Prologue

"You're leaving me."

The demon looked away. He put the silver key in the keyhole and opened the door to the apartment, the cold following him inside.

The sleeper said the words again in his heavy, leaden, raspy voice, his serrated teeth showing through his grimace. His breath hissed from between them like a bitter wind through the grates of a cage—hopelessly. "You're leaving me behind."

"I would have left anyway," said the demon while folding his glasses and putting them on the table by the door. He took off his coat, shaking off the snow and the winter's chill, and hung it on the coat rack on the wall. He walked down the hall, his steps making sound though the sleeper's didn't, as though he was being chased by a pierrot's ghost. "I'm not like you. I can't keep playing this game forever."

"Cheater," the sleeper hissed. "You're such a cheater! You stole it from me…and now you're throwing it away. That's not fair! That's not fair!"

The demon chuckled faintly as he walked into the living room. The sleeper loomed over him as he kneeled by the coffee table and took a pen from out between the pages of a book that had reached its end. The demon wrote down a quick letter on the notepad in front of him, ripped the page off with his teeth, then he stuffed it in his breast pocket and hoped that somebody would find it.

"How long are you going to yell at me?" he asked the sleeper. He didn't have to look back to know that the sleeper was scowling.

"Others always say you're so nice," the sleeper said over the sound of the demon putting wood in the fireplace and throwing a lit match in with it, "but you're not nice. You're not nice at all. You're rotten to the core. I hope you go to hell."

"Are you going to make a hell just so I can go to it?" the demon said jokingly though he was the only one amused. He threw the book and the newspaper and whatever else was on the coffee table that he wasn't going to need anymore into the fireplace and didn't watch for a second as the flames raged around them like they were nothing.

"Shut up. Shut up. You're such a…! I can't believe you're leaving me. You're the worst. The worst."

The demon smiled sadly. He took off his shoes and left them beside the table when he walked away from it.

"Yeah," he said, pulling a chair from the dining room down the hall with him. "You're right. I am 'the worst'. But I don't think I was always this way. At least…I hope not… Oh well." He shrugged slightly and put the chair down beneath the ceiling fan. "I guess it's too late to find out now."

"The worst," the sleeper continued to mutter. "The worst."

The demon kept moving, not wanting to lose any of his momentum. Not now.

"It's New Year's Eve tomorrow," he told the sleeper on the way to his bedroom. "Did you know that?"

"I don't care about what those things do," the sleeper said in his complaining voice. "They're just good for laughs. I don't care what they do by themselves. If it doesn't have anything to do with me, I don't care about it."

"You should pay better attention," said the demon with a laugh, taking a belt from inside the dresser and draping it over his shoulder. "You know, tomorrow, my son will be born. You should greet him, for courtesy's sake."

The sleeper's face contorted in disgust. "You're having it. You're having that thing. You're keeping it. Even though half of it belongs to that woman…that means none of it belongs to you. It's just a little nothing."

The demon went to the bed in the middle of the room and without thinking laid down on it. For a second, no thoughts came to him. He just allowed himself to be filled with the soft and the gentle sounds that were all around him. He listened to the sound of snow falling outside and feet walking past it and on it. He heard voices and laughter, the feelings from the other side of his walls tangible on him. But he couldn't feel anything. He wondered when the last time it had been he'd truly felt anything. As he ran through his memories, spanning decades, then centuries, then millennia, picking them and holding them like delicate jewels, he wondered which of those memories had been real. Laughing, crying, kissing, holding, skin against skin. He couldn't even prove they'd happened, let alone that they'd happened to him. Still, deep down in the dusty confines of his heart he knew that once upon a time there had been love there. But it was too late to believe in that—now, after the fact, it was too late. All the 'could have been's and all the 'was' were gone now.

Still.

At the very least, this time he could say 'I know'. This time he wouldn't be the only one who didn't get it. This time he could smile and actually mean it. This time, this last time, things for him would be real.

His eyes shut and a hollow breath left him, a breath he breathed without wanting to, and then his eyes opened again.

"No," he answered finally. "He won't be a 'thing'. He'll be a person, just like you and I."

"Is that why you're going?" the sleeper asked while the demon took in the last scents of his scentless sheets and tried to remember something that wasn't there. "Because of your kid? That's not funny. My father wouldn't have done that."

"What are you talking about?" the demon said, getting off the bed and leaving the room. "Your father is a psychopath."

"Wrong! He isn't! My father is ten times better that you! You're leaving because that boy is being born! I know it! If it wasn't for that boy, you wouldn't be leaving! You'd stay here and keeping following me! I know you would!"

"Yes. I guess that's partly true. That, and tomorrow her life will be traded for his." He saw himself reflected in the glass door to the balcony as he passed it—the scar, those empty eyes, the pale skin. He looked away. "And I don't want to miss anyone anymore."

"Miss them? Miss what? They're not people. Why don't you get it? They're just things…! Just pieces. That's it. So why won't you get it?"

"I'm not like you," the demon said again, standing on the chair and looping one end of the belt around the ceiling fan. "I'm not heartless. I care about the 'objects' in this world."

"But why? Why, why, why? I don't get it. I don't get it!"

The demon looked at the sleeper, at the face that had been following him so constantly for so long, its hateful expression, the agony that it too couldn't fathom, and then he looked back at the belt and made a second loop on the other end.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want to play this game anymore. I'm tired. I don't want to run after you anymore. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore. My brother, my friends, the woman I love, the man who loves her…my son. No more. I'm tired. So, so tired. I don't want to be part of this wheel anymore. I'm so sorry. I just…can't do this anymore."

"So you're running away?" the sleeper cried. "You're leaving? You're not just abandoning me! You're abandoning all of them! You're leaving everything behind!"

The demon put his head inside the loop and closed his eyes.

"If that's the case…if that's really the case…if that's really all I can do anymore…then it's just like you said, Bas." He took in a breath and tasted the blue light of the dawn. "I'm the worst."