Flytrap: Harrietta Lee, #3

By Stephanie Ahn

Harrietta Lee's demons have come back to haunt her. Two demons, to be exact: one who tried to buy her ex-girlfriend's soul, and another who invaded her dreams for six months.

To make matters worse, Harry's falling in love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephanie Ahn
• Release date: May 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393493167

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Dream a Little Dream

I’m naked and giggling on a shag carpet, my head cradled in a stranger’s lap and my ankles tangled in someone else’s knees. I’m either in Vienna or Amsterdam, either in a friend’s apartment or a club lounge—does it really matter? I must be drunk or high or something, but I don’t remember taking anything. I only remember warmth, and the feeling of being wanted.

A haze of sighs and body heat settles over me like a favorite quilt. Whenever I catch a glimpse of someone’s face, I think I might recognize them; a stranger I brushed past in a convenience store, an old classmate, an estranged ex. But then the specific features blur, and I don’t feel the need to investigate further.

Someone mindlessly cuddles up against my back. Someone else cups my cheek with a warm hand, pushes the pad of their thumb against my lips. I let them in and suck on their thumb like candy. Tastes like candy, too. Like salty caramel melting on my tongue. Like—ow, the fuck?

I jerk my head to the side, but the pinching, eye-watering pain on my tongue won’t let up. I shove the hand off my face and roll over to spit on the carpet.

A beetle thrashes amongst the matted, synthetic fibers, belly-up, its black carapace shiny with my pinkened spit. I recoil from it, bumping my head against a bony chest—long fingers hook over my shoulders, dig jagged nails into my skin. A voice I know better than my mother’s slithers into my ear.

Missed me, luv?

I freeze, long enough for trails of blood to drip from my collar bones. Then I throw an elbow in a spasm of movement—feel it crack into a ribcage hollow and hard like a cockroach’s shell—and scramble onto my feet to run.

The carpet explodes into a living wave of chitinous shells, skittering legs, and snapping pincers. I don’t make it two steps before I stumble, my knee crushing dry exoskeletons into the floor, sticky claws latching onto my thighs and scuttling up my torso. This isn’t—he’s not real, he can’t be real, if he’s real then I can’t do this, I can’t survive this again—

A hand grips the back of my skull, barbed fingers scraping my scalp. I beat the floor with my fists, trying to shake the swarm off my arms—they’re nipping at me, tearing little jagged slivers out of my skin everywhere, just few enough that I’m convinced I can still shake them off if I try—he shoves my face into the swarm, and the wave rushes into my mouth. I choke as they scrape the inside of my throat with spikes and barbs and stingers. I fight myself, trying to force my jaws shut against the pressure of so many wriggling bodies, gagging, heaving behind clenched teeth, bitter meat oozing down the back of my tongue into my throat.

And he’s still at my ear, his voice right at home amongst the buzzing cacophony, weaselly and worming and never fully committing to a vowel.

It’s been so long, I’d almost forgotten what you taste like.

The inside of my chest burns and burns with worming, squirming little legs, crawling and fighting and forcing their way into my stomach. Bloated little sacs form, hurting against my diaphragm every time I scream, the sound getting mangled in my crowded throat.

What say we continue where we left off?

The hand on my head tangles in my hair and yanks, stretching the back of my neck taut as another hand grips the meat of my shoulder blade. I know what’s coming and I can’t fight it, can’t fight as his jaws close around the back of my neck, as his teeth pierce meat, as he sinks in and clamps down and tears wet—

I open my eyes. My real eyes, the ones that take a second to adjust to the pitch blackness of my bedroom as my heartbeat roars in my ears and my brain shoots erratic signals to my limbs, commanding them to kick and scream and flail and escape. I don’t do any of that. Even though my brain has been jolted awake, my limbs are still sluggish with sleep. I just lie on my back, stomach rising and falling with my shallow breaths, too much within my own body and silently whimpering to be let out.

