Pygmalion and transform a statue of a person into a living human being, or a close facsimile of one.” She eyed me with evident suspicion. “It seems strange that your friend would ask you to do something so specific.”
I tried my best to look casual. “Maybe she didn’t realise what it was for. She was kind of ditzy. New age type, you know?”
“But you still want to try it?”
“Yeah. You know. For her. Last wishes and all that.”
“Then we’ll need the statue. I can arrange the rest of the … paraphernalia.”
This was beginning to sound almost too easy. “Thanks. What do I—that is, do you want something for helping me out like this? It feels a bit above and beyond if I’m honest.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. Maybe one day you’ll be in a position to do me a favour in return.”
“Not likely—academia is about a million miles from my scene.”
“Well then.” She smiled in a way I still wanted to describe as wicked. “It’ll have to be my good deed for the day.”
It didn’t take me that long to arrange for access to Elise. Eve had been keeping her in a warehouse on the docklands under close guard and with a couple of phone calls I was able to get access, albeit supervised. So I arranged with Dr Bright that we’d meet back up that afternoon once she’d had a chance to pick up whatever bits and pieces she needed to pick up, and killed the rest of the morning pretending to sort out my office when in fact I was just staring into space, angsting and waiting.
I arrived well early at the warehouse because patience was very, very low on my list of strengths, and was pleased to find that Eve had opted not to show up in person. Not that it would have been bad to see her in general. But that this whole fucking awful sequence of events had been too much, and I didn’t want the closest I’d ever had to a bona fide love of my life hanging around while I was trying to bring back the closest I’d had in years to a friend.
Which meant in the end it wound up being me, two anonymous goons, and the doctor stuck in a thankfully bright and airy warehouse space in Canary Wharf, with Elise’s disanimated body standing in a shaft of grainy sunlight.
“If I might ask, where did you get the statue from?” Dr Bright’s question was natural, especially for an academic, but I wasn’t sure how to answer it.
“It’s my friend’s,” I explained. “I think she used to … she used to go out with a sculptor.” It was creepily close to being true, if by my friend’s you mean actually her and if by go out with you meant was the mystically created sex slave of.
“It’s very lifelike. Now, would you like to perform the ritual, or shall I?” She gave me a smile that read as a little cold. “That is, what would your friend have preferred?”
I almost thought she was baiting me. If it turned out that this woman was a weird magic junkie looking for any excuse to perform rites of unspeakable power and pedigree, I was going to be incredibly ticked off. “I think she’d have wanted it done properly. And my guess is you can do that better than me, on account of how you’ve got the book.”
Doctor Bright nodded. Reading from the text in a language I still didn’t understand—I should look into night classes or something—she walked around Elise’s statue with her hand outstretched in a way that eerily reminded me of when I’d watched Russel creating Lisbeth. If she wasn’t secretly completely aware of what she was doing, then I couldn’t imagine what the fuck she thought was going on, because at this point the cover story I’d given her was fitting about as well as that one jacket I’d accidentally stuck through a hot wash and a full tumble dry. Which is to say it wasn’t fitting at all, and it was covered in tiny bits of bobbly fluff.
As the rite progressed, the circles Dr Bright was describing grew narrower, and before long she was in touching distance of Elise. I knew that this was how the ritual worked, but even so I was starting to get a little bit freaked out. There was something about this whole scenario that was beginning to feel decidedly uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on what