I slip on the stairs down to the emergency exit and Akira steadies me. No alarm goes off as he pushes it open, just a dark alley and cold, stabbing rain, like a crow pecking my bare head. With a tweet of outstretched keys and a blink of orange hazard lights, Akira unlocks the Mercedes.
As we head out of Inveran, I feel a tentative letting go. We’re not free yet, I know that, these things are never quite so easy. Any second now I expect the descent of the security detail.
Bring them on, Duke. Bring on you and Anna, anyone else who happens to be near, those teenagers on the street corner, the fuzzy shapes in the steamed-up windows of the chip shop, staring at the flash Merc as they spill out the door trailing orgasmic aromas of black pudding and pickled eggs. The Shinigami insists that you all line up, he orders each of you in turn to tell him what he should be thinking, you’ve all got such opinions. Everyone is so fuckin’ verbal, from the whispers in the cypress that told me to come to the white rush of Arctic surf telling me to leave.
I close my eyes. It’s about right. I am ever-emerging from deep sleep, that hand on my face waking me again, hot and sticky as only a grubby wee boy’s hand can be. Shorts and specs and more answers then than I have managed since.
He had to start asking questions, the poor bugger.
What now, mister? Where to?
I have no idea. It’s disappointing, Duke, I know. I guess they just don’t make gods like they used to.
The Accidental Recluse Page 26