by Nash Summers
“Oh, Levi, you’re such a prude.” Picking up the coffeepot off the burner, she slipped past me and went table to table to refill mugs.
I hadn’t realized I’d been staring vacantly at the cash register buttons until the men from table nine stood in front of the counter. After apologizing and ringing through their bill, another couple came up to pay. They left, and then the diner was empty.
Saddie was near the front entrance, tugging down the blinds over the windows and pulling the metal chain on the LED sign that lit up to indicate we were open. She leaned over one of the tables to wipe it down with a rag, when the bells from the front door chimed.
“Sorry—” Saddie started and then paused.
Monroe stood in the doorway, wicked grin on his face, hair swept back, wearing snug jeans with holes in the knees and a white T-shirt covered in black splotches of engine oil.
“Monroe!” A wide smile covered her pretty face. She tossed the rag down on the table and walked right over to him.
The look on her face was too hopeful, too happy. I felt odd seeing her look at Monroe like that. It felt too intimate, too personal. She reminded me of one of those beautiful women from black-and-white films who’d wait for their lovers on the edge of a train station platform, smiling like the sun had finally shone when they saw their one true love.
“What are you doing here?” Saddie walked up to him, went to throw her arms around his neck, but he caught her arms and gently pushed them back down to her sides.
Monroe looked calm, slick, collected, like this was something he’d done a hundred and one times before. “I’m actually here to see Levi,” he said. His eyes flickered toward me.
“Oh,” Saddie said, obviously uncomfortable. “Because of his car?”
Monroe shrugged.
“How about we stop by Whiskey’s again tonight?” Saddie pressed.
He put a small smile on his face that was faker than the neon green fern we kept in the corner of the diner. “Thought we talked about this, Saddie.”
“About what?” Saddie asked. “You blowing me off after we had a good time? You could at least give me another chance.”
Monroe’s eyes flickered up to me again, and when he saw me staring back at him, listening, he shifted his weight. “We did have a good time,” he said awkwardly. “And you’re a real nice girl.”
Saddie went still. “A real nice girl?”
“It was fun, Saddie, but it can’t happen again. That one time was a drunk mistake—I’m sorry. I can’t give you what you want.”
Even from where I stood behind the counter, I saw tears well in her eyes and spill down her cheeks. She threw her hands up to her face, wiping away the spilled tears. “You know what, Monroe? You’re a real bastard.”
Saddie turned away from him and stormed past me into the kitchen. Her face was red, and tears dripped down her cheeks and neck.
“Saddie,” I said gently, following her into the back room.
“I’ll be okay.” Her voice was rough, hitching when she spoke. “Should’ve listened to my friends and my mama. Men like him aren’t good for anything but breaking hearts. Will you lock up? I have to go.”
“Yes, of course.”
Without looking at me, she pulled off her apron, grabbed her purse off the hanger, and left through the back door with a loud bang.
When I went back out to the front of the diner, Monroe sat on one of the stools at the counter. The lights were all off, but the gentle glow of the streetlights that shone in through the blinds illuminated one side of his face. He looked up at me when I walked through the doorway. My heart began to race.
“What the hell was that about?” My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was low, challenging.
Monroe frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Saddie is a sweetheart. You could’ve let her down a little more gently.”
“Like what?” Monroe shot up to his feet. “With respect? With honesty?”
“You could do a hell of a lot worse than her,” I snapped.
“And I probably have. Does that mean I should lie to her? Tell her I feel something for her that I don’t?” He stopped in front of me, looked down at me as he spoke.
“You could’ve been a bit kinder about it. She seems to really like you. For some reason.”
Monroe barked out a laugh. It sounded harsh and cruel. It suited him. “For some reason? You don’t know?”
“Not a clue,” I sneered.
He took another step toward me, his chest pressing against mine, his thigh touching my thigh. Quietly he said, “Well, Levi, why don’t you ask her, and then you two can compare notes?”
Heat covered my body. Rage was a tangible thing pouring out of me. I put my hands between us and shoved him. “Fuck you,” I bit out.
I spun around, stepping toward the kitchen. I hadn’t even taken two steps when a vise grip grabbed my arm and turned me back around.
Monroe’s eyes were clearer than ice water.
The lights flickered on and then back off again.
He didn’t let go of my arm. He pressed against me, shoved me hard against the wall at my back. The shelves shook, dishes clanked together. He wrapped his other hand around my free wrist, slammed both of my hands against the wall near my shoulders.
A snake slithered up from under the collar of his T-shirt. Its blue scales glimmered in light that wasn’t really there. Another coiled itself around his arm, smooth purple scales running over his skin, pale eyes fixed on me.
The black snake slithered around the side of his neck, coming from the shadows behind his shoulders. It wrapped around his throat, watching me each time it looped around.
Monroe leaned in. There wasn’t an inch of space between our bodies. The bulge in his jeans pressed against my stomach, and I knew he could feel mine pressed against his thigh.
He touched his lips to the sensitive skin below my ear. “That’s not what you want to say to me, Levi,” he said in a low voice. “You want to beg me to fuck you. I can see it written all over that pretty face.”
