"The boy was still on the bed when I came round," Lester said. "Eyes open, mouth open. A swarm had already found him — flies, mosquitoes, more coming. I suppose it was a windfall for them."
He dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and ground it out under his heel.
"I held on another day. Another after that. But the voice just gets louder, clearer. I can't manage this thing on my own anymore, John. I've got nothing left."
Constantine exhaled through his nose. "So that's why you're here." A pause. "God, I genuinely regret knowing you sometimes."
"I need your help," Lester said, with the flat emphasis of a man who'd spent all his social capital and was down to the bare request. "I need it badly enough that I robbed a tourist on the way. Stole his passport, sold it, bought the plane ticket."
Chas, who had been quiet in the corner, looked up. "You left a child's body in that room to rot," he said, "and then you mugged a tourist."
"It's just hard times." Lester waved a hand. "The passport, anyway — a man can survive in Tangier without papers. It's not ideal, but—"
"How does he buy a plane ticket back?" Jude asked.
"Not my problem." Lester moved on without hesitation. "I got to Heathrow running a fever, shaking, goosebumps over every inch of me — and the border officers didn't even look twice. Must have been some kind of devil's luck." He paused, and his expression shifted toward something with teeth in it. "I'd been holding on because I knew you'd have a way, John. I kept telling myself: Constantine will sort it. And then I got here and you weren't here, were you."
"Yes, yes," Constantine said, making the specific gesture of a man managing a volatile situation. "I'm here now. Keep going."
"You should have come back a day earlier. Even one day." Lester's voice tightened. "I got here this morning. Talked my way past Mrs. M, came up, waited. You didn't come. So I went out to find something to take the edge off — didn't find anything — and then it started again."
He pressed both hands against the sides of his head, eyes squeezing shut for a moment.
"He never stops. Talks, sings, promises — freedom, relief, no more pain, no more craving, all of it — if I just let him out. I was already half gone when the insects started. Two or three at first. Then a dozen. Then hundreds, coming from everywhere, every crack in the wall, every gap under the door—" His voice cracked. "I was going to be eaten alive, Constantine. Can you even imagine what it's like being completely surrounded by—"
"By the marks on you," Constantine said, leaning over to examine him, "I'd say dozens. Not hundreds."
"Damn it." Lester sat back. The anger seemed to help, briefly. "Anyway. The old lady mentioned you had a girlfriend in America, Emma — so I asked her to post that package over to you. The bottle. The demon inside it." He rubbed his face. "You always know what to do. I kept thinking: Constantine will know."
Silence settled over the room.
Jude reached up and unclipped the hood from Lester's head, reattaching it to his coat. He sat with it for a moment.
He'd known, going in, that Constantine's circle had flexible ethics. That was practically the man's brand. The child's death — he could trace a line from that back to the demon's influence, to Lester's state, to the particular madness of a man in over his head with something genuinely infernal. Terrible, but there was at least a logic to it. The tourist's passport — expedience, desperation, wrong but legible.
But the package.
Shipping a sealed demon to a friend in America because someone else would deal with it. Not because Lester believed Constantine could handle it — or not only that — but because if the sky was going to fall, better it fall on someone else while you were still breathing. The bottle might never have arrived. Constantine might have been powerless. Lester had sent it anyway, because sending it bought him another day. Another week. And if it led to someone else's death — well. He'd survived, hadn't he.
No wonder they're friends, Jude thought.
"Don't you dare put me in the same sentence as this waste of space." Constantine had apparently read the look on his face. "I'm considerably better than him. I don't do drugs, and I know exactly what I'd do with this situation — I'd kick him out the door, deal with the thing myself, and go to sleep."
Jude stared at him.
Chas, who had not contributed to the conversation in some time, cleared his throat. "I could take him somewhere," he said, in the measured tone of a man making a practical suggestion. "Find a place to, ah. Leave him."
Jude's stare migrated to Chas.
"These are your friends," he said. "You're both sure you're in the exorcism business and not just — crime?"
Constantine had the decency to look slightly amused rather than offended.
In his months in Gotham, Jude had thought of himself as someone who operated in morally complicated territory. He had worked for crime families, assisted supervillains in the technical sense, deployed Plants vs. Zombies flora against armed men. He had believed himself to be, on balance, a pragmatist.
Sitting in this room, he revised that assessment. He had principles. Apparently a remarkable number of them.
"Right, forget it — there's no clean way to handle this." Constantine stubbed out his cigarette. "If we leave it alone, it causes damage. According to our friend here, it's already causing damage. We have to go after it." He turned. "Chas. Paper and pen. Lester — I know you're exhausted, but before you sleep, I need you to draw the boy. Face, tattoos, everything you remember. Bones, markings, the works."
Lester picked up the pencil without argument.
Jude watched the sketch take shape across the next few minutes — a child's face emerging in graphite, large-skulled, hollow-cheeked, with the broad features of East Africa. And then the markings came, covering the forehead and cheeks and chin, dense and intricate, line after interlocking line, the kind of patterning that would have taken months and considerable pain to complete. It was dizzying to look at. The thought of a child sitting through the process of acquiring it — he kept the thought brief.
"Not bad at all." Constantine examined the finished sketch with genuine approval. "I've always said you should have gone to art school instead of playing at magic. You've got the hands for it." He rolled the paper carefully and set it aside. "Right. Off to bed. You've done your part."
Lester didn't need telling twice. He was horizontal on the sofa in approximately thirty seconds.
Chas looked from the sleeping man to Constantine with the expression of someone waiting for the part of the assignment they weren't going to enjoy.
"So," he said. "My job's done, then."
"Almost." Constantine's smile arrived — the one that meant someone nearby was about to have a bad time. "You're going to need food, cigarettes, and reading material. Three days' worth. You're babysitting."
Chas turned to Jude.
"Don't look at me," Jude said immediately, shifting back. "I paid him to take me out into the field. I'm not sitting here waiting for updates."
"That's fair," Constantine said cheerfully. "You've worked hard. You've earned it." He retrieved his coat from the hook by the door. "You owe me nothing. I, on the other hand, owe you this."
He said it like it closed an argument. It probably didn't.