Vicious Circle

“If she wanted to talk to you, Castor, she wouldn’t have changed the locks.”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

“Because I don’t want to have to talk her down from another round of hysterics. Why don’t you e-mail her?”

“No computer.”

“Heliograph, then.”

I looked up at the heavy overcast sky. Antoinette did, too.

“Looks like you’re fucked,” she observed, and closed the door.

* * *

Over at the Stanger, Rafi was under deep sedation after smashing his head against the door of his cell until he left half of his face on it. He’d recover, of course: Asmodeus was back in residence, so he once again had a strong interest in making sure his home away from home was kept in good order.

But under the circumstances, the follow-up hearing to determine whether or not Rafi’s sectioning should remain in force had been postponed sine die.

“That means ‘watch this space,’ ” Dr. Webb translated helpfully. “You now have twenty-one days, Castor. If you don’t come up with anything within that time, I’m going to consult with Professor Mulbridge with a view to signing Ditko over into the care of the MOU at Paddington.”

“Watch your back,” I suggested.

Missing my point, he swiveled to look behind him. We were standing in the main corridor of the Stanger, just outside Rafi’s cell, and the corridor was clear. Webb turned back to me, slightly annoyed, as if I’d just played a silly practical joke.

“I meant,” I explained patiently, “watch your back if you throw Rafi to Jenna-Jane. Because if you do that I’m definitely going to break both of your arms and both of your legs.”

Almost in disbelief, Webb looked at the two male nurses who were flanking him to either side—his usual tragic chorus. “I have witnesses,” he said, “who heard you make that threat.”

“I’m sure their testimony will be invaluable,” I agreed. “But you’ll still be quadriplegic.”

Maybe that was a tactless thing to say, but in many ways it was seeming like a long and fairly stressful day. And there was still the question of where I was going to sleep that night.

Juliet and I met up in the evening at a pavement café close to the refuge where she lives. She arrived late, without apology. One of the other residents had a problem with an abusive husband, she told me, and this guy had turned up out of the blue and tried to make his wife leave with him. “So I had to step in and help.”

“What, you mean you ate him?” I asked.

“In front of everybody? No, of course not. I have to go on living there, Felix.”

“What, then?”

She drank her espresso in a single swallow, wiped her lips with her hand. “I showed the other women how to do it.”

“How to—?”

“Impose their will on a man.”

“Ah.” I fished for more, starting with what Juliet was best at. “By employing their feminine wiles?”

“By employing their boots, mostly. And I think an empty bottle was used at one point.”

“Right, right.” Violence, of course. The other thing that Juliet was best at.

There was something on her mind, I could see: something she found hard to say. I tried to make it easier for her.

“Thanks for getting that werewolf off my back,” I said. “It always puts a crimp in my day if someone rips my spine out through my throat.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Juliet, meaning it. “I . . .” She hesitated, feeling her way around social niceties that had no meaning for her. “I should thank you, too. The thought that I rendered myself helpless—that I placed myself so entirely within Asmodeus’s power—is very hard to bear. But you kept me safe, as far as you could. And you brought me back.”

“Brilliant improvisation,” I said modestly. “Include me in your memoirs. And in your will.”

“And in my vagina?”

A large mouthful of café latte went the wrong way in best Hollywood comedy fashion: refusing to endorse the cliché by coughing and spluttering, I went red in the face and waited for the scalding stuff to go down.

“Would I still have my soul afterwards?” I asked her wheezily once the attack had subsided.

Juliet looked thoughtful. “Probably,” she said slowly. “That depends, really, on how much self-control I could muster. At the very least it would have bite marks on it.”

What’s life about if it’s not about taking risks? I opened my mouth to say yes, but Juliet was still speaking.

“We’ll need to wait a while, though,” she said. “Tonight I’m trying something new.”

“Something new?” I repeated, struggling to keep the chagrin and frustration out of my voice. “You’re way past your seventeen thousandth birthday, Juliet. Is there anything new?”

She grinned. “For most of that time,” she reminded me, “I came to earth only at the hest of magicians powerful enough or stupid enough to summon me. They used me either to satiate their own desires—in which case they died, whatever protections they tried to deploy—or to destroy their enemies, in which case other men died. But if the intention was to destroy a woman, then it was my cousins, the incubi, who were called upon. In all that time I was never sent against a woman. Or raised by one.”

I suddenly saw where this was going.