Bound

by Sue Tingey

  ‘Me?’ I said, ignoring her.

  ‘The police think you and he were in a relationship.’

  ‘What? I only saw the man three times before he was whisked off to the Underlands—’

  ‘Your name was in his diary several times more than that – the police apparently decided the entries were evidence of meetings between the two of you, but looking at them, I think they were doodles.’

  ‘Doodles?’ My head was beginning to ache.

  ‘When he was on the phone – probably talking to Joseph, or his other contact.’

  ‘What other contact?’

  Jamie gestured at the file. ‘It’s all in there. When we get to Philip’s flat we can try to make some sense of it all. I think it may be a good place to start.’

  I opened the folder and flicked through a few pages before tucking it into the side pocket. I’ve never been able to read in cars without getting travel-sick; the last thing I wanted was to have to ask Jamie to stop the car so I could throw up.

  I stroked Pyrites’ ears and let my mind wander as I stared out at the streets flashing by. He was happy enough sitting on my lap, though it was a little strange stroking fur rather than scales. I noticed that whenever we passed someone walking a dog he followed it with his eyes until it was out of sight.

  I did wonder what he was going to do when he needed to eat – maybe he’d be able to make do on what we could give him until we returned home. He couldn’t really grow to his full size and fly across the English countryside – Jamie was right; that would cause a stir.

  Then I thought of Jinx, wondering where he was now. Last time I’d connected to him he had felt so bereft, so scared. I couldn’t imagine Jinx being afraid of anything, but he had been: he was as scared of what Amaliel was liable to make him do as I was. If Amaliel made him carry out some terrible atrocity, Jinx would never forgive himself. Even worse, he would have signed his own death warrant: Jamie’s Guardians would hunt him down. Even if we could find him first, I wasn’t sure Jamie and I could protect him – in fact, I wasn’t convinced Jamie would even try. He had his job, and he’d made it quite clear he would do it.

  I glanced across at him, watching his face as he concentrated on driving. I loved him and Jinx with all my heart, and I didn’t want to choose, but if Jinx was in danger and Jamie was that danger, then I would have to. Jamie must have felt my eyes upon him for he smiled and keeping his eyes on the road, reached across and squeezed my hand.

  ‘We will find him,’ he said very quietly.

  My fingers squeezed his and I forced my lips to smile back.

  *

  Philip’s apartment was only about fifteen minutes away from his offices. It overlooked the Thames and must have cost a fortune. Not for the first time I wondered how a man who was so obviously wealthy had managed to get himself entangled in something so crazy and potentially lethal. What with bokors and daemons, he’d been meeting with some seriously scary people. I did wonder about this man called Joseph: was he just like Philip, a greedy individual who had been enticed by promises of power and riches? Or was he the instigator? Of course, he might even be a daemon himself.

  The apartment block, like Philip’s offices, was an ultra-modern vision of stainless steel and plate-glass. There was a keypad to gain entry, but that wasn’t a problem; Philip’s secretary had been helpful in the extreme – which made me wonder whether Jamie had used his mesmerising skills on her, which got me feeling angry again. I reined it in. I had more important things to worry about for the moment.

  Philip had the penthouse suite – of course he did! – and in the lift I found myself getting even more irritated with him. As he was dead, this was just as stupid as getting angry with Jamie. The man was a total shit – shame I hadn’t realised it a whole lot earlier.

  As we stepped out of the lift I heard a sound in the hallway, and when I looked around, the door to the fire escape was slowly swinging shut. As Philip’s was the only apartment on this floor I wondered who could have been up here. I touched Kerfuffle’s arm and put a finger to my lips and pointed to the door. He gave a nod of understanding and hurried along the corridor and through the door as Jamie crossed to Philip’s flat.

  Kerfuffle returned a moment later. ‘No one there,’ he told me.

  There was police tape across the door to Philip’s flat and I imagined the rest of the high-class residents in the block must have been less than impressed, being questioned about their neighbour’s activities. But Jamie was already inside, so Pyrites, Kayla and I hurried after him. The lift wasn’t big enough for us all – it wasn’t much bigger than a large toilet cubicle – so the others were following us, all except for Kubeck, who was keeping watch in the lobby. If anyone looked like they were interested in the penthouse flat, he’d let us know.

