I was in Dr. Shapiro's office at 8:30 and home half an hour later, burdened with samples of some antianxiety drug that Shapiro thought might help in, say, a week or so. She didn't trust me with Xanax, she'd said, adding that if I'd been seeing things, the best medicine she could prescribe anyway was rest.

Precisely what things I'd been seeing, I hadn't told her. By daylight, the story seemed preposterous, and who would believe it if I didn't?

Scroogelike, I chalked everything up to physical causes. No doubt I'd gotten hold of some poisoned Cabernet at that party and some bad brandy at home. On top of that, I had been working too many hours lately. Stress and poisonings probably were enough to make anyone check out of reality for a while. Shapiro was no fun, but she probably was right.

So I turned up the air conditioning, crawled into bed, and started catching up on unconsciousness. When I finally got up, it was only to order a pizza and retire to the greatroom couch downstairs, which was where I still was, watching a movie, when Cassie and Chip walked in. I'd ignored the doorbell, but Cassie knew where I hid the spare key.

"So you are alive," Chip said, in lieu of hello. "She said you would be. She said you're too evil to die. Going in for stunt driving these days, are you?"

"Go away," I said.

He just smiled. "You might want to take some classes, though, if you're serious about it. Sounds like you're not very good at it yet."

Cassie scowled at him and then threw the spare key in the general direction of the couch. "You have the nerve of the world, Devlin Kerry, leaving me that message and then not answering your phone all day. Why didn't you pick up?"

"Phone didn't ring. I turned the ringer off. Want some pizza?"

She studied the remains in the box--two slices of cold loaded deep-dish--with suspicion. Then she surveyed the couch and the coffee table. An empty carton of Ben & Jerry's, with the spoon still in it. An ashtray full of M&Ms. A half-bag of caramel popcorn. Most of a jar of artificial cheese. And that was only the recognizable inventory. Her eyebrows arched delicately.

"Don't get uppity, Cass," warned Chip. "You never lived in a frat house. You haven't seen squalor." His expression grew thoughtful. "I'd have to say this is pretty darn close, though. What's on the lip of that bottle, Dev? Pizza sauce?"

Cassie's jaw dropped. "Do you mean to tell me that you've been drinking Coke right out of a two-liter bottle?"

I had been, as it happened, and did again then, just to annoy her. Chip laughed, though, and reached for the M&Ms.

"Have some popcorn, too," I urged. "It's the caramel kind. Try it with Cheez Whiz."

Cassie said a very bad word and left the room.

"Are you sure you weren't one of my frat brothers?" Chip asked. "Maybe the one who didn't wash his sheets for a whole semester?"

"I don't live like this, son. This is just for the duration of my breakdown. What are you two doing here?"

"Client meeting at 3. She wanted to stop by and check on you. You're sort of on the way." He fished a kernel of popcorn out of the bag and looked at me questioningly. I nodded. Carefully, so as not to get anything on his nice linen suit, he dunked the popcorn in the Cheez Whiz. "So really, how are you? There's a rumor going around the office that you totaled your car and you're in a coma."

"I am in a coma. Move. I can't see the TV."

Cassie came back from wherever she'd been in time to hear that. "You've seen that movie a hundred times. You've made me see it a hundred times." To Chip, she added, "She knows all the dialogue. You have no idea how annoying..."

Happy to demonstrate, I did. Not amused, Cassie stepped between me and the screen.

"We're leaving, Dev. This place is unspeakable. I can't imagine what's gotten into you. Are you going to the party tonight?"

"What party?" I asked.

"Greg and Linda's. I know you know."

"Oh. That party. I don't know. Wouldn't it be bad form to stay home from work and then show up at a party?"

"Bad form never stopped you from anything before," Cassie said exquisitely. "Is your car still in the shop?"

"Yup."

"All right, then, Mark and I'll be here to pick you up at 7."

"How bad is it?" Chip asked, all interest; he drove a restored Triumph himself.

"Not very," I said. "A few dings. They're putting a new top on. I'm supposed to get it back tomorrow afternoon."

"How much are they charging you this time?"

I started to point out the futility of trying to predict a car-repair bill, but Cassie interrupted. "The party, Dev. Seven. Sharp. Got that?"

"I'm not going on your date with you, lady," I told her. "It would look pathetic."

"It will be pathetic. We'll pick you up at 7. Come on, Chip. Some of us work."

I threw an M&M--a red one, the lucky kind--after her. I was feeling better already.

For my part, I decided to find the bar. Greg had the Dead on the CD system, loud, and odds were that it would be a long, long evening.

