The Devil You Know

I flipped through the pages of the notebook, looking for something that would be a bit more distinctive. In the end I settled for a Valentine’s Day card and typed in some of the search fields that Rich had jotted down. RECIPIENT CARLA. DESIGN HEART WITH WINGS.

Yeah, there it was: item number 2838. The next document I tried, a birth certificate, was number 1211. The third was a book of wedding photos, and it showed up as number 832.

It was no use. Even if I was right, it could take me days to find what I was looking for. There had to be another way of doing this. I thought about it for a long while. Then I picked up the phone and placed a call to Nicky.

He answered in his usual guarded way—making sure he knew who I was before he owned up to being who he was. Normally I take that in my stride, but not today. “Nicky, enough of the bullshit,” I said testily, cutting him off. “I need another favor. If it comes to anything, I’ll buy you a whole crate of that overpriced French mouthwash. Meet me at Euston Station. At the Burger King on the main concourse, okay? That way, you’ll be able to see me from a hundred yards away, and you’ll know it’s me, rather than some weird branch of the government pulling a sting. It’s goddamn urgent, okay? Someone’s trying to kill me, and I’d like to know why.”

Taking that kind of tone with Nicky was a high-risk strategy. I waited to see if he’d cave in or tell me to go fuck myself. He did neither. “Trying to kill you with what?” he demanded tersely.

“A stairwell. And then a succubus.”

That got a response, at any rate. “Holy shit. A fuck-demon? What did it look like? Did you get pictures?”

“Did I get pictures? Nicky, I was lucky to get out with my wedding tackle still attached. No, I didn’t get pictures.”

“Then what was its name? Was it one of the steganographics?”

“I’m not an expert. She said her name was Juliet. She had black hair and black eyes.”

“Anything else? Markings? Nonhuman features? What were her sexual organs like? Any teeth down there?”

“Nicky, for the love of Christ—they were like a woman’s—she was normal. Stupendously high-end normal.” Something popped up in my mind, like conceptual toast. “Except for her breasts.”

“Which were?”

“She didn’t have any areolae around her nipples. All of her skin was pure white.”

“Got you. Okay, I’ll do some looking around.”

“That’s not what I want you to do.”

“I’ll do it anyway. The hell-kin fascinate me.”

“Just meet me, okay?”

“Euston Station. I’ll be there—but twenty minutes is all you’re getting, and you can pay for the taxi.”

I went looking for Rich. I found him in the public reading area, watching over a florid, preoccupied woman who was leafing through what looked like the catalog from some ancient exhibition of chamber pots and toilet furniture. He looked up when I came in and gave me a nod.

“Alice is looking for you,” he said. “She didn’t look happy.”

“I’d probably be more worried if she did. Listen, Rich, there was something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Go on.”

“The first week in September. Maybe the last week in August. Do you remember anything out of the ordinary happening around then?”

He looked blank.

“Can you give me a hint?” he asked. “What kind of anything?”

“The kind of anything that would end up being written into the incident book.”

“So . . . an accident? Or a breakage? Someone going home sick?”

“Sounds like the right sort of territory, yeah.”

Rich frowned thoughtfully, but I suspected that was just to show willing. “Nothing that springs to mind,” he admitted. “The trouble is, those things happen all the time. Unless you’ve got something to pin it to—something that definitely happened at the same time—you don’t remember it well enough to say when it was.”

“The first appearance of the ghost,” I said. “It was almost exactly at that time. Does that help?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Sorry, mate.”

“Never mind. It was a long shot. If you do come up with anything, though, let me know. Ask Cheryl, too. And any of the part-timers you see.”

“And Jon?”

I had to mull that one over for a moment. “Yeah, and Jon,” I said at last. “Anyone you bump into. It doesn’t do any harm to ask.”

“Doesn’t do any good either, most of the time,” he observed cynically.

“I’m noticing that, brother,” I admitted. “But hope springs eternal, eh?”