My gift to you...

Happiest of holidays to you, my friend! Thank you for being here with me. It means everything. As a little treat, I’m excited to share one of my scary Christmas stories with you. Let me know what you think!

Pinpricks of ice pelt my cheeks as I stumble my way to Miriam’s massive front door. Gloved fingers brushing the spiky sprigs of a cedar wreath, I take hold of the door knocker, dropping the brass ball with one solid thunk, followed by another. My nostrils sting with each inhale, my breath pulsing between my lips in wraith-like tendrils. 

Everleigh Manor appears especially alive tonight, all the gas lanterns ablaze. On my way here, I followed the light like a north star through the wildflower field, now a slumbering tangle of crunchy, frost-tinged grass. When the door opens, I expect Mrs. Stark the housekeeper with her stony stare, but instead it’s Miriam flooding the brick stoop in amber warmth.

“You came!” she exclaims, grasping my arm and tugging me into the marble-floored foyer. 

I brush snow from my boots before removing my coat and gloves and hanging them on a mahogany coat rack. Through winter-stung eyes, I study Miriam. Her gown is a creamy white embroidered with lace in the same icy blue shade of her eyes. And draped around her swan-like neck are the pearls I had my scullery maid deliver this afternoon. 

“If I hadn’t, you would have dragged me here yourself,” I say, still catching my breath from the walk and how beautiful Miri looks in those pearls, just as I knew she would.

“You’re lucky I didn’t,” she teases, touching the necklace. “Shame on you for not giving this to me yourself.”

I blush.

“I have been busy,” I try.

A tense beat.

“With Frederick?” she asks, voice tight. 

“Yes,” I say, casting my gaze to the floor. “He called on me this morning. I could not refuse.”

I wait for her to say more, but just as quickly, she brightens, taking my hand and pulling me into the sitting room.

Since her parents took ill and passed away a year ago, this house and everything in it belongs to her, a team of clerks managing her small fortune while she is free to pursue her watercolor painting and impressive doll collection. Despite the loss she suffered, I cannot help but envy her life. When Mother dies, all of the family fortune will go to my younger brother. Marrying Frederick is the only way I’ll have even a portion of what Miriam Everleigh has. 

“Sit,” she says, gesturing to the loveseat beside the Christmas tree. 

Lost in my head, I didn’t even notice we’d reached the center of the sitting room. I obey, watching her stoop to retrieve a package topped with a silken black bow. She presents the gift with an eager grin. 

“What is it?” I ask, taking the box.

She sinks down beside me, electrifyingly close. My skin tingles with her proximity.

“Open it.”

I strain my ears for any telltale footsteps in the upper floors or a clatter of dishes from the kitchen, but the house is silent save for Miriam’s rapid breathing.

“Are we—?” I begin, clutching the package. “Where are the staff this evening?”

“I sent them home,” Miriam says with a sly grin. “Open your present, Cecile.”

With an anticipatory shiver, I slide off the bow and tear open the box.

The doll with my face peers from its wrapping paper womb, all gilded curls and huge brown eyes. Entranced, I lift it from the box, stroking my thumb along its cool, glassy cheek. 

“She’s you,” Miriam says, brushing aside a strand of hair caught in my lashes. The tender contact threatens to overtake me like the dense ivy still clinging to the walls of Everleigh Manor.   

“I can see that,” I tell her, voice low as I settle deeper into the sofa, training my focus only on the doll and not Miri’s face mere inches from mine. 

The doll’s nose is pert with a slight upturn at the tip. Its lips are full and pink. There are freckles, beige pinpricks that appear to have been dabbed on with a single hair in place of a paint brush. It isn’t only that the doll has my hair and eye color. It has been molded and shaped as my precise likeness, down to the little mole high upon its left cheekbone.

Miriam’s smile has a glint of familiar mischief in it. It’s the smile she favored me with the springtime of my eleventh year, the day we met. I’d resolved to run away from home, become a fae creature of the wilds, free from Mother’s biting insults and impossible expectations. With nothing but a stolen wedge of soft white cheese and a stale dinner roll tucked in a kerchief, I set out first thing in the morning, drawn inexorably to the ocean of flowers flanking the forest.

