There was nothing for it, except to press my fingers against the surface as I had last time. It was easier—no doubt about it. But there was still resistance, and that resistance grew greater the further in I pushed. As I had before, I panicked when it felt like I could go no farther and was trapped. This time, I’d gotten in as far as my elbow. I yanked, and the gate released me.
I stared at my arm in the flickering light. If I’d faceplanted into the portal rather than using my hand, I could have gotten my whole body into the stone barrier, judging by the length of my arm that had successfully gotten through. I knew I should try that, but the idea was terrifying. I couldn’t imagine getting my entire body stuck inside that clinging resistance without completely losing my shit.
For long moments, I wavered, before finally wimping out and gathering up the torches. Feeding on animus had made it easier to push against the gate. It seemed more sensible to try doing that a couple more times in the coming days before coming back for a fresh attempt. If I still couldn’t make it, I’d have Fatima contact Nigellus for me so I could talk options with him.
“Any luck?” Fatima asked when I emerged.
“Almost,” I hedged. “I bet if I hang around in Hell for much longer, I’ll be able to do it. I don’t suppose you’re hiding any other female exhibitionists looking for a way to gain male attention?”
Fatima laughed, but I was only half-joking.
“From what I could see,” she said, “Sharalynn owes you now. Maybe she knows someone.”
“I’ll ask,” I answered dryly. “Though she’s already offered to help me with Dad, so I don’t want to push the boundaries too much.”
“Not to worry. If that girl has any boundaries, I’ve yet to see any evidence of it,” Fatima told me with a smile.
We walked slowly back to the settlement, the light from the three moons making the torches unnecessary now that they’d breached the horizon.
* * *
My days fell into a sort of pattern. I came up with ways to make the younger male population of the village happy—or more precisely, horny—so that I could feed more. Sharalynn nominated a female friend of hers for the massage routine on the first occasion, but the poor girl seemed way more nervous than Sharalynn had been at becoming the center of attention. The second time, I went solo, performing the most suggestive scantily clad yoga routine I could come up with, and that seemed to work all right.
It was interesting to me how well behaved everyone was, for lack of a better term. I always had a handful of hopefuls approach me directly after I put on a show, but they took no for an answer easily enough. That was more than I could say about many of the guys I’d known on Earth, and combined with the knowledge that I could protect myself, if necessary, by sucking their animus dry, it made me feel more secure about what I was doing than I might have otherwise.
Meanwhile, Li Wei and Sharalynn were as good as their word, stopping by regularly to help me with Dad. My father responded to Sharalynn’s presence on a few more occasions, though never with more than a simple sentence or two. However, he nearly gave me a heart attack by getting up from his cot and walking outside to sit on the chair I’d set up for him on the stoop one morning, when I was running late.
“Dad?” I asked hopefully, after hurrying out to him.
He frowned a little, and I thought for a moment that he might speak to me. But then he gave a faint shake of his head, as though dislodging an insect, and withdrew into himself once more.
As the days passed, I tried to stay focused on the here and now. To be honest, it wasn’t working very well. I slept poorly, my nights disturbed by dreams of Rans disappearing into thick fog, slipping away from me even as I tried to catch him.
Yeah... all right. I never claimed that my subconscious was big on subtlety.
I was still angry, but I was heartbroken, too. That seemed terribly unfair, given how hard I’d worked at not falling for him. I wondered where he was, and what he was doing. Had he moved on from St. Louis? Had he moved on from me? I ground my teeth together whenever I so much as thought about the possibility.
Of course he’d moved on. Just because I was walking around bleeding like someone had cut off one of my arms, it didn’t mean he was. It didn’t mean he hadn’t found some little doe-eyed human to seduce with those wicked blue eyes and perfect features. Someone to help him turn off the hamster wheel in his brain... someone, presumably, who didn’t have a host of skeletons in her family’s closet, and who didn’t need to be rescued all the damn time.
Christ. I needed to learn to relax my jaw when thoughts like that crept in, or I was going to end up cracking a tooth. And god only knew what the dental plan in Hell looked like.
I took up jogging almost as a form of self-defense. It was easier to keep my thoughts in the present when I was physically tired. I also started practicing the self-defense and knife-fighting moves I’d learned, even though I had no one to spar with. The humans here seemed fairly bewildered by the idea of running when you didn’t have to, and none of them appeared to have any clue about fighting.
It was kind of weird, honestly. I’d expected humans to be humans, no matter what realm they resided in. And humans fought with each other. The oddly peaceful nature of the place was starting to make me wonder about some things. Were the demons really as
