Thicker Than Water

‘Music, generally, but the whistle’s the best medium I’ve found to work in. Key of D. I’m sure you understand.’

A half-second of silence, heavy with incomprehension.

‘Then why’d you leave it behind? You think I care two fucks about killing an unarmed man? Or was that your way of waving a little white flag?’

I gave him a look, keeping my expression more or less neutral. ‘Look,’ I said, mildly, ‘I’m off duty. Good news for both of us. Why don’t you buy yourself a few more beers, work on doing your liver a bit more damage, and at Lime Street we’ll wave each other goodbye? No harm, no foul.

The loup-garou stared at me. His lips peeled back from his teeth, which is never a good sign in a werewolf. I noticed that they consisted entirely of incisors.

‘You’re a toaster,’ he said, spitting out the word as if it was something unpleasant that he’d swallowed. I could have called that hate-speech, but exorcists coined the term themselves to describe their core business: ghost-toasting.

‘And you’re a fuckwit,’ I said, without heat. ‘Go and get drunk.’

‘I think I’d rather kill you,’ the loup-garou observed, leering. His face was flushed and his eyes, like animal eyes, had no whites. Part of that was just the animal and the human trying to reach a tense accommodation about what their shared body should look like, but I think he was substance-abusing›bst wa too.

‘Have you done it before?’ I asked.

He laughed shortly - a single exhalation pushed out through his still-bared teeth. ‘Killed? Oh yeah.’

‘Taken on an exorcist,’ I said, with heavy emphasis. His face registered the word in a micro-momentary flicker of some emotion that I couldn’t quite pin down.

But he ignored the question, or at least fended it off by throwing one of his own. ‘You got any money?’ he asked.

‘Why?’ I pretended to take a sip of the coffee.

‘You pay me - a hundred, or a couple of hundred - maybe I’ll let you live.’

I sighed and shook my head. ‘You died young,’ I said, trying one last time. ‘The first time around, I mean. Probably because you got yourself into some stupid pissing contest like this one. Learn from your mistakes, eh? Let it lie in the long grass for once, and see if there’s another way besides the hard way.