Magda
I hadn’t quite lost consciousness by the time Carmilla rolled her neck, stepped out of her human visage—or rather, dropped the hint of being human at all—and became a succubus: wings, tail, horns from her temples… a smile that revealed gleaming fangs… her eyes shining red in the center of black sclera. She shook her leathery wings out as if they needed a good stretching, and then lifted me with her tail, and hefted Caleb with both arms.
Is that… is that what I’ll look like?
She sailed from the window and landed, silent as a shadow, behind a dark black SUV I didn’t recognize, but that responded to the fob in her hand.
“Where… are… taking…” I managed.
Carmilla pressed the lift button and the trunk opened. She trundled Caleb’s larger form inside and then pulled me around and laid me down next to him.
“Your friend’s apartment—above her café. It’s unlisted, so it should be safe,” she said. “For now, why don’t you two just get comfortable? You’ll be back here a while, and I’m going to need all the help keeping your powers contained as possible.”
“Wait… w-what?”
She shoved me toward Caleb; even in his sleep, he rolled over to pull me to his chest, and once there, I felt like a safety blanket had been wrapped around me. My whole body felt warm; tingly even. I began drifting downward into sleep, even as I fought to surface once more, but it was too late. His heartbeat pounded gently in my ear, and I nuzzled tighter against him.
“Therrrrre we go,” said Carmilla. “This is what you two should have been doing safely back at my office hours ago.”
She closed the trunk, and I went into blackness.
“ W e’ve basically been inseparable since we were kids. I’m so glad you were able to help her. I mean, after everything that happened with my brother… yeesh. But then she just meets that hunk and in one night… I mean… wow. You must be a miracle worker.”
I lifted my head, confused. Katie?
I opened my eyes to find myself on Katie’s couch. The lights in her living room were dimmed, but the kitchen light was on, and at the small table in her corner, she and the doctor were chit-chatting amicably. Katie’s back was to me, but Carmilla cast a glance over her shoulder and caught my eye, then turned her charms back on Katie as my friend plied the succubus with some of her mouthwatering bear claws—my favorite pastries. I closed my eyes. How was it possible to have slept so much and still be this exhausted? It took me longer than I realized to understand that although I was in the vicinity of Katie’s couch, I was not actually on it.
Underneath me was a now-familiar chest, rising and falling in gentle breaths. I snuggled into Caleb before I realized what I was doing, curling a knee on top of his abdomen, my fingers tangling into the light tuft of his chest hair. He squeezed me against the couch cushions, his chin resting on my head, one hand wrapping around my bare waist, fingers toying with the edge of my panties. A noise rumbled low in his throat in as he slept, and I sighed contentedly.
Wait a minute… my underwear?
My eyes snapped open again. I struggled to right myself, and then looked down at Caleb. He was down to his boxer briefs, and I was in my panties and bra.
“Uh… Katie?” I called out.
Katie turned in her seat and then came scooting into the living room, sliding on the wood floor in her socks like she was attempting to recreate the scene in Risky Business . The look on her face when she saw me was both amazed and shocked.
Oh. My. God, she mouthed at me.
“Mags!” she whispered excitedly, gesturing me over to the kitchen. “Get in here!”
With some effort—Caleb tried to grab hold of me as I clambered over him—I disentangled my limbs and stood nervously in the middle of her living room in only my underwear.
“Can I, um, have some clothes? Where are my clothes?” I asked.
“Right—I’ll grab you some. Man, Dr. Lowe wasn’t kidding. You two were really out of it!”
“Carmilla is fine, please,” said the doctor with a gentle wave as she sipped her coffee.
Katie ran back to her room to grab me some spare clothes, and I hurried into the kitchen and glared at Carmilla.
“What the fuck is going on?” I hissed at her. “Why are we naked? Why are we here ?”
Carmilla blinked at me from above her wire-framed glasses and leaned forward conspiratorially. “There is literally no better way for a pair of horny sex demons to keep calm than to have them touching skin to skin, so I might have undressed you two. Besides”—she took a sip of her coffee—“I told your friend you two were waiting for your clothes to dry after the rain earlier. She doesn’t know a thing, don’t worry.”
I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was nearly seven in the evening. I closed my eyes. Shit. That meant I’d missed second mass, too. If my parents hadn’t already sprung a trap for me the second I returned to my apartment, then they’d definitely be setting one up for me soon. They’d never try and come over to Katie’s or do something public; their worst abuses had always been behind closed doors.
