The Demon Code by Adam Blake Read Free Book Online Page A

let you know about the probe.’ The line went dead: Partridge considered the formalities of leave-taking a waste of time.
    ‘So what’s the job?’ Izzy asked. Kennedy looked up to see her leaning against the door frame, arms folded. The earlier flirtatiousness was gone. Izzy had had time to disengage and she clearly wasn’t going to risk rejection a second time.
    ‘It’s hard to say,’ Kennedy admitted. ‘Investigating a crime that may not have happened.’
    ‘I love it already. Tell me over a drink?’
    *
    They went to the Cask, on Charlwood Street. It was a fairly pricey pub, but it was close, and this early in the evening, it would still be possible to find a seat.
    The conversation was desultory. After telling Izzy the basics, Kennedy stonewalled on all her questions. If she’d had the energy or the imagination to come up with another topic, she would have, but nothing occurred to her: Izzy tried to keep the conversation going on her own, but eventually they just wound down.
    A few minutes into the silence, Izzy put out a hand and touched Kennedy’s forearm.
    ‘We’re breaking up, aren’t we?’ she said. Her voice was calm, even resigned.
    Kennedy stared at her. ‘I don’t know what we’re doing,’ she answered.
    Izzy shook her head. ‘Oh babe, you’ve got ninja lying skills, but not with me. You can’t even look me in the eye any more. I’m talking to you and you’re planning your getaway, right here.’
    ‘I’m not planning anything, Izzy.’
    ‘Okay, then do something for me.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Kiss me.’
    Kennedy looked around at the other tables, about half of which were occupied. ‘We kind of stand out,’ she said.
    ‘Since when did you care? Kiss me or piss off, Heather. Don’t hang around my place making me pay, day in and day out, because you’re too lazy to pack a bag.’
    To pack a bag? Kennedy’s clothes, CDs and personal accoutrements had migrated slowly up the stairs to Izzy’s place over a period of months. The point at which she’d moved in hadn’t been formally marked. She’d assumed that her exit would be similarly protracted: storming out and slamming the door so gradually that you’d need a stop-motion camera to catch it.
    As soon as she realised that, she was ashamed, because everything that Izzy was saying was true. On the other hand, she reflected, it was also true that Izzy had been playing away – and with a man. So it was hard to sit there and take the lecture as though she had it coming.
    ‘I don’t know what we’re doing,’ she said again. ‘Seriously, Izzy, I’ve been too busy trying to scrape together some work. But if I’d found the time, I guess I’d have thought that you might be prepared to give me the space, since it was you that was sleeping around.’
    Izzy grimaced. ‘Sleeping around? It was one guy. I was drunk, and I was horny, and I let one guy pick me up. I was alone for the best part of two years before you came along. I got pretty casual about stuff like that.’
    Kennedy said nothing, but she let her feelings about this statement show on her face.
    ‘I’m not a slut,’ Izzy said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘When I don’t have a partner, I still have a need to get laid every once in a while. I don’t think that’s a crime.’
    ‘When you don’t have a partner,’ Kennedy said, ‘then no, it isn’t. But you’ve got me.’
    ‘And it was a shitty thing to do, and I cried, and I said I was sorry – and I kicked the poor guy out without his shoes, if I remember right.’
    ‘But on the upside, he got to keep his balls.’
    Izzy grinned faintly at that, although Kennedy wasn’t joking. If she’d still had her ARU licence, still had her gun, she might have done something stupid. She could picture it very easily. More easily than she could get her head around what actually happened, which was that she stood there like a deer on the freeway and watched the knock-kneed little jerk haul his pants on, looking from her to Izzy and back