Incubus Quotes

I envy people that know love. That have someone who takes them as they are.

There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it.

Accidental sex. He made it sound like I fell down, and there just happened to be an erection in the way.

Zebrowski says that if you killed someone else just hide the body, he's not starting over on the paperwork.

What is love? Sometimes it's just letting yourself be who and what you are, and letting the person you're supposed to love be who and what he is too. Or maybe what and who they are.

Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don’t want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight.

They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if it's direct opposite does not also exist.

One hand was behind his back, and he held it out, presenting a bouquet of white and smoky purple lilies. “They’re straight from the underworld, by the way. They are everlasting. They won’t die.

Giving up something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn’t giving up at all, it’s growing up.

I had a naked incubus in my bedroom. With a frying pan of half-cooked bacon, and a hard-on. And a unicorn bite on his ass. Christ, this was turning out to be a weird morning.

if i had to choose between breathing or loving you, i would say 'i love you' with my last breath

If your life works, and you work in it, then it’s okay, whatever is happening is okay.

I used to think I knew what was right and what was wrong, and who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. Then the world got very gray, and I didn't know anything for a long time

I knew what was like to finally be seduced by the thing you hunted. Mine just happened to be a more traditional seduction. Okay, at least I was still among the living.

Too bad the things that make you mad are my favorite things.

I am the Executioner. Murder someone in my town, and I’m the one that you get to see. Once.

Oh, no, a leopard blew up and plastered itself all over everything, but hey, animal print was in this year.

You fight so hard, so long, to cut someone out of your heart, but it’s not always your heart that betrays you.

Oh, I forgot to mention it: My brother is the kind of man whom women stalk. In cooperative packs.

you're like a dictionary, you add meaning to my life

To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.

Screw all that Incubus crap. That's how you do it Mortal-style.

Sex parties, alcohol and drugs lost their appeal to Sven after a while. Music never did, in his continual search for that sober connection--intimacy with one person over a long period of time, as opposed to periods of intimacy with a bunch of random faces.

Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.

If I wasn't dead already, I'd said I was having a heart attack.

I am the Messenger, Gabriel, she who is set over all the powers," I called out. "I evoke thee, Sammael, the Lord of Souls and Fallen angels of death. I am the Will of God and you shall come forth, incubus, the serpent with the lion's face, the Venom of God-" "That is enough name calling... I heard you the first time.

And don't let the world bring you down, Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold, Remember why you came and while you're alive, Experience the warmth before you grow old...

A Seer's moon, a Siren's tears, Nineteen Mortal, Wayward fears, Incubus graves and Caster rivers, The Final Page the End delivers.

murder takes presedence over watching my boyfriend strip" -ID, Anita to Nathaniel

I’d have much rather gotten dragged into someone else’s fight than face what was waiting for me. Other people’s emotional pain, no matter how painful, is so much less painful than your own.

Your heart is not a wound to be poked at to see if the scab is ready to come off. You can be healed of that very old pain, if you’ll just let it happen. (Marianne)

—but they’re minor-level functionaries. They can’t do that kind of shit. And a demon can’t possess another demon—or a half, for that matter. So two plus two, okay? His other half ain’t Ahhazu, it’s incubus. And there’s only one half human, half incubus ever been recorded—” “Maybe Pritkin’s birth wasn’t recorded.” “Bullshit. You know damn well who we got—” “Don’t say it.” “—next door, and John Pritkin ain’t his—” “I’m warning you.” “—name. It’s motherfucking Mer—” “Say it and spend the rest of your life in the Jurassic,” I hissed.