Pink astor, blazing star, butterfly weed. All were known to me from books, my only companions. And in that field, twirling and singing without abandon among the circling bees and dandelion fluff, was a girl. She had a crown of daisies woven into her unbound black hair, the hem of her dress coated in clinging seedlings. And when her eyes found mine, I knew I was exactly where I belonged.

A sanctuary and a certain kind of Hell. 

For the wild stirrings Miriam Everleigh elicited in my belly from the moment she took my hand in that field of flowers and dragged me along to our adulthoods. For how in moments like this, enveloped by her earthy scent, tracking the rise and fall of her breathing near enough to match it, I long for something I’m too afraid to name.   

“It’s not just any doll, my lovely,” she continues, resting her hand atop mine atop the doll’s lap. My chest hitches as her touch remains, my ribs straining above a dull thrum. That want, that ache. “It is you.”

As I lift a questioning brow at her, the doll’s face flashes in my periphery, the painted slashes of its eyebrows drawing together. There and gone in an instant, leaving nothing amiss on its static features when I regard it full on.

“Are we not too old for playthings?” I ask with a dry swallow, sliding my hand from hers. I busy myself with straightening the sleeves on the doll’s red dress. 

Miriam smiles impishly. Her pearl necklace flashes in the firelight, along with her teeth. Silvery strands of tinsel sway in the pungent evergreen among its array of hanging ornaments and baubles. The only decoration Miri asked the staff to arrange. 

Every Christmas needs presents, she explained over tea last week. And every present needs a tree to go under.

Christmases in Everleigh Manor were once grand affairs. String quartets, silk gowns and satin ribbons, endless puddings and sweets, an enormous turkey browned and crisp on a banquet table overflowing with garlands of pine and imported citrus fruits. Miri and I lingered in the upstairs nursery with the other children, sneaking cinnamon tarts with buttery crusts that melted on our tongues like the richest unspoken secrets. 

This is to be our last Christmas together before I marry Frederick and begin my new life at his townhouse in the city. My stomach twists at the unwelcome thought. By next year, nights like this will be a distant memory.

But tonight, in Miriam’s lavish candle-lit sitting room, the dark windows ensconced with powdery snowfall, we were the only two creatures in existence before the doll joined us. This twin of me. This gift of me.

“It is no toy, Cecile,” Miriam smirks. “And I doubt dolls have ever amused you. I know you much better than that, my lovely.” 

Outside, the wind howls, a blizzard forming. I turn the doll this way and that, a tingle edging along my skin where Miriam’s gaze strikes it. She’s right, of course. I never played with dolls as a child. I preferred the magic of my own imagination or the company of a fairy story. Miriam, on the other hand, loved dolls. Collected them from the finest toymakers. Fashioned her own out of twigs and scraps of old dresses. Brushed their hair. Polished their tiny shoes. Whispered over them. Poppets, she called them. Her silent friends.

This doll is as fitting a gift from her as any as my own childhood comes to its end. Next Christmas, I will be a wife. There will be no more clover crowns, no more fairy tales, no more Everleigh Manor. 

No more Miriam.

“Enlighten me then,” I say with a forced smile as my throat fills with cotton. Another flicker of movement on the doll’s lips, there and gone. The lantern light catches across its shiny ceramic face. My face. “If not just a toy, then what?”

“Haven’t you been listening? It is you.”

I chuckle, tamping the urge to shift nearer to her on the tufted cushion. 

“Miri, please. No riddles. It is late and I must be getting back.”

Miriam leans in, a spill of black hair loosening from its pins. She smells of pine and citrus, potent and sweet. She takes the doll. Whispers across its golden curls. As she does, a warm breeze caresses my cheek—a draft from the fireplace perhaps.

She adopts a strange look. Wolfish. Provocative. The skin pinches between her brows, her jawline rigid, her pale eyes hardening to ice. I blink, a surge of unease carving through my want, but something else, too.

Exhilaration. 

Excitement. 

Miri could be a goddess of war. An eldritch fairy queen.   

“Back to what?” she challenges, her words as cutting as her bared slash of a smile. “That monstrous woman? That complete bore of a fiance? To a future you don’t even want?”