“Where have we been all day?”
“Mostly here for the last couple hours. Prior to that, I had to spend some time losing a possible tail or two, setting up some decoys.” She grinned like we were discussing the weather. “We should be okay for a while. I’ve also masked our auras, but you’re going to have to keep him from waking up a little while longer, so go cuddle—but do not do anything more. You and I will need to talk about some—oh hey! There she is!”
“Got ‘em!” Katie said in a singsong voice as she pranced back into the room and handed me a tank top and a pair of her leggings. “I’m so glad you decided to stop by. I was dying to meet your guy there, and holy shit, Mags”—she lowered her voice—“he is u nbelievably hot. I mean… I cannot believe you bagged a guy like that! If he’s rich, too, I’m definitely going to make an appointment with your doctor.”
Behind her, Carmilla mouthed, Keep him sleeping .
“Yeah, for sure. Amazing luck, right?” I pulled the clothes on, but noticed with dismay they were much tighter on me than they had been just the day before yesterday, even though Katie and I were normally close in size. My breasts barely fit into the shirt. “Uh, what about your café? Is it?—”
“I closed it at five, but haven’t broken anything down, so I’ve gotta get back soon. Just chill out here, and I should be done cleaning by in about an hour or so. We can head out to dinner afterward.”
The thought of going out and being around people made my head throb. I already felt like I’d been run through some kind of crazy physical gamut, and it was hard enough just focusing on the conversation without having to imagine the crush of people, sounds, and smells—lights… I shook my head.
“Uh… going out for dinner? Couldn’t we just make something here? I’ve got somewhat of a headache, so I wouldn’t mind something smaller?—”
“Smaller? Nonsense! We should celebrate the occasion!” Katie said, reaching over and giving me a hug—a tighter-than-usual hug, and sighing. “Oh, there’s also some good news I wanted to mention, so I think we should go all out.”
“I, uh… Katie?” I hedged when her palms started to travel south toward my rear.
“Did you gain some weight or something?” she asked, grabbing my ass with both hands and squeezing, pressing a kiss against my neck. “You feel… nice.”
“Carmilla…?” I called, frozen, as Katie’s desire begin spilling into my awareness. “Can you help me out here?”
The doctor appeared and draped her arm over Katie’s shoulders. The reddish haze of her aura soon engulfed my friend, and Katie let go and glanced up at her with adoration in her eyes.
“Katie,” Carmilla said with a gentle brush of her thumb against the other woman’s cheek. “You may want to set up an appointment with me sooner rather than later, yes?”
Katie stared up at the doctor like she had forgotten anything else in the world existed. “Yes,” she agreed, breathless.
“You’re a little lacking in your own sex life as of late, aren’t you?” Carmilla traced the outline of Katie’s mouth with her finger, then let out a delighted gasp as Katie opened her mouth and pulled her finger inside. “Oooh, I see.”
The doctor removed her finger from Katie’s mouth and replaced it with a kiss. Tenderly, she pressed another kiss against her lips, and Katie moaned as she reached out and squeezed Carmilla’s breasts through her blouse.
“Carmilla…?” I asked, feeling like I was witness to something too private. Katie’s desire at her touch was absolutely brimming over.
“I will take care of you later,” said the doctor, pulling away gently, but keeping her palm on Katie’s face. “For now… weren’t you going to finish cleaning the café…?”
“Oh!” Katie snapped back to attention as if nothing weird had occurred. “Yes. I’ll check if the laundry’s ready while I’m down there.”
“Do you need help cleaning?” I asked, more out of habit than the desire to actually go and clean. My body felt sluggish as it was.
“Nah, it was kinda slow today because of the rain, so I was able to get a good bit done already,” said Katie. “You just uh…” She turned and eyeballed Caleb’s chiseled body on the sofa and then to me again, a strange pang of irritation entering her gaze. “I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Katie’s desire was still palpable, but she finally managed to make it out the door.
“I wasn’t kidding—go cuddle,” said Carmilla, smile dropping as soon as Katie was gone. “You’re both releasing pheromones that are going to drive your friend to near homicidal levels of horniness if you don’t go over there and keep yourselves calm and under control. I’ve been expending a significant amount of energy just charming her to think this is all… normal, but as you can see, she’s a human feeling the influence of three sex demons—two of which are cambions—in her living space.”
