COLM

“This place is fucking shit,” said Benedictine, and Colm laughed as he flicked on more of the top lights in the big room – they were late coming, because Jean and Aimé had come out to the gym straight after breakfast, and Colm and Benedictine had spent the morning on the allotment.

“It’s clean,” said Colm.

“But for the bloodstains,” Bene replied, and he punched her in the arm, laughing when she pulled him back and wrapped an arm around his neck, gripping him in a tight headlock. He tried to elbow her in the side, but she twisted her grip, and he sufficed with going limp and dropping her to the floor by making her carry his weight.

They laughed together, wrestling together on the cold, mostly unstained stone.

Jean-Pierre and Aimé were in the boxing ring, and both of them were pure drenched in sweat – the more times Aimé met Jean-Pierre in the ring, the better he got at predicting Jean’s moves, and it was no longer the case that Jean-Pierre could put Aimé down in a handful of seconds anymore.

That was good, Colm thought. Aimé learned quickly, learned everything quickly, and as time went on, he would only learn more, understand more.

Working in the yard earlier, he had done the most of everything himself, with Benedictine sitting down and watching him, which he didn’t mind. She liked to have a holiday when she came down to them, liked to actually rest, although once they’d gone out to the allotment, she’d joined in the work.

As much as she hated the wet, mulchy soil in Ireland, he could see she was feeling the cold, and it was easier to keep busy.

“You like it?” he’d asked. “The house?”

“It’s nice,” she’d replied. “Small. Cosy. It’s been a long time since I saw Jean-Pierre in school. He’s so… calm. I forget what he’s like, when he is learning, instead of working.”

“It was different, in Texas,” said Colm.

“Yeah,” said Benedictine, walking with him toward the shed so that they could head down into the basement. Benedictine was more comfortable down here where it was hot and humid, and she and Colm worked together on the cannabis plants, and the growing row of cacti, too. “I like to see him resting, don’t get me wrong – I know why he works as much as he does. I remember how he used to be, with Benoit, how much he used to worry about how much he works, and now I see him not working, and… Maybe Benoit was wrong.”

Colm had never been very close with Benoit.

He’d liked him fine, had thought he was a sound man, but he’d been a weird sort: he was quiet and he smiled a lot, but he was extremely regimented, demanded everything be kept in line, be kept organised. He was kind, thoughtful, and he was always endlessly patient with Jean, even more patient than Asmodeus was.

Colm had found it creepy, sometimes, how calm Benoit could be, was – even when he was angry, he worked his way through it, put it aside, so fast that Colm couldn’t even follow it, and it was uncomfortable, for a man to really be able to school his feelings like that.

Benedictine had been close with him, though, and Colm knew that – she’d understood him in a way he didn’t.

It felt like she understood Jean, too.

“You miss him a lot,” said Colm.

“Yeah,” said Benedictine. “He was my brother. Same way that Jean is yours.”

“I’m not your brother?” asked Colm, and Bene laughed quietly.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

Colm took in a slow breath, held it, and then exhaled very slowly, blowing the air out of his mouth. Asmodeus had only been talking about Jean-Pierre last night, talking about him getting overwhelmed at Christmas, but he knew it applied to him too. “Yeah,” he said in a very low voice. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Aimé is good with him the way Benoit was. Knows how to keep a handle on him.”

“Calls you out on your bullshit, you mean,” she replied, and he huffed out a noise. “I like him,” she went on. “He’s French, and he’s a bastard, but I like him. He has a strong spine, and he thinks. I didn’t care for Farhad – he was an airhead.”

“Jesus, Bene,” said Colm sharply. “No, he wasn’t.”

Benedictine shrugged, walking with him to start taking fruit off of the cacti that were bearing them.

“Not saying he didn’t love Jean,” she said. “But Jean picked him up like you pick a dying dog at the pound. He was easy. A mundie soon to die. It is what he needed at the time – I don’t fault him that. But Aimé is real.”

“Farhad was real,” Colm muttered, surprised by how much it made him angry, how his gut gave a sharp, sudden twist. “He was a good man. It wasn’t fucking right, the way he died.”

“No,” Benedictine agreed. “But that’s a separate issue.”

“You didn’t know him.”

“What was there to know?”

Colm twisted away from her, sucking his teeth.

“I like Aimé,” she said again, not budging on it. “He’s good for Jean – for you too. I’ve never seen Asmodeus like one of Jean’s boyfriends so much, but they are bosom friends, huh? And you like him, and he likes you, isn’t afraid of you. Isn’t afraid of Jean. Must be brain damaged, from the boxing.”

