"I can't believe it," I repeat again, breathlessly.

The demon, the beautiful literal real real real demon, continues talking her demon words, which are demon words because she's a demon so anything she does is a demon thing! "Yes, I think you're right about that, but trust me, you are about to believe it. Please do sit, Carrie? I'm afraid you're about to lose your denial. Which, normally, would be a good thing, but your words are confirming some guesses of my own, and I suppose I'd rather sour the moment a little with overprotectiveness than--"

I hear her, so I sit down, but I'm still talking. "You've been here the whole time, and…"

And I really look at her. I look at this room. All these plush chairs. This warm lighting. The tasteful arrangement of the igneous stonework. This is a place meant for many people to sit and talk together. There are other towers out beyond the veranda, rooms for dozens or hundreds of guests, and--here we sit.

One witch. One demon. Alone in this airy hall.

I didn't cast a spell. This door just opened because it opened. Maybe it would've anyway. But the reason I was there when it did, the reason I stayed in a dusty, weird old shrine by myself while everyone else had sex or went home to cuddle someone they love where it was comfy, like Hannah… it's the same reason no matter the mechanism behind the door's opening.

I stayed because I was the only person who couldn't get what she wanted any other way. Because nothing she knew for real could fill the void she felt inside, unless she found this.

"… and everyone back on Earth is just telling stories about you like you don't exist," I say. "First you were something for them to hate, an enemy to seek out and purge. Then you were a scary story, a shadowy figure in a doorway at night. And after that, what? Stupid costumes, shiny plastic. A toy. A joke. A game to play. A cartoon effigy they could contort into whatever shapes they wanted. A pair of tits and whatever's between your legs when they want to be horny, but a ridiculous problematic bad old habit as soon as they get off…"

My heart is racing. My breath comes in ragged panting while I rock back and forth.

"… and I'm not really talking about you, am I?" I ask, standing on a precipice of stillness that has shattered under the very weight I put upon it by seeing it for what it is. "I'm sorry. I'm just so used to it, because everyone else on Earth does it all the time. Talking about succubi when the person I'm really talking about is..." And I am falling. Falling into… Oh.

Oh, god.

The pressure doesn't need to build. It's been bubbling, rushing, groaning in the reservoir of my psyche all my life. So, of course, the break doesn't feel like anything except release.

"There it is," Merovingia says. Her words hitch, a little, because she has to lunge to catch me before I hit the floor. She doesn't try to pull me back up. She settles me against her. I bury my eyes against her shoulder and ruin her pretty dress with the wrinkles my fingers make when they clench on the shining fabric.

"If you're real then that means…" I sob, snotty and red-eyed and shaking apart at the seams. "Every time I woke up and there was no familiar on my bookshelf… every time I tried to cast lightning, or call the wind, or summon a ghost… every time I walked in the forest and there was no pixie to riddle with, every night I waited to dream visions of the future and all I saw was random bullshit… then that means I wasn't just making myself miserable, I wasn't being greedy and setting myself up for disappointment! That means… that means…"

"It means you're a witch," Merovingia says, "and those are all the things a witch is supposed to live among, every day and every night." She squeezes me. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

That breaks me. Or I've been broken all along. It doesn't matter. There's no wraith of volition left to hold back the deluge. Just tears, and tears, and tears without end for a family I only knew were real because of the hole in my heart where I was fated to put our future together--a future that died ages before I was born.

My shoulders heave. My eyes ache from crying. I only sob every so often: it takes everything I have just to breathe around the tide pouring out of me. There's nothing left to make noise with. Words fall away. Light and sound, the shapes of Merovingia's domain--I feel as if it's all gone. There's just me and a heartbroken demoness, left behind after everyone else has moved on. Two huddled figures alone at the last lightless wait before the abyss closes in.

"Why?" I whimper. "Why did they have to go? I just want them to come back. I just want the magic back. It's not supposed to be like this. Earth is so wrong."

"Me too, sweetheart," Merovingia says, hugging me. "I want to go back too. I'm sorry. I can't turn back time. I can't raise the dead either. I can't put the worlds back into one." She cups my cheeks. Brushes them with soft, warm fingers. Her claws trace my bones, but they don't hurt or pierce or anything like that. They pour warmth into me. Lulling. Dreamy. "But I'm still here with you, and you're still here with me."

