Chapter 16
How’s the murdering working with your doctor oath? I text Joel, poolside. Really well? Cool. Thought so.
He doesn’t respond.
Ella stands, her brow furrowed, at the edge of the electric-blue water.
She’s reluctantly wearing the slightly too-large giraffe-themed swimsuit Dee bought in one of the many gift shops (since we forgot to bring one).
Small children crowd the shallow pool, some in inflatable vests with Disney characters on them, others sporting disturbingly heavy-looking swim diapers.
It is apparently a school break—teachers’ conferences, maybe?
—so this is the worst possible weekday timing.
I didn’t even know he was my brother until the other day. I didn’t get to tell him.
He doesn’t respond.
Because you killed him.
Nothing.
I hate you.
He’s never going to respond. He’s probably on his way over to our house.
I shiver in the clogged, germy air.
I hate you.
He’s probably outside the brown house right now, waiting for me.
A red-striped waterslide, like a massive mutated candy cane, feeds into the far side of the pool, and boys explode out of its mouth in quick succession, shrieking. Ella cringes and takes a step back. She is only ankle deep.
No, he probably isn’t at our house. And even if he is, would he really kill me in front of my family?
That idea is seeming less and less likely to me.
It was stupid to come here, but when I suggested to Dee that we probably don’t have to stay, she told me she paid for two nights so we’re doing them.
Now she’s hunched over on a work call, covering her free ear with her hand.
There’s some emergency with her biggest client.
“Go ahead, bunny. In you go!” Mom is nudging Ella while peering over her sunglasses at a few dads in tank tops.
She is wearing a leopard-print one-piece that is barely a complete piece of anything—between the plunging neckline that nearly reaches her navel and the scraps of fabric straining to cover her extravagant breasts.
Adam was wonderful, I write. I never wanted to hurt him. I didn’t know it was hurting him. I thought it was different that time.
I realized in the car on the way home, as soon as I was calm enough to think: It must run in the family.
Like my own power. The healing power, the angel thing—Adam must’ve had some of it, too.
Maybe a lot less, but enough to keep him alive.
It was never his blindness. It was his bloodline. It was his genetic proximity to Joel.
I’m not the monster, I write. You are. I never wanted to hurt anyone.
Maybe he has blocked my number. Would it tell me if he had?
How many people have you killed?
Ella wails. “Something cut me! Is it bleeding? Is it bleeding?”
I look at Dee. I can’t deal with Ella right now; I have things to do, angels to defeat.
“Mom!” Dee snaps, muting her work call from her lounge chair. “Aren’t you supposed to be on this?”
A tiny blond boy nearly knocks Ella over as he erupts out of the water, laughing with his mouth wide open, mucus streaming from both nostrils. I move reflexively forward, but Dee shakes her head at me. Go, she mouths.
I nod and turn away, lifting my phone to my ear. “West Windsor Family Practice, how can I help you?” says a receptionist at Joel’s office. I googled: It’s him and one other doctor, only fifteen minutes from our home.
I step behind an enormous plastic palm tree and explain that I’m a new patient.
She explains in return that there are no appointments available for three months.
My shoulder brushes a stiff frond and dust drifts down.
A kid is scream-crying, and his mom is yelling at him to please just give her a break for one friggin’ second.
Or maybe it’s his aunt. I shouldn’t assume.
I call a different number. No answer.
I call again.
“What?” Dick Face growls. He sounds like I woke him up.
“Do you just sleep all the time?” I snap at him.
“I told you—fallow! You dense? Slow in the head?”
I ignore this. “I have a chance to kill the hunter and— ”
He grunts in a more positive tone. “Still trying to hunt the hunter? I like it. Ballsy.”
I hate that I am minorly pleased at his approval. What a psychological cliché. “He’s right here in my town. I already know him.”
He wakes up at that. “Why didn’t you say before?”
“I asked how to kill him. That’s like saying.” I can’t remember exactly what I said; I haven’t been at my most logical. “And anyway— ”
He talks over me: “What are the chances? He’s onto you. Shit. He’s coming for you next, then. You know that, right? Man, it’s me. It’s like he can smell me. He knows which ones I saw last or something.”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with your scent. But yeah, he’s definitely going to come for me now.”
“Well, fuck. Good luck, kid. Did I already tell you to act fast? You don’t want to give him any time. Aw, fuck, someone’s here.” I hear banging in the background. “Shit, they’re always bothering me. Harassment. It’s harassment. I gotta deal with this.”
