Dead Men's s Boots

I checked out the in-flight movies, none of which looked particularly exciting, and then looked around again: Juliet had her head bowed and her eyes closed, and her hands were clasped – very tightly, it looked to me – in her lap.

‘You okay?’ I murmured.

‘I’ll be fine,’ Juliet answered tersely.

I left her to it while the cabin staff came around with complimentary beverages. I opted for coffee, bearing in mind the risks of deep-vein thrombosis, but hedged my bets to the extent of asking for a brandy to spike it with.

I waited a while to see if she’d come out of it by herself: I didn’t want to irritate her by seeming too solicitous. But when we’d been in the air for half an hour, her expression had become›siot b a rigid mask of suppressed suffering. Juliet isn’t capable of going pale, because she’s already pale enough to make most albinos look ruddily healthy, but something had happened to her complexion, too: it was as though the radiant white of her skin was losing some of its intensity, some of its definition.

As tactfully and neutrally as I could, I showed her the sick-bag and explained its function.

‘I’m not sick,’ she said, her voice low and harsh.

‘Okay,’ I allowed. ‘But you’re not your usual cheeky, chirpy self. What’s the matter?’

She shook her head, but only half an inch in either direction so the movement was barely visible.

I wasn’t going to press it any further, bearing in mind how fiercely Juliet defends her privacy, but she spoke again after a pause of almost a minute. ‘I feel – stretched,’ she muttered. ‘Strained. As though – part of me is still down there. On the ground.’

I could hear the tension in her voice and see it in the set of her shoulders. The whole of her body was clenched tight, like a fist: the nails of her latticed fingers were digging into the backs of her hands.

‘Maybe it’s a kind of travel sickness that only demons get,’ I suggested tentatively. ‘If it is, you’ll probably get over it soon: it’s just your body adjusting to the weird input – the cabin pressure and the motion of the plane.’

‘Yes,’ Juliet growled. ‘Most likely.’

But she didn’t get better. She got worse. Two hours out, I saw a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and I could hear her breathing.