The Devil You Know

“Probably you’ve come to the conclusion that whatever happened in that basement is none of your business. Possibly you’ve decided that Rich has already been punished for whatever he did and would never stand trial anyway, in the state he’s in. Maybe you’ve also reflected on the potential embarrassment to Jeffrey if he was dragged into not one but two criminal trials at a time when he’s anxious to build on his capital in the art history world and make a big forward move in an already impressive career.

“It would be a shame to have to drag him back, really. It’s impossible to tell when another opportunity like this one would come up again. For either of you. And on the other hand, I kept Rich’s set of keys—which ought to make an interesting contrast with yours and Jeffrey’s. Just a thought, Alice. Perjury being a crime, and all that.”

I gave her all the time she needed to think that speech over. I’d worked on it for a long time and practiced the delivery on Pen, and we both thought it had a lot of dramatic highlights. Alice got up and crossed to the door, which was just a little open. She closed it firmly. We looked at each other across the length of the room.

“You’re a real bastard, aren’t you?” Alice said, but with less rancor than I would have expected.

“I did the job,” I reminded her. “All coy bullshit aside, I did the job, and I almost got killed doing it. You owe me. I’m sorry I had to remind you about that.”

We haggled some, but it was pretty much plain sailing from then on. Alice agreed to give me the seven hundred that was owing on the original exorcism and another grand and a half as a finder’s fee for the stuff that Tiler had stolen. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think it was exorbitant. It was more or less exactly what Pen needed to pay off the debts on the house, so all I was doing was keeping a roof over my head. Business is business.

As I got to the door, though, I felt her stare on my back. I turned around, and we looked a question at each other across the room. Well, I looked a question, she looked an accusation, but it was the same thing going both ways.

“You saw her,” I said.

Alice started to speak and then didn’t. After a long moment’s silence, she nodded.

“I was playing her in instead of out.” I groped for words. “The tune was the tune that described her for me. The one I’d normally wrap around her if I was doing an exorcism, until she couldn’t get away again and had to fade when the music died. I think—I guess—the tune described her for you, too, so that you could see her this time. You won’t see her again, though. I can promise you she won’t be back.”

For whatever reason, that didn’t seem to help very much, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I consoled myself that Alice was a lady who would always get by.

On my way out, I stopped by the workroom, where Cheryl was toiling alone. She looked up from her keyboard, gave me a nod and a half smile.

“Thanks for everything,” I said.

“You’re welcome.”

“I’m really sorry about your mum’s wedding.”

“Yeah. You said.”

A pause. I walked over to her, but she held out her hand quickly, emphatically, palm out, before I could touch her. I did as I was told and kept my distance.

It took her a long time to find the words. “I’m glad you did what you did,” she said. “I think it was cool. There’s got to be someone who’ll stand up for people like Sylvie—Snezhna, I mean—and make sure they get their justice. After all, there’s a million people out there protecting the living against the dead. Someone’s got to protect the dead against the living. There’s gotta be that balance, right? And I don’t think you even knew yourself, up until now, that that was what you were for.”

Cheryl blinked a few times, quickly, as if she might be about to cry. I could have been imagining that, though; it didn’t show in her voice, and she had no trouble looking me in the eye. “The thing is, Fix,” she said mournfully, “you lie too easily. You lied to yourself, all that time, about how ghosts were just things, not people. So you didn’t have to feel guilty about screwing them over. And then you lied to me when you didn’t even have to. When I would’ve helped you anyway, if you’d told me the truth. That’s a shitty basis for a relationship.”

“Relationship?” I said. “Hey, it was a good bang, and I like you and everything . . .”

She recognized her own words and laughed. But she got serious again.

“We can still be friends,” she said. “I’d like that. But I can’t—you know. I can’t open up to a man I don’t trust. It just doesn’t work for me.”

She let me kiss her once, very lightly, on the lips.

“Well, now you’ve tried it,” I said. “So you’ve got every right to say that you don’t like it.”

Just like with Alice. It was all I had, and I knew it wasn’t enough. The sound of Cheryl’s typing accompanied me down the corridor, but was lost in the vast coldness of the place as I descended the stairs.

Twenty-five