“You’re an animal.” I meant for it to come off as an insult, but I sounded out of breath.
“And you love it.” He pressed a gentle kiss behind my ear. I shivered.
“It breaks my heart when you look at me like that, like you can’t even stand the sight of me. I watch the emotions play over your face and it makes me want to cause something to bleed. You want me too, but you wish so fucking badly you didn’t,” Monroe said. “Tell me just once, Levi. Tell me you feel this electricity between us.”
Monroe pulled back enough to look at my face, stare into my eyes.
Without blinking, I said, “No.”
He grinned. It was a wolf’s grin. Feral and dangerous.
The grip on my wrists vanished, and for a moment I thought he’d turn around and leave. Instead he fisted the amulet around my neck, forcing the chain to pinch into my skin. He slipped his other hand around to the back of my head, grabbing a fistful of my hair.
And then he pulled me toward him and kissed me.
Could a man lose his soul from just one kiss? If he could, I didn’t give a damn right then.
When I parted my lips against his and pressed my tongue into his mouth, Monroe lost his mind.
His hands instantly fell to my ass, squeezing, taking my breath. He lifted me against him roughly, and I wrapped my legs around his thighs. He thrust against me, and I winced as the back of my head banged against the wall. I gasped, and he stole it away with another kiss. The shelves shook, a glass fell, shattered on the floor.
We were wild together. I laced my fingers into his hair. He gripped my ass hard enough to leave handprints on my skin for days.
The kiss was hot and needy, wet and too rough. I couldn’t get enough of him, of his touch, of his skin touching my skin, of his body pressing against my own.
I closed my eyes and listened to the sizzle and snap of current between us, to the gentle hum in the back of my mind. The hum was a cry from the swamp, a warnin
g, a blessing, a curse. Those black waters ran through his veins, forced his heart to beat, let me listen to how deeply he wanted me.
Small, smooth scales tickled up my arm. They wrapped around my wrist, then my elbow, then to my throat. I tossed my head back again. Another glass fell to the floor in an explosion of crystals.
Monroe bit my bottom lip, ran his tongue along the inside of my teeth, whispered my name.
I was drowning in him.
I was sinking, my body a stone. I begged the current and the waves to pull me under.
And suddenly he was gone. He’d stepped back, staring at me, chest heaving, eyes blazing. The loss of his touch was like a slap to the face. I was cold, impossibly cold. I was empty, hollow, a shell of what I’d been a second ago.
Without a word he reached into his pocket, slammed my set of car keys down onto the counter, and walked out of the diner, the door banging shut behind him.
WARD STOOD in the distance under a flickering street lamp. When I approached him, head hung, he said nothing. We began walking back home through the dimly lit streets, under the veil of the late-night sky. He barely looked at me, let the silence between us form an uncomfortable, ugly divider.
Eventually, after a painful silence, Ward said, “He is dangerous, Levi. Dangerous for your heart and your soul.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “But I can’t help it.”
“You just do not want to.”
I stopped short. Turning to him, I snapped, “Mind your own business, Ward. This doesn’t involve you.”
His dark eyes blinked at me, his expression blank.
I’d never raised my voice at him before, not in my entire life. It shocked both of us. I raked my hands over my face. “Fuck, Ward, I’m sorry.”
But when I put my hands back down to my sides, Ward was already gone.
Chapter 11
THE CANDLES blazed. Outside there was nothing but silence. There, in the darkness of my room, shadows danced across the walls. The curtains were drawn. My closed door shut me out from the rest of the world.
I sat in the center of my room on the carpet, candlesticks lit all around me on the floor, my dresser, my nightstand. A picture of my gran lay on the floor in front of me. I hadn’t ever really needed something physical of hers to talk to her, but lately I felt as though I was further from her than ever.
The smell of incense and burning sage wafted through the air. Mojo bags filled my pajama bottom pockets. All of my charms and amulets touched my skin in some way—around my neck, in the palms of my hands.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I was lost in every sense of the word. My head, my heart, my soul—all wanted different things, screamed different things at me, told me what the other wanted was wrong. I’d never felt more out of sorts with myself.
So I thought of my gran. Her kind smile, the way she’d braided her long, blond hair, how she’d always told me what I had to hear, even if I hadn’t wanted to hear it.
I listened to the creaking of the old house, the way the wooden boards shifted and moved. I forced myself to breathe slowly, evenly, when what I really wanted to do was scream.
I missed my gran, everything about her, how once I’d sat in front of the fireplace in the living room, looking up at her as she sat in her rocking chair. She wore a long, red night-robe that was patterned with pictures of tiny black birds. She pushed back and forth slowly as she looked down at me and smiled. And I smiled back.
The blond to our hair mirrored each other, but hers hung longer, glistening in the firelight. Wrinkles creased her eyes and mouth, making her look as kind as I knew her to be. She had a gentle face, easy and loving.
My gran and I used to sit in front of the fireplace just like that almost every night. She and my mama used to travel when it was just the two of them, seeing things, places, new people. But when Mama became pregnant with me, they thought it best to settle down somewhere.
