Bone Gods

CHAPTER 19

Jack stared down at her for a pair of heartbeats. Pete stared back, unable to think of a single thing to say. The pain all over told her she was awake; the warmth of his body told Pete he was alive. She wasn’t dreaming. He wasn’t dead.

“Haven’t lost your talent for finding big fucking trouble, I see,” he said at last.

Him speaking let Pete move again. She drew back her hand and cracked Jack hard across the mouth. “You fucking bastard! I thought you were fucking dead.”

“Christ and fucking Christmas,” Jack yelped, stumbling away from her. “What happened to Thanks very much, Jack? I saved your courageous little arse just now.”

“You left me is what you did,” Pete hissed. “You fucking left.”

“Well, I’m here now!” Jack said, swiping at his lip. “Dammit to Hell, do you have to play so rough, Petunia? At least give me a chance to explain meself.”

“Go piss up a fucking rope,” Pete snapped. “And then do me a favor and hang your lying arse with it.”

In her dreams, when she saw Jack again, she’d never shouted at him. Of course, in her dreams, they’d both been dead and the reunions had a very different cast.

Jack had let her think for more than half a year that he was gone for good, let her toss sleeplessly over him, shove all of his memories into cardboard boxes in the back of her mind, where they couldn’t paralyze her, and he was fucking smirking at her like he’d just done a particularly clever trick.

He stared at her for a moment and then the smirk bloomed into that infuriating grin. He ensnared her in his embrace again and pulled her against him hard enough to make her cracked rib scream. “Fuck, it’s good to see you,” he said against her hair. “Really bloody good.”

“Sod you, Jack Winter,” Pete responded, shoving at him until he took a hard step back from her force and nearly fell. “You don’t get to ramble back here smiling as if you’ve just landed from holiday.”

“Fair enough,” Jack said. “But let’s move the heartfelt speech of righteous indignation elsewhere. This isn’t the place for nice girls like you, Petunia.” He gestured at the pit, floor slick with black, shimmering blood. “Point of fact, it’s not the place for naughty boys like me, either.”

“If you think,” Pete started, “that you can just reappear from the bloody dead and start ordering me about, you’ve got another fucking thing coming, Jack. In fact…”

He grabbed her hard by the shoulders, and Pete felt the pinpoints where his fingers would leave round bruises under her clothes. Jack’s mouth closed over hers, hard and warm, depositing the taste of whiskey on her lips. Pete sought his tongue through no accord of her own, her fingernails digging into the warm, tattooed skin of his forearms as she gripped him. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. Nothing except him.

“What the … what the fuck is going on? What was that?” she demanded, when she trusted herself to make whole sentences again.

“It’s an orgy,” Jack said, tugging her past the bar and down a back hall that led to a closed door and a pair of loos that stank of bleach. “A blood orgy. You know, like sex ’cept with smashing faces instead of fucking?” He patted down his pockets, drew out a fag, and touched his finger to the end. Smoke curled up to tangle in the rancid air of Motor. “About that…” He gave her that smile again, tongue flicking across his bottom lip. “Told you. It’s good to see you.”

“How did you even know where I was?” Pete said. She desperately wanted a cigarette of her own, but her pack was smashed, just tobacco and shredded paper, after her encounter with the pit. She tossed it away.

“Followed you,” Jack said. “And I have to say, I was a bit disappointed you didn’t spot me. Though you’ve been busy. It’s understandable.”

Pete cast an eye back toward the club. The violence was slowing down, going to ground, bodies twitching and choking out on their own fluids and internal bleeds. A few figures intertwined, their grunts audible above the noise of the music.

“It’s a cantrip,” Jack said. “Musty Babylonian chanting to get you in the mood. Sounds like cats fucking in an echo chamber, don’t it?”

“You followed me?” Pete put her eyes back on him. She could scarcely believe it was really happening, that he was here, in front of her, as if she’d wished him there. Without meaning to, she put out a hand and squeezed him on the shoulder. He was solid, there. More solid than she remembered, really. Jack had always erred to skinny and mean rather than meaty. “For how long?” she said.

He shrugged, ash falling off the end of his fag. “Couple of days, I suppose. Which reminds me, I own Lawrence a smack right in the teeth for letting you anywhere near the Antiquarians.”

“Days?” Pete felt the heat in her breast rise again. “I’ll fetch you a smack. Jack, I thought you were fucking dead.”

His face closed up, all of the lines she remembered coming into relief. He shrugged off her hand. “I was dead, Pete. For a nice long while. Now I’m not. Do we need to make more of it than that?”

