Thicker Than Water

‘That’s my sweet girl there, Castor. The only thing I’ll leave behind me when I’m gone to show I was ever here. I stretched a point already, letting you bring an âme raché into my house. I stretched it as far as it’s going to go. Do I want to test the wards? Hell, if that thing gets out of him, all the wards in the goddamn world aren’t going to slow it down for the time it takes you to fart, Castor. I’m relying on the strength of my hands. They’ve never failed me yet.’

I threw up my hands in a gesture of surrender.

I could see I wasn’t going to carry the point. By this time Pen’s hour was up and we were getting into overtime. We went downstairs, letting our feet fall heavily to announce us. When Imelda was finally done with the locks and bolts, Pen and Rafi were sitting demurely on the bed together, just holding hands.

I held out the whisky and Rafi let go of Pen’s hand to take it.

‘Jameson’s,’ he said without much enthusiasm. ‘I asked for single malt.’

‘You get single malt when I get a paying gig,’ I told him, and he grunted in disapproval.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I guess we’d better hit the road.’

‘I thought you had something you wanted to say to me.’

I shrugged. There was nothing else I could do. ‘It’ll keep,’ I said. ‘Pen, whenever you’re ready.’

They embraced, long and lingering: in the end I made a throat-clearing noise and they peeled apart reluctantly. Don’t think I was just being an arsehole here, by the way: we’d learned by trial and error that the heightened arousal Rafi gets from being around Pen tends to undo the effect of Imelda’s benediction and my playing.

An hour is safe. An hour and a half is usually okay. Two hours or more is asking for trouble.

‘You’re working on the Tune, right?’ Rafi asked me. When he says it that way, with the capital letter, it only ever means one thing: the music of unbinding, the tune that will sunder him from Asmodeus and leave him once again as sole tenant in his own skin.

‘Always,’ I told him, which was as good as saying ‘No news since the last time you asked.

’

He nodded slowly, staring me in the eyes the whole time. He knows the only leverage he has on me is my gui kn m"">

The whisky bottle hit the wall right next to my head and shattered spectacularly."

"I turned with my mouth open on an oath, but the look on Rafi’s face silenced me. He was staring in shock and horror at his own left hand, which was rotating on his wrist as though he was flexing before some strenuous exercise.