Demon

I tried to finish editing jacket copy for next season’s releases, to remember what I had loved about a new author’s manuscript enough to go to bat for a larger advance . . . and then went back to my book, to tinker with grammar, rephrase sentences that had nothing wrong with them, check for overuse of hyphens—a writing tic I had only recently discovered that I possessed. I did all of this with growing disquiet, merely for the sake of doing it, unable to quell the unease snaking through my gut.

And then I remembered the e-mail.

I scrolled through my deleted folder and found it, the one about the temple curtain from “Light1.” It did not give the full address—only the Light1 moniker—but on a whim I clicked Reply.

I wrote three words:

Where are you?

SOMETIME PAST 3:00 A.M. I fell asleep on my couch, dreaming of blood on doorways, wine in the Passover cup, of damnation like the closing of a vault, the tolling of a bell, of bells ringing over Arlington Street, bells slapping against the door of a café, bells . . .

My cell phone was ringing.

I rummaged through my pants and then fumbled through the pockets of the jacket I had left on the kitchen table. Finding the phone, I noted the caller: “Private.” I thought of Sheila. I would be kinder, I thought. I had not realized how volatile, how precarious, her mind-set was.

“Hello?”

The voice, when it came, was gritty. “Hello, Clay.” It might have been a man’s or an older woman’s. I did not recognize it.

“Lucian?”

Silence. I was impatient and anxious, ready to grab my coat now and meet him anywhere. “Is that you? Did you get my e-mail?”

Another pause. And then: “Were you expecting Lucian?”

A chill crawled from my shoulders to my nape.

“Is that you?” I whispered, my heart so loud in my ears I wondered if I’d be able to hear the reply. It came, with a soft rasp.

“No.” And then, “No, Clay.”

I clapped the phone shut, my heart drumming against my ribs.

I sat very still. My door was locked. My computer had gone into energy-save mode, and both living room lamps were on. I stared out past the window, at the black, predawn night.

I made myself stand and walk first to one lamp and then the other, turning each of them off with a quiet click. In the darkness I felt vulnerable, blind. I closed my eyes and slowly opened them, made out the shapes of my desk, my sofa, the television on its stand, the casement of the window. I made myself walk to the sill. I grasped it with one hand. The window looked out at the space between my apartment building and the house next door. I leaned against the frame and craned my neck, looking out toward the street.

At first I didn’t see it—not until I swept my gaze away from the curb. There. A lone figure, leaning against the porch post of a house across the street, black against the darkness, looking up at me.

I knew, instinctively, that it was not Lucian. I jerked back from the window.

I hurried into my bedroom, shut and locked the door behind me, climbed beneath the covers on my bed, and listened to the percussion of my own heart.

WITH ONE GLANCE AT my clock, I shoved out of bed in a panic. It was Tuesday; I was missing my weekly editorial meeting. I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

For a moment I stood dumb in the middle of my bathroom, remembering the phone call, the rasping voice.

The figure across the street.

It was daylight now. Emboldened, I walked straight to the window—not in my living room but in the spare room that faced the street. I pulled the shade.

There was the house, the apartment building next to it, and farther down, Saint Mary’s, the liturgies of which I often heard drifting from the open windows of the church in summer. A mother and her young son passed along the sidewalk, bundled up in coats and scarves, toward Massachusetts Avenue. There was no one else.

I hurried to shower, shave, dress. I hesitated a moment before pocketing my cell phone and another moment upon stepping outside my door. Music was coming from Mrs. Russo’s apartment, a soaring female voice that reminded me of Barbara Streisand. I couldn’t make out the words, but the sound of it, like the daylight, heartened me.

On the single short ride from Central to Kendall Station, one of the train car’s few passengers was holding onto the rail to my left and studying me. He looked at least fifty-five and wore a faded Carhartt jacket. His hair was orangish, in the way of men who colored their hair long after it was gray. His large, thick glasses took up the upper third of his face. An “I didn’t vote for him” bumper sticker with a picture of the president was wrapped around his sleeve like an armband. As far as I could tell, he wore no watch.

“Can I ask you something?” He swayed with the car. Was he a tourist? No, generally they held maps folded open to red and green diagrams of the T, as though they were the complex capillaries of an organism and not five simple lines named after colors.