My spine straightens, nostrils flaring open, my heart a wounded bird fluttering behind my ribs. My enchantment ebbs, replaced by confused hurt. 

“What are you saying?”

“I speak the truth, Cecile,” Miriam says, softening. “Now be still for me.”

“Miri, what—”

She presses her lips against the doll’s forehead, tender and deliberate, her eyes trained on mine in a meaningful way. I gasp, touching my own forehead, an invisible pressure on my skin. 

A trick. An illusion. It must be. This is not real.

“We both know that place is not your home,” she continues, eyes glinting. “You belong here, Cecile. With me.”

When Miriam kisses the doll’s tiny parted lips, I feel it, too. There and gone. A teasing contact, whisper-light.

“Miri…” I breathe, eyes wide. My lungs strain against my corset, unable to draw in enough air. “What is happening?”

“Happy Christmas, my lovely,” she says, her mischievous facade receding at last. Trapping her shapely bottom lip beneath her teeth, she lifts the doll’s skirts. Brushes her finger along its polished white leg. 

I shiver at the contact across my own calf.

“How?” I pant. “Miri—”

She shushes me, gathering the doll’s dress about its stuffed fabric waist. When she presses into the smooth, formless place between the doll’s legs, I cry out, back arching against the embroidered loveseat. She rubs in a tight semicircle, her predatory smile never wavering. 

This is witchcraft. This is evil. This is…perfection. 

Through the hazy cloud of my horrified astonishment, Miriam’s scent chokes me, and God help me, I want it to. I want all of her. Her flesh on my flesh. Her touch on me. Not that accursed doll, but me and—

No. For the sake of us both, I must be stronger than this. 

You’re so good, Ceci, Miriam used to tell me. My unfailing moral compass.

Swallowing my pleasurable moans, I squeeze my legs shut, fighting against the sensation, against her, but she’s relentless. I must remember who I am, that it is not too late, that I can still save us both. 

“Stop,” I choke, wringing my fingers through my skirts, a hot flush gathering in my chest and flooding into my face. “Miri, please. Stop this.”

“Cecile,” Miriam whispers over the doll, never once easing up on her touches. “My Cecile.”

Heart thundering, fighting against my combined ecstasy and shame, I snatch the doll from her, clutching it to my chest. I shuffle away until my back strikes the sofa’s armrest.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I snap through labored breaths. 

“It’s not a sin if I don’t touch you,” she says, her smile unfaltering. 

I squeeze the doll harder, stroking its hair. I don’t register my own touches as I did Miriam’s. My dearest friend’s violating—yet so intoxicating—touches. Shadows lengthen over us as the blizzard rages outside. In the guttering firelight, she is beautiful in the way that all frightening things are. Angular. Sharp. Forbidden.

“Have you ever been touched that way before, my lovely?” she continues, edging closer until her face hovers over mine. “Has Frederick even kissed you?” 

My blush deepens. It doesn’t matter what I think of Frederick now. One day, he and I will come to love each other in the way that Miriam and I cannot because she is a woman and I am a woman and if Mother ever found out about tonight—

“I’m going now,” I manage, cradling the doll as if it’s my very soul. “Please, Miri. I will forget this night and I beg you to do the same.” With shaking hands, I shove the doll into her chest, rebuking her gift. “Whatever trick this is, whatever conjurer’s charm you’ve employed, remove it. Take this horrid thing back. I…” A sting behind my eyes, a knot trapped in my throat. “I do not desire you, Miriam.”

She blinks those pale eyes at the doll in her hands. Her shoulders hitch. She hefts a sigh. The blizzard rages, rattling the windows in their panes. The Christmas tree rustles. At our feet, the cavernous innards of the package the doll arrived in is an open mouth framed by jagged paper teeth.

“You may lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me,” she says, tossing the doll on the cushion behind her. My own body registers the contact as a breathtaking jolt across my back. Miriam clasps my hands in hers, vulnerable in a way I’ve never seen her before. Her grip is strong, grinding my knuckles together. Her pearls clack against her breastplate as her eyes latch onto mine. 

