bigger picture. I can give you that.”
“You don’t even know me!”
“On the contrary”—he slid the napkin dispenser away, as though it were a barrier between us—“I know everything about you. Your childhood house on Ridgeview Drive. The tackle box you kept your football cards in. The night you tried to sneak out after homecoming to meet Carrie Kraus. You broke your wrist climbing out of the window.”
I stared.
“I know of your father’s passing—you were fifteen. About the merlot you miss since giving up drinking, the way you dip your hamburgers in blue cheese dressing—your friend Piotr taught you that in college. That you’ve been telling yourself you ought to get away somewhere—Mexico, perhaps. That you think it’s the seasonal disorder bothering you, though it’s not—”
“Stop!” I threw up my hands, wanting him to leave at once, equally afraid that he might and that I would be stuck knowing that there was this person—this
His voice gentled. “Let me assure you that you are not the only one. I could list myriad facts about anyone. Name someone. How about Sheila?” He smirked. “Let’s just say she didn’t return your message from home, and her husband thinks she’s working late. Esad? Living in war-torn Bosnia was no small feat. He—” He cocked his head, and there came now a faint buzzing like an invisible swarm of mosquitoes. I instinctively jerked away.
“What was that?” I demanded, unable to pinpoint where the sound had come from.
“Ah. A concentration camp!” He looked surprised. “I didn’t know that. Did you know that? And as for your ex—” He tilted his head again.
“No! Please, don’t.” I lowered my head into my hand, dug my fingers into my scalp. Five months after the divorce, the wound still split open at the mere mention of her.
“You see?” he whispered, his head ducked down so that he stared intently up into my face. “I can tell you everything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve made a pastime of studying case histories, of following them through from beginning to end. You fascinate me in the same way that beetles with their uncanny instinct for dung rolling used to fascinate you. I know more about you than your family. Than your ex. Than you know about yourself, I daresay.”
Something—some by-product of fear—rose up within me as anger at last. “If you are what you say, aren’t you here to make some kind of deal for my soul? To tempt me? Why did you order me coffee, then? Why not a glass of merlot or a Crown and Coke?” My voice had risen, but I didn’t care. I felt my anger with relief.
Lucian regarded me. “Please. How trite. Besides, they don’t serve liquor here.” But then his calm fell away, and he was staring—not at me but past me, toward the clock on the wall. “But there”— he pointed, and his finger seemed exceedingly long—“see how the hour advances without us!” He leapt to his feet, and I realized he meant to leave.
“What? You can’t just go now that you’ve—”
“I’ve come to you at great risk,” he hissed, the sound sibilant, as if he had whispered in my ear though he stood three feet away. And then he strode to the glass door and pushed out into the darkness, disappearing beyond the reflected interior of the cafe like a shadow into a mirror. The strap of bells fell against the door with a flat metal clink, and my own stunned reflection stared back.
RAIN PELTED MY EYES, slipped in wet tracks through my hair against my scalp, ran in rivulets down my nape to mingle with the sweat against my back. It had gotten colder, almost freezing, but I was sweating inside the sodden collar of my shirt as I hurried down Norfolk, my bag slapping against my thigh, my legs cramped and wooden, nightmare slow.
The abrupt warmth inside my apartment building threatened to suffocate me as I stumbled up the stairs. My ears pin-tingled to painful life as I fumbled with my keys. Inside my apartment at last, I fell back against the door, head throbbing and lungs heaving in the still air. I stayed like that, my coat dripping onto the carpet, for several long moments. Then a mad whim struck me.
With numb fingers I retrieved the laptop from my bag and set it up on the kitchen table. With my coat still on, I dropped down onto a wooden chair, staring at the screen as it yawned to life. I logged into the company server, opened my calendar.
There—my six-thirty appointment. It was simply noted:
2
For the next two days, I kept to my office and home. I stared at my monitor by day and at my ceiling at night in bed, trying to dissect how someone with enough research, a talent for suggestion, and a few lucky guesses might pretend to be a demon with seeming credibility to the point where I might actually believe I was in the presence of evil. And while I decided it was possible, the one thing I could not answer was why.
Of course my mind went first to Aubrey. But to think that she would direct so much energy my way—even out of cruelty—seemed pure vanity on my part. I had given her no cause for vendetta toward me, having stepped aside with near silence once her resolve to leave was clear.
I briefly considered Sheila, who was not only our office manager but the wife of my college roommate. I owed her much, I supposed; it was through her that I first met Aubrey. She had also been the one to alert me to the position at Brooks and Hanover when my predecessor left to join Random House. And she was the only one in the office with ready access to my calendar. But while our conversation had been stilted, if polite, since the divorce, such a scheme was so far beyond and beneath her that I rejected the idea immediately.
That left three options. The first was Richard, but I could think of no reason for him to take the trouble. He already had what he wanted. Still, he had the resources and access to a storehouse of information about my history via Aubrey.
The second was, again, that Lucian was a writer. And while I had heard stories of writers tracking editors like crazed fans stalking movie stars, I had to wonder why anyone would direct so much interest my way when editors for the Six Titans, as I called them, were a train ride away in New York City.