Outside would have a better place to smoke anyway, though, on such a beautiful night. Unseasonably cool, since those storms the other day, but practically perfect. Brilliant full moon; an ocean of stars; and down where I was, the sweet green fragrance of growing things. Something else, too--some sort of perfume, maybe; something exotic. Maybe Linda had hounded some other ex-smoker out of the house. Or maybe I was just imagining things; nobody else was around.

Wandering around the garden, I came upon a small stocked pond. Koi, of course--the yuppie goldfish. Still, they were pretty, shimmering in the moonlit water like lamé, and watching them was oddly hypnotic.

Vaguely, I remembered hearing that watching fish can lower your blood pressure. I had been under a lot of stress. The better to lower my blood pressure, I leaned farther forward, to look deeper into the pond...

...and almost went in. Reflected in the calm water was the woman who'd been haunting me.

"Stop it, dammit!" I shouted at the image. "You know you're not real!"

Immediately, I felt a real, corporeal hand light on my shoulder. When I spun around, the real, corporeal woman was standing there.

She studied my face for a moment, and then threw back her dark head and laughed. Smokily, sexily, knowingly.

All my physical machinery ground to a stop. I knew that laughter. It was as intimately familiar as my heartbeat.

As familiar, in fact, as her touch had been. Impossible.

"A beautiful night for a haunting." Her voice matched her looks--and I knew the voice, too, somehow. "Cigarette?"

Wordless, I shook my head. She reached into the bodice of her black gown and produced a lighted cigarette--quite a trick for a ghost. Then she drew on it, inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, almost theatri...

Wait a minute--ghosts didn't smoke.

Did they?

"I'm not a ghost. I'm a demon. Your demon." Her red mouth curved into a mocking little smile. "Your guardian devil, if you like. I thought you'd appreciate my wit in coming for you in a garden."

"How did you..."

"Hell is practically all gardens. You never hear about gardens in heaven, do you? That damned Adam-and-Eve story. Have a cigarette, Devlin. You look as though you want one."

True enough. I'd never stopped wanting one. The patches had helped, but the cost was ruinous; otherwise, I'd probably have worn them forever. On my worst days, I'd even contemplated smoking them.

Perhaps reading my mind, the woman pulled another lighted cigarette out of her bodice. How did she do that?

"No, thanks," I told her. "Really. I quit last year."

She put both cigarettes, still lighted, back where she got them from in the first place. Alarmed, I turned toward the koi pond, ready to run for water when she started to burn. But she didn't. She just smiled. "Go on. Take a good look. Take your time."

I felt a little criminal about it, but I did. Besides, that dress almost demanded attention. I'd never seen anything quite like it before. It was old-fashioned in design, sweeping the ground and fastened to the waist with ornate frogs, but as close-fitting as a racing glove and cut much lower than functionally necessary. I wondered how she got into it, much less got around in it. I also wondered why she was wearing a crucifix. It appeared to be studded with rubies, which went well with those eyes of hers, but it was still a crucifix--and parked way too low, at that. What was wrong with this picture?

"So you're my demon," I finally said. "You'll notice that I'm not arguing with you--I've been drinking. Do you have a name?"

"Would it amuse you if I said, 'We are Legion'?"

I scowled at her. She was too literate to be a devil.

"I heard that," she said. "I'm not a devil; I'm a demon. And you're too literate to be in advertising. But then, you're really in it for the sublimation, aren't you?"

She knew too much. But what worried me even more was the chance that she might know everything.

"Monica," she said suddenly. "My name is Monica. And I do know everything about you. Shall I prove it?"

"No. You're a nightmare. I'll wake up as soon as you bite."

She threw back her head and laughed again. Again, that terrible, inexplicable familiarity tugged at me.

"Walk with me," Monica said.

Whereupon Monica reached across the booth and unstrapped it.

"It ruined your look," she said, dangling the gaudy Swatch from a scarlet fingernail. "You're very attractive in black."

So was she, actually. More than attractive. But what had brought that on? "Was that a pass?"

"Was that a catch?"

Damned if I knew. I smiled uncertainly.

Monica fastened my watch onto her own wrist. "Flirt with me, Devlin. We're well past the preliminaries now. Tell me I'm the woman of your dreams, and I'll tell you what happens next."

"You are my dreams. That's the literal truth. I know it sounds crazy, but..."

"Can I tempt you?"

I jumped. But she was merely offering to feed me a bite of her biscotti. Feeling foolish and very conspicuous, I retreated behind my cappuccino cup.

"Flirtation," she remarked, "is a lost art. Perhaps you're too literal for it. Let's move on to seduction."

