Page 1 of Lethal Kiss

ONEMarcella

The easiest way to kill a man is by pinching the delicate skin of his throat with your teeth and shucking the tissue like an oyster’s shell.

I haven’t done that in a while, though. Most of the time I have to be quick about it: drain their energy, drink their blood for sustenance. A woman—a succubus, draugr, vættr anyway—can’t live on Snickers bars alone.

I lean the heels of my hands on the window and stare at the rainstorm battering Seattle this ugly Tuesday morning. There’s nothing here for me anymore, now that I’ve been backed into a corner by my department’s dean. The thing about competing for a tenure spot at the University of Seattle is that there are so few people to actually prey upon, their absences are noticed. I guess I took one too many.

Bellatrix—not named after that one, don’t get it twisted—comes up and rubs her furry black side against my leg, mewling for attention. I lean down and stroke her ears thoughtfully. The dean has called me in for a one-on-one meeting later today, and if the resentment simmering through the Folklore department tells the story, I’m gonna get kicked out. I know it.

Damn, that guy from Milwaukee was not worth all this trouble. But he was attractive and asked me to work with him late-night in the library. What can I say? A girl has needs.

Bellatrix meows at me again, affronted that I haven’t picked her up and cradled her yet. I lean down and sweep her into my arms, touching my nose to hers, a little pink triangle. She blinks at me with her orange eyes. Ekk-ekk.

“Don’t use that tone on me, missy. Food’s coming.”

She leaps from my arms again, affronted, snapping her tail from side to side. I grab my coffee from the Nespresso machine and sip as I scoop liver pâté into her bowl. Only the best for my little familiar. I’ve lost count of how many cats I’ve owned in my hundreds of years, but she’s definitely top ten for sweetest.

As she slurps, I tap the email on my phone again.

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJ: ALLEGATIONS

MARCELLA,

SOME DISTURBING ALLEGATIONS HAVE COME TO LIGHT. MEET ME IN MY OFFICE TO DISCUSS YOUR FUTURE AT UOS.

REGARDS,

ALEX

DEAN OF FOLKLORE

I sigh. Well. Jig is up, anyway. I toss back my coffee and riffle through my closet, on the hunt for a suitably modest outfit. Ugh. When did I turn into a dark-academia girlie? I push aside the plaid skirts and crisp white shirts and reach deep inside the cavernous space. There, that’ll do. A black satin dress with a black bomber over top, sheer tights with red back seams. If I’m getting the can, I might as well look fucking amazing while doing so.

I’m far from embarrassed. I burned through that emotional state long ago, back in my twenties. I don’t give a flying fuck about the University of Seattle, but I do worry that if they know about me and my eating habits, I won’t be able to find a cushy position at a university somewhere. What’s life without the pursuit of knowledge? When you have a nearly limitless lifespan, after a while the only thing to do with yourself is learn. Some succubae turn to sex and extravagance—I’ve heard stories about the British royal family, for example, or the Saudi princes—but I’ve always been a hoarder of knowledge. I want to read everything. All of it. When my body finally gasps its last, I want to be a verifiable library in kinda-human form. I want to be able to spin tales to tell the children who aren’t afraid of me. I want to wow the friends I don’t yet have with words.

I slip into black pumps, shiny patent leather decorated with a bow over each heel, and survey myself in the mirror. Crimson lipstick, glossy and slick still, winged liner sharp enough to cut. I sweep my dark hair into a bun.

Can’t look like I tried too hard for these idiots.

The University of Seattle is massive. Thousands and thousands of students, but I had to choose the department with the least, somehow. My heels click down the yellowing linoleum flooring as I make my way to Dean Hansen’s room. Alex’s room, I should say. He’s about to no longer be my boss, and I’ve always hated that simpering deference I have to put on like an itchy wool sweater.

His door is slightly ajar but I knock anyway.

“Oh, Marcella, come in. Close the door.” He sounds distracted as he flips through papers on his desk, the light from his ancient desktop giving his face an ugly blue cast.

His office is sizeable compared to most deans’, with a window overlooking the quad’s brick and granite rosette. Still, Alex has made this place as cluttered as physically possible. His postdoc degree from Stanford hangs cockeyed on the wall next to the window, and there are books on every surface—in the shelves, on them, stacked on the floor. I can smell the crumpled Dick’s burger wrapper he’s thrown in the trash recently, and there’s a mug of cold coffee partially spilled on his desk. He has a massive calendar covered in ruffles of sticky notes scribbled on by smeared pen.

Alex Hansen is a fucking mess of a dean, and even though this is clearly not a good meeting, it gives me a little burst of serotonin to know he’s always a hair’s breadth from falling apart.

“You wanted to see me? What could possibly be so urgent?” I shut the door with my foot. “Today’s my day off.”

Consternation ripples across his face, and it is absolutely delightful. He’s nearly forty, a bespectacled man with an outsize ego hidden between academic tweed. In a former life, one where he ate properly, worked out regularly, and didn’t mistreat the young women of this department—especially that last—he might have been an attractive target. But a draugr doesn’t eat their kitchen staff, and Alex has until now been ignoring absences in the department just so he can stare at me. He doesn’t realize he’s been serving me dinner.

Alex motions for me to sit in the hard chair he offers students. I oblige, tucking black silk around my shapely legs.

He doesn’t even look, which is more the pity.