Dead Men's s Boots

‘You’ve got a lot of dead men – dead bad men – turning up alive again,’ he said. ‘Or at least you got one or two, could be, and your friend was prodding a whole lot more with a stick to see if they moved. That right? But they’re all from your side of the water. Myriam would be the only woman, and the only American.’

‘Yes. Exactly.’

‘So it’s about your friend, and his . . . unfinished business.’ Mallisham took off his glasses and stroked the pinch-marks on the bridge of his nose. ‘Would I be right in saying that finishing the business would make it more likely he’d lie down and stay down, instead of distressing his nearest and dearest?’

‘Yes,’ I said again.

I thought about Carla, and realised that I hadn’t called her before I left. I didn’t even know whether John’s violently unhappy spirit had surfaced again since the cremation. I had to admit to myself that there were other factors operating here besides altruism. One of them was that when someone tries to kill me to keep me from finishing a job, it touches a stubborn streak in me that goes fairly deep.

‘Okay.’ Mallisham put his glasses on again, squinting and grimacing them into position. ‘I’m going to buy that. One out of two of you’s got an honest face, and these days that counts as better than average.’

‘One out of two of us?’ Juliet queried blandly.

Mallisham gave her a hard look. ‘Well, you’re a long way away from being what you look to be, missy,’ he said to her. ‘I’m not sure whether you’re dead or just something that never got born in the first place, but that body that looks so good on you – it isn’t really you, is it?’

There was a long silence.

I didn’t rush in to fill it: this wa£ill;&ns Juliet’s question and I figured she’d field it by herself.

‘No,’ she murmured at last, looking down demurely into her lap. ‘It’s not me. It’s not even a body.’

‘Just something you ran up for the occasion, eh?’ Mallisham’s eyebrows flashed. ‘Well, in a way that makes me feel a little better. You’re, what, her kore aperigrapta? Succubus, maybe?’

Juliet’s gaze jerked back up to meet his.

She blinked. ‘You want to guess my lineage?’ she invited, with an edge to her tone. I hadn’t understood the ancient Greek, but it was clear that something in what Mallisham had said had hit home.

He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no. I’m not of a mind to play twenty questions with you. I used to do a little exorcism on the side, in my early days, is all: that’s how I knew what you were.