“No!”

  She releases her grip on me and brings her injured hand to her chest. Grey has hold of my foot, and I deliver a kick to her face with my free leg. I gasp as the lower half of her goes sailing into the night and lands on the foamy shoreline with a plunk.

  I smile and let out a cackle of my own. I’m stronger than they are! No wonder Lydia and her fucked up knitting circle all wanted a piece of me. I try my hand at flying again, this time steadier in the air than before. I leave the injured bitches moaning on the beach and float up, up, up, through the night toward home.

  Okay, so maybe flying is growing on me.

  Once I figured out how to position my body and use the wind currents, it wasn’t too bad. And at night, my little town by the bay is actually quite pretty. I worry that Lydia might send more of her goons after me, so I hang out and watch the Bay Vistas building for a while, crouching on the roof of a nearby Holiday Inn like some kind of fucked up gargoyle. I discover a group of nesting seagulls on the roof, and they look at me as though I don’t belong there. They’re right, I don’t. But there I am, and there I stay until it’s nearly dawn.

  I watch the exit to the condo building all night, waiting for another attack, but nothing comes. As dawn nears, it occurs to me that they likely won’t go outside during the daytime if they can help it. I only saw Lydia outside during the early morning hours and in the evening, and even then, she always seemed to need to shield herself from the light. Is she a vampire? A witch? Whatever the fuck she is, I know that I am well on my way to becoming like her. And if I don’t want to stay this way, I need to try something. But I won’t have much time.

  When the sky begins to turn a shade of lavender and then pink, I finally decide it is safe to go home. I float down from the hotel rooftop and find my way to the main road, floating quickly through side streets. In the early dawn light, if someone were to see me on the side of the road, they would see a strange woman in a red evening gown, seemingly riding a bike. If they look close enough, they would see the truth: that there is nothing between me and the sidewalk but air.

  I arrive home just before the street lights go out and dawn arrives in full form. I am locked out and don’t have my house keys; Igor had made certain of that. I could knock on our apartment door, but I also don’t know how deeply asleep Elaine is. There is only one sensible solution. I have to tap on her window.

  I float around the side of my apartment building, stunned at how shoddy the exterior siding looks. Half of it seems to have rotted away or been eaten by termites, though I have never noticed before, probably because I have never had cause or ability to float around this side of my apartment building. When I reach Elaine's window, I glance around, hoping that she’ll answer right away. If I float out here in the open for too long, where all of my neighbors can see, eventually, I’ll be spotted.

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  KNOCK.

  I rap silently against the glass, then louder and faster. Finally, her pink curtains rustle, and Elaine’s pallid, exhausted face comes into view.

  “What are you doing out there?” she asks.

  “I need you to let me in,” I say. “I lost my keys and my phone. My wallet. Everything. Please, Elaine, I don’t want to wait out here.”

  She glances down at the street, then back up at my face. Her drooping, sleep-deprived eyelids widen, and her lips form an “O” of surprise. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m locked out!” I shout. “Come on, I need you to let me in before someone sees me.”

  “How are you doing that?” She glances up, down, and all around. “Are you on a wire or something?”

  “No! Come on, I’ll explain later.”

  “Wait, are you a vampire?”

  “No!” I shout, glancing over my shoulder. “Maybe? Fuck, I don’t know. Please, Elaine. Just let me in!”

  “Really? Because I’ve seen Lost Boys and you sure look like a fucking vampire.”

  I show her my teeth. “Look! See? No fangs! Come on, I promise, I’m not a vampire.

  “That’s totally something a vampire would say!” Elaine coughs into her open hand. Through the pane of glass, I can see specks of red on her palm. She’s getting worse.

  “Elaine, you’re sick and it’s all my fault. But if you let me in, I can fix this. I can make you better again.”

  “What do you mean?” Elaine asks.

  I hear my neighbor’s door open below. People are waking up. I need to move.

