LITMIR.BIZ

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Not so much as a bruise or a scrape. In fact, other than the glass in my hair, there was no evidence that I’d been hit by a car.

      “Keep moving,” the prison matron ordered.

      I obliged, but walked slowly as I continued to ponder the evidence. Besides my physical proof, there was the strange jail cell and the fact that I’d been allowed to keep my cell phone and purse. In a real prison, I would have been fingerprinted, posed for a mug shot, and had my belongings confiscated. Lastly, there was the hallway I was now walking. Not only was it the longest corridor I’d ever seen, my tired legs told me that I was travelling steadily downhill.

      This place I was in, this anonymous bureaucratic building, was nothing like the terrifying images of damnation that the nuns had conjured up when I’d been in Catholic school, but I sure as hell wasn’t in Heaven.

      Panicked, I stopped walking again. Fear locked my joints like rigor mortis. I pressed myself against the wall and started to cry.

      I was in Hell! The realm where the damned were punished. A place worse than the strange jail cell with the bruiser cellmate. Far worse. I swore I could already feel the Devil’s pitchforks under my fingernails, and his fire blistering the soles of my feet.

      “Please,” I begged my guard. My stomach pitched, and I was sure I’d throw up all over that polished linoleum floor. “Don’t make me go.” I was shaking now, violently. My teeth rattled together in my mouth. “I can’t go through with this!”

      The guard was slack-jawed with amazement. “What is wrong with you?”

      Beyond shame, I dropped to my knees and grabbed her around the legs. “Please, take me back.”

      A door opened. “What’s going on out there?” a woman’s voice asked.

      “She says she doesn’t want to go.” The guard tried to pry me off her legs, but I clung to her like a toddler who’s had a nightmare.

      “Lilith Straight, get in here. Right now! We don’t have time for your silliness.” The owner of the voice stepped into the hallway. She was older than me by about three decades, but her forties-era film-star elegance would have turned a lot of heads. She was like Katharine Hepburn, maybe. Or Grace Kelly. The kind of woman who could wear pearls with a cardigan and look elegant, not prissy. Her hair and makeup were old school – short, permed curls, deep red lipstick and heavy eyebrows – but it worked for her. She was graceful and poised, sexy and chic. In short, she was not the Devil’s torturer.

      I let go of the guard’s legs.

      “That’s better,” the older woman said. “I’m Miss Spry, your supervisor. Now come along, and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” She held out a be-ringed hand which I took. She may have looked sixty-something, but her firm grip marked her as a younger woman.

      She led me to the door, but I balked, still not convinced that I wasn’t heading for the iron maiden or the rack.

      “Come along, Lilith.” She tugged on my hand.

      Bracing myself, I stepped through. Instead of finding myself amid the fiery pits of Hell, I entered an office. Not a government bureaucrat-type office with filing cabinets and computers, but a gentlewoman’s study. A delicate writing desk stood in front a pair of French doors overlooking a well-manicured garden. An enormous, potted palm sat near a painted silk screen, and a Persian carpet covered the floor. If this was Hell, then the nuns had gotten it all wrong.

      Miss Spry guided me to a chintz-covered chair while she sat behind her desk. She put on a pair of steel-rimmed reading glasses. “Ms. Straight, I will get right to the point. You were hit by a car earlier, but you are not dead. Not quite.”

      I felt my mood lift the tiniest bit. Not dead? Was I just in a coma? Or, better yet, drugged up and dreaming? I held my breath, waiting.

      “You’re, let us say, in between realms.” She pushed a sheet of monogrammed note paper towards me and drew three dots. “This,” she said, pointing to one, “is where you came from. Call it ‘life’ if you want. This,” she pointed to another, “is where you would have ended up if I hadn’t prevented it. You can think of it as ‘death’.” She drew a line connecting all three dots, making a triangle. “Right now, you’re in the middle.”

      “What’s that third one?” I pointed to the dot she hadn’t named.

      “Don’t worry about that.”

      Not worrying was the last thing I was capable of right now. I just had to know. “But what is it?”

      Her eyes went hot. That’s the only word I can think of to describe it. An enraged fire blazed behind them, making it perfectly clear that no matter how much this Miss Spry looked like Katharine Hepburn, she was not. Her unearthly rage instantly rekindled my fears about demons and pitchforks and hellfire. The room, despite its French doors and view of the garden, was not a safe place. I shrank back in my chair.

      “We don’t talk about that one,” she said, clearly enunciating each word. I nodded quickly, eager to show her that I did understand.

      “Now you are in the center of all this.” She put a little X in the middle of the triangle. Her temper had blown over in an instant, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

      “Not living, not dead. Right.” So what did that make me? A zombie? A vampire?

      Miss Spry smiled slightly, as if guessing my thoughts. “My dear, you are a succubus.”

      My jaw went slack. A succubus?

      There was a knock at the door, then the prison guard entered pushing a tea tray. Miss Spry thanked her and began pouring tea from a china pot. She offered me a cookie from a silver tray.

      A succubus? In college, I’d taken a course on mythology and remembered that a succubus was a female demon with insatiable sexual desires who slept with men before sucking out their souls. And now I was supposed to be one of these creatures? Was this woman kidding me?

      “I’m an elementary school teacher,” I told her.

      “I know.”

      “I haven’t had sex in over a year.”

      She pursed her lips. “Let’s just keep that to ourselves, shall we?”

      “Look at me,” I insisted. I stood up to give her the full view. Since the divorce, I’d added several extra pounds. I also hadn’t had the money to visit a salon so my roots showed under the dye job and highlights. My nails, once perfectly manicured, were bitten to the quick. “I’m a soccer mom, not a super model.” I had a thought. “Maybe you’re confusing me with my stepsister Jasmine?”

      “No, you’re the one,” she said firmly. “My dear, it’s what’s in here that counts.” She tapped the side of her head.

      “What’s in here?” My voice was climbing octaves, making me shrill. “What’s in here is trying to make sure that my daughter has clean underwear every day, and that she’s done her homework. And that my niece, Ariel, isn’t going to burn down the house again. And that my sister doesn’t get a hold of my credit cards. And that there’s enough cat litter in the house so that the cat won’t start peeing in the plants…”

      “Ms. Straight.”

      “And then there’s my ex-husband. Don’t even get me started on him…”

      “Ms. Straight!”

      I was pacing now, too aggravated to sit still. “And my job. My stupid job. You’d think the school district would want to hire a woman with a master’s degree in women’s studies, but no! How am I supposed to pay bills on a substitute teaching job?”

      “Sit down!” The eyes behind Miss Spry’s steel-rimmed glasses glowed hotly.

      I sat.

      “Now drink your tea, and listen.”

      I took the cup with a trembling hand and took a careful

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