Thicker Than Water

But how can it be so big, Juliet? How can it be so fucking big and so fucking powerful if it’s -’ the word had a sour, almost obscene taste to it as I shaped my mouth around it ‘- newborn?’

Juliet stared at me for long enough that I was sure she wasn’t going to answer. But then she made a gesture that conveyed very succinctly the impression that in talking to me about this she was trying to pour a major ocean into a pint pot. ‘Many of us start out . . . large and diffuse,’ she said. ‘Bodiless emotion. Pure power, but not concentrated.

Like a vapour that fills any space it finds itself in. We condense gradually, over a long time. We find our form.’

‘But you come from souls?’ This from Matt, who was staring at her in utter horror. ‘From human souls?’

Juliet made another gesture: something close to a shrug.

‘Dear God!’ Matt whispered. ‘Oh dear God!’

‘Tell me if I’m missing something,’ Coldwood growled, ‘but fascinating as all this is from a religious standpoint, is it not also totally fucking irrelevant? Either you can sort this out or you can’t, Fix.

Which is it?’

‘The first ghost I ever exorcised was my own sister, Gary,’ I answered, shaking my head with ferocious emphasis. ‘I’m not going back there. Today it’s Matt’s turn.’

‘Mine?’ Matt’s voice trembled as he raised his red, tear-stained face to stare at me.

‘I think it’s our only chance,’ I said. ‘He’s kin to you and he’ll feel the connection. He may listen to you where he wouldn’t listen to anyone else. Most ghosts - they hang around because they can’t get it into their heads that their life is over.

They’re tied to all the stuff they didn’t do, or wish they hadn’t done. You have to tell him it’s okay. Make your peace with him. You have to ask him to leave, of his own free will. It’s the only way.’"

"At least, I added mentally, it’s the only way that doesn’t involve me doing an encore for my biggest sin. For Katie. And I marvelled again at how big a bastard Asmodeus was: how nearly perfectly he’d led me to this massacre of the innocents.

Because that’s what Mark was, however deadly his infatuation with wounds had become. His real father literally didn’t know he was alive, his stepfather was a vicious sadist and his mother was probably already broken before he was born. His cards had been well and truly marked. And then when he did finally break out of the ghetto, by metamorphosing into something big and powerful and scary, along came Uncle Felix with his magic equaliser.

No. Sorry.