Demon

The third was that Lucian had targeted me for more mysterious reasons of his own. This was the most disturbing possibility of all.

On Thursday afternoon I put in a call to Esad to ask if he remembered the man I had been sitting with two nights past. “Yes!” He raised his voice over the sear of the grill in the background. I could practically smell cooking onions. “Very nice!”

“Do you know him?” I asked, feeling foolish.

“No, no, it’s the first time to meet him. Bring him back! I’ll make something special.”

I had no intention of doing that. Further, I determined that if this Lucian pursued me again, I would go to the police.

NEW YORK LITERARY AGENT agent Katrina Dunn Lampe was a polished, vivacious woman who sapped my energy. But because she represented talented clients, I tried to meet her for lunch whenever she came to town. And so I was shifting time blocks in my schedule like square pieces in a puzzle box, trying to find that doable—preferably short— lunch slot during the two days she would be in town, when the appointment materialized in the corner of my screen.

6:00 p.m.: L.

Tonight.

I got up, hardly able to take my eyes off it, not trusting that it wouldn’t disappear the minute I blinked. Forcing myself away, I strode out of my office and down the hallway. Sheila was missing from her desk. I sat down in her chair and tapped her keypad, bringing her screen to life. I closed an open e-mail, but not before catching the subject line: “have to see you.” I noted it wasn’t from her husband, Dan. Opening the group schedules, I found my own, scrolled through it.

It wasn’t there.

I went back to my office and stared at my monitor.

L.

What did it mean? Did he just expect me to show up at Esad’s again? Or did he plan to follow me when I left work? Was he waiting, watching for me even now?

I sat like a ghost through a last-minute titling meeting. Stared at the sandwich I had brought from home without eating it. Shifted manuscript pages on my desk without reading them. Watched the clock.

I distracted myself by thinking of Sheila’s mysterious e-mail. A part of me wished I had noted the sender, a part of me wished I hadn’t seen it at all. I couldn’t help but remember Lucian’s insinuation. I hoped for Dan’s sake it wasn’t true.

By five o’clock I was useless. I shut down my laptop, shoved it along with a stack of proposals into my bag, grabbed my coat, and left.

Outside on the street, I realized I had no idea where I was going. But one thing I did know: I was not going to Esad’s. Neither did I want to risk anyone following me home. For a moment I actually considered going to Carmichael’s, a small restaurant with a decent wine list, once my favorite watering hole. I quickly discarded the idea—not for my three months on the wagon so much as the thought that my supposedly preternatural acquaintance might find it pathetic.

Which just made me mad.

If he was what he claimed to be, the last thing he should want was for me to stay sober. And the last thing I should want was to care what he thought. But here I was, a flustered wreck, having doubted my experience and second-guessed myself a thousand times since Tuesday.

I descended into Kendall Station. I normally hated the claustrophobic press of rush hour, but today there was something comforting about the electric lights, the subterranean warmth, the flow of bodies to and from the T.

On the train I did something I rarely do: I studied the faces around me. I took note of clothing, skin color, and watches but saw no one resembling the Mediterranean stranger. Packed in the Red Line car, I considered the distant dullness of the commuters’ eyes, even of those playing games on their phones or jacked into iPods, of the book readers who had all but escaped their bodies for the ride.

How long had I been one of them?

I filed out and up onto Park Street, one in a milling flotsam of bodies. I often felt lost in this current, everyone around me having places to be and going there with a purposeful intent I envied.

But not tonight.

Tonight I meant to end these three days of anxiety—days during which I had somehow forgotten that I was a rational and intelligent person. I meant to remember that, despite how I had felt in the past, I was not at the complete whim of circumstance—or of any other phenomena either.

I walked down School Street in the brisk cold of pre-twilight and entered the bookstore.

There was a time when this sheer volume of books—shiny in their crisp dust jackets, stacked along the new arrivals section or, better yet, orphaned on the bargain table—was as intoxicating to me as any wine. That was before I entered the business. Now I couldn’t remember the last time I had been here—only that it had been with Aubrey.

I took the stairs up a half level toward the back of the store. I wasn’t sure where I was going; I just wanted to get out of the entry. Passing between shelves like labyrinth corridors, I veered off between Women’s Studies and Sexuality and found myself, ironically, in Spirituality. There I sequestered myself at the end of a row housing books on guides, angels, and psychics.

Demons, too.

5:40. I felt a spike of anxiety but reminded myself that tucked away here, I was the colloquial needle in the haystack. Six o’clock would come and go, and here I’d be, my nose in a book on psychic healers. By seven o’clock I’d be taking dinner at a restaurant in Chinatown, perhaps contemplating writing an essay about the lengths desperate writers will go to get published, or at least requesting that our technical team put up a better firewall.

I had a second reason for coming here—one that had more to do with the exorcism of Aubrey than disproving