Page 84 of Devil Inside

It’s got to be her. I can tell from the way he’s taking in the artwork. The sheer reverence of it all. “Friend of yours?” I ask as I slide in next to him, nodding to the serpent.

“Excuse me?” This guy doesn’t get the joke.

Okay, so maybe it’s not Lilith. “Sorry,” I say. “Thought you were someone else...”

Where the hell is she?

I’ve navigated half of the contemporary art wing. Maybe she made her way to another corner of the museum. Just as I’m about to give up, throw in the towel...

“Nice try,” someone says behind us.

I turn to find a teen in overalls and a shaved head. She taps the shoulder of a young man holding hands with another. “You’ll have to keep up with us better than that,” he says.

The current passes through their hands. Even if I can’t see it, I notice the shift from one person to the next. “Should we give you a head start?”

That man taps the elbow of a woman on her way past. She doesn’t say a word, simply winking over her shoulder as she abandons the gallery. On to the next chamber.

This is the work we wish to share. We stand before a sculpture. A tangled knot of pottery sits on a steel armature. The flow of the ceramic tendrils suggests something almost human might be immersed beneath the twine of spindling tubes, but if there is, they are surely suffocated. The color of the glazed pottery is such a vibrant red, it turns purple.

Raw meat. A man. The sinew glistens under the spotlights, as if it were wet. The tendrils are held together by wire, threatening to come undone and spill across our feet.

Red Roverby Annabeth Rosen.

“Is this what it feels like?”

“Getting warmer.”

Jordan looks to us. A stillness takes over his body. A calmness.

“What is it? Why are you looking at us like that?”

“Can I say the last twelve hours have been the most fun I’ve had in... well, a while?”

Us as well. Can we tell him that?

There it is.

The itch.

The burn begins. We slip away, drifting into a young man walking by. We slip from him to another, and another, and another, so quickly, so fluidly, until we are circling Jordan.

“Where are we going?”

“To see more.”

“Lead the way.”

“Try and keep up.” We never stay in one host long enough to settle. Our voice becomes several. We blend—blur—from host to host, so Jordan has to catch up.

Lilith doesn’t stay in a particular host for long. Always moving. Drifting. She never settles, connected by this electrical current, swimming upstream through the crowd.

I must’ve had a conversation with a dozen different people, flowing from countless mouths. I’m wandering the halls, chamber after chamber, cavities of the same infernal heart, while Lilith leads the way, hopping from one host to the next, never settling.

“Not bad as first dates go,” I say.

“Is that what this is?” the man next to us asks.

“Would you disagree?”