Dead Men's s Boots

‘It’s not right for you to be talking to me after what you did to Jules. You should have been a better friend to her.’

I opened my mouth to say that it was Juliet who’d broken a table across my back, rather than the other way around, but this wasn’t the time for scoring cheap points.

‘I think I can bring her back,’ I said again. ‘If I can come in for just a minute, I’ll explain what I want to do. Then if you say no, I’ll just leave.’

‘No. I don’t want you to come in here. Not while I’m alone.’

‘Then let me explain out here,’ I suggested.

‘I don’t want to hear what you’ve got to say.’

‘Susan,’ I said, making my last pitch, ‘this is something she needs to know about. She’s done something that might make it . . . hard for her to stay here on Earth. Or at least here in London. Something that puts her way, way over on the wrong side of the law. She’s made a choice, and in my opinion it was the wrong one. It will hurt her.’

‘Nothing can hurt her,’ Susan said, shaking her head again. I wasn’t sure if it was a boast or a lament.

‘Losing you would hurt her, I think. And if she has to do a moonlight flit – if all the exorcists the Met can lay their hands on are sharpening their knives for her, and she makes the city too hot to hold her – she’ll leave you behind.’ I paused for just a moment to let that idea sink in, then went in for the kill. ‘Or do you tÛ216r&nhink you can go and live with her folks for a while?’

A whole cavalcade of emotions crossed Susan’s face. I wanted to look away.

Moloch’s words about my having a gift for hurting people were still hanging in the air: this wouldn’t count as torture at Abu Ghraib, but standing on a doorstep in West London at the arse end of winter with the rising wind carving sharper edges on my face, that was exactly what it felt like.

Susan was looking at me, shaking her head: rejecting the picture I’d painted, or maybe rejecting me, seeing through my sullied flesh to my shabby heart and saying no. She stood aside, wordlessly, and let me come in, then closed the door, locked it and bolted it top and bottom.

I waited until she was done and let her lead the way into the living room. It was a gesture: a pretence that she was in control of what was happening. I thought about the aborted dinner party and everything that had happened since, and I had to struggle against a feeling of shame. Susan was right, in spite of everything: I should have been a better friend.