Mike Carey - The Naming of the Beasts

I didn’t bother to challenge the mission statement. I’ve been skittish about casual eradication for a while now, but if J-J wanted to believe that I was toeing the company line and strumming the company banjo, I was happy to let her. ‘It makes a big difference,’ I said, ‘because it ties in with some other stuff that’s happening, and if I’m right, it opens up a new line of attack.’

I’d finally reached the point, but I hesitated to put it into words. It would have been hard, even with a more sympathetic audience. I was thinking of a lot of things: of Nicky, a few scant hours ago, talking about the new options that had opened up for him; of the ghost on the Salisbury estate, the spirit of a teenage boy that had metamorphosed into a newly born demon; of the time, even more recently, when I found myself sitting in the gutter in a drunken stupor with my whistle in my hands, trying to hit a note that had crept into the world while I wasn’t even looking; of the story of Chicken Licken; of the sad, wrecked old zombie in Somers Town saying, ‘World’s changing. It don’t want us no more’; and of Rosie, repeating the same sentiment almost word for word. Like the light in a room when the sun comes up, or when it goes down. You don’t notice it until it’s happened.

‘I think we’re starting to see some stuff that’s totally new,’ I said, taking refuge in the jargon. ‘Things that won’t be in the grimoires, because nobody’s ever encountered them before. I think we might be coming to a point where the rulebook won’t help us all that much.’

Jenna-Jane was staring at me intently. She hadn’t sat down all this time; she’d been standing over me, like a teacher over an unruly pupil who’ll stop working as soon as he knows he’s not being watched. ‘And why do you think this is happening?’ she demanded.

‘I have no idea,’ I said, and it was the truth. ‘Maybe a balance shifted somewhere. Some big cosmic constant wasn’t quite as constant as we thought, and now it’s tilting. Maybe the sewers are blocked in Hell, and all the shit is backing up. I don’t know, Jenna-Jane. I’m just throwing it out there. But if I’m right, then I think you’ll probably already know what I’m talking about – either because you’ve had this conversation with some of your own people, or because you’ve found some way of measuring it for yourself.’

She was staring at me with an air of cool, detached appraisal that didn’t quite ring true. I met her gaze stolidly, until after a few moments she looked away.

‘Interesting,’ she said. ‘This is why I missed you, Felix. Because you work through the evidence without preconceptions.’

‘With respect,’ Gil said, his voice sounding a little thick, ‘he’s told us nothing at all about the Super-Self ghosts. He’s only justifying his own failure to reach any solid conclusions.’

Jenna-Jane smiled indulgently. ‘He’s told us his conclusions, Gilbert – although it’s true they don’t amount to a solution as yet. In that regard, Castor, do you have a solution? It would be an excellent way to round off your first twenty-four hours on my staff.’

‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t. Teamwork helps, I can tell you that much. Pax and I got out in one piece because we ran interference for each other. But we didn’t even get close to attempting an exorcism. You just can’t keep your head together enough for that. Maybe you need a sort of Normandy landing approach, with exorcists advancing in waves. But even then . . .’

‘I like that,’ Jenna-Jane mused. ‘A brute-force approach. It has the merit of simplicity.’

‘And the drawback that we’ll be throwing all our people into a blind alley,’ Gil objected. ‘If it goes wrong, they could all end up like Etheridge.’

Actually, that was a fair point. If Etheridge had become the jumpy little bag of nerves he now was by getting too close to the Super-Self entity, that made a strong case for staying away from it at least until we knew what it was. It suddenly occurred to me that we should have asked Juliet that question. Erratic as her recent behaviour had been, she was still the acknowledged expert when it came to matters demoniacal: our inside man. And since I was already paying her to babysit Pen, it might not be too much of an ask to have her come down to the Strand for a consultation.

Jenna-Jane put on her Solomon-come-to-judgement face. ‘I understand your concerns, Gilbert,’ she said. ‘Still, a combined attack did pay very definite dividends in the summoning of Rosie Crucis. It’s possible that a number of simultaneous exorcisms might work where individual attempts have failed. You can organise your people into teams of two, with one leading partner in each team. The second man watches the first from further back, and pulls him out if he starts to show signs of strain.’

Gil was getting exasperated, persumably at the prospect of my plan being adopted after he’d given it the thumbs down. ‘What if the trailing man gets hit first?’ he demanded, throwing out his arms in an indignant shrug. ‘We know the pool is ground zero, but you can feel the effects of this thing from a long way away. It would be stupid to just go in there thinking that we’re attacking the pool, or what’s in it. It would be like . . . like going after a wasps’ nest with a baseball bat and thinking you can’t get stung as long as you kill the queen.’

‘Nice analogy,’ I conceded. ‘Look, I’m not saying that going in mob-handed is a good idea. I was just thinking aloud.’

Jenna-Jane made a dismissive gesture, as if this was all just a matter of fine detail.

‘Still,’ she said, ‘I see no harm in trying. Make a list, Gilbert. Ten lead exorcists, with ten in support. Castor will be one of the leads, as will you.’

She stared at Gil for so long it was impossible to miss the point that he was being dismissed. He stood up but didn’t leave, fighting a visible psychomachia against his strong instinct to roll over and die for the queen.

‘If it doesn’t work,’ he said, ‘that’s twenty of us in the shit.’

‘The larger number spreads the risk,’ said Jenna-Jane, her tone cold and deliberate.

Gil stood his ground for a moment longer. Then he nodded curtly and headed for the door.

When it closed behind him, Jenna-Jane turned back to me with a look on her face that was almost arch. ‘Gilbert doesn’t like you very much, Felix,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried hard to bring him round to my way of thinking, but I’m afraid it’s an uphill struggle.’

‘I killed his favourite uncle,’ I pointed out. ‘Makes it a little hard for us to bond.’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ Jenna-Jane assured me, sounding surprised at the very idea. ‘It’s much more personal, and much more straightforward. He’s afraid that you might be a better exorcist than him. That thought niggles at him. It throws him off his stride.’

‘Really?’ I demanded. ‘Why me, particularly? Everyone on the team is probably a better exorcist than him.’

Jenna-Jane shook her head admonishingly. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘He has a lot of raw power. More than anyone else in the family. I tested his cousin Dana, and she was impressive. She worked here for a year, and did a lot of good work for us. She left in the end for personal reasons, after a quarrel with another woman on the team turned into something more ugly. Gilbert is better than Dana, but he’s still not what you might call emotionally stable. In order to manage him, I’ve bonded with him on a very personal level. Now he sees you as a threat to that . . . closeness.’

I stared at her in silence, a smart answer dying on my lips. The thought of being part of a love triangle that had Jenna-Jane as one of its other two vertices made my stomach go through some complicated and unpleasant revolutions.