Vicious Circle

unconscious, lying on the pavement in front of me, and I realized that there was blood all over her white blouse. I thought she was dead, after all?that the laughing thing had managed to kill her somehow. But then I realized . . .?

She held out her hands for us to see. There was scabbed skin on both palms, all the way across in a broad straight line, angry and red at the top and bottom edges.

?It was my blood, not hers. It must have happened when I touched the altar rail. The metal was so cold that my skin just stuck to it. That was why it was so hard to let go.?

It was a pretty eloquent demonstration. I listened in silence as she wrapped up her story. Everyone got out alive, although some crawled out on their hands and knees: incredibly, very few were even hurt, beyond bruised arms and cut foreheads. The ones who?d gone into fits seemed to recover quite quickly, except that they were still pale and shaking. Canon Coombes had locked up the church there and then, and told Susan to cancel the Sunday services. After which he?d fled, leaving her to call ambulances for the hurt and the traumatized (leaving red smears on the keys of her mobile phone) and to try to talk down those who were still hysterical.

On Sunday he?d called her at home. He?d spoken to the diocese, he said, and they?d authorized him to engage an exorcist?so long as it was a church-approved one. He told Susan to pick someone out of the yellow pages.

But Susan didn?t have a yellow pages, so she?d gone online instead, and Juliet?s Web site had been the first to come up. I wasn?t surprised. It was sometimes the first to come up when your search string was ?Chinese restaurants? or ?plumbers.? I was pretty sure she?d done something to Google that was both illegal and supernatural.

The site listed Juliet?s church accreditations?Anglican and Catholic?as pending. Susan thought that was good enough, and called her.

?And now here you are,? she finished, brightly. ?Two for the price of one.? She smiled her tentative smile at us both, turning her head to left and right to do it. It was the first time she?d acknowledged my presence since she started to tell her story.

?Here we are,? I agreed. I stood up. ?And I guess we?d better confer about the case. Could you excuse us for a moment??

?Of course,? said Susan, blushing a hectic red. ?I have to lock up again, anyway.?

She got up and bustled away, keys jangling. We retreated up the hill to the Rybandt vault, with full night coming on.

?So you think it?s a demon, rather than a human soul?? I said, when I was sure we couldn?t be overheard.

Juliet didn?t answer for a moment. When she did, I got the sense that she was measuring her words. ?The scions of hell,? she said. ?I know by their habits and by their spoor. It?s not likely that any of them could be this close to me without me knowing it. But it would take one of the older powers to do that on hallowed ground. Just as it takes all of my strength to enter a place like that and not be hurt by it. I have to prepare myself, put a guard up?and not stay there very long.?

?Then what? What do you reckon it is??

She turned to face me, and I could see that she was troubled. Which meant that she was letting me see, because Juliet can control her body language in the same way that a fly-fisher can place a lure. ?If it wasn?t for the cold,? she said, ?and for the other signs, I?d swear that there was nothing here. Whatever it is, it has no smell. No body. No focus.? She sought for words, grimaced as if she didn?t like the ones she?d found. ?Weight without presence.?

?What have you tried?? I asked her, keeping it businesslike.

?A number of things. A number of askings and tellings, any one of which ought to have made whatever is in those stones show its face to me. They all came up blank. I?m grabbing at smoke.?

I remembered the roiling shadows I?d seen reflected in the bowl of water, and nodded. It was barely a metaphor.

?And yet?? Juliet murmured, and hesitated. I?d never seen her be tentative about anything before: it was, to be honest, a bit unnerving, like seeing an avalanche swerve.

?What??

?Occasionally I feel a very faint presence. Not in the stones themselves but close. Close, and moving, moving against itself, in fragments, like a cloud of gnats. Whatever it is, I think it?s linked to what?s inside the church?but as soon as I look towards it, it hides itself from me.?

