Vicious Circle

“Okay, sport,” I murmured. I stood up and he squared off against me, waiting for me to throw the first punch. He was sure enough of his own strength to know that nothing I could swing would put him down, and having allowed me an ineffectual tap at his chin he could dismantle me at his leisure.

I had the myrtle twig wrapped twice around my hand. I just slapped it to his forehead and spat out the words “hoc fugere.” He shot backward as fast if I’d stuck a shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

It wasn’t an exorcism—nothing like. It’s just the most basic kind of nature magic, an elemental ward that has efficacy for about three weeks of the year, so long as it’s been properly cut and blessed. To the dead, whether they’re in the body or out of it, getting too close to a ward is like touching a main cable: it hurts a fuck of a lot.

The zombie hit the floor hard, and lay there jerking spastically with his eyes wide open. One of his arms, flailing out, hit the leg of the woman who’d been reading Cosmo. She jumped aside to avoid the contact.

“I really don’t want any trouble,” I told the room in general.

“Yeah,” said Nicky from the doorway. “That’s fucking plain to see.”

Behind him, Imelda gave a yelp of dismay and stormed past him into the room, knocking him aside. She’s a big woman, with fists like hams: it would take a lot more than a myrtle switch to take her down. “Castor!” she bellowed. “You have no right! You have no right! You get out of my house now, or I swear I’ll call the police on you.”

“Hey, he was the one wanted to fight,” I said. “I was happy with the Reader’s Digest.”

Kneeling down beside the still-shuddering zombie, she laid her hand on his forehead and shot me a glare of pure contempt. He quieted under her hand.

“Then you deal with him like a man,” she said. “Not like a cockroach.”

“I just used a—” I began.

“I know what you used,” she snapped. “You swatted him with a stay-not like you’d swat a bug, because you couldn’t win the fight any other way. You’re just a goddamn coward. Now you get out of my house before I throw you out.”

That was a much more serious threat than the one about phoning the police. Imelda would never ask the man to fight her battles for her, but she really could pick me up and throw me, and the way I felt right then I might not survive. I put up my hands in surrender and left the room, hearing Nicky behind me apologizing on my behalf and assuring her I’d never come round here again.

Little Lisa was out in the hallway, leaning against the wall. She grinned at me, wickedly amused.

“What’s the joke?” I asked.

“You beat that big lych man,” she said scornfully, “but you couldn’t beat my mom.”

“Can you?” I asked.

She shook her head vigorously. “Fuck, no.”

“Well, there you go.”

I waited for Nicky in the yard, but when he came out he walked right on past me. “The car’s out in the street,” I said, falling into step with him.

“Fuck you, Castor,” he snapped, speeding up. “I’ll take a frigging cab.”

“Look, the guy was going to fold me into a paper plane, Nicky. I’m sorry. But I did what I had to do.”

“You know what it would mean for me if Imelda decides I’m bad news? The only other guy I know who can do what she does lives in Glasgow. I am fucking screwed if she gets mad at me. I wish to Christ I’d told you to wait until tomorrow.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’m sorry. I already said I was sorry. What did you have to tell me, anyway? What is it that couldn’t wait?”

We were out in the street by this time. He slammed the yard door shut with a bang that resounded across the street—in this neighborhood, not a wonderful idea.

“What couldn’t wait?” he echoed, sarcastically. “You’ve been fed a line, is what. I wanted to tell you you’re running on pure bullshit. This kid Abbie Torrington—you said her parents hired you to find her?”

“Right,” I agreed, a little unnerved by his savagery. “Get to the point, Nicky.”

He rounded on me, thrust his face into mine.

“The point is you had me chasing my own fucking tail, looking through morgue records and autopsy reports and fuck knows what else. And it’s all a waste of time because the kid’s not dead.”

He hit the punchline with grim satisfaction.

“The kid’s only missing. It’s the parents who are dead.”

Twelve

WHEN I WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD, AND COMING UP TO MY twelfth birthday, I dropped a lot of heavy hints about a bike. It was a lot to ask, even if it was a secondhand one, because my dad had just been laid off from the metal box factory on Breeze Hill and we’d reached the point where we either had to eat dirt literally or go to one of the local loan sharks and do it figuratively.