deposit I’ve already paid you, and I’ll bring in somebody who
“The deposit is nonrefundable, Mr. Peele.”
“Now see here, Castor—”
“Those were the terms you agreed to. But I don’t think the issue here is whether or not you get your money back. You’ve got a dead woman in your archive, and she didn’t die all that long ago. You need to know why she’s here and why she’s so full of rage and misery that she’s attacking the living. If you don’t get answers to those questions, exorcising her could be just the
“I don’t understand the logic of that statement.”
“Then think about it. It’ll come to you.”
I left him fulminating. There seemed no point in staying. In fact, the longer I hung around, the bigger the risk that he might actually talk himself into throwing me out. And I wasn’t ready to go, not yet.
I stuck my head into the workroom. “Peele wants someone to open doors for me,” I said. “Any volunteers?” This lying thing—once you got into it, it was really a fantastic labor-saving device.
Rich opened his mouth to speak, but Cheryl got there first. “I’ll go,” she said. “Sign the keys over, Rich.” Rich closed his mouth again and shrugged. There was a brief transaction in which Cheryl swapped her signature for a turn with the big key ring. Then we headed for the door.
I walked on down the corridor, and Cheryl fell in beside me. “The Russian room?” she asked.
“No. The attic.”
“The attic? But there’s nothing up there.”
“I know. My brother says nothing can be a real cool hand.”
Two nights ago, dressed in opaque shadows, the attic had looked numinous and threatening. By daylight, it just looked empty.
We went to the end room, and Cheryl followed me inside. I pointed to the cupboard.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
Cheryl shook her head. “I haven’t got a clue,” she confessed. “Why?”
“I’m just curious. Would there be a key to that cupboard on Rich’s ring?”
Cheryl flashed me a wicked grin. “Hey, smutty innuendo aside, if it’s got a hole, Rich has got a key.”
She went down on one knee and squinted at the lock on the cupboard door. Then she nodded, satisfied, and started to sort through the heavy ring of keys. “Silverline 276,” she said. “It’s the same as the ones downstairs. Here you go.”
She slid a key into the lock, turned it, and pulled the door open with a flourish.
The cupboard was empty.
“Maybe it’s got a false bottom,” said Cheryl without much conviction. She bent over to examine it, and I found myself staring at hers—which was indisputably real. My body reacted of its own accord; blood rushed to my face and to other outlying parts. Arousal exploded in me like a signal flare.
When Cheryl straightened, she could see the sudden change in my mood at once. It must have been written all over my face.
“You didn’t bring me up here to open cupboard doors at all, did you?” she demanded, reprovingly but with no real heat. “You dirty bugger.”
It was the succubus, Juliet. She’d reached inside me, which was her mystery and her power, and turned the dial on the outer casing of my libido from “normal” to “seismic.” Evidently, that wasn’t something that just went away—and being in such close proximity to Cheryl had triggered an aftershock. I braced myself for a smack in the face, but Cheryl was looking at me with a quizzical and contemplative expression on her face. I opened my mouth to explain, but she shook her head briskly to stop me from saying anything.
“I’ve never had sex at work before,” she murmured at last. “And you are pretty attractive—in a sleazy, government-health-warning-on-the-packet sort of way. You know what I always say, yeah?”
I’d forgotten, but I remembered now. “If you’ve never tried something, you’ve got no right saying you don’t like it.”
“Exactly. But are you sure you’re not letting your eyes make promises your trousers can’t keep, Castor?”
“That’s a valid question,” I said, trying to reengage the parts of my brain that weren’t connected with panting and sweating. “Cheryl, this isn’t me. This is just a sort of hangover from—”
She stopped my mouth with a kiss, which tasted very faintly of coffee and cinnamon. I had ample opportunity to taste.
When we broke off, she smiled at me again—a smile with a world of promise in it.
“Someone could just walk in,” I reminded her, making one last doomed effort to be the voice of reason.
“That’s where the keys come in handy,” Cheryl said. She crossed to the door, closed it, and locked it. Then she came back over and began to unbutton my shirt.
“I’ve got cuts and lacerations,” I warned her. “In some of the parts you may be planning to use.”
“Poor boy. Let Auntie Cheryl have a look.”
She had very gentle hands—which she used to do a number of things that were highly prejudicial to the exorcist/client relationship. I responded in kind, and things went from bad to wonderfully bad.
But even as Cheryl drew me into her with a wordless murmur of approbation, I was thinking of the parcel tape and the plastic bags. Where did they go?
Fourteen
WE SAT UP IN THE ATTIC IN A COMPANIONABLE POSTcoital languor, leaning against the bare wall. We’d already made ourselves decent again, and anyone clattering up the bare stone stairs would announce themselves from a good way off, so we didn’t have to worry about being caught in a compromising position.
“You never suggested using a condom,” I commented.
“Have you got a condom?”
“No.”
“There you go, then.”
“Are you always this happy-go-lucky?”
“I got carried away. So did you. But I’m on the pill. Are you saying I should still be worried?”
I shook my head. I steer clear of relationships. I’ve always been afraid of someone I love turning up dead, and then—having to live with that or having to deal with it. Having to face the choice. So although I’m not entirely celibate, I think I count as chaste.
“And no more should you. Word. Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay,” I conceded. “Can we talk shop?”
“Sure. Go on.”
“Have you ever heard of a strip club called Kissing the Pink?”
Cheryl laughed; she had a dirty laugh that I liked very much. “I’m glad we’re talking shop now,” she said. “I’d hate to think you were gonna ask me out on a date. No, I don’t know it. I’ve never been in a strip club in my life. I saw the Chippendales once, if that’s any good.”
“Have you ever met a man named Lucasz Damjohn?”
“Nope.”
“Or Gabriel McClennan?”
“Nope again. Felix, what’s any of this got to do with my Sylvie? You’re sounding like a private detective.”
“It’s all tied together somewhere,” I said, aware of how lame that sounded. “Cheryl, what about these rooms? Do they ever get used for anything?”
“Not yet. We’re gonna expand into them eventually. Some bits of stuff get stored up here, but not much. Why?”
Instead of answering, I got up, breaking what was left of the drowsy, intimate mood. I crossed to the window and looked out. Then down. Three floors below was the flat roof of the first-floor extension. A plastic bag lay on the gray roofing felt, the wind making it jerk and flurry, but not shifting it.
“What’s underneath us on this side of the building?” I called over my shoulder.
