by Robin Thorn
Phoebe stormed out of the house; her head bowed as she paced along the path towards the gates.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, fine,” she muttered. She ducked past me and opened the truck where we’d left it parked on the curb.
“Phoebe?” I went after her, slipping into the passenger’s seat and closing the door behind me. “You are angry, what did you May say to you?” My breath misted the windscreen.
“Nothing.” She turned the key in the ignition; the engine started to purr.
“Because if your parents don’t want me to coming over for the holidays—”
“No,” she said, her eyes finding mine now. “It’s not that. It’s nothing. It’s fine.”
Yeah, sure seemed fine, I thought.
No, no, no.
That’s about all I could think as I drove away from my parents’ house. No.
Of course, I’d known why my mum and dad had been so keen to see Stef; I wasn’t a complete idiot. But naively I’d been hoping that they’d have a different take on the situation. After all, they were the experts. I was just a novice. A screw-up novice.
I knew what my parents were thinking too, that this was my fault. It was my fault that Stefan was in this mess And it was all because of that goddamn demon bastard.
I cringed as the memories crawled back to the forefront of my mind. I didn’t want those memories back. I wanted them buried. I wanted all of it buried. I’d messed up, and now Stef was paying the price.
“Sam?” I called into the darkness.
On my command, he’d slithered out from the shadows of the cemetery in a whirl of smoke.
I trotted between the headstones and met him as he approached. I threw my arms around him.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” he murmured into my ear as his arm snaked around me, drawing me closer to him.
I rose to my tiptoes and kissed his lips, shivering as he kissed me back, his arms locking tighter around me.
One…two…three… and then he pulled away, stepping back. Just like he always did. Just like he always had to do.
I inhaled slowly, feeling the sensation return to my body. I was numb when I was with Sam; I guess that was the power of the Incubus.
“We really shouldn’t keep meeting like this,” I mirrored his words, but my tone was far more serious than he had been. What the hell was I thinking? My parents would have pulled me out of field duty, revoked my privileges, and sent me off to some stuffy reform school if they had any idea what their newbie fifteen-year-old daughter was doing on Saturday nights in Briarwood Cemetery.
But since the day I’d met Sam, I hadn’t been able to stay away from him. I hadn’t been able to resist the urge to see him, and it seemed that he was suffering from that same internal struggle. So, every Saturday night for the past three months, we met at Maura Bishop’s headstone, and we kissed, and talked, and kissed some more, and then restrained ourselves, because…well, he was an Incubus, which meant that we were one moment of passion away from my death. Or his. Depending on who struck faster.
Sam wound his fingers through my hair, his eyes finding mine in the moonlight.
“I missed you,” he said.
“I missed you, too,” the words came out in a rush. I had missed him. Between the gruelling drag of Monday to Friday, the longing only intensified. It was as though a little piece of him had transported into me through our lips, and now it tugged at my ribcage when we were apart, as though it were trying to find its way back to him. I wouldn’t have described myself as a romantic, but this wasn’t romance, this was chemistry, biology, and I was afraid that the more I allowed the fire to burn, the harder the flame would be to extinguish.
“I came to your school yesterday,” he said, sitting on Maura’s grave and leaning against the headstone. His arm covered up half the inscription on her stone, fragment her legacy. It now reads In memory of Maura —devoted—died.
I sank down beside him on the dewy ground. “You came to my school? Why?”
He smirked up at the moon. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I guess I just wanted to see you in the daytime.”
I felt my cheeks grow hot. “You did? I didn’t see you.”
“You Guardians,” he replied, laughing, “you think you’re good at your job. You can’t even sense when a Demon is twenty feet away from you.”
I swatted him. “Why didn’t you come over to me?” My heart started beating faster. This was dangerous territory. It was one thing meeting in darkness when I was deliberately out looking for Demons like him—albeit to kill them, not kiss them—but another thing to meet in daylight. In the hours when I was alive and real, as opposed to existing in this pocket of a dreamlike world that didn’t truly exist beyond the perimeters of midnight and dawn.
He tilted his face to look at me, and a gentle breeze moved through the strands of his deep brown hair. “I wanted to see you. You were talking to a guy, a scrawny kid, and I wanted to kill him.”
I rolled my eyes.
“What?” he said, the picture of innocence. “I didn’t kill him. I wanted to, I could have, but I didn’t.”
“Still a little over the top.”
“They get you for the entire week,” he said, pursing his lips into what could have been a smile, but seemed more like a grimace. “They see you for five days. That’s seven daylight hours, five times a week. I don’t even know you in the day—”
“Bright lights can be very unforgiving,” I joked. But he wasn’t smiling anymore.
“I want more,” he said, tapping his palm on the earth beneath us. “I want you, all of you, daytime, nigh-time, all the time.”
My pulse was racing, I could feel the blood pumping frantically through my veins, and I was afraid that he could feel it too, somewhere in his consciousness. I was afraid that it was driving him wild. “No,” I murmured. “Sam, we agreed. Seeing you like this isn’t right, this isn’t normal—”
“To hell with normal. We weren’t normal, to begin with,”
“My family—”
“To hell with families,” he choked. “My family shut the door on me the day I turned. I don’t have a family.”
