Thicker Than Water

For demons, excluding personal friends and acquaintances, my standards are even lower. But - call it a weakness, or an eccentricity - I like to know both who and what I’m dealing with these days before I get out the bell, book and candle. I don’t empty the whole clip into every room as I kick the door down: that’s for amateurs and idiots.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, by way of abridging all this angst and introspection into soluble form. ‘I need to find out more about what this thing is - and how it’s tied up with Kenny.

Petra seemed to find this answer unsatisfactory. ‘Through the boy,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Mark. If that’s what they’re both saying in their sleep—’

‘If,’ I repeated, cutting across her. ‘And even granting that that’s true, we still don’t know why, or how. Mark is dead. Did someone raise the demon to get vengeance for him? Is it looking for Mark’s spirit for some reason? Did Mark himself bring it to the Salisbury - whether he meant to or not - by something he did? There are just too many ways it could all fit together, and if I go in without knowing the answers, I’m probably going to last as long as a marshmallow in a microwave.

Petra stared at me.

‘You’re afraid of this thing,’ she said. It wasn’t a taunt - just an observation.

‘Oh yeah.’

She looked at the two fitfully sleeping men, then back at me. ‘But you’re - awake. Healthy. It can’t hurt you, can it?’

‘When I fell over just now, it was about a heartbeat away from doing something to me that the English language doesn’t even have a verb for.

Nurse Ryall nodded uncertainly, visibly rearranging the furniture in her conceptual space. ‘Okay. So what should we do?’"

"I noted the ‘we’, and I was impressed. Scared as she was, she wasn’t just writing this off as somebody else’s problem. ‘Right now,’ I said, ‘we should get out of here. There’s nothing more I can do until I get some of my facts straight.’

We left the same way we came in,ƒwayme under the bored eyes of the duty cop who didn’t even ask us what the music was all about.

Back on my own ward, I stowed my paletot thoughtfully while Nurse Ryall picked up Nicky’s printouts and flicked through them with unashamed curiosity.

‘Are these the facts you were talking about?’ she asked.

‘Some of them,’ I allowed. ‘The rest I’m going to have to pick up on the ground.