Now that was an odd thought. It occurred to me that such an event would constitute my first real date since my divorce, frayed pant hems and all.
At the table I watched with some curiosity as she emptied no fewer than three sugars into her mug, the ankh drawing my attention back to the skin beneath it every time it swayed on its silvery chain.
“So, how is the guardian angel business these days?”
She traced the handle of her mug with a fingertip. “Well, for one, the pay is horrible.”
“Sounds like editing.” I chuckled. “My name is Clayton, by the way.”
“I know,” she said, her hazel gaze leveled upon me.
“Guardian angel intuition?”
“No, Clay, because I know everything about you.”
I hesitated. “You didn’t tell me your name,” I said, slowly.
“Yes, I did.” She was no longer smiling.
“You did?” But I knew she hadn’t. Then I saw it: the dark intelligence behind her eyes. Every capillary under my skin bloomed to startled life. She glanced at her wrist; an expensive-looking watch peeked out from beneath her sleeve. “You were early today.”
My heart beat at my ribs like a cudgel. I flashed back to the office I had left an hour ago, to my hesitation on the street—and the fact that even as I entered the
I found myself staring at the copper-haired woman, trying to reconcile what I heard and saw, what I knew to be possible and had formerly thought impossible. I felt fear like a pickax in my gut. “This can’t be real. How can this be real?”
“This is real. So calm down and listen to me.”
“I can’t calm down! This can’t be real. No! I refuse to accept it. Who put you up to this? Was it Richard? He has my wife—what more does he want?” I was trembling, my mind splattered in too many directions at once: Richard, Aubrey, the Mediterranean stranger, the dark presence—and now I felt it, as I had in the café—cloaked in the flawless skin before me. “Tell me why you’re doing this!”
She muttered in a language I didn’t recognize. Suddenly she lunged forward, copper coils splayed over her shoulder, the color at odds with the burgundy of her coat. The effect struck me for an insane moment as one of fire.
She grabbed my hand. “I told you,” she said, as though I were unintelligent or a child, or both. “To tell you my story.”
Warmth spread like something injected directly into my bloodstream, creeping up my arm to my shoulder. I tried to pull away, but as in the café three nights ago, the demon’s grip brooked no argument. The warmth spread into my chest. My heart rate slackened. It was still too fast—I don’t think any power could have quelled it in that moment—but even as I thought this, I felt my anxiety, the alarm, the intensity of my fear, smooth out into something more placid. As alert as ever, but at least within my control.
“I don’t have time for your breakdown, Clay. There are things I need you to know, and at the rate you’re going, you’re going to give yourself a heart attack, and then you won’t be any good to either one of us.” Her voice was as smooth as a hypnotist’s, and I thought again of my theory that this was, in fact, a hoax, that it was merely the power of suggestion working its way through my muscles and veins that even now had relaxed back into the chair.
Then I remembered that for suggestion to work, the subject had to be willing.
My gaze dropped to the table, to her hand, holding mine. Ten minutes ago I had considered the possibility of this very circumstance. Now that it had come to pass, though not in any way I might have imagined, something inside me splintered. With the same kind of spontaneous recall with which I had remembered Aubrey and the travel guides, I returned to that night in our apartment when, long after she was asleep, I crept out of bed, careful not to uncover her. And I saw again the e-mail on her account from Richard, a man I didn’t know, saying that he loved her, that he would be thinking of her tomorrow as she told me she was leaving, and that he would be waiting up for her with warm arms afterward. And I knew that night that nothing would ever be the same again.
I knew the same thing now.
Were it not for the unnatural tranquility that had probably saved me a public scene here in the bookstore coffee bar, I might have been overcome by the uncontrollable urge to shout like a madman, to lash out at her with a fist, or even to bury my head in my arms and weep.
But I did none of these things. And the woman—the demon—nodded as though satisfied and let go of my fingers. The calm ebbed, but only slightly, when our contact was broken.
“Your body simply needs some time to adjust to what your mind now knows. Meanwhile, no, Richard did not send me. He could no sooner send me than he could call down rocks from heaven. I am here of my own volition, and I have much to tell you.”
“Am I going to hell?” I asked, ashamed at the smallness of my voice. “Is that why you’re here?”
