Thicker Than Water

‘It’s yours,’ Asmodeus whispered, smiling a smile so wide that it almost cracked Rafi’s face in half. And just like before, the notes were driven into my brain like tent spikes into frozen ground. Harder this time, and further in, so that the pain made me gasp and stiffen.

And I saw what Asmodeus was doing just a second too late for it to make the slightest bit of difference.

‘No!’ I screamed.

‘Too late,’ the demon chided me. ‘I have to take your first answer.’

I took a step forward, my arm shooting out by some stupid, gobshite reflex. Trudie Pax tackled me hard from the side and pulled me back before I could step across the circle and into the demon’s hands.

‘No!’ I said again, shaking my head violently as I choked the word out. I was trying to remember: but Asmodeus was writing the new tune - the exorcism that would destroy the Salisbury demon - in the exact same space within my mind where he’d written the one that was his own: overwriting one sequence of notes with another. He’d given me the means to rip him out of Rafi root and branch: and then he’d taken it away again as easily as he’d given it.

‘You bastard,’ I moaned. ‘You cheating, conniving bastard!’

Asmodeus actually laughed. ‘I played by your rules, Castor,’ he said, shaking his head as he settled back on his haunches again. ‘It’s not my fault if you don’t think things through. Hey, be grateful you get out of this still sane. I could have filled your whole head with that fucking music and left you drooling.’

He licked his lips, savouring the last vestiges of his unholy meal. His gaze clouded.

‘But then you wouldn’t have got the joke,’ he said reflectively. ‘And that would have taken away a lot of the point.’

21

It was more than an hour and a half later when we got back to the Salisbury. It had taken a long time to play Asmodeus back down into Rafi’s hindbrain: he was disposed to be frisky, and I wasn’t exactly on top of the situation. My head was throbbing from having the demon’s ectoplasmic fingers poked into it, and I was shaking with anger that I couldn’t use and couldn’t swallow.

‘You should probably take a little holiday when all this is over, Castor,’ Asmodeus leered as I played. ‘Maybe shoot off to the Caribbean or somewhere. Get yourself drunk, get yourself laid, see if it improves your mood.’

I ignored the cheap jibes and kept banking up the music in front of him in a hot, futile rage, while Imelda sat cross-legged across from me, her head bowed, doing an interpretive dance of a refrigerator. Between the ice and the fire, the demon laughed and took his ease, whistling out of key with my lead-sap lullaby.

This wasn’t an exorcism, it was just a soporific: the same tune I’d been playing for Rafi ever since he’d caught his spiritually transmitted disease three years before. It wasn’t the tune I wanted to be playing - but then, that tune had been stolen from me.

I’d have to be content with cleaning out the Augean shithole over at the Salisbury. That at least I could do now. And Bic was stirring in his sleep towards normal wakefulness, his face calm, his chest rising ¾an and falling evenly. Everything had worked out fine, really - except that Asmodeus had found a way to stick a poker up my arse even when I was facing him full-on.

Gradually, step by step, we heaped up chains around him and sent him back down into the oubliette of Rafi’s soul. He went smiling, enjoying his joke, but he went. I took the whistle from my lips, flexed my stiff fingers, and listened to the silence that was descending on the room.

‘Where am I?’ Bic demanded groggily, sitting up. ‘Where’s Mum?’

‘You’re with friends,’ I assured him, surprised by my own cracked voice. ‘Imelda, thanks for everything. I owe you, and I’ll find a way to pay you back.’

She didn’t move, but her head came up slowly and she stared at me.

‘You let yourselves out,’ she said stonily, not acknowledging the thanks. ‘I’m staying here until I’m sure.’

‘He’s asleep,’ Rafi said, sounding even more wrecked than I felt. ‘I’d feel him if he was still awake.’

‘He fooled us once,’ Imelda reminded him. ‘When he kept a little piece of himself inside your hand. There’s nothing to stop him doing the same thing again, so I’m not taking anything on trust here.’

She walked with us to the door. Trudie made to take Bic’s hand but I got there first and handed her the helmet instead. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Rules are rules.’

She took it, giving me a slightly hurt frown, and slid it over her head again without a word.

Imelda confronted me squarely. ‘When you’re done tonight,’ she said, ‘you come back and take your friend out of here. I’ve got nothing against Rafael, and Pamela is as sweet a child as ever I saw, but I got my own child to think about, too. Enough is enough, Castor. This is your notice to quit.’