He left his bedside light burning, settled down to sleep. A door, unlocked, stood between the two rooms. Quint was right next door, probably asleep by now. The city’s traffic was giving it hell out beyond the louvered window shutters. London was a tomb by comparison. Tombs hardly seemed a fitting subject to go to sleep on, but .
Kyle closed his eyes; he felt sleep pulling him down, soft as a woman’s arms; and he felt —
— something else pulling him awake!
His lamp was still on, its shade forming a pool of yellow light on the mahogany bedside table. But there was now a second source of illumination, and it was blue! Kyle snatched himself back from sleep, sat bolt upright in his bed. It was Harry Keogh, of course.
Carl Quint came bounding through the joining door, dressed only in his pyjama bottoms. He pulled up short, backed off a pace. ‘Oh my God!’ he said, his mouth hanging open. The Keogh apparition — man, sleeping child and all — turned through ninety degrees to face him.
Don’t be alarmed, said Keogh.
‘Can you see him?’ Kyle wasn’t quite awake yet.
‘Lord, yes,’ Quint breathed, nodding. ‘And hear him, too. But even if I couldn’t, I’d still know he was here.’
A psychic sensitive, said Keogh. Well, that helps.
Kyle swung his legs out of bed, switched off the lamp. Keogh stood out so much better in the darkness, like a hologram of infinitely fine neon wires. ‘Carl Quint,’ Kyle said, his skin prickling with the sheer weirdness of this thing he’d never get used to, ‘meet Harry Keogh.’
Quint stumblingly found a chair close to Kyle’s bed and flopped into it. Kyle was wide awake now, fully in control. He realised how insubstantial it must sound, how hollow and commonplace when he asked: ‘Harry, what are you doing here?’
And Quint almost laughed, however hysterically, when the apparition answered: I’ve. been talking to Thibor Ferenczy, using my time to my best advantage — for there’s precious little of it to waste. Every waking hour makes Harry jar stronger and me less able to resist him. It’s his body and I’m being subsumed, even absorbed. His little brain is filling up with its own stuff, squeezing me out or maybe compacting me. Pretty soon I’ll have to leave him, and then I don’t know if I’ll ever be corporeal again. So on the way back from Thibor, I thought I’d drop in on you.
Kyle could almost feel Quint’s near-hysteria; he glanced warningly at him in the light of the soft blue glow. ‘You’ve been talking to the old Thing in the ground?’ he repeated. ‘But why, Harry? What is it you want from him?’
He’s one of them, a vampire, or he was. The dead aren’t much bothered with him. He’s a pariah among the dead. In me he has, well, if not a friend, at least someone to talk to. So we trade: I converse with him, and he tells me things I want to know. But nothing’s easy with Thibor Ferenczy. Even dead he has a devious mind. He knows that the longer he strings it out, the sooner I’ll be back. He used the same tactics with Dragosani, remember?
‘Oh, yes,’ Kyle nodded. ‘And I also remember what happened to Dragosani. You should be careful, Harry.’
Thibor’s dead, Alec, Keogh reminded him. He can do no more harm. But what he left behind might.
‘What he left behind? You mean Yulian Bodescu? I’ve got men watching the place in Devon until I’m ready for him. When we’re sure of his patterns, when we’ve assessed everything you’ve told us, then we’ll move in.’
I didn’t exactly mean Yulian, though certainly he’s part of it. But are you telling me you’ve put espers on the job? Keogh seemed alarmed. Do they know what they might have to deal with if they’re marked? Are they fully in the picture?
‘Yes they are. Fully. And they’re equipped. But if we can we’ll learn a little more about them before we act. For all that you’ve told us, still we know so very little.’
And do you know about George Lake?