  ‘We’re looking for anything that might be at all useful,’ Jamie said, gesturing around.

  I handed Jamie the manila folder and suggested, ‘You said you had an address for Joseph?’

  ‘His office, allegedly. I’ll ring now.’

  While he tapped the number into his mobile I began to look around the flat, wrinkling my nose at the slightly unpleasant odour in the air, like something had gone off.

  ‘Hello, I’d like to speak to Joseph Babel please,’ I heard Jamie say as I wandered around the living room.

  It was beautifully decorated in monochromatic shades of black, white and grey, but too bland for my taste. The small kitchen was the same: white wall tiles patterned with black and silver bands and gleaming black worktops. The stainless steel oven, fridge and dishwasher shone. The black and white floor tiles also sparkled, and I just knew Philip had to have had a cleaner coming in.

  ‘This is – nice,’ Kayla said, screwing up her nose.

  ‘A bit too nice,’ I whispered and walked back into the living room.

  ‘Oh, that’s a shame. I don’t suppose you have a contact number for him? It is rather important. Thank you. Goodbye … Shit!’ Jamie said and dropped the phone into his pocket.

  ‘No luck?’

  ‘Joseph Babel was only based there temporarily while he was in England. Apparently, he returned to the States several weeks ago.’

  The door opened and the rest of my guards came trooping in.

  Jamie looked round. ‘You took your time.’

  ‘A woman on the ground floor questioned our identities,’ Shenanigans said.

  ‘Nosy bint,’ Kerfuffle added.

  ‘What did you tell her?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘That we understood the penthouse suite was for sale.’

  ‘What did she say?’ Shenanigans and Kerfuffle looked like they could have Mafia connections, which meant she’d probably tag Vaybian as a pimp or drug dealer.

  ‘She said once we’d finished looking around, perhaps we’d like to pop in and have a cup of tea,’ Shenanigans said.

  Jamie gave a snort of laughter and Kayla started to giggle. ‘It takes all sorts, I suppose!’

  ‘While I start on the rest of these numbers,’ Jamie said, holding up the file, ‘Shenanigans and Kerfuffle, you search the living room, and Vaybian can take the kitchen.’

  ‘And I’ll make a start in the bedroom,’ I said, and headed for the door, Pyrites trotting along beside me.

  ‘Did the man have no bloody imagination at all?’ Kayla said as we walked into yet another pretentious monochrome designer room: light grey walls, white ceiling and black lacquered wardrobes and cupboards. The bedlinen was shiny black satin banded with silver, completing the elegant but stark décor.

  ‘I suppose it matched his black heart,’ Kayla commented.

  I slid open the door to the first wardrobe. ‘I told you he was vain the first time we met him,’ I said, running my fingers over the sleeves of a dozen suits.

  ‘You should check the pockets,’ Kayla suggested.

  I pulled a face. ‘Nah, Philip wouldn’t put anything in his pockets – it would ruin the line.’

  ‘He might have been vain, but a man
has to put his bits and pieces somewhere,’ she pointed out. Then she laughed. ‘Although he’d obviously been putting his in a few places he shouldn’t!’ That did get me to crack a small smile, and she said gently, ‘It will be all right, you know. Jinx is tough.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, Kayla. He’s hurting like you wouldn’t believe.’

  ‘Because he thinks he’s lost you.’

  ‘If that’s meant to make me feel better, it doesn’t – it makes me more scared for him.’

  ‘This connection between the two of you is strange …’

  ‘We used to have something similar,’ I said with a sad smile. ‘When I first arrived at court I could feel you – it was like we were somehow bound together.’

  ‘Blood!’ she said.

  ‘Jamie said being blood-related didn’t mean we’d automatically have that kind of connection—’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that. I meant actual blood: you and I were connected by blood.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘When I first came to you I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stay, so I shared blood with you so I’d always know if you needed me.’

  ‘What do you mean, shared blood?’ I shuddered, imagining some sort of vampiric ceremony, but she held up her thumb.

