Thicker Than Water

All the same I played him a binding tune, and Imelda touched him some more on the head and face and shoulders, murmuring to herself in throaty Gabon French as she did so. It was the first time we’d worked in tag-team format like this, but we fell in with each other’s moves without needing to discuss it.

Rafi didn’t talk either, until we’d finished. Then he voiced the question that had been on his mind ever since we’d walked into the room. ‘Is Pen with you?’

‘Nah, she had to do her hair,’ I said, and then, before his face could register either dismay or disbelief, ‘She’s upstairs. She clocks on as soon as we clock off.’

‘Then don’t let me keep you,’ he said, waving us towards the door. ‘Oh, did you bring the whisky, Fix?’

‘I’ll drop it in later,’ I promised. ‘Before I leave, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

While Pen got her conjugals, securely locked in with Rafi behind the barricade of wards, I explained to Imelda what I’d seen and felt on the Salisbury estate. She was about as impressed as I thought she’d be. ‘You need to drink a little less coffee, Castor,’ she told me stonily. ‘Your nerves are getting jumpy.’

‘I’m serious, Imelda,’ I said, not rising to the bait. ‘This is real, and it’s nasty.’

‘Then go do that thing you do.’ She said this with a contemptuous edge in her voice: like I said, to the Ice-Maker the dead are friends and clients. Consequently she doesn’t have a whole lot of time for exorcists.

‘I intend to,’ I said, flatly. ‘But I’d like to know how the land lies. You don’t defuse a bomb by picking it up and shaking it to see what rattles. You check what kind of trigger it’s got.’

‘What in God’s name do you know about defusing bombs?’

‘About as much as I know about freestyle tap-dance,’ I admitted. ‘But I do know about frying the undead - saving your presence - and I know I’ve got a better chance of coming out of this on my own two feet if I get some decent intel.’

We argued it backwards and forwards a knd divlittle without getting anywhere. And when it was clear that Imelda wasn’t going to concede the point, I shifted my ground.

‘What if Asmodeus gets out anyway?’ I asked her. ‘We’ve got him under control at the moment, but that might not last. Wouldn’t you like to test the strength of those wards on the door while you’ve got me around as back-up?’

By way of answer, Imelda stood up and beckoned me to follow her. We went across the barren space, smelling slightly of decay, that she calls her waiting room to a doorway, on the far side of which Lisa was reading Hello! magazine by the light of a stub of candle.

‘So say we test the wards, and they fail,’ Imelda said. ‘That’s my sweet girl there, Castor. The only thing I’ll leave behind me when I’m gone to show I was ever here. I stretched a point already, letting you bring an âme raché into my house. I stretched it as far as it’s going to go. Do I want to test the wards? Hell, if that thing gets out of him, all the wards in the goddamn world aren’t going to slow it down for the time it takes you to fart, Castor. I’m relying on the strength of my hands. They’ve never failed me yet.’

I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender. I could see I wasn’t going to carry the point. By this time Pen’s hour was up and we were getting into overtime. We went downstairs, letting our feet fall heavily to announce us. When Imelda was finally done with the locks and bolts, Pen and Rafi were sitting demurely on the bed together, just holding hands.

I held out the whisky and Rafi let go of Pen’s hand to take it.

‘Jameson’s,’ he said without much enthusiasm. ‘I asked for single malt.’

‘You get single malt when I get a paying gig,’ I told him, and he grunted in disapproval. ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I guess we’d better hit the road.’

‘I thought you had something you wanted to say to me.’

I shrugged. There was nothing else I could do. ‘It’ll keep,’ I said. ‘Pen, whenever you’re ready.’

They embraced, long and lingering: in the end I made a throat-clearing noise and they peeled apart reluctantly. Don’t think I was just being an arsehole here, by the way: we’d learned by trial and error that the heightened arousal Rafi gets from being around Pen tends to undo the effect of Imelda’s benediction and my playing. An hour is safe. An hour and a half is usually okay. Two hours or more is asking for trouble.

‘You’re working on the Tune, right?’ Rafi asked me. When he says it that way, with the capital letter, it only ever means one thing: the music of unbinding, the tune that will sunder him from Asmodeus and leave him once again as sole tenant in his own skin.

‘Always,’ I told him, which was as good as saying ‘No news since the last time you asked.’

He nodded slowly, staring me in the eyes the whole time. He knows the only leverage he has on me is my gui kn m">

The whisky bottle hit the wall right next to my head and shattered spectacularly.