I turned and looked at Caleb, and with a last glare at Carmilla, clambered back over him onto the sofa. Without a moment’s hesitation, Caleb wrapped his arms around me, and the feeling was so good I was almost annoyed. I relaxed against him, my own near-homicidal levels of rage at the doctor falling away as I melted into his hold.
“Why did you bring us here?” I asked, keeping my voice soft, fighting every urge within me to relax into sleep, cradled against Caleb’s warm, muscular chest, the pulse of his heart thudding against mine… “If you put Katie in any danger, I’ll never forgive you.”
“I know,” said Carmilla, striding in and sitting on the coffee table in front of me, “but while she’s gone and he’s resting, you and I need to chat.”
“Oh, you think ?” I demanded, unwilling to back down from all of my rage just yet.
“Look, I know this must all be confusing and painful, and I truly understand?—”
“How could you possibly understand?” I spat, feeling my fury giving way to elongated teeth and horns sprouting from my forehead. “You have no idea what you’ve put me through.”
“Yes, I do know,” said Carmilla solemnly, “because I went through something similar… only I didn’t have a ‘Caleb’—I had a true monster who forced his… corruption… on me.”
I was quiet for a long time before I said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed?—”
“It’s fine.” Carmilla waved the words away, then looked distantly at the corner for a moment before she began speaking once more. “Demonic puberty, remember? Mood swings are going to be part of it. You’re not the first cambion to get pissed off at me, and probably won’t be the last. As far as things go, though, we really do need to have a little talk. The reason I asked you how many times you’d slept with Caleb wasn’t because I’m just some lecherous old whore, okay?”
I snorted at that, unable to keep the smile from creeping up my face. “Okay, so what then? What’s so important about it?” I snuggled closer, waiting for her to continue.
“As I’m sure you’re more or less aware of by now, succubi and incubi require sexual energy gathered from other beings. It can be as simple as a touch or a kiss, or, for a more… fulfilling experience… sex, in all of its delightful forms. All demons have the ability to exude our power around ourselves in something called an ‘aura.’ You may have felt this when you entered my office.”
I balked at the memory. The extreme thickness; the heaviness in the air—it had made my knees shake. It made me dizzy, lightheaded—too hot. “That was all… you ?”
Carmilla nodded. “When succubi get powerful enough—usually as we get older, but sometimes from the sources we feed from—we can selectively create pockets of space that exist solely within our dominion. The office I had was one such place—the other was my house. It requires an enormous amount of energy to maintain these aural dominions, but it allows us to influence humans—and even other demons—without touching them while they are within reach of our auras. As a result, I have to feed constantly in order to maintain my energy levels and continually exude that power, which is why being a sex therapist comes in handy.”
My face flushed at that. “You… charging people money to have sex with them? Wouldn’t that be considered…?”
“Prostitution? Certainly,” Carmilla agreed with a nod, “if I were doing it on the street, without a PhD, and I actually was having sex with people. However, don’t get me wrong—I’ve resorted to prostitution before in my younger days, and I’m not ashamed of it, either. Now, as I said, despite my demonic side, I am a legitimately licensed therapist. Most of the feeding I do is through touch, or perhaps the occasional couples’ guided sex therapy session, which can get kind of heated, if you know what I mean.” She smiled, then waved her words away once more. “It’s all above board. I genuinely do help people with intimacy issues and relationships—it’s kind of how my nature and expertise go hand in hand. Regardless, because maintaining an aura takes a lot of energy, most younger succubi and incubi are only able to influence perhaps one, maybe two people at any given time, and usually only in short durations. That is not the case with cambions.”
I felt strangely relieved by that. I didn’t want to be able to control other people. I knew how badly being controlled had been, and it wasn’t an attribute I was interested in partaking of.
“Cambions… Caleb and I… we won’t be able to do that?”
“Quite the opposite, actually,” said Carmilla, and my heart sank. “The more powerful you both become, the more your auras will grow in strength and size. Cambions exude auras as naturally as breathing. You won’t be able to stop charming and influencing those around you. People won’t even realize they’re under your influence. You don’t choose to do it; it just happens, as with your friend back there.”
“But that… that’s…” I paused, considering. “How am I supposed to ever know who to trust, or who I’m just manipulating into liking me? I’ll always be wondering if they’re just… being affected by me… I don’t want that!”
“You’ll learn who is good for you—and more importantly, who isn’t,” said Carmilla stoically. “People will reveal their true selves in that state; they can’t help it. But… then there’s the matter of you and Caleb. Since you’re both awakening into your demonic powers, your auras are strengthening and calling to each other.”