I remembered what I?d felt as I stood waiting by the church?s front door. ?Yeah,? I agreed, ?I think maybe I got that, too. A scent, I mean, but not strong enough to pin down.?

I glanced over at the lych-gate: Susan Book was waiting for us there, her pale face visible through the gathering gloom.

?You want me to try?? I asked. The stuff Juliet was talking about was probably necromancy?black magic?most of which I tend to regard as a mountain of quackery and bullshit surrounding a few grains of truth. What I do is different: the expression of a talent that?s inside me, with no recitations or rituals and no steganographic mysteries. It was a sincere offer, but Juliet was shaking her head: she wasn?t asking me to do her job for her.

?I want you to tell me if I?m missing anything,? she said. ?You?ve been doing this a lot longer than I have.?

That was true, as far as it went. Juliet was a good few millennia old, from what she?d told me, but she?d only been living on earth for a year and a half. There were things about the way the living, the dead, and the undead interacted on the mortal plane that she didn?t know or hadn?t thought about.

But if this was a demon, then her experience counted for a fuck of a lot more than mine. What could I tell her about the hell-kin, when for her hell was the old neighborhood?

I chewed it over. I liked it that she called on me when she was baffled?I liked it a lot?and I didn?t want to just turn my pockets out and show they were empty. But this wasn?t like anything I?d ever seen before.

?Let me think about it,? I temporized. ?Ask a couple of friends. Right now I can?t think of any angle you?ve missed.?

?Thank you, Castor. I?ll share the fee, of course?if this turns out to need our combined efforts.?

?The twinkle in your eye is reward enough. Although actually, since I?m here, you can do me a favor in return.?

?Go ahead.?

?In your?um?professional capacity??

?This is my professional capacity now.?

?Well, yeah. Obviously. But in the old days, when you were?hunting, hunting someone specific, I mean, and they knew you were coming and tried to hide. Did you?how did you??? It was hard to find a delicate way of putting it, but Juliet was smiling, really amused. Demons have an odd sense of humor.

?You mean, when I was raised from hell to feed on a human soul?yours, for example?how did I find you??

I nodded. ?In a nutshell.?

?I hunt by scent.?

?I knew that. What I was trying to ask was which scent? Was it the soul or the body that you tracked??

?Both.?

Now we were getting somewhere. ?Okay,? I said. ?So did you ever come across a situation where your??

?Prey??

?I was going to go with ?target,? but yeah. Where your prey knew you were coming, and managed to brush over his trail in some way. So you couldn?t smell him anymore??

She thought about this for a moment or two, visibly turning it over in her mind.

?There are things that disguise the body?s scent,? she said. ?Lots of things. For the soul?a few. Running water would hide both.?

I nodded. That much I did know. ?But did you ever have a situation where you were following a trail, and the scent was strong, and then suddenly it just went cold. Completely died on you.?

She shook her head without a moment?s hesitation. ?No. That couldn?t happen.?

?Somebody did it to me earlier on today.?

?No,? she said again. ?That may have been how it felt to you, but it was something else that was happening.?

Good enough. And food for thought. ?Thanks,? I said. ?I?ll stop by again tomorrow, see how you?re getting on.?

?Come in the evening,? she suggested. ?We can have dinner.?

That was a very appealing prospect. ?On you??

?On me.?

?You?re on. Where do you want to meet??

?Here, I suppose. We?ll find somewhere close by?perhaps around White City. I?ll see you at eight thirty.?

I turned to leave, but then I remembered something that had slipped my mind. That twin-peaked sound: surge and fall, surge and die, like waves of some curdled liquid crawling up an unimaginable shore. I turned back.

?It didn?t come to me,? I said.

?What??

?The noise in there. You said it would come to me, but it didn?t. You think you know what it is??

?Oh.? Juliet gave me a slightly disappointed look, as if I were asking her for the answers on a test that was too easy to need thinking about. I shrugged, partly in mock apology, mainly just asking that she cut to the chase.

?It?s a