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though I will say I expected something terrible. And I even thought by then that I might welcome it. But El was absorbed by grief, which only seemed to incense Lucifer.”
    “Why wasn’t he afraid? He had been the favorite; he had the most to lose.”
    “Exactly. El had never ignored the voice of his favorite before. And as his silence continued, Lucifer grew more venomous. I had never seen this kind of resentment. The violence of our uprising seemed like children’s quarrels by comparison.”
    Children’s quarrels? The horrible face of the seraph in my dream hovered before me.
    “Lucifer ranted and stalked. And we trailed him like ermine on the train of a king. Then, just when I thought he had forgotten us, El broke his silence.”
    We were nearing Charles Street. What happened next was something I would replay over and over in my mind for weeks. A woman jogger was running toward us. She was all blonde hair and black running pants, a hot pink iPod strapped to her arm. I thought with some irony that this was the extent of my social life of late: appreciation of women going the other way.
    Assuming, of course, that they were not demons in bookstores.
    Just as she was about to pass us, Lucian tripped, his hand grabbing at my shoulder as he practically fell into the woman’s path. It was such a queer incident; I had never seen him anything other than fully composed. The startled jogger, for her part, managed to skirt him just in time to avoid a collision that might have kneecapped her, and Lucian escaped the fall, thanks to his pulling at my shoulder which nearly took me down with him. As I stumbled, shoving the demon’s hand away, I saw alarm and confusion on the woman’s face. But, as we more or less righted ourselves, she seemed to decide that Lucian was neither an attacker nor injured, and she ran on.
    Lucian stared after her with slatted eyes. He murmured something under his breath.
    “What was that about?” I demanded. It was bad enough that he looked like a punk. Did he have to act like one, too?
    “You wanted her.”
    It was close enough to the truth to shut me up.
    I would come back again and again to this interchange, would remember that narrowed look on Lucian’s face for weeks and months to come.

    OUTSIDE THE GATE OF the Garden, a bearded man played an electric guitar. It was plugged into an amp, and now I realized the source of the music we had heard from the Commons softball field. As we crossed Charles Street, I asked, “What kind of special curse does one reserve for someone who has ruined everything?”
    “We’re talking about Lucifer, not Aubrey. And El didn’t curse Lucifer.” He pulled a cigarette out of his coat pocket.
    It was bizarre, seeing him light up. It was the first time I had actually seen him ingest anything.
    “He didn’t strike us down, either.”
    “So what did he do?”
    “He drew breath.” He exhaled a stream of smoke that drifted before and then over us, diffusing like ectoplasm. “And with that inaugural sound we, with keen immortal perception, knew that something was about to happen. Something different. ”
    “How could you tell?”
    “How can I explain this?” He kicked a Dunkin’ Donuts cup, an escapee from a nearby trash bin. “It was a pregnant sound. Expectant, like a hesitation on the verge of speech. It vibrated throughout the universe like the tight pulse of a tuning fork.” He flicked his fingers, sending a ripple of invisible energy into the air and a spatter of ash toward the ground.
    We veered down a small path toward roped-off flowerbeds and domed shrubs. I thought back to my nightmare, to the vision of the newly fallen drifting away, fading into the residue of sleep. I didn’t know what happened next. I had to know. I was jonesing, pure and simple. I stopped. “Show me.”
    His brows rose, as though he were waiting for a punch line.
    “Show me,” I said again.
    He pulled the cigarette from between his lips and flicked it away. “I will never