Smoke & Ashes (Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator #4) - Alexis Hall Page 0,52

hadn’t exactly been a deliberate policy, and so I hadn’t set things up for it. I didn’t want to think about how much mould had grown in the half-cups of coffee and never-quite-finished sandwiches that were probably scattered all over the whole damned place.

Well, most of the place. For the first time since her not-exactly-death, I went into Elise’s room.

It was pristine. Her bed was made—as far as I knew she’d made it the first night she got here and it hadn’t been unmade since because she never actually slept in it. I’d occasionally pointed out to her that she’d have more space if we got rid of it, but she said she thought it tied the room together, and that a bedroom should have a bed in it.

What, precisely, she felt it tied together I could never be sure of. I paid Elise for working for me—not a huge amount admittedly, basically minimum wage, but since she also got to live in my home rent-free and had zero physical needs, I thought it was pretty generous all things considered. Her whole income had been disposable income, and she disposed of it according to a series of whims I’d never properly been able to understand. She’d had a phase of building model aeroplanes, had bought one of those incredibly elaborate dollhouses some people were into and done it up in immaculate detail. She owned a truly remarkable and strangely eclectic wardrobe of clothes that ranged from the demure to the outlandish. A chest of drawers in one corner was completely filled with objects whose texture she found interesting. Different grades of sandpaper, rocks with holes in, silk and soapstone, a koosh ball. I’d never worked out what Elise’s relationship with touch was. As near as I could tell she didn’t feel pain, but she must have felt something because she took an almost-childlike joy in subtleties of texture and variations in temperature. She’d been quite unabashedly sensual, I realised. Even if her sensuality hadn’t come across as ordinarily sexy.

I allowed myself a good few minutes of wallow, then went back into the sitting room. Definite mould. Definite weird smell.

Fuck it, Tesco's was open ‘til eleven. I went for cleaning products.

I got back home a bit under an hour later with bags full of all-purpose cleaner, mould and mildew remover, and that odour spray stuff that you use when you have to admit that the situation has got so bad all you can do is cover up the worst of the stench. Not being sure where to start I took everything that looked throw-awayable and threw it away. Then I took my full-to-bursting bin bag down to the big communal bins outside. Then it was a matter of spraying everything to within an inch of its life, scrubbing the shit out of anything that looked like it might actually be growing, and filling the whole place with a nauseating floral scent that was marginally better than the faint smell of decay it was masking.

It was a haphazard, poorly planned affair, and about halfway through I found myself crashed down on the sofa wearing a pair of marigold gloves and crying my eyes out for no fucking reason.

I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder, and looking around I saw a woman in green sitting beside me.

I slapped her arm away. “Can you not give me one fucking moment to have a feel without popping back up like the otherworldly equivalent of undercooked chicken and telling me I’m supposed to be doing something woobly and mystical. And then not telling me how.”

She glared at me. Her too-green eyes looked weird as hell in Nimue’s face. “You’re at your worst when you’re defensive.”

“You’re invading my fucking house. And my fucking dreams. I’ve got the right to be as defensive as I damned well want.”

In a rush of emerald sequins and unsettling magic, she rose and stood in front of me, looking down with that imperious expression that Nim only got when it was super, super important. “The Queen of London will die forever if you do not act. You have a duty and you are abandoning it to bathe in self-pity in this”—she made a sweeping gesture that covered my entire flat—“parody of a home.”

“I’ve not been bathing.” That was kind of true but not what I wanted to be saying. “I’ve been getting my shit in order so I can be of some use in whatever apocalyptic showdown you’re trying to prepare