Page 114 of Spit

“More.” He croaked.

“In a minute.” I smiled for the first time since he had arrived. “Can I have that scalpel you said you had in your pocket? It would make me want to kiss you again.”

Wordlessly, Dr. Wise reached into his pocket and pulled out a scalpel. The edge was blunted with a plastic guard, but that was easy to remove.

He closed his eyes in pain. The front of his slacks stretched around his pitiful erection. “Please. Spit in my mouth. Please.”

My nose wrinkled in disgust. “Come here,” I ordered, and he misread my command as agreeing to his weird request. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth.

Then I slit his throat.

The fog of my memories played over my eyes. I saw Dylan in my mind's eye—the man I tried to never think about. The man that took my virginity after breaking into the cottage in the middle of the night. My shadow had saved my life. My shoulder still ached with the scar tissue from Dylan’s knife in my side.

That night, my mother acted like a parent for the first time since I had accidentally nulled her as a child. Anne-Marie Boudaire answered Adelaide’s call in the middle of the night while I sat on the bed. My thighs were covered in blood, and my side bleeding through my fingers.

“I need to take her to the hospital, Ms. Boudaire.” Adelaide had said in her soft voice. Though my nanny usually spoke to my mother as if she could barely stand the woman, it seemed like the fight had gone out of the strong creole woman for the first time. Her dark skin was ashen, as she tried not to lift her voice to startle me.

I remembered my mother’s gaze as she took in my face. A pale mask in the moonlight. “What happened?”

“I think Ms. Alexis has a gluttony curse,” Adelaide said heavily, giving my mother a meaningful look. “I think Beezlebub has placed his mark on her, and she made the mistake of giving that boy a taste. Turns out a taste wasn’t enough.”

“He didn’t—”

Adelaide cleared her throat. She shot my mother another loaded look.

Dylan had. Hedid.

There must have been something wrong with me because it hadn’t hurt like movies made it out to be—the sex, or the r…I couldn’t think of the word. If I put it out of my mind, it was like it hadn’t happened. I could wash the blood off my thighs and pretend I was the same girl I had been when I went to bed that evening.

My shadow had knocked him off me, but Dylan had been hit with a cast iron pan courtesy of Adelaide. He might have been woozy when he raced out of the front door and back onto his motorbike, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back.

For six months, I had felt like someone was watching me. I had kept my head down and ignored his notes, his pleading. His behavior had died off for a while, and I believed it was finally ending.

Then that night happened.

Adelaide took my mother by the arm and to the other room. I heard their whispering though I knew they didn’t intend me to. Adelaide told her about Dylan’s obsession and what had happened.

I stayed on the bed…where it had happened for the longest time. Looking at the Hello Kitty sheets that used to be my favorite. I hated that I wouldn’t be able to sleep on them anymore.

One of the reasons I dyed my hair pink was because I was trying to reclaim the color. Trying to rise above what had happened. Rising above my curse.

My mother returned and knelt down, looking me in the eyes for the first time in years. Her eyes were the same cornflour blue I saw in the mirror every morning. “Do you have anything that belonged to that boy?”

My eyes slid to the side as I lifted my closed bloody fist. A chuck of Dylan’s hair.

My mother nodded, determined. She took the hair. “You won’t have to worry about that boy anymore.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked though a part of me didn’t care.

My mother slanted a daze my way, and though I knew my presence numbed her magic, I swore I could see the darkness swirl in her eyes as her power rose to the surface. “Don’t you worry, Lexi.” She assured me, taking the hair from my fist. “That boy won’t be able to get within fifty feet of you. If he tries, his heart will stop.”

The next day, Adelaide took me to New Orleans to get away. A new start.

And I never saw Dylan again.

I didn’t realize I was screaming until a very human hand covered mine and slid the bloody scalpel out of my grip. I looked up, blinking, unable to process anything as my memories died away. An unfamiliar face swam into my vision. Red hair, wide green eyes that seemed to glow. Cupid bow lips. Freckled cheeks.

Mars—in human form, though it seemed to take a lot of effort to hold the body. He shook with the strain as he crouched by my side, taking a moment to throw the bloody scalpel across the cell, where the metal clinked against the hard concrete floor. He was naked; his skin was poreless in the way demons were, save for the blackened marks in several places on his body—the same puckered scars he had in his beast form.

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