Dead Men's s Boots

‘Yeah,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m an exorcist.’

Hunter shook his head in pained wonder.

‘Won’t work,’ he said, sounding angry and impatient. ‘If it was that easy, they’d all have gone years ago. But they won’t like it, all the same. If I were you, and believe me I’d sooner be the shit on your shoe, I’d be running now. I’d be taking a train to somewhere a long way away and changing my name to – to fucking Smith or something. You idiot. What do you think you can do? You can’t do anything.’

‘I’m still going to try,’ I said, for the sake of saying something.

‘Jan sent you, didn’t she?’ Hunter demanded, his voice modulating weirdly so that the wrong words were emphasised and the sounds fought against the sense. ‘She can’t help me now. You – just leave. Just get out of here. And you tell her – tell her to forget about him. He didn’t ask any of you to get involved in –’ he hesitated, blinking rapidly now ‘– in my life, or in what’s happening to me. In fact, I’m telling you not to.

‘I’m sorry about Jan,’ Hunter said, and the catch in his voice as he spoke her name made me pretty sure he meant it. ‘Really, really sorry. I know – how much she’s got to be missing me. But he’s not coming back. Not after what I did. I can’t help that now. I can’t even make the inscription.

The word ‘inscription’ jolted me out of my seat, but Hunter was up again too before I could get a word out. He kicked the chair away with his hee sy w jol, muscles working in his broad neck as he ground his teeth together. ‘He’s not coming back,’ he repeated. ‘I’m going to sort this out for myself and I’m going to go my own way. Don’t try to save me. She killed a man. She doesn’t deserve to be saved, and she doesn’t want to be.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Juliet stood up very abruptly, stepped around the table and came up very close to Hunter, her face only an inch or so from his, her eyes and his locked in a point-blank staring contest. He froze for a moment, then a shiver went through him. I had a worm’s-eye view, from directly underneath, so I saw his fist clench. The guards saw it too and they all moved at the same time, but I was closer so I got there first.