She was looking at me closely, appraisingly. She paused, as if she expected me to respond to the allegation.
‘It’s good to know that you’re still taking an interest in me,’ I said blandly.
‘Always, Felix. Always.’
‘Listen, Jenna-Jane.’ I was trailing the field in the small-talk stakes, so I reckoned I might as well cut to the chase. ‘I need to speak to Rosie. There’s something I want to ask her about.’
J-J’s eyebrows rose. I knew they did because I saw the crease appear and then fade again on her forehead. The eyebrows themselves were grey, like the hair on her head, and pencil-sliver thin so they couldn’t be seen unless you were right up close.
‘I’ll add you to the roster,’ she said, mildly.
‘I meant tonight.’
J-J smiled a tight, pained smile. ‘That would be more difficult to arrange. We have a formal booking system now, and the time slots for tonight are entirely filled. Probably the earliest I could fit you in would be in about three or four days’ time.’
‘I just need a couple of minutes. Couldn’t you squeeze me in as someone else is clocking off?’
She shook her head with an expression on her face that was indistinguishable from genuine regret. ‘No, I’m afraid not, Felix,’ she said. ‘Everything goes through one of the oversight boards, and I can’t pre-empt their decision. Even for a friend.’ She paused, frowned for a moment in thought, and I waited for the other shoe to drop. ‘For a colleague, though,’ she said, ‘it would be different. If you had an active and current attachment to the unit, I mean. I could stretch a point then, and be reasonably sure that the board wouldn’t smack my hand for it afterwards.’
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but then again if all she wanted was a promise I could be every bit as radiantly insincere as she could. ‘Well, I’m pretty busy right now,’ I said, ‘but when I’ve got an opening, I could maybe come over and do some chores for you.’
Jenna-Jane nodded enthusiastically. ‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘There’s one thing I’d love to have you do for us.’
‘What’s that?’ I was already standing, trying to hustle her on to the next stage in the proceedings, but when it comes to immovable objects and irresistible forces, J-J can play both ends against the middle.
‘You can persuade your friend Rafael Ditko to sign himself into our care.’
My face froze, and so did I, halfway between sitting down and standing up. In the end I went for standing up, because it got me a bit of distance from her.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘That one’s not on the table.’
‘Isn’t it?’ She was all innocent inquiry. ‘I had a call from Doctor Webb a couple of days ago. He seemed to feel that it might be better for Mister Ditko to be in an environment that’s more directly and intentionally geared towards dealing with the kind of problem that he faces.’
‘J-J, no offence, but in here Rafi would be the problem. You don’t distinguish between the carrier wave and the signal.’
Jenna-Jane seemed hurt. ‘That’s a rather opaque metaphor, Felix. And it’s very far from the truth. I’m aware that Ditko and the demon inside him are two distinct entities. I’m probably more cognisant of what that means than you are, and better able to understand the mechanism by which it works. I would never confuse your friend with the passenger he has the misfortune to carry.’
‘No? So you wouldn’t, for the sake of argument, be tempted to try stabbing Rafi with a pitchfork to see if Asmodeus bleeds?’
Jenna-Jane’s disguise is close to being perfect, so there was no sign of anger or frustration on her face. She just shook her head, as if that harsh remark was the latest proof that she was never meant to live in a world as cruel and unfeeling as this.
‘My first concern would be Ditko’s well-being,’ she said solemnly.
‘It’s not negotiable, Jenna-Jane.’
‘Then neither is Rosie, Felix. I’ll add you to the roster, and you’ll get a call within the next few days. Unless, of course, someone on the oversight board has any doubts about your suitability.’
‘And are you on the oversight board, Jenna-Jane?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Of course. I’m one of four faculty members, balanced by three—’
I raised my hand to stop the flow. ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I get the picture. Give my regards to any of the old gang you still see.’
‘Of course.’
‘And fall downstairs and break your neck while you’re doing it. The next time I drop in, I’d love to see you in a persistently vegetative state.’
‘Felix!’ I walked out on that tone of reproach – identical to the one I’d walked in on. I didn’t want to see the expression that went with it.
What I did see, on my way back to the guard post, was one of those alarm points with its sternly worded notice. It gave me an idea that was hard to resist. I smashed the glass with my elbow and hit the button. A deep, two-tone whoop sounded from all sides at once. I kept moving, dredging up my memories of the unit’s floor plan. There ought to be a corridor off on my right somewhere up ahead.
There was. Turning along it, I saw a whole lot of people running towards me, some of them in the dark blue uniforms of the security staff. I braced myself, but they ran on past me without giving me so much as a glance. A second wave followed a hundred yards further on, and then I turned into a short side corridor with just the one door at the end of it.
It was locked. I hammered on it and yelled ‘Open up!’ as loud as I could over the continued mad-cow mooing of the alarm. There was the sound of a bolt drawing back, and a surprised face appeared in the gap as the door was pulled open. It was another man in uniform, two inches taller than me and a lot heavier.
‘She’s got to be moved,’ I shouted, pointing past him into the ward.
‘Moved?’ He looked surprised and alarmed. He didn’t budge out of my way, though: he wasn’t going to buy the bridge without looking over the design sketches. ‘Where to? What’s going on?’
‘Out into the yard. There’s a fire.’
He looked less convinced than ever. ‘A fire? That’s the breach alarm, not the—’
Enough is enough. I brought my knee up into his stomach, and then as he went down I spun on my heel and gave him a roundhouse punch behind the ear that laid him out on the floor. There was a fire extinguisher in a niche to the right of the door: I hooked it out and held it ready in case he got up again, but for now he was in dreamland. I felt a little bad about it, because he was only doing his job: but on the other hand, anyone who sticks around in Jenna-Jane’s company on the basis of that excuse has got to be skating on ice so thin you could melt it with your breath.
I pulled him inside and closed the door, after glancing back up the corridor and finding to my relief that it was empty. It wouldn’t be for long.
Rosie grinned when she saw me – a lazy, wicked grin.
‘Felix Castor,’ she said. ‘I had a dream that we were married.’
‘I’d give you a dog’s life, Rosie. I’m not domesticated.’
‘Ah, but in the dream, I was the man and you were the woman.’
‘It would still hold. I’d whore around. I know my own weaknesses.’
I pulled a chair up next to her bedside. The body she was wearing right now was a new one on me, but that wasn’t surprising: like I said, it had been a while. It was a young lad with dark, curly hair and a volcanic spill of acne across his left cheek. He was fully dressed, lying on top of the covers: maybe on some level he was listening in on the conversation, but Rosie was in the driving seat. She usually is.
It’s almost impossible for ghosts – as opposed to demons – to possess living human hosts: that’s why loup-garous pick on animals, despite the social embarrassments that can cause. Rosie manages because the people she insinuates herself into are both extraordinary receptive and extraordinary co-operative, and even then it can be a tight and uncomfortable fit.