Thicker Than Water

what I’d seen and felt on the Salisbury estate. She was about as impressed as I thought she’d be. ‘You need to drink a little less coffee, Castor,’ she told me stonily. ‘Your nerves are getting jumpy.’

‘I’m serious, Imelda,’ I said, not rising to the bait. ‘This is real, and it’s nasty.’

‘Then go do that thing you do.’ She said this with a contemptuous edge in her voice: like I said, to the Ice- Maker the dead are friends and clients. Consequently she doesn’t have a whole lot of time for exorcists.

‘I intend to,’ I said, flatly. ‘But I’d like to know how the land lies. You don’t defuse a bomb by picking it up and shaking it to see what rattles. You check what kind of trigger it’s got.’

‘What in God’s name do you know about defusing bombs?’

‘About as much as I know about freestyle tap-dance,’ I admitted. ‘But I do know about frying the undead — saving your presence — and I know I’ve got a better chance of coming out of this on my own two feet if I get some decent intel.’

We argued it backwards and forwards a little without getting anywhere. And when it was clear that Imelda wasn’t going to concede the point, I shifted my ground.

‘What if Asmodeus gets out anyway?’ I asked her. ‘We’ve got him under control at the moment, but that might not last. Wouldn’t you like to test the strength of those wards on the door while you’ve got me around as back-up?’

By way of answer, Imelda stood up and beckoned me to follow her. We went across the barren space, smelling slightly of decay, that she calls her waiting room to a doorway, on the far side of which Lisa was reading Hello! magazine by the light of a stub of candle.

‘So say we test the wards, and they fail,’ Imelda said. ‘That’s my sweet girl there, Castor. The only thing I’ll leave behind me when I’m gone to show I was ever here. I stretched a point already, letting you bring an âme raché into my house. I stretched it as far as it’s going to go. Do I want to test the wards? Hell, if that thing gets out of him, all the wards in the goddamn world aren’t going to slow it down for the time it takes you to fart, Castor. I’m relying on the strength of my hands. They’ve never failed me yet.’

I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender. I could see I wasn’t going to carry the point. By this time Pen’s hour was up and we were getting into overtime. We went downstairs, letting our feet fall heavily to announce us. When Imelda was finally done with the locks and bolts, Pen and Rafi were sitting demurely on the bed together, just holding hands.

I held out the whisky and Rafi let go of Pen’s hand to take it.

‘Jameson’s,’ he said without much enthusiasm. ‘I asked for single malt.’

‘You get single malt when I get a paying gig,’ I told him, and he grunted in disapproval. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I guess we’d better hit the road.’

‘I thought you had something you wanted to say to me.’

I shrugged. There was nothing else I could do. ‘It’ll keep,’ I said. ‘Pen, whenever you’re ready.’

They embraced, long and lingering: in the end I made a throat-clearing noise and they peeled apart reluctantly. Don’t think I was just being an arsehole here, by the way: we’d learned by trial and error that the heightened arousal Rafi gets from being around Pen tends to undo the effect of Imelda’s benediction and my playing. An hour is safe. An hour and a half is usually okay. Two hours or more is asking for trouble.

‘You’re working on the Tune, right?’ Rafi asked me. When he says it that way, with the capital letter, it only ever means one thing: the music of unbinding, the tune that will sunder him from Asmodeus and leave him once again as sole tenant in his own skin.

‘Always,’ I told him, which was as good as saying ‘No news since the last time you asked.’

He nodded slowly, staring me in the eyes the whole time. He knows the only leverage he has on me is my guilt and so he plays it up, afraid that I might one day forget who carries the lion’s share of the blame for what he is. He doesn’t have to worry on that score, but you can understand why he doesn’t take it for granted. I broke that ancient-mariner stare and turned to leave, my hand already on the handle of the door.

The whisky bottle hit the wall right next to my head and shattered spectacularly.

I turned with my mouth open on an oath, but the look on Rafi’s face silenced me. He was staring in shock and horror at his own left hand, which was rotating on his wrist as though he was flexing before some strenuous exercise. I saw the truth in his eyes. Then the hand and arm lifted, against Rafi’s straining efforts, and beckoned me to return.

I didn’t: not straight away. First I went upstairs to get pen and paper.

‘So let’s be absolutely clear,’ I said, looking not into Rafi’s eyes but at his twitching left hand. A black biro was loosely propped between his thumb and forefinger, and a page from the newspaper was spread across the table between us. ‘Asmodeus?’

The moving biro wrote, and having writ moved on. A single word. Yes.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Imelda murmured in her throat. Pen just gave a forlorn moan.

‘How?’ I demanded.

Rafi wrote: The usual way.

‘So you’re building up an immunity to Imelda’s treatment. Very kind of you to let us know. We’ll try harder next time.’

The hand twitched and scribbled, the pen held at a crazy angle, the letters produced gradually by what seemed at first to be random strokes and slashes. You’ll be civil. If you want answers.

I tried to keep a poker face: Asmodeus had the left hand, and clearly he could hear me, too. Safest to assume he was also looking out through Rafi’s eyes. ‘You’ve got some answers for me?’

Ask me a question.

Might as well go for broke. ‘What’s happening on the Salisbury estate?’

A door opening, Rafi wrote. An eggshell breaking across. Call it metamorphosis. Call it transformation.

Great. Who’s up for a game of twenty questions? ‘So what’s changing into what?’ I demanded. ‘Or are you getting writer’s cramp?’

Rafi’s hand laid down the pen, flexed and unflexed, then picked it up again. You’ll laugh when I tell you. It’s a huge joke, mostly on you. But there are two sides to every deal, Castor. You haven’t asked me what my consultation fee is.

And here we were, at the top of the slippery slope. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘How about this? You tell me what I need to know, and I’ll keep doing whatever’s necessary to make sure Jenna-Jane doesn’t get to add you to her zoo.’

But you do that for your friend, not for me. I need

The sheet of paper was now completely filled with angular scrawl. I flipped it over — Rafi’s hand twitching all the while as though the flow of nerve impulses couldn’t be stopped or slowed — and Asmodeus went on as though there’d been no interruption. something else.

‘Like what?’

Entertainment. Delectation. Tasty morsels to gladden my jaded heart.

Despite the situation, I almost laughed. The images conjured up by the words were too grotesque to take seriously. ‘How about an Indian takeaway and a belly dance?’ I suggested.

My tastes run otherwise.

‘Be specific. I’m no way signing you a blank cheque.’

You feed me. And I’ll feed you.

‘Meaning?’

Bring me to it. This thing you want to kill. Set me free, so I can carve off a little piece of it for myself, and enjoy it at my leisure. When I’ve eaten my fill, I’ll tell you how to deal with whatever’s left.

I sat irresolute. I looked into Rafi’s eyes but Rafi only shrugged brusquely, his shoulders hunched and his mouth set in a grimace. This was nothing to do with him, and he obviously wasn’t enjoying the experience.

Imelda saw my hesitation. ‘No deal,’ she said, a warning note in her voice. And I knew damn well she was right.

‘Tell me a way to do this that doesn’t leave you loose in the world when it’s over,’ I said to the invisible