“Let me free you, Cecile. Take care of you as when we were children. He cannot make you happy like I will. He is just another cage. Another jailer, just like your mother. Like my parents were.” Her grip tightens. “But I freed myself from them and I can do the same for you. You have only but to ask.”

Trembling, I tear loose from Miriam and stand, heeled boots sinking in the floral rug. She rises with me, that wildness I always admired visible in every facet of her diamond eyes and angular cheekbones. Whatever cryptic implication she just confessed to regarding her parents’ demise, I do not wish to hear it. She is a sorceress, an agent of the devil on this most holy night and she would drag me with her into his clutches. I never knew this woman at all.  

“No, Miri,” I plead, twisting toward the grand foyer. “I’m leaving now. When you’ve come to your senses, you’ll—”

I cry out when she yanks me by my wrist and tosses me to the loveseat. The doll bounces in my wake just before she takes it into her arms like an errant child. Miriam’s chest rises and falls, twin rivers carving down each rosy cheek. 

“Admit it,” she says, her voice hushed, inflectionless. Without preamble, she winds her fingers into the doll’s golden curls and rips several strands loose. 

I cry out, my scalp aflame. Wisps of golden thread flutter past my eyes. My own hair, torn from the root. My eyes burn with unshed tears, a scream caught in my chest.

“Admit that you love me,” Miriam presses, digging her nails into the doll’s soft belly. I groan at the sensation of dull blades jabbing my skin, bruising and punishing. 

“Miriam,” I cry, doubled over, hugging myself. “Don’t—”

“Stop denying us!” Miriam shrieks, her composure dropping like a heavy curtain at the opera we attended last week and silently snickered the entire way through. This is not that woman. This is not my Miri. 

Shuddering, chest hitching, I dart toward the foyer, storm be damned. I need to leave this place, put as much distance between myself and her crazed obsession as I can before—

I hear the shatter before I feel it. A dropped dinner plate. A lilting crack. I fall, striking my head on the stone hearth before the fire. My vision wavers with each of Miriam’s steps until she stands over me, the doll in one hand and its porcelain foot in the other. With a dazed whimper, I scan the length of my body and release a ragged mewl at what I find. 

My ankle is a perfect twin of the doll’s. Bloodless. Jagged edges. My foot rests several inches away inside my lace-up boot, only instead of meat and muscle surrounding a bone core, the limb is hollow. Porcelain. A network of black cracks spiderweb up my calf, ceramic giving way to living tissue. 

Miriam kneels beside me, triumphant and smug as if she won yet another round of croquet or outlasted me in a game of hide-and-seek. Even as children, she always won. This time is no different. She will have her way. She always gets her way.

“Don’t be afraid, my lovely,” she says. “You can be repaired. This can all be fixed, you’ll see.”

“Miri…” I moan, stemming the blood flowing on my scalp from striking the stone hearth. I lift my deformed leg, shuddering at the loss of feeling where my foot once was. Where there should be pain, there is only a dull nothing, heavy as clay. My best friend’s eyes are as lifeless as the doll she holds as both stare down at me. She lays the doll’s castaway foot on the side table before regarding me again.

“Tell the truth,” Miriam says, her voice achingly tender as she brushes a sweaty strand of hair from my eyes. “You love me, Cecile. You always have.”

I choke around a sob. She’s hurt me. Shattered me. 

But God, how I have awoken in the loneliest nights from sweet dreams of her lips on mine, her long cool fingers sliding through my hair, her laughter across my skin. How I have tucked those shameful, beautiful fantasies down deep where no one can find them, least of all myself. Even now, I would welcome her love, twisted and cruel as she’s proven it to be. 

“Say it,” she urges above my whimpering. “Say it and I will see to it that no one ever hurts you again.”

“You’re hurting me, Miri,” I say. “Please. Do not do this.”

“I am saving you,” she says, her voice steady and certain. “You and I… We are inevitable. We always have been. This is my gift to you, Cecile. Admit your truth and we can begin our lives. Together.”

“It sounds beautiful, Miri,” I whisper, dizzied by converging thoughts of Mother’s fury, Miriam’s savagery, and the condemnation of a world that will never condone the life Miri and I could have shared. What she is proposing is impossible. She is devastation, this incandescent flame of a woman before me. My most treasured friend. My ruin.

