Demon A Memoir by Tosca Lee

Author:Tosca Lee
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: B&H Books

Don’t EVER try to contact me again.

I sagged into my office chair and rubbed at my face with trembling hands.

27

In the Marriott Starbucks across the street from my office, I waited. For Lucian. For answers. For the end of the story.

Five o’clock arrived and passed. I sipped my coffee, strained to see guests walking through the hotel lobby, studied every patron that came into the coffee shop, most of whom left again. Except for a businessman camped at a table with his laptop, I was the only one there.

I checked my watch. 5:07.

Was this his idea of getting back at me? For what—trying to contact him?

5:11.

I thought through our last conversation that day in the airport before the nuns came along. They had thanked Lucian, not in the way older women coo at the kindness of strangers but in the regal way of those accustomed to respect. I had eavesdropped on their conversation, which consisted wholly of the details of their trip, and had found myself disappointed not to hear them debating Scripture or the devil.

5:19.

I thought about the man on the T and the figure in the darkness across the street from my apartment. They weren’t the same person; the man on the T was short, slightly stooped. The figure across the street was taller, seemingly at ease in the darkness, apparently doing nothing but standing there.

Waiting to be seen. Watching me.

A man in cargo pants with zippered pockets and a “Carpe Brewem: Seize the Beer” sweatshirt strode into the coffee shop. He was tall, with straight features and a prominent nose. He wore thick socks inside his Birkenstocks, and I could see the gleam of a silver chain disappearing into the neck of his sweatshirt. He might have been a grad student at MIT.

He wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, Clay.” He sat down at my table. He did not smile.

“For being late?”

“Well, yes. But mostly for the situation we seem to be in.”

“What situation is that? Did you call me last night? Was that you on the street outside my apartment?”

His bangs flopped over his forehead. He raked them back and then frowned. “Someone called you?”

I nodded. I had never considered that he might not know about the call. But he did not ask for details. Instead, he sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve pulled you into the middle of a conflict that existed long before you were aware of it, one that has been happening around you for . . . well, you know the story.”

“There was a man on the T, asking if anyone had been talking to me.”

“I’ve heard.”

“He had auburn hair, bald on top—”

“It doesn’t matter what he looked like. He could be one of millions.”

“Of Legion?”

“I suspect he was with the Host.”

“And last night?”

“I suspect the other.”

I shivered, felt the sharp claws of anxiety inside my chest. In these meetings, these times together, we had existed in a world of story, separate from the spiritual and corporeal worlds we came from. Now, in the last twenty-four hours, I

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