I take the streets methodically, tracking my turns with the Notes app on my phone so I can be sure I cover every one. At first, it is uneventful. The streets resonate with a million feet pounding. It’s bright out. The daylight makes even the scrawniest of alleyways and deepest of potholes seem cheery. I start to get bored after the first hour and a half. I wander in and out of shops. Poke my head into bars that are open early. Survey the tables at restaurants through their windows. I breeze past the café and think of going in to see Daniel, but decide not to. I don’t want to be rescued. I deny my inner damsel. I’m not ready to step out of the magic of our night together into what’s next. I want to hold on to the perfection of us side by side with nothing in between—no moms or grandmas or strangers—a beat longer.

When I reach the square, her presence isn’t among the paintings of skeletons and cats and colorful front doors. It isn’t hiding between the six-strings and the drum sets and the benches full of people. Disheartened, I turn into the garden, sticking to the outer circle. That’s where I find the Devil leaning against a tree. He has one leg up, foot against the trunk, and his arms are crossed behind his back—the Hanged Man. Today he is wearing a woman’s jacket with a faux fur collar and the sleeves ripped off.

I walk up to him.

“Back for more?” he asks with a wicked grin.

I roll my eyes. “You haven’t seen her, have you? My mom?”

“Afraid not.” He pulls a snakeskin flask from a back pocket and takes a swig, then reaches out to me, offering it.

I take it from him and swallow the cold burn, the mint lighting up my nostrils like sun on snow. I pass it back.

He caps it. “There’s something different about you,” he says, studying me.

“You too,” I tell him. He seems suddenly shorter to me, sadder. I think I see the beginning of lines around his eyes, and the whites are pink with angry veins. Is that gray in his goatee? Maybe he’s not as young as I thought he was. He’s just a drunk after all.

“Why here?” I ask after a moment. “Why the church? Isn’t that kind of your kryptonite?”

He looks at me for a long while, as if deciding whether to answer, and then says, “One person’s devil is another’s angel.”

I can’t argue.

Then he adds, “Do I really exist anywhere else?”

I notice the necklace he’s wearing. A long silver chain with a bat hanging upside down at the end, its wings wrapped around itself protectively.