“Oh my god,” I said, shoving back from Caleb, even though it was as painful to me as trying to rip off my own limb. “You mean right now?”
“Yes. … I… I have a theory about why the Church may have targeted you, but if I’m right, then there’s something you should know.”
I went completely still, waiting for her to speak again. I could scarcely breathe.
“If my theory is accurate, then you may be a rare type of cambion… a creature that I haven’t seen the likes of in a very long time. And if that’s really the case, then… I need to warn you. Do you recall those consequences I’d mentioned to you two earlier?”
“Consequences?” I said, vaguely recalling the conversation. Everything seemed like it had happened in a dreamscape. “Of being cambions? Or because I’m… whatever you think I am?”
“Of what could happen if you continue to have sex with Caleb.” My mouth fell open, but before I could interrupt, she held up a finger to stop me from replying. “The more time you spend with each other, the more your auras will draw you together. Small feedings, such as kisses, touching—as you’re doing now—aren’t really going to do anything, though it will effectively keep you both calm right now. You’re both desperately in need of energy as you awaken—hence why you might find yourself passing out occasionally. Keeping in contact with each other will allow energy to pass through the both of you, like a loop. Sleeping together, however— especially anything penetrative—will lead to you becoming inextricably entangled.”
“You’re saying that if Caleb and I keep having sex, that eventually… what?”
“Like I was saying earlier,” Carmilla continued, “I think it was no mere accident that you were both awoken at the same time. Someone may have been specifically using him for this very reason—hence what I meant about the ‘arranged marriage.’ I doubt the archdiocese has any real idea what they’ve done, because those old bastards only want to play whatever game amuses them for the moment, but?—”
“You’re saying Caleb and I becoming demons now… was an experiment? By this Church organization?” I gazed down at him, afraid I might cry. We’d both been trapped… abused… tortured… for these people to control us.
Carmilla massaged the side of her head, as if fighting off a migraine. “I could always be wrong, but… this isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed the organization attempting to engineer things between succubi and incubi, . The man in charge of that place—” She shook her head, as if chasing a particularly bad memory from her brain. “I pray I’m jumping to conclusions.”
“What does it mean for us?” I asked, unable to stop myself from gripping him tighter.
“Put simply, if my theory is correct, then you will eventually end up bonding with Caleb. It won’t stop either of you from having relations with anyone else—perhaps even enough interaction to get energy to give you a bit of sustenance—but it will create an unbreakable bond in which you’ll only be able to attain true satiation from feeding with each other… or you will eventually end up starving to death. No matter how far apart you are, bonded couples are able to sense each other, so it's unlikely that such a thing would happen, but… right now, since you’re both awakening, your auras are probably calling to each other out of deep need. It will calm down, but your feelings at the moment might become intense… as you experienced in the condo.”
I gaped at her, mouth hung open, terror climbing at the back of my throat. “It’s because of me? I-it’s my fault because of this aura thing?—”
“No,” said Carmilla, but then with a slight twist to her mouth, “but also yes. Someone within the organization did something. Just… let me show you.”
Carmilla’s forefinger extended into a claw, and she reached down and drew a thin cut in Caleb’s shoulder. I had to clamp down on the worry as a trail of blood began to slip out of the wound, but Caleb didn’t appear to notice, so I forced myself to focus as she maneuvered the blood into a floating orb in her hand. It rolled like it was trying to coagulate and slip away at the same time.
“Look—do you see?” she asked, pointing to the blood as it twisted in her hand.
I leaned closer, and there, among the natural red color were flowing bits of purple and shining gold, like silky threads woven throughout.
“Is that normal for a demon?” I whispered. It was strangely beautiful.
“For an incubus, the gold bits, yes—those are from the family line, I suspect—but the purple…” Carmilla reached over with her other hand and scratched my arm—it didn’t hurt. My blood flowed into her free palm, but unlike normal blood, mine was not red, but rather a deep, almost violet color. Inside of it were similar threads similar to the gold, but they were bright silver, shining like starlight.
“That’s… that’s me?” I asked, watching with rapt attention.
Carmilla nodded. “Now, if I stop trying to control them…”
The orbs in her hands flew together as if magnetized, into one singular ball. The violet and red entangled, the gold and silver braided themselves together. Then, as if the cells had a mind of their own, the mixed blood broke into two perfectly even orbs, then returned to the cuts on both of our arms and sealed our wounds. I looked up at Carmilla, eyes wide in horror.
