Demon

governor. It had all been noticeably missing from the account in Genesis. I wondered if it was anywhere in the Bible.

Returning to the online Bible, I searched for Lucifer. The only linked passage that came back was a reference from Isaiah:

How you have fallen from heaven,

O morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!

I searched next for Eden. An entire list of references scrolled before my eyes. I dropped down to the index results, to “Garden of Eden.” There I found more Genesis and more Isaiah but nothing that snagged my attention—until this:

You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you:

I scrolled down through the passage from Ezekiel.

You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones.

You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you.

Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned.

So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones.

I grabbed my notes and reread them, my heart accelerating. It was the same story except that, as before, the demon’s account was more fantastic. More compelling.

I had sworn I would not publish his story even if he were J. D. Salinger.

Salinger never wrote a story like this.

And again I had to wonder: Why me? I was no high-profile editor. Brooks and Hanover was a small publishing house. With titans like Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, and Random House roaming the earth—with Houghton Mifflin, even, right here in Boston—why choose me?

It drifted back to me from the pile of pages: My story is very closely connected to yours.

But how could that be?

I searched for Satan, half expecting to see a warning on my screen.

Satan: “Accuser.”

For a long time, I read and reread that single word.

I SLEPT, FINALLY, AROUND three in the morning but woke again just after five thirty.

I couldn’t go on like this. Maybe that is his intent. I pictured myself five years into the future, a skeleton of a man, my eyes sunken into my skull, dark circles like black halos on pallid, sun-forsaken skin, ranting on street corners, and no doubt jobless.

I got up for water, thinking I ought to return to bed, try to sleep some more. But instead I sat down at my computer, setting the glass atop a pile of proposals I had read the night before, the content of which I could no longer remember.

I touched the pad on my laptop. A page of links on Satan and Satan-related topics sprang to pixilated life. I had asked about Satan on the verge of hysteria that day in the bookstore. Now here I was with a bookmark on him.

Lucian claimed he didn’t know where I was meant to spend eternity. Staring at the screen, I wondered: Was I sealing my own fate with every hour, every minute I passed with him? I felt the cold fingers again, scraping the inside of my chest. Could one be damned by association?

Stop it. You’ll make yourself crazy.

I looked out my window onto the darkness of Norfolk Street. All around me I was surrounded by so-called normal people chasing lives filled with normal things—money, relationships, losing weight. People who went home to families or empty apartments and went to bed worrying about the same, normal things.

I wondered if I would ever return to that life. Assuming Lucian never appeared again, could I ever purge myself of this more vivid reality and go back, reset . . . reboot?

Just as I lifted my finger to the power button, a new meeting notice appeared in the corner of my screen.

14

That Tuesday, Helen, my editorial director, called me into her office.

Helen Ness was a strange mixture of steely, old-school-style politics and a frozen-in-time femininity that, having manifested itself in young adulthood, had never quite progressed into the next thirty years. As I entered her office, she pulled off her glasses. They hung on a beaded chain and dropped down against her sweatered bust. I took a seat in one of the two chairs in front of her heavy oak desk. From here I could see that the lines at the corners of her mouth had directed bits of color from her lipstick away from her lips like tiny irrigation canals.

“I’m worried about you, Clay. Even when you’re here, you don’t seem here. Your skin is pasty, you look thin and worn out. You look terrible.” She smoothed a strand of hair from her forehead. Shoulder-length, curled under at the ends. I doubted it had changed style since her days at Smith College. “I don’t know if it’s your divorce or your health or what. Sheila said you’ve been to the doctor a few times.”

Well, see there’s this demon.

“But I need you to let me know what’s going on.”

He’s following me, and I’m pretty sure he had that runner on Arlington killed.

“Let me help, Clay.”

I’m compiling the story of our encounters, which, by the way, has a nice subplot about