u up? #2
What is that? I stop cold and try to lock on to the sound, wherever it’s coming from. Smoke escapes my lungs, even though I’m not exhaling, overwhelming the air around me.
tap tap . . .
There it is again. I hear it, loud and clear. Fingernails on glass.
The window.
Here we go again. My mind playing tricks on me. Fool me once . . .
I’m not falling for it this time.
tap tap tap . . .
I should know better by now. I’m not going to let my insomnia get the best of me.
tap tap . . .
Probably a loose bolt from the fire escape. A stray telephone wire. There’s no telling what it might be. What I know for sure
is that it’s not some fucking spider trying to—
tap
Now I’m not so sure.
tap
Look. Just go ahead and look. Let my eyesight settle.
tap
What do I see?
tap
Someone’s out there. Outside my room. I can just make out the blackened silhouette hunched over on the fire escape. Black
within black, shadows within shadows.
A woman is crouched on my fucking fire escape.
I’m staring, waiting for the image to dissipate. For me to see it for what it really is. Because there’s no way, no possible
way that it could possibly be—
her
—real. I refuse to believe it, sorry, it just can’t be—
her
—real. If I wait long enough, the hallucination will fade. It’ll be a dead potted plant, the brittle husk bristling in the wind, those shriveled leaves looking like hair but not really hair.
Let me hold onto my sanity for just a little bit longer, I’m begging my brain.
Pretty please. Sugar on top.
tap
tap
tap
She’s not moving. Her silhouette doesn’t shift. I can’t tell if she’s even breathing. Only her fingernail pecks against the
glass, a raven’s beak rapping at my chamber door.
tap
How did she get up here? Did she climb all the way up from the street? That’s five floors. Not impossible, but I would’ve
heard her. The strain on the metal. The weight of her body on the rungs. The scuff of her shoes against the railing. Something.
Anything.
It can’t be her. It’s not real. This isn’t happening. Nothing within my body wants to work, even though there’s a very distinct voice in the back of my head begging me to run.
Go, Jordan, leave now, before it’s too—
tap
tap
tap
It’s Lilith. The woman from the Inquisition show. She’s kneeling on my fire escape, hunched in such a cryptid position, I
can’t help but picture a granite gargoyle, perched on my apartment’s ledge, overseeing the city, knees pressed against her
chest.
Not human. Not human at all. Something terrifying.
Something glorious.
tap
tap
tap
Lilith presses her palm to the pane, flattening her hand against the glass.
I see her skin. The tattoo of that black rose wrapping around her wrist. I swear I see it writhe, that inked flower growing over her palm, its roots tightening around her fingers, the thorns digging into her flesh, floral barbed wire endlessly snaking and spiraling around her hand.
Lilith. How did she find me? How did she know where I live? Because you brought her back to your apartment, dumbass. Of course she remembers where you live . . .
So. The million-dollar question, big guy, is . . . Are you going to invite her in?
My hands are already on the window, fingers digging into the loose crevasse between the frame, and pulling up. The window
scrapes open. All that warped wood. It’s murder in the winter, when the cold seeps through, but right now all I can feel is
heat. The humidity lingering outside oozes in and it’s like Lilith has exhaled all over me.
“May I come in?” she asks.
“What’s stopping you?”
“I’m trying to be polite,” she says. Is that a smile budding up from her lips?
She has been waiting for an invitation. How cordial. “Why start now?”
“Because you seem, I don’t know . . . afraid.”
She’s not wrong. “Do you get that often?”
“Not as much as we’d like,” she says, “if we’re being completely honest.”
“Honesty tends to be the best policy.”
“Is it now?”
“So I’m told.”
“Most people don’t know any better. If they did, perhaps they would be afraid.”
“Should I be afraid?” I ask. “Of you?”
“Probably. Are you?”
I can’t tell if I’m frightened or turned on. Maybe both.
There’s my pulse.
I feel my heartbeat. That steady pound resonating through my chest. It’s growing. Amplifying itself. A marching band in my rib cage. When was the last time I felt like this?
The last time I was with Lilith. Always her.
“Maybe I am afraid,” I say. “But that’s not stopping me from wanting this.”
“This.”
“You,” I clarify.
Silence from Lilith. We’re staring each other down, taking one another in, daring the other to make the first move. “So,”
I start. “Who are you this time? Who are you now?”
“Still me.” Something in the way she says it tells me she means it. It’s the truth.
Do I trust her? Should I? “Still you,” I repeat. “And who’s that?”
“Who do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I say. “Not anymore.”
“Perhaps it’s better to simply . . . feel.”
“That’s your advice? Feel my way through all this? Put common sense to rest?”
“Why not? Let yourself go. Live a little. Live a lot.”
“That’s a pretty tall order,” I say.
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“Plenty.”
“You’re no fun,” she says. “We were hoping for fun-Jordan. Where is he?”
I could give in. Give myself over. Let go. Lord knows I want to.
“Who was that at the farmers market?” I ask.
“Me.”
“On the . . . inside. Not on the out?”
“Different skin, yes.”
“Okay, so . . . What are you?”
“Don’t you know by now? Do I have to say it out loud? Say the word?”
“Yes, I want to hear you say it.”
“Ask nicely.”
“No.”
This makes her smile go wider, lips stretching. “Fine,” she eventually relents. “Demon.” The word extends, a vesper, lengthening, a serpent in the air. “Happy now?”
“I can’t believe this.” I’m not willing to give anything of me, to accept this. Not yet.
“Faith is difficult to find these days, isn’t it? And yet . . . you’re still afraid.”
“How can you tell?”
“You’re so easy to read.” She sighs, the air escaping her chest. “I can practically hear your pulse pounding from outside.
You’re sweating, even now. Your breathing has picked up. All that tells me is your body believes, at least, no matter what
your mind tells you.”
She’s right. I’m afraid. Not of her, though.
Of myself.
I haven’t been the same since the accident. What if I brought something back? A little memento of hell? What if something’s
slithering within that I don’t even know about?
If I’m not the same person I was before . . . then who am I now?
What am I becoming?
Maybe death unlocked something inside that’s always been there . . . I could’ve had this darkness within me from the get-go
and I just didn’t know.
All it took was dying to dislodge it.
All I know is I’m waking up.
I feel alive.
Lilith’s picking up my pulse again. Proof of life, right here. I feel things with her. Feel like myself again. Or who knows?
Maybe something better. Something more . . . me.
Whoever I am now.
Am I ready to let go? Go along for the ride? That blend of fear and excitement, the thrill of it, whatever this is, the very tumult of her, it’s making my heart beat faster. I’m walking along the razor’s edge of my senses, simply trying to find my equilibrium.
Like riding a bike. It’s still there, somewhere. The muscle memory of my heart.
“How?” I ask. I need to understand this. Understand her.
“How . . . what?”
How is this possible? How can you be here? How can you possibly be you and her and him and all these people all at once? How
can I believe a word of what you say?
How can you be what you say you are? How can you be a . . . a . . .
“How can I trust you?” Let’s start there.
Trust. Faith.
Demon.
Her body fills the windowsill. She could easily crawl in. Pounce. But she doesn’t. She merely crouches. Her body remains in
such an unfamiliar, inhuman, position, but she doesn’t move.
“Is it proof you want? Another vulgar display of power?”
“No,” I manage to say, swallowing back whatever fear is rising up my throat.
“What do you want, Jordan?”
What do I want?
Simple.
“You.”