People found themselves staring at Christine’s face for the simple reason that they could not figure out how such an odd combination of features could be arranged in such a pleasing configuration. Her nose was too long and pointed, her eyes were too narrow and far apart, and the lines from the sides of her nose to the corners of her mouth were too pronounced. Her hair was not quite dark enough to be seductively exotic, nor curly enough to suggest carnal desires bubbling unseen under her overly placid demeanor and slightly uneven complexion.

Despite this, she managed to be strikingly beautiful, in the sort of way that made the beholder believe that he or she was the only person on earth capable of recognizing her beauty underneath those overly aggressive features. Even now, flying obliviously across the desolate landscape of eastern Nevada, she found herself transfixed by her appearance and wondering just what the deal with her face was.

As she was about to veer off the unrelentingly straight highway, her cell phone rang on the seat next to her, and she tore her eyes from the mirror, taking a moment to recalibrate the Corolla’s course before picking up the phone. The display read “Harry.”

Christine sighed. Her boss, Harry Giddings, had the irritating habit of sending her across the country on these wild goose chases and then forgetting where she was and wondering why he hadn’t seen her around the office for a few days. Best case scenario, he had yet another crackpot in mind for her to interview, and it was urgent that she get on the next plane back to Los Angeles – as if maybe she had intended to lollygag around the Salt Lake City airport for a few hours, just for giggles. She tossed the phone back on the passenger’s seat. Harry would just have to wait. She had some things to say to him, but not over a cell phone while she was a thousand miles away. He wouldn’t be happy about her dodging his call, but he’d get over it. Harry being unhappy wasn’t the end of the world.

THREE

Supernatural intrusions upon the Mundane plane are quite a bit more frequent than most of the plane’s residents imagine. Unfortunately for those – like Christine Temetri – who are looking for such occurrences, these intrusions tend to happen in precisely the places that people aren’t looking. This is mostly because extraplanar agents generally take great care not to be noticed, but also to some extent because human beings have an uncanny knack for looking in exactly the wrong places.

So it was that while Christine was in the middle of nowhere waiting for the no-show Bridegroom, evidence of a reality beyond the Mundane manifested itself in her condominium in Glendale. The supernatural impinged on Mundane reality in the form of a demon breaking into her condo and making a grilled cheese sandwich.