‘With respect,’ Gil said, his voice sounding a little thick, ‘he’s told us nothing at all about the Super-Self ghosts. He’s only justifying his own failure to reach any solid conclusions.’
Jenna-Jane smiled indulgently. ‘He’s told us his conclusions, Gilbert – although it’s true they don’t amount to a solution as yet. In that regard, Castor, do you have a solution? It would be an excellent way to round off your first twenty-four hours on my staff.’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I don’t. Teamwork helps, I can tell you that much. Pax and I got out in one piece because we ran interference for each other. But we didn’t even get close to attempting an exorcism. You just can’t keep your head together enough for that. Maybe you need a sort of Normandy landing approach, with exorcists advancing in waves. But even then . . .’
‘I like that,’ Jenna-Jane mused. ‘A brute-force approach. It has the merit of simplicity.’
‘And the drawback that we’ll be throwing all our people into a blind alley,’ Gil objected. ‘If it goes wrong, they could all end up like Etheridge.’
Actually, that was a fair point. If Etheridge had become the jumpy little bag of nerves he now was by getting too close to the Super-Self entity, that made a strong case for staying away from it at least until we knew what it was. It suddenly occurred to me that we should have asked Juliet that question. Erratic as her recent behaviour had been, she was still the acknowledged expert when it came to matters demoniacaclass="underline" our inside man. And since I was already paying her to babysit Pen, it might not be too much of an ask to have her come down to the Strand for a consultation.
Jenna-Jane put on her Solomon-come-to-judgement face. ‘I understand your concerns, Gilbert,’ she said. ‘Still, a combined attack did pay very definite dividends in the summoning of Rosie Crucis. It’s possible that a number of simultaneous exorcisms might work where individual attempts have failed. You can organise your people into teams of two, with one leading partner in each team. The second man watches the first from further back, and pulls him out if he starts to show signs of strain.’
Gil was getting exasperated, persumably at the prospect of my plan being adopted after he’d given it the thumbs down. ‘What if the trailing man gets hit first?’ he demanded, throwing out his arms in an indignant shrug. ‘We know the pool is ground zero, but you can feel the effects of this thing from a long way away. It would be stupid to just go in there thinking that we’re attacking the pool, or what’s in it. It would be like . . . like going after a wasps’ nest with a baseball bat and thinking you can’t get stung as long as you kill the queen.’
‘Nice analogy,’ I conceded. ‘Look, I’m not saying that going in mob-handed is a good idea. I was just thinking aloud.’
Jenna-Jane made a dismissive gesture, as if this was all just a matter of fine detail.
‘Still,’ she said, ‘I see no harm in trying. Make a list, Gilbert. Ten lead exorcists, with ten in support. Castor will be one of the leads, as will you.’
She stared at Gil for so long it was impossible to miss the point that he was being dismissed. He stood up but didn’t leave, fighting a visible psychomachia against his strong instinct to roll over and die for the queen.
‘If it doesn’t work,’ he said, ‘that’s twenty of us in the shit.’
‘The larger number spreads the risk,’ said Jenna-Jane, her tone cold and deliberate.
Gil stood his ground for a moment longer. Then he nodded curtly and headed for the door.
When it closed behind him, Jenna-Jane turned back to me with a look on her face that was almost arch. ‘Gilbert doesn’t like you very much, Felix,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried hard to bring him round to my way of thinking, but I’m afraid it’s an uphill struggle.’
‘I killed his favourite uncle,’ I pointed out. ‘Makes it a little hard for us to bond.’
‘Oh, it’s not that,’ Jenna-Jane assured me, sounding surprised at the very idea. ‘It’s much more personal, and much more straightforward. He’s afraid that you might be a better exorcist than him. That thought niggles at him. It throws him off his stride.’
‘Really?’ I demanded. ‘Why me, particularly? Everyone on the team is probably a better exorcist than him.’
Jenna-Jane shook her head admonishingly. ‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘He has a lot of raw power. More than anyone else in the family. I tested his cousin Dana, and she was impressive. She worked here for a year, and did a lot of good work for us. She left in the end for personal reasons, after a quarrel with another woman on the team turned into something more ugly. Gilbert is better than Dana, but he’s still not what you might call emotionally stable. In order to manage him, I’ve bonded with him on a very personal level. Now he sees you as a threat to that . . . closeness.’
I stared at her in silence, a smart answer dying on my lips. The thought of being part of a love triangle that had Jenna-Jane as one of its other two vertices made my stomach go through some complicated and unpleasant revolutions.
‘Now,’ she said, moving briskly along, ‘the Ditko situation . . .’
Right, I thought. And the Rafi situation too, while we’re on the subject. I squared my shoulders involuntarily, because I was about to tell J-J some bare-faced lies and I wanted to do it with an upright posture and a lot of eye contact.
‘I think you should send me to Macedonia,’ I said.
Jenna-Jane tilted her head to one side, looking faintly puzzled.
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘Because Rafi Ditko has a brother. Jovan.’ J-J didn’t exclaim in surprise or ask any further questions. She just stared at me, knowing there had to be more. ‘He’s on death row,’ I went on, ‘convicted of murder. If we want to talk to him, we’ve got precisely two days to do it in.’
‘But why should we want to talk to him?’ J-J asked, sounding genuinely puzzled. ‘Ditko only became possessed after he arrived in England. It’s not likely that his brother would know anything that could help us.’
‘I copy you on that, as far as it goes,’ I agreed. ‘I started looking for Rafi’s family in the first place so I could warn them that Asmodeus might be dropping into their lives. But now I’m thinking that it might be worth a trip to meet this guy. Did you know that Asmodeus can’t walk through wards drawn by Pamela Bruckner?’
J-J frowned. ‘No, I didn’t. Bruckner is the vile-tempered little redhead, correct? Ditko’s former girlfriend, as well as yours.’
‘Pen was never my girlfriend,’ I corrected her scrupulously. I let the ‘vile-tempered’ stand, since Pen wouldn’t have taken it as an insult in any case. ‘She’s my landlady. Sometimes. The point is, I’ve seen Asmodeus ignore wards drawn by strangers. They hurt him, but they don’t slow him down all that much. The personal connection seems to make a difference.’
‘So you believe Ditko’s brother might have a similar power over the demon? But if he’s in prison . . .’
‘I just want to talk to him,’ I repeated. ‘Mostly about Rafi’s childhood. It may come to nothing. Probably will. But at the very least, deepening our understanding of Rafi may help us to bring his consciousness and his reactions to the fore when we meet Asmodeus again. At the moment the bastard seems to have things all his own way. Rafi can’t get any purchase, so he’s led around like a dog.’
I’d said my piece. It was all garbage, of course, and I felt pretty uneasy about that. Not about lying to Jenna-Jane, of course, but about going AWOL at a time when the hunt for the demon might finally be starting to get somewhere. But Rafi had begged me to deliver his message to his father and his brother. I’d already missed the boat as far as Mr Ditko senior was concerned, and this was my last chance to talk to Jovan. I really didn’t have any other option, unless it was to write Jovan a letter, send it first class and hope it beat the hangman.
Jenna-Jane appeared to consider. ‘If you think this could actually be of some value . . .’ she said.
‘I don’t think we can afford to pass up the opportunity,’ I said.