The taxi dropped Nightingale a block or so east of the cemetery, and he walked along to the side street where he’d left his car. As he approached his car from the opposite side of the road, he was pleased to see that it looked just the way he’d left it, but when he walked round to the driver’s door he flinched at the sight of a black and white collie dog urinating against the front wheel. ‘Oh no,’ he said out loud. ‘Not again.’
She stepped out from the front of the car and smiled serenely at him.
‘Hello, Nightingale. Going somewhere?’
This time she’d changed her hair. The spiky fringe was gone, and her jet black locks were brushed backwards and upwards to form a halo around her young, dead-white face, She was wearing a calf-length leather coat over black leather shorts, torn, black fishnet tights and long studded black boots. Her t-shirt was black, with Born To Lose printed across it in bright red letters. Inverted crucifixes hung from her ears and there was a spiked dog collar fastened around her neck. A large silver ankh hung from the collar. The dog finished spraying Nightingale’s car and walked over to lick her hand.
Nightingale could never get over her eyes. They were jet-black, the irises merging completely into the pupils, and always devoid of expression, let alone warmth. He shuddered.
‘Give me a cigarette, Nightingale. Unless the American health lobby have managed to persuade you to give up.’
‘Not yet,’ said Nightingale. ‘Catch.’
Taking out his pack, he tossed her a cigarette. It would probably have been safe to hand it to her since he hadn’t actually summoned her, but who knew the rules with Hell-spawned demons, even if they did show up looking like teenage Goths. Better safe than sorry. She caught it in her left hand, gazed at it and watched it light by itself. She took a long drag then smiled at him through the smoke. ‘In a hurry, are you?’
‘I’m guessing you know as much about that as I do.’
She gave him an amused smile and rolled her dark eyes. ‘Now what on Earth makes you say that, Nightingale?’
‘I just thought I recognised one or two of your signature touches lately. What are you trying to do this time? I assume it’s nothing good.’
This time she laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Like someone swallowing broken glass. ‘The Great Detective has been doing some detecting. And by the way, Nightingale, I do things, I don’t try to do them.’
‘You failed at keeping my soul. You had it and I got it back. So it’s not as if your success rate is a hundred per cent, is it?’
The laugh was a little less cruel this time. ‘File that under “unfinished business”, I think, I had more important fish to fry at the time, and you were quite useful to me. And what are these signature touches you’ve been so busy detecting?’
‘People keep killing themselves. You’ve been known to make that happen.’
Her smile was gone now, and she took a step closer to Nightingale. He flinched backwards, a pure reflex action. ‘Oh yes, you know all about that don’t you, Nightingale? Poor Uncle Tommy and Aunty Linda. Then that Harrison character, and your poor dear, dead dad’s driver. Now what was his name...’
‘Alfie Tyler,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ve often wondered, why did you do all that? All you needed to do to take my soul was just turn up on my thirty-third birthday and collect it. Why all the dead people? Why all the warnings to put me on my guard?’
Her eyes seemed to grow bigger very quickly, until he was gazing into two huge pools of darkness that seemed to draw him in and down below their surface. ‘Because I can, Nightingale. And because maybe your miserable soul isn’t actually the most important thing in the known universe. Maybe it was never about you. Maybe you were just a very small cog in a very big machine.’
‘And is that what’s happening now? I’m being played again?’
She chuckled. ‘Same old Nightingale. It always has to be about you. There are far more important things going on here. Don’t get in the way any more.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or maybe you’ll wind up as a suicide statistic too. You said it, you know it’s a little talent of mine. There’s a bus due along that road in four minutes. Would you like to know what it’s like to walk in front of it?’
‘You wouldn’t. You’ve said before that you don’t want me just dead, you want my soul.’
‘Oh I do. And I plan to have it. Unless something more important comes up. As the song says, ‘You can’t always get what you want’.’
‘Which song?’
She raised one of her thick black eyebrows. ‘You don’t know? Before your time, I suppose. I forget about your sort and time. As I said, Nightingale, this isn’t about you, and you’d be very well advised to keep out of it. It would be a shame if you ended up dead. Or worse.’
He flashed her what he hoped was a confident smile, ‘Maybe I feel lucky.’
She raised a warning finger, then put it to her black-painted lips. ‘Hush now, You’ve got quite a long way on sheer dumb luck so far, but it can’t last. You need to be very lucky every time, if you’re not...’
‘I can’t pull out. There are children’s lives at stake.’
‘Ah, the old weakness, you’re just a big Santa Claus, aren’t you? Full of love for kiddies everywhere no matter whether they’re naughty or nice. You may have noticed that seven of them are dead so far, you’re not doing too well.’
Nightingale shrugged. ‘I’m doing my best.’
‘I’m sure that’ll be a comfort to their parents. And the parents of the ones to come.’
‘Why are you doing this?’
Again the mocking laugh. ‘Who said I am? Maybe I just like to watch you run around in circles.’
‘But you know what’s happening. Help me here.’
This time the laughter seemed to come from genuine amusement. ‘Oh Nightingale, you are such an infant. You persist in this idea that I’m on your side. How many people that were close to you are dead now? Why on earth would you expect me to help you? That bus is due now, shall I make you walk under it?’
Nightingale held his hands up in surrender. ‘Okay, I get it, you haven’t come to help.’
‘Nobody will be helping you, Nightingale. You and Wainwright have danced your little jig, and now it’s time to pay the piper.’ She grinned. ‘That’s what this is about, Nightingale. Paying the piper.’
‘Looks like I’ll be going then.’
‘You’ll go when I’ve finished with you, and I haven’t yet. Listen carefully now. I don’t plan to visit Tennessee again any time soon, and I’ve got rather tired of being summoned whenever you think of a question. So don’t do it. I’m not your personal phone-a-friend.’
‘I thought the rule was that you had to come if you were summoned. You have no choice in the matter.’
‘Oh we have to come when we are summoned. But the whole purpose of summoning our kind is to make a deal. There has to be something in it for us. With you, there hasn’t been lately. So I’m making my own deal. You summon me to Memphis and I’ll have to come. But when I go, I’ll be taking someone back with me when I leave. It’ll cost you a life, Nightingale. The life of someone you care about.’
‘There aren’t any of those left.’
She smiled cruelly and fingered the ankh that hung round her neck. ‘Oh really? Not dear little Jenny? Maybe Amy Chen? Didn’t Robbie Hoyle have a wife and kids? What about your long-lost sister? I’ll think of someone. I mean what I say, Nightingale. Don’t even think about summoning me here. If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your short, miserable life.’
Nightingale shuddered. She was right, he was always disarmed by the harmless appearance, but beneath it lurked one of the most powerful Devils in Hell. She had told him what would happen, and he knew from experience that he needed to believe every word. He nodded.
‘Looks like I’ll manage without you,’ he said.
‘Probably not too well, is my guess. Remember, this isn’t the movies. The guy in the white hat doesn’t always win.’
The air around her flickered and seemed to fold in on itself, and she and the dog were gone.
Nightingale’s hand was trembling as he lit a cigarette.