I swallow, tasting something utterly disgusting on my tongue. The inside of my throat feels scratchy and torn raw. I flick on a bedside lamp, then roll out of bed, landing unsteadily on my bare feet.

My skin crawls as I feel my way along the familiar walls of my apartment, fighting to ground myself. Sweat sticks the fabric of my tank top to my back. The lights of the city wander in through the windows of the living room I use as an office, gently prying fingers of darkness off my bare arms.

The linoleum of the kitchenette floor freezes the soles of my feet with the barest contact. When I open the refrigerator, the torrent of yellow light blinds me. I reach into the fridge and grope clumsily, black spots fading in my vision, until I find what I’m looking for.

The green, translucent bottle molds itself into my hand. Twisting open the lid requires almost more strength than I have. I haul the bottle up to my lips, glass clacking once against my front teeth.

And I drink. The soju burns like rubbing alcohol. I treat it like bleach, forcing it into the places the dream touched, scrubbing them raw, purging myself. The burning makes it up to my eyeballs, and I squeeze out a tear or two. I drink as much as I can stand, then stop to take in a ragged breath.

I sit on the floor and cry.

***

At 5:00 a.m. sharp, I press my face up against the glass door of Café Amara and pound with my fist until Gael’s gruff voice shouts, "We’re not open yet!" I keep pounding. The backroom door opens and Gael steps out, angrily rubbing his face with a towel. He slaps it down onto the counter and scowls up at me—and then he recognizes my face. His eyes go wide.

I motion for him to unlock the door.

He hurries over, and I get a better look at him. His russet hair is sticking out in a trio of tufts, east, north, and west. He’s just shaved; there’s a nick on the side of his jaw that’s only recently stopped bleeding. He’s on the grizzled side, but once you look past the jowls and heavy brow, he’s not much older than I am—twenty-eight, at the most. He unlocks the door and lets me in.

Tell me this isn’t what I think it is, he says.

I put my hands in my pockets and let him look at me straight-on. He reads the answer in my bloodshot eyes puffy from crying, the rumpled, too-thin-for-winter shirt, and yesterday’s jeans I threw on under my coat just to make it over here.

…Shit.

Do you still have the pills?

Gael scratches the back of his head as he turns away, rubbing his other hand on his faded blue T-shirt. I… I don’t know. After you stopped needing them, I stopped ordering any at all—I’d had enough of them to last a lifetime, and I figured anyone else who wanted them could do with the leftovers. But I might have some of that last shipment left…

Give me everything you have.

Gael turns to me, but he doesn’t budge. The grim set of his lips isn’t anything new; he always looks like that. But the concern in his shadowed eyes is something rarer. I don’t know if tolerance to this shit fades over time. You might be able to go back to taking one a day, or… you might have to pick up where you left off.

I twitch at his wording. I’ll deal with it.

How many a day were you taking by the time you quit? Five? Six? More?

I said, I’ll deal with it. You know I’m not exactly doing this by choice.

Gael crosses his arms, tilts his head back. Yeah. I know. A moment of silence. So, he’s… really back?

I stare at a small, missed coffee stain on the floor.

And you still don’t know his name?

I scuff the stain with my shoe. Could’ve gone looking for it after he disappeared. I was clear-headed, building contacts with my new job. I could’ve asked anyone anytime about who he was. There was even a guy who… But I just dropped it. I didn’t even want to think about him anymore, I just wanted to let it all go and trust that he wouldn’t come back. I just… I just wanted to sleep the bad shit away.

Gael is quiet. Then he turns to go into the backroom. I wait for him at one of the tables, head in my hands, trying not to think about anything at all.

Gael comes back with a small plastic bottle that’s dwarfed by his enormous hands, the word VIGIL scrawled onto the side with thick Sharpie. By this time, the cut on his jaw is nearly healed to invisibility. I hurry over as he twists the bottle open on the counter and checks its contents.

Last bottle left, seal unbroken until now.