He squeezed my shoulder and smiled at me. I realized that I hadn't kissed him hello, I always kissed him hello. Of course, I was still covered in blood and other bodily fluids, and none of them were his, but he might not understand that that was why I hadn't wanted to get too close. Some of my confusion must have shown on my face, because his smile widened. He turned me around by the shoulders, gave me a little push towards the bathroom, and slapped me on the ass. "Get cleaned up, I'll take care of things here." "I can't believe that you just did that," I said. "Did what?" he said, and he was grinning at me. I could probably count on one hand the number of times Micah had grinned at me. His eyes were sparkling with laughter as if it were all he could do not to let it out. I was happy to see him having a good time, really I was. But I wasn't sure what was funny, and I didn't have the courage to ask. It was probably something that would be at my expense, or something I'd just done that he found cute. I was not cute. Confused, fucked-up, bruised, but not cute. Nathaniel and Damian knew better, but as I passed Gregory, I had to say, "If you touch my ass, I will rip you a new one." I said it as I moved past him, not even pausing. "You're no fun," he growled. I looked back just before I turned out of sight of him. "Oh, I'm a lot of fun, just not around you." He snarled at me. "Bitch." "Woof, woof," I said, and finally made it into the bathroom.

If Frau Rasch, in the last and fullest days of her husband’s power in Brno, had idly—during a party, say; a musical recital at the castle—gazed into the core of the diamond that had come to her from Oskar Schindler, she would have seen reflected there the worst incubus from her own dreams and her Führer’s. An armed Marxist Jew.

My least favorite thing was a man who had severe white-man's ass, where the jeans just bagged over the butt. I wanted something to hold on to, something to sink my teeth into. When I said I liked meat on my men I didn't just mean one thing.

If I turn into another, dig me up from under what is covering the better me

There's Only so much emotional super glue in a person's soul, that everything just stays broken.

Not that I knew just what an incubus actually looked like, but judging by the darkness that was sliding up the back of his neck, it wasn’t overly human. Hysterical visions of people running for the exits pursued by a massive cock and balls filled my mind, and I let out a gasp of laughter despite myself.

If you masturbate, would that make you an incubator?” I eyed him sideways, struggling not to laugh at his nonplussed expression or the sharp bark of mock outrage that followed.

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,” he said, “That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind.” I looked up at him, and said the next line, “To war and arms I fly.” “True, a new mistress now I chase,” he said. “The first foe in the field,” I said, and let him draw me closer. “And with a stronger faith embrace,” he said. “A sword, a horse, a shield.” And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face. “Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore,” he whispered against my hair. I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. “I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more.

I thought we were the good guys,” he said, and it had that note of a child who finally realizes that sometimes good and evil aren’t so much opposites, as two sides of a coin. You toss it one way, and it looks good, another way, and it’s evil. Sometimes it just depends on which end of the gun you’re on.

Well, if the excitement's over, I think I'll take a bath.' 'Wow. The harsh lifestyle of a succubus. I wish I had your job.' 'Hey, our side's always recruiting. You might need to be a little prettier to be an incubus, though. And a little more charming.' 'Untrue. Mortal women go for jerks. I see it all the time.' 'Touché.

How can you accuse me of cheating on you—just because you’ve come home from a two-year sea voyage and I’m pregnant? It was the incubus. He hypnotized me with his mystical vampire powers.…

Winter Liar" by Liam Doyle the Incubus What come once here will never come again, no matter monument nor memory; all sunwarmed green succumbs to winter's wind. And you, my love, were also my best friend, and had your life to live. The tragedy was not just my youth's recklessness, although I trusted much to impulse, whim, freedom, a destiny excluding doom. Frankly, youth can be our insanity. But now I'm cured of that fever, although the price was high; and chilly April wind can only sigh at my regrets, yet sun will brighten wind so, one knows that soon green stirs, and wild bees hum. And summer once more will make winter liar, but I won't warm. You're all I'll ever desire.

There's always choices. Not liking the ones you've got is a different issue.

He wanted to lick every one of Tarrick’s wounds to taste his blood and speed along the healing process. He wanted to place his bite marks on Tarrick’s neck. Fuck. Matthew wanted to ravage the incubus in every way possible. He wanted to fuck him and destroy him all at once.

Lady number two was trying to wrap her hand around my dick despite my rejections. Being a monogamous incubus was a challenge at times like this.

She had been tied to an incubus, the memory of a love that had been rejected and had had nowhere to go; she had been locked into a dead relationship and now the last dried skin of it had fallen away, like the scab on a wound, and she was free.

It moves by itself? Penises are so strange!

Demons exist,' he says simply, as if talking about the weather. 'They are real and they are dangerous. We hunt them when necessary and return them when we can.