Colm sniggered.

“He’s good,” he murmured.

“Jean is worried his father will kill him,” said Benedictine. “He’s asked me about it, this Luc Deverell. Are you?”

“Worried?”

“Yes.”

“He’d kill him,” said Colm, remembering the times he’d been in the same room as Deverell, the times he’d been close enough to skim the thoughts off the top of the man’s head, the cold, clear calculation of them. “He’d rather avoid it, but not out of sentimentality. I don’t think he’ll do it right away, but he’d do it, if he feels he has to. Jean’s right to be worried.”

Benedictine looked at him thoughtfully, her eyebrows furrowing. “But you aren’t?”

Colm almost answered right away, but that Benedictine had actually asked meant that the question was probably one considering in a bit more depth, and he held his tongue for a few seconds, considering it. “We have him,” he said simply. “He’s ours now. I won’t let Deverell kill him – nor will Jean. I’d kill him myself before I let him have at Aimé. We won’t let Deverell touch him. And nor will Asmodeus. Even if Deverell was a politician, which he isn’t, he’s just rich and has an influential brand, we’d have at him. He’s a smart guy, but I don’t think he realises how much Aimé is ours now, how seriously we take it.”

“You do like him,” said Benedictine softly, but she smiled as she said it, and then nodded. It was the stout, purely Benedictine smile that Colm always searched for, that made him feel safe, secure, a stamp of approval. “I won’t let him, either.”

“Thanks.”

She nudged his elbow with hers. “It’s nothing.”

Now, Aimé was leaning on the edge of the ring’s ropes, falling over them to stare at the two of them, sweat dripping off him, his hair a wet mop around his head.

“One of you want to tap in?” he asked, and Colm and Bene both laughed.

“Seems like you are handling him,” said Benedictine, but she put up her arm and let Aimé pull her up into the ring, bending to slip through the ropes. She kept hold of Aimé’s arm for a second, looking down at him seriously. “Sorry. About last night.”

Surprised, Aimé looked up at her, and Colm felt the rush of feeling in him, the comparison he had between Benedictine and her brothers in his head – he wasn’t expecting an apology.

“It’s okay,” said Aimé. “I get that it wasn’t really me you were upset about.”

Colm felt the familiar pitted grief in Benedictine’s chest even as she gave him a small smile: keeping hold of his arm with her one hand, she squeezed his shoulder with the other, and even if Aimé didn’t see the significance of that embrace, Colm did – and Jean-Pierre did, too.

“I like this boy, Jean,” said Benedictine. “You have to keep him.”

“Yes, Bene, I plan to,” said Jean-Pierre, adjusting the wraps on his hands. He was better than he had been last night, no longer a dead pit of nothingness but now alive with feeling: his heart was pumping fast, and he felt exhilarated, satisfied, tired but ready to be exhausted. “Are you going to keep pussyfooting with him, or are you going to face me?”

Benedictine laughed, clapped Aimé on the back, and let him go. Colm held out Aimé’s bottle for him as he dropped out of the ring, and Aimé grinned his lopsided grin, taking it and swigging heavily from it as he dropped onto his feet.

“Where’s De?” he asked, and Aimé rolled his shoulders, stretching out his desk.

“You can’t feel him?”

“Well, I could reach out and feel everyone in this place aching and tired at once, but—”

“He’s in the pool,” said Aimé, then pulled Colm’s wrist toward him, looking at his watch. “I think, anyway – he was going to go in the pool and then the sauna, he said, but he was arguing with Polydorus for fucking ages about the state of the studio.”

“It’s not a studio,” said Colm. “It’s a box with laminate floors and a mirror on one side.”

“You’ve heard this talk before, then?” asked Aimé, and Colm sniggered. “I fucking hadn’t. I wondered why Jean got bored so quickly.”

“You want to come in the sauna?” asked Colm.

“Yeah, let me shower first and I’ll come sit with you,” said Aimé. “You don’t want to box?”

“I might after. You want to do some knifework?”

“Yeah, I was about to ask,” said Aimé, and Colm patted him on the shoulder as he went out of the room, moving through the dimly-lit labyrinths of the gym’s corridors to find the pool.

They almost always, when they had a regular gym, went to Hellenist-run places like this one – that the corridors weren’t lit with rows of painfully bright fluorescent lights was frankly a relief, and Colm liked that you could choose between the more modern exercise machines and just having space to exercise in, with weights, with the ring, with a place for archery and throwing knives.