“Jack…” Pete ground her fingers into her temples. The howling, pulsing music was creeping into her, up through her feet, making her pulsate with it everywhere that hurt. “Jack, you can’t just be dead and then here…”

Jack picked up her hand again, put it against his face, and pulled her close with his free arm, pressing them together from her waist to her breasts. “And yet, I am. You can put me off if you want.” He put his mouth against her neck, breath hot when he spoke. “You’re right. I’ve been a cunt.”

His skin, where it touched hers, bare to bare, closed a current that Pete’s body had ached for since the first time Jack had touched her, back when she hadn’t known any man could touch her like that. “No,” she managed. “I’m giving you a pass. Just this once.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Jack growled, and his fingers curled in the waistband of her trousers, searching and tugging at the fly button and zipper. Pete shoved his hands away, and felt a twinge low in her stomach when their skin lost contact.

“I … I can’t…,” she managed. “We…”

“Come on, luv.” Jack attacked her neck again, then her earlobe, tangling the fingers of his right hand in Pete’s hair to expose more flesh. “Being dead’s like being in jail. Shit food and no women. ’Specially not ones hot as you.”

“Jack, stop it!” Pete shoved him again, putting her back into it. The shrieking music made any conversation besides screaming or lipreading impossible, but Pete put her mouth near Jack’s ear and tried. “This noise is mucking with your mind!”

Jack blinked once, and then rubbed the heel of his hand into his temple, a gesture Pete found so familiar she felt as if she’d been kicked in the stomach all over again. “Sorry!” Jack shouted. “I told you we needed to get out of here!”

“After you!” Pete said. Jack took her hand, but before they could get far the blank door at the end of the hall opened, and a man in a black suit emerged. He pointed at Pete, and then at Jack, and beckoned.

“Yeah, don’t think so,” Jack mumbled, tugging her along. Pete fetched up when two more figures appeared at the other end of the hallway, blocking the way to the front door and bottlenecking her with little choice but to turn around.

“Do you know these gits?” Jack whisper-shouted at her as the trio herded them toward the blank door.

“Yeah,” Pete said. “You’re not going to like it.”

She’d expected something in keeping with the rest of Motor, lots of leather and rivets and maybe some light BDSM decoration, but what lay beyond the door was a blandly modern office filled with ASDA furniture and an LCD screen flickering between grainy CCTV images piped in from the larger club.

Nick Naughton sat behind the glass desk, rocking his chair back and forth. “Now, this is confusing. I recall telling you only this morning to stay the fuck out of my business.”

Beside her, Pete felt Jack stiffen. “You twat,” was all he said. Naughton regarded him, one eyebrow up.

“Mr. Winter. I was under the impression you were no longer with us.”

“Check your sources,” Jack suggested. “If you have time before I come over that desk and wring your neck.”

“All right, all right,” Pete said, snatching Jack by the arm before he could get himself wrapped in a curse like the one Naughton had thrown at her. “No need to measure. We all know you’re the big man, Naughton.”

One of the suits patted her down and took away the Walther. Naughton shook his head as if she’d disappointed him, and nudged the gun away from him. “Mind telling me what you think you’re doing in my place of business?”

“Business?” Pete jerked a thumb at the door. “That’s what you call that out there?”

“Don’t be cute,” Naughton said. “Or I might not be so calm. Why are you here?”

“I think you’re a fucking liar and you broke into my flat,” Pete said, deciding any excuse but the truth would just get them run through a wood-chipper and scattered in someone’s garden.

Jack twitched again at the mention of Naughton in the flat, and Pete dug her fingers into his arm. He’d definitely put on muscle—he was hard in places where he’d been stringy, and his skin was hot under her fingers.

“Hmm,” Naughton said. He shoved his chair back and stood up. “Bring them here,” he told the suits, who hustled Pete and Jack through a door in the rear of the office and through a closed-down kitchen. Water dripped and roaches scuttled out of Pete’s way.

“I can’t say you’re making my life easier,” Naughton said, “but it appears you may be the solution to an intractable problem.” One of the suits opened a rust-rimmed door to a walk-in freezer, and Pete nearly slipped on the damp floor when she saw inside.

“He’s giving me the silent treatment,” Naughton said, brandishing a finger at Ollie, who was tied to a chair and sporting a cheek and eye that were swollen and starting to go blue. “I don’t fucking appreciate it.”

“Ollie…” Pete went toward him reflexively, to insert herself between Heath and Naughton, but one of the suits hauled her back and slammed her into the metal wall. Her skull connected with a dull bong.