“It will be, my lovely,” says Miriam, pulling me into her lap. I rest my cheek against her stomach, inhaling her as she holds me against the pain she caused. The doll’s curls tickle my face, its expression heartbreakingly sad. My mirror. My gift. 

“Miriam,” I say, closing my eyes. “Miriam…”

“Yes,” she says with feeling. “Yes, I’m here. I will always be here.”

Hot tears in my eyes, I bundle the front of her dress in my fist and drag her face to mine. I part her lips with my tongue, tasting her. She groans into my mouth, our salty tears mingling as we kiss our collected pain away, banish the world and its barriers to places so far off they can never trap us again. 

“Thank you, Miri,” I whisper. My friend rattles out a sigh as my fingers grasp the doll’s arm. “I will always love you.”

With her eyes trained on mine, her smile cast in all the radiance of the spring sunshine over the wildflower fields in which we played, I lift the doll and dash her porcelain face against the ground. 



Three winters come and go. We share her canopy bed, floor-to-ceiling shelves of dolls watching over us while we sleep. A sea of baked clay, fabric, glass, wax, and gleaming eyes of all shapes and sizes. Miriam’s lifelong collection. Most are comfortingly silent and inanimate, but sometimes, I can hear the others. Close-mouthed moans, wordless pleas.

My body has never once touched that pile. I am not like the others, that lifeless throng. I am singular. Miri’s finest work. We are never apart, she and I. As promised, she has saved me. Repaired me. Protected me. Her favorite toy. She spares hardly a glance at the others anymore. Her collection stopped with me.        

Tonight, she has moved me into our sitting room beneath the light of the immense evergreen tree and its usual adornments. She folds my immobile hands in my lap, the cracks in my glossy skin faint as gossamer lace. She has dressed me in a fine green gown, polished my face with rose water, and draped emeralds around my neck.  

“Happy Christmas, my lovely,” she says, her lips warm against a deep rift marring the surface of my cheek. Humming beneath her breath, she takes up a brush and glides its bristles through my golden hair. With a shifting sound of stone sliding against stone, I close my eyes. My heart beats, the meaty organ pumping like a whisper beneath my ceramic exterior. 

A joyous bead of moisture gathers at the corner of my glass eye and vanishes into my vast network of fractures before Miri can see it.

Happy Christmas, my Miri.

I will always love you.

The End.

Meet the villain: Moondancer House

“You begged for your ruin in my waters. You prayed so prettily for me. I answered.”

Moondancer House’s villain is a shapeshifting sea god bent on taking our MC’s soul. To stop him, she’ll have to venture into the barren Second Sea—an ocean without a surface—and acquire the fabled water of life from the fearsome sea dragon that guards it.

What's Inside: Our Devil's Awake

Yes, Red Hollow Road has a new title! While I’m still waiting for responses on my YA ocean fantasy Moondancer House, I have resubmitted this project to a select few agents who had requested the manuscript before it was truly ready. We’ll see what happens! In the meantime, here’s what you can expect to find within the pages of my YA sapphic southern gothic novel, Our Devil’s Awake.

Sneak Peek: Red Hollow Road

I’m querying Red Hollow Road again! In my first round of submissions back in March, I was lucky enough to have two agents tell me they loved the concept but weren’t hooked by the story’s opening enough to ask for more. So you can guess what I did next…

After months of revising, I’ve finally hit that sweet spot. As much as I liked the opening before, this new one is so much better! Enjoy.


RED HOLLOW ROAD

By Chloe York

  

Chapter 1

Instead of sleeping with Cassandra Smith, I killed the devil in front of her. 

I raced to the trunk—to him—my prepared excuses dying before they passed my lips. I couldn’t worry what Cassandra might think. There wasn’t enough time.

The cool air whistling through the basement’s ceiling vents tightened the bare skin on my stomach while Cassandra mumbled some confused protestations over my sudden departure from the sofa and her arms. I couldn’t hear her, not over the familiar snarls and thunks coming from the ornate wooden trunk beside the long-defunct air hockey table. 

