“ᔑꖌ⚍⋮╎.”

The sudden words make me jump awake, and I nearly fall out of the tree in surprise. I dig my nails into the bark and whip my tail around to regain my balance, barely catching myself in time to stop from falling to certain death. The rush of adrenaline leaves me wide-eyed with my heart racing beyond measure. Then I cast a seething glare at the woman sitting across from me.

“Mommy, you scared me,” I whine.

She chuckles and shakes her head, her long indigo hair swaying back and forth as she does so. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah, right,” I huff, rolling my eyes.

I hear her laugh again and feel her movements as she steps towards me. I look up at her as she holds out her hand. I take it carefully, and she pulls me into her, embracing me against her full bosom. I wrap my arms around her too and cling onto my mother like a small child, nuzzling my face into her neck and breathing in the scent of hell. My home.

It’s a strange scent to most. You can pick out hints of charred ash and leather, and the sharp tinge of blood and stale metal hits you at the end, assaulting your senses. It’s not a very pleasant smell for us Lesser Demons, but the High Demons swathe themselves in it. You get used to it though. After a while, it’s not so bad. It can even be comforting in some context. For instance, right now. It’s the smell of my childhood, no matter how repulsive it may be, and I haven’t seen my mother in a bit.

“Mommy, what are you doing here?” I mutter against her warm skin.

She pulls away from me and places her slender hands against my cheeks. “I came to check on you,” she grins. “I’ve got to make sure my baby is doing okay. Are you doing okay?”

I smile and lean into her touch. “Yeah, I’m doing fine,” I tell her.

“Now, what are you doing here? Normally I’d find you in a mall or … in the mall. Why are you always in the mall?”

I giggle, “What can I say? I like to go to the mall.”

She places her finger down on my nose and coos, “Oh, you just love giving mortals a run for their money, don’t you? Anyway, seriously, what are you doing here?”

A blush fills my cheeks, and I jerk my head away from her touch, looking away awkwardly. “Uhm, well, I’ve been staying with a guy, and this is his house. He’s a whole forest here. Isn’t it wonderful?”

She looks around at the scenery and shrugs. “I guess it’s alright, but you’ve been staying with a guy? As in, you’ve been here for a while?”

I give her a hesitant nod. “A couple weeks. About a month or so.”

“Wow, that’s a bit strange.”

“It’s not strange!” I argue. “Mortals do it all the time.”

“You’re not a mortal, honey bunny,” she reminds me.

“Yeah, well, I don’t want to leave,” I admit.

She stares at me for a moment then grabs my chin, forcing me to look at her. “What’s his name? Tell me about him. Don’t stop talking until I tell you.”

“Uh, his name is Deidre Brennan. He’s a retired doctor. He had his license stripped from him because of malpractice, but he still practices medicine under the table. He’s generally hated by the locals. He’s emotionally unstable and probably a sociopath, and he doesn’t have any social grace. He’s got brown hair, lovely tanned skin, and these amazing brown eyes that look like melted caramel in the sun. He drinks this aged whiskey, and occasionally he smells like smoke. He’s got a bit of a temper, but most of the time he’s completely emotionless. It’s rather intriguing how quickly he can jump from one mood to anoth—”

“Oh my fuck, you’re in love,” she gasps, pushing my chin away.

“What? No, incubi don’t fall in love. It’s—”

“Shut up, your eyes don’t lie. They’re bright pink, boy. You’re in love with a mortal,” she says, but I can’t tell if she’s scolding me or not. Her eyes don’t tell me anything either. It’s obvious that she’s put a glamour over them because they’ve stayed a solid red for the entirety of our conversation.

I stare at my feet in shame, but I feel her hand touch on the side of my jaw again. She tilts my head back up to look at her face and sighs, “Now, Akuji, I’m not mad at you. Don’t look so ashamed. It’s okay; it’s just unexpected, especially between a mortal and an incubus. And I guess you are only half-demon, so could it really be that impossible? Are you sure he’s a mortal?”

I nod.

“What did you say his name was again?”

“Deidre.”

“Are you positive that he’s human? Because that’s an awfully demon-like name.”

“Yes, I'm sure. Lots of people are named Deidre. No name is exclusive for demons.”

“I’m just saying that it sounds familiar,” she comments with a skeptical look.

I open my mouth to reply but stop when I hear footsteps making their way across the forest floor. Panic rises in my chest and I hurriedly whisper for my mother to leave. As soon as she disappears, I pull up my glamour and dive down from the branches. My hands reach the ground first, and I let my arms absorb the first of the fall as I roll into a somersault. I get to my feet just in time to see Brennan enter the clearing. He seems to perk up at my appearance as if he’s been looking for me for a while.

“Breakfast is ready,” he tells me simply without much emotion. Then he casts his gaze behind me into the forest and scans it for a second as if looking for something. He tries to make his inspection look more curious than examining, but it doesn’t work in the slightest. He seems to realize that I’ve caught on to his antics, so before he can even properly investigate the area, he’s turning back toward the house and walking off.

