Free The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper Page B

of panicking patrons and waiters.
    “Tess!”
    There is something authoritative about my shout—I know her name —that parts the crowd, quieting the calls for the police, for someone to do something . It allows me to approach in what I hope to be a calming pace, my steps as sure as I can make them.
    All the while Tess’s eyes stay on me. But as I get closer I see that I’m wrong. They are her eyes, blue as mine. Yet it is not Tess who seeswith them. It’s not my daughter who stands on the edge, her arms out at her sides, fingers splayed apart to feel the wind pass through them. There is a rigidity in her stance that betrays an unfamiliarity, the testing of balance and strength. Her posture is that of someone contained within a prison of bones and skin. Her body, but not her.
    When I’m almost close enough to reach her, she rears back. Extends her leg out behind her so that she is balanced on one foot, the other wavering in the air.
    It’s meant to stop my approach. It works.
    Hello, David.
    An entirely different voice this time. Male, measured, the fine pronunciation that marks the affect of sophistication. A voice not unlike the ones I hear at university conferences or from the country-club parents of students who donate money in order to put their names on campus buildings.
    “You’re the one I was told I would meet,” I say.
    We’re going to be so close. Not friends, perhaps. No, certainly not friends. But unquestionably close.
    It lowers Tess’s leg so that she stands on both feet once more. Yet to show this isn’t a gesture of concession, both feet shuffle backward an inch. It leaves her heels hanging off the edge.
    “Let her go.”
    It replies in what sounds like Tess’s voice, though it’s not. The same phrase, the same intonation she used when I said I wanted to leave Venice less than an hour ago. A brilliant mimicry, though emptied of life.
    I like it here.
    “Please. I’ll do whatever you ask.”
    It’s not about my asking you to do anything , it says, speaking in its own voice again. This is for you, David. A journey of your own making. A wandering.
    That word again. Wander .
    The old man on the plane had used it, too. And the Thin Woman had said that about herself, hadn’t she? That she was not a traveler, but a wanderer. Even at the time I’d noted this term bears particular meaning for Milton. Satan and his underlings wander about the earthand in hell, self-directed but without destination. It is widely interpreted as connoting the homeless nature of demonic existence, the drifting movement within purgatory. Ungrounded, loveless.
    And then, as though reading my mind, the voice cites Paradise Lost itself.
    Wandering this darksome desert, as my way
    Lies through your spacious empire up to light
    Alone, and without guide, half lost, I seek . . .
    “Then tell me,” I say, my voice breaking. “What are you seeking? I promise I will help you find it.”
    I have already found what I seek. I have found you.
    Tess’s feet scratch back another inch. All of her weight gripped to the edge by her toes like a highboard diver.
    There is much to discover, David. Though little time.
    “How much?”
    When you see the numbers, you have only until the moon.
    “Why? What happens then?”
    The child will be mine.
    I lunge forward. Grab Tess’s hand.
    Even though I pull as hard as I can—even though she is an eleven-year-old girl less than half my weight—it’s all I can do to just hold her there. Her strength is not her own but the voice’s. And what it shows me at the touch of Tess’s hand is of his design, too. A collage of pain, colliding and burning.
    My brother inhaling the river’s water.
    Tess screaming, alone, in a dark forest.
    My father’s face.
    A severed thumb, spouting blood.
    Tess’s lips part. Say something I hear but can’t immediately make sense of. Because she’s going and I’m trying to hold her. There is nothing but the effort to not let go. Her fingers drawing closed.