OF COURSE I didn’t. He could just as well have said I was Jack the Ripper. I might have an impaired memory, but I would know if I were the epitome of female evil. Because oddly enough, I remembered all the stories. The sources of the Lilith myth, and myth it was. Lilitu, the Mesopotamian storm demon. Lamia, the screech owl who devoured children and drove men to distraction, the queen of infertility and predatory sexuality, the queen of the night and the wind. Lamia, the raptor. As well as Adam’s first wife, the one who was cursed and banished to lie with demons and kill children. I was shivering now, and I didn’t have to hide it. I managed to get back to my room, slamming the door behind me. I leaned back against it, staring around the grayness with numb horror. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. But … I had run from babies, certain they would die if I stayed near them. It had made no sense, but in the snippets of my various lives I could remember what had precipitated my flight.