The pool, though, was definitely the best part of all – Jean-Pierre wouldn’t, couldn’t swim in one of the heavily chlorinated pools without having some kind of reaction, whether it was going into the room and immediately starting to cough, or managing to hold his breath and then coming out in hives once he swam for more than a few minutes. And honestly, Colm didn’t care for chlorine either: if he could choose, he’d prefer a good-sized pond or reservoir, or best of all, to swim in the sea, but it was far too busy around Dublin for all that, even if you found somewhere that wasn’t filthy.

This was a wonderful middle ground: the pool was huge, by far the largest part of the gym and taking up the entirety of the bottom basement level, and a little of the one above it.

When you first walked in on the second floor, there were changing rooms to one side, and a small pool with a cut out of it that showed into the larger pool below, creating a waterfall and a fun drop if you liked that sort of thing. As Colm walked by, he could see a few kids paddling in the small pool, doing lengths between the steps and the shrine to Nike.

The pool was circular in shape, and the cut out of it was a crescent that look up about a quarter of its size, and from a little island downstairs grew a dryad’s tree, the branches spreading out on this floor, so that some of her branches brushed the head of Nike’s statue.

He’d met the dryad, a woman named Philaenis, and he knew that she took care of the pool.

It was a saltwater pool, edged on the bottom floor with sand on two sides instead of stone, and although the upstairs one had tiles, the main pool didn’t: the bottom, if you dived down the twelve or so metres to touch it, was more sand that grew thick with kelp and seaweed, and small fish swam in amongst it all.

Colm had been glad he could teach George to swim in proper, clean water instead of chlorine, although it did mean when he did go for a swim with Bedelia at the fancy place she went to for her jiu-jitsu classes, that he’d kicked up a fuss about it after.

He dropped his clothes into a locker and sealed it with his palm before he went downstairs, his towel slung over his shoulder.

This part, Colm knew, Aimé wasn’t quite used to – the first time he’d seen one of the old Greek vampires with his cock trussed up in string to keep it from flopping about as he jogged on the treadmill, he’d thought it was a chastity thing, and Colm had laughed so hard he wheezed after. It wasn’t to say everyone went naked – no one kicked up a fuss at people who wore gym clothes or a swimsuit – but Colm had noticed that most people in the downstairs pool and its offshoots went naked, whether they were immortals who’d never learned to get used to swimsuits, or whether it was just Hellenists or fae who’d grown up not thinking anything of it.

The pool was decently busy, a lot of people scattered around the edges talking to one another, a group of young women laughing and tossing a ball between each other to one corner, and Colm scanned the different people swimming, saw different people’s legs, their tails.

Asmodeus was running lengths, perfectly straight in the water as he did a measured, even front crawl. Colm knew from experience that Asmodeus could swim a lot faster than that, but he just liked the tension in his muscles and the feel of the water when he swam like this.

Colm dropped down to sit at the edge, arse on the cold stone, as Asmodeus swam slowly toward him, keeping his towel around his neck so it wouldn’t get wet.

“This your water?” Colm asked.

“Please,” said Asmodeus, steadying himself on Colm’s knee instead of on the pool’s edge, and Colm passed him the bottle, watching Asmodeus take a few swallows before he handed it back and reached up, pushing his hair out of his eyes.

Colm was so used to Asmodeus’ hair, thick, black, sleek, and always very neatly parted to one side, that he always forgot how it looked like this, wet and a little bit messy.

It was easy to forget that Asmodeus made himself perfect, that he wasn’t like that by default.

“Is everyone else still wrestling?” Asmodeus asked, leaning back as he tread water, and Colm nodded.

“Benedictine and Aimé swapped places – he’s going to jump in the sauna with us.”

Asmodeus nodded, closing his eyes and staying in his place. “I’m getting Jean-Pierre a dog.”

Colm looked at Asmodeus’ face, shifting his own feet in the water. A part of him wanted to be irritated at Jean-Pierre getting his way, at Asmodeus spoiling Jean-Pierre, at the thought that he might have to take care of the dog too. That, he refused to admit, was quite a small part of him: the rest of him thrilled, was excited at the idea of having a dog again, as much as he liked Peadar and the other neighbourhood cats that hung around.

“For Christmas?” he asked.

“I was going to bring her around on Boxing Day anyway, but now that you two know about the ice-skating I’m setting that doubly in stone. She’s a Pyrenean Mountain Dog, three months old. Her name’s Brigid. I’m going to bring her around to the house in the morning, surprise him when and Aimé when they get up, and let her meet everyone, see the house. If it’s a good fit, we can bring her home later in the week.”

