How had it all gone so horribly wrong? One minute he was getting ready to cut the brat's throat, the next he was running for his life. For his life and soul. Beleth wouldn't play around. Demon princes never did. The minute he caught up with Brimstone, Brimstone was dead meat. And his soul, what was left of it, would be used to drive a golem, or guard some stupid tomb, or have slivers sliced from it perpetually to nourish demon children. It was dreadful. Ghastly. Beyond thinking about.
He opened the door of his office and roared, 'Porter!'
He couldn't carry all his gold, of course, not even with a porter helping. He'd have to leave so much behind. Tens of thousands of pieces. Hundreds of thousands of pieces. The pain he felt was almost physical. He'd have to start again. Somewhere where no one knew him. Have to start without contacts or friends. Well, actually, he'd never had many friends, but it was the principle of the thing. And starting without contacts was a nightmare. He'd have to live in some dingy little back street in some dingy little set of lodgings in some god-forsaken dungheap of a farming village where nobody would ever think of looking for him. And even when he started up another business, he'd have to make sure it never became too successful. Once he disappeared, he must never, never, ever draw attention to himself.
There was a man standing in the doorway.
'What the hell do you want?' Brimstone asked.
'Porter, sir. You called for one.'
'So I did,' said Brimstone. 'Can you lift that?' He pointed to the chest of gold coins on the floor beside his desk.
The porter walked across and hefted it on to his shoulder as if it were a feather. 'You've got a floater spell on this,' he said in some surprise.
'Take it downstairs and load it into my hansom – it's the black one parked outside,' Brimstone ordered. 'When you've done that, come back here – ' he cracked a smile ' – for your tip.'
When the man had left, Brimstone opened his desk drawer and examined the selection of knives inside.
They were all long-bladed and razor sharp. He picked one with a curved edge and an ion blade that was capable of decapitating the porter, let alone slitting his throat. Then he hid behind the door and waited.
He usually disliked cutting throats. The amount of blood that pumped from the jugular was appalling, took ages to clean up. But since he was unlikely ever to come back to his office, that would be somebody else's problem. Pity, though – he'd always liked this office. Such a shame never to be seeing it again.
He heard the porter's footfalls outside and steeled himself to strike the moment the man entered. One quick stroke, step over the corpse, then out of the building before anybody noticed he was gone. The horses were fresh, the hansom unmarked. He could be- The porter turned the handle of the door. Brimstone raised the knife and had a sudden thought. He didn't need to run away at all! He didn't need to hide! How had he missed it? All he had to do was burn The Book of Beleth! He froze in place. So simple. It was the book that had called him into Brimstone's world in the first place. Destroy the book and Beleth had no way to reach him. It solved the problem absolutely. With Beleth out of the picture, Brimstone could ignore the contract. He could forget about sacrificing the boy -who'd turned out to be trouble anyway – and forget about Beleth grabbing his soul. He could keep his gold, keep his businesses, keep his books. He could carry on exactly as before and, when things settled down a little, he could work on other plans to get richer and more powerful. Suddenly life was wonderful again!
Brimstone dropped the knife as the porter stepped into his office. The man started a little at finding Brimstone lurking behind the door, but recovered enough to say, The chest is in your carriage, sir. You mentioned something about a tip, Mr Brimstone…?'
Brimstone grinned at him. 'You can whistle for it!' he said gaily. 'I'm not going! I'm not going!' He danced past the man and ran downstairs to the passage that led from the factory to his lodgings and the attic room. The place was still in a mess after the last disastrous evocation, but he ignored the debris and headed straight for the cupboard, chanting the code that removed his protection spell. The cupboard door sprang open as he reached it.
The Book of Beleth was no longer there.
Nor, when he went back to the factory a little later, was his chest of gold. Brimstone only just stopped himself from screaming. That damn porter had taken his own tip!
Thirteen
It had clouded over and begun to rain by the time Henry reached his road. He plodded miserably towards his house. Mr Fogarty's voice sounded like a refrain in his head. Your mother. She wants you to get home. At once. Home at once. Home at once. At once, At once. He'd a pretty good idea why his mother wanted him home at once.
Despite the cool touch of the rain, Henry's face was burning. He simply couldn't believe what he'd done. Stood in the street in front of Anais and cried like a baby. Huge, racking, incoherent sobs with blubbering attempts to apologise without knowing what he was apologising for.
She came over to him. That was the worst bit. She came over and put her arm around his shoulders and cuddled him as if she was his mum or something. 'Oh, Henry, what is it? What's wrong?' He'd let her hold him. She smelled nice and she was soft and warm. But now he felt guilty, as if he'd betrayed his dad. 'Do you want to talk about it?'
He didn't want to talk about it. How could he talk about it behind his father's back? Besides, he couldn't speak for sobbing. He just stood there, his head pressed to her breast, and cried. Then, to finish him completely, a stream of snot poured from his nose all down her crisp, white blouse. It went on and on and he couldn't stop it. The awful thing was she didn't make a fuss. She didn't even move, just kept holding him and stroking his hair and asking what was wrong, as if she didn't know already.
His house came into view and he noticed at once his dad's car was in the driveway.
His mother must have seen him through the window because she met him at the front door. She managed to look anxious, furious and guilty all at once. 'Where on earth have you been, Henry? Didn't Mr Fogarty tell you to come straight home?'
Been blubbing at your girlfriend, Mum. But instead of answering, Henry pushed past her, head down, dripping water on the Welcome mat. He wouldn't bet on getting much of a welcome today. His dad emerged from the kitchen and grinned at him weakly. 'Your mother's a bit upset,' he said.
Henry shrugged out of his coat and hung it to drip from the hallstand. 'You're soaked,' his mother said. 'Go up and change your clothes before you catch your death.'
'I think I'll take a bath,' he said, just to be bolshie. He knew they wanted a family conference.
He stood there dumbly, watching the conflicting emotions cross his mother's face, and felt a tiny twinge of guilt, a tiny twinge of satisfaction. Eventually she said, 'Yes, all right, but don't be long.'
The bath was a bad idea. He lay in the warm, soapy water, looking up at the light fitting and feeling afraid. Whatever happened next wouldn't be good and he wished now he hadn't put it off. They might get divorced. They might ask him and Aisling to go into a home. He couldn't see how to work out anything that wasn't a disaster. AOS. All Options Stink. He closed his eyes and wished there was somewhere he could go to hide.
He put on clean jeans, but the only shirt he could find was that stupid lumberjack thing Aunt Millie had bought him for his birthday. He stared at it blankly, then pulled it on. What the hell, he wasn't making a fashion statement.
They must have been listening out for him because they both shot out of the kitchen while he was on the stairs. 'We're in here, Henry,' his dad said. 'Can you come in a minute?' He hesitated, then added briskly, 'Things to discuss.'