Asmodeus could enter the house. It was Pen’s wards that were keeping him out, and nothing else.
Asmodeus was still standing in the same place, and he was still staring up at the window under the eaves where I’d been standing a minute before.
Mindful of what Pen had said about seeding the garden with stay-nots, I took a calculated risk and walked out onto the front step – two paces away from the house, then three. Asmodeus still didn’t move, but I didn’t take my eyes off him for a second. If he did attack, I wanted to be sure I could put the door – which Pen had blessed and anointed and talked to and generally strengthened with her own will every day for the past six or seven years – between us before he got in close enough to do me any damage.
‘The three stars in a row,’ I said, ‘that’s Orion’s belt.’
Asmodeus turned slightly to look at the constellation, which was right above us. He nodded.
‘Really?’ he demanded, in a grating, metal-on-metal voice.
‘Really.’
‘Well you know what that means, Castor.’
‘No. What does it mean?’
‘That Orion wasn’t considered a suicide risk.’ He grinned mirthlessly at his own joke, flashing teeth that didn’t look as though they’d fit inside a human mouth. Flesh is a plastic material to demons, but Asmodeus had never bothered to change Rafi’s body very much. It looked as though he’d done a fair bit of redecorating since I’d seen him last, though. He was both taller and broader across the shoulders, with muscular forearms which tautened the ripped fabric of his shirt. His arms looked longer, and so did his fingers – not long enough to make him look simian, but subtly out of proportion with the rest of the body.
‘Did you catch your bus okay?’ I asked.
Asmodeus stopped laughing. He shook his head at me disapprovingly.
‘I told you once that you were missing the big picture,’ he said. ‘That you don’t know the right questions to ask. That you have no idea what’s really happening, or how you fit into it.’
‘I remember,’ I agreed. ‘Didn’t stop me from whipping you back to kennel the last time you stuck your nose out.’
Asmodeus flexed those overlong fingers, very slowly. He seemed to be measuring the distance between us, and I tensed to run. Maybe Pen’s new stay-nots would hold the demon back, and if they broke maybe they’d still slow him down enough for me to get back over the threshold of the house, where the older, many-times-inscribed wards would protect me. I didn’t want to bet my life on those maybes.
But Asmodeus still didn’t move. ‘I’m kind of glad I didn’t finish you off last night,’ he grated. ‘I really ought to build up to it properly. It was just the heat of the moment. Seeing you there, and feeling Ditko pull back from the thought of it. He’s still seeing you as a way out, Castor. When you die, it’s gonna be a real blow to him. But personally I think that ship has sailed. I’m making my own arragements now.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘So I’m not here to kill you. Or Ditko’s whore. You can relax. I just wheeled him over to take a look at the old place.’ He snickered, making the noise a blade makes on a strop. ‘Build up his morale a little. You want to say hello?’
For a moment I thought I’d misheard him. ‘Say hello?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘To your old friend. He’s right here, listening. Just like he was last night. Fuck, wake the redhead up and she can even have a conjugal visit.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, ignoring this last suggestion. ‘I’d like to talk to him.’
The demon bowed his head and was silent for a moment. Then, still staring at the ground, he spoke in a different voice, a voice that was as faint as a day-old echo. ‘Fix?’
‘Rafi. I’m here.’
‘I know. I know. My God, Fix, he’s got me . . . staring out of the window here. I can’t stop him, but I have to watch . . .’ He gave a choking sob. ‘Ginny!’
‘Ginny got you into this mess in the first place, Rafi.’ It was meant to console him, but I realised even as I was saying it that it wouldn’t have that effect. ‘She was working for Anton Fanke – the grand panjandrum. She was just using you.’
‘We were using each other.’ Rafi’s voice was barely a whisper. I took a step forward, straining to hear it. ‘I knew what she was, Fix. And it’s not as though I loved her. I’ve never loved anyone except Pen. But . . .’ He gave another sob and lapsed into silence. One of the dark figure’s arms twitched slightly in a vague, abortive gesture – some random nerve impulse of Rafi’s getting past Asmodeus’ guard – but only for a fraction of a second. ‘She didn’t deserve what she got.’
‘I’m going to free you,’ I promised him.
‘Sound familiar?’ The demon’s voice intervening, forcing itself out of Rafi’s mouth like hissing steam out of a pipe. ‘He lives like fucking Nero, Ditko: he fiddles while you burn. Three years, and all he’s ever done is lie to you. He’s lying now. You belong to me, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. I’m so sure of that, I’m not even going to bother to kill him just yet. We’ll leave him till the end.’
‘I will nail him, Rafi,’ I insisted, ignoring the demon’s taunts. ‘I’m onto it, I swear to you. The bastard won’t even see me coming.’
‘Fix . . .’ Rafi’s voice again, a gasping sigh at the lower limit of audibility. ‘Tell my father . . . and Jovan . . . Tell them I’m sorry. Do that for me. Please.’
And then nothing. Slowly Asmodeus straightened until his gaze met mine again. ‘I meant what I said,’ he grated. ‘I’ll kill you last, Castor. And it won’t be all at once. I’m thinking of going home for a while, when I’m free of this meat: I’ll take you along as food for the journey. In the meantime . . . breast pocket, left-hand side.’
Something dropped out of his sleeve into his hand, glinting momentarily in the light from a street lamp. I ducked reflexively, but Asmodeus was so much faster than me that his arm was back at his side before I’d even registered that it had flicked up and out – long before my own lazy nervous system had carried the message down the royal road of my spine to my distant arms and legs.
I felt something like a punch in my shoulder. Dazed, I stared at the long slender handle of a knife sticking out of my own flesh. One of the buttons of the greatcoat hung in neatly severed halves on either side of it, dangling from separate lengths of the same frayed thread. The buttons were solid brass, but Asmodeus had thrown the knife with enough force to hammer straight through it, then through the thick cloth, and still embed itself an inch or so deep into the soft flesh below my collarbone.
‘I only said I wouldn’t kill you,’ Asmodeus snickered. ‘That doesn’t stop me from whittling you into a more interesting shape.’
My teeth clenched on the pain, I groped inside my coat for my whistle, but I’m a southpaw, and it was my left shoulder that Asmodeus had hit, so my movements were jerky and uncoordinated. The demon watched in silent amusement.
I got the instrument out at last and fitted it to my lips. I started to play the opening notes of a tune: not a banishing but a soporific, a piece of music I’d composed for Rafi during the long months when he was stuck in his silver-lined cell at the Charles Stanger Care Home. Asmodeus just laughed and walked away, seemingly unaffected.
‘Be seeing you, Castor,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Eventually.’
‘First of all, he’s lying,’ Jenna-Jane said. She said it in a didactic tone, like a maths teacher stating an axiom. ‘So a logical question to ask would be why.’
We were in her office, and it was still early enough in the day for the workmen not to have clocked on. There was silence throughout the vast building, and a slightly disconcerting echo to our words.
‘About what?’ I demanded, probably sounding childishly truculent. ‘He meant what he said about not wanting to kill me yet. I’m not dead, am I?
Reflexively, I rubbed my shoulder. It hurt like hell. The knife hadn’t gone in too deep, all things considered, but it had been thrown with spectacular force. I was bruised as well as cut, and my arm had already stiffened in spite of Pen’s expert ministrations.
‘But his motives for not killing you are far from clear.’ Jenna-Jane leaned back in her seat, one finger touched to the point of her chin. ‘Certainly he needs nothing from you now. As he said, he no longer believes you can free him from Ditko’s flesh.’
