In which an young academic's life is thrown into turmoil when she attracts the attention of the President, a malevolent theocrat, because of her possession of a mysterious key which POTUS believes has a connection with the second advent. As she is pursued by government thugs, she is aided, and eventually befriended, by Satan. This Satan is a sort of George Sanders devil--suave and wise. He possesses some superpowers, but they are limited and he also has an Achilles heel; thus the pair remains vulnerable. The result is a rollicking read which also contains some eschatological and metaphysical overtones.

When Cassandra Wilcox meets Beelzebub, she shrugs it off. As an atheist, that simply doesn't fit her worldview. She plays along, flirting with Nick as he leads her through a series of increasingly dangerous adventures, until at last she has to decide who to trust, what to believe. Her entire worldview is shaken as she searches desperately for the key that will lead her to the destiny that Nick swears is hers. Prose and poetry, science and philosophy, the sun and the moon all come together in a philosophical fantasy that turns good and evil on their head to look at them from the other side.