  “I’ll explain it, just come on! Open the window!” I say. “I’d break the glass and come in, but we don’t want to lose our deposit, right?”

  “Fine.” Elaine sighs. She unlocks the window and tries to push it open. I can hear her grunting on the other side, straining. She’s out of energy.

  “I got it,” I say, and pull off the screen. The window lifts without a problem for me. I pull myself into Elaine’s room and am immediately hit with that funky rot smell. I keep her window open to let the room air out.

  “Thanks,” I say. “I know this is weird.”

  “Really fucking weird,” Elaine says. “What’s going on?”

  “I think some kind of energy soul sucking coven infected me,” I say. “Then, I accidentally infected you.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.” Elaine coughs. There’s more red-tinged spittle on her hand. She’s deteriorating fast. “How could that even happen?”

  “I used your toothbrush by accident,” I say. “This virus that I have is spread through sharing biological matter. Sorry.”

  “I told you that would happen,” she says, sputtering into another bloody coughing fit. “I think…I think maybe I should just go to the emergency room. I’m clearly hallucinating.”

  My gaze flicks to Elaine’s dresser. There’s a photo of her and Leticia kissing from her birthday last year tucked into the frame of the mirror. A photo that I took.

  “Oh my gosh. Elaine! That’s it!”

  I snatch the photo from her dresser mirror and tear it in half. I rip the pieces of the photo over and over again until the image is nothing but confetti.

  “Hey! What’s your problem?” Elaine cries. “I thought you liked Leticia? That’s my favorite picture of us.”

  “Yeah, it’s a photo I took,” I say. “See, however this fucked up coven works, they steal your essence through images and organic body matter or some shit.”

  “Coven? You mean like witches? Do you hear yourself?”

  “I know! It sounds nuts, but you just saw me floating, right? I don’t know what they are, and I don’t care. I just want them to leave me alone.”

  “This is too much,” Elaine says. “I’m going to call Leticia and have her take me to the hospital now.”

  “No! Just hold on for a second,” I say. “If this is truly the last remaining photo I took of you, then ripping it up should break the spell.”

  “What do you mean by spell? None of this makes sense.” Elaine’s head cocks to the side. She sticks her finger in her right ear and twists it around. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?”

  “That whooshing sound?” Elaine stands from her bed, stretches. Color floods back to her cheeks. Fresh crops of hair sprout from the thinned patches on her scalp, and the light returns to her eyes. She touches the top of her head and examines her hands with her mouth open wide.

  “Well, that was pretty fucking weird.”

  “It worked!” I rush to her side and wrap her in a hug.

  She hugs me back, and a lightning bolt of pain sears through my chest, followed by a loud CRACK. I can’t breathe.

  “Oh my god!” Elaine said. “Are you okay?”

  “No.” I hold my side. “I think you broke my rib bone.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “Does that mean…”

  “I reversed whatever fucked up spell this is,” I say, wheezing. “The only problem is, now it’s back on me.”

  “We’ve gotta get you to a hospital then,” Elaine says. “I’m feeling one hundred percent better. Let’s go! Come on, I’ll drive!”

  “They can’t help me,” I say, wincing at the pain. “There’s only one thing I can do to stop this now.”

  “What?”

  “I need to kill the person who did this to me,” I say. “And I think I know how.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Rotting away fucking sucks. I know now that I always took my health and youth for granted, and never imagined a day when my body would fail me. Well, certainly not a day so soon. Even though I never really abused my body with drugs or alcohol, I definitely didn’t appreciate what I had. All the times my muscles and bones worked, and how I never appreciated them. All the times I had strong hair, nails, skin, and teeth. If I get myself out of this situation, I’m going to be grateful. For my body. For my life. For everything.