She moaned, long and low, wanting to arch, to thrash, to scream. Instead she opened her mouth and bit his shoulder, tasting salt. Tasting want. Then she gasped. "Please." "What do you want?" he whispered in her ear, an incubus, dark and alive and in her. "Tell me. What do you need?" "I..." Her mouth opened, wordless. "Tell me," his smoky voice curled around her. "You." He chuckled, dark and low.

A troubled Necromancer. An Illusionist with a secret. An Incubus marked for death. A Darkborn in hiding. A Siren with a past.

The opium-eater loses none of his moral sensibilities or aspirations.  He wishes and longs as earnestly as ever to realize what he believes possible, and feels to be exacted by duty; but his intellectual apprehension of what is possible infinitely outruns his power, not of execution only, but even of power to attempt.  He lies under the weight of incubus and nightmare; he lies in sight of all that he would fain perform, just as a man forcibly confined to his bed by the mortal languor of a relaxing disease, who is compelled to witness injury or outrage offered to some object of his tenderest love: he curses the spells which chain him down from motion; he would lay down his life if he might but get up and walk; but he is powerless as an infant, and cannot even attempt to rise. I

Bir an gelir birini seversiniz. O iyi ya da kötü olduğu için hissetmezsiniz bunu. Sadece seversiniz. Bu sonsuza dek birlikte olacağınız anlamına gelmez. Birbirinizi incitmeyeceğiniz anlamına da gelmez. Yalnızca seversiniz. Bazen olduğu kişiye rağmen, bazense olduğu kişi yüzünden. Ve onun da sizi sevdiğini bilirsiniz. Kimi zaman sırf siz olduğunuz için, kimi zamansa size rağmen.

I’ve always felt that love is like Belgian chocolate, you know, the ones with brandy filling. You always say you’re going to take one more bite, one more chocolate, and then, the whole box is gone. Perhaps the morning after, you might even get indigestion or a headache, and still, that evening, you might stop by the supermarket and buy another box because you simply can’t get enough.

Admit it, you want to be fucked and it’s not Emen, that dull fuck, you want to feel saddled fast and riding hard between your legs. It’s me. My bruises on your skin, my bite marks for you to wear as if it were the finest jewelry.

If you are not careful, their beauty will become both heaven and hell, you will betray every oath, abandon every loyalty, give up your heart, your mind, your body, and your immortal soul to have them near you but one more night. Then one cold night, a hundred years after the passion is spent, and nothing but ashes remain, you look up and see someone gazing at you, and you know that look, you've seen it before. A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven istself, but you know in your heart of hearts that it's not heaven you're offering them, it's hell.

History will repeat itself, i will get hurt, and I will get back up. When i love someone, i will be willing to take hits!

Sleep is our connection to the part of ourselves that isn’t bound with physical restrictions

Guarantees are for major appliances, not for murder.

Welcome to Tears of Crimson, the New Orleans Vampire Bar.

Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside,” is a safe rule for those who would always retain the good opinion of that all-powerful, but somewhat unintelligent, incubus, “the average person,” but the pioneer, the guide, is necessary. That is, if the world is to move forward.

But just as my philosophy had ceased to interest me as soon as it was formulated into a set of principles so, when I saw myself being imitated, I realised at once what an incubus my aesthetic personality might become if I were to be trapped within it. Imitation changes, not the impersonator, but the impersonated.

-Please, Anita, go home, and don’t freak. Just go home, and be happy. Be happy, and let everyone around you be happy. Is that so hard? When Jason said it like that, it didn’t seem hard. In fact, it seemed to make a lot of sense, but inside, it felt hard. Inside it felt like the hardest thing in the world. To just let go, and not pick everything to death. To just let go and enjoy what you had. To just let go and not make everybody around you miserable with your own internal dialogue. To just let go and be happy. So simple. So difficult. So terrifying.

Did you look up 'incubus'?" Ren asked, in her ear. She heard a smile in his voice. "Yes. Let's see, 'a lascivious spirit supposed to have sexual intercourse with women in their sleep,' if I remember right." "There. And you thought it wasn't possible. It's common enough they actually had to make up a word for it." "Well, if you've been doing that, then you must have been discreet, because I sure haven't noticed." "It's not my preferred method," he said. "I always wake them up first.

