Thicker Than Water

So I told her about Bic, and I let her make the call. That’s how big a bastard I am.

Five minutes later she was unlocking Rafi’s »locbasdoor, having previously removed the wards from it. Trudie was with us: Cheadle had freed her hands, but she still wore the helmet and mask. Rafi stared at us in blank amazement as we trooped into the room: me first, with Bic in my arms: then Cheadle, steering Trudie by her shoulders; and Imelda last of all, her expression somewhere close to hangdog.

More explanations, while Trudie sat like a slightly kinky version of Blind Justice on a chair in a corner of the room, and Bic lay moaning and murmuring on the couch.

Rafi was unhappy, and scared. Since he’d moved in here, he’d got used to being the only inhabitant of his own brain, and I was proposing to wake up the sleeping sub-letter with a vengeance.

‘Is there no other way of doing this?’ he asked.

‘None that I can think of,’ I said. ‘But believe me, Rafi, I’m open to suggestions.’

Rafi looked to Imelda in mute appeal, and Imelda shook her head: the rock, crying out no hiding place.

‘If you’re asking me if this is safe,’ she said sternly, ‘then, honey, I’m going to have to tell you I don’t know. Castor and me have been up to the job so far, more or less - kept that nasty little thing under his rock most of the time. But this is different. We’re waking him up and we’re letting him off the leash. Whether we can put him down again afterwards is a blue-breezing blind guess, and anyone who’d tell you any different would be lying. ’

‘But it’s not just the two of us this time,’ I pointed out.

Imelda looked at Trudie, who was missing all the finer points here because of the BDSM harness.

‘Can you let her out of that thing now?’ Imelda asked Cheadle.

‘No,’ Cheadle answered shortly. ‘But you can. I don’t mind what you do here in this room, so long as she’s all wrapped up in the ribbons and bows again when we come to leave. I’ll be waiting at the bottom of the stairs.

And you can tell madam that if she comes down them with her eyes open, I’ll bounce five pounds of loose change off the back of her neck. She might survive the experience, but she won’t appreciate it.’"

"He left without further ceremony. Imelda helped me to undo the straps and we removed the mask from Trudie’s flushed, sweating face. ‘Thank God!’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to suffocate in—’ She broke off, staring hard at Rafi.