The Devil You Know

“Not indistinct,” Peele objected. “I never said that. I said you can’t see her face. Not the upper part, at any rate. It seems to have . . . a curtain over it. A veil. A red veil. I can’t quite describe the effect, but it’s probably the most disconcerting thing about her. The veil covers everything from her hairline to just below her nose, so that only her mouth is visible.” He paused for a moment—consulting his memory, I assumed—and his voice became even more hesitant. I could hear him picking his words, turning them over in his mind to check for nuances. “But you feel her attention,” he said. “You know you’re being watched. Examined. There’s no possibility of doubt on the matter.”

“You get that in a lot of hauntings,” I agreed. “Ectoplasmic eyeballing. You can even get it without the ghost itself ever showing up; and then, of course, it’s a lot harder to deal with—a lot harder to spot for what it is. What you’ve got is the more usual variety: she looks at you, and you feel the pressure of her gaze. But”—and once again I forced him back to the real issue—“she’s doing more now than just looking, right?”

“Last Friday,” said Peele unhappily. “One of my assistants—a man named Richard Clitheroe—was mending a document in the staff workroom. A lot of the original manuscripts in our collection have been indifferently cared for—inevitably, I suppose—and so a large part of our work is maintenance and reconstruction. He picked up a pair of scissors, and then there was—there was a commotion. Everything on the table started to fly around wildly, and the scissors were snatched from his hand. They cut his face, not deeply but visibly, and—and mutilated the document, too.”

He fell into silence. I was impressed that he’d put the damage to the document last. To judge from his hushed tone, it was obviously the thing that had frightened him the most. So Peele’s archive had a harmless and passive ghost who had suddenly become enraged and active. It was unusual, and I felt curiosity stir in my stomach like a waking snake. I clenched my teeth, holding it sternly down.

“There’s a woman I used to work with sometimes,” I said to Peele. Work under was the truth, but I went with the face-saving lie. “Professor Jenna-Jane Mulbridge. You’ve probably heard of her. The author of In Flesh and Spirit?” Peele exhaled—a sound halfway toward an “Aah.” JJ’s magnum opus was one of the few textbooks of our trade that had genuine crossover appeal, so everyone had heard of her even if they hadn’t read it. “The woman who raised Rosie?” Peele confirmed, audibly impressed.

Actually, it had taken a whole bunch of us to raise the ghost known half jokingly as Rosie Crucis—and it took a whole dedicated team of people to keep her raised once we’d got her—but I let that pass. “Professor Mulbridge still practices occasionally,” I said. “And she also heads the Metamorphic Ontology Clinic in Paddington, so she’s in daily contact with dozens of the best men and women in the business. I can drop her a line and ask her to get in touch with you. I’m sure she’ll be able to help you.”

Peele mulled this compromise over. On the one hand, JJ was a very sizable carrot; on the other hand, he’d obviously been hoping, as clients usually do, for instant gratification.

“I thought you might come yourself,” he said pointedly. “Tonight. I really wanted to have this dealt with tonight.”

I have a stock lecture for clients who take this tack, but I felt as though I’d already given Peele more than his fair share of tolerance and patience.

“Exorcism doesn’t work like that,” I said tersely. “Mr. Peele, I’m afraid I’m going to have to get back to you later—unless you choose to follow this up yourself elsewhere. I have another appointment, and it’s one that I don’t want to be late for.”

“So Ms. Mulbridge will perform the exorcism for us?” Peele pursued.

“Professor Mulbridge. I can’t promise that, but I’ll ask her if she’s free to take it on. If she is, I presume the archive’s number is listed in the phone book?”

“We have a Web site. All the contact details are on the Web site, but my home number—”

I broke in to tell him that the Web site would be fine, but he insisted that I take his home number down anyway. I wrote it on the back of Rafi’s envelope. “Thank you, Mr. Peele. Really good to talk to you.”

“But if the professor isn’t available—”

“Then I’ll let you know. One way or another, you’ll hear from me or from her. Good evening, Mr. Peele. Take care.”

I hung up, crossed to the door, and headed down the stairs. I’d reached the bottom before the phone rang again.

I flicked the lights off, turned the key in the lock, and walked away, heading for the car. It was still where I’d left it, and it still had all four wheels. Even at its worst, there are tiny holes in the midnight canopy of my bad luck.

A glass of whisky was calling out to me, a sultry siren song floating above the hoarse and ragged voices of the night.

But I was like Ulysses, tied to the mast.