I held his gaze. “But I do, Sam,” I said, as gently as I possibly could. “And my family would kill you if they found out. They wouldn’t think twice about it, and you know that.”
“It’s worth the risk,” he said, shrugging.
My heart gave a heavy thump. The fact that Sam was even saying such a thing showed how lost and broken Sam’s world is. In truth, Sam was alone. Nothing had value anymore; he had nothing to lose—including, it seemed, his life.
“I can’t risk it,” I said. “I won’t. Your life is important to me. You are important to me.”
He threaded his fingers through mine; his eyes cast down to the blades of grass beneath us. “Okay,” he said. “Then we’ll keep meeting in secret. They don’t have to find out.”
“Saturday nights,” I said.
“Saturday nights,” he echoed. Then he kissed me. Once, twice. Then he pulled away.
For a moment he was quiet, we both were, then he turned to me and said, “Don’t give up on me. Not yet.”
“I won’t,” I whispered.
“I can be more,” he murmured. “I don’t have to kill to survive. It’s just an urge, and I can resist it.” He pressed his lips together, obstinate like even now he was fighting an impulse inside of himself. “Just wait,” he said. “You’ll see. I can be more than this. I can be more to you than this.” He extended his hands to the darkness enveloping the cemetery.
I held my breath. I wanted more; daytime, night-time, all the time. But I was scared to say the thing that frightened me most, the reality of what this was. All it would take was one kiss too many, one touch too far, and I was either dead or turned.
Guardians and Demons don’t fall in love. There were reasons; I just had to remember them.
Sam had been turned a few years earlier by some hungry newbie
Succubus whose kill had gone wrong, filling him with demonic molecular cells, doing to him what he may one day do to me. He was frozen now, eternally seventeen, eternally golden-eyed and lusting for souls, and death, and sex. And I was at his mercy because I was hooked on him.
Now, then, and forever.
By the time we arrived back at campus after our visit to Phoebe’s family home, my shoulders felt locked in tension. Whatever had happened between Phoebe and her mum had followed us the entire way back. Phoebe had been unnaturally quiet on the drive home, submerged into private thoughts that made her brow furrow as she drove. She parked up on campus. It had snowed since we left, coating the ground with an unblemished layer of white powder.
We stepped out of the truck and began wading through the snow towards the dorms.
I studied Phoebe’s profile as we walked. I wished she’d talk to me, tell me what the argument was between her and May—it didn’t take a genius to figure out that it’d had something to do with me.
I cleared my throat. “Hey,” I said, drawing Phoebe’s attention to me. Her eyes snapped to mine as if she’d only just realised I was walking alongside her. “I feel like I’ve done something to upset you?”
“Of course you haven’t.” She forced out a laugh. “Listen, can we just put today behind us. My parents can be such kooks. I’ve told mum to cut it out, or we will both not visit for Christmas.”
I summoned a smile. “Phoebe…if there’s something wrong, you’ll tell me, won’t you?”
Another false laugh. “Sure.”
I blew out a breath. “Okay.” I decided to change tack. “Do you wanna stop by Java?” I asked, pointing to where the wooden walkway branched off in the direction of the coffee house. “I could do with a caffeine fix and food. I swear I feel like I’m eating my stomach lining at this point.”
Phoebe paused, looking at me than Java. “Um, actually, I was thinking of going back to my room for a while. I’ve got an assignment to finish before Christmas break…”
Since when did Phoebe prioritise coursework over coffee?
“Oh,” I said. “Need any help?”
“No. You go.” She gestured to the homely lights shining out from Java’s bay windows. “How about I meet you there in an hour?”
It was a compromise, I supposed.
“Okay,” I agreed. “If you’re sure…”
“Yeah. I just need an hour to finish off this assignment.”
“Right.”
“And then I’ll meet you.” She was fumbling over her words, acting very un-Phoebe. But what was I meant to do? Drag the truth out of her. If she wanted alone time, I could hardly say no.
“See you later,” I finished at last, and we turned to go our separate ways.
I traipsed through the snow towards Java and ducked inside the brightly lit café. The heating vents were blasting out warm arm, tinged with the scent of freshly brewed coffee and pastries. Half of the seats were already taken up by students; their heads dipped as they focused on the paperwork scattered across their tables. I found a quiet wingchair by the window and shrugged out of my jacket. As I flattened it over the arm of the chair, I withdrew my phone from the pocket and checked the screen.
One new message from Will, telling me he’d be at the bar late tonight, and one from my mum, with pictures from her day trip to Santorini.
Looks great! I replied to Mum, keeping my tone breezy, so she didn’t catch on to any underlying tension. Love the pic of you and Debs on the waterfront. I miss you. I deleted the last line and rewrote; I’m glad you’re having a good time.
After that, I braced myself to check the dorm group chat. There was a string of notifications, undoubtedly more gossip and conspiracy theories surrounding Jeanie, all of which I’d avoided looking at so far.
Swallowing the dryness in my throat, I opened up the message thread.
