away from the mirror and found him watching me, hands stuffed into the pockets of his joggers.
My ex had once said that my style was like, “if Janis Joplin had a lovechild with Sisters of Mercy.” It was more weird than sexy, which wasn’t something I thought about most of the time — except when a supernaturally sexy demon was staring me down like he was considering eating me again.
“Why are you blushing?” He took my face in his hands, which made my blush far worse, considering I couldn’t look away from him. “I thought I’d fucked all the shame out of you already?” He kissed my forehead, and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Apparently I need to corrupt you a bit more, baby girl.”
I didn’t know what to expect when Leon said he was going to keep me “occupied” — but leaving me at the hotel’s spa for several hours hadn’t even been on my radar as a possibility. Getting my nails done and my back massaged after soaking in a mud bath was a bizarre contrast to the past few weeks; it felt too normal, too safe.
Not that it had ever been exactly normal for me to have a spa day. That wasn’t something that typically fit in my college-student broke-vlogger budget.
I couldn’t fathom where Leon had gotten the money for this, either. Did demons have money? Did they have credit cards?
“You’re carrying a lot of tension in your shoulders.” The woman massaging my back was blonde, pretty, a few years older than me, with a voice so soft she probably could make a fortune off recording ASMR videos. “Slow, deep breath…I’m going to work out the knots here.”
They’d given me wine, and after a glass I found it pretty funny that she probably thought all that tension was from stress at work or school, rather than being hunted by monsters and a death cult.
Funny. Just hilarious.
She did her job though. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in months. As I walked back up to the room that evening with my body feeling like jelly, I realized that I couldn’t wait to move out of Abelaum. I couldn’t wait to leave that goddamn town behind.
Fuck reconnecting with the magic of my childhood. Once I’d graduated and gotten to see Inaya’s wedding, I was moving as far away from this place as I was able to. Money was an issue, but I’d rent out an unfinished basement on the East Coast if I had to.
And Leon…
It had become too easy to imagine him going with me. Living with me. Staying with me. But as I got back up to the room, and ordered room service again for dinner, I knew that was a dangerous train of thought to go down. Dangerous because that wasn’t something I should get my hopes up about.
Leon was a demon. An immortal. A monster. He wanted my soul. He wasn’t about to be domesticated — and I didn’t want him to be. I didn’t want a demonic variation on the white-picket-fence nuclear family ideal. I just didn’t want him to leave.
His absence would be a void I couldn’t fill, which seemed so silly considering the lifetime I’d been through since moving here had really only been a few months. But it was like the first time I’d seen a ghost; it had been so brief but so stark, and the moment I’d realized what had happened I’d known I could never let that go. It’s weird that one brief moment can change the course of your whole life.
I finished dinner, and the sun set, but Leon still hadn’t returned. I streamed Youtube on the TV, putting on some deep-dive into an unsolved mystery from the 1970s to keep myself distracted. Nothing like watching the story of a woman disappearing without a trace to soothe my brain.
Tap, tap, tap.
I paused the video, looking around the room with a frown. I’d thought it was the sound of raindrops hitting the window, at first, but the sound was too steady, too purposeful. I waited, listening for it again to figure out where the hell it was coming from.
Tap, tap.
I got up slowly from the bed. It sounded like a finger tapping on wood, but it made no sense — it sounded like it was coming from the far corner, near the sliding door out onto the balcony. The only thing on the other side of that corner was the bathroom on the inside, and the balcony outside.