"Then it's a question of identity as well," he said. "If I'm somebody else, is that as good as being me? If I can't be myself anymore, am I better off being nobody at all, or choosing a new self to become?"
"That's right," I said, nodding. "You can stay one person, in one place, doing one thing forever, and hate it, or you can be free of everything—no responsibilities, no problems, no baggage."
He stared at me a moment. "Is there something you want to tell me?"
"I want you to tell me what would make you stay in that situation," I said. "I know you think this is about me, but it's not—I can't explain. Now seriously—you've got nothing on the one side, and everything on the other. Why would you stay?"
He thought about it for a couple of minutes, tapping his pen on his pad and frowning. This was why I came to Dr.
Neblin—he took me seriously, no matter what I said or how crazy I sounded.
"One more question," he said. "Am I a sociopath?"
"What?"
"This is your puzzle," said Neblin, "and as we have often discussed, you have strong sociopathic tendencies. I want to know if I should be answering from a standard emotional state, or from the lack of one."
"What's the difference?"
Dr. Neblin smiled. "There's your answer. You said that the second option, leaving and starting a string of brand new lives, had freedom—it had no 'baggage.' Where a sociopath sees baggage, a typical personality would see emotional connections. Friends, family, loved ones—not all of us can give those up so easily. They define us, and they make us who we are. Sometimes the personalities around us are what make us complete."
Emotional connections. Loved ones.
"Kay."
"What?"
"I . . . I said okay."
It was Kay Crowley. Mr. Crowley was really in love with her—not pretending to be, not using her for cover, he was really, truly in love with her. I'd tried putting myself into Crowley's place and it didn't work, not because his mind was too different, but because mine was. The demon loved his wife.
"I have to go," I said.
"You just got here."
Crowley had done it maybe a hundred times before, maybe a thousand times, jumping from body to body, life to life. He moved to a new town and started fresh, and when his demon powers couldn't sustain a body anymore, he just dropped it and moved on. He'd done it in Arizona with Emmett Openshaw, and fled here to Clayton County to hide and start over— but then he'd met Kay, and now it was different. Leaving this body meant leaving her, and he couldn't do it, so he was patching himself up piecemeal instead—fixing each part as it broke down instead of starting over fresh.
"John?"
"Huh?"
"Is there something you want to talk about?" asked Dr.
Neblin.
"No, no, I . . . have to go. I have to think."
"Call me, John," said Neblin, standing up and pulling out a business card. "Call me if you want to talk, about anything at all." He wrote a second number, his home number, I assumed, on the back of the card, and handed it to me. I realized abruptly that he was worried—lines of concern etched his face like wounds, and he was watching me anxiously
"Thanks," I mumbled, and left the office, picking up my coat from the waiting room and going downstairs. I got on my bike and rode home, not aimlessly, not desperately, not nervously; I was calm for the first time in weeks. I'd found his weakness.
Love.
I spent the evening locked in my room, going over my notes and watching out the window for Mr. Crowley. Love was the chink in his armor, I knew, but I hadn't come up with a plan to exploit it yet. I crafted and discarded a dozen different ideas, desperate to find one that could stop him before he killed again.
But he was already growing very sick. He'd strike soon, and I wasn't ready.
Sure enough, a little after midnight Mr. Crowley staggered out to his car. He looked worse than I'd ever seen him—he was waiting as long as possible to fix himself. I wondered if he might have to replace more than one thing, and then I wondered if that was even possible—if he took too much from one person, did he become that person whether he wanted to or not? That would explain why he replaced just one organ at a time.
I opened my door quietly; Mom was still awake, watching Letterman. I closed it again, locked it, and went to the window.
It was a long drop to the ground, but Crowley was getting away.