners. “What?”
Sky pulled my car into the driveway and killed the engine. He flicked off the headlights, unhooked his seat belt, and shifted in his seat to face me. “You honestly don’t believe Misty is a succubus,” he said. It wasn’t a question; it was an accusation. “Even though you used the word yourself.”
I nodded. “Correct. It was the vodka talking.”
He edged toward me, his green eyes roving over my face. With the car turned off, the night felt quiet and thick and dark around us. My fingers twitched against each other, and I realized they wanted to sink into Sky’s messy blond hair and slide down the back of his neck . . .
I shoved both hands under my thighs.
“You think she was just a tall woman,” he went on. “A tall woman in a fetish club.”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Nothing at all magic or supernatural about her, right?”
“You have a point?” I asked in a hollow voice, my eyes searching his.
Sky leaned in and touched his forehead lightly to mine. Despite everything we’d done that night, he smelled like clean laundry. A warm blanket. Something I wanted to wrap myself up in. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe. I closed my eyes. He slid his head to the side, still hardly touching me, letting the side of his face drift against my own. His cheek—only a little rough—moved gently next to mine. His breath was warm in my hair. I felt his lips touch my earlobe and then skim upward, and I knew he had to be hearing my heart because it was pounding so loudly.
“I’m going to ask you something,” he whispered.
“Yes.” I wasn’t sure if I was giving him permission to ask the question or giving him an answer for any question he might pose. His hand slid down my bare arm and onto my torso, stopping at my waist, right under where my shirt was still knotted up to the side. His thumb moved in small circles against my skin, and a shiver went through me.
“If you don’t think Misty is a succubus, then why did you kiss me?”
I heard a click. He had unsnapped my seat belt. I jerked back against the car door and glared at him. “What?”
“Either you know Misty is a succubus and you were saving me from her spell, or you still don’t believe it and you just wanted to kiss me.” Sky arched his eyebrows. “Which is it?”
“I . . .”
“You can’t have it both ways,” said Sky.
I glared at him. And then, because I didn’t have an answer, I got out, slammed the door (of my own car, I might add), and stalked up the driveway.
Behind me, I heard the driver’s side door open and close. I listened to Sky’s footsteps disappear into the night.
Nineteen
There was still no electricity on the home front, obviously. Even though I was dying to tear my father’s house apart for more clues about Rosemary-Who-Might-Be-My-Sister—and maybe even look up some of his old lectures on descendants of Asterion—it would all have to wait for sunlight. Besides, I was exhausted. I trudged up to my apartment and dropped fully clothed onto the futon.
I fell into a fractured, restless sleep, one where I found myself reliving the same incident over and over again. I was crouched on concrete with danger barreling toward me. Over and over, I jerked awake before the moment of impact. Over and over, the memory of how I’d been saved slipped away.
Wednesday morning, when I finally staggered out of bed, there weren’t enough minutes left to take a shower or eat breakfast. I made a mental note to rethink the tradition of driving Norbert to school. As I pulled on the closest items of (reasonably) clean clothing—a black denim skirt and a T-shirt screen printed with the word fight—I contemplated playing hooky. Maybe even dropping out. After all, I was already living the life of an adult. What more could I possibly gain or learn while being imprisoned five days a week with a bunch of kids whose biggest concern was prom?
Then again, the life I was living wasn’t exactly the norm. Either for a teenager or an adult. And I did want more from real adulthood than a continued existence as a fake paranormal investigator. I assumed I would need a diploma in order to forge ahead in a different field, but I didn’t know what that different field might look like. What did I want t
o be when I grew up? What would I be qualified to do? Clearly, not family therapy . . .
While slaloming through traffic, I gave Norbert a rushed and garbled summary of the previous day’s events. I glossed over the paranormal portion, as well as the vodka part of the vodka cranberries. I also didn’t mention the part where I kissed Sky. I pretty much kept to the horror: getting chased by oversize thugs. In return, my cousin gave me a name.
“Dade Lawson.”
“Who?”
“Remember? That janitor from Valley College who wanted us to put a hex on the trig professor.”
