by Jen Klein
When I saw Sky.
He appeared out of nowhere at a dead run and launched himself straight at me, flinging his arms around my body and swinging me off my feet before I could stop him—or even remember that I wanted to stop him.
“Thank God, thank God, thank God,” he kept saying into my hair.
Maybe I would have remembered his lies and pulled away from him. Or maybe I would have been too dizzy and exhausted to make a fuss. I’ll never know because I didn’t get a chance to make a decision. Before I could say a word or take a stand, the building exploded.
Twenty-Four
Ambulance rides are never fun, but a hospital is all things I hate: sterile to the point of anal, everything placed at right angles to everything else, riddled with unhelpful employees using inscrutable medical terminology. Worse yet, this particular hospital was full of sanctimonious cops.
I experienced the great joy of being lectured by one of them about the dangers of exploring abandoned buildings.
His name was Officer Simon (his cop badge was very shiny, so his name was hard to miss). He was young, maybe five years older than me, with round red cheeks and blue eyes that blinked a lot.
“Maybe you think this is a game . . .” Officer Simon was saying.
I pretended to listen as we stood near the third-floor nurses’ station, waiting for updates on the conditions of Todd Harmon (smoke inhalation), Norbert Cade (mild concussion), and Sky Ramsey (general assholery—at least as far as I was concerned). It was the first time I’d been allowed out of bed.
“But you should consider any property with which you are not personally familiar to be inherently dangerous.”
“I’m sorry.” I hoped my apology would put an end to the harangue so I could go check up on Sky. And then perhaps murder him. A few minutes earlier, I’d caught a glimpse of him—up and about and out of his hospital room—but somehow he had managed to duck away, leaving me to take the brunt of Officer Simon’s speechifying.
“Methamphetamine labs contain poisonous and flammable materials,” Officer Simon informed me. “That is why criminals often do their cooking in abandoned houses. You kids are lucky you got out of there before it blew up. You could have been killed. At the very least, you were illegally trespassing.”
Leave it to Misty to pick a meth lab as a place to live. Or maybe that was why she had picked it. So she could blow the place up and make a quick getaway. The irony was almost tragic: she herself had been reduced to ashes before she could torch her “lair.”
Still, I bristled. “We were trying to help someone.”
Officer Simon glanced across the waiting area. I followed his pitying eyes to an open recovery room, where Todd Harmon lay in bed, gazing up at Corabelle. She was perched beside him, her back to us, holding his hand. As we watched, she leaned over and nuzzled against his neck.
I had caught sight of her face when she’d sprinted through on her arrival not long ago. She had looked awful. Nothing but stringy hair and smeared makeup and sagging clothes. She still may have been a rank bitch to me, but there was one thing I could say about Corabelle LaCaze: she wasn’t a liar. She really had wanted her boyfriend back.
Maybe it was the Todd-Corabelle snuggle fest, but Officer Simon softened. “Well, you did one thing right today, miss.”
He gave me a nod and walked away, adjusting his belt as he went. He’d barely disappeared around the corner when Sky appeared behind me. He grabbed my upper arm, pulling me to face him. “I have to tell you something,” he said. His voice was low and urgent.
I yanked myself backward, out of his grasp. “Don’t touch me.”
Yes, I needed to tell him what a horrible person he was, that he had turned my feelings into a joke, and that he’d made me a pawn in his sick game. But I needed to wait. If I said those words out loud right then, I might start crying. So instead, I whirled away and marched across the waiting area toward Norbert’s room. Allowed or not, I was going to visit him.
When I came in, he was sitting up in bed. His head was wrapped with a thick bandage. There was a bloodstain on it. “I’m fine,” he told me, reading a look I wished I’d hidden. “Head wounds bleed a lot. It’s nothing. Don’t freak out.”
I forced a smile. “The doctors say you have a mild concussion,” I told him. “You’ll get discharged any time now.”
Sky burst in behind me. “You guys have to listen,” he said. “Where’s—”
“Shut up!” I turned around with a snarl. “This is family only. Stay away from me and my cousin.”
