Suddenly A Succubus

Late last year, Chloé found a small note-taking app in her search to organize her volunteer efforts. Her poor memory had always been a frustrating weakness, and her phone was cluttered with dozens of calendar alerts designed to keep her focused. A weekly alarm for hormone shots, a monthly alarm for the phone bill, and myriad other one-off events for anything and everything else.

Hanging out with friends? Event. Meeting with a teacher? Event. Day off with absolutely no plans? Three events, without which she would forget to eat.

One of the most important events was the weekly call she scheduled with her parents. While she hated talking to them, they had a habit of aggressively looking into her life when they thought she was ignoring them. She’d learned this the hard way when college had started; they had visited without warning on the assumption that her silence was proof of a new drug habit, or something similarly sinister. Their accusations changed from month to month, normally in accordance with whatever conspiracy theory was being floated on the news they watched.

The note-taking app had been the perfect partner for her myriad alerts. Calendar events were great for setting alarms, but they weren’t great repositories of information. Her app, however, essentially let her build a wiki about her life. She could type as much as she wanted, link pages within other pages, even create tables and charts when needed.

There were countless pages dedicated to her volunteer efforts, with an entire subsection for her charity app. Her schoolwork had its own section, with pages for in-class notes and writing assignments. That section also had a secret page that held her poorly written fanfics. She had pages for all her friends, filled with small reminders about birthdays, favorite foods, relationship webs, and countless other facts she had trouble remembering. Today’s events had forced her to add new headings to her friends’ pages: superpowers.

The word left a strange taste in her mouth now that she knew how real magic was.

Amara was a succubus. She could shapeshift, control fire, and had super-strength. Massive wings allowed her to fly, but personal trauma prevented her from doing so.

Vee was an angel. She could bless items of religious significance, create light, and summon small angelic constructs. Her powers were the hardest for Chloé to understand; on paper, it seemed like Vee was theoretically capable of anything. For some reason, however, she had repeatedly stressed that she was weaker than Amara.

Tessa was a witch with mild telekinetic abilities. Her biggest asset to the party, as far as Chloé could tell, was her vast knowledge of the runic language of magic.

These new sections had been slowly filled out over the last few hours, in between her assigned work. With the campus under siege, her friends needed to focus on battle strategies, which left no time to wrangle the crowd of panicked students that had been inadvertently wrapped up in the chaos. According to Amara, Chloé’s volunteer experience made her the perfect person to touch base with all the other students.

After creating a new section in her notes app, she’d held brief interviews with each and every student presently hiding out in the cafeteria. They all got their own pages, and she did her best to record how they felt about the day’s events. Most of the students were shocked and confused, unsurprisingly, and several of them had gotten injured in the earlier chaos; despite Amara and Vee’s best efforts, one reaper had gotten loose on campus. Thankfully, Nick and Tessa had been able to guide students to safety while mostly avoiding the beast.

After interviewing everyone, Chloé shared her results with the rest of the group, who briefly helped her calm down some of the more excited students. Afterwards, they retreated to a corner to plan their final assault on Brandon.

Chloé didn’t fully understand why she was present for that particular conversation and tried to convince herself they weren’t including her out of pity. She stayed quiet for most of it, watching them debate the merits of their different plans. Despite the fact that they were debating the best way to take down a mad cultist and save the campus, they seemed incredibly composed.

God, they’re all so cool. Do they know how cool they are? I mean, they’ve been secretly protecting the campus for months. Why do they even bother being friends with me? I mean, what am I good for? Organizing groups of people? Wow, what a power. All my friends get to fight monsters and save the world, and I’ll be known for my ability to take notes.

Ugh.

Who am I kidding? I won’t be known for anything. What’s worth remembering about me?

Despite Amara’s insistence to the contrary, Chloé was having trouble seeing her earlier task as anything other than busy work. She reminded herself time after time that talking to everyone was helpful, it kept them from panicking, but it felt so quaint in the shadow of the literal tear in reality just outside the window.

Before long, it was time for the fight to begin. Tessa was spinning her switchblade around in her hand, examining the magic runes she’d just finished applying. After some additional feeding, Amara was practically glowing with power and presence. Vee was leafing through pages in, if Chloé remembered correctly, an incredibly powerful angelic artifact that held thousands of years’ worth of Enochian magic. She had briefly left the cafeteria to grab it from her home, which had worried Amara considerably.

Chloé planted her hands on the table, jumped to her feet, and walked over to them.

“—and there were no problems getting your book, Vee?” Amara asked as Chloé walked within earshot.

Vee shook her head. “No, he’s got the reapers glued to the quad, presumably to keep him safe. Thankfully, all the school buildings are blocking the view from the streets nearby, so I don’t think anyone has noticed the portal yet. Tess, how’s the dagger?”

“I mean, as good as it’s gonna get. There’s only one way to test it out, sadly. You might only get one shot at this, Vee, so make that fucker bleed.”

As Tessa and Vee started talking about the knife, Amara looked over at Chloé. “Hey, Chloé, how are you holding up?”

“I’m… good. I guess,” Chloé muttered, looking around at everyone. “Is there anything I can do to help? I don’t really have anything else to do here, I’ve already talked to everyone, and I hate the thought of you fighting that cultist all on your own.”

Amara stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Chloé. “We’ll be okay. I promise.”

Chloé returned the favor, hugging Amara tighter than she’d ever hugged anyone before. She took a deep breath, fighting to hold back tears as she spoke. “I-it just looks really scary out there, and I don’t want to see you get hurt again!”

“Hey, look at me,” Amara whispered. Chloé pulled away to look deep into Amara’s glowing amber eyes. “We’re stronger than we look, and the last time I fought Brandon, I was running on fumes. Besides, even if there were something you could do, I would still ask you to sit this out. Brandon’s certifiably insane, and he won’t hesitate to hurt you if given the chance.”

No response sprang to mind, and instead Chloé buried her face in Amara’s shoulder again. She squeezed Amara tightly, scared to let her go. After a minute, Nick walked closer and placed a hand on her shoulder.

“C’mon, Chloé, it’s time for them to go,” he said. “I’m here too, don’t forget. There’s no shame in leaving the fighting to the people with the strength to hold their own.”

With a sniff, Chloé wiped away her tears with her sleeve. She ran over to Vee and Tessa, hugging them both tight while she still had a chance. “Good luck, everyone,” she managed to say. Nick said his goodbyes as well, and with nothing left to prepare, Amara, Vee, and Tessa walked out of the cafeteria.

Watching them leave, Amara’s words rattled around in Chloé’s head.

“Even if there were something you could do, I would still ask you to sit this out.”

She knew what Amara meant, and tried to convince herself the words were well-intentioned, but she couldn’t help but fixate on them. In her own way, Amara had admitted that Chloé was useless.

Is she right? Am I still nothing, after all this?

She clenched her fists and shook her head.

No.

There’s got to be something I can do.