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“Why should I?”
    She was crushing something unidentifiable with a big stone pestle and mortar. All around her, mysterious things bubbled through what looked like several miles of strangely curved glass tubing and condensers and retorts and other things I didn’t even know the names for, before dripping into a variety of flasks and beakers and bottles. There were Bunsen burners hissing away underneath some of the apparatus, and purple and green smoke escaping from various seemingly random valves and gaskets along the way. I had no idea what any of it was for, but the whole affair looked like some sort of mad chemistry teacher’s wet dream. This was in her living room – the rest of the flat was much worse. I knew she kept the toads in the bathroom, for one thing, and the kitchen didn’t even bear thinking about. The last time I’d seen the inside of her bedroom there had been a live goat in there.
    â€œOld times’ sake?” I suggested, hopefully.
    â€œGet stuffed, Don,” she said. “I don’t know why I even let you in.”
    â€œBecause…” I started, about to say something glib and cute, but the look on her face made me think better of it. I gave honesty a try instead. “Because you know I need your help.”
    â€œYou should have thought of that the last time you stood me up to go and play cards, or because you were drunk, or out with some tart or whatever the hell you were doing,” she muttered, putting the pestle down to fiddle with some of her glass tubes.
    â€œI’m sorry Debs,” I said. “Really. And I’m in deep shit if you don’t help me.”
    â€œTough,” she said, and looked at me. “Who with this time?”
    â€œWormwood,” I confessed.
    She winced. “Ouch,” she said.
    â€œYeah,” I said, “it’s pretty bad.”
    â€œNot that you pillock, I burned myself.” She came out from behind her workbench and gave me a stern look. “I’ll be back in a minute – don’t touch anything.”
    She disappeared into the bathroom, sucking on a scalded finger. I sighed and looked around the room. Most of two walls were covered floor to ceiling with shelves full of hundreds, maybe thousands, of glass bottles, vials and jars, each one with a carefully handwritten label. She had pennyroyal oil and graveyard dirt for the hoodoos, holy water for people who liked that sort of thing, bloods and tinctures and ground this and powdered that and distilled the other in a bewildering array. She’d have some manticore spines somewhere, I knew she would. She certainly had a lot of pickled dead things in jars, most of them with far too many tentacles for my liking. At least I really hoped they were dead.
    Debbie came back a minute or two later with a damp cloth wrapped around her hand and a slightly less pissed-off look on her face. She had a smudge of soot on one freckled cheek, I noticed now, and bits of some sort of dried plant caught in her auburn ponytail. I smiled at her, and she laughed and shook her head.
    â€œYou really are a bloody idiot, Don, you do know that don’t you?” she said.
    â€œYeah,” I admitted. Next to her I certainly was – Debbie was a hell of a lot cleverer than I’ll ever be, I knew that much. She was also, bless her, a bit of a soft touch. “Come here, you’ve got a bit of something…”
    I wiped the soot off her cheek with my thumb, and leaned forwards to kiss her. That, as it turned out, was exactly the wrong thing to do.
    â€œNo, I don’t think so,” she said. She stepped back, away from me. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, Don. Not anymore.”
    Ouch indeed. “Look,” I said, feeling a bit awkward, “that last time… well, I wasn’t with a woman, OK?”
    â€œJust drunk and gambling then? Well that makes it all OK, I’m sure,” she said, a bit