Sky gaped at me. “What’s going on? I’m trying to help you! Everything I do is to help you!”
“Oh, really?” I shouted back. “You know what was super helpful ? When you snuck my obituary into my locker! That was wildly helpful! I’m so grateful for your wonderful, generous help!” I stopped, breathing hard, knowing my face was flushed, hoping against hope that the floodgates behind my eyes wouldn’t burst in front of Sky-the-Liar.
“That was you?” said Norbert weakly.
Sky blinked at him, then at me. He had no response.
“Why were you trying to scare me?” I asked. “I didn’t even know you! Did someone at school put you up to it?”
“No!”
“Oh, so it was just fun to terrorize the daughter of your hero?”
“Jillian, stop.” Sky grabbed me by the arms. I tried to shake away from him but he hung on. “I will explain everything, I promise, but right now we have a bigger problem than your obituary.” He let go of me and held up a cell phone.
Correction: my cell phone. The shattered screen was a dead giveaway.
“Give it back!” I grabbed at it, but Sky held it out of my reach. “How did you get that?”
“I took it from your pocket outside Misty’s lair.”
“Ballsy,” said Norbert.
Of course. I remembered how Sky had thrown his arms around me right before the building exploded. It hadn’t been to save me; it had been to rob me. I felt like there was a thick rubber band squeezing the blood out of my heart. “So you’re a liar and a thief.”
“No! I’m a . . .” Sky struggled for the right word. “Detective. Researcher. Historian.”
“Dick.”
“Call me whatever you want, but I needed to talk to your father.”
It always comes back to my father.
I shrunk away from him, backing toward Norbert’s bed. “I had to steal your phone,” Sky went on. “I knew you wouldn’t give it to me. The only reason I didn’t tell you until now is because it was out of juice, so I had to go plug it in. Your dad is going to send a file. It should be here any second.”
I glanced at Norbert. “I can’t do this anymore,” I told him. “I’ll call you later. I’m getting a cab.”
“Hold on.” Norbert leaned forward and caught my wrist. “What did Uncle Lewis say? Jillian, wait.”
I waited, but only because my cousin had a mild concussion and I thought maybe I should be sweet to him. He let go.
Sky waved my stolen phone at me. “Dr. Cade said to tell you in no uncertain terms that you are not to go succubus hunting. They are extremely dangerous because of their addiction.”
Norbert frowned. “Their addiction? I thought men got addicted to them?”
“It goes both ways.” Sky’s words came quickly. “Jillian, that’s what Dr. Cade said. Succubi can go through life just being generally beautiful and feeding off the desire of random men who pass by, but what really satisfies a succubus is establishing a mutual addiction. It’s like the relationship between bees and flowers. Bees get nectar from flowers, and at the same time, help them pollinate.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t listen to this. Not now.
“So which one is helping the other pollinate?” my cousin asked.
“Both. Succubi have black, forked tongues.” Sky paused for a split sec
ond to shoot me a knowing look. “They’re tipped with tiny fangs. When a succubus kisses a man, she can inject her poison—her drug—into his mouth. After that, he’s gone. He thinks he loves her so much that he’ll die if they’re not together.”
I shook my head again, edging toward the door. “That doesn’t make any sense. What is the succubus addicted to?”
“Desire,” said Sky.
I looked over at Norbert. He nodded slowly, brow furrowed under his bandage, as if putting the pieces together. “So that’s what happened to Misty. She was addicted to Todd’s desire.”
“Right,” Sky told him. “Once a succubus injects a man, his addiction manifests as desire, and the succubus needs that particular man’s desire. They’re imprinted on each other. If she can’t get it, she loses her beauty and her power. Eventually, she goes crazy and dies.”
I wanted to leave. No, I wanted to slap him, then leave. But my mind was spinning, flashing back to Lilith’s Bed, to the rage in Misty’s face when she barked that Todd Harmon belonged to her. “So Misty picked Todd and stuck her forked tongue in his mouth,” I said. “He got addicted to her, and she got addicted to him. That’s why he ditched his girlfriend and his roommates and his job? So he could follow a succubus to South LA where they could both be all addicty with each other?”