  I can’t lie in bed and rot this time. Once the sun sets, Lydia and her ghoulish gal pals are probably going to pay me a visit, and I need to be ready. Even as my energy slips away from me, as strands of brittle hair dust my shoulders and my fingernails peel away from the quick, I know I’m not done yet. I didn’t think I had anything to live for after Leo left me high and dry, after my dreams were smashed, and life became too hard to keep going. It was dumb to think giving up was the answer, but in the rearview, it wasn’t like I had a big support system or mental and financial stability. I know now that I must live for myself, even if things seem bleak. I have something new to live for now, too—revenge. And it’s one helluva drug.

  My decaying body wants to lie down and let the bed consume me, to let the inexpensive sheets I got from Bed, Bath & Beyond (not stolen, but paid for with a forty percent off coupon) soak up my juices and liquified flesh. But my mind, my mind is alive again with artistic inspiration and elaborate revenge plots. I don’t know what Lydia and her clique of ghouls are all about, but one thing’s for certain, and it’s that for them, image is literally everything.

  She stole my soul with a photo? Well, I’ll take control of hers with an image of my own.

  The blank canvas that I had purchased from the mall still sits in the corner of my bedroom, waiting for me. Waiting for just the right time, gleaning inspiration from the universe as though its cotton skin knew its true purpose all along. It calls to me now, ready to fulfill its destiny. There was a reason I had bought a fresh canvas on the night that Lydia assaulted me—I know it now. There was a reason why I hadn’t started a new project on it, why it sits there, waiting for the perfect opportunity to bring my vision to life.

  I am going to paint a portrait of Lydia. I will show her what she really looks like. And then, I am gonna destroy her.

  “Hey, how are you doing?”

  Elaine pops her head into my bedroom as I set up my easel. She’s back to her old self, brand new. It’s like she was never accidentally cursed by me in the first place, and for that, I’m glad and grateful. If she permanently lost a toe or an earlobe or something because of me, I would never forgive myself.

  “I’m falling apart,” I tell her. “But I have work to do.”

  “This is all really weird,” Elaine says. “I don’t know what to think of everything. It all feels kind of crazy.”

  “Yeah. I thought so too,” I said. “But after last week, I’ll believe just about anything.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asks.

  “I think that the woman who assaulted me, who did this to me—to us, I think she’s going to come after me. Probably tonight.”

  “So call the cops,” Elaine said. “We can get help. You don’t have to do this alone.”

  “I do, though,” I say. “I can’t really explain it, but whatever this woman has or is or does, she seems to have superpowers. Not just like, sucking the life and energy from people, but also flying and mind control.”

  “Come on…”

  “It’s true. I think that’s how she’s gotten away with this for so long,” I say. “I witnessed it myself. Some police came here interrogating me, and I swear I was able to just talk myself out of it.”

  “Police? Came here? Why?”

  “It’s a long story,” I say. “Anyway, I was able to use my influence to get them off my back. I’m sure she’s been doing the same for a long time.”

  “So you think she’ll just charm the police or whatever?” Elaine asks.

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  Elaine shifted on her feet. “What will you do if she shows up then?”

  I nod to the empty canvas. “I’m going to paint her portrait. Give her a taste of her own medicine.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t say I do either,” I say. “I just know that destroying an image seems to break the spell. Remember how you were sick, and I tore up the last photo I had of you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And how, after I tore up the photo, you were miraculously healed?”

  Elaine nods. “I did seem to get better out of nowhere right after that.”

  “Well, this woman has a photo of me,” I say. “I’ll force her to give it back to me, or something. I dunno. First, I’m going to paint a portrait of her. Let her see what it feels like to have someone else pull the strings.”

  “And what if this doesn’t work?” Elaine asks.

  “I’m done for either way,” I sigh, pick off the nail on my pointer finger, and show it to her. “I’m falling apart again. But I won’t go down without a fight.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Elaine asks. “Like, if they come here tonight?”

  “You should go to Leticia’s,” I say. “It’s not safe for you here.”

  “It’s not safe for you either,” she says. “I really don’t know what to think.”