“Wait—is there anything you can do? You said something about summoning something?” I’m desperate. It’s the only thing I can remember that might help.
“I said that?”
My heart sinks.
“Shut up! I’m busy! I’ll be there in a minute, dick rag!” This is clearly not to me. And then in a more normal voice: “Oh yeah. Sure, sure. You want me to summon the . . .” He says one of his indecipherable words.
“What?” I demand.
He says it again angrily.
“Say it so I can understand,” I order. “In, um, American.”
He makes a screechy sound of annoyance. “You stupid, stupid people! Uh. Pain . . . demon. Sure. Pain demon. I would go for fire, y’know, but I actually forgot that ritual somehow.
I think I was doing shrooms at the time, when my buddy was teaching it to me.
Shrooms have been around a long time, kid.
You know that? I’m educating you right now.
” He chuckles. Then screams: “No, you can go fuck yourself! You think I’m a lazy old man? Well, wait until you meet me, fucker!”
“Pain demon?” I say.
“Like I said, not the perfect one for the job, necessarily, and unpredictable as fuck. That’s why I don’t like to do it. I shoulda done it, though, earlier. When it might’ve helped my boy. My Fabian.”
“Sorry it’s just me,” I mutter, becoming oddly aware of the Moana 2 soundtrack playing tinnily from hidden speakers somewhere above me.
“Well, don’t take it personal. There’s still a bunch of you out there. Gotta do it sometime. Okay, give me your address. I’ll send it to you.”
I feel deeply uneasy. “Um, what does it actually do?”
“Don’t worry, kid. I got this. I’ll—I TOLD YOU I’M COMING, ASSMOUTH!—make the instructions clear to it. You need to make the instructions clear, is the trick.”
I definitely don’t trust him to do this. Whatever it is.
“What instructions? What do they have to be?” I ask a little frantically. I can tell I’m losing him.
“Nah, I got this. You just hang tight. It’ll be there tomorrow. Or maybe a couple days.”
“No, wait— ”
But he misinterprets and interrupts me all at once: “It takes at least twelve hours, Stormy! At the minimum! I can’t help that! You want me to change all the rules? The world has rules, okay?” He’s angry again.
“My name is Tempest.”
“I know, I know, but Stormy is cuter. It’s like a nickname.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t like it.” I hear how petulant I sound. He brings out the absolute worst in me.
The pounding increases in the background of his call, accompanied by muffled yelling.
“Bye, kid. Hang tight.” He’s gone.
It takes me a few extra seconds to realize he doesn’t have my address. I text it to him. This is probably a huge mistake. Or maybe it’s like Taskrabbit. For demons. Either way, I don’t know what else to do.
“Any luck?” Mom stage-whispers, appearing around the trunk of the fake tree. “Are you calling him?” She lowers the unnecessary sunglasses (the whole park is technically and grotesquely indoors), and before I can respond she says, “You should stop at Macy’s.”
Somehow, she seems to have remembered a lot of the conversation from last night, but she hasn’t asked any followup questions or tried to have me committed to a psychiatric facility. I have sworn her to secrecy, and she seems to be enjoying it.
“They have good deals on matching sets. With your coloring, you shouldn’t try for pink.”
“I don’t think lingerie is really— ”
“Tempest. Listen to me. I was thinking about it. You should enjoy yourself a little, if you can.”
“What!” I cry.
She widens her eyes at me, like I’m the one being ridiculous. “Don’t look at me like that! I’m just saying, this might be your only chance—this is the only man you can— ”
“Mom!” Dick Face and my mother within minutes of each other is maybe too much for me right now. And also every other time.
“And you like him.”
“Liked! I don’t think you’re understanding.
” I start to walk away through a small herd of children rushing toward the pools, the hot dogs in their hands dripping bloody ketchup.
I don’t want to say what I’m thinking: Lingerie or not, I might not survive my next encounter with Joel.
Of all the details for Mom’s slippery brain to release, it has to be the one about my possible impending death?
“Everything okay?” says Dee from behind me. Her work-bag is over her shoulder; Ella is trailing moodily after her.
“Just talking lingerie,” chirps Mom.
Dee’s forehead creases. She looks like she doesn’t want to know. Which is definitely better.
“Little bit of a prude,” Mom murmurs to me. “Not my fault.”
“No,” I say deadpan as a passing my-age dad contemplates her cleavage.
“I don’t want to get wet,” Ella informs the three of us in a stubborn tone.
Dee sighs. “I told you, you can just read your book then.”