Gran had always been a permanent fixture in our home. Before Gran died, I couldn’t have imagined a family without her. She was the one I’d always gone to when I thought Mama was being unfair to me, only to have Gran tell me how lucky I was to have a mama like her, and that I should be more thankful.
“Levi,” she’d said.
“Yes, Gran?”
“I need to tell you something very important. Will you pay attention?”
“Of course.” I’d always known that when Gran told someone something important, it was imperative that they paid attention. Not only because it was respectful, Mama said, but because Gran knew things about the world that no one else knew. She was a looking glass into the past, present, and future.
“One day you’ll fall in love with the devil. Lord, will you ever love him. And he will love you right back. But remember, Levi, loving a man with darkness on his soul can cause you to go mad. It could cause you to lose your own soul. And, sweetheart, I’m not sure if you’d be the same person without your soul.”
I thought about that, let it sink in deeply, the thought of a person losing their soul. I wondered to myself if they’d be an evil person, or vacant, like a leftover eggshell.
“Will I lose my soul, Gran?”
She looked up at the ceiling. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking hard about the question, or about whether or not to tell me the answer.
Eventually she looked back down at me. “Maybe. But maybe the devil will be worth it.”
“How could the devil possibly be worth losing my soul over, Gran?”
She smiled at me kindly, the corners of her eyes scrunching as she did. “Ah, sweetheart. That’s love, ain’t it? It’s the one thing you’d throw almost everything into the pits for.”
I was too young to understand it then. I had no notion of romantic love or desire. I knew only the few things in my small world, and I knew by the way Gran looked at me that she knew how confused I was.
“You’ll remember this memory one day, Levi, when you need it most.”
“Are you sure?”
She laughed and wagged her finger at me. “Of course, I’m sure. I don’t make this up for fun.”
“What if I don’t know he’s the devil?”
“You’ll know. The devil has a soul blacker than tar. You’ll see it, and his dark, dark soul will love you so bad.”
I thought about this for a moment, long, hard. “What should I do, Gran? I don’t want to love someone full of darkness. I don’t want to lose my soul.”
She smiled at me sweetly, her expression warming, turned loving. “When the time comes, that’s a choice you’ll have to make.”
I STOOD at the edge of the swamp, the wooden boards of the dock under my bare feet, the seemingly endless pools of water before me beckoning. Tall, dark trees shaped like looming figures watched me, outstretched their spindling arms toward me.
“How sweet it will be,” they murmured, “if you plunge into these depths. How badly we’ve missed you. Come to us, and we will never part again.”
Overhead hung a white, full moon. Reflective scratches of light raked the dark water’s surface.
In the distance between two trees stood a woman—a creature—the same as before. Her long, matted hair covered her face. The whiteness of her skin was startling. It decayed before me, falling from her body in chunks, splashing into the swamp waters. Her arms stretched toward me. The ragged cloth over her body was soaked in crimson. She screamed something—my name. No, his name.
She wanted me so badly to drop into the water. I wanted it too. I couldn’t breathe without it, couldn’t be complete without it.
I took a step off the edge of the dock, and then I was falling. The waters coated me, soaked me from the inside out, lined my organs, mixed with the blood in my veins.
Yes, I tried to say, but I couldn’t because my throat was full of the dirt-filled water.
Everything was perfect….
Until it wasn’t.
Coldness whipped against my skin. My body ached. My heart cried out. The separation was pai
nful, and my skin burned from it.
I opened my eyes, shaking violently, held still by big, strong hands, my body pressed against a hard chest.
Monroe stared down at me, a deep line between his brows, his expression panicked.
“Christ, Levi.” His voice shook.
The water was up to Monroe’s chest, and I was cradled in his arms. The swamp was covered in darkness. I couldn’t see or hear anything but the wild beating of my own heart and the heavy breath coming from Monroe.
My soaked clothing pressed a chill into my skin. Mud covered my arms, bare feet. I could feel twigs in my hair and the underlying sting of salty swamp water in my eyes.
“I’m okay,” I said, but my voice hitched.
Monroe didn’t respond, didn’t look at me. He waded through the water toward the edge of the swamp where the water met the shoreline. It wasn’t until we reached the back door of his house that he set me back down onto the ground. He yanked the door open, locked his fingers around my wrist, and pulled me inside.
I shook as we swiftly walked down the hallway. Monroe flicked on the bathroom light, went to the shower, and turned on the water. The bathroom soon filled with hot waves of steam.
“Get in,” he said, still not looking at me.
He stormed out of the bathroom, leaving the door wide-open. I stared into the vacant spot he’d stood in moments before. As my body began to stop shaking, I peeled my dirty clothing off. The metal rings on the shower bar clanked when I pulled back the thin curtain and stepped inside. Hot water beat against my naked body, warming me quickly.
I picked up a bar of soap from a dish on the side and lathered my body, scrubbing away the mud caked to my skin, the smell of the swamp, the feeling of muck against my skin. I tried my best to keep my eyes open, even as the spray of water splashed onto my face. I was too afraid of what I might do or see when I closed my eyes.
When I turned off the shower and stepped out, my clothing was gone, but on top of the counter sat a large, folded towel. I pulled it apart, hung it around my shoulders, wrapped it closed in the front to cover everything but my bare feet and head.
