Dead in Time

Chapter Twelve

Getting back from Bristol took over three hours. It irked me that travelling by road would have been quicker, quite probably more comfortable, and not laced with the slight miasma of panic that trains had held for me since Uncle Duncan’s accident, but I couldn’t complain. I had no way of running a car and the flat on a student’s budget, and what I might have been able to spend on a rental I’d already blown on wining and dining Leon Fielding.

The relief at being home was immense, though, even if my flat wasn’t totally my own anymore. In the sitting room, the piles of paperwork had been cleared off the coffee table. In their place sat an artistic arrangement of scented candles on a copper tray, with an incense stick smouldering in a silver ash catcher that I didn’t recognise.

Jefferson Airplane’s Bless Its Pointed Little Head played softly on the stereo, which seemed strange because—although I knew it—I didn’t own the album. In the corner, my computer had been left on. The printer was flashing a combination of lights and making sad little noises suggestive of terminal indigestion. Balls of scrunched up paper littered the floor.

I padded into the kitchen, which was empty, but clean. A frying pan sat soaking in the sink. From there, I noticed that the bathroom door stood open and, on closer inspection, I found the bathroom itself still wreathed with the traces of recent steam. Mist streaked the mirror, a wet towel left crumpled on the floor. An open bottle of expensive salon shampoo stood on the side of the bath, and I decided not to contemplate the contents of the plughole. There appeared to be razor scrapings in the sink.

I sighed, because I’d quite fancied the idea of a hot bath, and now I suspected I could never feel the same way about my bathroom again. I’d had a long day. I didn’t need to see this. After a moment, unwilling but unable to resist the temptation, I picked up the bottle of shampoo and gave it a sniff. It smelled of coconuts or, at least, that pleasingly sweet but synthetic coconut milk perfume. Nice, all the same.

“Hey, baby.”

I really wished he wouldn’t do that. Shampoo still in hand, I turned. Damon was leaning decorously against the doorjamb. A beautifully tailored jacket—a slick of silk shot through with reds, oranges and golds—hung unbuttoned over a purple Peter Pan shirt. A skinny black fur boa swaddled his neck, ends trailing down to his slim hips. His bare toes protruded from under the hems of a pair of denim flares heavily patched through style rather than hard wear, a dazzling collage of brightly coloured velvets, paisleys, chintzes, and gaudy striped fabrics. His skin had that pink, clean-scrubbed look to it, his eyes freshly made up and his hair damp, coils springing out at strange angles, all gold and dark honey. He beamed at me, and I wondered where the hell (or wherever) he’d sprung from, where he went when he wasn’t terrifying the living daylights out of me, and why—though I’d probably regret asking the question—he needed to use the bathroom at all….

“How’d it all go? What was he like?” Day passed behind me, an impish grin on his face. “You don’t smell like cows. That’s gotta be good, right?”

“How the heck would you know what I smell like?”

Damn. I hadn’t intended to sound quite so accusatory. He shrugged in dismissal, and the fur boa (was it real? I wondered, then the irony made me smile) slid across his throat. It gave him, for a moment, just a hint of the Forties starlet.

I didn’t intend to let that one go; it seemed, on top of everything, indescribably unfair to think that he could perceive the physical world in a way that I couldn’t perceive him, but it really had been a long day.

“So you trashed my bathroom?”

He frowned and peered at the chaos. “Oh, yeah. Oops.”

Raising his left hand, Damon snapped his fingers and, when the horrible sense of pressure lifted from my sinuses and I opened my eyes again, the bathroom was clean. The wet towels had landed in the laundry basket, the sink and bath shone, and the chrome sparkled. I detected a vague scent of lemon. He looked smug and, though I now felt the need to sit down, preferably in a darkened room with a packet of frozen peas on my head, I had to admit he’d impressed me.