“They bark a lot,” said Colm. “He’ll complain about the noise.”

“Well, he’s always the one that trains them,” pointed out Asmodeus, opening his eyes to look at Colm, not sternly, but with a kind of frank expectation. “If you want her to learn to quieten down quicker, I expect you’ll have to join in.”

“I always walk the dogs,” said Colm. “And feed them.”

“Yes, you do,” said Asmodeus, smiling slightly, “but you’re the same way Jean-Pierre is about it, and you know that. Well-behaved dogs aren’t born that way, Colm. You have to teach them.”

“We coming back to you criticising my parenting style again?” asked Colm, more coldly than he meant to, and Asmodeus’ brow furrowed, his lips shifting into a small frown.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that, and I think you know it.”

“Who’ll take care of the dog when me and Jean are in Berlin?”

“Oh, I asked Pádraic if he and Bedelia would take her on days that Aimé and I are both working. She’ll need to get used to them anyway, if they dog-sit whenever you two are away, and it will be good for her to be exposed to the chickens. She’s from a farm with livestock, ewes and a few goats, mostly, but I think early exposure to poultry is better than later.”

Colm nodded.

He wanted to point out, as he’d done before, that Asmodeus tended to bring a dog home when Jean-Pierre was at his worst, and he wanted to ask if he thought that was now, if Jean was really doing all that badly. He settled on asking, “Were you planning this for a while?”

“I thought a dog would be good once you settled here,” said Asmodeus quietly. “I admit, I was thinking something more dramatic, coming home from a while away and surprising you all with a dog upon my return, but I do think it’s best now. Not just for Jean – for you too. I think you need it too, and I know it’ll already be a big change when Heidemarie comes home with us later on, but she likes dogs, and I would be lying if I said that wasn’t a contributing factor.

“With that said, if she’s amenable, the farmer we’re adopting Brigid from knows a vampire who trains service dogs, and if Heidemarie would be open to it, I would ask you to consider letting me put you into contact. I know she doesn’t like relying on people for help, asking for things, but a dog is different, and I think she’s missed being able to have a dog again. Being prevented, I mean, by the children.”

There was a tight sensitivity in Asmodeus’ voice, one that Colm could actually hear and make out – perhaps he recognised it so easily because there was a similar tightness in his own chest, a thickness in his throat and around his eyes. It was more than just grief, for Asmodeus – Colm knew damn well how much he hated seeing someone’s wings clipped, and he was angry about Heidemarie and her kids.

“I think that’s a good idea,” he murmured. “I think she’ll like that.”

“Good.”

“You weren’t going to tell us about the meet-up at all,” said Colm – a question, not a statement.

Asmodeus considered it before he answered, and then said, “I don’t expect I would have, no. No more than I’d tell you about lectures I’m giving, classes I’m teaching, other events I’m taking part in.”

“It’s not the same as other events you take part in,” Colm said, his mouth tasting like copper. “It’s not the same as knowing we’d be bored shitless by some celebrity event you’re doing.”

“No,” Asmodeus agreed. “And it is precisely because the two aren’t the same that I didn’t tell you. It’s one thing to bore you two with the intricacies of my commitments – it’s another to bring up an event you might like to attend, but would never be welcome at. You know I don’t do these things to cut you.”

“I just thought they’d be like us, that’s all,” said Colm. “George and Bedelia. Pádraic is.”

“Pádraic isolates himself by choice, and he does so because he doesn’t agree with the political standpoints of the Embassy – he’s too much of a communist to prop up what he thinks is a statement in itself of hypocrisy. I don’t fault him for that – and equally, I don’t fault Bedelia for feeling a sense of gratitude at being allowed the kinship she’s wanted for so long. It’s hard for angelic children, Colm, and it hurts me that I can’t fix it from the get-go, but I saw that George was an opening – though I’d have put him into contact with them anyway – and I engineered things as best I could to let her slip in. I’m very glad it’s turned out the way it has for the two of them. They’re young, new, uncertain. They deserve to feel that the family loves and accepts them.”

“We’re not family enough?” asked Colm.

Asmodeus put his hand on Colm’s knee again, and squeezed it, his thumb sliding over where the skin was shiny from long-burned petrol. Colm was fully aware that people were looking at his scars as they moved past in the room, and did his best to tune it all out, to focus on Asmodeus.

