It’s a white wine, not too bank-breaking by the looks of the bottle, thank gods. I follow Kate’s lead, swirling it in the glass, then taking a sip. It’s like being seduced by the first warm, sour swallow—fuck, I’d forgotten what wine tastes like. Wine-drunk is kinder than soju-drunk; soju goes down smooth like a demon deal, all the while promising to punch you in the gut sometime in the next ten minutes. Wine is more like… I’ve been struggling to keep my head above water, kicking, submerged and exhausted, and someone just lays a carpet of concrete over the floor so that my feet easily touch the bottom.
Our main courses arrive shortly after, my chicken and Kate’s steak. “Did you always know you were going to be an event planner?” I ask around a mouthful.
“Hell no!” she says, louder than I expected, her knife sawing through a hunk of meat. “What kid’s dream is to get yelled at by rich people in pastels all day? I thought I was going to be—” She stops. Flushes.
“Oh? What did you think you were going to be?”
She fumbles to put down her utensils, pressing a hand to her hot cheek. “Forget it.”
“Are you sure? I promise not to judge. If I tell you something equally embarrassing, will you feel better about sharing?”
“…Alright, but only because I want to see you embarrassed.”
“Alright! Errr…” I tent my fingers under my chin, thinking. There’s not a whole lot I’m embarrassed about; I’m pretty shameless, bordering on obscene. But… ah there’s one thing. “I like the taste of cat food.”
Kate’s fork stops halfway to her mouth. “What?”
“Just this one brand of wet canned food, but—look, okay—” She’s already giggling. “It started as an accident! My sister, Luce, found a kitten our first year living together, and I’d never ever had pets before, so I had no idea what pet food looked like—and, admittedly, I was the type of asshole who just ate other people’s food out of the fridge—so I find this canned food that my sister bought, right? And she’s out at the moment, so I open the can—it smelled like spam, I swear it smelled like spam! And her little kitten, this cute little black cat with a white tummy, comes over and starts meowing at me while I’m pouring—pouring cat food all over my rice. And I’m just like, what, why are you yelling?”
Kate’s trying to stifle her laughter, but it escapes in loud snorts through her nose.
“And I sat down, and I started eating.”
“You can tell it’s not spam when you start eating it, can’t you?”
“I—yes, but I still couldn’t tell it wasn’t human food! So I’m just sitting there, finishing a meal of this poor little kitten’s food while she claws at my ankles, and my sister comes home. And she’s like, awwww, little Tuxedo’s hungry, isn’t she?”
The snorts become a full-blown yell of, “Ohh noooo!”
“And I see her—take out the wet food, and put it in a bowl, and feed it to the cat. And I swear, I did my dishes so fast, got rid of all the evidence—”
“Nooo!”
“Okay okay, but, here’s the kicker—I literally drove all the way to the pet shop just to get an extra can of the cat food, to replace the one I’d eaten, because I was so paranoid Luce was going to find out. Except… I was like, well—it wasn’t that bad. Actually, it was interesting, it didn’t taste like any kind of meat I’d ever eaten before—”
“No! No! Oh my god!” Kate’s face is turning red—I’m pleased to see that she flushes from the forehead down, and the extra color just makes her tan deeper, the candlelight shining more clearly off her cheeks.
“—And it’s like, grainy! Grainy in this, this weird way that kind of crumbles flat and sticks on your tongue—and salty, the salty part’s not so different from spam—”
“I’m not going to be able to finish my steak!”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“How much cat food did you end up eating?” she demands.
“A six pack of cans. In the course of my life I’ve eaten six meals of cat food, and I honestly only stopped because Luce started buying a different brand, and I couldn’t hide the evidence in the trash anymore.”
“Oh my god!” Kate is burying her face in her hands, cry-laughing. I crane my neck, trying to see her face through her fingers.
“Did I overshoot? Don’t tell me your thing is going to be like, super reasonable.”
