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“Alright. So, her friends made her leave the party, and she told me to call her, but she neglected to give me her number. I spent…probably about two weeks texting my sister and begging her to get it from Vi, since Ros wasn’t on any social media at the time.

Molly just liked to torment me and wouldn’t do it, and I didn’t see Ros on campus anywhere—didn’t have any classes with her that semester—so I really thought I was fucked.

But, I knew that Molly was going over to Ros’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving that next month, and I bribed her with a blank babysitting check if she would ask Ros what classes she was taking in the spring.

I signed up for one she was in, a Shakespeare class, but it turns out she was in a different section than me.

I went to my advisor and…might have told a white lie to get myself moved to her section. ”

“Saint Theodore told a lie in order to meet a girl?” says Annoth, putting on a tone of fake outrage. “The scandal! How will you ever wash that spotless reputation clean?”

“What did you tell your advisor?” Ben asks.

I run a hand through my hair and grin sheepishly. “I, uhh..I told her I had to go to Mass on Wednesday mornings, so I needed to be in the Thursday morning section, which is the one Ros was taking.”

“I’m practically swooning over here,” Ben sighs, pressing a hand to his forehead.

“And how did you win her over?” Annoth asks, slightly less hostile now.

“I’m honestly not sure,” I admit. “I sat next to her in class and just asked if she remembered the party. She did, but she said she was really embarrassed, didn’t want our sisters finding out, and wasn’t sure if I would remember it, so that’s why she didn’t try to contact me.

But…we just started talking, and then we started studying together, and then dating…

and we moved in together after graduation…

” I feel lighter for a moment, but then the heaviness of losing Ros washes over me again and my body sags.

Ben frowns. “I know what you need. Star Wars .”

“Really?” I ask, slightly embarrassed at how much that cheers me up.

“Sure, why not? If you two are going to hold me prisoner, you might as well torture me too.”

“It’s not torture!” I insist. “You just have to watch them in the right order, with the shows!”

“Annie, what’s better: Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy ?” Ben asks, and she sighs.

“You will not like my answer. I enjoy Star Wars more.”

“You two are killing me,” he groans. “Fine, but if I’m cooking dinner, we’re at least going to start with whichever one has Carrie Fisher in that gold bikini.”

“That seems fair,” I say, but then Annoth gives him a mischievous smile.

“You mean… this ?” she asks, and before I can stop her, she’s made her oversized t-shirt vanish and is sitting there wearing Princess Leia’s signature space underwear. I think Ben’s head might explode and he stands on his tiptoes to get a better look at the rest of her behind the counter.

“Annie, I swear to God…” he mutters, putting a hand over his face. “If I wasn’t cooking, I’d–”

“You would do absolutely nothing!” I interject with a small laugh, then I spy a pile of mail on the counter, which includes some magazine that Ros used to get delivered. It has a lot of ‘fashion inspiration’ articles and photos, so I grab it from the stack and toss it to Annoth.

“What is this?” she asks, frowning.

“Just look through it and pick something more…appropriate,” I tell her. “Ben’s going to slice his finger off if you keep that on much longer.”

“Killjoy,” Ben mutters. Annoth takes the magazine and begins to flip pages.

She’s feigning boredom, but every few minutes she casually waves her hand and new clothes appear on her body.

She seems to be testing things out, and I let her work in silence while I get Star Wars: Episode IV ready.

Ben is still cooking, but I want him to watch, so I ask if there’s anything I can do to help.

I’m not the best in the kitchen, but I can certainly follow directions.

“Ehhh,” he says warily, “I dunno if I trust you, but…if you insist, you can just stir that pan every few minutes.” I pick up the wooden spoon and stand dutifully by the stove, watching Ben watch Star Wars , and watching Annoth pretend she isn’t enjoying herself.

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 of Tom & 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 hot cocoa 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 jalapeno 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 of The Screwtape Letters and Paradise Lost at 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.

“This is 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?”