Mike Carey - The Devil You Know

“Everything that’s damned is my business,” he leered. “You ought to pick your words more carefully, Castor. Words are the birds that break cover and show your enemy where you’re hiding. Here. Get into practice.”

He picked up one of the cards and skimmed it across to me, so it fell facedown at my feet. I picked it up and turned it over, expecting the ace of spades or maybe the joker, but it was blank on the face side—the spare card they give you in some decks to stand in for the first one you lose.

“No, the smart money says you’re gonna fall for it,” Asmodeus said. “So I’m just telling you—you need to watch your back better than you’re doing. You’re too easy, Castor. You’ve got to kick up some dust once in a while so it’s harder to see where you’re going. Otherwise, you’ll get there and you’ll find a hanging party waiting for you.” His eyes narrowed to coal black slits. “You’re looking to play me back down into the basement right now. But one of these days, you’re gonna come around and play me right the fuck out of here. Set me free. Set little angel Rafael free, too. I mean, those are the rules, right? You break it, you fix it. But you’re no fucking use to me dead. So you got to do three things. Take the card when she gives it to you. Watch out for burning booze and wicked women. And don’t put your finger on the trigger until you know what you’re shooting at. Kiss, kiss.”

He kissed his fingers—the same two fingers that had previously been the gun—and pointed them at me again. I put the whistle to my lips and started to play, and after that, I went at it solidly for half an hour.

When I banged on the cell door for Paul to come and let me out, Rafi was sleeping. It was Rafi, now, and he’d probably tear up the zeds until morning, so there was no point in me hanging around. I took a glance at the wound on his arm just before I left. It was already healed, only a faint scar showing where it had been. Fucking demons. All mouth and trousers, most of the time.

But as I drove back to Pen’s house, Asmodeus’s words worked their way down into my brain like grit into a paper cut. So I was going to change my mind about Peele’s job offer? I didn’t think so. Right then I couldn’t think of anything that would turn me around. The whole business with Rafi was what had made me say my farewell to arms the best part of a year ago, and tonight had just served as a vivid reminder of what happened when I made a mistake. Like I needed reminding anyway. I live with it every fucking day.

But I still carried the tin whistle around with me. I still felt cold and exposed without it. And my pulse still slid up a gear or two when I heard a ghost story.

Grit in a paper cut, ground all the way down, where you couldn’t get it out again.

I backed the car into Pen’s overgrown driveway, crushing a few tough strands of bramble that had had the guts to put their heads back up since I’d left that afternoon. I got out and retrieved Rhona the rat’s cage from the backseat. She gave me a fairly unfriendly look; in her books, I was one of those guys who lead you on, take what they need, and then leave you hanging. All things considered, it was a fair cop.

The key fob played the first bar of “Für Elise” as I locked the car up. I hoped that Beethoven’s ghost was out there somewhere, making the night hideous for the managing director of Ford.

There was no sign of a light. I live at the top of the great, three-story pile, and Pen lives at the bottom of it, but it’s built into the side of a hill, so from this side, her rooms are underground. On the other side, they look out onto a garden that is ten feet below the level of the road. But I didn’t need to see a light; I knew she was in there, waiting for me.

The Peter’s Birthday Party Massacre seemed a long time ago now, and its sting had faded. But for Pen, it was still the big story of the day, and she’d be wanting to know how well I’d gone down. She’d also be wanting to count the pennies.

Well, I’d gone down like the Titanic , and the pennies were still in James Dodson’s wallet. Now I had to face the music—which was likely to be a lot more like “O Fortuna” than “Ye Banks and Braes.”

I let myself in and locked the door behind me. I bolted it, too, and I lifted up my hand to put a ward on it, which is still automatic with me even after living in Pen’s house for three years. But I remembered in time and turned away with a vague sense of coitus interruptus. She’s a priestess now; she does her own blessings.

But just as I put my foot on the top of the basement stairs, I saw that I was wrong about where Pen was. There was a light on in the kitchen, not visible from the street, and there were noises of purposeful, even slightly violent activity.

I walked on through. Pen was sitting at the kitchen table with her back to me, the bare bulb swinging gently over her head in the draft from the cracked window, and she didn’t look up. She was too absorbed in her work. She had her toolbox open on the table in front of her and the remains of a sprawled, broken necklace. I came a step or two closer and saw what she was doing. She was filing the beads from the necklace, laboriously and carefully. A saucer on her left-hand side was full of beads that she’d presumably already finished to her own satisfaction. There was also a bottle of Glen Discount and a glass.

“You can share,” she said, as if reading my mind. “I broke the other glass when I tried to scrub the turps smell off it.”

I was right behind her now. I picked up the glass, took a long sip of the whisky, and set it down again. While I was doing this, I looked more carefully at the necklace and saw that it was her rosary.

“Pen,” I said, because there was no way I couldn’t ask, “what are you doing?”

“I’m filing the beads down,” she answered, matter-of-factly.

“Because . . .”

“They were too big.” She looked up at me now, twisting her head around and squinting against the light. “You changed,” she said, sounding disappointed. “I hope you brought the suit back with you.”

“It’s in the car,” I said, putting Rhona’s cage down on the table. “Thanks for the loan.”

She pursed her lips and made kissing noises at Rhona, who sat up and scratched at the bars.

“Would you put her back in the harem?” Pen asked.

I was glad to. The alternative was to come clean about the party then and there, and every minute I could put that conversation off was one more minute of happiness. But the beads were still weighing on my mind, probably because I’d only just seen Rafi, and this looked so much like something that one of the inmates at the Stanger would do to while away the hours between ECT sessions.

“Too big for what?” I asked.

Pen didn’t answer. “Take Rhona downstairs,” she said. “I’ll be right behind you. I found something of yours, by the way—it’s on the mantelpiece next to the clock.”

As I walked down the stairs into Pen’s basement citadel, I heard something that made a sudden wave of unease crest inside me. It was “Enola Gay” by OMD. Pen often left her old vinyl playing on the turntable when she went out of the room, and the turntable was of the kind that goes back to the start of the record when it finishes. But if she was playing eighties stuff, that wasn’t a good sign.

The door to her sitting room was open. Edgar and Arthur watched me mournfully from their favorite perches—the top of the bookcase and a pallid bust of John Lennon, respectively—as I transferred Rhona from the carry cage to the big rat penthouse where she lived with her entourage of big, hunky guy rats who’d be happy to give her what I’d so signally failed to deliver.