“Renounce her, renounce her,” the pastor kept saying, “it’s only the demon.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I just can’t.”

“We’ll come back the day after tomorrow,” he confided in my mother. “Meantime, don’t let her out of this room, and don’t feed her. She needs to lose her strength before it can be hers again.”

My mother locked me in [the parlor.] She did give me a blanket, but she took away the light bulb. Over the thirty-six hours that followed, I thought about the demon. I knew that demons entered wherever there was a weak point. If I had a demon my weak point was Melanie, but she was beautiful and good and had loved me. Can love really belong to the demon?

“They’re looking in the wrong place,” I thought. “If they want to get at my demon they’ll have to get at me. If I let them take away my demons, I’ll have to give up what I’ve found.”

“You can’t do that,” said a voice at my elbow. Leaning on the coffee table was the orange demon.

“What do you want?”

“Everyone has a demon,” the thing began, “but not everyone knows how to make use of it.

“Demons are evil, aren’t they?” I asked, worried.

“Not quite, they’re just difficult.”

“If I keep you, what will happen?”

“You’ll have a difficult time.”

“Is it worth it?”

“That’s up to you.”

The demon vanished.