Mephisto appeared in my life a year before I saw Cain wearing his face paint. I can't tell you how utterly freaked out I was when I saw him dressed as my demon. The demon I had told no one about, the one only I could see. The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw him was this:

"Am I crazy, or is he?"

I hadn't even considered the possibility that I was crazy until that moment, until I saw my delusion manifest itself in someone else's erratic behavior.

The first thing he did when he caught me spying on him was to reflexively shut the window and the curtains. He must have gone inside and thought about it for sometime, remembered my face from multiple visits at his store. I sat out on the curb for awhile and tried to make sense of what I had seen. Just as I walked up to his door to knock, he was opening it to see if I was still there.

He had dreamt of Mephisto every night for the last three weeks. He said he had not been prone to dreaming before that. I, on the other hand, had not seen Mephisto for his usual long visits at night. He'd pop in, then pop out in irritation, as if someone had just called to tell him he had left the stove on again at home.

Now I knew where he had been. I suspected that Cain had been unconsciously calling Mephisto to him. Why? I didn't know for sure. My first suspicion was that Cain led such a mundane lifestyle that he was just begging for chaos to enter into his life and throw the tracks for him, so he would not have to be responsible. He didn't know that it wasn't Mephisto's style to interfere when someone wanted it so badly. He always waited to the point at which the subject couldn't bare to have anything go wrong. Usually, that was when intervention was needed most, he said.

The first night I spent time with Cain was incredibly awkward. He didn't seem to know how to talk to human beings very well. I left an hour after the incident, in a daze, just trying to get back into my room without being noticed. I was so shaken, my entrance was not so graceful and my mother nearly caught me in the act. I laid in bed all night, staring at the ceiling. I wanted nothing more than to sleep so that I could question Mephisto. But sleep would not come. Not for the rest of that week, in fact. I felt like a person without fingertips or peripheral vision. My most acute senses were dulled. My perceptions came through cheesecloth.

I couldn't sneak out all that week. My mother was heavily vigilant, having come to a suspicion over my night activities after my last noisy entrance. I had one free period at school that I normally spent working backstage on school plays. Since it was my last period, I found it easy to sneak out and catch the 22 downtown.

I thought again about my fascination with Cain. I wondered if I had been drawn to him, against my better judgment, thanks to our mutual fascination with Mephisto.

It was near closing time. He always closed right at five o'clock, but he never left until two in the morning. He always seemed so afraid to face his apartment, or to get away from his books.

It was five-fifteen when I got there, and he was turning the key in the door, satchel in hand. His hair was a mess, dark circles under his eyes. When he noticed me, I thought he had noticed a raw beating heart lying on the concrete.

"It's you."

I wasn't sure how I felt, either. "It would appear that way. You're leaving early."

He was still trying to sort out how he felt about my being there. His eyes darted to a passing bicyclist. "How would you know that?"

"I know." There was no point in being ashamed about my obsession. Circumstances were already strange enough as it was. "I've been watching you."

He bent over nervously, clutching the case close to his side. Raspy words slipped between his clenched teeth. "You didn't... do this to me, did you? A spell or something?"

I shook my head. I didn't find his claims of enchantment strange, because I knew from experience such things were possible. "I don't understand it, either."

"What do you mean?"

I inched forward. "I didn't tell you this before... But I know the demon you are seeing. Mephisto."

He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me away. Dragged me to the bike rack and made me watch as he unlatched the lock in a flurry. "You and I have to talk."

"No shit." I crossed my arms, warding off the sharp city breeze. I looked around myself, at the passing cars and bikers, the silvery buildings rising up into the steely skies, the city noise enveloping me like a blanket. I thought about how my mother would be wondering where I was about then, and how I didn't much care. I thought about how strange and beautiful being alive could be, and how terrible and strange. I bent over to tie my shoe, but he was soon grabbing my arm again to drag me at his side. I didn't know where we were going, I didn't much care.

What we had was twisted and surreal, but it's all that mattered to me at the moment.

"You just have to know," he shot, staring straight ahead toward his destination, "I am not crazy. There is no precedence for this sort of thing in my life."

"I didn't say you were crazy." I pulled some lip gloss from my purse and applied it to my already too-chapped lips. "I wasn't judging you. I'm the one who claims to talk to demons, here."

He looked at me out of the corner of my eye. I didn't know him well enough to know what it could mean. Then he smirked, and I knew it would be alright.

"Right, right. You've got a point."

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