“Naughty,” he said, and kept his hand on her breastbone, pinning her as if she weighed no more than an insect on a display card.

“There’s absolutely no need for this,” Pete said. “Please. I’ll never bother you again. Just let Ollie be.”

“No, don’t think I will,” Naughton said. He squeezed Ollie’s swollen jaw between his thumb and forefinger, forcing a whimper from Heath. “This fat bastard is being remarkably uncooperative. I think he fancies himself a hard man.” Naughton let go of Ollie and backhanded him on the bruised side of his face, reopening a cut under Ollie’s eye with his thick silver ring. “That right, hard man?”

Ollie sucked dried blood between his teeth. “Your mum seemed to think I was a hard man when I bent her over,” he said, tongue thick from the earlier beating Pete could read all over his face.

She bucked against the suit’s hand, but he pressed down harder, so she couldn’t do anything except breathe with ease. “There’s no need for that!” she shouted at Naughton. “You’ve no quarrel with him.”

“I beg to differ,” Naughton said. “I’ve got quite a persistent quarrel with Inspector Heath, seeing as how he’s repeatedly refused my very simple and reasonable request.” He moved his gaze between Pete and Jack. “However, your intrusion does give me an idea.”

Pete looked to Jack as well. He stood very still, a pillar of black cloth and pale skin, hand loose at his side. He didn’t return her look, just drilled his glacial eyes into Naughton as if he wanted very badly to slice off his face and make it into a hat. She was on her own as the rational half, then. That really wasn’t any great leap from when Jack had been alive. With her. She’d think over the proper phrasing later. Pete put her attention back on Naughton. “Can’t wait to be dazzled with your brilliance, Nicky.”

“You’d get a lot further in this life if you at least pretended not to loathe the entirety of the human race,” he told her. Naughton removed a cloth rag from his jacket and wiped Ollie’s blood from his ring. “I’m proposing that I pass the recalcitrant inspector’s task to you, and he will stay here, receiving my hospitality, until such a time as I’m satisfied.”

Naughton was a reptile. Not in the sense that Pete would have gladly kicked him in the teeth and called him a bloody snake if she got the chance, but in that he had cold blood and cold nerves, the kind of sociopathic politeness endemic to gangsters and professional soldiers. He was a camouflaged monster, walking and wearing a man’s clothes, buying groceries and smiling at pretty girls, until the skin shed, and the dead eyes and venom-filled mouth underneath showed themselves. All that did was make Pete more likely to acquiesce to him, not less. Naughton was a legitimately scary bastard. Pete didn’t make a habit of getting on the wrong side of those, especially not when they had her best friend tied to a chair. “Fine,” she told Naughton. She lifted her hands and pointed at the suit. “I’m agreeing to be civil. Could you possibly ask your Pomeranian here to quit groping me?”

Naughton waved his hand and the suit stepped back, giving her a smile that revealed that he had the sort of hobbies where teeth were knocked from his head with regularity. “Gerard Carver,” he said. “We want him back.”

“Back?” Pete said. “Isn’t that more your department, Nicky?”

“His corpse,” Naughton said. “Gerard Carver’s immortal soul can be chewed, swallowed, and shat out the arse of Dagon for all I care. But his corpse, I would very much like returned.”

“I’m sure you’ve already thought this through,” Pete said, hoping that Naughton wasn’t even further around the bend than she’d guessed. “But can’t you, er … retrieve Carver yourself? ’S not like the Wapping mortuary has a posse of ninjas guarding the door.”

“I’d like to,” Naughton said. “But I can’t.” He patted Heath on the cheek. “Do be quick, Petunia. I think the inspector’s already rather homesick.”

“Why do you want Carver now?” Pete said. “He already fucked you and got himself made dead. Seems a bit moot.”

Naughton twisted his ring. “I’m not finished with him,” he told Pete. “That will be all,” he said to the suits, and they hustled Pete and Jack back through the crush of fucking, fighting bodies and out the front door. It slammed behind Pete, and the quiet of the night street replaced the vacuum.

“Well, that was fifty kilos of fun in a forty kilo sack,” Jack said, acid etching the words. “I’d murder somebody for a fag.”

Pete sat down hard before she fell down, making even more of an arse of herself.

Jack sat next to her, and wordlessly she gave him a cigarette. “You’ve had a bit of a makeover,” he said, lighting it. “Gun-toting, playing nice with necromancers—you’re a regular dangerous type these days, Petunia.”

