Mike Carey

by Dead Men's Boots (v5)

  This time he managed a faint, sickly smile. “Do you?”

  “Funny you should ask,” I said deadpan. “Normally, if I’m this close to a ghost, no matter what it’s wearing, I get a ping on my radar. When I met you and Scrub—sorry, I mean Leonard—downstairs here, I got nothing. And every time I’ve seen you outside this building, nothing all over again. You’ve got good camouflage, I have to say. I’d love to know how it’s done. But then I guess you’ve been in the game long enough to have figured out a lot of the angles.”

  Todd didn’t answer, but there was a glint in his eye as he looked at me—a hint of challenge or mockery. Looking down at the music, fixing the opening beats in my mind, I slid my whistle out of my inside pocket and shipped it into the operating position.

  “But here’s the bad news,” I said. “John Gittings did manage to get a fix on you. I don’t know where he was standing or what sort of tricks he used. He wasn’t a particularly smart guy, in my opinion, but he did it anyway. He nailed you and got you down on paper.” I cleared my throat, spat on the floor. “And that’s what I’m going to play for you this evening,” I muttered, not looking at Todd. I put the whistle to my lips, tried to find the sense. I took one deep breath, held it for a second, then another second, until the seconds became beats and the music invited me in.

  Open with a hot trill like manic birdsong, but the bird’s a dive-bomber, and it crashes down hard through the scale to level out a full octave lower in a welter of hard, pugnacious chords. Bail out into C and hold it for a full four beats before dropping even further. It was all guesswork—and I was trying to cover both parts of John’s wacky notation, playing two voices on the same instrument. Todd looked at me with blank puzzlement, but beyond that, he didn’t respond.

  Change the key, change the time, start again. Still no reaction from Todd. When I got to the hard part, where Jamie Pomfret had told me a third drummer was meant to come in, I started to tap my heel against the desk in crude counterpoint to the music. It was hard not to tap on the beat, but John’s music was quite clear that the new voice should be at odds with the rest of the rhythm. I kept it up until the weird lack of synchronization made me stumble, lose my sense of direction, and stop dead in the middle of a bar.

  “What’s the point of this?” Moloch demanded.

  “Shut up,” I said, trying to think my way through the sequence that had just tripped me.

  Again from the top, and faster now because the sense was growing inside me again: the sense that was my knack, my stock in trade, and that had started to kick in back at the National Gallery café when Pomfret was playing the cruet set for all he was worth. My fingers were finding the right stops almost without being told to, and the atonal skirl leaked out into the air like toxic waste.

  Todd winced, which was encouraging. I had to hope it didn’t only mean he was a music lover.

  I skated up to the crux again, started to kick with one heel and then with both. The wailing voice of the whistle and the hollow thudding rhythm clashed and fought. Moloch shook his head and scowled, but Todd was starting to look a little afraid. “Castor—” he whispered. I couldn’t hear the word under the music, but I saw his lips move and read it there. Another chord change brought a flicker of real pain, making him screw his eyes tight shut. John’s evil medicine was working. A symphony for drums, played blind and fumbling on a tin whistle. But if it works, don’t knock it.

  “Castor!” Todd said again, louder. There was a catch in his voice, and his eyes rolled. I carried on playing. Deep in the logic of the scribbled score, it would have been almost impossible to stop. I’d given him a choice, but now there were no choices left. A single phrase from the David Bowie song “Sound and Vision” formed in the music and then dissolved, a surprise visitor from another dimension. Flying on autopilot, I was more surprised to see it there than anyone.

  The music rushed to its climax, the backbeat limping along behind in a slow-quick-slow. Todd was yelling, tears coursing down his cheeks. “Ash! It’s the ash! The ash is our physical focus, and we feed it to the people we want to take. Then we all invade them together, subdue them together, and a single spirit stays inside. Please, Castor! That’s the truth. Inscription stops the host soul from reasserting itself. It’s still there, but it’s too weak to fight us. We reinscribe once a month, to make sure— Don’t! Don’t!”