  ‘Like blood-brothers: I just pricked your thumb and mine and pressed them together so our blood became one.’

  So Kayla had always known I wasn’t a blue-blood, like true daemon royalty – but now wasn’t the time for that particular conversation.

  I stared at her for a moment, then lifted my right hand: there between my middle and forefinger was the tiny white scar where the arrow that had erupted out of Jinx’s chest had nicked me. ‘You’re right: that’s exactly how Jinx and I are linked. When I escaped from Amaliel, Jinx knew without me telling him that I had been hurt. At the time, neither of us had thought much about it …’

  So that was one mystery solved. I started going through Philip’s pockets, but it was clear most of the suits had been recently dry-cleaned and by the time I was halfway through them I suspected my first opinion was correct: I’d not found a single thing.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ I said to Pyrites, who was watching me with interest.

  He padded forward and stuck his nose in the closet, running it along the line of clothing. A couple of times he drew it back out and sneezed – dry-cleaning fluid getting up his nose? – then a few jackets from the end, he began to snuffle in earnest. He pushed his way into the wardrobe and began to paw at a silver-grey suit that probably cost as much as my old Fiesta.

  ‘He’s got the scent of something,’ Kayla said.

  As I grabbed the hanger and pulled it out of the wardrobe, Pyrites whined, the air shimmered and he was a drakon again, albeit a small one. He puffed grey smoke, made a grumbling sound from deep inside his chest and grew a few sizes more.

  ‘What’s got him all worked up?’ Jamie asked as he strolled into the room.

  ‘Not sure,’ I said, holding the suit at arm’s length and looking it up and down.

  I checked the right-hand pocket of the jacket and then the left – nothing. Nothing in the top pocket either. I pulled the jacket open by the lapels, one side at a time. No right-hand inner pocket, but in the left side, bingo! I could feel the edge of a piece of card. I caught it between my fingertips and pulled it out. Pyrites growled and made the strange paddling motion with his front feet he did whenever he was excited or anxious.

  ‘It’s a business card, that’s all,’ I told him.

  Pyrites growled and puffed grey smoke again.

  ‘I think it must be more than that,’ Jamie said.

  It was plain white with navy print and read ‘Gabriel Derne’. There was a mobile phone number. ‘It’s nothing special,’ I said, handing it to Jamie.

  He took it between his thumb and forefinger. He examined both sides, then breathed out through pursed lips. ‘Well, this explains a lot.’

  ‘It does?’

  He passed his left hand over the card and held it out to me. ‘Look again.’

  I peered down at the card. ‘I don’t see …’ Then I turned it over. On the back were some very faint symbols. ‘What do they mean?’

  ‘I think I mentioned that I spent quite a lot of time in the Overlands in the twenties, thirties and forties.’

  ‘That’s when you learned to drive.’

  He nodded. ‘There was a lot of interest in Satanism then, which included calling on daemons.’

  ‘People actually did that?’

  ‘’fraid so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, for all sorts of reasons. Power, wealth, just to see if they could – and sometimes for darker motives.’

  ‘I should think calling up daemons for any reason was pretty dark,’ I said.

  ‘Some humans were pretty dark,’ Kayla chipped in, ‘especially during that period.’

  ‘Sometimes they called upon a daemon to collect a soul.’

  ‘Like when Lord Argon came to collect me?’

  ‘Exactly. The Satanist or devil-worshiper or whoever would call upon a daemon to collect the soul of an adversary.’

  ‘In other words: kill them,’ Kayla interrupted.

  ‘To identify the victim to the daemon they used to “pass the runes”: a piece of paper inscribed with a daemon-summoning curse was given to the victim, who was usually none the wiser.’

  ‘But Philip wasn’t the intended victim – I was.’

  Jamie ran his hand through his hair. ‘I think what we have here is a variation upon a theme. Passing the runes is a practice fraught with danger.’ He tapped the front of the card with his fingernail. ‘This Gabriel Derne was probably a conduit between the daemon and Philip, as Philip was between him and you. Once a daemon is called to collect a soul they get mighty pissed off if they have to return empty-handed, and in that case, the soul of the person who passed the runes in the first place becomes forfeit.’

