He sat down. This was not what he’d been expecting. Not what he needed. He chewed on the inside of his cheek, exhaling noisily down his nose as he considered this new information. “Maybe I can snap her out of it,” he said.
“I don’t know… sir,” Spook mumbled. “It doesn’t really work like that.”
“Well, what way does it work?”
“I don’t—”
“Let me try.” He put his mug down and marched out of the room. Fecking depression. He didn’t have time for this shite. He ascended the steep staircase, gripping hold of the bannister to pull himself up quicker, sprightly despite his age. “This one is it?” he called down, already knocking on the first door on the landing. He listened at the wood. The music coming from inside was metallic and brittle, like someone throwing a drawer of cutlery down the stairs to a staccato backbeat. He knocked again, harder this time. “Acid. It’s The Dullahan. Open this door.”
He heard movement, the sound of breaking glass. Then muffled voices. The music dipped in volume and a second later the door creaked open.
“Fecking hell.” He put his hand up over his mouth and nose as a potent wave of toxic air hit him in the face. Made his eyes water. “You got a three-week-old corpse in there with ya?”
Acid Vanilla loomed out of the darkness and leaned against the doorframe. She shrugged. “Something like that.”
All she was wearing was a faded black t-shirt (sleeves and collar cut off, Richard Hell and The Voidoids written in bright pink across the chest), but which was (thank Christ) oversized enough to cover most of her body. Her thick black hair was greasy and pointing in all directions, with the odd lank strand stuck to her face. To say she looked a real bloody mess would be an understatement, but it was her face that gave him most concern. Not the copious amounts of smeared mascara and lipstick, he’d seen her like that many times over the years, but more so the look in her eyes. Those striking eyes of hers, one blue, one brown, always so fierce, so alert, were now glassy and dull, the fire in them quenched.
“Wha’ ya want?” she slurred.
“Jesus, Acid. The state of you. What’s going on?”
“Huh?”
“And turn that fecking racket off. I’m not surprised you’re depressed, listening to that shite.”
She rolled her head around her shoulders, looking all the while like a petulant kid. “It’s Teenage Jesus and the Jerks,” she told him. “They’re amazing.”
“Is that right? And what are you doing in there, apart from listening to terrible music?”
She sniffed and rubbed her eye with a thumb. “Chilling, thrilling, spilling. I needed a little ‘me’ time, what can I tell you.” She narrowed her eyes at him and snorted loudly. “Oh it’s you! Shit, Dullahan, you should have said. What the bloody hell are you doing here? Woah. Nice suit. Is that your…”
“Aye,” he spat. “It is. So you know I mean business.”
The Dullahan had only ever owned three suits. The first was a charcoal number he’d bought second-hand in the mid-seventies, when he was still a foot-soldier in the Irish mafia up in Manchester and had a few court dates he needed to attend. The second one was a dark blue affair, navy you might call it but darker than that. It was the suit he’d worn when he married Sheila, the love of his life and the woman who had eventually convinced him to step away from his life as an assassin. Unfortunately the main way she’d managed to convince him was by becoming sick. The third suit was the one he was wearing. Jet black, with emerald flecks dotted through the cotton. This was the suit he’d always worn whilst at work, a uniform of sorts, his killing suit.
Acid stuck her bottom lip out, looking him up and down. “You here to kill me?”
He tensed, a way of holding back his rage. “No, of course not. But I’m here on important business. I need to call in that favour you owe me.”
“Pfft. Wow. Okay… Oh, you getting off, sweetie?” She stepped aside as a young man with dark stubble and messy black hair shuffled out of the room. Fully dressed, thankfully. He smiled sheepishly at The Dullahan before slinking past and heading down the stairs. Acid watched him go, a wretched smirk playing across her face, before turning back to The Dullahan. “Hey, how are you?”
He lifted his chin, fighting the urge to grab the insolent girl’s head and smash it into the doorframe. “Did you hear what I said? I need that favour.”
She hit him with a big grin, ear to ear. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”
He shook his head. “Not like this. Put some clothes on and we’ll talk downstairs.”
“Aw, do I have to? I like it in here. It’s nice and warm.” She stretched and her t-shirt rose up over her stomach.
The Dullahan looked away in time. “Get dressed. Now. I’ll ask Spook to get a pot of coffee on for ya as well, hey?”
“I don’t want coffee.”
“Acid Vanilla. Remember who you’re talking to. Don’t you push me.”
“Or what?” she sneered, shoving her face at him. “What will you do? Kill me? Give me another good scar?” She held up her forearm, the long red welt running from wrist to elbow still visible in the light from the dim bulb overhead. “Well go on then. Do it. Kill me. Put me out of my misery. I’d really appreciate it.”
“Now listen here, Acid, I…”
He trailed off as the door opened a little wider and a girl snuck around the side. She was a couple of inches shorter than Acid and a few years younger, with platinum blonde hair and false eyelashes. Good-looking in a trashy kind of way. She was also naked but for a grubby towel wrapped around her waist and a bundle of clothes clutched over her chest. “Sorry, I need to use