Pete lit a fag for herself. “You’ve been gone awhile, Jack.”

“True enough,” he said.

“So, are we going to talk about this?” Pete said. “Or am I supposed to accept coming back from the dead as a part of your inscrutable mystique?”

“You just found yourself agreeing to steal a corpse from the police at the behest of a circle jerk of bastard necromancers, and you’re worried about a little resurrection?” Jack tsked. “Priorities, Petunia.”

Pete fetched him a punch on the arm, hard. He yelped and lost his cigarette. “Are you bloody five? That hurt.”

“You’re going to tell me the truth,” Pete warned. “As soon as we have this sorted. You get me?”

Jack rubbed his arm. “Never said I wouldn’t. Fuck me, you’ve got bony hands.”

Pete pointed herself in the general direction of the tube station. “Mortuary’s closed this time of night. Station’s running a light crew.”

Jack shoved his hands into his pockets. “Really think that fool’s errand Nancy Naughton gave you will be that easy?”

“Of course not,” Pete agreed. “But it’s not as if I have a choice, so let’s get on with it.”

CHAPTER 20

Southwark to Wapping was a long ride, longer when you were trying not to shout everything that came into your head at the person who was taking the trip with you. Pete tried not to stare at Jack under the harsh fluorescent light of the train car, either, but she admitted by the time they rattled past Bermondsey station it was a lost cause. They were alone, this late in the evening, except for a few sleepy wage workers and a bored transit officer looking off into space.

Under light, Jack didn’t look as good as he had in the club. His skin was pallid. She could see veins, how his blood moved through his body, the stark, shining whiteness of the scar on his cheek. Twin half moons had taken up residence under his eyes, as if they’d always lived there, deep and purple, fading away into the lines she remembered.

She voiced the least offensive thing she could think of. “You look tired.”

“Yeah.” Jack rolled his neck back and forth. Small bones popped. “Being alive will do that to you.”

The train ground to a stop at Wapping, and the doors hissed open. They walked in silence the rest of the way to the mortuary. Pete couldn’t think of another topic that didn’t involve So, Hell. Hear it’s lovely this time of year.

“Right,” Jack said, when they reached the stern brick edifice of the mortuary, boats hooting on the Thames as if warning of their approach. “So I assume you’ve got a plan all worked out.”

“Of course not,” Pete said. “It’s a city works building, and there’s CCTV all over the bloody place, not to mention, you know, police officers.”

Jack grimaced. “Fuck. Stealing corpses in Thailand was much easier.”

“Unfortunately, Naughton seems set on this particular corpse,” Pete said. “Any actual helpful idea would be shockingly appreciated.”

“Whole thing stinks,” Jack said. His entire body was wire-tight, and if Pete didn’t know better she’d swear he was back on smack and jonesing hard, from the way his fingers played the air and his eyes darted from side to side. Pools of dark beyond the lamps in front of the station revealed nothing.

“Cheers, Captain Obvious,” Pete said. “Necromancers demanding you steal a corpse is rarely a harbinger of unicorns, rainbows, and candy-filled shopping trolleys.”

Jack laughed. “So sharp, luv. Don’t tell me our brief separation has turned you into a bitter spinster.”

“Not in the least,” Pete said, “though our brief reunion has caused me to entertain the notion of shoving my boot up your arse.” She discarded the idea of the main door at once. It was locked at this hour, requiring a desk officer to buzz you in, and a camera across the street pointed directly at it. She walked down the close between the mortuary and the next building, back toward the museum on the history of the Thames patrol and the modern marine support building. Jack followed her.

“Are we actually going to give this dead bloke to Naughton? Because I have to say, I don’t fancy it.”

Pete jiggled the handle of the delivery entrance, keeping her face shy of the CCTV camera. Locked. “You’re actually asking for my opinion? You really have changed.”

“Heath’s your friend,” Jack said. “And in spite of being a rotten, nasty pig, he’s not a bad sort. I won’t kick up a fuss if you do exactly as Naughton asks, but I’m on record as saying it’s a shite idea. Your call, Petunia.”

“We’ll have a better chance during the day,” Pete said. Ollie wasn’t going to stay in one piece if she got rash and found herself locked up by Patel, who’d think Christmas had come bloody early if he nicked her absconding with evidence.

Jack nodded. “Morning, then.”

“Don’t be too overjoyed,” Pete warned. “Because when we get home you’re going to tell me why you’re really back here.”

CHAPTER 21

When he stepped into the flat, Jack paused with one toe over the threshold and one still in the hall. “Protection hex is shot. Lawrence should have laid it again.”

