Page 14 of The Prospect's Succubus
I could hear the ringmasters outside, the laughter, the lights, the music, all of it duller than it should have been. In here, it was just us, just her and me, and the invisible current running between the little round table and the hand cannon in my lap.I stepped further in, let the gun rest on the table, still pointed in her direction, but not with my finger on the trigger. “If you’re really tired of the game, why not just walk away?”
She looked at my gun, then up at my face, then back to the gun again. It was the first time I’d seen her posture slip. “That’s not how this works. Someone’s always watching. If I run, they send something hungrier. Or I go back to the pit and let Lilith eat my ovaries for dessert.”
“Lilith,” I said, tasting the name. The word felt greasy, like a thumbprint pressed onto wet glass. “She’s the handler?”
Jasmine’s laugh was slow, bitter, nothing like the manic edge from before. “Handler, mother, CEO, prison warden, depends who you ask. But yes. Her leash is on my neck, and she’s getting bored too.”
“So that’s it? You run the clock down, and then she comes to drag you away?”
“You ask a lot of questions for a man who shoots first.”
I shrugged, letting the silence do the work for me. Her eyes narrowed, and she drummed her fingers once, twice, then stilled them.
“Why don’t you ask what you really want to know,” she said, voice softening. “Why are you not dead. Why I didn’t hollow you out on the ride. Why you’re sitting here, talking to a monster when you could have finished it.”
“Maybe I want to see if you’ll surprise me,” I said, mocking her words back at her.
She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “You already know the answer. You’re marked, Torch. You’ve been back from Hell, but you never left it. That’s why it burns so bad. Why the guns work. Why every scar lights up when I’m near. Your soul is still on loan.”
I felt a headache, the kind that came at the base of the skull and pulsed through the teeth. “If that’s true, why not just finish the job? Get your promotion, move up a rung on the inferno ladder.”
She shook her head, and this time she looked tired. “It’s not so simple. There’s no up. There’s just more. More work. More hunger. More Lilith. And there’s a catch, at my pay grade. When I take you, I have to drag you back myself. No proxies, no shortcuts. Just me, you, and about a million years of open wound.”
“I’d hate to make your commute worse,” I said, deadpan, but my hands were trembling on the table.
She folded her arms, studied me a long while, then leaned forward, close enough that if I wanted, I could have counted the flecks in her eyes. “If I die here, the job falls to my boss. She’ll be less charming.”
I sat back, pretended to weigh my options. The truth was, I’d known the shape of this since the first night. Maybe even since the cemetery, since the first time Vin had hauled me up from the dirt, half-dead and radiating with Hell’s afterglow. It was always going to be me, and it was always going to be her, or something like her, and the rest of it was just window dressing.I looked atJasmine, really looked, and saw for the first time she didn’t want to win. Not the way monsters usually do. Maybe she was just tired, or maybe she’d seen the same painted-on ending as I had, but that didn’t change what I’d have to do.
She read my face and softened. “You could walk out right now. Go home, call it a night, let the carnies have their fun and the world keep spinning.” Her voice dropped, like she was offering mercy as charity. “But you won’t, will you?”
“No,” I said, and it was the only answer that made sense.
She closed her eyes, took a breath, and when she opened them, the red had faded to a quiet hazel. “You ever wonder if you came back wrong?” she asked, gentle as a whisper. “If maybe the scars weren’t a warning, but a target?”
“Every damn day.”
She laughed, and the sound was almost pretty. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“Don’t let it get around.”
The room went still. I waited, and so did she, each of us hoping the other would blink. Behind us, the carnival noise washed back in, a layer of reality just thick enough to keep the dream from eating us both.
I reached for the gun and re-holstered it, slow and careful.
She touched her wrist, just once. “I have to do it. If I don’t, they’ll send the next one, and she’ll be fire where I’m ice. She’ll make you wish for what I am.”
“I know.”
“You’re not the only one who wants out,” she said, and then she was gone, a blur through canvas and night.
I sat there another minute, staring at the dust she’d left behind, and tried to feel something like victory. But all I felt was the slow burn of the scars and a hunger I couldn’t shake.
Jasmine
Iducked into the fortune teller’s tent with all the dignity of a fugitive, clutching the tail end of my borrowed human body and praying it wouldn’t slough off in public. There was no line at this hour; the only person at the threshold was a kid in a polyester turban, scrolling TikTok and not even bothering to hustle. That was fine, I wasn’t here for the experience. I was here for the nearest roof, the closest shadow, the first thing that looked like it might conceal me from the world and the RBMC and, most importantly, from Torch.
I wasn’t sure who I was hiding from most.