When can you get more? I ask, hands braced on the counter as I try to count the little green capsules.

Quickest I can get them is in a week.

I blanch. "A week? I have to last a week on one bottle?"

Gael sighs. Look, Harry, I’m sorry. I wish I could find a closer supplier, but there’s only one I still talk to since leaving my pack. And it’s not like they manufacture in bulk—this stuff is an organic performance enhancer, not a prescription med for mindfuckery. Remember what I told you the first time I gave it to you? Which I’m going to say again, just for the sake of informed consent—

You’re a barista, not a pharmacist—

"—this stuff is a fungus, Harry. Literally a fungus, that kills and eats things in the goddamn jungle."

Yes, I kn—

It keeps you awake because it’s a fucking parasitic organism that attaches itself to your brain and blocks your ability to sleep, so that you’ll lose your mind and wither away until you eventually collapse, die, and the fungus gets to eat your rotting corpse.

You are making this sound so much more dramatic than it actually is, I mutter, eyes trained on the countertop. We’re not in the jungle, and it’s your people who scienced the scary mushroom into family-friendly capsule doses. Besides, weren’t all the werewolves taking this during the werewolf-mage war?

Gael only sounds more distressed. "Yes, because we were at war! A war that ended sixty years ago! We only still use it because we metabolize coffee too quickly, because we’re werewolves. Do you know how much brain damage you would have if you weren’t a blood witch with fucked-up immunity to shit from getting healed all the time? Do you know what this would do to you if you were a regular person?"

Informed consent. I’m giving it, right now. I snatch the bottle off the counter.

Gael sighs, his cheeks puffing with the force of it. "Look, at least promise me you won’t go overboard. At least try old-fashioned caffeine."

I shrug, feeling a little bad for worrying him, but trying not to sound defeated. I have to, there’s not enough in this bottle to last me a week.

Good. I’ll get you started.

He kicks something on the floor, and the row of coffee machines behind him blink to life. I put my head down for the rest of the process, barely listening to the whirr of the machine and the dripdripdrip of liquid into a metal hollow. I only rouse myself when Gael slams a full thermos down onto the counter next to me.

Drink up, witch.

I sigh. "Gods, I hate coffee." I pick up the thermos and chug.

CHAPTER TWO

Study Break

No, I’m not a student, I say for the hundredth time. I’m just here to talk to someone on the eighth floor.

Which is the academy, the security guard says, also for the hundredth time. Are you a student? You don’t look like a student.

No, I’m not a—

The brassy elevator next to me dings open. A bespectacled head of swooping black hair pops out, blocking the doors from closing with a bulky, well-muscled arm holding a reusable Starbucks cup.

Hank! She’s with me.

Oh, okay. She doesn’t look like a student.

I’m so frustrated that all I can manage is an Ugh as I stomp into the elevator. Brian just chuckles as I pass by him.

Rough night?

The doors close, and the elevator rattles as it starts to climb. I lean back against the railing on the far wall, head tilted back and eyes closed. Ugh.

I’m taking that as a yes. Good rough, or bad rough?

Bad. Really bad.

Ah, shame. I was hoping to live vicariously through one of your nightlife stories.

I crack open an eye to see Brian taking a sip of his coffee, tilting his glasses upward so they won’t fog up. He’s not dressed dissimilarly from me, in slacks and a lightly checkered shirt, with a blue tie as opposed to my red one. His shirt is strained where he’s thick around his middle and shoulders. He’s bulky with old swimmer’s muscles that never quite went away after high school, with a too-earnest smile that’s made him a perpetual target of bullies since first grade. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. He never did.

The elevator shudders, then opens on the eighth floor. Brian beckons me into the hallway, then pulls out some keys to open the doors to a suite with tall wooden doors. Inside, I’m immediately confronted by a wall of college acceptance certificates. I don’t know enough to tell, but I’m pretty sure at least a third of them are bootlegs.