She’s giggling, adorably, and even though it’s at my expense it makes me feel nice and bubbly. “Honestly, you overshot a little, but you did succeed at making me comfortable enough to say anything.”
I drum my fingers on the table and make a silly pouty face, wagging an imaginary puppy tail. “Don’t leave me hanging, come onnn.”
“I… do you remember those old cartoons? With like, teenage girls who were cheerleaders and had gadgets doing cartwheels and flips, parachuting and waterskiing to save the world? Like… Kim Possible. Totally Spies. Basically everything that was ever based on Charlie’s Angels.”
“Oh yeah, I loved Charlie’s Angels! I still watch YouTube clips of Lucy Liu in that leather skirt.”
“That was my stupid, secret dream, all the way up to middle school. It’s why I took up judo and kickboxing. And cheerleading. Briefly, very briefly.”
The wine is starting to get to me—I feel warm, like I’ve swallowed a little flame and it’s dancing in my throat. The world is a thin wallpaper behind which someone’s having a firework show. And center-stage of all of that is Kate, her hair like a mane of smoldering fire. “Is it tacky of me to say you’d look fantastic in a cheerleader uniform?”
She purses her lips, one side quirking up. “A bit pervy, but not tacky, I think.”
“You look absolutely stunning the way you’re dressed now.”
She puffs a laugh, and her forehead flushes just slightly again. I can’t keep the questions from coming; I just have so much fun every time I learn something new about her.
“Any siblings?”
She pauses, then shakes her head. “Only child. You?”
Baby sister, almost two when I left her, seven years old now. “Adopted sister, the one with the cat—name’s Luce. Two years younger than me, and she was taught by Johanna too. Well, I guess I’m adopted too—adopted by Johanna, both of us. Before Johanna got…” I pause. Do I want to go there? No, not yet. “…anyway, Luce is gay too.”
“No way, you have a competing lesbian sister?”
“Well, we never had an issue with that, we have different types.”
“What kind of types?”
I was into vampire princesses and succubus orgies. She fell in love with a werewolf. “Oh, you know, she liked the quiet types, I was always with one alternative chick or another.”
She sticks her lower lip out. “Aww, so I don’t really fit the bill.” Her tone is playful, but I still find myself scrambling to backtrack.
“Well, that was me as a twenty-year-old. Stuff’s changed.”
“Okay then, what’s your type now?” She leans forward, the candlelight catching her cleavage.
I feel sweat at the back of my neck. I remember the pegging joke she made earlier. I take a leap. “Bossy women, mostly. Dominant is a better word for it.”
The word dominant leaves my mouth and she does that thing—the eye-twinkle, the oh, I know you, and my responding I know that you know, and the both of us going, What’re you going to do about it?
Fuck fuck fuck. I’m in so much trouble, and I am so pumped about it. Maybe I’m imagining it, but from that point on her spine straightens more, she leans forward further, and she reaches across the table to touch my hand when she laughs.
“So, what do you do?” she asks. Yup, she’s definitely checking me out the same way I’m checking her out. The top two buttons of my shirt are open, and she openly admires the dip between my collarbones as I lean to get the salt shaker.
“Same thing I did as an apprentice,” I say. �
��I’ve got no college degree, no training I can reliably put on a resume, but a surprising number of referrals that say I’m good at digging people—er, things up. Finding things, finding people. So that’s what I do.”
“What, like, a private investigator?”
I keep fixating on her freckles. How is she wearing makeup and still showing freckles? Femme lesbian magic, I’m sure.
“A knockoff PI, I guess. But hey, knockoffs work, they just don’t last as long.”
“Catch any cheating spouses lately?”
“Not cheaters, but creeps for sure. Stalkers, harassers—” kidnappers, child murderers, serial witch-killers, “—you know, the types who deserve a really good scare. Or a beating.”
“Ooh, careful there Miss Graverobber, you’re starting to sound like a delinquent again.”
Maybe it’s just the wine, but I grin, full teethed. “And what if I am?”
