The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper Read Free Book Online Page B

sublime. The unsettling presence of the serpent and its implications not only upon the iconic “Eve,” but the two realpeople pictured in the mosaic, a man and woman touched not by a symbol, but by a physically embodied evil. The green-scaled length. The forked tongue.
    And then, in the hushed tomb of the church, the sound of a whisper next to my ear. The serpent’s eyes focused not on a girl holding out her hand for an apple, but upon me.
    “Dad?”
    Tess has her hands against my lower back.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Me?” she says. “What’s wrong with you ? I’m holding you up.”
    “Sorry. Got a bit dizzy for a second there.”
    She squints. Knows I’m not giving her all the details and determining whether she needs to hear them now or not.
    “Let’s go back to the hotel,” she suggests. “We can have a rest before your meeting.”
    She’s your child, the imagined O’Brien qualifies in my head as Tess leads me out into the piazza’s bustle. She knows more than you could ever hide .

5
    I ’ M FEELING MUCH STRONGER AFTER LUNCH . T HE BABYSITTER THE concierge has arranged for arrives at our room to look after Tess for the couple hours I will be away. Stout, matronly, “fully registered,” as the hotel assured me. I trust her at once. As does Tess. The two of them engaged in Italian lessons before I’m out the door.
    “Be back soon,” I call to Tess, who rushes to deliver a farewell kiss.
    “ Arrivederci , Dad!”
    She closes the door behind me. And I’m alone. It’s only once I’m down among others in the ordered comings and goings of the lobby that I feel able to pull out the address the Thin Woman gave me.
    Santa Croce 3627 .
    A typically Venetian designation. No street name, no apartment number, no postal code. Even the most extensive online map zooming could provide only a couple-hundred-square-meter area where it might be. To find the doorway I’m to knock on, I’ll have to be on the ground, looking for signs.
    I board a vaporetto at the hotel’s dock and head back along theGrand Canal to the Rialto stop. The bridge is as busy today as when we passed under it yesterday, and as I work my way across it to enter the Santa Croce sestiere on the other side, my hesitations about whatever awaits me at 3627 lift away, and I am merely a visitor among visitors, passing the vendors’ stalls and asking “How much?” in the languages of the world.
    Then I’m following the relatively easy route highlighted in the printout I unfold from my pocket. There are people here, too, other map readers like me, though as I proceed their numbers diminish. Before long there are only locals returning to their homes with grocery bags. Kids kicking soccer balls against ancient walls.
    I should be close. But how can I know? Only some of the doors have numbers next to them. And they aren’t in anything approaching order. 3688 is followed by 3720. So I turn back, thinking the numbers will get smaller, only to find 3732 comes after 3720. Much of the time, I’m just trying to remember landmarks to which I can stick a mental pin: these drooping window-box flowers on the second floor, those stern-faced old men drinking espresso outside a café. Yet when I cut back and follow what I’m sure is the same path, the café is gone, the flower box replaced by an undershirt left out to dry.
    It is only at the moment I start to head back in the direction (or what I believe to be the direction) of the Rialto that I find it.
    Stenciled in chipped, gold paint on a wooden door smaller than any other is 3627 . It must be an original, maintained since the time when it was built for shorter, seventeenth-century Venetians. Its size, along with the tiny script of the numbers, gives the impression of an address that has long done its best to avoid notice altogether.
    A doorbell button flickers like a nightlight even now at midday. I press it twice. It’s impossible to know whether it makes a sound within or not.
    In a moment, the door