The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online

was build a church and hope God would save them.”
    “And did he?”
    “The plague eventually lifted. As it would have whether anyone built a church or not.”
    Tess twirls a new bundle of noodles around her fork.
    “I think it was God. Even if you don’t,” she says decisively. Takes a cheek-bulging mouthful. Chews and grins at the same time.
    T HAT EVENING, TIRED BUT EXCITED, WE GO FOR A SHORT STROLL along the twisting calles surrounding the hotel before bed. I have a better-than-average sense of direction (it comes with the travel-guide map study) and can see our course in my head: three jagged sides of a square and then back again. Yet shortly after setting out, the turns become unexpected, the lane breaking off into two smaller canalside fondamenta , forcing a decision—left? right?—I didn’t think I’d have to make. Still, I figure I’m holding to the idea of going around the square and returning to the Grand Canal, even if it takes us a little longer.
    After half an hour, we’re lost.
    But it’s okay. Tess is here. Holding my hand, oblivious to my internal calculations, my attempts to guess north from south. The old man on the plane was wrong. Being lost in Venice is as charming as the guide books say it is. It all depends on who walks next to you. With Tess, I could be lost forever. Then it occurs to me, with the sharp pinch of emotion, that so long as I am with her, I could never be truly lost.
    Just as I am about to abandon my masculinity altogether and ask someone for directions, we come upon the doors to Harry’s Bar. Hemingway had his own table here for the winter of 1950 . The guidebook returns this fact to me, along with the more useful recollection of the map of the area. We aren’t too far off. We probably never were. The Bauer is just around the corner.
    “We’re home,” I tell Tess.
    “We were lost back there, weren’t we?”
    “Maybe a little.”
    “I could tell from your face. It does this thing sometimes”—she hardens her brow—“when you’re thinking.”
    “Your face does the same thing.”
    “Of course it does. I’m like you, and you’re like me.”
    The simple truth of her observation stops me, but Tess walks ahead. My guide, leading me to the hotel doors.
    T HE NEXT DAY MY PLAN IS TO DO A LITTLE SIGHTSEEING, VISIT the address the Thin Woman provided me in the afternoon, then wipe my hands of my official business and enjoy the evening and tomorrow with Tess unencumbered. Yet as we start out in a private gondola, Tess marveling at the long boat’s smooth progress through the chop, I begin to suspect my timing is a mistake. I should have gotten my work (whatever it is) over with first thing, because my speculation over what I have been asked to observe here has, even over breakfast, graduated to niggling worry. The strangeness of my assignment was sort of thrilling over the last twenty-four hours, a distraction from unwelcome realities. I could see the episode playing out as something to be retold in the lecture hall, a winning, screwball anecdote at conference wine-and-cheeses. Now, though, in the gold haze of Venetian light, the butterflies in my stomach have turned to warring wasps, churning and stinging.
    What had the Thin Woman called it? A case. A phenomenon . Not the analysis of a discovered text or interpretation of verse (the only sort of fieldwork I might be expected to lend my expertise to). She came to me for my knowledge of the Adversary, one of the Bible’s many names for the Devil. Apocryphal documentation of demonic activity in the ancient world .
    None of this, of course, can be discussed with Tess. So I play cheerful tour guide as best I can. All the while struggling to tell myself that this day is merely a little out of the ordinary, that I shouldn’t fear the unusual simply because it takes me out of my habitat of library, study, and seminar room. Indeed, maybe more days like this would have made me more present, as Diane had wished I’d been.