“You won’t scare me.” She lays her arm on the table, and her bicep flexes.
Hot.
She tells me about her tinnitus from all the metal concerts in college. I tell her how Luce dragged me into a concert binge in Tokyo, just so she could sit her short ass on my shoulders and actually see the stage. As she describes her favorite donut shop in the city, I notice that her nails are neatly manicured, pale pink, cut to show just a millimeter of quick; she sees me notice. I don’t know what she reads in my face at the moment, but it makes her smile. That’s a good sign, right?
We talk and talk and talk even when the food is gone, until the stone-faced waiter leans over my shoulder to say, “Excuse me, excuse me, sir—I mean, miss? We’re about to close. So if you could…”
“Huh? Yeah, of course, yeah.”
Kate and I split the bill fifty-fifty and leave a generous tip for staying so long. My wallet does take a bit of a hit, but I don’t even notice, don’t even mind—I’m too busy draping Kate’s cardigan over her shoulders, admiring the strong line of her neck, brushing her hair out from under the cardigan so it tumbles down her back.
The air is crisp outside, and it hits my face in an exhilarating rush. I turn to Kate, teetering on one foot, my hands loosely in my pockets.
“Shall I walk you home?”
“Mmm, lovely offer, but my car is in valet.”
“You actually drive around here?”
“You don’t?”
I smile and shrug. She smiles and looks coy. We stand next to each other as valet gets her car. She smells like vanilla and brown sugar. An old reliable scent, one I’ve used before too.
“When are you free next?” I ask.
“I honestly don’t know, my schedule is a nightmare. But if I see a crack in it, you’ll be the first to know, handsome.”
“Oh—what was that you just called me?”
“You heard me.” Her car arrives, a light silver Lexus. She rocks onto her toes to kiss my cheek. It’s like the most fleeting breath of fresh air, gone before I can even grasp at it. I feel my breath catch, and I almost forget to wave as she tucks her long legs into the car.
I don’t even remember that I meant to take the subway until I’ve walked two blocks past the subway station.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Like It When You Get Possessive
When I get back into my apartment and hang my blazer up on the wall, I’m still warm and fluttery all over. I haven’t felt warm in a while, not since a month ago when I fell asleep using my coat as a blanket, spent and tired of crying, suspended in that space between a finished chapter of life and the beginning of a new one, comforting yet anxiety-inducing, restful yet mournful. That was the last time I saw Lilith. I have to admit, she’s had good reason to avoid me; if it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have become Samael’s target. But I’d been hoping she’d come back, hoping that I could talk to her about it, maybe even—
A hand grazes my shoulder. As I jump in alarm, the hand slides around my waist, spins me around, and pins me to the wall. A flash of burnished gold is all I see before soft, wet lips press up against mine, and I melt.
I think it’s a trained instinct of mine, to go utterly still when an unidentified woman breaks into my apartment and ambushes me with a hot, invasive kiss. I don’t cope well, sue me. But even in pinned-rabbit mode, my brain retains some semblance of a survival instinct. And so, as she kisses me, my brain sluggishly realizes who I’m holding.
Lilith pulls back and stares at me with half-lidded, honey-golden eyes, her bunched cheeks a deep umber in the light, her widow’s peak and coils of black hair framing her face into a round heart. “Hi,” she says, breathlessly.
She looks happy. Exuberant, even. In my unheated apartment she somehow still radiates warmth, especially at this close distance. She looks good—her hair’s grown back out since she cut some singed ends, and she’s in a slinky dress with a loose, flower-petal-like skirt that drapes her generous hips and tummy in orchid colors. The only thing different about her is the barely noticeable scar between her collarbones, the knife wound she took when she killed Samael.
“…Hi,” I say.
Her face falls. She blinks. “Are you—wearing perfume?”
“Am I?” I turn my head to the side and sniff. “Um, I don’t think so? I was just on a date.”
Her eyes widen. “…Oh.” It’s awkward. She drops her hands from me and takes a tiny step back. “Like… just now?”
