I snorted. “Let you happen, you mean? To me? I’ll pass, thanks.”
“To you…” He lifted his hand and a breeze spun up between us, though there were no windows in this room. It chased across my cheek, lifting my hair, curling around my neck like a promise. With the pulse of its cool touch, my body formed before my eyes, so that there were now two reflections in the mirror—his and mine—with mine coming into sharper focus now, pale skin, dark hair, huge, skeptical eyes.
Eyes that faltered a bit as the demon spoke again, and a swirling heat passed between us.
“For you…” This new sensation skated over my shoulders, diving down between my breasts, and more of my body formed. In my reflection, I could see that I was still marked with the poetry he’d inscribed on me. Only the words were moving now, sliding across my belly, curling beneath my breasts, diving down?—
“In you,” he finished, and I didn’t miss the raggedness of the moan, hated the way my body responded as he stepped closer to me, the air now scented with jasmine and plumeria and dark, heady notes of bourbon-soaked chocolate.
“Sweet, powerful Delia,” he whispered, and somehow, he was right behind me now, his tall, powerful body dwarfing mine, his hands coming up to curl around my shoulders, turning me toward him. “Tell me,” he whispered, as his dark eyes stared into mine, ancient and powerful and sure. “Is it agony you fear…or ecstasy?”
Bringing his hands to my face, he brushed back my hair with the softest flick of his fingers. Then he bent down to kiss me, his mouth an inch from mine?—
The dream shattered. Not because I woke—because something else interrupted.
A different memory, clawing its way up from whatever dark place I’d buried it.
Mordechai. The cemetery. Blood on his face.
And me, standing over him, laughing.
I awoke like a shot,my eyes wide, my heart too large for its spot in my chest, my lungs stretched to bursting. My hands scrabbled at my belly, but it hadn’t changed, wouldn’t change. I turned and felt the thing turn with me, I scrambled back in my bed and felt it shift back as well. It filled me full, pressing into all the broken places, pushing apart all the scars. It filled me, and it knew me.
It was me.
“Get out,” I tried, but no sound came out of my throat. Nothing moved or fled into the night. Mercifully, nothing else clattered in the house beyond me either. The demons were quiet. Waiting, I thought. Watching. Wondering what was going to come out of this room tomorrow.
I felt the blackness press me down again, and I stumbled back to bed.
Somehow, I must have slept. Because when I opened my eyes, Mordechai was there. It was that last night in the cemetery, all over again. Mordechai was there and he was healthy and whole, staring at me with his wise, gentle eyes. He turned and walked with me down the path of tombstones, clasping his hands in front of him, as he always did.
I snuck a peek at those hands, old man’s hands. I liked his hands. They were gnarled and rough with age, but worn down too in all the right places, from holding hands and comforting shoulders and placing a benediction on the bowed heads of the faithful. They were good hands, a rabbi’s hands.
They were not blistered in any way.
Standing beside him, I found myself wanting to reach out and touch Mordechai, hold his hand the way he’d held so many others’. But he stepped away as I raised my arm, his gaze swinging back to me. Understanding. Knowing.
The thing inside me began to shiver. Not with dread, but with excitement.
I didn’t understand, but I knew something was wrong.
We walked on until we came to the little courtyard, and my demon began to dance.
“No,” I whispered.
Yes.You know what you did. You’ve always known.
The cemetery solidified around us. Not a dream anymore. Memory. And I couldn’t look away.
“No,” I said again.
Yes.
Suddenly Mordechai turned to me, regarding me with all the earned wisdom of his years in his eyes. But he had changed, somehow. Standing there, he seemed more stooped, more ancient. Weaker. Had the blockage already started forming in his artery? Had the blood already started to cease its easy flow?
That’s not what he died of. Stop lying to yourself.
I knew that truth suddenly too. Knew it with the resigned certainty of someone who’d read the plot of the movie before even setting foot inside the theater. But I couldn’t stop that movie from unspooling before me now, playing out horribly in front of my eyes.