“Right, that guy.” I swerved around a garbage truck and gunned through a yellow light. “We convinced him to go with the Egyptian locust plague instead.”
“Yeah. We put a dozen cockroaches in the professor’s desk.”
I nodded. “Lawson thought he didn’t get his money’s worth.”
“Even though we gave him a partial refund,” said Norbert.
I thought for a moment as I shifted lanes again. Dade Lawson, as I remembered, was basically a more human version of my attackers the previous night: a gym rat who also happened to believe in black magic. “Nah. I don’t think he sent the obituary. He wasn’t smart enough to come up with something like that. Anyone else?”
“Hey, can you stop zigzagging?” Norbert scrolled on his phone. “One more. Here it is. Marion Blewitt.”
“Who?” Good thing I had Norbert around to keep track of details.
“That old lady in Chatsworth who was convinced her cat was Cleopatra reincarnated.”
I grimaced. “And then Cat-Cleo got run over by a soccer mom in a minivan.” I jammed into a parking space by the school. “We had nothing to do with that.” I wondered if Marion Blewitt was her real name. I suppose I should have wondered that at the time of her case.
“Still, not a satisfied customer,” Norbert said. He hopped out and slammed the door just as the bell rang from inside the school. Then he was off like a sprinter.
I followed, feeling queasy and hot. Coming here was a mistake.
Geometry class started with a discussion of proofs. Considering that my days were already spent trying to prove things that couldn’t possibly exist, it was stupid that I had to waste an hour of my time explaining why Triangle A was congruent with Triangle B. Especially when the answer apparently had to involve a bunch of memorized theorems and postulates instead of the simple answer I tried to provide when called on.
“They’re just the same.” I slumped further into my chair.
“But why?” asked Mrs. Keplin.
“Because they look the same.”
“That’s not enough,” said Mrs. Keplin. “I need a theorem.”
“How about the theorem of ‘Duh’?”
Some classmates giggled. Some glared. Mrs. Keplin shook her head and scribbled something in her notebook.
Great. Another year, another class participation grade gone to hell.
At lunchtime, I bought a wilted salad and ate it on the hood of my car, mentally going over everything I knew about Corabelle’s case. Given what had happened in Little Tokyo, I needed to explore all possibilities. No matter whether Misty was a succubus or believed she was a succubus (maybe the difference was unimportant) or was just a crazy fetish queen, I had to take a good look at her connection to Todd Harmon.
When I finished my salad, I jotted down two sets of notes: one that any real investigator would use and one that operated strictly in Lunatic Land. One of the two would lead to Todd Harmon. At least, I hoped so.
A phone search on (sigh!) succubi led me to several websites, including a few that featured articles by my father (sigh again). There was conflicting information about the details, but the general definition was pretty much the same across the board: a succubus was a lady demon who fed off human men.
Exactly what Sky had said.
Maybe he knew what he was talking about. Or maybe he’d just been to these websites too, the difference being he had been a believer going in.
I tried to look at things objectively. If I could buy the existence of succubi (still a leap), then I could also theoretically buy the idea that, in order to live, they required different sustenance than what normal humans needed. If, as these sites claimed, that sustenance was male “life force”—a euphemism for something completely disgusting—then feeding off human men kept succubi alive and made them stronger.
Okay, I could wrap my head around that if it weren’t for this one thing: getting certain males to have sex is hardly a difficult task. Especially if you’re a hot succubus with the ability to turn dudes to Jell-O with a gaze. Considering the number of horny teenaged boys at my school alone, it seemed like a succubus could screw her way to the top of the food chain in a single afternoon. If succubi existed, why weren’t they ruling the world?
I was about to begin a search on “history of demons” when the bell rang. Lunch was over. I had already sent several texts to Norbert with no answer, so I’d finally fired off one to Sky, too. In return, I’d gotten nothing.
Silence from my cousin and silence from my . . . whatever he was.
*
When I got to Greek Mythology, the room had been rearranged so all the chairs were facing inward in a big circle. I sat down between two empty seats and dropped my backpack onto one of them to save it for Sky. It wasn’t that I wanted to be near him; it was that I had some thoughts about Todd Harmon that warranted discussion.