“He’s not on call for me.” Pete tried taking off her jacket and immediately regretted the attempt, all the way down to her bones. Her shoulder throbbed and there were ink-blot bruises already turning purple up and down her arm. She’d have them on her stomach, too, and felt a dull twinge every time she breathed. Her cracked rib chimed in with a gleeful jab.

“Fucking layabout, is what he is,” Jack muttered. He went into the kitchen and rattled around in drawers, returning with a black zip-up bag. “Where’s me chalk? Used to have enough to run a school.”

Pete spread her hands. “Do we really have to do this now?”

“In case you haven’t noticed…,” Jack said, curling his lip in the way Pete hated. It meant he was about to impart Great Knowledge to her, the mundane who knew fuck-all about magic. “The Black isn’t the friendliest of places these days.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pete said. “Since you’ve been gone, it’s been a regular tea party.”

Jack flopped down on the sofa, dropping the bag. “I’m done in, Pete. Fucking wrung out. I don’t want to argue or have a meaningful conversation. I just want to clean up the mess and then get pissed and go to sleep for about a month.”

“Oh, it’s my mess, is it?” Pete said. “All of this shit cropped up like flowers in horse manure after you made your little devil’s bargain and left me to fend for myself?”

“Pete…” Jack warned, but she cut him off.

“Sod you, Jack. It’s your flat, and you’re welcome to stay here, but you can sleep on the sofa and I don’t need your fucking condescension disguised as a helping hand.”

She slammed and latched the bedroom door, but the force wasn’t enough. Pete unlaced her boots and chucked them against the far wall. They chipped the plaster with a satisfying crash, but the noise didn’t lessen the aches in Pete’s chest. At least not the ache that wasn’t from a boot landing in her flesh.

Jack was the one person who could assure her that everything was going to be all right. Except he wasn’t doing it, and Pete wouldn’t have believed him now if he did. She dropped backward on the bed and pressed a pillow over her face, letting out a scream. She couldn’t give Naughton Carver’s body, in spite of Ollie’s bind, and she couldn’t expect Jack to pull her out of the oncoming freight train’s path. Not this time.

He had to be finishing the spell. That was the only reason. Carver had tried to go freelance, and now Naughton was back in the game. He couldn’t have Carver’s corpse. Nicholas Naughton was an evil man, and evil from men was the most insidious sort. Whatever Naughton was playing at, she couldn’t let him get to the endgame. She had to at least try and pretend she had a spine and a plan to make everyone and everything she’d set into the sights of Naughton’s wrath all right.

The owl landed outside the bedroom window with a thump, staring at her with gold, unblinking eyes. Pete shoved the pillow under her head and turned her back on it. “Leave me alone,” she muttered.

You know I can’t do that, Weir.

Pete felt her breath stop. In the place of the owl sat the woman, small and clad in white, gold eyes and dark hair, skin the same shade as moonlight. She put her hand on the glass, pointed black nails leaving score marks on the pane.

“I don’t want this,” Pete said. “I don’t want you.”

Still you have me, Weir. You who are marked as a servant of the crossroads. Whether you desire my ministrations is irrelevant.

Pete sat up, deciding that if the Hecate wasn’t going to shut up it was just silly to pretend she wasn’t there. The woman watched her. Like the owl, she never blinked. You allow that abomination to slumber one room away. I told you what to do.

“I think you’re forgetting we’re not on the orders given and received system, you and I,” Pete told her. “Whatever your problem is with Jack—it’s not my problem. Far as I’m concerned, you can float away back to whatever musty corner of my dreams you came from and give me some bloody peace, because I’m not doing it.”

You’re wrong, you know, the girl whispered. The crow-mage rides at the head of a bone army, borne on a river of red death. Forget your memory of the man, Weir. The thing he has become must die, or the world dies, and wind will scatter its ashes.

“I’ve lost Jack once and it was bloody enough for this lifetime,” Pete said. “I won’t hurt him. He’s not a threat to you, and if you’ve got a grievance with his patron goddess, maybe you two ladies should hash it out over a cup of tea and stop bothering humans with your spats.”

He’s not the Jack you know, the Hecate whispered. The Jack you know could not crawl from Hell unscathed, no matter your faith in him. And you know this is the truth, even if you will not speak it. What has returned in Jack Winter’s skin and bones is not Jack Winter as you knew him.

Fingers of cold spread away from where the Hecate touched the glass, creeping over Pete’s skin, down her throat, choking off her air, and the glowing gold eyes filled up her vision, until all she could see was the flame burning at the center, flame that spread out and consumed the walls and the bed, until everything around her was ashes.