My phone vibrated. I took the opportunity to snatch it out of Sky’s hand. “Allow me,” I told him, swiping at the cracked screen. First thing I needed to do after kicking Sky’s ass and getting paid: buy a new phone.
There it was: an email from my father.
“What is it?” asked Norbert.
“The subject says research notes,” I told him.
“Read it out loud,” Sky said. He blocked my exit. “Please.”
I didn’t want him listening to my father’s words, but I also thought reading the email out loud would speed things up, so I touched the message. It was long. I took a deep breath and read: “Succubi are highly territorial loners. Each one behaves as a queen bee who will tolerate no rivals. In cities, the size of a domain can be up to a dozen miles in diameter, as the succubi are few and far between. Her drones are all human: female supplicants and the men upon whom she feeds. The only reason she will venture beyond her own boundaries is to take a rival down. Stealing the imprinted man of another succubus will cripple the succubus from whom he is stolen. This is why a succubus will often imprint a man and feed off him for a while, but then kill him herself before he can be stolen by another.”
The message ended there. Of course there wasn’t even a Love, Dad. This was a research file.
I was silent. So were Sky and Norbert. Maybe they were thinking the same thing I was: there was something here, a connection to all of this madness. But the puzzle didn’t seem to be complete.
Sky’s eyes locked on mine. “It’s got to be ten miles from Misty’s lair in Leimert Park to where she hung out in Little Tokyo.”
“Neither is anywhere near the Valley,” I said.
And that’s when the pieces finally clicked together. That’s when it took shape: the whole picture. That’s when the horror started rising inside me.
“It’s out of her domain,” said Sky.
“There’s only one reason she would have been in the Valley,” Norbert added. His voice had gone thin and tight. “To take down a rival. To steal a man.”
Sky nodded. “Not just any man. An imprinted man.”
I wanted to contribute to the conversation, but words wouldn’t come out. My gaze flew back to Norbert as he spoke:
“Misty grabbed Todd Harmon from another succubus.”
I sucked in a breath. The burst of oxygen kicked my brain into gear. When I spoke, my voice sounded hollow in my ears. “A succubus named Corabelle LaCaze.”
That’s when we heard the beeping.
Twenty-Five
Sky and I raced out of Norbert’s room—straight into a stampede of doctors and nurses. All were racing toward the beeping—toward Todd Harmon’s room—yelling things like “Code blue!” and “Crash cart!” The beeping was shrill, and it was loud, and it wouldn’t stop.
Then Corabelle appeared. She floated right out of Todd’s door, through the onslaught, and into the waiting area. Her hair was in the same ponytail that I’d seen when she raced in, but it didn’t look the same. No longer greasy, no longer lank, it was once again the bouncy beautiful blond wave that it had always been. Her skin had cleared up too, and her eyes—as they found mine—were a gorgeous, crystal blue.
Corabelle was back.
We froze, staring at her. Her smile wasn’t scary or bitchy at all. It was dazzling and enticing. The kind of friendly smile you wanted to return, that you almost couldn’t help but return.
“Thank you,” Corabelle said to me. “Thank you for finding him.”
I nodded. She was beautiful and vital again, but she didn’t look like a succubus. Or at least not like what I now believed succubi to look like. Corabelle wasn’t as tall as Misty; her skin wasn’t as pale or freakishly luminous. Most telling of all, Sky didn’t seem to be losing his mind from her presence. I marched straight toward her, ignoring the chaos around us. Sky tried to stop me, but I twisted away.
“Stick out your tongue,” I ordered her.
Without missing a beat, she did it, as if I’d made the most normal request in the world in response to the gratitude she’d shown for my finding her boyfriend. She opened her perfect, pink lips and stuck out her perfect, pink tongue.
Okay, that would have been too easy.
“What happened to Todd?” I demanded. “Is he going to be okay?”
Before Corabelle could answer, Sky spun me around to face him. “Stop this. Maybe your dad was wrong about the tongue thing.”
