“No need to rub it in.” Big sis had always had a knack for getting under his skin.
“If the shoplifting and petty larceny aren’t cutting it, you could always put your artistic projects on hold. Get a real job. The trustees would even pay for you to go back to university, as long as you study something employable this time.” A bitter tone crept into her voice.
Skin crawling, Imp had to work hard to resist the urge to tell his sister to fuck off. Like him, she’d chosen her own path and pursued it with terrifying tenacity. He felt it was almost his duty to counterbalance her workaholism by slacking. “Would I have to wear a suit and tie?” he asked idly. “Because that’d be a hard no.”
“Oh you.” She chuckled again, almost indulgently. “Never change.”
His vision doubled, blurring as she whipsawed him from love to hate and back again. You could build your own family through choice, but you couldn’t erase the one you were born with, even if you chose to avoid them. With a supreme effort of will he gathered his wits. “Listen, it’s three in the fucking morning and you want a favor and it can’t wait, which means it’s pretty fucking big, so why are we pissing around the bush like this? What do you want?”
“I’d like to hire you,” she said, “to do a job.”
“No.” It came out instantly, without having to think. “You can’t make me work for you.” Or see you.
“You misunderstand: this is a one-off, not a permanent position. And it pays very well…”
“Doesn’t matter: I’m still not going to work for you.”
“Not even freelance? On your own terms?”
“Huh.” Imp stared at his phone for a moment, wondering if he was dreaming, or maybe nightmaring. “Good try, but the answer is still no.”
“I just want you to get hold of a book for me. There’s eighty large in it for you, no questions asked.”
“Eighty—” Imp remembered who he was talking to at the last instant and body-swerved—“no.”
“I can make your dyke biker chick’s Yardie neighbors leave her mom alone. I can get you what you need to make your boyfriend with the attitude problem happy. I can get the Chinese kid’s parents off his back. I can even hook him up with SexChange.”
“SexChange is a myth,” Imp said automatically. Game Boy had spent ages chasing after the mirage in question, whose power was the ability to put the trans into transhuman.
“SexChange is real.” Her voice dropped an octave: “And I can get you the use of a RED Dragon and all the lenses you need, and a slot on the number four sound stage at Millennium Studios in Elstree whenever you’re ready for it.”
“I—” Imp’s larynx froze. This was a nightmare scenario: Big Sis was back in his life, wanted him back in her life, and knew how to pull his strings—“cunt!”
“I’ll take that as a yes, shall I?” She sounded idly amused, and far too awake for the time of night.
“Fucknuggets. Yes, all right, but can we talk about it in the morning when I’m sober?”
“Of course. My office, backside of n—no, ten o’clock, I know what you’re like before breakfast. Yes, come to my office at ten o’clock and I’ll fill you in.” She rattled off an address. It was, Imp realized with dismay, a mere fifteen-minute walk from the squat. “Security will be expecting you. Be there or stay poor, Jeremy! Ciao!”
Jeremy—Imp—lay back on the sofa and groaned softly, clutching his head. She’s found me, he thought dismally. By the sound of it she’d been watching him from afar for some time. Typical. Five years of avoiding her and suddenly it turned out she’d known where he was all along. Just please god don’t tell me it’s for Mum. The less he had to do with his family, the better for everyone. Jesus fuck.
But he had to, however unwillingly, face the facts. It was three o’clock in the morning, an hour when nightmares came true; and his sister was willing to pay eighty thousand pounds and a bounty of dreams in return for a rare book. She hadn’t actually threatened Del, Doc, or Game Boy, at least not explicitly. As for why: if anyone knew what Imp was capable of, it’d be his big sister. And it would be her sleazebag boss’s money she was spending. Even so, eighty grand was a lot to pay for a book.
There was no alternative: tomorrow morning he’d go round to her office and find out what Eve wanted.
FOUL PAPERS
The next morning Imp forced himself to shave, brush his teeth, and dress for a business meeting. Which was to say, he wore the morning suit he’d acquired from the back of an Oxfam shop some years ago for Court Appearances and similar occasions. (He’d been caught with an ounce of grass at sixth form college and the barrister had insisted he wear a suit when he came up before the magistrate. Imp had taken to heart the maxim that you can never be underdressed for a formal occasion, and went large, or as large as he could while being broke.) Because it looked dangerously similar to a real suit, he’d accessorized it with a wing-collared shirt and a cravat that was auditioning for a future role as a dishcloth.
Imp emerged, yawning and blinking at the unaccustomed sight of London before noon, and strolled towards the de Montfort Bigge household. He clasped his hands behind his back and tilted his head forward, like a particularly hungover pigeon. The address his sister had sent him was a few streets over from the squat, in a significantly cheaper part of the borough—one where mere multimillionaires could still afford to live, behind high stone walls surveilled by CCTV cameras.
The front door of Chez Bigge opened directly onto the pavement. From the outside it resembled any other Georgian house of a certain vintage, although the windows to either side were blocked
