“Are you stealing?!” I shout, smacking my hand on the window. “In my body?!”
“Obviously.”
I groan, long and loud. “Are you kidding? If we get caught, guess who gets in trouble?” I slap my chest once. “Me! You can just leave and go possess someone else, but I have to deal with the consequences.”
He climbs in my car, closing the door behind him and tossing the bag of stolen goods on the passenger seat. His eyes catch mine in the rearview mirror. “You’d like that, though. Me leaving to possess someone else.”
I wonder if he knows when I roll my eyes? “Well, no shit, Sherlock. Of course, I would. But I wouldnotlike being arrested. Especially for shoplifting makeup. How old are you? Fifteen? Ihavemakeup. Why did you feel the need tostealme more?”
He readjusts the mirror and loses my eye. “We’re going out tonight. I want to look nice.” He cranks the key and puts the car in reverse.
“Oh. My. God.” I cover my face with my hands. “You cannot be serious.”
He pulls out of the mall parking lot. “We’re not going to get caught. It’s fine.”
Anger bubbles through me, so enflaming that I couldn’t respond even if I wanted to. I didn’t know I was capable of thiskind of hatred—the kind that digs its claws into you so deeply that it will forever scar.
The fury coursing through me makes my knees weak. My intended destination is the floor, but a chair appears before I even move to sit. It’s a basic wooden chair with a straight back, but it’s a chair. I poke it to confirm. It’s as solid as things are in here. Did I make this? It is my mind. If I can conjure a chair…what else can I do?
I sit in the chair cautiously. It’s sturdy. I scoot it up to the window and lean forward against it. It’s like a car wreck, my new life. I can’t look away.
Kit drives a familiar way, eventually pulling up to my apartment complex.
“How do you know where I live?”
He doesn’t respond right away. He gets out of the car and starts to ascend the wooden stairs to my second-floor apartment. In the void, he explains, “I can access memories. I try not to for anything more than basic information.” He pauses again, before adding nonchalantly, “I can also see your memories when you access them.”
“Oh, I…” I trail off when I realize what he means. He’s seen my high school memories of August and my first day at Blanc & Hartman. I need to be more careful about where my mind goes. “How invasive.”
“Nature of the game, babe.”
“Stopcalling me babe,” I command.
He ignores that, saying, “I’ve already been to your apartment today. That’s when I saw the poor state your makeup was in.”
“How do you know so much about makeup?”I snip. I consider a moment before inquiring additionally, “Obviously not only women wear makeup, but can I ask—your voice sounds masculine, so I’ve been assuming you’re a man, but I mean, is that how you identify?”
I hear the grin in his voice when he responds. “Gender is a bit of a complicated concept for demons. It’s more fluid than a human would be used to, even though gender can be fluid for humans as well. I don’t have a preference for the gender of the people I possess. However, I do consider myself a man—if I have to consider it. That’s what I lean toward. Though, that could be left over from when I was alive.”
This causes me to falter, a surprising chapter of his story suddenly spread before me. “Alive? Kit, were you human?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he pulls out keys and shoves them in the lock of my front door. He drops the tote with the new makeup on my kitchen island and opens my fridge to pull out a hard seltzer. Sure.
“Kit,” I prod again, rapping my knuckles on the window twice.
He again chooses to ignore me. Communication isn’t our strong suit, is it?
Seltzer in hand, he takes a seat on the cream-colored couch in my living room. I love my couch. It’s big and soft. I wish I was sitting there, and not in this wooden chair. I understand that my body is on the couch, but I can’t feel it, so I can’t experience the pure comfort it encompasses. Kit flips on the TV, perusing streaming services for a bit before eventually landing onFriends. I settle in and watch the episode with him. He picks up where I left off on one of my endless re-watchesof the show. It’s “The One With the Jellyfish”—one of my favorite episodes.
We watch in silence, a smile here or there from both of us, until we both laugh aloud at the same joke. My face falls flat. I refuse to have something in common with him—especially when, despite being my voice, that laugh was distinctly not mine. It must be his.
Comfortableis far too strong of a word, but this isn’t torturous. Like, we’re just hanging out. He’s not doing anything bad. At the moment. Yet, I’m on high alert, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I understand, as much as I can, that Kit is a demon and that I’m possessed. I get that. Totally do. Not on board with it, not one hundred percent convinced this is real, but I’m accepting it as my reality until I figure out how to escape him.
But he doesn’tfeellike a demon. Sure, I haven’t ever (knowingly) met a demon. Though it wouldn’t surprise me if any of the lawyers I worked with—minus Hudson—were secretly demons. Shouldn’t a demon feel, you know, evil? The worst things he’s done are shoplift and kill a bug. Non-evil humans do things like that all the time. I killed a cockroach in my kitchen the other day and stole a lipstick I knew I would never wear from Target when I was sixteen. It’s nothing, in the grand scheme of things.
Until he does something truly evil, and I am sincerely hoping he does not, I fear I’ll view him as this annoying guy I’m being forced to spend time with in a rather unconventional way and not the embodiment of actual Hell he is. He’s been in me for less than twenty-four hours. While I’m dreading it, I have no doubt he’ll show me the wicked side of himself before long.
eight