She came awake gasping, and it took her a moment to realize she could breathe, she wasn’t freezing or burning, and she’d fallen asleep with the pillow jammed at an awkward angle under her neck.

Pete swiped a hand over her forehead. It came away with a sheen of sweat. Her shirt was damp as well, even though the air in the room was cool enough to catch her breath and turn it white. Shivering, she burrowed under the duvet and lay very still, trying to calm her throbbing heartbeat.

She’d had apocalyptic dreams for as long as she could remember—of Jack, when she’d thought he’d died the first time; of the Morrigan, his spectral, dark-winged goddess; and now of the owl-eyed woman. It was part and parcel of being the Weir. She was an antenna for disturbances in the unseen, and her brain was a projection screen for any and all signals slithering their way through the Black.

This was different, though. Before, she’d known they were dreams. The visions of the Hecate, though—she couldn’t pick out the dream from the waking. Those with a talent who couldn’t see the Black and the daylight world for what they were had a nasty habit of going insane, or simply chucking themselves into the path of an express train to end the constant, blurring carnival of horrors the Black paraded before them.

The bedroom latch clicked and the door swung ajar after she’d lain there for twenty-four minutes by the glowing clock numerals on the bedstand, and weight settled on the other side of the mattress. “You awake?” Jack said, voice faded to a rough whisper.

“Yeah,” Pete said, not bothering to complain at him for using his talent with locks on her privacy. She didn’t turn toward him as he settled, but the dire cold finally shook off her bones.

A lighter snapped and flared in the dark, and she listened to Jack drag and exhale before he spoke again. “I think I was a bit of a cunt back there.”

“A bit?” Pete did face him then. “That’s kind.”

“It’s so … cold … here,” Jack said. “I feel like I’m in my skin, behind a glass wall. Everything’s rushing around me, too fast, and I’m out of step. I…” He inhaled on the fag sharply, and Pete watched the ember flare. “I want to tell you. I want to spill my fucking guts, but I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Pete said.

“Can’t as in can’t bloody remember,” Jack said. “I remember…” He trailed off, coughed harshly, and stubbed out his fag. “I remember snapshots. Ends of film reels, a few frames here and there. And then I’m waking up next to some bins near Aldgate, and an Iranian fellow is shouting at me to get away from his restaurant. I found you, I followed you when I realized you were in fucking deep shit, as you usually are, and you know it from there.”

She wanted to scream at him, hit him with the pillow and say that was no sort of fucking answer, and if he was going to keep dying and reappearing he might as well just flit off permanently. But she swallowed down the scream and reached out, brushing her fingers down his bicep. She swallowed all of the whispers that the Hecate was right and that Jack coming back and not remembering how wasn’t a boon, it was a warning, and simply held on to Jack, because he was warm and there and she couldn’t bear to have him gone again. “I guess that’s enough for now.”

He stubbed his cigarette out in a saucer on the bedside table. “Cheers.” He started to rise, but Pete tightened her hand on his arm. All at once, she didn’t want him out of her sight. If he was close, she’d know he was really there. And her dreams would stay quiet. Jack acted as sort of a psychic buffer, and if she touched him while she was asleep and her defenses were down, he soothed her talent so that it would allow her to rest.

“Stay,” she said. Jack sat back down, the line between his eyes deepening.

“You sure?”

Pete nodded and yawned at once. She hadn’t really slept in days, and what sleep she’d gotten since Jack had gone had been fitful and fleeting. Plus, she’d had the piss kicked out of her and couldn’t have shifted Jack off the bed even if she’d wanted to.

Jack kicked out of his boots and undid his belt, dropping the pyramid-studded strap to the floor. When he swung his feet onto the mattress, Pete saw his socks had holes in both big toes. “Landed in the same clothes I left in,” he said. “You’d think Belial would have at least fitted me up with one of those posh three-button jobs he’s always gadding around in.”

“So you think it was him?” Pete said. “Belial?” A demon who let the soul he’d chased the longest simply stroll back from the jaws of death. Not very demonlike. And certainly not like Belial, who reminded Pete of an obsessive bloke who might spend years chasing a rare stamp. So Belial had sought Jack. And found him. And pinned him to the fucking page. “Jack?” she said, when he didn’t answer.

“I told you everything I know, Pete,” he mumbled. “When I know more, I’ll pass it along.”

