Thicker Than Water

’

Juliet stared at me, deadpan. ‘Yes. So?’

‘So - how much of that is bullshit?’

There was a silence during which we could hear Coldwood on the floor below us chewing out one of his subordinates. ‘Well, whichever corner is closest to the bloody underpass. Are you seeing wheelie bins? Well, right fucking there, then. Look behind them. I don’t care how much fucking mess there is—’

‘How many demons, Castor,’ Juliet asked me, in a tone of long-suffering patience, ‘have been summoned by how many necromancers and mages and scholars and hobbyists and enthusiastic imbeciles? Down the centuries, from the Middle Ages when the first grimoires were written, to the present day when the grimoires are almost irrelevant because you can raise a hell-hound with an incautious word? How many, would you say?’

I shrugged impatiently.

‘Or tens of thousands. And not one of them has ever discussed these matters with the ones who summoned them.’

‘We don’t know that.

‘Trust me,’ said Juliet. ‘It’s the truth. Not one of them. I told you a long time ago that there were certain things I wasn’t prepared to discuss with you. I told you this was one of them. It still is.’

‘What, because you’re afraid?’ I demanded, still hurting too much to be circumspect. ‘Because you think I’ll use the information against you in some way?’

‘Not you, perhaps. And not against me. But someone, sometime. Against my kind.’

‘Juliet, you’re working as a fucking exorcist.

She took a sudden step towards me, and the look on her face was so dark that I raised my fists, as if I had a hope in Hell against her if she wanted to take me out. But all she did was grasp my chin in her hand and hold my face in place as she brought her own up close. Mostly that only happens when I’m asleep and dreaming.

‘Do you see a difference between the public execution of a criminal and an act of genocide?’ she asked me, speaking very softly but very distinctly.

‘I’m fort of oppoved to bofe,’ I mumbled, unable to part my jaws.

‘Whereas I’m perfectly happy with the first, but by and large prefer not to abet the second.’ She let go of me, but she was still standing close enough that her achingly beautiful scent filled the air between us. ‘Understand me, Castor. It occurred to me not to allow you - any of you - to walk away with what you’ve learned today.