Glossary
(Fictional and Nonfictional)
Angel: A soul who manifests benevolent energy
Anicorpus: The animal form a demon takes to move more freely on This Side. Not to be confused with Familiar. (see: Familiar)
Archduke of Hell: High-ranking demon
Babylonian Empire: An empire that dominated the Mesopotamia region between the 19th and 15th centuries BCE and again between the 7th and 6th centuries BCE
Before Common Era (BCE): Recorded history leading up to Year 0
Brethren, The: Twelve high-ranking demons who serve directly under Archduke Casziel and command his legions
Common Era (CE): Year 0 to present
Crossing Over: Moving between This Side and the Other, usually by dying. Only powerful demons can move back and forth at will, while others will Cross Over when summoned.
Demon: A soul who manifests malevolent energy
Djinn: (Genie) A demon bound in servitude to a certain location, human, or another demon for a set amount of time or until certain criteria are met
Familiar: A demon’s animal companion, e.g. fly, snake, goat. Not every demon has a familiar.
Forgetting: The wiping of all memory of the Other Side and all previous lifetimes prior to beginning another cycle on This Side (life) in order to facilitate learning. Memory is restored upon Crossing Over (death).
God: The Benevolent Unknown
Grimoire: A book of spells that may also contain incantations for summoning spirits or demons
Hammurabi: A king of the First Babylonian dynasty, reigning from approximately 1792 BCE to
1750 BCE
Heaven: The collective term for all angels on the Other Side. Not an actual place.
Hell: The collective term for all demons on the Other Side. Not an actual place.
Innana: Sumerian goddess of war
Larsa: Sumerian city-state conquered by the Babylonian king Hammurabi in 1699 BCE
Lesser servitor: The lowest, most base demons, mindless in their hunger for human pain. They serve in the legions of more powerful demons as foot soldiers and resemble starved, stray dogs or hairless rats. Also known as imps.
Mesopotamia: The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, home to ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Babylonians, now modern-day Iraq
Oblivion: Ceasing to exist completely. Ultimate and permanent nonexistence. “Death for the dead.” Only very powerful demons can send another to Oblivion and only when that demon is in his/her human form.
Other Side: The realm a soul returns to after death, between lifetimes. The realm of angels and demons. The human mind cannot fully comprehend the Other Side and knowledge or memory of it would defeat the purpose of living. (see: Forgetting)
Rim-Sin I: King of Larsa, reigned from approximately 1758-1699 BCE
Servitor: Any demon in service to a more powerful demon. High-ranking demons might have legions of servitors.
Sumer: Ancient civilization that existed in the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers called Mesopotamia, now modern-day Iraq
This Side: Life on Earth
Veil, The: A crude and overly simplistic explanation of the barrier between This Side and the Other Side
Utu: Sumerian god of light
Ziggurat: Mesopotamian temple, architectural precursor to the pyramids
Zu: The “storm-bird.?
?? A demon of Sumerian lore.
For Dad, who I like to think is just in the next room.
And for Izzy, my brave girl, who stepped into the unknown first.
All my love to you both.
Part I
My Lucifer is lonely. —Billie Eilish
One
I didn’t think my day could get any worse and then I found the dead body.
Work had been terrible for a Friday. The E train was late, which made me late, which set my whole day off-balance. At our morning meeting, Guy Baker mistook me for the intern who brings the coffee, despite us working together for nearly two years. Which meant he still didn’t know I existed. On the way home, the train was crammed, bodies pressed to bodies. A few feet down from me, a young couple was taking advantage. She clung to him, he held on to her, and they gazed at each other as if there was no one else in the world. Their happiness was beautiful to see but made my loneliness feel sharp by contrast.
To top it off, there was the aforementioned dead body in the empty lot behind my apartment.
Technically, the lot was more like my front walk. My building in Hell’s Kitchen had been chopped up in the 1970s to make the most of the New York City real estate boom. My tiny studio was hardly a functioning apartment, but more of an appendage—an elbow chopped off from the body. It stuck out at the edge of the second floor, and the only way in was by walking to the rear of the building, through the trash-littered lot, and climbing a rickety set of stairs. The interior wasn’t much more than a shoebox, but it had one large window. Even if the view was mostly the next building, the light was lovely in the morning.
And it was all mine. In Manhattan.
Every time I locked my three deadbolts and looped my three chains in at night, I reminded myself I didn’t have any roommates keeping me up, or eating my food, or hogging the tiny bathroom…or to chat with in the morning over coffee. Or to huddle with on the tiny couch and watch Netflix while we talked about our hopes and dreams. Like my hope that Guy Baker would finally notice me and take me around the world with him on his fifty-foot sailboat as we continue our work at Ocean Alliance, the nonprofit where we’re both employed. We’d fall deeply in love, the kind of love you find in the romance novels I read every night. The kind of love that felt like a promise that’s never been fulfilled.
Which was kind of dramatic, I know. I was only twenty-three; I had my whole life to fall in love. But the loneliness that wracked me felt a lot older than twenty-three years.
That late afternoon in April, on my walk from the subway, I tried to erase my crappy day with my favorite daydream. The one where Guy and I are sailing around the Rock of Gibraltar or the coast at Cape Town…doesn’t matter where. We’re on a mission through Ocean Alliance, both of us passionate and tireless in our work. In this particular fantasy, Guy and I return to his boat after a grueling day on the trawlers and garbage scows, hauling tons of plastic trash from the water. He looks at me across the tiny cabin, tired but happy, and we fall into each other. He kisses me desperately, then holds my face in his huge, rough hands. His light blue eyes are intent on mine, as if it’s impossible to look away.
“Lucy,” he says gruffly. “I never want to do this without you.”
I swallow hard, choked with emotion. “You’ll never have to.”
My favorite exchange. We’d made it a thousand times in my pathetic imaginings. Lines I could’ve pulled from one of the hundreds of romance novels that crammed my studio. They took up most of one wall where I didn’t have room for one thing to take up anything.
I rounded the corner to my studio. In my mind’s eye, Guy and I were falling onto the bed that was just big enough for the two of us, the sea cradling us in a soft sway, when I stopped short, a gasp catching in my throat.
He’s dead.
The words popped into my head before my eyes registered what I was seeing—a man’s legs, long and lean and sculpted with muscle. Naked of clothing and alabaster white. The white of porcelain or marble. As if Michelangelo’s David had tipped over on the asphalt.