Pete edged toward the window to give him room, but he stayed close to her. Jack had nearly a foot on her, and his frame easily curled around her body. His arm, with its new weight, lay across her waist.

Breathing against the back of her ear, his words tickled. “All right?”

Pete nodded, and let herself relax against Jack, back to his chest. Whatever else happened, Jack was here. And she knew, even when the Hecate and Pete’s own meager knowledge of Hell and all the senses her talent gifted her with said differently, that this was the way it should be.

Jack stroked his fingers down her back, over the thin material of her shirt. “Been raiding my wardrobe.”

“Didn’t think you’d mind,” Pete mumbled, squirming as Jack’s fingers slipped between her denim and the hem.

“Not a bit,” Jack said. His finger slalomed between the bones of her spine, until he reached her rib cage and found the side curve of her breast. “All right?” Jack said. Pete bit her lip as the callused tips of his fingers skated against her skin, raising gooseflesh.

“I’m not…” Pete shivered as Jack ran his hand down her bruised stomach, gently enough that he just grazed her skin, and found the button on her jeans. “I’m not really in shape for that, Jack.”

“Relax, luv,” he said, wriggling her jeans over her hips. “I’ll be gentle.”

“Jack…” Pete gasped when his hand dipped into the crevice between her thighs, Jack letting out a contented sigh as his fingers found purchase against her clit.

She didn’t need flashing neon to tell her that this was a bad idea. Jack popping back up from Hell with no memory and no marks, fresh and new as if he’d been remade, wasn’t a miracle or even, likely, a good thing. The last thing she should be doing, Pete told herself in her stern, Inner-Connor voice, was letting him stick his hand inside her panties.

Jack licked the line of her shoulder, up her neck, and landed back against her ear. “Pete, don’t tell me that. Please.”

If she told him no, he’d stop. He wasn’t a bastard. But he made an excellent point, Pete thought, as he rubbed her more insistently, his other hand sliding under her ribs to bring his shirt over her head. She didn’t want to tell him no. She could explain it any way she liked—in the copper way, that told her they’d both suffered a trauma, and were projecting, or even in the plain common sense way, that said hopping back into bed with Jack would net her nothing but headaches. Jack wasn’t reliable under the best of circumstances, and these were far from them.

Pete knew she wouldn’t throw him out. After six months of thinking she’d never smell him or see him or touch her hand to his skin again, he was here. How and why could be saved for a few hours.

She rolled over, dislodging Jack’s hand and fumbling at the fly of his pants. He made a gravelly sound in the back of his throat when she drew out his cock, stroking with both hands between their bodies. “Thank you.…” Jack muttered, face in her hair, but Pete shook her head.

“Shut up, Jack. Please just be quiet and fuck me.”

He pulled her down to his mouth, hand knotted in the hair at the nape of her neck, and Pete felt him nip her bottom lip. He kissed her as if he were starving until he had his fill, then took Pete by the shoulders and put her on her back, kneeling above her.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” Jack said, just a hairsbreadth above a raspy cigarette whisper, and then ducked and lifted Pete’s thighs over his shoulders.

She grabbed for his hair when he lowered his mouth onto her clit, taking long, slow strokes that made Pete tighten her fingers in the bleached strands. Jack grunted but didn’t lift his tongue, the insistent flicks against her getting quicker and rougher.

“Fuck,” Pete gasped, lifting herself to press closer against Jack’s mouth. The motion sent a stab through her abused abdomen, but she didn’t, at that moment, particularly care. Being with Jack pushed her straight over the edge—there was no slow, no tender with him. He made her want nothing except him, and what he could do to her, and Pete spread her fingers across the top of his head, urging him on. “Please…” she managed. “Jack, I’m…”

She felt his fingers dig into her bruises, sharp hot pain contrasting with the slow, trembling contraction of her core. Pete let out a small, involuntary cry when she came, Jack running his tongue against her until she had to fall back on the mattress, boneless.

Jack stood for a moment, wordlessly stripped all the way out of his denim and pants, and climbed back into the bed, turning Pete onto her stomach. Her heart rate was finally coming back toward regular, and Jack stroked her back again as he nudged her knees apart, mattress sagging under his weight. “Not hurting you, am I?” he asked, urging her hips off the sheets with his hands.

“No,” Pete muttered, muffled against the pillows. Her aches and bruises protested no matter which way she moved, but she wasn’t about to cry off because of a little pain. Jack slipped one finger, then another, into her pussy.

