The Naming of the Beasts

Jenna-Jane’s office was at an intersection of two corridors. It had probably been a nurses’ station at one time because two adjacent walls of it were solid glass from floor to ceiling, commanding a panoramic view in both directions. Austere white vertical blinds hung over them now, but the blinds were open.

The office was sparsely furnished. There was something monastic about Jenna-Jane’s dedication to her cause. Probably she and Father Gwillam would have found a lot to talk about if they’d ever met, even though her religion of science was the antithesis of his old-school apocalyptic fundamentalism. There was only an antique roll-top desk against one wall, a number of office chairs on castors, a phalanx of five four-drawer filing cabinets in battleship grey, and a bookcase filled with formularies and medical textbooks. Jenna-Jane didn’t read for pleasure. Classical music was a vice she admitted to, but most of her passions were tied up in her work. In tribute to that jealous god, a statuette standing on one of the filing cabinets - a stylised human figure with its back arched, like the Oscar statue yawning and stretching - was inscribed on its wooden base with the words EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVEMENT IN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH. Josef Mengele probably had one of those on his desk too.

Two other people were in the room, besides Jenna-Jane - a man and a woman - but I didn’t know either of them, and my attention flicked over them to land on the vivid, self-contained figure behind the desk. Jenna-Jane stood, closing the lid of her laptop with an automatic gesture. ‘Felix,’ she said, a warm smile on her face. She held out her hand, and I took it because there was no use straining at gnats considering the camel I’d come here to chow down on. ‘You’re looking really well, as always. And as always, it’s very, very much a pleasure. You find us at sixes and sevens, so you’ll have to excuse us: the move occupies so much of my time right now.’

Jenna-Jane is like one of those trompe l’oeil paintings where you think you’re looking down a long corridor and in fact it’s a solid wall. That’s the only way I know to describe her, because nothing else in nature is so absolutely impenetrable while seeming so entirely wide open. You look at her small frame, her grandmotherly face, her straight, dignified bearing, and you feel an instinctive swell of affection and respect. Unless you know her; in which case the more she smiles the more you find yourself thinking about what happened to the young lady of Riga. She was dressed down today, in blue jeans and a gingham shirt. That degree of homespun camouflage boded bad news for someone, and it was probably going to be me.

I took my hand back, suppressing the urge to count the fingers and make sure they were all still there.

‘This is Karin Gentle, my PA,’ said J-J, indicating the woman, who stood as her name was mentioned. She had a ring-bound reporter’s notebook in her right hand, but she transferred it to her left so we could shake. As we did, she bobbed her head in a subliminal echo of a formal bow. She was Asian, in her mid-twenties, and handsome despite a slightly pockmarked face.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you,’ she said, confirming my suspicion that it was her voice I’d heard over the intercom. ‘You’re the man who survived the embrace of the succubus Ajulutsikael, and then tamed her. Isn’t that right?’

‘You think she’s tame?’ I asked. ‘I should introduce you.’

It was just a flippant comment, but the Asian woman’s eyes widened. ‘Then it’s true? She stayed on Earth? She went native? I could meet her?’

The eagerness in her stare was unsettling. Maybe she was younger than she looked: no exorcist should be that happy at the thought of tangling with a demon. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I advised her. She blinked, looking a little hurt.

‘And I believe you know Gil,’ J-J went on smoothly, indicating with a nod of her head the man sitting in the corner of the office. Unlike J-J and Gentle, he didn’t bother to stand. He just looked me over, toe to head and then back down to toe, without finding anything that he liked on either leg of the journey.

I was pretty sure J-J was wrong on that one: I didn’t know the guy. He looked to be a few years younger than me, which put him just over thirty, with a slightly ratty physique, watery blue eyes, and brown hair with oddly placed blond highlights. Something about those blond tufts raised echoes in my mind, but I would have needed a quieter place to hear what they were whispering.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever—’

‘My name is McClennan,’ the guy said. ‘Gilbert McClennan. You knew my uncle.’

I nodded slowly, wondering how to respond to that one. Gabriel McClennan had been the biggest rat’s arse I’d ever had the misfortune of working with. Based in Soho, he’d systematically lied and cheated and stolen his way out of the good graces of the entire ghost-breaking community. We’d never had a whole lot in common, even before I’d accidentally got him killed.