“Colm, I love you and Bene and Jean-Pierre very dearly, more dearly than I love anybody else alive,” said Asmodeus. “But if ever it seemed to me that Bedelia and George, that any other angel, had to choose between associating with you two, and Benedictine and her little army, wherein they should have to pick up a rifle to continue that association, or cut off all ties forever, you know precisely which recommendation I would make.”

He met Colm’s eyes to say it, didn’t look away or break his gaze, and a cold rush ran down Colm’s spine that made him shudder. “Yeah,” he said: his voice croaked, and he cleared his throat. “Yeah. I know.”

“I know it’s hard,” said Asmodeus. “That they have what you don’t anymore.”

“It’s not that,” said Colm. “It’s what they’ll tell George. What they’ll tell Bedelia.”

“Oh, Colm,” said Asmodeus softly, and pulled himself to the edge of the pool. “You really think they don’t already know?”

Colm didn’t know what to say in response to that, but it turned out that he didn’t have to – Aimé had come into the pool, and as Colm and Asmodeus got to their feet, he walked up to them, one towel wrapped around his waist – although Colm could see the waistband of his trunks – and another around his shoulders.

About a metre away from them, he stopped, blinked, and stared down at Colm and Asmodeus’ bodies. Aimé had seen Colm a bit undressed before, but admittedly, not with his cock out, and nor, Colm didn’t think, had he seen the full extend of the scars spattered over his belly, his chest, his thighs, some of his old tattoos half lost in the mess.

Asmodeus, of course, had no scars and no tattoos, either – but it was him that Aimé was staring at most, frozen completely still.

The two of them gave it a few seconds, and Colm really didn’t think it was much of an insult, or anything creepy – Aimé wasn’t moving a muscle, frozen like a deer in front of one incredibly large headlight, and in fairness to him, Colm could tell he wasn’t doing excellently with critical thought in the moment.

“You know,” said Asmodeus, breaking the spell and making Aimé burn red, cringe, and crumple into himself all at once, “Colm and I have quite nice eyes, too. You might like to look up at them.”

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Aimé, putting his face in his hands, and Asmodeus laughed. “Is that thing even legal?”

“I have a license to carry,” said Asmodeus, and Colm’s snort of laughter caught him by surprise, making him cough. The embarrassment radiating from Aimé was too funny to be contagious, let alone the fact that when Asmodeus stepped closer, Aimé buried his face in his elbows instead of his hands, and Asmodeus laughed at him and shoved him in the hand.

“Would you cover up?” Aimé demanded through laughter. “How the fuck do you do ballet with that? Wrap it around your leg?”

“I wear a cup,” said Asmodeus.

“They make cups that big?”

“He gets them made,” said Colm, and he and Aimé both laughed at Asmodeus this time, who frowned. “Anyway, we’re not covering up, we’re going in the sauna without wearing three layers of fabric like you.”

“Aren’t Catholics meant to be modest?” asked Aimé.

“I’m standing naked next to Asmodeus, lad, I’m about as humble as they come right now.”

“You’re not bad, bigger than me,” said Aimé, and his leering look was in jest: it made Colm snigger and shove him, and Aimé shoved him back, grinning widely. “What, can’t take a compliment?”

“Fuck off, city prick,” said Colm.

“Culchie.”

“I’m happier a culchie than a fucking West Brit,” retorted Colm, and Aimé let out a wounded noise before Colm slapped Aimé on the arse through the towel, shoving him ahead of him as they walked into the sauna.

“So nice to see you boys play nice,” said Asmodeus, and Aimé gave him the finger at the same time Colm said, “Fuck off, De.”

It was hot in the sauna, and as soon as they went inside Colm saw Aimé groan quietly, rolling his shoulders. Colm sat down in one of the corners, so he could see the rest of the room, and Aimé sat down beside him, shoulders falling against the wall as Asmodeus sat down on the bench across from them.

“What’s that sign say?” asked Aimé, pointing to a sign in old Greek over the door, and Asmodeus glanced back to look at it, then chuckled.

“Uh… It’s not easy to translate pithily, but the sentiment is that if you leave any unexpected puddles behind, it is your responsibility to clean them, and that if you do not, the management reserves the right to drag you back in by your ear and make you clean them up with your tongue.”

Aimé’s face passed through several expressions in succession, before settling on a weary disgust.

“This place is so fucking weird,” he said.

“If it helps,” said Asmodeus, “I think they’re mostly joking.”

“That doesn’t help, actually,” said Aimé. “That you have to clarify to me that it’s a joke does not help at all – I assumed it was a joke until you said that. That’s definitely worse.”