He leads me through a maze of choked beige hallways and into a room with a whiteboard on the wall and a dozen tiny wooden students’ desks lined up in rows. Brian himself has an identical desk at the front of the room, his seat of honor as teacher only distinguishable by his position facing outward from the whiteboard.

What, they don’t even give you a real desk? I say.

Sometimes I have a real desk, it just depends on what classroom I’m using for the hour. And you don’t get to complain right now, because apparently your need to see me was so urgent you couldn’t wait until my lunch break. Half-standing, he scoots his tiny desk forward until it bumps up against another one, and sits down. What’s up?

I laugh, even though the sound catches as a croak in my dry throat. I’m just here to ask you about some stuff. I attempt to sit across from him, tugging on the back of a chair before realizing that it’s attached to the desk by a metal bar. I sit down. Brian and I both look ridiculous, me shooting up from my little chair like a beansprout out of a tiny pot, Brian’s bulk spilling over the sides like a heavy cactus.

Shoot. Just make it shorter than an hour, that’s when the boss lady shows up and she doesn’t like visitors who aren’t paying.

Is she running a college prep academy or a brothel?

Hey, I just work here. He pops the lid off his coffee to blow into it, saying in between puffs, So, the thing you have to ask—does it have anything to do with why you look like you’ve been hit by a truck?

I rub at my dry eyes, the movement irritating my rubbery cheeks and triggering a flare-up of achey tension in my temple. I’ve changed into my usual uniform of slacks, boots, shirt, tie, and black coat since seeing Gael, but presentation can only do so much to compensate for a looming hangover. I try to choose my words carefully, but I’m too tired.

So I think… it’s back.

What’s back?

Him. My… issues. You know, from about a year ago.

Brian pauses. Takes another sip of coffee, prompting me to pull my thermos out of my coat to do the same. Like a relapse?

My hand brushes the pill bottle that weighs heavily in my pocket. That might be a good word for it, yeah.

Shit, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do? If you need someone to keep an eye on you, Deborah and I can—

"You didn’t have a baby back then, dude. Besides, it was beyond generous of Deborah to help at all last time. She didn’t even know me."

Woojin—

—I’m asking for a different kind of help. I’m trying to figure out why it’s happening again, and you might know. Because you were one of the only people I talked to back then.

Brian opens his mouth like he’s going to argue more, but frowns instead. Makes sense. Do you think it could be about… you know… your friend?

Joy?

The flash of Samael’s knife. Blood welling up through broken skin. Freezing steel chain at my throat. A body in a dark basement, slumped like a mannequin, skin milk-white and criss-crossed with cuts.

Joy.

I think about her properly, feeling the ice-cold knife of fresh grief in my chest as I do. It was even colder just a few weeks ago.

No, I don’t think it’s because of her. Some shit went down that day, and I miss her, but… she’s in a better place now.

A voice on the wind, something more than human.

Thank you for bringing her back to us.

Brian’s eyes bulge like a cartoon. "Excuse me? Did I really just hear you say that? Don’t tell me you’re going Christian on me. Again."

I wave him off, one hand rubbing my eyes. Oh, shut up. All I’m saying is, if the universe takes care of anyone after they die, they’d take care of Joy.

I know how this works. Things will never stop reminding me of her. But maybe, one day, when I see a window display she would have liked or a joke on TV I would have texted her about, I’ll just dwell on it silently, internally, and it won’t hurt.

Not as much, anyway.

"Woojin-ah. You don’t get over things just because you say you’re over them. That’s not how brains work."

I know. But… If being skinned alive and holding my dying friend in my arms didn’t bring back my demons a month ago, it’s strange that it would do so now. Demons aren’t like rogue brain chemistry. They have intent, and they follow through. He’s not back by some accident or coincidence. My gods, I wish he were just a trick of the light I could therapize and medicate out of existence. But I didn’t know what my spleen looked like before he showed me. Didn’t know how many times you have to break an arm to twist it in on itself in a knot.

I shake my head. "Look, just trust that I know more about this situation