Her eyes are so sad. Too sad for someone who's just worried about a new friend.

"Sweetheart, they abandoned you too," she whispers. "No one on this side believes in witches anymore. They all think you just up and left one day. Cast some final great spell to escape the growing evils of the Earth, and took the last of the magic with you into the bargain." She grinds her fangs. "I didn't agree. I told them over and over you would never have thrown us away to survive, that you would never have accepted the Wall, that something must have stolen you from us. But they… I think you already know the kinds of things they said."

I nod.

Mero pushes on. "But I'm not leaving you. Demons cross the threshold. Witches keep it. We need each other. And need or not, we're meant to be together. You understand?"

"And when you talk about witches, the one you're really talking about is…" The light of her beautiful, sad, abandoned domain melts into my tears, and so in my sight she is wreathed with stars. "Oh, Mero… I'm so sorry." I have nothing to say that will make this better. Magic is real, and that's exactly why magic can't fix this. So all I can do is sob. Heave. Say it again. "I'm so fucking sorry, Mero!"

She cries demon tears that look just like human tears. "That's why I am not leaving you," she says. "I refuse. If they desert me too, then so be it, but I. Am. Not. Leaving. You."

"And I'm not leaving you either," I say, full of that same strange force from the camp site. Maybe… maybe there is no other. Maybe this is just the way I feel when the time is right for me to be me, all of me: my whole being awake at once so I can give everything I've got to this one moment. "No matter what. I've found you, Mero, and I'm never letting go. If we lose each other, we'll find each other again. If we're lost, we'll find our way. And if we die…"

I raise my hands to hers. Human and demon, our fingers intertwine.

"Then we will be reborn, together," she whispers. "Is this a witch's pact, Carrie?"

"Yes," I say, blinking away my tears. "Yes, by scorn, it is. Made with you, the demon of my heart."

"Then it is a demon's pact as well," Mero says.

And, leaning forward, she kisses my forehead. Fire washes through me from my brow all the way to my toes, hotter and hotter, yet somehow it never becomes scalding--I never burn. And its backblast on my breath laces glows in Marrow's iron horns. Reignites ancient jade fires on each angle and edge. Kindles a line that ripples down her back and spirals along her tail to culminate in a small yet loudly-roaring tongue of green inferno on her tail's spearhead tip.

"I missed you, dearest witch," Mero cries. "I missed you so, so much."       

I hug her, and hold her, and lose all track of time.

When we finally break apart and lie down together, it's like reuniting with my best friend forever… well, yeah, duh. That's what this is. We talk about all kinds of things. Mero proves she can conjure a TV. The reception and channel list is absolutely bonkers. We can often figure out which shows have gotten blended together, and really, really famous stuff tends to come through mostly intact, but it's more like we're tapped into humanity's collective experience of television than the neat, compartmentalized shows and movies of Earth.

But hey, it's also completely fucking free! We can either skip commercials instantly or butcher them into the goofiest parodies just by thinking at them hard. We have more fun screwing with dick-pill commercials than any normal people should have--but I mean, I'm some kind of self-taught arch-wich and Mero is an ancient succubus. We're abnormal as literal Hell and thank fuck for that. And even non-edited commercials are entertaining when they're this nuts, so it's by far the best viewing experience of my life.

We spend three hours trying to figure out how any of it works, and even with a witch and a succubus working together, it's basically impossible to find a pattern.

Who cares? It's fun. At some point I guess I just, well… fall asleep. That's good. It means that by the time I realize my disappearance will have been reported and there's probably a huge shitstorm going down, I'm midway into cake and coffee for breakfast.

We talk more after I finish up, and, as it turns out, Mero's so even-keeled I can pretty much say anything and she'll just receive it calmly. If I want to explain more, she listens, and if I don't, she just lets me stop when I'm ready to stop. I get on the subject of wanting to send some kind of message back, anything to let everyone know I'm okay, and then…

"I'm glad you're so fluid with your power," I say, brushing my hair with a really nice brush of painted seashells set in a translucent sea-blue resin. I'm not sure what the bristles are, but they're definitely enchanted--my tangles come undone the instant my strokes reach them, and my hair has never had these amber undertones before.

