The Devil You Know

I opened my eyes halfway and found myself staring up into a wide range of startled, suspicious, and resentful faces. Cheryl’s was right in the middle of them, and although she looked relieved to see me conscious again, I could tell from the hard set of her mouth that her membership in the Felix Castor fan club had lapsed forever. That was two body blows inside of twenty seconds.

A silver hip flask was pressed into my hand. Feeling numb and cold and strangely removed from myself, I took a swig without checking what it was and found myself coughing noisily on some raw but excellent bourbon. A lot of it went down the front of my coat, but the rest of it did the trick. I turned to see who it was I had to thank; Rich Clitheroe was looking down at me with a surreptitious eyebrow flash of sympathy and solidarity. I handed the flask back to him with a nod, flashing back to his secret stash of Lucozade in the traveling fridge down in the strong room. Well, “Be Prepared” is the Boy Scouts’ marching song, and some things just stay with you. But that wasn’t the phrase he’d used in any case; it was something like that, only different.

In case of emergency . . .

Domino nudged domino nudged domino, and everything fell into a pattern that had been there all along, unseen. I sat up, feeling an odd sense of weightlessness. I was like a thrown ball at the top of its arc, when it’s stopped rising but hasn’t begun to fall—freed from gravity, freed from the necessity of choice. Cheryl helped me to my feet, and our gazes met, furiously accusing on her side, God only knew what on mine. There was no sign of the ghost now. The summons I’d sent out to her would have broken when I lost consciousness, and there was nothing to keep her in this confusing, exposed, overbright space.

“I’m sorry,” I told Cheryl, leaning in close so that nobody else could hear.

She didn’t bend. “I bet you always are, afterward. I bet it even works sometimes.”

“I hope it will work with Sylvie,” I murmured. “I owe her the biggest apology of all.”

Other voices were breaking in now, and other hands were taking hold of me. Jeffrey Peele was saying, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” and Alice was interjecting comments like “It’s all right” and “You’re fine now” without any noticeable effect. Someone else—a woman—was asking whether she should call the police, and one of the ushers—the barge pole this time—muscled in between me and Cheryl to suggest that I might want to go out into the street and get some fresh air. His nose wrinkled, no doubt smelling the booze.

I let myself be shepherded away toward the door with his hand gripping my collar, but then I stopped again before he could get any real momentum going. I turned back, found Rich in the crowd. He stared at me, a little startled, as I made the universally recognizable gesture that meant he should phone me. I pointed to Jeffrey, meaning that Jeffrey had my phone number.

Rich hesitated for a moment—probably trying to work out what the hell I was trying to say—then nodded. The thickset usher loomed up on my other side, hooked one hand under my arm, and I was off, my feet barely touching the floor as I went.

It was probably just as well. I get all emotional at weddings.

Nineteen

YOU’RE LOADING UP YOUR SIX-GUNS, AREN’T YOU?” Pen said, standing in the doorway of my room. A chill wind was blowing around the plastic sheeting she’d nailed across the splintered, gap-toothed window frame, like a reminder that winter was on its way. I didn’t need reminding, and I didn’t appreciate it much.

“Yeah,” I said tersely. “I think it’s going to be a bad one.”

I was rummaging through the top shelf in my wardrobe, looking for a spare whistle. There should have been at least one there—older than the little beauty I’d just destroyed, and brassy rather than black in color, but in the same key and with something of the same feel to hand and mouth. I was damned if I could see it, though. The best I could come up with was a cone-bore flute. I’d almost forgotten my brief flirtation with that well-mannered instrument. It hadn’t done the job for me at all—something about the tone, maybe, or the tapering body. It shouldn’t have made that big a difference, because tin whistles have a conical bore, too, but every pattern I tried to weave on it got screwed up and thrown out somewhere along the line. Still, it was better than nothing by some small but measurable margin.

“Maybe you should get some help, then,” Pen suggested. “John Gittings?”

“Never again.”

“Pac-Man?”

“Still in jail. He doesn’t get out until next October.”

“Me?”

I turned to stare at her. “Usual strictures apply,” I said, sounding colder than I meant to; and then, more gently, “I don’t have any idea how this is going to come out, Pen. But I do know it will leave you with dirty hands—by your definition and probably even by mine.”