“You see the gold rooster?” Mimi moves me into place. “It’s just above the two windows where the Apostles appear. When they’re done marching, the bird crows and that’s the hour.”

“Fascinating.”

“The clock is over six hundred years old,” says Mimi. “That has to count for something.”

The sides of the clock are draped in scaffolding and blue tarps. A plywood barrier has been thrown up at the base of the building to keep the crowds back.

“Can you read that sign?”

“Nope.”

Mimi pushes her way through the crowd. I stand at the back and thumb through the guidebook, which warns that Old Town Square is an area frequented by pickpockets. I’ve never seen a pickpocket and am not sure what I’d do if I happened to spot one.

Maybe take a photograph. Write a story. Photojournalism at arm’s length.

Mimi is back, and she doesn’t look happy. “The sign says that the clock is under repair.”

“It doesn’t work?”

“No idea.”

“So, all these people are standing around, waiting for nothing to happen?”

“Maybe part of it works,” says Mimi. “Maybe the clock doesn’t tell time, but the Apostles still walk past the windows.”

I check my watch. “It’s twenty minutes to the hour.”

“Then let’s wander the square,” says Mimi. “Check out the crafts market.”

“We have a crafts market in Guelph.”

“And then when it’s near the top of the hour,” says Mimi, “we can come back and see what the clock does.”

IT WAS BAD ENOUGH when my demons were just shapeless emotions and unpredictable moods, but as soon as Mimi named them, they began to take physical form.

Eugene, for instance.

Dark hair, dark eyes, full lips. Stupid smirk on his face. Frog butt. Reflective sunglasses and a dirty-white straw on his head.

Eugene likes to hang out with Didi and Desi, fraternal twins who aren’t all that easy to tell apart. Self-loathing, Depression, and Despair. Your popular power ménage-à-trois.

Kitty is tall and thin, blond, brittle, with sharp edges and a voice that can make cars pull to the side of the road.

Chip shaves his head and spends too much time at the gym.

They don’t look like demons. They don’t look scary at all. They look like people you pass on the street every day.

At first, they were easy enough to ignore. But then Mimi named them.

And then they started to talk.

SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, marking time in a crafts market while we wait for the famous astronomical clock in Old Town Square to do something. Mimi sorts through scarves and leather handbags while the vendors follow us around with discounts and deals.