I also learn that Mero is not only a hopeless lesbian, but adorably easy to mess with. Every time I turn my head and adjust my hair for a long brush, she'll just stare and make this continuous, happy mewing sound behind her lips while she watches me.

You know… I think I like this girl.

"I always felt like I was supposed to have power, or magic, or whatever," I continue, "but no matter how hard I felt that, it just never did anything. There's this sense of… bigness… to it that's only grown in the back of my head as I get older, but no matter how big I think my magic is, it never does anything at all in the world."

"Well… have you tried, since coming here?" Merovingia asks.

"Eh?" I ask in turn. "I don't know. I guess I thought I didn't have any innate power. That I needed to get it from somewhere else."

"Well, innate power has to exist in somebody," Mero says, "or something. Otherwise, where does everyone else get it from? And if it can exist in the first place, well…" she flaps her hands. "It should be able to start existing somewhere new. Including as part of a person."

"Okay," I say. "Uh… how do I try?"

"Well, how do you feel like trying?" Mero asks. "And what do you want to try?"

"I like incantations. Incantations make me feel powerful," I say. "Hm… but doing it every time I want to repeat the same spell I just cast could get a little annoying… let's try this." I draw a deep breath, put my brush down, and stretch my arm to the nighttime gap in the cavern roof--it's on the opposite side of the hall now, of course. I like to imagine each of the openings in the cavern roof is a window to the opposite side of the same planet.

I let my head clear. Close my eyes. No rush. I'll let the words come to me when it feels right.

"Once shall I call, thrice shalt thou answer," I say, speaking the words even as their meanings take shape. "The silver stroke from the lightless sky, vestige of the Void Aeon, sacred sword of the first, mourning dirge of the last. Ere the sound comes the light, ere the light comes the path. Answer me, oh lightning, and be this witch's wrath."

The final word rips out of me. In my moment of shock something crackles and slams into me. I'm buzzing, vibrating, surging with power. I spread my fingers and blue electric arcs flow between them. I was expecting red, and something about not getting the color I expect feels important to dig into, later. But… this is fucking lightning. This is a torrent of raw electrical power that would kill an ordinary human, and I'm just holding it inside me.

"Mero," I say. Oh. Here we go. Sobby disaster witch time again. "Mero, I can cast lightning."

"Of course you can, Carrie!" she answers, clasping her hands. She's giving me this weird, warm, melting look--that's pride. She's proud of me. She's a real succubus and she's proud of me. "You're a witch. Not because you were born to it, not because of your bloodline or a prophesy or someone handed it to you, but because you worked for it."

All my wasted nights weren't wasted. All my daydreaming wasn't just daydreaming, it was training. Thinking about how to focus my magic, how I wanted to wield it. I stand up, quivering with the ecstasy of my power, look over my shoulder to look at Merovingia, and with a breathy hitch in my voice I ask, "So, um… where can I cast this?"

"Throw it at that statue!" Mero says immediately, pointing to a chiseled demon with two snub horns. I've hated his face since I got here. A second later, I know why. "That bastard said witches were never coming back, and I should share the 'smoldering deepness of my passions' with someone who actually cared about me--but he never showed his face to tell me he cared without putting someone else down. Haven't seen him a thousand years."

"Tchuss, schweinhund," I say, lifting my fingers towards him. "Wir werden uns nie wieder treffen." I only have to want the lightning to fly and it does. It blasts right out of me in a huge snarling bolt, and it doesn't melt through the statue or even explode it, it vaporizes it. I see a flare of light and an afterimage. A shockwave of force, smoke, and fire rips through Merovingia's domain and blasts us both back a step.

The succubus has to use her own power to call back a debris cloud of cushions before they hit the lava, and nearly all of them are on fire from the explosion anyway.

"Mero," I start to say, "I am so, so sorry about your stuff--"

She cuts that off with a hug. "Who cares about stuff! We're on our side of the Wall, Carrie! I can rearrange time and space! I can replace stuff, but nothing is more precious to me than getting to see my witch learn how strong she really is!"