 I found my shirt on the ground and wrestled myself back into it. Upstairs, the phone was ringing. 

“What are you doing, Blythe?” Cassandra asked, crossing to me while she fiddled with her eyebrow ring.  Shuddering at a violent jolt from the trunk, I finished buttoning my shirt with clumsy fingers and regarded Cassandra with as much calm as I could. 

Gorgeous Cassandra Smith with her blue hair and the little birthmark on her temple I had long fantasized pressing my lips against. And now she was here. Actually here with me after all the anxious texts, stammered flirtations in front of my locker and invented excuses to see her after school. After all the agonizing uncertainty, she was actually here. 

This perfect moment, our first kiss, my first time laid bare with someone I cared so much about and I wasn’t even present for it. The entirety of me was in the shuddering casket with the red-skinned monster. I wouldn’t let him ruin this. He’d taken enough from me already.

 Inspired, I gestured for Cassandra to kneel with me on the thin carpet. After all, there was always a chance she could see him and if she could see him, then she would understand why I never went out, why I kept everyone at a distance and why I was so afraid—

But beneath that fear, a selfish part of me longed for her—for everyone—to know that I had given up my life to protect theirs. Because without Mom and without me, our devil would take the world.

“Can you hear that?” I asked, voice shrill. I cleared my throat.

Her shoulder brushed mine as she joined me in front of the trunk. After a beat, she shook her head. “What should I be hearing?”

“I’m going to open this,” I said, placing a hand on the trunk’s lid. Even in the dark room, the wooden surface gleamed with fresh oil. I was certain Mom had polished it that day. Stuck at home monitoring our devil with nothing better to do, she cleaned incessantly. “I need you to hang back and give me some space. And whatever you um… Whatever you see, don’t be scared. Okay?”

Cassandra kissed the corner of my mouth as she rose. 

“All right, I’ll play. As long as we can get back to…”

I stopped hearing her. The devil’s shrieks were louder than I had ever heard them before. The coffin’s lid flew open and slammed back down, making Cassandra jump.

“Get back!” I shouted and in the same breath, I pried a pointed shard of wood from the nearest cigar box on a shelf above my head and heaved the trunk’s lid open, facing the devil as I had done so many times before. While the sight of him awake should have instilled a primal fear that hastened the killing, I could never resist taking a moment to study him before I did. 

The monster’s skin was a pinkish red, a color I used to love before I learned of his existence. Multiple horns crowned his bald head and he had pointed ears like an elf or a pixie. He had no nose. Instead, he breathed through two slits above his tusked mouth. Thick dark fur covered his lower half, the hair tapering off around the ankles. His eyes were entirely black, inky and gleaming. As those eyes took in my approach, I could see myself reflected in them, Cassandra close behind me with a dazed look on her lovely face. 

“I don’t see anything,” she said. 

My heart panged. No. Of course she couldn’t see him. 

The monster’s bisected tongue stretched behind his sharp teeth as another animal cry emanated from his throat.

“What are you holding?” Cassandra asked.

The devil thrashed as I grasped one of his arms and pushed it aside to reveal a black X tattooed across the monster’s chest.

“Blythe?” she pressed.

Before the monster could stop me, I plunged the stake through the X, careful to release my grip before the stake glowed orange and disintegrated into ash. The devil’s scream was equal parts animal and human, a sound I could never wash out of my head. That scream lived inside my chest, a constant buzzing itch. I wondered if Mom felt it, too. Like the headaches she always got when our devil awakened, we must have experienced him differently. 

With a shudder, his chest caved in, his skin dried out, and every bit of him shriveled like a mummy. Within moments, the monster lay still—a desiccated carcass in a pretty carved trunk inside the basement of a middle-class, suburban home. 

After it was over, I stood panting over him, my blurred vision snagging on the couch over Cassandra’s shoulder. The demon’s emaciated husk shifted, making a leathery scraping sound I flinched against. Eyes locked with Cassandra’s, throat bobbing, I reached down and closed the lid, sealing my monster away until the next time he woke.

