Dead Men's s Boots

There’s going to be a war, and I want you on my side. I’m determined on it. Perhaps your friend Rafi might actually be the bridge that brings us together.’

‘You mean you’re going to lay him down on the ground and trample on him?’ I said. ‘Tell it to the court.’

She raised hethoShe rair hands in surrender and walked on. I turned to Pen, who was trembling like a tuning fork.

‘Well, that went as well as could be expected,’ I said.

‘Fuck off, Fix,’ Pen answered, her eyes welling up with tears and instantly overflowing.

She turned her back and stalked away along the seats, tripping at one point over somebody’s briefcase and then kicking it out of her way as she righted herself. It wasn’t a dramatic exit, but it did the job.

What’s that old Groucho Marx line? No, never mind: I’ve got plenty of enemies. But if they ever start to thin out, most of my friends are right there in the wings ready to audition.

‘There’s going to be a war.

The dead only rose again because they were running ahead of the demons, the theory went, and now the demons had started to appear. There was a gaping hole in the walls of Creation: Hell was throwing its legions into the breach, and so far our side not only didn’t have an army, it didn’t even have a poster with a pointing finger on it.

The first and greatest of the exorcists, Peckham Steiner, had believed this too, and towards the end of his life he’d devoted his personal fortune to the building of defences that would give the living a fighting chance in that war when it was finally declared: the Thames Collective, a barracks for ghostbreakers on running water, where the dead and the damned couldn’t walk; the safe houses, protected by ramparts of water, earth and air, which I’d assumed were an urban legend until I’d actually seen one and figured out how it worked; a dozen wacky schemes full of customised craziness in every flavour you can think of.

If there was a war coming, then Rafi Ditko was conquered territory. Playing around with black magic, he’d opened up a door to Hell inside his own soul, and something – a big, bad bastard of a something that called itself Asmodeus – had stepped through.