Thicker Than Water

It was the first time we’d worked in tag-team format like this, but we fell in with each other’s moves without needing to discuss it.

Rafi didn’t talk either, until we’d finished. Then he voiced the question that had been on his mind ever since we’d walked into the room. ‘Is Pen with you?’

‘Nah, she had to do her hair,’ I said, and then, before his face could register either dismay or disbelief, ‘She’s upstairs. She clocks on as soon as we clock off.’

‘Then don’t let me keep you,’ he said, waving us towards the door.

‘Oh, did you bring the whisky, Fix?’

‘I’ll drop it in later,’ I promised. ‘Before I leave, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

While Pen got her conjugals, securely locked in with Rafi behind the barricade of wards, I explained to Imelda what I’d seen and felt on the Salisbury estate. She was about as impressed as I thought she’d be. ‘You need to drink a little less coffee, Castor,’ she told me stonily. ‘Your nerves are getting jumpy.’

‘I’m serious, Imelda,’ I said, not rising to the bait.

‘This is real, and it’s nasty.’

‘Then go do that thing you do.’ She said this with a contemptuous edge in her voice: like I said, to the Ice-Maker the dead are friends and clients. Consequently she doesn’t have a whole lot of time for exorcists.

‘I intend to,’ I said, flatly. ‘But I’d like to know how the land lies. You don’t defuse a bomb by picking it up and shaking it to see what rattles. You check what kind of trigger it’s got.’

‘What in God’s name do you know about defusing bombs?’

‘About as much as I know about freestyle tap-dance,’ I admitted.

‘But I do know about frying the undead - saving your presence - and I know I’ve got a better chance of coming out of this on my own two feet if I get some decent intel.’

We argued it backwards and forwards a knd divlittle without getting anywhere. And when it was clear that Imelda wasn’t going to concede the point, I shifted my ground.

‘What if Asmodeus gets out anyway?’ I asked her. ‘We’ve got him under control at the moment, but that might not last.

Wouldn’t you like to test the strength of those wards on the door while you’ve got me around as back-up?’

By way of answer, Imelda stood up and beckoned me to follow her. We went across the barren space, smelling slightly of decay, that she calls her waiting room to a doorway, on the far side of which Lisa was reading Hello! magazine by the light of a stub of candle.

‘So say we test the wards, and they fail,’ Imelda said.