  He carried on babbling, but the words were lost to me in the drumming of my own blood. Drumming. Yes. This symphony needed percussion—demanded it. I jumped down off the desk and started stamping on the floor with my left foot. It turned into a clumsy dance. I was staggering around like a drunk, the sounds rising through me and making me move whichever way they needed me to move. Downstairs I’d played for my life, cold and focused, pulling every note out of my mind and out of the darkness by will alone. What was welling up inside me now was different, and will had very little part to play in it. The closing notes seemed almost to tear the back of my throat, and when they faded, I found that I was down on my knees on the floor beside Todd’s chair.

  Groggily, I straightened and stood. I stared down at the lawyer in his hemp cocoon. His head lolled at an angle, his glazed eyes staring at nothing. A string of spittle trailed from the corner of his mouth onto the collar of his shirt. I thought he was dead, but I realized after a few moments that his tongue was moving inside his mouth. He was trying to form words.

  I bent down, put my ear to his mouth, and listened. Nothing intelligible, although there was a faint rise and fall of sound like the half-heard voices in between radio stations that you can never focus into audibility.

  “You drove the possessing spirit out,” Moloch said, at my elbow.

  “Yeah, I did,” I said, the words hurting my tender throat. “And look—someone else is still home.”

  “The original owner of this flesh,” Moloch confirmed. “He seems—disoriented.”

  “He seems pretty much catatonic,” I muttered, looking away. “Did you catch Todd on the wing?”

  “This is Todd. The soul that animates this meat now. What fled is not Todd but someone else who lived in his body and stole his name. But no, I didn’t eat it. You told me not to. I let it leave unmolested.”

  I nodded. I had to sit down. That performance had left me feeling as hollow as a cored piece of fruit. A dull ache was starting inside my head. I stumbled across to a vacant chair and sank into it. My breath was coming as rough and ragged as if I’d just swum the Channel, and panic was settling on my mind like a physical weight.

  The thing that had been Todd looked past me with its eyes focused on nothing very much.

  “What did he say?” I asked the demon. “He was shouting toward the end, but I couldn’t stop to listen or I would have lost the tune. Lost the sense of it.”

  He summarized with crisp precision, turning away from the shell of Maynard Todd as though it held no further interest for him. “That they use the ash of their cremation as a physical vessel for the possession of new host bodies. The host is tricked or forced into eating the ash. Then all the souls in this—cabal—invade the intended host at once, subduing his soul so that one of their number can possess his body.”

  “I caught that much,” I said. “I thought there was more.”

  Moloch nodded. “He said they tried to do this to you when you went to Mount Grace to burn John Gittings. Todd gave you a drink of brandy from a hip flask. The ash was dispersed in the liquor. But the succubus came before they could complete the possession, and they had to stop.”

  I remembered the sudden terrible sickness that had come over me as John’s casket rolled through the furnace doors. Not like me at all, and now I knew why. It wasn’t me at all.

  “He also said that the procedure—the possession—is only temporary. The soul of the possessed tries to reassert itself—tries to break free from their control. It gets stronger again over time, however hard they whip it into submission. They have to meet at Mount Grace once a month to repeat the ritual, for want of a bet
ter word, and reassert their control. They do this at the dark of the moon, and they call it—”

  “Inscription.”

  “Yes.” He stared at me with a hungry intensity. “Castor, he answered your question, finally, when he was desperate and trying to make you spare him. But in any case, you’d only have to look out the window. The dark of the moon is tonight.”

  “I know.”

  “We have them. We can take them all.”

  I nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

  Maybe the feeling of foreboding I was experiencing was paranoia. I’d just performed a full exorcism—or something that felt like one. The ghost that had flown out from this room either should have vanished into the ether or should be heading for hell at a good cruising speed. That was where the smart money was lying.

  But what was the worst-case scenario? That the tough old soul had been cast out but had the strength to resist utter dissolution. That it knew where it was going and had the strength to get there. Sure, the thing inside John Gittings had needed to be taken to Mount Grace and burned there again—but then John’s house had more wards and fendings on it than Pentonville had bars. They were designed to keep the dead out, but they cut both ways. That was why the mad, desperate ghost had gone geist. But here at Todd’s offices, as I’d noticed when I first came in, there wasn’t anything to keep the evil dead from coming and going as they pleased.

