Demon

“If you need anything, you let me know. Don’t you ever feel silly asking.” There was a steeliness I had never seen in her before. And in that moment I thought she would have defended me to the death had she needed to. Not knowing what to say, I found myself fighting a wave of emotion, the product, I was sure, of exhaustion. I was so tired, in fact, that for a moment I thought I saw in her eyes an acumen as discerning as the intelligence in Lucian’s was strange.

THAT NIGHT, AFTER TRANSCRIBING the strange interaction in the co-op, I tried to read one of my newly acquired manuscripts but was unable to concentrate.

Why was our time getting shorter? Did he mean that we were nearing the end of his story, or had something happened? Regardless of the reason, I should have been happier than I was—soon I might be free of him. I would have what I needed to finish the manuscript. And once it was published, I could get on with my life.

But I was unsettled by Lucian’s distraction, disturbed that I could not pinpoint a reason for it. I had never seen him so emotional or emotionally at a loss. And to see him flee the co-op . . .

What could possibly compel a demon to flee?

The kindly face of Mrs. Russo floated before my mind.

SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT MY inbox chimed. It could have been incoming spam or a note from one of my authors—some of whom I secretly believed never slept. It might have been from Katrina, whom I had known to work through the night and half suspected of being a day-walking vampire. It could even have been a note from my sister, with whom I had had only sporadic contact since her insinuation that I had driven my wife away.

It was none of these.

From: Light1

Sent: 12:18 a.m.

To: BandHClay@brooksandhanover.com

Subject: More

I have to tell you one other significant thing that happened.

In the Jewish temple, El’s spirit resided in the Holy of Holies. Do an Internet search if you don’t know what I mean. All you really need to know is that it was the most sacred place on earth. Only the high priest could enter it and then only once a year and bearing the blood of atonement—one of El’s many concessions to the clay people. The curtain concealing the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was heavy, requiring more than a hundred men to move it. There was no mistaken entry, and the symbolism was blatant: There had been no open communion with El since those days in the garden.

This is what you need to know: As the God-man, hanging on the cross like a common criminal, died, the curtain ripped. Access to God, so long denied to any but the appointed, was now laid open to anyone, the blood of atonement having been paid in full according to the old law. The heavy partition that had separated the spirit of El from the fallen soul of man was broken forever.

I hate you.

I stared at that last line for a long time.

23

On board flight 865 to Cabo San Lucas, I closed my eyes. I had worked straight through Christmas, marking the season with a roast-beef sandwich—homemade, no less—and a call to my niece, Susanna, during which she thanked me for the Chronicles of Narnia set that I had ordered and sent straight from Amazon. Afterward, I talked to my sister for a few rare minutes.

Despite my productivity in those quiet days alone on the second floor of my building—Mrs. Russo had gone to her daughter’s house in Haverhill—I wasn’t going on this so-called vacation without my laptop and the handwritten transcriptions of every meeting since that first night. I would have felt less compelled to carry so much with me—I brought along two manuscripts as well—had the majority of my work over the holiday been for my actual job. But I had been preoccupied with the memoir on my laptop hard drive, currently seventy-eight thousand words and growing.