I take one last glance at the nature surrounding me, trying to see what he saw, then follow after him.

† ⸸ †

“So, who were you talking to?” he asks me suddenly, breaking our usual silence that I had become so accustomed to.

I falter for a moment then say, “My mother. I called her.”

He nodded and hummed. “I don’t ever hear about your parents.”

“I only have a mother.”

“No, you have a father. You just don’t see him,” he corrects me.

“Same difference,” I grunt.

“So, who was your father?”

I shrug, “I don’t know. He was some Japanese dude that my mother hooked up with. He doesn’t really matter.”

“Do you favor your mother or father in your looks?”

“I would suppose my father since I look nothing like my mother. Why?” I question him, raising an eyebrow.

“Just curious,” he answers blandly.

I lean back in my chair and cross my arms after pushing my plate away. “I’m going to go watch Netflix,” I conclude.

“Alright,” he says, stacking his plate on top of mine and taking them to the kitchen sink.

I get up and go into the living room, plopping down on the couch and turning on the TV. I open Netflix and start scrolling through when Brennan walks past me and heads into his study.

“Working?” I call out to him, and he just raises his hand dismissively behind him before closing the door.

I sigh and lean my head back on the sofa, and my gaze falls back to the screen. I start scrolling through the different genres and top-rated, but I can’t find anything that interests me. I don’t actually want to watch a movie or a series or anything right now. I’m only here because I literally don’t have anything else to do, so I click on whatever movie is featured on the homepage and toss the remote to the side lazily.

It ends up being a movie about some governmental project to put human beings on another planet. They inject this dude and his fellow experimental astronauts with these animal genes to ensure that they can live on this planet, and everything goes terribly wrong as what happens in all of these movies. It’s actually pretty entertaining, and I sort of get into it, but I easily get distracted when Brennan walks back out of his study.

Immediately my attention falls on him, and he looks over to me then to the screen. “That’s not scientifically possible,” he says, raising his lip in disgust.

I groan, “Yeah, I know, but that’s not the point.”

He doesn’t respond to that; he just brings his eyes to meet mine and shrugs before looking back down at his chart and walking off to who knows where.

After that, I try to reimmerse myself into the movie, but I can’t stop thinking about his comment. Every time they explain the science behind the experiment, I mentally point out all of the fallacies and false statements, and it makes the movie a whole lot less enjoyable. For fucks’ sake, he kills all my fun.

I stretch out and grab the remote with my fingertips, pulling it toward me. I readjust it in my hand and shut off the TV before collapsing back into the cushions. I let my eyes wander over the high ceiling crossed with support beams that are decorated with large, dangling ivy vines. My stare traces down the plants’ winding stems all the way across the shafts to the huge floor-to-unreasonably-high-ceiling windows where the garden lays peacefully outside. The scene is all complete with a tranquil salt water pool that sits in the deck.

And because this house is incredibly boring, I summon the will to get off my lazy ass, and I drag myself out to the poolside. I strip my clothes and throw them away onto the deck mindlessly. Then I dive into the pool, submerging myself completely and embracing the way the water encases my body and hugs every crevice. I try to stay underwater for as long as I can, but soon enough, my lungs begin to burn like fire eating at my flesh, begging for a breath of fresh air—begging for an escape from the pain. And as much as I want to slip away in the weightless world around me, everything mortal in me forces me to push off the pool floor and glide back toward the surface.

When I break the water, all my senses return to me at once like being traumatically born again into reality, and the only feeling I’m left with is the steadily decreasing struggle of living.

I start to tread water from under myself and open my eyes slowly, taking time to carefully bring myself into awareness, but as soon as my sight returns, all is ruined. I catch the glimpse of motion in the corner of my vision, and it has me whirling around to find the disturbance in my serenity. Immediately I find the source; Brennan is staring at me, just leaning against the windows inside the house and admiring me.

I try to keep eye contact with him, but he folds, looking down at his feet and shaking his head. I think he’s laughing, but I can’t really tell. Then he looks back up at me, and I realize this is the first time I’ve ever seen him smile. Then it’s like I can’t turn away.

It doesn’t help when I see him mouth, “You’re incredible.”

A blush spreads across my face faster than I can stop it, and I dive back under the water out of unbearable embarrassment. I shouldn’t be acting like this, and the last thing I want is for Brennan to see it. My face is all hot, and my stomach is flipping out of control. I really think I could throw up, and it’s all because of him.

Because I love him, damnit!

Then like some kind of sick joke, when I surface again, he’s gone. Probably off to do his work or something. And I’m left with myself.

You know, it’s these little things—these tiny, practically nonexistent things—that keep me around. I get the slightest bit of attention, and then, he disappears.

And sometimes, I think, one day, he might do so for good.