  So I’d had my rehearsal for the big show, and that was good, but it was more than possible I’d told the bastards I was coming. They’d have all the time in the world to prepare us a really nasty welcome.

  “We’ve got to go now,” I said.

  Moloch gave me a look of ruthless, detached appraisal. “You think you can walk?” he asked.

  I nodded again. “Yeah,” I said from a fog of exhaustion and pain. “Just getting my second wind.”

  “We can’t go now,” he reminded me in the same cold tone. “We need the lady.”

  I climbed unwillingly to my feet. “I know,” I muttered.

  “Can you find her?”

  I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. There was only one place I’d thought of that was worth looking, and I knew for a fact I wasn’t going to be welcome there. I trudged down the stairs. I couldn’t hear Moloch’s footfalls, but the prickle on the back of my neck told me that he was following.

  The night loomed ahead of us like a mountain. Only idiots climb mountains in the dark.

  Twenty-three

  I HADN’T EXPECTED TO BE BACK IN ROYAL OAK SO SOON, and Susan Book wasn’t expecting to see me there. In the four or five seconds between “Jerusalem” sounding and the door opening, I braced myself for storms.

  But Susan wasn’t in the mood to give me a hard time. Her eyes looked swollen with unshed tears, or maybe with sleep. Everything about her posture suggested misery and a preemptive surrender to despair. Juliet’s absence was obviously hitting her very hard. Given that even looking at Juliet felt a little bit like taking a hit of some illicit drug, to be withdrawn from her so suddenly must be like going into the instant, unwelcome free fall of cold turkey.

  Susan stared at me. “I told you she wasn’t here,” she mumbled tonelessly.

  “I know,” I agreed. “I’m thinking that maybe I know a way to bring her back. Can I come in and explain?”

  I hunched my shoulders against the gathering wind, playing the pity card to give myself an additional argument if my words didn’t work. Beside me, Moloch tilted his head back, sniffed the air, and growled. “This hovel stinks of the lady,” he said, in his car-wreck-in-slowmotion voice. Susan swiveled her head to stare at him, her eyes widening. She hadn’t noticed him until he spoke.

  Maybe after living with Juliet for so long, she could tell what he was by looking. That would explain the fear that crossed her face. But even if you didn’t know, he was an intimidating presence, and he was glaring at her with an unreadable emotion in his dark eyes. Susan gripped the edge of the door in both hands, as though preparing to close it in our faces, but she hesitated, caught in a cross fire between her survival instinct and her good breeding.

  I wasn’t sure how to make the introduction, so I didn’t try. Instead, I turned to Moloch as the more immediate problem. “Juliet lives here,” I said to him. “But she’s not here now. She hasn’t made contact with anyone since she got back from the States. Well, apart from Doug Hunter, of course, and that’s no use to us.” I turned back to Susan. “Or has she called you?” I asked.

  Susan’s anxious gaze flicked back and forth between the two of us. “No,” she said. “Not a word. I’m just—sitting here by the phone.”

  “She’s probably lying,” Moloch said, his tone detached and thoughtful. “You could hurt her and make sure, one way or the other. You clearly have impressive skills in that area.”

  Susan gave a yelp, like a dog that’s had its tail trodden on, and tried to slam the door. Moloch held it open with one negligent, unhurried hand. I knocked the hand away, and he gave me a look of politely mystified inquiry as the door slammed in our faces.

  “Nobody,” I said with slow, heavy emphasis, “is hurting anyone. In fact, you’re not even coming in here.”

  “No?” Moloch’s voice was mild, but there was an edge of amusement to it.

  “No. You’re going to wait on the other side of the street, under that lamp.” I pointed. “And you’re not going to come near this door, or this house, until I come out.”

  “And why am I going to do that?”

  “Because if you don’t, the poor doggy isn’t going to get so much as a bone to gnaw on. If you want to eat tonight, you’ll do this my way.”

  He stared at me in silence for the space of two or three heartbeats. It felt like a lot longer.

  “If she offers you tea,” he said at last with a nasty grin, “decline it. Time is short enough as it is.” He turned his back on me and walked away.

