Dead Men's s Boots

‘I don’t even know what the boulder is,’ I pointed out. ‘I’m not likely to get my shoulder under it any time soon – not on blind faith, anyway.’

‘Faith?’ The demon made a terse, faintly obscene gesture. ‘No. I wouldn’t advise you to deal with me on that basis. Did you mention me to the lady, at all?’

‘To Juliet? Yeah, I did.’

‘And how did she respond?’

I thought back. ‘She spat on the ground,’ I said.

He nodded with a certain satisfaction. ‘Immediately after she spoke my name, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you’ll notice I haven’t spoken hers.

Only that of her brother, who is dead. These are useful precautions among our kind. Our names aren’t given or chosen at random. They have unique properties, and to speak them casually, without due attention to . . .’ he hesitated before visibly selecting the right word ‘. . . prophylaxis can lead to very serious consequences. And she has good reason both to hate and to fear me.’

‘I’ll bet,’ I said, unimpressed. ‘And, you know, I appreciate your frankness. I’d Ãessme.say it was a breath of fresh air except that the air stinks of rotten meat.

This isn’t getting us much further, is it?’

‘No,’ Moloch agreed. ‘It isn’t.’ He smiled nastily. ‘You’re very amusing, Felix, do you know that? Your instinctive mistrust. The way you look for angles, for advantages, even when there aren’t any. You see yourself as the finger in the dyke, don’t you? And me as the rising tide. But I promise you, very solemnly: in the bigger scheme of things, you’re –’ he touched the tips of his fingers together, opened them again, consigning me to oblivion ‘– insignificant.

’

‘Can you have a rising tide of shit?’ I asked politely. ‘I suppose technically the answer’s yes, but it’s a disturbing image. I’d go for a different metaphor, if I were you. Something more in a David and Goliath flavour. And you know, I’m like Avis rent-a-car: because I’m insignificant, I try harder.’

I was hoping to shake the aura of smugness Moloch was putting out, but his smile just broadened. ‘Do you even know, Castor, why the dead are rising? Why the order of things has reversed itself so that graves gape and give birth?’

In spite of myself, a tremor went through me.

The demon must have seen it because he smiled in modest gratification. ‘I think the answer is no,’ he murmured. ‘Poor little Dutch boy, labouring in the dark as the water rises around his ankles, then his knees, then—’

‘Well, everyone’s got a theory,’ I said, cutting across his chalk-on-blackboard eloquence.