Page 181 of Incompatible

"Because he is. I know Anzo gives him something that’s supposed to boost his visions, but I don’t know how well it works. I don’t think he’s found the perfect dose yet, because Moon is all over the place."

I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I stare at him, he kind of avoids my gaze. Ennio is usually so grounded. Maybe something really is up?

"Well, that would be so otherworldly if he were the real deal." I sigh. "I just hope that, in that case, we won’t walk straight into some trap because of him."

Ennio takes another drag. "Well, if he wants us‘all to be saved’, he should keep his mouth shut," he says, giving me a meaningful look.

I sigh again and take a slow drag from my vape. We smoke for a few aimless minutes, standing there in the hallway while I let my mind go quiet.

Silence fills me. My constant companion. The only thing that takes me in, the only cushion where I can rest my head.

I close my eyes and let myself drift into it.

The hallway drifts away, the worries lift.

At the edge of my vision, a sweet, beautiful face flickers into view, fair in the darkness, wide eyes staring at me like amethyst gems. Unsure, questioning, utterly beautiful. I drown in them for a while.

And then the silence takes that image too.

ALEX

The weekend passes in a strange haze.

I drift through the once again empty house from window to window, staring outside, my thoughts frayed with absolutely no coherence leading toward any kind of conclusion.

Sometimes I mutter things out loud.

My mind gets sliced apart by random thoughts about what my stalker did with the Hansons’ bodies, whether he took them to the police or did something completely different and much darker.

Then I think about the fact that now, without Dereck, I’ll have to walk home alone again in the evenings, and I wonder whether there are still people out there who pose a threat to me or if they’ve been scared off or even eliminated.

Then I think about how my hole is still a little wet and I start wondering whether my heat, my first heat, might actually be approaching.

Yeah, that scary thought.

Then in all that chaos a thought about Jared strikes from nowhere, how I haven’t had any contact with him for two months and how nothing new has appeared on his Instagram, which is scary.

So many things, so many questions and so many answers I desperately need, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with any of it.

Pushing myself out of the mental swirl, I remember that the stalker typed something into my phone.

I open my contacts, and at the very top there’s an entry with no name, just a number copied into both the name field and the phone field.

I stare at the row of digits, and my heart speeds up.

Maybe I should text him, ask what he did with the Hansons, but for some reason I feel like this is a number I should only use in a truly desperate situation. Besides, it could be evidence for the police, and it’s better not to leave traces like that.

Monday brings an escalation of these strange symptoms, a constant feeling of cramps in my hole, my tunnel pulsing, slick dripping off it, and I’m low-key aroused all the time, though the arousal isn’t shaped by anything specific, it’s just this undefined cloud swelling through every cell of my body like a pink haze.

But at the same time I’m generating this strange syndrome of denial, a genuine self-delusion, acting as if nothing is about to happen, as if it’s all just a dream. I think I really am losing touch with reality. Especially because this could be a serious problem, and it’s probably also what’s behind what I did on the lawn with my dark protector.

Pre-heat can be full of hormonal spikes and surges of arousal, which would explain my insanity.

In a brief surge of common sense or you could call it a momentary flash of sanity, I order a set of dildos online, including ones with an expandable knot.

But other than that I drift through the entire day from lecture to lecture, completely ignored by Dereck, and the funny thing is that I don’t even blame him for it. I can’t make sense ofany of this myself so why would I expect someone else to make sense of it for me.

Maybe I could tell him it’s probably the beginning of a heat, but what for? I imagine that if I were into some guy and that guy started fucking with a random stranger in a park right in front of me, what would I think? Let’s be serious, I can’t hold it against Dereck.