Vicious Circle

Rosie brought her mouth up close to my ear. “He said he was staying with Mr. Steiner,” she whispered quickly, just as their hands clamped down on my shoulders and hauled me backward off the chair. They spun me round to face J.J., who was staring at me with an expression of baffled sadness.

“You’ve really disappointed me, Felix,” she told me.

“J.J.,” I said, “you’re only saying that to make me feel good.”

One of the guards punched me in the stomach to show willing, and as I doubled up on a painful whoof of air, Jenna-Jane chided him as gently as she’d chided me. “No violence,” she said. “This is a place of civilized discourse. Just show him out, and bring me the tapes from this session, when they’re changed. I want to know what they were talking about. I’m sorry you were disturbed, Rosie.”

“It was all rather exciting,” said Rosie. “Come again soon, Fix.”

“I’m afraid Mr. Castor isn’t in our good books anymore. It’s not likely he’ll be back.”

“Count on it, Rosie,” I wheezed.

The guards gave me a bit more civilized discourse on the way to the front door, but nothing that would leave any marks.

As I walked, a little shakily, back to the car I played Rosie’s words over in my mind. Staying with Mr. Steiner. Since Peckham Steiner was dead and buried, while the guy I’d briefly gotten acquainted with on board the Collective was definitely alive, that left one intriguing possibility, for which I’d need Nicky’s help.

And maybe—you’ll have to pardon the expression—I could kill two birds with one stone.

Fifteen

WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE?” NICKY DEMANDED, THROWING out his arms indignantly. “A fucking flophouse? Beds for all, extra blankets on request?”

“It’ll just be for a day or two, Nicky. Maybe less than that. She could just wake up of her own accord, anytime, and walk out of here.”

“Take your demon slut somewhere else, Castor. You already fucked my life up more than enough for one week.”

We were in the main auditorium of the cinema, where Nicky keeps the pump and the generator for his air-conditioning rig. I’ve never been able to work out the intricacies of his power-swapping and volt-laundering, but somehow he manages to keep about a thousand cubic meters at a well-chilled four degrees Celsius without making a needle tremble anywhere in the whole national grid. I think there’s a hamster in a wheel somewhere, running its little heart out.

But tonight there was some kind of a hiccup somewhere in the system, and Nicky was on his back underneath the pump mechanism tending to its innards with a wrench and an oxyacetylene torch. The torch looked like a frilled lizard, because Nicky had fitted a reflective collar to its neck to minimize the heat splashing back against his body as he worked. He was fresh from Imelda’s healing hands, but still—a degree or two here and there, it all added up in the end in terms of life expectancy. Life-after-death expectancy, I should say.

I tried a different tack. “Look, she can probably afford to pay you. Let’s say a hundred a night. I’ll get her to settle up as soon as she’s awake.”

“Yeah? Be cheaper to dangle me off a footbridge by my entrails, wouldn’t it? You forget, I did your research for you on this: I know more about how dangerous Ajulutsikael is than you do. Pass me that masking tape.”

I kicked it across the floor to within reach of his hand. He fished it up without thanks.

“A hundred and fifty a night,” I suggested.

“You’re not getting it, are you, Castor? I don’t trust her and I don’t want her around. I take my physical safety pretty seriously. You think I want some psychotic demon whore waking up grouchy in my guest bedroom?”

“Do you even have a guest bedroom, Nicky?”

“Nope. Good point.”

“Maybe she could pay you in information.”

“About what, Castor?”

Inspiration sailed past me like a dust mote in the frigid air, and I caught it on the fly. “About what comes next,” I said. It was grotesquely manipulative, but I was getting a little tired of the way people kept saying no to me.

Nicky rolled out from under the pump to stare at me with a mixture of definite interest and deep suspicion. “What was that?”

I blew out my cheek, shrugged. “Well, I mean to say, you’re good at postponing the inevitable, Nicky—nobody better—but you’re gonna drop off the edge sooner or later. Wouldn’t you like to know where you’re likely to fetch up?”

He found a roll of paper towel, hauled off a length, and started to wipe his soot-stained fingers on it. He kept his eyes on what he was doing, knowing that his poker face isn’t all that great. “I’d still be scared she’d rip my balls off and wear them as earrings,” he said sourly.

“Do you have a storeroom with a good strong door and a padlock?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So she doesn’t need to eat or drink, or use the bathroom. You could just lock her up until I get back.”

There was a long silence as Nicky carried on with his ablutions.