I have lived with others more powerful than I in Belle Morte’s line for centuries, Anita. I, more than most, know just how much you must fight every night of your existence not to be consumed by their power.” He paused and then whispered so that it filled the darkened car, “If you are not careful, their beauty will become both heaven and hell, you will betray every oath, abandon every loyalty, give up your heart, your mind, your body, and your immortal soul to have them near you but one more night. Then one cold night, a hundred years after the passion is spent, and nothing but ashes remain, you look up and see someone gazing at you and you know that look, you’ve seen it before. A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven itself, but you know in your heart of hearts that its not heaven you’re offering them, its hell.

I chew the inside of my lip, considering for a second what it would be like to slap this skinny little witch right across her tight-lipped little face. ~Kelly about Suni

I answer your desires, I fulfill them beyond even your expectations and I obey whatever you demand.

It had always been thus, one law for the rulers, another for those they ruled. “Can

I had a naked incubus in my bedroom. With a frying pan of half-cooked bacon and a hard-on. And a unicorn bite on his ass. Christ, this was turning out to be a weird morning.

Why couldn’t her enemies die without her having to resort to her knives? She was getting tired of carefully picking all the nooks and crannies on the blades clean anytime she got into a fight…

...there is beauty that hits the eye like a bolt of lightning, that burns and sears and blinds. It is more disaster than pleasure. But yours, yours is a beauty that lulls one into comfort, into not protecting one's eyes from the light, then one night you realise that the moon, too, has its beauty.

He always seemed to know just what I needed, just when I needed it. If we weren’t in love, then how did he do that? Hell, I’d been in love with people that didn’t even come close to meeting this many of my needs.

You always have my attention. Whether you’re working, training with Valerian and Astor, bending back the finger of an incubus who’s clearly overstepped his bounds, threatening Amelie, or manipulating Caro, I see you.

But please tell me that – that you understand? That I never lied to you, that you were everything I said you meant to me?" (…) ”Piper, I-" He flew back so fast he seemed to vanish. Then he crashed into the bar and Ash was standing in front of him, a hand fisted in the front of the incubus's shirt..(…) ”If you touch her again," Ash snarled, pressing his fist into Micah's throat,”if you so much as look at her, I will rip off your balls and feed them to you. Do you understand?

Lengo kuu la Shetani kuingilia uumbaji wa Mungu kwa kutumia Succubus na Incubus ni kumzuia Yesu asirudi kwa mara ya pili. Anajua akiingilia uumbaji huo na kuwafanya watu wote wawe na roho za kishetani, wokovu hautakuwa na maana, Yesu hatakuwa na mtu wa kumwokoa atakaporudi kwa mara ya pili.

It is hard to describe to you but I swear it was a fearsome sight. There were not eyes to speak of, but chasms that saw into its dark depths. A shade of a mouth full with phantom teeth. There seemed to be a skull shifting in and out of form beneath the black. Bound together by an unspeakable evil.

Looking at the blood still dripping from her arms, she considered her options. Should she walk into the room full of children as she was, blood and other things oozing off of her, potentially scarring them for life? One glance down to the near gutted body at her feet made her decision for her. Nope.

Naučila jsem se, že si musíte udělat čas na to, co je důležité. Musíte bojovat o to, abyste si do života vtěsnali malé kousky štěstí, nebo vás každodenní starosti sežerou.

There's always choices. Not like the ones you've got is a different issue.

A hundred years later and someone gazes upon you as if you were heaven itself, but you know in your heart of hearts that it’s not heaven you’re offering them, it’s hell.

Together we are more than we are apart, Anita, that is what love is.’ I

they have so fraid us with bull beggers, spirits, witches, urchens, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the can'sticke, tritons, centaurs, dwarfes, giants, imps, calcars, conjurors, nymphes, changlings, incubus, Robin good fellow, the spoorne, the mare, the man in the oke, the hell waine, the fierdrake, the puckle, Tom thombe, hobgobblin, Tom tumbler, boneless, and such other bugs, that we are afraid of our own shadowes. In so much as some never feare the divell, but in a darke night; and then a polled sheepe is a perillous beast and manie times is taken for our father’s soule, speciallie in a churchyard where a right hardie man heretofore scant durst passe by night, but his haire would stand upright

Throughout the entire Christian era theism has lain like an incubus on all intellectual, especially philosophical endeavor and has prevented or stunted all progress; and when anyone has possessed the rare elasticity of mind which alone can slip free of these fetters, his writings have been burned and sometimes their author with them, as happened to Bruno and Vanini.