At least, that was the angle I would go with.
If he ever showed up.
After Mr. Lowe sauntered into the classroom and closed the door, and Sky still hadn’t arrived, I started to get pissed. I hadn’t seen or heard from him all day. Sure, I had contemplated bailing on school myself, but I hadn’t actually done it.
I watched Mr. Lowe lift a plastic basket off his desk and drop it onto the desk in front of the seat I’d saved. “You can put your index cards in here.”
Damn it. I had forgotten all about that dumb homework assignment.
I raised my hand and waited for Mr. Lowe to nod at me. “I have to powder my nose,” I told him, using the code every male teacher in every high school knows. This is the one thing that’s awesome about menstruation: guy teachers will never—and I mean never—stop you from going to the bathroom.
Moments later, I was standing by a dirty sink, skimming a finger over my phone. My connection wasn’t great, but I was able to pull up a website dedicated to characters from Greek mythology. It was easy to find a good one: Persephone. Daughter of Zeus and the Queen of the Underworld. She sounded sufficiently badass to me. I pulled out my index card and scribbled her name on it. When I got back to class, I shoved it into the basket among the others while Mr. Lowe’s back was turned to the whiteboard.
Whew.
Even better, we were instructed to spend the next twenty minutes of class reading while Mr. Lowe looked over the cards. Translation: quality phone time, hidden by my textbook. I wasn’t sure what my next move should be on the case, so I searched “fake obituary” on the off chance it was a thing and not a specific threat aimed at me. My heart sank. The only results were about a white-collar criminal in Florida who was scamming life insurance companies.
Just as troubling: still no Sky by the time Mr. Lowe told us he was ready to guess who had chosen which character.
“As I’ve only met some of you this week, I’m taking chances,” he announced. “Of course, there are those whose reputations precede them.”
Mr. Lowe struck out on his first guess but then nailed two in a row.
Peter Penn—a dude who wore enough black eyeliner to make me look like a ray of sunshine—was Thanatos, the Demon Personification of Death. Our resident hottie, Angel Ortega, was an easy one as Aphrodite: the Goddess of Love, Beauty, and Pleasure. When Mr. Lowe said her name, Angel fluttered her eyelashes. Of course she did.
From across the circle, Lauren-or-Laurel accidentally made eye contact with me. She flushed and looked down, like she’d done something wrong. I wondered if there was a Herald of the Hopelessly Damaged in the stack.
Mr. Lowe looked at the next card and nodded. “Persephone,” he told us, and then paused, letting his gaze drift around the room from person to person.
I waited to hear about Persephone’s badassery. I didn’t know how much this assignment was worth, but I hoped turning in someone so obviously suited for me meant I’d start off the year with a decent grade.
“This student made a brave choice,” said Mr. Lowe. “Persephone was a beautiful and warm-hearted girl until Death wrenched her away from her mother.”
Wait—what?!
“Persephone was kidnapped by Hades and dragged down to be his bride in the Underworld,” said Mr. Lowe. “She sealed her fate by eating a pomegranate. Nobody can eat the food of the dead and return to the world of the living. Some see her as the Queen of the Damned. Others see her as a cautionary tale.”
That was more like it.
“But astute scholars know her for who she really was. Someone forced to leave home too soon.” His voice softened. “A child missing her mother.”
No, no, no, no, no . . .
“A girl in pain.” I was frozen, horrified as Mr. Lowe’s compassionate eyes settled upon mine. “Persephone?”
Heat burned up my throat, stopping my breath and quickening my pulse. I would rather have been back in that alley. I would rather have been anywhere but there in that classroom for everyone to see me for what I truly was.
Scared.
Tragic.
A victim.
I had no idea what I was going to say, but I opened my mouth—and then closed it.
Lauren-or-Laurel had her hand raised.
“It was me,” she said in her wispy voice. “I’m Persephone.”
Mr. Lowe turned to her, confused. “You’re Persephone? Are you sure?”