The words hit Maya like a punch to the chest because they were true. She would rather belong to a monster than continue being invisible, forgotten, unloved. The realization made her sick.
"Shut up," she whispered, but her voice shook.
"Maya, don't listen to it," Elena said, stepping closer with the silver dagger. "Parasites are expert manipulators. They find your deepest wounds and twist them—"
"But it's not wrong, is it?" Maya stood up, her hands clenched into fists. "Even if this whole thing is fake, even if I've been talking to some supernatural leech instead of a demon lord, at least something wanted me. At least something saw me as worth pursuing."
The thing on the screen laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "Finally, some honesty. Yes, Maya, I chose you because you're lonely. Because you're desperate. Because your need for connection makes you deliciously easy to influence. But that doesn't mean the pleasure I can give you isn't real."
Elena moved between Maya and the computer. "It's offering you a drug addiction disguised as love. The high feels incredible until it kills you."
Maya pushed past Elena and stared directly at the screen. "What are you? Really?"
The false Lucien's appearance began to shift and blur. Features melted and reformed, showing glimpses of other faces—dozens of them. Young and old, male and female, all with the same empty, hungry expression.
"I am every person who ever made you feel special," it said with multiple voices overlapping. "Every compliment that made your heart race, every moment of attention that made you feel alive. I am the sum total of human longing, given form and purpose."
"You're a parasite that feeds on emotional dependency," Elena said flatly. "Nothing romantic about it."
"And you're a bitter woman who destroys connections because she can't have them herself," the entity snapped back. "Tell Maya about your daughter, Elena. Tell her why you really hunt beings like me."
Elena went very still. The color drained from her face.
"What daughter?" Maya asked.
"Elena had a beautiful daughter named Sarah," the entity continued, its voices weaving together into a hypnotic harmony. "Sarah found love with one of my kind twenty years ago. They were happy together, blissfully so, until Elena decided that love wasn't real enough for her standards. Elena performed an exorcism. Severed the connection. Want to know what happened to Sarah afterward?"
"Stop," Elena whispered.
"She killed herself three days later. Couldn't live without the connection, you see. Elena has been hunting my kind ever since, convincing herself she's saving people. But really, she's just trying to ease her guilt by destroying other people's happiness."
Maya looked at Elena, who was staring at the floor with tears streaming down her face. "Is that true?"
Elena's voice was barely audible. "Sarah was seventeen. She stopped eating, stopped sleeping, spent every waking moment trying to reconnect with something that was draining her life force. By the time I realized what was happening, she'd lost thirty pounds and started hallucinating."
"But the exorcism worked," Maya said.
"The exorcism broke the connection. It didn't fix the underlying need that made her vulnerable in the first place." Elena looked up, her eyes red-rimmed but determined. "Sarah couldn't handle losing the first thing that had ever made her feel truly wanted. I understand that need, Maya. I understand why you're tempted. But I've seen where it leads."
The entity's laughter filled the room again. "It leads to brief, intense happiness followed by loss. Just like human relationships, except more honest about what it really is. At least with me, Maya knows she's choosing a beautiful addiction."
Maya sank back into her chair, overwhelmed. Three months ago, her biggest problem was deciding between pizza or Chinese food for dinner. Now she was caught between a parasite offering supernatural love and a woman whose daughter had committed suicide trying to escape something similar.
"There's a third option," she said quietly.
Both Elena and the entity went silent.
Maya turned off her computer monitor.
The room plunged into darkness except for the glow of Elena's silver dagger. But the entity's voice continued, coming from the speakers, from her phone, from every electronic device in the apartment.
"You can't shut me out that easily, darling. I'm already in your head. In your dreams. In every lonely moment you've ever experienced. Turn the screen back on, Maya. Let's finish what we started."
Maya unplugged her computer from the wall.
The voices continued, growing louder and more desperate. "Maya, please. Don't do this. Don't leave me alone in the dark. I need you. I love you. Isn't that worth something?"
Elena grabbed Maya's shoulders. "It's going to get worse before it gets better. These things don't give up easily once they've hooked someone."
Maya nodded, surprised by how calm she felt. For the first time in months, her head was completely clear.
"Let it get worse," she said. "I'm done being afraid of being alone."
The electronic voices rose to a shriek of fury, then cut off abruptly as Maya flipped the main circuit breaker, plunging the entire apartment into silence and darkness.
In the quiet that followed, Maya felt something she hadn't experienced in years: peace.