“Since when do you doubt the great Dr. Cade?”
I turned back to Corabelle, but she wasn’t there anymore. There was a flash of blond at the corner, and then she was gone.
I would have chased after her, but unfortunately my arms were pinned at my sides by one of Aunt Aggie’s hugs.
“Angel love!” she shrieked into my ear.
Sky was trapped too. Uncle Edmund had grabbed him by the shoulders. “Where’s Norbert?” he boomed.
I wrestled away from my aunt while Sky shook free and pointed in the direction of Norbert’s room. “Over there,” he said. “And sorry but—”
“We have to go!” I finished for him.
Sky bolted from the waiting area. I should have been right behind him, but Uncle Edmund pounced on me.
“Hold it.”
“Please,” I gasped, struggling against his grasp. “You don’t understand. I’ll be fine. I have to do this one thing. It’s really important. I’ll come right back.”
My uncle was strong. Stronger than I’d realized. I couldn’t even wriggle.
“No,” he snapped. “Jillian, this is very serious. We promised your father that we would keep you safe. And we always assumed you would do the same. We trusted you, Jilly. We trusted you with our son.”
Aunt Aggie stood by his side. Her relief had fallen away. Now her face was creased with anger. “Is it true you’ve been taking Norbert to explore crack houses in Leimert Park?”
I almost said, It wasn’t a crack house; it was a meth lab. I bit my lip. Probably not a distinction they’d care to make. Besides, neither was true. Of course they were pissed. I had put Norbert in danger. I felt terrible too, but I didn’t have time to apologize or make amends. Corabelle had escaped and I needed to find her. Succubus or not, she was dangerous.
“Clear!” came a shout from Todd Harmon’s room. There was a jolt, followed by a high-pitched whine. No more beeping. Just an even tone.
I felt that rubber band pull around my heart again. I was responsible for this. If I hadn’t found him in that basement, he wouldn’t be here right now, and Corabelle wouldn’t have hurt him. I
had to convince my aunt and uncle to let me go.
Maybe I could. Maybe I had a trump card to play.
I looked at my uncle. “Listen, I get why you’re mad. I get it because I trusted you. And I know you know that I would never hurt Norbert. So now that we’re on the subject of trust, let me ask you something. Do I have a sister?”
Uncle Edmund went ashen. In seconds. Whiter than Misty. His grip loosened. A puff of air escaped Aunt Aggie’s mouth.
So. The trump card worked. It was all I needed to know.
“Go see Norbert,” I said, and then I raced away.
The doors of two elevators at the end of the hallway were closed. The lights above them showed that one was on the top floor, the floor above us. The other was headed down. That had to be Sky. I would have done the same, guessing Corabelle had taken the stairs to throw us off, and was trying to flee the way she’d come in: out the front door.
I jabbed the up arrow. From the roof, I could both avoid Sky and get a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding streets. Maybe I could even spot her. Screw it. I bolted for the stairs and took them two at a time, racing up to the roof door. It was marked emergency exit only. I held my breath as I pressed the thick metal bar . . . and no alarms blared.
Amazing. Something had actually gone my way.
I stepped out onto the roof, let go of the door, and then reached back to snag it before it could close. It’s not like I’d never seen a movie before. The last thing I wanted was to get trapped. I wasn’t carrying anything besides my nearly destroyed phone, so I took off one boot and used it to wedge the door open. I would have wadded up my T-shirt and used that, but then I’d be a girl on a hospital roof in a bra. The clock on that scenario would be a short one, and I’d end up talking to Officer Simon again.
It wasn’t until I was outside that I remembered that it was the middle of the night. Floodlights illuminated a giant white cross with an H at its center. A helicopter landing pad, maybe? It was the only part of the roof that was lit up. Nothing but murky shadows everywhere else. From where I was standing, I could see a rusty red rail along the edge of the roof. I set my hand on it and followed it into the gloom, letting my fingers trail over the scabby roughness. To my left something was making a loud whirring sound: giant fans and air-conditioning vents.