  I knocked again and waited. After a minute or so, I rang the bell.

  Eventually, the door opened a crack, and Susan stared out. The tears had been shed in the meantime. Her cheeks were wet, and her face, as she glowered up at me, was full of terrible pain. “You should go away now, Fix,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong, as though crying had bled some poison out of her. “It’s not right for you to be talking to me after what you did to Jules. You should have been a better friend to her.”

  I opened my mouth to say that it was Juliet who’d broken a table across my back, rather than the other way around, but this wasn’t the time for scoring cheap points. “I think I can bring her back,” I said again. “If I can come in for a minute, I’ll explain what I want to do. If you say no, I’ll leave.”

  “No. I don’t want you to come in here. Not while I’m alone.”

  “Then let me explain out here,” I suggested.

  “I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say.”

  “Susan,” I said, making my last pitch, “this is something she needs to know about. She’s done something that might make it… hard for her to stay here on earth. Or at least here in London. Something that puts her way, way over on the wrong side of the law. She’s made a choice, and in my opinion, it was the wrong one. It will hurt her.”

  “Nothing can hurt her,” Susan said, shaking her head again. I wasn’t sure if it was a boast or a lament.

  “Losing you would hurt her, I think. And if she has to do a moonlight flit—if all the exorcists the Met can lay their hands on are sharpening their knives for her, and she makes the city too hot to hold her—she’ll leave you behind.” I paused to let that idea sink in, then went in for the kill. “Or do you think you can go and live with her folks for a while?”

  A whole cavalcade of emotions crossed Susan’s face. I wanted to look away. Moloch’s words about my having a gift for hurting people were still hanging in the air. This wouldn’t count as torture at Abu Ghraib, but standing on a doorstep in West London in the arse end of winter with the rising wind carving sharper edges on my face, that
was exactly what it felt like.

  Susan was looking at me, shaking her head, rejecting the picture I’d painted, or maybe rejecting me, seeing through my sullied flesh to my shabby heart and saying no. She stood aside wordlessly and let me come in, then closed the door, locked it, and bolted it top and bottom. I waited until she was done and let her lead the way into the living room. It was a gesture, a pretense that she was in control of what was happening. I thought about the aborted dinner party and everything that had happened since, and I had to struggle against a feeling of shame. Susan was right in spite of everything. I should have been a better friend.

  She waved me to a chair with a visible lack of enthusiasm. I stayed standing. I didn’t feel like I had a right to any hospitality. She sat down herself in one of the armchairs. It was a surprise, and not a happy one, to see a half-empty whiskey bottle and a half-full glass on the occasional table next to her.

  “What I wanted to do,” I explained, “was play the first few notes of an exorcism—an exorcism for Juliet.” Susan’s eyes went big and wide, and she started to speak, but I hurried on, talking over her. “Not the binding or the sending, Sue—just the summoning. Juliet said she’d hear that wherever I played it, and come and—” “Rip your throat out” had been her actual words; I groped for a mealymouthed substitute. “—stop me from finishing.”

  Susan glared at me in deep, almost speechless outrage. She was trembling now. “Oh, she’d stop you,” she assured me.

  “Believe me, Sue, I’m not underestimating her. I’m hoping I can explain why I’ve come before she cuts in and does something irrevocable to me. That’s why I want to do it here. I’m thinking maybe she’ll hesitate before doing something really violent in front of you. She wouldn’t want to hurt or scare you.”

  That didn’t seem to make Susan any happier. Exhausted as I was, and desperate as I was to be moving on and doing what had to be done before I fell down and passed out and deflated like a punctured balloon, I tried to explain. “There’s a woman,” I said. “Someone she met. Not—romantically. Met in the line of duty. And this woman needs help, that’s the plain truth. Which is what Juliet is trying to do. But I don’t think the help that Juliet is giving this woman is what she needs. This is what we argued about back in Alabama. There’s more to it, but I’m hoping that Juliet will accept a compromise solution if I offer one.” I shrugged. “That’s it,” I said. “The whole thing. So it’s up to you. I’m going to do this anyway, but if you tell me not to do it here, I’ll go someplace else.”