  “I’ll be fine. I know how to handle myself. You’re a good friend, Elaine. I’m sorry I was so shitty to you.”

  “I’m sorry, too.” Elaine goes in for a hug.

  I reach for her and then think better of it. “I probably smell pretty gross.”

  “I don’t care.”

  My best friend wraps me in a hug, and even though I hear my sternum frizzle and crack and my skin burns and stretches as though it’s going to peel away from the muscle, her hug is the best thing ever. Feel-good chemicals flood my veins as we embrace, and I think for a moment that maybe I have it in me to do this. Maybe I’ll be able to reverse whatever this curse is and get things back to the way they should be.

  She lets me go, and I wipe a blood tear from my cheek.

  “Thanks. I needed that. I can’t remember the last time someone touched me and didn’t want anything in return.”

  “That’s so fucking sad.” Elaine laughs and wipes her own glassy eyes. “You really want me to leave?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I got it from here.”

  “Fuck. Okay,” she says. “It doesn’t feel right, but if that’s what you want, I’ll go.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Elaine closes my bedroom door, and it’s just me and my canvas. I’m still wearing the red cocktail dress from the night before, and I don’t feel like changing into anything else. The bones in my fingers ache with arthritis as I set up my station and stare at the easel. It’s been so long since I’ve picked up a brush that I wonder if I’ll even remember how to paint. But, just like riding a bike, I set up my colors and get the paint thinner, and it all starts coming back to me.

  I close my eyes in front of the canvas and try to visualize what Lydia looked like the first night I saw her—those snarling, bloodless lips. Wild, buggy eyes. Skin the color of cement, thin and dry over a network of blue veins. Yes. I know her hideous face and exactly how I want to portray her, not as the young, vivacious hostess her cunty coven knows her to be. But the real her. The ghoul beneath it all. That’s what I will paint. That’s what I will show her.

  I begin by painting a likeness of the hood of my car, the portrait being composed from my point of view behind the wheel. From there, I add her gnarled, claw-like hands and her fur coat. The canvas soaks up the paint, a palette of bruise hues in gray, black, purple, and royal blue as her face, her horrid fucking face, is recreated before my eyes.

  Time ticks away, and I am unmoved in front of my canvas as I work, inspired once again by the very horrors that I’ve lived through. Every movement is excruciating, but I keep going and keep painting because I know that soon it will be dusk, and soon she will come for me. I keep going because I’m afraid that if I stop, something else will fall off my body. Something else will begin to rot, and maybe this time it will be my fingers or my eyes, and I may never get to paint again.

  I’m nearly finished with the portrait when I hear my phone ring. I haven’t checked my phone all day; in fact, I’d almost forgotten about it. Funny how I used to live and die by my phone, assessing my worth based on who has called or texted me. I finish my portrait and let the call go to voicemail.

  The paint is still very wet when the light outside my window is no longer suitable for painting. I realize I’ve been sitting in front of my easel for ten hours—the entire day. My nervous system screams in pain, but I’ve achieved what I set out to do. I stand on atrophied limbs, the joints in my knees and ankles creaking like rusted hinges as I reach for my phone. There’s a new voicemail from a number I don’t recognize. I press the voicemail icon and bring the phone to my ear.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Leo said. “I’m calling from a burner, I’m pretty sure you blocked my number again. Listen, I don’t remember much of what happened the other night. I was really drunk, but I know that I was not nice to you, and, well, I just wanted to apologize, I guess. I know how that must sound, and I don’t blame you if you don’t believe me. My time in the hospital really got me thinking about everything. I was wrong, the way that I left and the way that I treated you.” Leo pauses, takes a breath, and continues.

  “Anyway, I’m going back to New York in a couple of days, and I’m not going to reach out to you again. My parents are getting me into an outpatient rehab program up there. I think it’s time. I need to focus on my family and my life there. Anyway, I just wanted you to know, I’m sorry. Take care.”