Now that I'm not focused on riding out my catharsis for twenty-one years of pent up angst, I realize that when we're both standing up a hug from Merovingia puts my face right in her boobs. She smells like cinders and hot iron and a hint of Sulphur, but what she really smells like is another woman. And she called me her witch. I'm Mero's witch. Does that mean Mero is my succubus? I mean, I know we literally made a magical demon-witch pact, but…

Oh. Oh, my gods, I'm gay. I'm… I'm SO GAY. I like men and yet I'm GAY.

I pry myself out a few seconds later--oh, I mean to go back, but I cannot stand another second of this. "Okay, Mero, sorry for breaking the dumb lesbian code of ethics, but I have spent way too long wanting things I couldn't have to not recognize when I want something that maybe I, um…" I trail off and start over. "Merovingia, I'm pretty sure you're my Sapphic awakening. I like like you."

"You…" the multi-thousand year-old succubus shows me just how wide her eyes can dilate. "You… Carrie… you… like like me?"

"Yeah," I say. "Like… you know… wanting to be lesbians with you."

"Like… girlfriends?" Mero asks. "And we'll go on walks, and say stupid jokes to each other that make no sense but are funny because we're saying them to each other, and sometimes we'll try and get each other in the mood for sex but just end up cuddling sleepily before we both pass out, and in the morning we'll wake up to find out one of us drooled on the other?"

"Yeah," I say. "I'm… I mean, I've had a lot of sex, but I've never been in a committed relationship. But I think that's what girlfriends do."

Mero clasps her hands in front of her. She takes the deepest breath yet, and there have been a lot of deep breaths the last couple of days. I brace myself. This is the part where she tells me succubi don't do romance, that they're only demons of lust, and instead of the next few months being magical they'll be awkward and--"

"I would love to be your girlfriend," Merovingia squeals. "My witch is my girlfriend! My girlfriend is my witch, and I'm her succubus! I'm Carrie's succubus!" My head has zero seconds to stop spinning: Mero picks me up, whoops with joy, and starts flying us around the chamber while I scream and laugh and hold on tight. A few minutes later we crash-land on the least-scorched couch--I do some really quick magic to soften the impact, and holy shit, that's a spell I can cast--and Mero nuzzles me and giggles drunkenly.

"I h-have to warn you, Carrie," she says, "it's going to be harder for me to work up the courage for sex at first. If you think succubi are horny normally, then just wait until you're with a succubus who's in love. The intimacy of romance, of knowing you're mine and I'm yours… it's a lot, even for me. It's been a long, long time since I've had that." Her eyes brighten. "Ohhhh… hey… does this mean I'm a pet succubus?" She taps her fingers together. "Am I… am I going to be your pet succubus, Carrie?"

"And so," I say dryly, "they were both bottoms. Mero, I wanted to be your pet."

"Well… hm…" Mero knuckles her chin. "Is there a rule that says there has to be a top in the relationship? I mean, I want you to top me, but…" She shakes her head. "I don't want to be someone else's pet. I want to be yours. Um, assuming sex outside the relationship is okay?"

"It's totally okay!" I say, nodding. "Actually, um… I think it's really sweet if I know you could be with anyone, but you keep choosing to be with me."

"So… so that's not just an excuse I invented to justify being unable to control my lust?" Merovingia asks. "That's normal reasoning? For humans, too?"

I swear, sluts could fix just about anything with sex and love if the worlds we live in would stop filling us with guilt for five fucking minutes.

"Yeah," I say out loud. "Yeah, Mero, it really is. And, I mean… if you like someone, I'll probably like them too, so if you did fall in love with them…"

"We could form a polycule," she says, a breathy whisper. "Carrie… we can seduce people together." Then, before I can too far into bubbly visions of me and Mero making a cutie's head spin, she holds up her hands. "Okay, moment mal. Let's settle the pet thing first. We both want to be pets. We also don't want to bring in a third just to fulfill that desire. If neither of us wants to be designated top, then how do we resolve this?"

"What if," I say, steepling my fingers, "we alternate? I can be mistress when I feel like, and you can be mistress when you feel like, and if nobody feels like being mistress then we'll just flop around in a panic until one of us rolls on top of the other."

Mero narrows her eyes like she's working through calculus in her head--actually, I bet Mero could do calculus in her head instantly. This, on the other hand, is being lesbians, which every lesbian has taken a solemn oath to be bad at each time she wakes up in the morning.

"… deal!" she finally says.