I almost choked on cappuccino. "Seduction? What seduction?"

"Yours, of course."

It occurred to me that I might be in trouble. "I'm celibate. By choice. It's not that I'm not flattered, but..."

"By choice, yes. But why make that choice?"

Before I could think of anything to say to that, she reached across the booth again to rest her fingertips lightly on my wrist. "You're warm. You have a pulse. You're mortal. Do you think you have forever?"

I jerked my arm back, not wanting to feel what I'd just felt.

Unrebuffed, Monica smiled. Her eyes ran down my shirt buttons and then back up, as though she were counting them.

For control, I gripped my cup harder--and for no reason at all, it shattered, cutting one hand.

Monica leaned farther into the candlelight, red eyes glittering, to check the cut. Then, without warning, she pressed it to her mouth. I tried to pull away, but she pulled back the other way, harder.

"Christ, Monica!" I whispered fiercely. "What are you doing?"

The other patrons of the coffeehouse had been watching us all evening, curious, but now they were starting to stare. There was going to be no explaining this. Nice normal people didn't carry on this way. Drinking blood--and in public--was too much even for Shipley Street.

"Monica, dammit, stop it!"

"Conformist," she murmured. But she finally let go.

I moved all the way back on my side of the booth, deliberately sitting on my hands, and glared at her. For a long moment, neither of us spoke.

"You didn't even ask if I'm tested," I finally complained.

"You were tested," she said calmly, "on April 23. At Presbyterian Hospital, on AIDS Awareness Day. On a bet. You're still negative. You taste a little anemic, though. Stress, I should think. Tell Dr. Shapiro to run a blood count the next time you..."

"How do you know that?"

"That your red-cell count is down?"

"That I was tested. When I was tested. Where..."

"I told you--I'm your demon. I know everything about you. Down to your blood type and your sexual fantasies. Even the ones you don't know about yet."

My mental wiring, already overloaded, began to shower sparks. My God, what a night.

"Suppose that I don't believe you," I told her. "Suppose that I don't believe in demons. Or angels, or any of the rest of that superstitious claptrap."

"They say that there are no atheists in the bedroom. Shall we find out?"

"I'm leaving. You're insane."

"Insanity is nothing but misdirected drive. So you're the one who's insane, by that definition. Tell me I'm wrong. If you can. Where do you fall on the Kinsey Scale?"

My shock must have shown, because she laughed, startlingly.

And then, much more startlingly, she vanished.

I was certain then: I'd been had.

Somebody was having some fun with me. Somebody who knew me too well, who knew that celibacy was starting to bother me, who knew exactly how to scare me. This had Cassie written all over it. Cassie and Kurt--which would explain that conversation in my office earlier in the week.

It added up. Advertising is the business of illusion, after all, and we all had access to the mechanics of illusion. This Monica was an actress, of course. A good one; I'd give her that. As for the special effects--the trick with the cigarettes, the way she kept dematerializing and then rematerializing...

Well, those things, I couldn't explain right off the bat. But J/J/G had the best video department in town, and those boys could almost always be bought for a beer.

They'd probably staged the dreams, too. Maybe they'd spliced subliminal images into work tapes; everyone knew I had to look at videotape almost every day. They'd all gone to a lot of trouble. But they probably were reveling in payoff now. That could've been Kurt at the coffeehouse, at the table by the far wall, in a phony beard and bald cap. No doubt he was back at the party right now, telling all.

I could almost hear him.

I couldn't wait to get my hands on him--and on Cassie, too.

Furious, embarrassed, guilty as sin, I started walking faster. I'd never suspected her of having that Machiavellian streak or that kind of taste for vengeance. All I'd done--lately--was subscribe her to a really interesting alt.sex newsgroup. (Her own fault for giving me her password.) She'd thrown a very satisfactory tantrum in my office the next morning. But she'd gotten over it. In fact, we'd conspired to subscribe Heather to that newsgroup before the day was over.

What a devious creature Cassie was. If only she weren't so...

Evil. Now there was a concept. Was Monica my concept of evil? Was it that obvious?

"To everyone but you," Cassie would say, if I were fool enough to ask. "Yes, a vampire is obvious, Dev. Think about it. Bram Stoker was a Victorian, and Irish on top of it, and his brain was half-rotten with syphilis. He probably couldn't help making up vampires. What's your excuse?"

I didn't have one. The worst of it was that I'd wanted Monica.

No--the very worst of it was that I still did.

Sexual evil. All right, fine; I was obvious. I was as crazy as Bram Stoker. I was out of my box. It was time to go home.

(c) 1999, ROCFanKat

Continued - Part 4