“You want me to pop any muscles back?” asked Colm, and Aimé shook his head.

“I’m okay, actually – I’m mostly tired more than sore. We wrestled for a while before we boxed, and I think that helped me stop tightening my stance the way I normally do. Jean says you should teach me to dance, De.”

Asmodeus glanced at him, interested. “You want to learn?”

“I don’t know,” said Aimé. “I don’t think I could do ballet, not like you guys – you, Jean. Bedelia. Do you do ballet?”

“Yeah, I do ballet,” said Colm sarcastically. “I conduct symphonies, too, play the cello. Sing opera.”

Aimé, straight-faced, asked politely, “You can sing?”

“Cunt,” said Colm, shoving Aimé in the head and making him laugh. He liked how comfortable Aimé felt like this, how at ease he was, the good mood that radiated from him, and the affection that he felt for Asmodeus and Colm both.

Across from them, Asmodeus was smiling a distant, fond smile.

“We can have a look at dance in the new year, if you like,” said Asmodeus. “I’d invite you to join one of the special classes I do from time to time at an academy, as I do for Jean, but I’m afraid it would be a little advanced for a beginner.”

“He good?” asked Aimé. “Jean?”

Colm watched Asmodeus’ face, the subtle shifts in his expression, almost invisible. In them, he saw almost nothing, too distracted by the great nothingness that radiated out from De; beside him, he felt Aimé’s curiosity, his assumption that De was going to avoid the question or twist it.

“It pains me sometimes to watch Jean-Pierre dance,” said Asmodeus. “I feel the same way watching him play violin – he could be truly very great, if it ever suited him to devote himself to it.”

“What, give up medicine and put on a tutu instead?” asked Aimé, and Colm actually winced, watching Asmodeus go cold, setting his jaw. Aimé, to Colm’s surprise, noticed the shift in Asmodeus’ mood but didn’t flinch away – he just shrugged.

“Not saying ballet’s not important, or music. I know you love that stuff. And he’s said how much it’s helped him, learning an instrument, with his discipline, with his mood, that it made him a better doctor. I assume dance has done the same. But it’s his life, De – and he’s a good doctor, right?”

“The best,” said Asmodeus quietly, softening a little, and Colm reached out, curling his fingers in Aimé’s sweat-soaked hair, prompting Aimé to look at him askance. “You two are going back in the ring after this?”

“Gonna practice a little more with the throwing knives,” said Colm. “Thought we could try an axe, if you want – you’re getting more accurate with the knives, you’re getting better at using the right muscles.”

Aimé made a face. “Are axes easier to throw?”

“No.”

“Can you throw knives?” Aimé asked De, and Asmodeus nodded.

“Mostly, I can juggle,” he said. “Although I try not to embarrass myself too terribly in public.”

“What, by dropping stuff?”

“By juggling.”

“Heidi was unbearable after he taught her to juggle,” said Colm. “Nothing was safe. Pens, knives, apples, plates.”

“I taught her to spin them too,” Asmodeus murmured, and Colm groaned.

“You fucking did not,” he said. “If you’d taught her, I’d not have been picking up shards every time she tried.”

“Were you trying to train her for the circus?” asked Aimé, and Asmodeus laughed, leaning back in his seat.

“No, but she didn’t care to dance, didn’t much like to sing, wasn’t hugely interested in any of the instruments I play. I taught her card shuffles, some sleight of hand, to juggle, spin plates. Some minor gymnastics, which she took to more than dance – it’s all the same sphere of physical work, to do with dexterity, muscular control.”

“Can you do trapeze?” asked Aimé.

“Yes,” said Asmodeus. “But trapeze work is best done with a few strong partners – it’s not as fun, alone. I don’t think, anyway.”

Aimé crossed his arms over his chest, and asked, “You can do the splits?”

“Yes.”

“Put your leg over your head?”

“Yes.

“Behind your head?”

“Yes. Is this leading somewhere?”

“Not really,” said Aimé. “I’m just trying to think of something you might not be good at.”

“Watching a whole movie without starting to read a book instead,” said Colm.

“Not being smug,” agreed Aimé. “Owning a phone. Or a computer.”

“Singing a song written after 1960.”

“Are you two quite finished?” asked Asmodeus.

Aimé sighed, looking at Colm. “He’s perfect, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” said Colm resignedly, and the two of them shared a sad nod.

“Twats,” said Asmodeus succinctly, and Aimé and Colm’s laughter echoed off the tile.

Asmodeus smiled with them.