Vicious Circle

The church stood in its own very narrow grounds on Du Cane Road, almost directly opposite the soul-dampening pile of Wormwood Scrubs—which is angry red chased with white, like bone showing through an open wound. To the left of the church itself, where Susan Book led me, there was a lych-gate, on the far side of which I could see a trim little graveyard like the stage set for a musical of Gray’s “Elegy.” This gate was locked, too, with a padlock on a chain. Susan took out a small ring of keys from her pocket, sorted through them, and found the right one. It turned in the padlock after a certain amount of fidgeting and ratcheting, and she slid the chain free so that the gate swung open, stepping aside to let me through.

“I’ll unlock the vestry door for you,” she said. “It’s by the west transept, over there. Miss Salazar is—” She pointed, but I’d already seen Juliet. The cemetery was on a slight slope and she was sitting cross-legged on top of a marble monument of some kind, outlined against the sky. A colossal oak that had to be a couple of hundred years old held up half the sky behind her.

“Thanks,” I said. “We’ll join you in a couple of minutes.”

Susan Book stood for a moment staring up the hill at Juliet’s silhouetted form. Then she bustled away, casting a wide-eyed look at me over her shoulder as if I’d caught her out in a moment of self-doubt. I waved, reassuringly I hoped, and walked up the hill to join Juliet. She had her head bowed and she didn’t look up as I approached. She didn’t seem to notice me, although I knew damn well that she’d heard the key rattle in the lock of the lych-gate, smelled my aftershave on the air as I stepped through, and sieved my pheromones by taste to find out what kind of a day I’d had. As soon as she was close enough so that I didn’t have to raise my voice to speak to her, I voiced what was uppermost in my mind.

“Why a church? Did you get religion?”

Her head snapped up and she frowned at me, eyes narrowing to slits. I threw up my hands, palms out, in a meant-no-harm pantomime. Sometimes I go too far. She infallibly lets me know when that happens.

As usual, once I’d started looking at her, the tricky thing was stopping. Juliet is absurdly, unfeasibly beautiful. Her skin is melanin-free, alabaster smooth, as white as any cliché you care to dredge up. If you go for the default option, snow, then think of her eyes as two deep fishing holes, as black as midnight. But if anyone’s fishing, it’s from the inside of those holes, and you won’t feel the hook until it’s way, way down in the back of your throat. Her hair is black, too: a waterfall of black that falls almost to the small of her back, texturelessly sheer. Her body . . . I won’t try to cover that. You could get lost there. People have: stronger people than you, and most of them never came back.

Because the point—and I know I’ve said this already—is that Juliet isn’t human. She’s a demon: of the family of the succubi, whose preferred method of feeding depends on arousing you to the point where your nervous system starts to fuse into slag and then sucking your soul out through your flesh. Even tonight, dressed coyly in black slacks, boots, and a loose white shirt with a red rose embroidered up the left-hand side, you could never mistake her for anything other than what she was. The confidence, the strength that Susan Book had seen in her—that came from being the top carnivore in a food chain that no man or woman alive could even imagine. Except that “carnivore” wasn’t quite the right term: you needed something like “noumovore,” or “animovore.” And even more than that, you needed not to go there.

Thank God she’s on our side, that’s all. And I’m saying that as an atheist.

And taking another step, I came within range of her scent. It hit me in two waves, as it always does. With the first breath, you’re gulping in the rank foulness of fox, cloying and earthy; with the second, which you draw shallowly because of the sharpness of that first impression, you inhale a mélange of perfumes so achingly sweet and sensual your body goes on instant all-points alert. I’m used to it and I was braced for it, but even so I felt a wave of dizziness as all the blood in my head rushed down to my crotch in case it was needed there to bulk out my sudden, painful erection. Men limp around Juliet: limp, and go partially blind because taking your eyes off her suddenly seems like a waste of valuable time.

Which is why it’s important never to forget what she is. That way, you can maintain a level of good, old-fashioned, pants-wetting terror as a bulwark against the desire. I’ve found that to be a healthy balance to keep, because obviously if I ever actually had sex with Juliet, my immortal soul would be the cigarette afterward; but still, it’s not easy to think logically when she’s right there in front of you. It’s not easy to think at all.