Just as I’d expected, names of people in Block D ran down the screen, all discussing Jeanie and what had happened. I scrolled through them until I reached the bottom, where I noticed people had started talking about Tanner.
Apparently, the cops have let Tanner go, someone wrote.
And there was a reply from another name I didn’t recognise: Yeah, it’s true. I saw him this morning. He looked like shit. His dad picked him up from campus, and he’s gone back home for Christmas break. I think he needed to get away from this place.
Did you talk to him??
Yeah, the guy replied. He’s pretty messed up about it all. He said he burst into Jeanie’s room because she wasn’t responding to him. He thinks he saw some girl standing over the bed, and then he swears the girl just vanished.
My stomach knotted. Had a girl been in Jeanie’s room that night? The same night I’d dreamed about her.
I returned to the message thread.
What, like, she disappeared? Someone else wrote. It sounds like Tanner’s lost his mind!
I know, right? But that’s what he said.
Who was the girl?
Tanner didn’t say. Not that it matters. He is just trying to cover his tracks I’m sure.
Suddenly I couldn’t breathe.
What mum had told me was not good. I couldn’t shake it from my mind as I drove back. Even looking at Stefan was hard.
Stefan was changing. Putting everything he had told me together only solidified that into a fact. How could I tell him?
I slipped into my dorm room and pulled the door shut behind me. My hands trembled as I jostled open my dresser drawer and fumbled around for my deck of Tarot cards that I’d buried beneath my clothes
Personally, I’d always thought the Tarot cards were just a dumb parlour trick. But I was willing to try anything, and the usually worked to get a little insight at least.
I lit a candle and set it down on the floor in the centre of my room, then planted myself cross-legged in front of it.
I drew in a breath and began to shuffle, thinking only of Stef as I let the cards slip between my fingers, their silken surface cold against my skin.
Okay, foresight, let’s see what you’ve got.
I spread the cards facedown across the floor, then selected one from the arched arrangement.
I flipped it over to see the image.
I’d been hoping for something a little less foreboding.
The grim reaper stared back at me, black cape pulled high over his hollow face, and a beady-eyed crow perched on his shoulder.
Death, I thought.
“Had you expected anything else?” a voice came from across my room.
I didn’t bother looking up; I already knew who it was. “Do-over,” I said, gathering up the cards for a second try.
She scoffed out a laugh.
This time, I looked up, frowning at her. Jeanie, last seen in the window of her crime-scene dorm, was now standing next to my pine wardrobe, with a strange silkiness to her faded appearance. She was eyeing me sceptically. It bugged me.
“There are no do-overs,” she said, haughtily. “It’s already done.”
I grimaced and resumed shuffling the deck. “Not necessarily. Anyway, the death card only means change. That’s not a bad thing.”
“Then why the need for a do-over?”
I decided to ignore her—but I could feel her eyes on me as I fanned the cards out across the carpet again.
Come on, happy, cheery image of positivity, I willed.
I selected a card. And there he was again. Grimreaper in all his morbid glory.
“You know they’re coming for Stef,” she said. “The same ones who got me, they’re coming for Stef.”
I gritted my teeth. “I’ll stop them. I’ll figure out a way to reverse this.”
She laughed again. “I have learnt a lot in death,” she mocked me. “Listened and watched. Stalked and followed. I’ve heard them. The girl. The one who did this. He is angry with her you know. Very angry. Said it was a mistake. Said I was the wrong one. I hope they do kill him. It is all Stefan's fault.” She pressed her wispy fingers to
her pellucid chest.
I didn’t respond. I just scooped up the deck and began shuffling again. Spirits always seeped into anger and denial. What they didn’t know was it only kept them tethered to this dimension; stopping them from moving on.
“Nothing to say?” Jeanie called my attention back to her. “How will you stop the father of them all?”
“Leave.” My voice was firm.
“Wouldn’t you be better off figuring out how to end them? To end Stef before the change is complete?”
I kept shuffling, refusing to meet her glassy eyes.
“They’re coming here, you know,” she murmured. “I can feel it. They’re on their way.”
For a long moment, I was silent, just breathing steadily in and out.
“It’s true,” she said. “It won’t be long.”
I dropped the cards onto the carpet and rose to my feet.
Turning to the angered spirit, I pushed my hands sending the ball of light I’d kept buried towards her.
“I said leave.”
Jeanie burst into a whisper of light and dust.
An hour and a half had passed in Java, and still, Phoebe was a no-show. I’d already drained two coffees and was too wired to take on another one, even if she showed up now.
I’d already tried to call her a couple of times, but she wasn’t picking up. I tried texting her instead.
Phoebe? I’m in Java, are we meeting here or what?
No response.
With a sigh, I rose to my feet and shrugged into my coat. What was the point in waiting around here any longer? I’d officially been stood up.
I left Java and began along the pathway back to the dorm blocks. There was something eerie about the campus; maybe it was down to the fact that everything was covered in a white blanket of fresh snow. Or maybe it was because the entire plot was suddenly empty. Most of the live-in students had already gone home for the holidays, and for the first time all semester, I found myself totally and utterly alone.