A love that is true to living persons and existing realities is steadfast and fine. But I saw then, for the first time, that a love which was fastened upon the dead and true to nothing but a past that was finished, is not a good nor true emotion. If it went on too long, it could become an incubus, throttling a man from the real life of the present, which is the life that we were fashioned to meet and experience.

Why does anger makes people pretty? Rage doesn't. Rage makes you ugly, but a little anger, that just seems to add spice. One of nature's cruelties, or maybe it's to keep us from killing each other more often.

My body was jerking and shaking, and I remembered John when he was in the Tunnels with Lena. The weird jerking and twitching he seemed unable to control. Was this what it felt like to be in the grip of Abraham Ravenwood?

He was too perfect, so I had to poke at it. Our relationship worked too well, so I had to see if I could break it. Not really break it, but see how far it would bend. I had to test it, because what good was something that couldn’t be tested?

Love keeps the word turning. Not only romantic love but the kind of love people have for their family, or their best friends, or even their pet. Love is what makes people do good. It’s what drives them to be brave. It’s what makes them the best versions of themselves.

Analysis is like a shock treatment, it throws you back into childhood in order to recapture the reparable elements, to reconstruct the personality. To reconstruct the personality it is necessary to find the original wound. You have to revaluate the past so it will not remain an incubus or succubus. For example, I look at others with my own eyes, my own values, I evaluate them by my own standards, but when it comes to looking at myself, I look at myself through my father's eyes. I judge myself by his standards, and in his eyes I was not beautiful, I had flaws.

For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch making. But at length we have discovered that to be free in this sense, that is, to have the excuse of being sick rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost… In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free, we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity, and with neurotics, themselves, we find ourselves asking: Who am I, what is my deepest destiny, what does living mean?

Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps. I’ve got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs. I’m dead.

They came to the door of the ladies’ club and Ash reached for the handle. Before he could touch it, the door flew open and Lyre fell out, still dressed in the white waiter “uniform” and his arms full of his clothes and weapons. Shouts burst from the building’s interior. “There you are!” Lyre blurted, wild-eyed. “Time to go.” “What happened?” Ash barked. Clio was still gawking when Lyre launched down the alley, leaving her and Ash to rush after him. “Some women react poorly to rejection,” Lyre explained breathlessly. “Especially when they’ve paid a lot of money to not be rejected.” “You blew your cover by rejecting her?” Ash snapped. They fled down several alleys before Lyre skidded to a stop and whirled on Ash, still clutching his belongings. “I’ll dress up in stupid costumes,” the incubus snarled with unexpected temper, “and I’ll pretend to be a paid whore, and I’ll even let a crucial informant pinch and paw at me.” He thrust an accusatory finger at Ash. “But I will not allow that nasty old hag’s tongue anywhere near me, not even to save the damn world!” Ash blinked. Scowling blackly, Lyre shoved his armload at Ash, then pulled a dagger from the pile and cut his leather-strap top off. “Next time, you can do the nasty stuff and I’ll kill people.

I mean, if I was getting married the guests would include a celibate incubus, an undead drag queen, a living statue, my dad, who’s had his eyes stolen by faeries, the woman who stole him back from faeries, a teenage oracle who’d insist on bringing my arsehole ex, a pack of werewolves, assuming it wasn’t too working class for them, possibly the entire Witch Court of London—and that was way more people than I was comfortable caring about. If I’d made the same list eighteen months ago, it would’ve been dad, Jenny and a bottle of cheap Scotch. Mind you, in either case I’d have to be marrying somebody and that would involve some fairly radical changes to my lifestyle. Because, let’s face it, my longest adult relationship has been with my hat.

