Miss Starkey finally spoke. “Did you get the book?” She sounded mildly curious, as if she was asking about the weather or the latest test series. Her lack of fear was irritating.
“Shut up, bitch.” He held his gun to the back of her head as he dropped the bag on the floor of the lift and drew the outer gate shut with his now-free hand. Then he reached for the inner gate. “I got it. We’re nearly done here. No witnesses, like M said.”
“Who’s M?” she asked.
“The boss, Rupe—” He gritted his teeth furiously against the rapidly worsening pounding in his skull—“shut up! Only speak when I tell you to! Do you understand?” She shrugged again. He winced as he glanced at the brass control panel, then pushed the topmost button—black Bakelite with no label. “Going up.” The lift began to rise.
“Do you want money?” she asked tonelessly, ignoring his earlier order. “Whatever he’s paying you, I can pay more.”
“Turn round.” She slowly turned to face him, her expression botox-blank. Miss Starkey didn’t have resting bitch face; she didn’t have resting anything face. She’d have revealed more of her thoughts to him if he emptied his magazine into her perfect turquoise eyes. She was, however, beautiful. Beautiful like a priceless Ming vase or a very expensive supercar, one outside his price range. The kind of beauty that made him want to hurt her, to bring her down to the level of his own inner ugly, to make her feel something of the ache that gripped him right now, everywhere from his head to the soles of his feet. He shivered. This wasn’t normal; this was the vestibule to the land where dreams come true.
“Kneel,” he demanded.
She knelt. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
“Anything I fucking feel like. Tell me, how much is the book worth? Really?”
“How much is anything unique worth?” She might have shrugged. “How much is your life worth?”
“More than yours.” He held his gun to her forehead one-handed, his cock springing rigid with excitement. “Yes: I know about the curse.”
“Why do you think it hasn’t killed you?”
“I made them give me the book,” he gloated, willing his hand not to shake. He was sweating: it was unaccountably cold in the lift car. “Any final words?”
“Mm, yes. Did I ever make you a cup of coffee?” She looked up at him with a quizzical smile on her face.
“No, why—” He felt really sick. “The book. It’s worth … worth…” I’m burning up, he realized. A fever out of nowhere, sweeping over him like one of the sudden death diseases of childhood that swept through Victorian London leaving black crepe and tiny headstones in its wake. “Shit.”
“I didn’t ever make you coffee,” Miss Starkey said, “so you missed out on my special demonstration. Pity, that.”
The wall of the lift rippled in front of his vision, and began to fog. The pain behind his eyes was excruciating. He tried to squeeze the trigger, but his hand wasn’t working properly. In fact, nothing was working properly. The Bond leaned against the back wall of the lift, breathing hard.
“Wha…”
“A mug of coffee contains about half a liter of water,” Miss Starkey calmly explained. “I can bring it to a near-boil in about a minute. A human skull contains about two liters of stuff that can be approximated to greasy water. I can raise its temperature by ten degrees Celsius in about fifteen seconds. That’s enough to denature proteins, such as neurotransmitter receptors, like soft-boiling an egg—”
But the Bond wasn’t listening any more. His feet drummed a tetanic tattoo on the elevator car floor. He’d bitten his tongue badly, a bloody froth trickling from his lips.
Eve winced. “Damn it,” she complained softly.
Finally, the lift arrived at the top floor.
Eve rose and took a couple of deep breaths, clearing her mind. Then she leaned over the bag and addressed it politely in a dead language no human tongue had evolved to utter: “By the life I claimed on your behalf, the next one is yours also.” She opened the lift gates, stepped out, and closed the gates again. With ghostly mental fingers she reached through the lift gates and pushed the button to send the car back to the ground floor. With a somewhat greater psychic exertion, she ripped out the wires behind the call button. Then she made her way back towards the real world.
Behind her, shadows lengthened in the lift as it descended towards Neverland. Inside it, the carpetbag sat in lonely splendor on a floor restored to pristine condition, all evidence of the Bond’s presence banished like a dream. Within the bag, the leatherbound book throbbed gently as a dead man’s pulse, waxing plump and powerful.
Imp and his crew knew better than to touch the book. Which, to Eve’s way of thinking, was a very good thing indeed. She knew better, too: custody of the tome had already cost her family far too much. They’d bled for it ever since the late nineteenth century, when an ancestor had acquired it and foolishly followed one of the rituals it described, trading baby lives for Lares to protect his family and heirs in perpetuity. As long as it slumbered in Neverland it couldn’t do too much more harm—but now that it had come to the attention of Rupert and his friends, it fell to Eve to cover it up again.
Sacrifices had to be made, starting with the Bond.
Eve had always been of the opinion that when life handed you lemons, you should make lemonade.
Rupert dabbed at his forehead with his monogrammed silk kerchief, then paused on the landing to wheeze. Damn these stairs, he thought irritably as he reached for his asthma inhaler.
Eve had popped out of the office with her