“It’s the wrong one!”
Dee looks at me. “I brought the Libby book, but it’s the second one. Apparently she still won’t touch that. It’s been, what, a year now?” I can tell she had to cut her work call short and she’s stressed.
“You know I’m not ready yet!” Ella cries, fully activated now.
I flinch.
“And why are you speaking in that voice about me? It sounds mean. Titi doesn’t use that mean voice. Ever!”
I freeze in place and the Crayola-colored slides seem to writhe and wriggle together in the humid distance like poisonous snakes. But then Dee takes a slow breath and says with great restraint, “I hear you, baby. Do you want a hug right now? You can just tell me if you want a hug.”
And I relax as Ella nods and then flies into Dee’s arms. Dee is such a good mother. She will be fine, I think, without me, if it comes to that. Maybe she’s always been fine without me.
I call Joel’s office again from a gray-carpeted nook by some vending machines and ask if Dr. Tav is in today.
The receptionist says he isn’t. Where is he?
I almost demand, but then suddenly she is asking me if I’m the one who called earlier.
“This is like a miracle, honey, but we just had a cancellation for tomorrow afternoon. We don’t get a lot of those around here.
Not for Doctor Tav, anyway. He’s so popular.
This might just be your very lucky day! Do you want to snap it up? ”
“Yes,” I say without thinking. It’s like the universe is dragging its lazy butt over to the side of justice. Finally.
“Amazing!” Her voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper: “I’m supposed to check the wait list, but you sounded so stressed. . . .”
“Thank you!” I chirp.
“All right, let’s just get your info!”
Crap. My name.
“Um. My name is . . . Catherine. Catherine Jones.” Not my best effort ever, and I will have to somehow get past the front desk without showing ID, but I’m leaving that problem for future Tempest to solve. Hopefully tomorrow me has learned and grown.
I start to give my address. No reason a doctor would check on that detail, right? The address doesn’t go on the forms they see, but I change a couple of details anyway.
“Wonderful, thanks, Catherine! Do you prefer Cathy?”
“No,” I say primly. I am not a Cathy.
* * *
I turn on the harsh light that also controls the churning exhaust fan and face myself in the mirror of the hotel bathroom.
I take off my shirt. I shake my hair out of its low bun, and it drifts limply, streaks of air between strands.
I pull off my pants and stand in my beige-and-gray striped Thinx, my arms at my sides.
My period is short and light these days, thankfully.
I run my hands over my breasts. Unassuming.
An understated, quiet body. Nothing objectionable here, nothing remarkable.
I try for a come-hither expression. It looks like I’m faintly disturbed, maybe constipated. I return to my regular face.
Beautiful, I suggest silently. Sexy.
Alluring.
Seductive.
Shit.
This isn’t going to work.
I’m not seductive.
I’m not even sexy, probably.
I’m nothing like Dee.
I don’t know how to do a come-hither look. I don’t own sexy clothes, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have brought them with me to our hideout hotel. I only have one bra.
I can’t believe it’s all come to this. I’ll have to actually use the terrible ability that I’ve been running from my whole life. I’ll have to lean into it, to own it.
Which he will of course be prepared for. Maybe not there; he won’t expect me in his exam room. But he will in general expect me to try to seduce him. I’m a succubus. This is exactly what he expects.
So how the hell will it work?
I have to stop him. I don’t know who else is out there.
How many other Grubs. How many kids my horrible father has sired with women he doesn’t deign to remember.
Some of them, maybe most, are despicable like him.
But some of them must just be people—just bewildered, lonely people with no instruction manual for life with a dark curse and a hunter on their trail.
I’m the only one with access to that hunter.
My phone buzzes by the sink and I snatch it up. He’s written back!
Tell me where your father is and maybe I will let you live.
Generous, I write, my heart pounding like I’m being chased. Maybe I am being chased.
You don’t want to die and leave Ella, do you?
Is this him backing out of his threat to kill me? What am I supposed to do?
What would a seasoned spy do? Or maybe a hostage negotiator. That one excessively disheveled and recently divorced guy from every TV show who always knows the exact psychology of the criminal mastermind.
I write: I don’t know where my father is.
I may be disheveled but I am not that guy.
You have three days, he writes.
Fucking psychopath, I reply. It autocorrects to ducking but I catch it before sending. Phew. That would’ve been embarrassing.
I don’t need three days, I think at him. You’ll be dead by tomorrow night. And I won’t shave my armpits. No fucking way.