“Do you… do you think it’s already happened? Do you think I?—”
“We don’t know anything for certain,” she said quickly. “These things take time, but… the connection between you two—you can feel it, can’t you?”
I nodded, mute.
“I don’t think it’s just happenstance that you two are so drawn together.”
Tears stung my eyes. “But what about Caleb? Did I do this to him?”
“No, , I believe he may have been made for you. Or in the very least, a succubus like you. Regular incubi and succubi are typically able to hold our own against the temptations of other demons, but you and Caleb are not regular demons or cambions. I think someone within the organization made sure he wouldn’t be able to resist the pull of your aura… nor you, his. You two have probably been circling one another indirectly for years, kept at a safe distance by the organization… until now.”
“But why?” I whispered. I wanted to break into tears; I wanted to scream; I wanted to run. “Why would someone do this to us?”
“Remember, , this is all speculation so far, all right? It could be side effects of the transition for you both, but… when I kissed him earlier,” Carmilla paused, shivering pleasantly with the memory, “he should have been entirely focused on me. At some point, however, I realized that he was feeding off the energy between the two of you, and it was coming through as I fed. He was kissing me physically, but the power was all coming from your lust for each other.”
I stared down at Caleb, afraid that the fear building within me would wake him up. I knew she was telling the truth, and it terrified me. I recalled the moment I first woke up in the condo with him. I’d felt like a crazy person, trying to remind myself not to get closer to the strange man. I’d had to constantly remind myself about the normal sense and logic that seemed been shut up tight in the back of my mind. And when I’d gotten close enough to him that I’d first imagined him holding me like that… driving himself into me… It hadn’t just been a random orgasm at all. If Carmilla was right, it was the first time I’d encountered his aura while I was conscious—and the moment he’d come to my side, our fates had been sealed.
Who would do this? Why?
“I…” I started slowly, uncertain of whether I wanted to admit this to Carmilla or not. “When we were having sex the second time, I… I felt this intense need to… to…”
“Claim him?” she supplied casually, and then at the flushing panic in my cheeks, she grinned. “I told you before, I could sense your aura literally all over him. That’s just good, old-fashioned horniness, dear—succubi and incubi attributes aside. You like him, your sexual natures are compatible, and your demonic nature compelled you to ‘mark him’ with your energy. You might not be able to see it, since it’s your energy, but I can—as would other succubi. There’s a purplish cloud around him that tells other demons that they shouldn’t feed from him—without permission.”
I covered my face with my hands, recalling how angry I’d felt at first seeing Carmilla feeding from Caleb in the model condo. But when he’d locked eyes with me while he kissed her—the moment I knew that he was craving me, not her, it had suddenly become a turn on. I’d gotten wet from watching them make out. Watching the way his large hands cradled her throat so tenderly. From the look in his eyes that said he was eager to bury himself inside of me—I forced my thoughts from it as Caleb stirred in his sleep. Carmilla smiled knowingly.
“Why do you think I asked you if it was all right to feed from him?” she asked. “I could see you’d already marked him, so despite being near starving, I was waiting for you to give the okay. It’s just polite.”
“Are you telling me I essentially just did the demon version of spraying my perfume on his clothes so other women would smell it…?”
“Oh darling, it’s perfectly natural. Even humans want to mark their partners, you know. Ever seen a hickey? A lipstick stain on a collar? A man with his hand in his girlfriend’s back pocket? A wedding ring? It’s all territorial, and it’s the most human part of you there is, if you ask me. We’ve all found someone we liked now and again, even as humans, and put a claim on them. It’s just that, as a succubus, other succubi feeding on your partner may make you… well, a little crazy.”
“So, this connection between us,” I said, moving away from the topic, “the ways our auras pull toward each other… You said we won’t end up bonding if we don’t… have sex?”
“Well, like I said, thus far, it’s speculation… but to be on the safe side, yes… I would recommend you both hold off, at least until we know more for certain, one way or another. Perhaps you two are just extremely compatible, but… there are things that worry me…”
“Compatible,” I repeated. “You’ve mentioned that a couple times. What do you mean? Just that we find each other… physically attractive?”