It’s been my experience, Requiem, that people become more of who they are in extremes, both good and bad. Give a truly good person power, and they’re still a good person. Give a bad person power, and they’re still a bad person. The question is always about the person in between. The one that isn’t evil, or good, but just ordinary. You don’t always know what an ordinary person is like on the inside.’ He

There was an epoch in the course of the general sentiment when the comet had attained, at length, a size surpassing that of any previously recorded visitation. The people now, dismissing any lingering hope that the astronomers were wrong, experienced all the certainty of evil. The chimerical aspect of their terror was gone. The hearts of the stoutest of our race beat violently within their bosoms. A very few days suffered, however, to merge even such feelings in sentiments more unendurable. We could no longer apply to the strange orb any accustomed thoughts. Its historical attributes had disappeared. It oppressed us with a hideous novelty of emotion. We saw it not as an astronomical phenomenon in the heavens, but as an incubus upon our hearts and a shadow upon our brains. It had taken, with unconceivable rapidity, the character of a gigantic mantle of rare flame, extending from horizon to horizon.

Before you decide,” MacRieve interrupted, “know that if you were my mate, I’d make sure you had whatever you needed to be comfortable.” Her lips parted when he pulled her bag from behind him and proceeded to dig through it. “Like your toothbrush.” He held up her pink toothbrush. He’d retrieved her things from her car? And rooted through her personal possessions. She’d seen MacRieve’s ferocity, and now she was getting a good glimpse of his sly side, his tricksy side. She could see what Rydstrom had been talking about. MacRieve seemed . . . wolfish. Then she remembered what else she had in her bag. Oh, great Hekate. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach. Mari had private things in there—rocket of the pocket-type private things. Like a tube of lipstick that wasn’t really one. “Or this.” He carelessly flicked her birth control patch. “Doona know what it does, but I ken that people who use patches for whatever reason might be eager for a new one.” He displayed her iPod next. “It’s my understanding that females your age canna go long without listening to music or they become irrational and impossible to deal with. And how long’s it been for you, then?” He drew out a blue-labeled bottle and shook it. “You had several bottles of Orangina in your Jeep. Must like it, do you no’?” Not the Orangina! Her mouth watered even more. “And here’s your bit of Mayan gold that you’re probably keen to hold on to.” He held up the weighty headdress. Stunning. She hazily remembered seeing it in the severed hand of an incubus, as if in offer, but she’d thought the piece had been lost into that crater. If MacRieve gave the incubi’s headdress to her, it would be her first payment as a mystical mercenary. No, resist him! To act like his mate? To follow his orders? She could resist the food and the Orangina. She could even resist gold, but there he went digging once more. He’d find it. But maybe he wouldn’t know what it really was— “And your lipstick,” he said with a wicked glint in his eyes. Oh, no, he knew, and he was playing with her. She was going to die of mortification. Her face grew hot when he added, “You must be in sore need of this after three weeks without.