  ‘But Philip never passed me any runes!’

  ‘Did he give you a business card?’

  ‘Oh shit,’ I muttered. Of course he did, the conniving, manipulative, lying bastard.

  ‘Whoever called upon the daemon put at least two layers between him and it.’

  ‘So we need to find this Gabriel Derne?’

  ‘I suspect he was being used by Joseph Babel, but it wouldn’t hurt. He might help us find him.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d returned to the States.’

  ‘No, the woman I spoke to said he’d returned to the States. If Amaliel is here, I suspect his human ally is too.’

  ‘Guardian,’ Vaybian said from the doorway, ‘Kubeck just called: two men in suits are on the way up in the small box.’

  ‘Pyrites!’ But I didn’t need to say anything else; with a shiver, my drakon had changed into a rather large German shepherd.

  ‘What if they’re police?’ I asked, worried.

  ‘Let me deal with it.’ Jamie pocketed the business card and walked through to the living room. ‘You carry on searching the bedroom,’ he called over his shoulder as an afterthought.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I muttered to myself, sitting down on the bed next to a set of drawers.

  I heard the front door open and close, then, ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘This is going well,’ Kayla said, wafting through to the other room, no doubt to join in the fun.

  I let them get on with it. If they were the police, I was the last person they should see: I’d probably go straight from potential victim to the top of Britain’s ‘most wanted’ list. I still couldn’t believe they thought I was having an affair with Philip.

  I pulled open the top drawer of the bedside cabinet and rummaged through the contents. There wasn’t much to see: some loose change, a packet of condoms – bloody man – and other bits and pieces. Then right at the back, I noticed the corner of something black, the edge of a notebook or diary, maybe. I stretched my fingers and pulled out a smart notebook bound in black leat
her with gold-edged pages.

  It had gone very quiet in the room next door, although I could hear a low murmur that sounded like Jamie. I flicked open the cover of the notebook and as I did so, the stone in my mother’s ring must have caught the light as it appeared to flare green. But before I could think on it for more than a moment, all hell broke loose. There was an almighty roar from the living room and Pyrites went bounding off. I considered hiding under the bed, but if they were policemen next door, that would make me look guilty, and if they were daemons – and judging by the commotion they probably were – they would find me wherever I hid.

  There was a crash and the sound of breaking furniture, then the air quite literally rippled out towards me, as if a boulder had been dropped in a lake, and I felt myself change.

  I shoved the notebook in my jacket pocket and ran to the doorway: everyone had reverted to their daemon selves. I had seen our visitors before: they’d held me still while Amaliel cut off the tip of my finger. Just looking at them made the mutilated finger throb.

  They were not just built like sumo wrestlers but dressed like them too, wearing only small leather loincloths. Their glistening orangey skin looked like they’d overdone it with the fake tan; their long black hair was slicked back and braided. That is where any similarity to humans ended: one had the face of a hawk, with a beak, round eyes and a smattering of feathers on his cheeks and where his eyebrows should have been. The other had a flattened stump for a nose, huge nostrils and small black beads for eyes.

  Hawkman was holding Kerfuffle above his head and was heading for the window. Shenanigans, Jamie and Vaybian were being kept back by Pigface, who was twirling two double-edged scythes with a skill I would have found awe-inspiring if I hadn’t been so afraid for my friends.

  I could do nothing for my three guards facing Pigface’s deadly steel, but I was buggered if I was going to let Kerfuffle be thrown out of the window of a fourth-floor penthouse.

  ‘Pyrites!’ I shouted as I bounded towards Hawkman, and my drakon shot up into the air and flew towards the struggling Kerfuffle. Pigface glared at me as I ran past, but he had his hands full with my other guards.

  Hawkman had drawn back his arms over his head, ready to throw my diminutive guard at the window, but as I let out a yell, Pyrites swooped down and grabbed Kerfuffle by his belt. Hawkman spun around as Pyrites sped away, Kerfuffle hanging from his claws, but I was too pumped to stop: I jumped over the smoked glass coffee table, drew up my legs and executed a perfect jump front kick, hitting Hawkman smack-bang in the middle of the chest.