The Devil You Know

I got the door open, but he called out to me before I could walk through it. I turned on the threshold and looked back at him—indecisive, sullen, glaring at his desktop with bitter distaste, but obviously thinking that starting again with someone else would mean all the time he’d wasted already would just be sunk costs.

“Could it really take as long as a month?” he demanded.

“If it did, it would be a new world record. Most likely, I’ll run your ghost to ground inside of a couple of days and be out of your hair before you’ve had time to notice that I’m around. I’m not saying I’m slow, Mr. Peele—just that the work I do doesn’t proceed according to a fixed timetable.”

“Are there ways to make it proceed faster?”

That one set off a small carillon of alarm bells in my mind.

“Yes, there are,” I admitted. “But they’re not going to be my first options, because they’re—unpredictable.”

“Dangerous?”

“Potentially, yes. Dangerous.”

He nodded reluctantly. “Well, then. I presume you know your business, Mr. Castor. I think—I may have spoken too hastily before. Three hundred isn’t an unreasonable sum to ask for as a deposit. But if progress is slow, then perhaps we might consider using some of those other methods?”

“We can talk about that later,” I said firmly, wondering what I was letting myself in for here.

“Later,” Peele agreed. “Yes, very well. Perhaps you can come back at the end of the day and let me know how it’s all gone. Or tell Alice,” he amended, and he seemed to brighten at that second, better reflection. “And Alice can report back to me.”

I let it go. It was obvious I was going to have him breathing down my neck whatever I said. “Fine, I’ll do that. First, though, I’d like to talk to Rich Clitheroe about the incident where the ghost attacked him. And I’d also like to take a look at those Russian letters you were talking about—or rather, the room where you’re keeping them.”

“Certainly. Ah—I’ll have to get the money signed out of the safe, which means waiting until after lunch, when I do the financial review with Alice. But I hope you won’t wait until then to get under way?”

“Mr. Peele,” I assured him gravely, “I was under way as soon as I walked in the door.”

Peele didn’t go back into the workroom with me; he just picked up the phone and summoned Alice. I had to wonder if he was trying to distance himself from the decision to hire me—or was this just another aspect of his condition? Was he so uncomfortable around other people that he preferred to rule by proxy?

Peele broke the news that I’d be around for a while. Alice took it on the chin, but it was clear that she viewed this prospect with about as much enthusiasm as root-canal work. If I were sensitive about stuff like that, I could have got my feelings hurt. Before I let myself be led away, though, I decided to clear up one thing.

“The incident in which Rich Clitheroe was attacked,” I said, as Alice held the door open for me to walk on through. “You told me you weren’t present for that, right?”

“No.” Alice’s tone was exasperated. “That’s not what I said. I said I didn’t see the ghost. I saw what happened to Rich, but there wasn’t any ghost there. As far as I’m concerned, there never has been.”

“So you just saw the scissors—what? Levitate? Move themselves through the air?”

Alice shot a look at Peele before replying. He was staring at the desk, but seemed to be listening closely. I don’t know what cue she was looking for or what she got. “His hand twisted around,” she said. “The scissor blade scraped along his arm and then came up and grazed his face. You should be asking him about this, not me.”

“Yeah, well, I will ask him, of course. But I wanted to establish—”

Alice cut across my words, speaking past me to Peele. “Jeffrey,” she said. “If you give me a direct instruction to cooperate with this, then I’ll do it. If I’m free to refuse to be questioned, I’m going to refuse.”

There was a strained pause.

“Alice has strong feelings about this,” Peele said very quietly. He stared at his computer monitor as he said it, so the only clue I had that he was talking to me was that he referred to her in the third person.

“I can see,” I acknowledged.

“If you can work around her . . . it would probably be best. I’m sure everyone else will be happy to tell you what they know.”

I looked at Alice, who was glowering at me now, making no attempt to hide her resentment.

“Fine,” I said, after a moment. She nodded curtly, her point established, and her lines drawn. I followed her out to the workroom, and the door closed on Peele, no doubt to his immense relief.

It wasn’t fine; it was thick, lumpy bullshit. But the cardinal fact hadn’t changed—I still needed the money.

Back in the workroom, I gave the Exorcism 101 speech again, with minor modifications, for the benefit of Rich and Cheryl, who ate it up, and Jon, who pretended I wasn’t happening.