The Devil You Know

Didn’t do me much good, though. Okay, I was up and running before it could get all its legs in their right places again and turn around, but the bastard thing went from zero to sixty in three seconds. With me these days, it’s more like three weeks’ notice and a friendly push-start. The thing’s whole weight hit me solidly in the middle of the back, and my feet went out from under me. I hit the ground heavily, face slamming hard into the grass. Stenching furnace breath billowed over me, and I ducked and covered only just in time to hear massive jaws snapping closed an inch from my ear.

They only closed once, I’m happy to say. Five sharp cracks sounded closely enough together to be mistaken for one, and the thing collapsed on top of me. A moment later, the keepers were hauling me out from underneath the loup-garou’s stinking, slumbering mass.

God, it was even worse this close up. The basic shape was canine, but the claws were recurved like sickle blades, and there were additional spurs of bone at elbows and haunches. Splotchy fur like a hyena’s covered its overmuscled shoulders, but its hind quarters were bare and leprous. It must have massed about two hundred and fifty pounds.

“Old soul,” said Savage with something like respect. He meant that this was a ghost that had been around the track a few times and had picked up some neat tricks where the molding of its host flesh was concerned. Even now, it was impossible to tell what kind of dog this monster had started out as.

“Have you got a cage to put it in?” I asked.

He shot me a glance; shook his head. “We couldn’t keep this here. The smell of it would make the other animals run mad. No, this goes to Professor Mulbridge down in London. And good riddance.”

Gittings came up panting. “Sorry, Fix,” he said. “I thought this way would work better.”

I gave him a high-octane glare. “What way is that?” I demanded. “You sit on your hands, I lose my head?”

“No. I wanted you to get its attention and then, while it was focused on you, I thought I’d have time to do a full exorcism. That’s why I got in so close. Rip the ghost out of the flesh, and you’ve just got an animal, after all. Much easier to deal with.”

I poked him in the chest. “Don’t change the plan on the ground when it’s me that’s in the line of fire, John. Next time, you find another piece of raw meat to dangle, okay?”

He was contrite. “Sorry, Fix. You’re right. It just seemed like a good idea.”

I simmered down. It had been a bad call, but it wasn’t really Gittings that was jangling my nerves, and taking it out on him wouldn’t make me feel any better.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

“Breakfast’s on me,” said John recklessly. But my churned-up stomach wouldn’t let me eat, so that was a really cheap round.

Driving back into London, I thought about the various reversals that last night had brought. I asked myself why the hell I was out in the Bedfordshire sticks doing a good impersonation of live bait instead of in the Bonnington, whistling the faceless lady back to her grave.

And the only answer I could come up with was that I was still unhappy.

Pen needed the car, so I dropped it back around to her. Walking down Turnpike Lane, I called Peele to tell him I had some things to do that would keep me away from the archive for most of the day.

“What’s left of the day, you mean,” he corrected me prissily. “It’s almost noon now.”

Time flies when you’re enjoying yourself. “I had some other matters to attend to,” I said.

“Other matters?” He was suitably scandalized. “You mean you’re taking on more commissions before you’ve finished here?”

“No, I went to the zoo.”

“Very amusing, Mr. Castor. The things that you’re doing today, can you honestly tell me that they relate to us? To our problem here?”

“Yes,” I said, which was true enough. “A lot of it is about getting more background information. I’m on the case. I feel like I’m really moving forward.” And now I was stretching the truth more or less to breaking point. “But if I can use a military metaphor, Mr. Peele, sometimes when you move forward too fast, you leave your flanks exposed. I just want to make sure that I’m not missing something.”

He gave in sullenly and indicated that there was a conversation that needed to be had about an incident in the workroom the day before. I told him I’d be at his disposal either later that day or first thing tomorrow. Then, before he could hang up, I hit him with the little sting in the tail I’d been holding back all this time.

“Oh, just one more thing before you go, Mr. Peele,” I said like Columbo’s understudy. “Why didn’t you tell me I was the second name on your list?”

“I’m sorry?” Peele sounded surprised and coldly affronted—as if I’d accused him of marital infidelity.

I rephrased. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d already used another exorcist? Gabriel McClennan has been in the Bonnington, and he’s met your ghost. I like to know if I’m unpicking someone else’s work rather than doing a job from scratch.”