Cassandra blinked while I held my breath. While I’d put my devil to sleep countless times, no one had ever seen me do it. I knew Dad had watched Mom stake our monster on several ill-timed occasions, but he had no memory of it. Whatever magic made the red demon invisible to anyone outside of some old bloodline dating back to my great-great grandmother was very good at keeping secrets. 

And tonight, that suited me just fine. It meant Cassandra and I could pick up where we’d left off, like nothing happened. Maybe I’d even work up the courage to tell her I’d been accepted to New York University, the college she was set to attend next year. Tell her I’d follow her there—that I’d follow her anywhere, devilish burden be damned. 

Mom didn’t know I’d even applied to NYU. It was an impetuous urge, only partially influenced by the eighteen-hundred miles it would put between me and that ticking time bomb of a casket. No, what I really desired was to remain in Cassandra Smith’s spectacular orbit after high school. We only just found each other. I couldn’t lose her now. 

“Were we just—?” Cassandra murmured with a tilt of her head. She hugged her shoulders, studying me with an odd sort of blankness.

“I—Sorry about that,” I said to the floor. I tousled my hair, brunette and curly with some fuchsia highlights I’d gotten to impress Cassandra, a feeble attempt at edginess. 

“About what?” she asked, knitting her brows. 

I inhaled, forcing my gaze up.  

“Nothing,” I smiled.

Everything was fine. We were going to be fine. We’d go to New York together, cram into a tiny dorm, frequent bookstores and art galleries and night clubs every day. We could do whatever we wanted. Complete, delicious freedom. No more isolated nights standing guard over the devil. No more denying myself. I deserved a life beyond this prison and I deserved someone to share it with. 

For so long, it was only Mom and our monster. 

And I’d had enough.

Cassandra was my future now. My everything. 

I closed the distance between us, prepared to show her as much, but when I reached for her, she stepped back, eyes flicking to the stairs leading up to the living room. We’d been up there a short while ago eating pizza rolls and watching bad reality TV before the power went out and we moved to the basement to trip the breakers, opting  instead to paw at each other in the dark. With Mom at work all night, this evening should have been perfect. But then, like my devil sensed how much this night meant to me, he decided to wake up and ruin everything. 

“We should slow down,” Cassandra said, leaning forward to straighten her stockings. 

“Oh,” I said, breath hitching. Before I had a chance to get the flush out of my cheeks or offer further monosyllabic apologies, the front door clattered open and Mom burst into the basement, flawless blonde curls bouncing as she clomped down the steps.

“Why weren’t you answering your phone?” she snapped. Cassandra fidgeted, shuffling her stockinged feet on the carpet. “Why are all the lights off?”

“The power went out,” I blurted, dazedly off-kilter from Mom’s sudden, unwelcome arrival. My eyes darted from my mother to Cassandra and back again. “We were just about to try the breakers.”

Shoving past us, she gave the devil’s casket a meaningful look as she crossed to the breaker box. My breath hitched at the sight of my bra on the floor. Subtle as I could, I kicked it under the couch and out of Mom’s sight. 

The door to the breaker box gave a metallic thud as she opened it and flipped the switches. There were several clicks and beeps from upstairs as all of the kitchen appliances came back on and the television blared to life. Mom turned on the overhead lights. I blinked at the sudden luminescence, feeling my face grow hotter. Thankfully, I had my dad’s olive complexion instead of Mom’s fair one. Not that anything ever made her blush.

Finally noticing Cassandra, Mom plastered on one of her beauty queen smiles.

“Hi, there! I’m Andie,” she said, opening her arms wide. She never shook hands. She hugged. 

“Um, hello!” Cassandra replied, her hazel eyes crinkling at the corners. Mom’s

energy made you want to match it. “Is that short for Andrea? Cause I have an aunt named Andrea and she likes people to call her Andie. Mine’s Cassandra.”

Mom grimaced and rolled her eyes. “My full name is Andromeda. My daddy loved Greek mythology. Andromeda, leader of humanity. I never liked it. Your name’s Greek too, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” Cassandra replied with a thin smile, out of genuine ease or anxious politeness, I couldn’t tell. 

Still holding Cassandra’s shoulders, Mom looked her over while I died of embarrassment. My mother knew I liked girls even before I did. Accepting my pansexual identity was nothing. A shrug instead of a gasp. But this was the first time I’d ever dated anyone and Mom was humiliatingly ecstatic for me.  

