Demon

With my luck there had to be a line. I bounced nervously, shifting my weight, and the man in front of me turned around.

I’d lived in New York long enough to make it a habit not to look at people on the street. Here in midtown, most of the women were taller, thinner, and better dressed than I was, and I didn’t like feeling inadequate. I never made eye contact with anyone, not even with Harvey the hot-dog man, who’d served me daily for the last two months.

So why was I looking up, way up, into a pair of eyes that were … God, what color were they? A strange shade between black and gray, shot with striations of light so that they almost looked silver. I was probably making a fool of myself, but I couldn’t help it. Never in my life had I seen eyes that color, though that shouldn’t surprise me since I avoided looking in the first place.

But even more astonishing, those eyes were watching me thoughtfully. Beautiful eyes in a beautiful face, I realized belatedly. I didn’t like men who were too attractive, and that term was mild when it came to the man looking down at me, despite my four-inch heels.

He was almost angelically handsome, with his high cheekbones, his aquiline nose, his streaked brown and golden hair. It was precisely the tawny shade I’d tried to get my colorist to replicate, and she’d always fallen woefully short.

“Who does your hair?” I blurted out, trying to startle him out of his abstraction.

“I am as God made me,” he said, and his voice was as beautiful as his face. Low-pitched and musical, the kind of voice to seduce a saint. “With a few modifications,” he added, with a twist of dark humor I couldn’t understand.

His gorgeous hair was too long—I hated long hair on men. On him it looked perfect, as did the dark leather jacket, the black jeans, the dark shirt.

Not proper city wear, I thought, trying to summon up disapproval and failing because he looked so damned good. “Since you don’t seem in any kind of hurry and I am, do you suppose you could let me go ahead of you?”

There was another crash of thunder, echoing through the cement and steel canyons around us, and I flinched. Thunderstorms in the city made me nervous—they seemed so there. It always seemed like the lightning snaking down between the high buildings would find me an easier target. The man didn’t even blink. He glanced across the street, as if calculating something.

“It’s almost three o’clock,” he said. “If you want your deposit to go in today, you’ll need to skip that hot dog.”

I froze. “What deposit?” I demanded, completely paranoid. God, what was I doing holding a conversation with a strange man? I should never have paid any attention to him. I could have lived without the hot dog.

“You’re holding a bank deposit bag,” he said mildly.

Oh. Yeah. I laughed nervously. I should have been ashamed of my paranoia, but for some reason it hadn’t even begun to dissipate. I allowed myself another furtive glance up at the stranger.

To hell with the hot dog—my best bet was to get away from this too-attractive stranger, drop off the deposit, and hope to God I could find a taxi to get me across town to my meeting. I was already ten minutes late.

He was still watching me. “You’re right,” I said. Another crash of thunder, and the clouds opened up.

And I was wearing a red silk suit that I couldn’t really afford, even on clearance from Saks. Vanity again. Without a backward glance, I stepped out into the street, which was momentarily free of traffic.

It happened in slow motion, it happened in the blink of an eye. One of my high heels snapped, my ankle twisted, and the sudden rain was turning the garbage on the street into a river of filth. I slipped, going down on one knee, and I could feel my stockings shred, my skirt rip, my carefully arranged hair plastered limp and wet around my ears.

I looked up, and there it was, a crosstown bus ready to smack into me. Another crack of thunder, the bright white sizzle of lightning, and everything went calm and still. Just for a moment.

And then it was a blur of noise and action. I could hear people screaming, and to my astonishment money was floating through the air like autumn leaves, swirling downward in the heavy rain. The bus had come to a stop, slanted across the street, and horns were honking, people were cursing, and in the distance I could hear the scream of sirens. Pretty damned fast response for New York, I thought absently.

The man was standing beside me, the beautiful one from the hot-dog stand. He was just finishing a chili dog, entirely at ease, and I remembered I was famished. If I was going to get held up by a bus accident, I might as well get a chili dog. But for some reason, I didn’t want to turn around.

“What happened?” I asked him. He was tall enough to see over the crowds of people clustered around the front of the bus. “Did someone get hurt?”

“Yes,” he said in that rich, luscious voice. “Someone was killed.”

I started toward the crowd, curious, but he caught my arm. “You don’t want to go there,” he said. “There’s no need to go through that.”

Go through what? I thought, annoyed, staring at the crowd. I glanced back up at the stranger, and I had the odd feeling that he’d gotten taller. I suddenly realized my feet didn’t hurt anymore, and I looked down. It was an odd, disorienting sensation. I was barefoot, and if I didn’t know it was impossible, I would have said there was thick green grass beneath my feet.

I glanced back up at the rain-drenched accident scene in front of me, and time seemed to have moved in an odd, erratic shift. The ambulance had arrived, as well as the police, and people were being herded out of the way. I thought I caught a glimpse of the victim—just the brief sight of my leg, wearing my shoe, the heel broken off.

“No,” said the man beside me, and he put a hand on my arm before I could move away.

The bright light was blinding, dazzling, and I was in a tunnel, light whizzing past me, the only sound the whoosh of space moving at a dizzying speed. Space Mountain, I thought, but this was no Disney ride.

It stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and I felt sick. I was disoriented and out of breath; I looked around me,