“That’s part of it.” Carmilla tapped her chin and thought a moment. “Sexual energy isn’t just sex. It’s the same as if you met someone on a date and ‘clicked.’ Compatibility with someone occurs on several levels, so yes, your natural inclination to how attractive you find them is important, but as a cambion, the stronger your energetic entanglement with someone—even another cambion—requires all the same check marks as any relationship would.”
I squeezed Caleb tighter without thinking about it. “So, a gay man wouldn’t want to sleep with a succubus—nor would a straight woman.”
“Correct—but you may still influence them in other ways. It’s just something you’ll have to learn to live with. People will want you. They will want to be around you without knowing why. You’ll end up feeding a little here and there from those within your aura. You won’t be able to help it. With Caleb, however, the more you feed from each other, the more your bond will increase until it’s so strong no other energetic sources will leave you satisfied.”
I sat up once more, disentangling myself from Caleb’s grip, and stood, moving away from him and Carmilla both as I went to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee from Katie’s fancy machine—if she hadn’t already made some, I wouldn’t have bothered since it was tricky to work—and I needed something warm and comforting.
“Like I said, I could be wrong,” Carmilla said as I reached into one of the cabinets and got a mug. “It wouldn’t be such a bad thing though, you know. He’s incredibly handsome—strong, and seems head over heels for you, doesn’t he? Once he awakens fully, you can claim him legitimately, if that’s what you want. Just keep sleeping together and it will happen eventually?—”
“That’s not fair to him,” I said. My hand was resting on the handle of the coffee pot, but I hadn’t lifted it. “He doesn’t know any of this. I didn’t know when we had sex that it would… do that… but I practically threw myself at him, and if you’re right , then I didn’t even get to pick the man I lost my virginity to. Even now, someone is controlling my sex life, my body, and?—”
I was crying before I knew it, weeping as Carmilla walked in and gently wrapped me in a hug, rubbing her hand along my back until I could stifle my tears.
“I’m sorry, this is all just… so much.”
“Don’t apologize, . If you want to be angry at anyone, be angry at me. I’ll take responsibility for the situation you’re in now.”
“You don’t understand… my whole life, someone has been telling me how to dress, how to behave, how to be a good girl or be sent to Hell—” The coffee mug in my hand shattered. Thankfully, it was empty, but the shards went everywhere along the counter. I cursed and stepped back from the broken remains.
“Even going to see you wasn’t my idea, and now I discover that even that had been preordained because somewhere out there was the man that someone else had chosen for me to sleep with, when they wanted me to sleep with him… It hurts so badly! Nothing in my life had ever felt better than when I thought I had something—someone—that made me feel so good, and he was just mine . Just a secret I could keep from the world and enjoy.
“I wanted him to be mine, Carmilla, and now I find out that he is —but not because it’s his choice? I can’t. I won’t do that to him or anyone else. But given the fact that I’m apparently just radiating sexuality to everyone, even my best friend is clambering all over me—and goddammit!”
The apartment, possibly the entire building, shook with my shout, and I closed my eyes.
“, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I swear to you… if I could make things right?—”
“If you want to make things right, then promise me something, please,” I said.
Carmilla hesitated, but then dipped her head. “If I can, I’ll do my best.”
“I know what it feels like to have someone control you,” I began, then turned and walked over to the doorway, where I could spy Caleb sleeping heavily, a furrow to his brow, as if he’d sensed my unease in his sleep. “…I don’t know if we’ll be strong enough to keep away from each other, so please, Carmilla—don’t let us.”
“Are you really asking me to keep the two of you from fucking?” Carmilla scoffed. “I nearly got killed last time?—”
“I know, but I’m going to do my best to avoid… to avoid it. Whenever you can—at the first opportunity, please… take him somewhere safe, so we can’t find each other. I don’t… I don’t think it’s fair to either of us to just accept whatever they’re trying to do to us without putting some perspective, and maybe some distance, into it.”
Carmilla stared at me, crossed her arms over her chest, and sighed. “I’ll do my best, dearest, but… to be perfectly honest, since none of us know exactly what they’re to just yet, we have no idea what actions might wind us up playing directly into their hands. If that’s what you want… so be it, but we’ll have to decide quickly. The longer we spend here trying to figure out whatever their motives are, the more time we lose in making our escape.”
I nodded, then grabbed the broom and a dishrag to clean up the mess I’d made on the counter and floor with the broken mug. “It is. I… I won’t sleep with Caleb again.”
Liar , said a small inner voice, he’s literally everything you want , but I mentally shoved it into the dustpan along with all the shards of porcelain.