“You’re as cute as a bug’s ear,” Mom said. “I’m sorry if I spoiled y’all’s evening. I just get paranoid when I can’t get ahold of my baby girl.”

Mom shot me a look that I withered beneath.

“So do you have to go back to work now, or…?” I asked, the expectant question spilling clumsily out.

“Nope. Got off early. Thought I’d catch up on my stories. But I’ll get out of y’all’s way.” She gave Cassandra another squeeze. “It was so nice to meet you, honey.” 

Then she padded upstairs, giving me another hard look on the way.

“I’m sorry,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck. “She can be a little intense.”

“No, no,” said Cassandra. “Your mom’s nice.”

I stifled a scoff. If it hadn’t been for Mom, this night with Cassandra might have happened a lot sooner. Pete Wakelyn’s party last Fall. I had planned on finally asking her out then. Worked extra shifts at the bookstore to pay for a slinky black dress I’d been coveting, dyed the edges of my hair, perfected the dreaded winged eyeliner technique, armor for a battle that would win me the girl of my dreams. 

When the night of the party arrived, Mom had knocked on my bedroom door just after I’d zipped myself into the dress. Seeing me standing there in the uncharacteristically daring garment, wide-eyed and eager, the regret on Mom’s face was obvious, even though the words she’d spoken had been business-like, clipped. 

“I need you here tonight,” she’d said. I’d only managed an incredulous blink before she’d added, “The clinic called me in at the last minute. There’ll be other parties.”

And that had been that. She had her job and I had mine. 

I’d spent the night on the basement couch in the expensive dress, fondling a wooden stake, wishing the devil would wake up so at least I wouldn’t have missed the party for nothing. But of course by morning, he hadn’t so much as stirred and Cassandra’s social media profiles were flooded with photos from Pete’s party, Janine White’s lips pressed against hers in the last of the selfies. 

Cassandra and Janine dated for months after that, my one chance blown. All because of that monster in the casket. I couldn’t let him do the same thing to us now.

“Well listen, would you um… We can put a movie on,” I tried. “I’m sure Mom’ll be asleep any minute. The night shift always wipes her out.”

“Actually, I… I better get going,” Cassandra said, avoiding my eyes.

“Is everything okay?” I asked, heart hammering. 

“No, yeah! I just feel really tired all of a sudden.”

Fighting an instinctual urge to grab her by the shoulders and beg her to stay, I worked at my lower lip, sloughing away a ribbon of dry skin. The bitter tang of blood sat heavily on my tongue as my eyes trailed back to the ornate wooden trunk. 

My mind returned to Cassandra’s lips on mine, her fingers on my bare skin, touching me in places I’d never been touched in my entire eighteen years of life. I pushed my lust down, defeated and confused, and walked her upstairs. 

“Text me tomorrow if you want to meet at the bookstore or something,” I tried.

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, staring at the ground. With great hope, I kissed her cheek. That’s when she finally looked at me. 

Her expression told me everything. Whatever happened between us had ended no sooner than it had begun. Whatever she’d seen or remembered I would never know, but one thing was certain. 

Cassandra didn’t want me anymore.

Mom stayed up with me until I fell asleep, rubbing my back and letting me sob into her shoulder. 

“You’ll never forget your first heartbreak, baby girl,” she said softly. “But I promise, it’ll get easier.”

“Does it still hurt when you think about Dad?” I sniffed.

I wanted honesty from her, not the empty cliches all mothers told their jilted daughters. 

“Yes,” she said with no hesitation. “I will always miss our old life. I’ll always miss him.”

“It’s always gonna be like this, isn’t it?” I said quietly, dread growing in my heart to displace the heavy ache there. “We can’t have both.”

She knew what I meant. As long as we had our devil, we couldn’t have a normal life. A part of us would always remain hidden from any partner we chose. I supposed I should be grateful for learning it from Cassandra, like I should have learned it from my parents’ failed marriage. This life with my monster was a life I could never share. 

And I knew that for once, Mom had no comforting words for me. Because she had none for herself.