‘Hanged herself?’
He nodded.
‘Why?’
Finn reached for her hand but she pulled it away.
‘Eleanor didn’t stay with Lisa as long as she had intended. She thought, Sole Alliance, we all thought that it was too dangerous. We thought that Eleanor facilitated her … unstable behaviour, so we thought Eleanor should leave before Lisa did something to hurt herself or someone else. We couldn’t contain her behaviour within Sole Alliance, and Eleanor …’
‘I thought I should give her free rein, and, in truth, I delighted in all the things she did, all the dangerous things we did together.’ It was almost as though Eleanor moved closer to Jill, trying to make sure Jill understood. ‘There were orgies, drugs, sex with strangers, dangerous strangers. Nothing was too extreme for Lisa with me in residence, and it wasn’t just sex, it was anything, anything risky, anything dangerous, and I felt it all, all the excitement, all the fear, all the debauchery, things I’d never been allowed to feel under the control of Sole Alliance. You need to understand I’ve been under the control of Sole Alliance for a very long time. Finn and his gang are just the latest incarnation. And Finn, well, Finn has been much kinder to me. But that didn’t make me any better behaved.’
‘So you were exorcised from Lisa?’ Jill asked, not allowing herself to be pulled into the demon’s remorse, which felt way too much like her own.
‘There was no need to. I came out willingly. There was a death. She was doing rope play with one of her lovers. She wasn’t nearly as skilled at it as Meinrad is.’
‘Jesus,’ Jill whispered, suddenly feeling cold, as though she would never be warm again.
‘After that, I left her. I thought, we all thought, she’d calm down after I left. We never imagined that …’
‘That she’d kill herself.’
Finn nodded.
‘I’ve never possessed anyone I intended to leave willingly. That only happened under the control of Sole Alliance, and before Lisa, well, before Lisa my last possession was nearly a hundred years ago.’
‘Did she die? The person before Lisa?’ Jill was trembling, but she pushed Finn away again when he reached for her. ‘Well, did she?’
She felt Eleanor’s slight nod of confirmation as though the earth had shaken beneath her. She swayed on the bed, then grabbed onto the night stand at her side to steady herself, to keep the world in focus, to keep herself grounded. For an eternal moment, her world consisted of breathing in and breathing out. Right over left and under and through. Left over right and under and through. And when she was at last able to speak again, she felt calm growing at her centre, and it came from a place where Eleanor was not. ‘Then when you leave me, I’ll die.’
‘We don’t know that,’ both Finn and Eleanor said at the same time.
‘We don’t know that at all,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’re different. You’re not like the others. You’re certainly not like Lisa.’
When she was sure her legs would support her, she cinched a knot in the sash of her robe, then stood and turned to face Finn. In her mind’s eye, she was also facing Eleanor. ‘If you left Lisa at will, then I’m assuming the whole ritual, all of that stuff in Finn’s basement, was as much of a lie as everything else, and that you can leave me whenever you like. Is that true?’
‘‘Jill, you have to understand the risks. What we were doing that night in the basement could have –’
‘Is that true?’ she cut him off.
Once again both Finn and Eleanor nodded confirmation. Then Finn spoke. ‘But that might have been the problem with Lisa. Maybe if we’d waited. Maybe –’
‘Eleanor, I want you out. Now.’
She heard the startled silence inside her head.
Finn practically catapulted out of the bed, came to her side and took her arm. ‘Jill, please. We can work this out. Give us a chance.’
She jerked away. ‘I said I want her out now. I’ve got a hard day ahead of me, a hard week. If I die, I want to do it on my terms, not because you two toyed with my life like it was a fucking pair of shoes at your damned store to be filled by the right-sized foot. Now! And I mean it!’
There was a crackle that felt like an electrical current being discharged up her spine. For a second her head felt like it had swollen, like it would explode with all that it contained. Then Finn took her into his arms and kissed her, and she felt his body tense and the sensation, the power, the force that was Eleanor moved back into his body.
Then she was only conscious of pushing him away, stepping back towards the door, feeling as though there were nothing left inside her but a hollow space. ‘I’m going to take a shower,’ she said. ‘I expect you two to be gone by the time I get out, or I’ll call the police.’ She turned and walked, on surprisingly steady legs, out of the bedroom. Once she was safe in the rising steam of the shower, she wept.