Demon

I sat down, sighed, and gestured at the paper skyline. “I’ve been sick. I’m behind. I could use about five solid projects right now to fill out our next season. I’ll never get through all of this in time. So anything you want to send when you get back—”

“You know I will.” She paused and then, on seeming whim, reached for the bag covered with Coach’s trademark Cs. “You know I don’t bring a lot with me”—she pulled several packets from her bag—“but here are a couple that might trip your trigger.”

“I’ll read them this afternoon.” I meant it. I needed to patch at least one more project together this week or next to take to committee. Still, I took them with the sense of one accepting a meal from a questionable Samaritan.

She pulled another few pages from her magic bag. “And then I have this strange little orphan. Highly experimental. Frankly, I’m having some trouble finding a home for it.”

She handed me a mere two pages, an odd length for a proposal—more like a query, I thought. I added it to the top of the pile. And then my gaze caught the title: Demon: A Memoir.

My eyes slid down to the next line: A novel by L. Legion.

“It’s dark, edgy—it’ll get in your head. Don’t read it unless you want to seriously question what you think is real.”

My heart accelerated, loud in my ears. “I’ll look at it as soon as I can—just back from being sick,” I murmured, already turning to the first page past the cover. My blood iced over at the first words printed there:

Don’t stop reading. I need you to know.

“Well, let me know what you think.” Katrina gathered up her coat.

“Who—who did you say this author was?” I blinked up at her.

She gave me a blank look. “Someone my assistant discovered in the slush pile. I think it has potential.”

I don’t know what I said after that. I saw her to the door, the manuscript clutched in a sweaty hand. When she stopped to talk with Sheila, the voices of both women assuming a personal tenor, I shut my door and carried the pages to my desk.

Don’t stop reading. I need you to know. This story is about you, after all.

I sat down hard in my chair.

I know what you think, and it’s not true. Hear me out; I have nothing to gain by lying to you. You’re very important to me.

My fortitude, so carefully bolstered by my logic, cracked. Go away, I thought, my voice like a child’s in my mind. But even as I thought it, I knew that wasn’t really what I wanted.

I’ll tell you that thing you want to know, answer the question haunting you. You just have to hear me out—hear it through—first. Let me tell my story. All of it.

I am not a mindless monster. I do what I do for a reason. Question what you think you know about me. I’ve only told you the beginning. You don’t completely understand anything yet.

Time is failing us. Don’t let your natural instincts keep you at bay. You cannot trust them. They’re human, after all.

I promise you’ll get what you want in the end.

For now I offer you a rare gift. Take it.

That’s all there was: a teaser paragraph, the title, and Katrina’s contact info. I read it again with an editor’s eyes. Yes, it might be mistaken for an intriguing, if nebulous, prologue.

I set the pages aside. Silently, robotically, I turned on my computer, logged onto the network. Opened my calendar. There was Katrina, at 9:00 a.m. That was all.

It appeared as I was staring at the screen:

9:30: Come outside. I’m waiting. L.

Insanity. It was all I had known these last few weeks.

I put on my coat.

9

The taxi waited on the tree-lined east side of my office building. I stared at it until the driver leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in. We have to talk.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“Just get in!”

When I didn’t move, he leaned farther across the front seat. He was ruddy skinned and thick set. His head was shaved and his brows might as well have been; they were so pale that they hardly appeared on his face except when the light caught them. A thick stainless steel watch escaped the ribbed cuff of his leather bomber jacket. “I tried to delay her. Startling her was supposed to slow her down.”

I thought again of his strange stumble that day in the Garden.

“And prevent her getting killed?”

“That was the idea.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because I didn’t want it interfering with our time together.”

“You’re not even going to pretend that you cared about saving her life.”

He paused. “No.”

I believed him. That the expediency of his purpose and his personal convenience took precedence over a life was both brutal and, I believed, the truth. The bald admission triggered something irrevocable within me, and I knew then I could no sooner walk away than I could return to my former life—be it the one with Aubrey or my aimless existence since.