The Mephisto Club

down the stairs. Then your father shoots himself. All within a few weeks. That’s a lot of tragedy for a sixteen-year-old girl.”
    She hugged herself even tighter, afraid that if she didn’t, she would shake apart, shatter to pieces.
    “
Was
it just bad luck, Lily?”
    “What else would it be?” she whispered.
    “Or was something else going on that summer, something between you and Dominic?”
    Her head snapped up. “What are you implying?”
    “You’re refusing to help us find him. All I can conclude is that you’re protecting him.”
    “You—you think we had a
relationship?
” Her voice rose to a hysterical pitch. “You think I
wanted
my family to die? My brother was only eleven years old!” She stopped, then repeated in a whisper, “He was only eleven years old.”
    “Maybe you didn’t realize how dangerous it all was,” said Sansone. “Maybe you just joined him in a few incantations, a few harmless rituals. A lot of kids do, you know, out of curiosity. Maybe to show they’re different from everyone else, unique. Maybe to shock their parents. Were your parents shocked?”
    “They didn’t understand him,” she whispered. “They didn’t realize…”
    “And the other girls. Your friends Lori-Ann and Sarah. Did they join in his rituals? When did the game get scary? When did you realize there are powers you don’t ever want to awaken? That’s what happened, isn’t it? Dominic lured you in.”
    “No, that’s not what happened at all.”
    “And then you got scared. You tried to pull away, but it was too late, because their eyes were on you. And on your family. Once you’ve invited the darkness into your life, it’s not so easy to get rid of it. It burrows in, becomes part of you. Just as you become part of
it.
”
    “I didn’t.” She looked at him. “I wanted no part of it!”
    “Then why do you continue to seek it out?”
    “What do you mean?”
    Sansone glanced at Baum, who opened his briefcase and removed a sheaf of papers. “These are reports we compiled on your whereabouts these past years,” said Baum. “Interviews with people you’ve worked with. Museum curators in Florence and Paris. The tour group company in Rome. An antiques dealer in Naples. It seems you impressed them all, Ms. Saul, with your rather arcane expertise. In demonology.” He dropped the interview transcripts on the table. “You know a great deal about the subject.”
    “I’ve taught myself,” she said.
    “Why?” asked Sansone.
    “I wanted to understand him.”
    “Dominic?”
    “Yes.”
    “And do you now?”
    “No. I realize I never will.” She met his gaze. “How can we understand something that’s not even human?”
    He said, quietly, “We can’t, Lily. But we can try our best to defeat him. So help us.”
    “You’re his cousin,” said Baum. “You lived with him that summer. You may know him better than anyone else does.”
    “It’s been twelve years.”
    “And he hasn’t forgotten you,” said Sansone. “That’s why your friends were killed. He was using them to find
you.
”
    “Then he killed them for nothing,” she said. “They didn’t know where I was. They couldn’t have revealed a thing.”
    “And that may be the only reason you’re still alive,” said Baum.
    “Help us find him,” said Sansone. “Come back to Boston with me.”
    For a long time she sat on the bed, under the gazes of the two men.
I have no choice in this. I have to play along.
    She took a deep breath and looked at Sansone. “When do we leave?”

THIRTY-THREE
    Lily Saul looked like some young druggie who’d been plucked straight off the street. Her eyes were bloodshot and her greasy dark hair was pulled back in a sloppy ponytail. Her blouse had clearly been slept in, and the blue jeans were frayed to within a few washings of disintegration. Or was that just the style with kids these days? Then Jane remembered that this was no kid she was looking at. Lily Saul was twenty-eight years old, certainly a woman, but at the moment she looked far younger and more vulnerable. Sitting in Anthony Sansone’s ornate dining room, her thin frame dwarfed by the massive chair, Lily was painfully out of place and she knew it. Her gaze flicked nervously between Jane and Sansone, as though trying to guess from which direction the assault would come.
    Jane opened a folder and removed the enlarged print copied from the Putnam Academy yearbook. “Can you confirm that this is your cousin, Dominic Saul?” she