The Naming of the Beasts

‘Oh, I think it will be a lot duller than it sounds. But it’s easy money, right?’ As in, ‘Easy come, easy go,’ I added mentally. It was everything I was getting from Jenna-Jane. I had very mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, it was kind of a relief to shunt J-J’s tainted favours directly onto a third party. On the other hand, you can’t eat air. If this thing didn’t wrap itself up quickly, I was going to be dining in the bins behind Pizza Hut.

‘I’m not interested,’ Juliet said.

‘What?’ I was dismayed. I’d started with my best offer, knowing from experience that you can’t drive a hard bargain with a woman who can smell your soul, so I had nowhere to go now but down. ‘At least think it over, Juliet. Please. It won’t be for very long, and you can always—’

‘I’m not interested in the money,’ Juliet clarified. ‘Give it to her.’

‘To her? Her who?’

‘The one who bruises so easily. My little friend.’

She spat the words out with searing contempt.

‘Susan?’

‘Exactly. She’s the one who needs clothes to wear and food to eat and toys to play with. Make her happy, if she’s capable of being happy. I’ll give you three days.’

I didn’t answer. To tell the truth, I was still trying to digest ‘bruises so easily’, and it was sticking in my throat like a chicken bone. Juliet stared at me with an edge of challenge in her narrowed eyes.

‘She’s . . .’ I began tentatively. ‘That is . . . Sue has been a lot more to you than a friend.’

‘Has she? How would you know, Castor?’

Okay, that was an easy one. ‘Because you can get sex anywhere,’ I pointed out bluntly. ‘You can have anyone you want, on whatever terms you want, for as long as you want. So if you choose to live with one woman, and to stay faithful to her, then it has to be because—’

Juliet’s coarse laugh cut across me. ‘Faithful?’ she repeated. ‘Please. It’s only your species, Castor, that makes a virtue out of not following its instincts. If I’m hungry, I eat something. If I’m angry, I kill something. And if I feel lustful, I make someone satisfy me. Where does faithful come into the equation? It’s just a word you use to hobble someone you love. To tie them to you. It’s a weapon the weak use against the strong.’

‘Interesting choice of words,’ I commented, looking studiously at the dregs in my own cup.

‘Weapon? What would you call it?’

‘Not that word,’ I said. ‘The other one. Love. There was a time when you would have said desire or want. Two years on Earth has changed you more than you know, Juliet. I bet Baphomet wouldn’t even know his kid sister if he saw her now.’

I met her gaze again, and the silence stretched. It’s a high-risk strategy, needling a succubus. Normally I’d have been pretty sure where the line lay and when to stop, but this was a Juliet I didn’t recognise, and I tensed under her stare like a small rodent under a stooping buzzard.

Then she laughed, and I relaxed.

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I have changed.’ She put down the cup and gave the waiter a tenth of a second’s glance - enough to make him come scampering over and give her the refill. He was happy to be of service, happy to be in the vicinity of this amazing woman, who for the moment was filling his mind to the exclusion of his wife, his kids, his other customers, his mortgage, the entirety of his past and the entirety of his future. He filled the cup and then made to raise the pot. Juliet rested a finger lightly on his hand, and he kept on pouring. Hot coffee splashed over the edge of the cup to soak into the tablecloth in a spreading brown stain.

‘Maybe I’ve changed too much,’ Juliet said. ‘Maybe I’ve lost something. A lot of what I’m doing right now bores me.’

The waiter made a small, helpless sound, a half-swallowed moan of dismay. Juliet wasn’t pressing down on his hand; she was holding him in place with the strength of her will, not with any physical force. The coffee had saturated the tablecloth now and was spattering down onto the floor and onto the waiter’s well-shined shoes.

‘Then maybe you need a new challenge,’ I suggested. ‘I mean, as opposed to the same old same old, like making guys have wet dreams while they’re awake. Too easy, surely?’

Juliet lifted her finger. The waiter took an involuntary step back as the skin-to-skin contact was broken, gasping like a landed fish.

‘Everything is too easy,’ Juliet said with heavy emphasis. ‘As I said, I’ll watch your woman for three days. If Asmodeus is really hunting her, that might be a fight - or a fuck - worth having. But three days is my limit. If he hasn’t come by then, he isn’t coming.’

‘Pen isn’t my woman,’ I pointed out scrupulously.

‘Then I’m even less interested. Let’s make it two days.’

Juliet stood up, leaving the refilled cup untouched in the centre of the swamped table. The waiter was staring at her with huge, hapless eyes, haunted by his own unrequitable desire. A lot of other people were staring too, but Juliet’s well used to that. It never bothers her.