Demon

“Sure.” I prepared to tell him he could switch to the Green Line two stops after Kendall.

“Has someone been talking to you? Contacting you?”

I froze. And then I studied the man more acutely: the faint age spots on his face and the edge of his upper lip, the flannel shirt under his jacket, the too-straight line of his hair across his forehead that indicated a comb-over.

“Don’t be afraid.” He regarded me through sagging eyelids magnified by those glasses. “Has someone been talking to you? Someone not like you?”

The chill and ensuing sweat of the night before returned to me—along with the same need to flee, to shut myself behind a door. The train slowed with a squeal of brakes, and I jumped up, grabbing for the rail near the door as it stopped completely. I squeezed past the doors as soon as they opened, hurried out into the station and up the stairs. Only on the street did I look behind me to confirm that he had not followed me.

I needed to talk to Lucian.

I went into the meeting late, flustered, unprepared. I contributed little, unable to think of anything but the man on the train, the voice on the phone. Were other members of the legion aware of what Lucian was up to, his ambition to have his story—and theirs—outed? Could they interfere?

Helen pulled me aside in the hallway after the meeting. “Clay, I know you’re working on a brilliant piece of writing. And it is brilliant. But I can’t have you doing it at the expense of your responsibilities. It’s all right if it takes longer to finish. You and Anu are still working out the contract particulars, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” I’d forgotten the contract.

“Then give yourself the time you need to do your job in the meantime. Please.”

I nodded, embarrassed and a little resentful at being openly chastised outside the conference room. I went into my office, shoved the door shut with more force than I meant to, dropped the stack of packets from the meeting onto my desk.

I went to the window and looked out at the people walking by, headed somewhere with a purpose I had once envied.

Returning to my desk, I unpacked my bag, pretending it was any usual day—not that I had had a usual day since early October—putting the packets on the corner of my desk, docking my laptop.

I signed in to the company server, opened my calendar, and faltered.

There. Five o’clock tonight: L. But that was not what caused me to hesitate. Below that, a line across the time block read:

Don’t EVER try to contact me again.

I sagged into my office chair and rubbed at my face with trembling hands.

27

In the Marriott Starbucks across the street from my office, I waited. For Lucian. For answers. For the end of the story.

Five o’clock arrived and passed. I sipped my coffee, strained to see guests walking through the hotel lobby, studied every patron that came into the coffee shop, most of whom left again. Except for a businessman camped at a table with his laptop, I was the only one there.

I checked my watch. 5:07.

Was this his idea of getting back at me? For what—trying to contact him?

5:11.

I thought through our last conversation that day in the airport before the nuns came along. They had thanked Lucian, not in the way older women coo at the kindness of strangers but in the regal way of those accustomed to respect. I had eavesdropped on their conversation, which consisted wholly of the details of their trip, and had found myself disappointed not to hear them debating Scripture or the devil.

5:19.

I thought about the man on the T and the figure in the darkness across the street from my apartment. They weren’t the same person; the man on the T was short, slightly stooped. The figure across the street was taller, seemingly at ease in the darkness, apparently doing nothing but standing there.

Waiting to be seen. Watching me.

A man in cargo pants with zippered pockets and a “Carpe Brewem: Seize the Beer” sweatshirt strode into the coffee shop. He was tall, with straight features and a prominent nose. He wore thick socks inside his Birkenstocks, and I could see the gleam of a silver chain disappearing into the neck of his sweatshirt. He might have been a grad student at MIT.

He wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Clay.” He sat down at my table. He did not smile.

“For being late?”

“Well, yes. But mostly for the situation we seem to be in.”

“What situation is that? Did you call me last night? Was that you on the street outside my apartment?”

His bangs flopped over his forehead. He raked them back and then frowned. “Someone called you?”

I nodded. I had never considered that he might not know about the call. But he did not ask for details. Instead, he sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve pulled you into the middle of a conflict that existed long before you were aware of it, one that has been happening around you for . . . well, you know the story.”

“There was a man on the T, asking if anyone had been talking to me.”

“I’ve heard.”

“He had auburn hair, bald on top—”

“It doesn’t matter what he looked like. He could be one of millions.”

“Of Legion?”