Page 37

This is how things go every day for almost a week. It becomes a routine, as simple as getting up and going to work used to be. I wake up in my own bed, with the cats on my chest, and feed them. Ben is usually cooking breakfast and playing early-aughts angry emo kid music or old episodes ofTom & Jerry, while Annoth browses magazines I’ve found around the apartment, or a carefully chosen pile of books from my own collection.

It slowly becomes easier for me to shower again, because I know that I don’t have to worry about making food. Then, it becomes easier for me to help Ben make breakfast, and to clean up afterwards while he showers. Each morning, we do one of Ben’s ‘counseling’ sessions, which prove to be unhelpful. Annoth won’t speak at all, except to threaten or insult, and I’m not ready to talk about a lot of things, like why Ros and I broke up. After the unsuccessful attempts at therapy, we walk to the park and bring tupperware containers of hot food to Monty and Roger. Every day, Annoth insists on getting hotcocoa from the food truck. She claims that the heat simply reminds her of home, but always makes sure we get a cup for Monty too.

On Saturday, we pick him and Roger up and take them to the animal shelter. Jaime goes absolutely bananas over Roger, then asks ‘Annika’ if she’d like to help give him a bath and a brush-out. Annoth declines, as politely as she knows how, and instead accompanies me and Ben while we take Monty to lunch. She has to actively hide her delight when Ben orders her a jalapeño margarita and the spiciest dish on the menu. I catch her looking at him more than once over lunch, and I think I see a strange new softness in her eyes, but all that does is make me anxious.

After a second week of the same routine, she’s barely even making threats or using her creepy shadows anymore. On our daily walks to the park, she talks to Monty, laughs at his jokes, and uses her powers to keep his food and hot cocoa warm. Then, she starts to pat Roger on the head, scratches his ears, and eventually allows him to snuggle up to her. He doesn’t react badly to her the way other dogs do, which Ben seems to think is meaningful.

In fact, he seems to think a lot of things she does are meaningful. I even found him flipping through my copies ofThe Screwtape LettersandParadise Lostat one point, like he’s trying to figure her out. For every question she asks us about the human world, Ben asks one about her, about Hell, and about demonic possession. Part of me can understand his interest. After all, he spent years studying this stuff and now he’s finding out it’s all real. I can’t blame him for wanting answers, but it’s his interest in Annoth specifically that makes me nervous. He jokes with her, teases, flirts, asks her opinion,checks up on her–treats her like a person. It might be heartwarming if I weren’t still at her mercy, even if she has been keeping her promise not to mess with me.

By the end of that second week, she’s become so withdrawn and quiet, if she were a normal friend, I’d be worried. She sits on the couch and watches movies most of the day, but I start to notice a change in the ones she picks. More soft, romantic, and uplifting, rather than the gory, violent stuff she wanted to watch before. At one point, I even catch her trying to coax Dante and Virgil out from under my bed with pieces of bacon. They still want nothing to do with her, but their rejection actually seems to make her sad now, instead of angry. The anxious part of my brain tells me that it’s all an act, that she’s manipulating my emotions and trying to get me to drop my guard. But there’s a small part of me that hopes it’s real, at least for Ben’s sake. I think he’s becoming attached to her, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t becoming attached to him.

Meanwhile, Ben hears back from his church contacts and, bit-by-bit, my hopes of being in control of my own life again dwindle. One priest has moved to Switzerland. Two won’t perform an exorcism without the approval of their bishop. One won’t do it without the mental health tests. A week after our lunch with Monty, Ben is waiting to hear back from one last contact, and I’m becoming increasingly desperate. In spite of the changes in Annoth’s behavior, the thought of being stuck with her indefinitely is pushing me to the edge of a panic attack that I can’t afford to have.

“What if we can’t find anyone?” I ask Ben one night while Annoth is in the shower again. She takes at least two every day, and I can only assume it’s because she enjoys the heat, because she doesn’t actually need to clean her fake human body. I don’t mind though, because it gives me and Ben time to talk privately.

“Well, then I guess you just have to keep being a good person for the rest of your life,pobrecito,” Ben says with a smirk.

“Thisis serious!”

“I know it is, but…I’ll be honest, Theo, I’m out of my depth here, and this doesn’t just affect you.”

“What?”

“When do I get to go on living my life without the threat of arrest dangling over my head?” he asks. He might as well have hit me in the chest. I had almost completely forgotten about my threat to turn him in. We get along so well, I guess I’d fooled myself into thinking that he was sticking around because he wanted to, because it was better than sleeping in his car…or maybe because he cared about me. Completely delusional, obviously.

I clear my throat. “I’m sorry I did that,” I say quietly. “I was just…desperate and angry. You can go whenever you want to, if you don’t mind leaving me the contact information for your friends…”

Ben pauses cutting the green onions he’s working on, then picks up the cutting board and slams it down in front of me.

“Chop,” he says tersely, placing the knife next to my hand. “Thin slices.”

I don’t touch anything. “Ben…I just said you can go…”

“I heard you,” he snaps, turning around to stir the potato soup he has simmering on the stove.

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not leaving you alone,” he says, keeping his eyes on the pot, “or her. Not right now.”

“Annoth?” I glance behind me to make sure she isn’t lurking.

“Both of you need my help.”

“She’s a demon. I don’t know if she really needs or wants anyone’s help.”

He turns back and points the wooden spoon at me. “Is that what she’s been acting like these last couple weeks? A demon? Or has she been acting like a woman who’s starting to realize there’s more to the world than what she was taught? Don’t tell me you don’t understand that feeling, Theo.”

He goes back to stirring, and my body floods with shame. Of course, I know that feeling. It’s what made me leave my hometown and refuse to go back, even when that was all Ros wanted. As much as I tried to give her everything, I couldn’t give her that.

“Annoth isn’t human, Ben,” I say softly. “I know it’s hard to remember when she looks the way she does, and when she’s acting…softer, but you aren’t the one sharing your body. I need you to remember what she is.”

“Do you want my help or not?” he asks, closing his eyes and letting his shoulders sag. “Because, I don’t want to leave the two of you…until we figure this out.” He opens his eyes halfway, looking at me through long, black lashes, and something shifts in my body. I don’t want him to leave either, but I don’t know how to say it, and I don’t know how to ask him for what I really want.

“What has the two of you looking so melancholy?” asks Annoth as she emerges from the hallway. She’s spent the last week learning how to wrap a towel around her hair and twist it up, even though she could dry it with magic. Her shadow-wardrobe has expanded too, so she’s now wearing a fluffy, blood-red bathrobe and slippers. She sits beside me at the counter as I start chopping the green onions and Ben returns to stirring.

“Another one of my contacts fell through,” he tells her. “I only have one more who might answer.”

“Oh,” says Annoth. She glances at me. “But…Theo has been doing many good deeds, so maybe…”