Mom was in a deep drunk messing snoring stupor, and Dad had given up for the night, so I took the chance to get the hell out of the house. It's hard to sneak out at night usually, because Mom put those metal bars over the window. When I press the emergency unlock button, it makes a hell of a noise. To get around this, I waited for a moment when I was home alone one day to open them, then left them ajar so that I might more easily be able to leave at other times. I just hope she doesn't notice.

I took the number twelve bus downtown. The people that ride the bus after eleven are really something to behold. One drunk, one junkie, a lady with the biggest gold Chanel earrings I've ever seen, and a wrinkled Chinese lady with two bags of meat. The junkie was twitching and mumbling about flying.

Too bad no one knows what I know about flying. They'd give up their alcohol, drugs, and lattes for good. That stuff only gets in the way.

I looked out the window. I kind of both hoped and feared that Mephisto would show. I never knew what he would do, but no matter how bad or good, it was definitely always interesting.
And I was definitely bored. I remembered how bored I use to get just a year ago, when I never left my room, never left my house. Just locked up inside, writing stories, not experiencing life. Then he showed up. He showed me that real life was on the tail end of all trouble brewing. It's all his fault I started sneaking out at night.

I got off on the corner stop by the convenience store. It was too late for many people to be milling about, but Jack, the homeless guy that always manned that corner, was still there. I waved to him, and he smiled to me beneath his scraggly beard. "Hiya Kat. Got any leads for me tonight?"

Sometimes I'd have an instinct about where he might find some cash. People were always dropping it in the city. It wasn't ever much, or I'd have gotten it for myself. But I had nowhere to spend it.

Jack was a good guy. He'd had a family once, a wife and two boys. Then he lost his programming job during the recession and couldn't find anyone to hire him. He slowly sunk into a depression, but didn't have money or insurance for treatment. His wife just thought he was lazy. She divorced him and took the kids, and then he owed child support. A couple of years went by on unemployment, and when he tried to get back into the job market, his skills were already outdated. So it went, he ended up on the streets. He told me stories about how people cussed him out and spat on him, calling him lazy, calling him a lowlife, telling him he was useless... to just get a job. Over the last year I had only witnessed him sink lower and lower into his depression.

I always felt so bad for him, and whenever I traveled the astral planes, I always looked for him and tried to bolster his aura however I could. In the waking life, though, I could only help him find cash.

I thought a bit, and got a flash of something green in the old subway shaft. I pointed. "Over there, underneath the fast food bag."

He looked at me, with hope glimmering in his eyes. Then he shuffled over to the shaft, bent down, and retrieved a five dollar bill. "Thanks, girl!"

"No problem, Jack. Keep warm."

He nodded to me, then ambled into the liquor store a block down, intent on warmth.

I fingered the spiral necklace like a worry stone, my usual habit. I had found it on the sidewalk one day, and it had stuck with me. I had a hard time removing it to get into the shower. In fact, I had stopped taking it off altogether. Sometimes it tingled, usually just before Mephisto would appear. I again found myself longing for his presence, butterflies in my stomach when I thought of him. I was obsessed with him. I think he knew that, and liked it that way. He knew he was my teacher, and I knew I could have chosen to seek out a better one. Or rather, one that did not cause so much mischief in my life. Yet I couldn't resist. I couldn't resist my darker impulses. They sat next to my lighter ones.

Mephisto taught me the beauty of paradox, and the inherent freedom of giving up the labels "good and evil".

On fourth street I finally ran across the bookstore across from which I had found my spiral pendant. I pressed my hands to the glass and looked inside. Though it was way past store hours, I sometimes saw the faint glow of a lamp in the back, and the golden edge of a man's face in that light, perusing an old book. He was always so engrossed in it that he never saw me spying on him. Page after page he'd turn, almost lovingly, his eyes fervent in the search for something important. I was always struck by this feeling that I had met him before, but I wasn't ever sure where.

The last few times I had seen him, his face had been haggard, tired.

He wasn't there tonight. My gut sank, as my last form of potential amusement had been snatched away.

And yet...

I turned around, and there he was in the alley, locking up the back door. I froze in panic. Then I ran around the corner to watch him. He walked to the downtown train and waited at the stop. I ambled over casually, a few yards away. The train pulled up and I hopped inside, dedicated to following him wherever he went.

He stayed on for several stops, his hands folded neatly over a leather satchel. He seemed calm, in deep thought, as his eyes gazed out the window. I tried to watch him through the reflection in my window.

I let him get off, then I slipped out at the last moment, following him from a safe distance. He went into a shabby one-level apartment building, turning on the lights a moment later. I hid behind some bushes on the side of the building. The curtains were opened a crack, and I could see into his bedroom.

He put the satchel next to his bedside table and I squatted down when he came over to open the window a crack. He then went back across the room and sat at an old-fashioned theater vanity. There was makeup strewn across the surface. He stared at his reflection for some time before he began to talk to himself. "Why? What's happening with me?"

Intrigued, I pressed closer to the window, risking discovery, but eager to watch things unfold.

He sighed and opened a vial of white face paint. He then smeared it all over his face, slowly and deliberately, smoothing out all the rough areas. After that, he applied black liner to his eyes and mouth, with an accent of red on his lips and eyelids. He globbed red pomade into his hair and twisted it into strange, curving shapes. The final touch was the application of curling lines at the edges of his mouth and eyes.

My heart was beating like mad in my chest. I thought it would leap out at any moment.

A gasp fell from my lips, and his eyes shot suddenly to the window. He looked exactly like Mephisto. Now I realized why it is I had felt I had recognized him. If Mephisto had been a man and not a demon, he might have looked like this bookstore owner.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" the man asked quietly, seemingly unshocked but confused.

And that was how I formally met Cain