“Yeah, I was coming back from dinner.”
“Dinner, like… a date date? Like a relationship date?”
“…I think so. Yes.”
“Oh.” She smooths out her skirt, like she’s trying to dim its extravagance. “That’s—sorry. I didn’t—wasn’t thinking that—”
“That I would be with anyone when you came back, a month after you acted like you were leaving forever?”
She sucks her lower lip in between her teeth. Turns to go.
“—Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” I reach for her, then falter. “Please, don’t go. Do you want to catch up? Want a drink? I have—well, water, I guess.”
She drifts into the dim kitchenette, still seeming undecided about leaving, her pale pink and purple skirt fluttering behind her. I get each of us a half-full glass of water, and we lean on the counter, sipping placidly.
“Where have you been?” I ask. “I mean, I’ve been here, obviously, but you—I don’t know where you are unless you come find me, so…”
She’s fidgeting with a bottle cap she’s found on the counter, sliding it back and forth with a delicate finger. “I—took a break. What happened last time, it was a lot to, um, process. I needed space.”
“I get it. First kills are like that.”
The bottle cap gets stuck, then skips forward again. “That wasn’t my first kill.”
“Really?”
“My first was the parking attendant. The ginger one. You’re the one who made a big deal about it.”
“Oh, I—didn’t think you’d remember him.” But why wouldn’t she? She carried his failing body to the front steps of a hospital, and by the time they arrived, he wasn’t breathing. I wouldn’t call that a “kill” per se, but I never considered that she may think otherwise.
“I didn’t think I’d remember him either.” She won’t look at me. “What’s… your experience with it?”
I remember the tall shelves from my dream-world, the ceiling of Celtic knots. “Johanna went to buy a book from the Cornish Bookmaker’s Guild when I was an apprentice. I was supposed to wait for her in their library. But the guild believed she owed them, so they meant to kill me as a warning. They told me about it over tea—drugged tea, made out of those roses the Council uses to suppress magic in convicts. When the librarian came at me with a knife, I spat the tea in his eyes and ran for my fucking life.
“It wasn’t even the first fight I’d been in, or the first time someone had tried to kill me while I was with Johanna—but it felt diff
erent this time. Like I couldn’t think, or plan, only react and react too slow. I just couldn’t get out of my head that I was going to die. Everything felt pointless and terrifying at the same time. I broke a leg and three ribs. And in the end, I only won by pure chance—I scrambled over and around furniture until a tiny sliver of my magic came back, just enough to summon a shard of the sword I usually carried.” I conjure a shard into my hand now, let it lie flat in my palm like a fallen snowflake. I let it melt away like a snowflake too, and close my fingers over the spot it had been. “He charged me into the wall while I was holding it.” I tap my left cheekbone. “Got stuck in his eye.”
“Oh. That feels like it could’ve been an accident.”
“Your thing could’ve been an accident. It actually was an accident. Even Samael, he was going to bind you to him and imprison you for life just for a shot at avoiding Hell. He deserved what was coming to him.” I stop. I know there’s no point in saying it, but I do anyway. “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have had to kill someone for your own safety.”
“Weird thing to say to a demon, don’t you think?”
I think of Lilith crying in the basement, holding a dented, blood-soaked skull in her hands. “Not to you, I don’t think.”
Finally, she regards me with her chin in her hand. “So… what was the date?”
“Old classmate of a friend. She’s an event planner. And Korean. And she drives.”
“That’s a weird way to describe her.”
“I don’t think I’m very good at describing.”
“Do you think you’re going to keep going out with her?”
“Yeah, I really think so.” I almost add, but we can still fuck like bunnies. Almost. Because to be really, truly honest… when I’m like this, I’m a wreck, and a wrecker of people. And as much as I like Kate, I also like the idea of not spending the night alone, of not needing a pill to stay awake, of drowning myself in the flesh of a woman whom I already know is a great fucking time. It’s not so bad, is it? To be weak for stuff like that?
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