Maybe that’s his game, though,” I said. “The hunt for one soul, again and again.” “Then why are you still here?” “The other women lived with him for a long time too. Maybe he wants to wait until my defenses are down, and then-“ “Wow, Clea, you are so jaded. You found your soulmate. People wait their whole lives for this. It’s the most amazing thing in the world, and it’s happened to you. Can’t you just accept it and be happy?” What she said made sense, but… I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Without looking at Rayna, I said, “He doesn’t act like he’s my soulmate. Sometimes I think maybe he liked the other women more. I think maybe he wishes I was one of them.” Rayna was silent. This was something I’d never heard. “This is seriously, deep,” she finally said. “You’re feeling insecure because you’re jealous…of yourself.” “I didn’t say I was jealous…” “You’d rather think he’s a serial killer than risk being with him and finding out he doesn’t like you as much as he liked…you?” She scrunched her brow and thought, then tried again. “Yous? Anyway, you know what I mean-the other yous.” “Forget the jealousy thing, okay? There are other reasons to doubt him too. Ben doesn’t trust him at all. He thinks Sage is some kind of demon. He said there’s a spirit called an incubus that comes to women in their sleep, and-“ “Of course Ben said that.” Rayna shrugged. “He’s jealous.” “Of what?” “Ben’s crazy in love with you, Clea. I’ve been saying that forever!” “And I’ve been ignoring you forever, because it’s not true. You just want it to be true because it’s romantic.” “Did you not see the pictures of you from Rio?” I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?” Rayna pulled out her phone. “Honestly, I don’t know how you survive without Google Alerts on yourself. The paparazzi were out in full force for Carnival.” She played with the phone for a minute, then handed it to me. It showed a close-up of Ben and me at the Sambadrome that could only have been taken with a serious zoom. I felt violated. “I hate this,” I muttered. “Why? You look cute!” “I hate that people are sneaking around taking pictures of me!” “I know you do. Ignore that for the moment. Just scroll through.” There were five pictures of Ben and me. Four of them were moments I vividly remembered, pictures of the two of us facing each other, laughing as we did our best to imitate the dancers shimmying and strutting down the parade route. The fifth one I didn’t remember. I wouldn’t have; in it I had my camera up to my face and was concentrating on lining up the perfect shot. Ben stood behind me, but he wasn’t wearing the goofy smile he’d had in the other pictures. He was staring right at me with those big puppydog eyes, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all, but… “Uh-huh,” Rayna said triumphantly. She had climbed into my bed was looking at the picture over my shoulder. “Knew that one would stop you. There is only one word for the look on that boy’s face, Clea: love-struck. Which is probably why a bunch of websites are reporting he’s about to propose.” “What?” “Messenger. Don’t kill the messenger.” I looked back at the picture. Ben did look love-struck. Very love-struck. “It could just be the picture,” I said. “They caught him at a weird moment.” “Yeah, a weird moment when he thought no one was looking so he showed how he really felt.” I gave Rayna back the phone and shook my head. “Ben and I are like brother and sister. That’s gross.” “Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic. It was kind of hot.” “Shut up!” I laughed. “I’m just saying, think about it. Really think about it. Is it that hard to believe that Ben’s in love with you?

Incubus?" I asked Ben. He nodded grimly. "A lost soul-usually male-turned evil spirit that attaches itself to someone in order to lead her astray. The spirit is kind of...sexual in nature." He reddened and gestured to the picture. "Like it shows there. The incubus comes to a woman and has...you know...relations with her in her sleep." My jaw dropped, and I was glad Ben's eyes were averted as an exhilarating stream of images from my dreams flashed at super-speed through my head. I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath until it came out in a whoosh that I tried to pass off as a laugh. "It's not funny, Clea." "It's insane. Even if there were such a thing as an evil spirit, wouldn't it be obvious if I'd spent my whole life stalked by one? Wouldn't terrible things have happened to me?" "Maybe they will. Maybe he's just been waiting for the right time. Maybe that time is now, and that's why all of a sudden you see him everywhere." "So he's a patient evil spirit," I said sarcastically. "Know what else comes from the same Latin root as 'incubus'?" Ben retorted. "Incubate. I don't think it's coincidence. I think this...thing has been incubating, and now it's ready to come out and do whatever it's going to do. And I think your dad would agree with me.

an unrestrained infatuation with ecstasy and other extraordinary phenomena developed. These experiences were thought of as something to be obtained at all costs. Among some noted but deceptive visionaries of the time was the stigmatic, María de Santo Domingo (1486-1524), known as the Beata of Piedrahita. Her monastery became a center of spirituality and high prayer; she herself wrote a book on prayer and contemplation. But soon the Master General of the Dominicans had to isolate her because of certain aberrations and prophetic revelations. No one in the order, with the exception of her confessor, was allowed to converse with her or administer the sacraments to her; nor was anyone allowed to speak about her prophecies, ecstasies, and raptures, except to the provincial. Another visionary, Magdalena de la Cruz, a Poor Clare with a reputation for holiness, severe fasts, and long vigils, also bearing the stigmata, let it be known that she no longer required any food except the consecrated Host in daily Communion. In an investigation by the Inquisition she confessed to being a secret devil worshiper. Inspired by two incubuses with whom she had made a pact, she became very skillful at all sorts of legerdemain. Through her success in fooling both bishops and kings, she brought the fear of being deceived to all of Spain.