“Good,” he said, free hand running across her arse to hold her hip, fingers pressed into the hollow next to her stomach. “You all right to be fucked?” he said, curling his hand inside her. Pete felt a residual rush of nerve endings from being eaten out and squirmed, pressing back into Jack’s hand. He chuckled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

He replaced his fingers with the head of his cock, guiding it slowly until his pelvic bone pressed against Pete’s arse, Jack inside her to the hilt. “Fuck,” Jack groaned. “This’d drive lesser men mad, you know that?”

Pete felt a giggle escape her into the pillow. Jack rocked back, then forward. Pete wrapped a handful of sheet in her fists, held on as he fucked her. The worry had gone, and all she really cared about at that moment was Jack’s breath heating the back of her neck. He bent over her, put his forehead on her shoulder, and thrust into her twice, jerkily, before he came.

Pete lay still for a moment while Jack went to the loo and cleaned up. He came back and wrapped his arms around her. Pete tried not to whimper when he pressed into her bruises, and just focused on the fact that he was there, and that he’d still be there when she woke.

Jack didn’t say anything else to her before he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 22

She only slept, really slept, for a few hours—it was six a.m., glowing and red in her face, when her eyes snapped open. Jack’s breathing quickened almost as soon as hers did, and he opened his eyes. “Back to the bone-shaker’s errand, then?” he said, voice husky from smoke and sleep.

Pete sat up and tried to work the kinks from her neck. “Suppose we have to.” Despite her resolve not to give Naughton more ammunition for whatever sort of wickedness he was up to, she couldn’t think of another way to keep Ollie from ending up like poor McCorkle.

“You hungry?” Jack asked. “Stealing on a empty stomach’s no good.”

Pete shook her head. “I haven’t been hungry since Naughton showed up here and gave me the hard line, like the scary bastard he is.” She found her shirt and panties and slipped them on, feeling her skin prickle when the air hit it. A scrim of frost lay on the window and the street outside, just starting to stir and growl at this hour of the morning. The radiator in the corner of the bedroom kicked on with a hiss and a clang.

“How about you?” she said after Jack spent a quiet few moments both getting dressed and studiously avoiding her eyeline. “Hungry? We could stop on the way.”

Jack dug in the wardrobe and pulled out a clean shirt, rolling it over his torso. “Nah. ’M fine, luv. No appetite. Let’s go.”

Pete pulled her jeans on and took the hint. He wasn’t talking about the sex and she wasn’t going to be that sort of woman, the one who interrogated everyone she happened to take a tumble with.

She got her bag and added the usual inventory—mobile, lighter, wallet. “I’d just gotten that pistol,” she told Jack. “Hope Naughton’s enjoying running about like he’s in MI6.”

“Meant to ask you about that,” Jack said. He pulled on his old leather and let out a sigh. “Hello, gorgeous.”

“You weren’t here.” Pete went to the lift. “It’s not as if I can shoot fire from my fingertips.” She started to tell him about the zombie and the paralyzer hex, then thought better of it. Best case, Jack would laugh at her. Worst case, this Jack with no memory and no marks on him would know she could throw hexes. Pete couldn’t be that kind of lovesick fool, even when she wished she could. When Jack came up with more than a blank spot in his memory about walking out of Hell, she’d tell him about the hexes.

“Don’t think we’ll need a gun, though,” Pete said. “Assuming she hasn’t changed her mind, the ME’s a friend.”

“Always did like the bossy detective side of you, luv,” Jack said. He placed his hands on her waist, swaying slightly as they waited for the lift. “Are you sure we have to go poach Carver right this minute?”

Pete lifted his hands away from her. “Jack, that is not going to work.”

“No?” His bottom lip protruded. “Not even a quick tumble? Take pity on me—being locked in Hell makes a bloke horny.”

“Keep your pants on,” Pete said, walking ahead of him to the lift. “I mean it.” Jack didn’t get to pretend everything was normal between them, normal in bed and normal as they walked to the tube, and find his way into her knickers any time he liked. Pete could admit that she’d made a mistake ever letting him touch her, at least with so many uncertainties. That Jack was all right. That he’d really forgotten how he’d clawed free of Belial’s bargain.

That he was still Jack.

Pete let the tube ride pass without saying a word, and when they reached the station, waited across the street under the awning of a café until a familiar curly-haired form entered the front door, messenger bag slung over her shoulder. “That’s Dr. Nasiri. Let’s go.”

Nasiri had disappeared down the hall to the autopsy theater by the time Pete caught up with her, but she walked on, ignoring the NO PUBLIC BEYOND THIS POINT sign and nudging open doors until she saw Nasiri shrugging into a lab coat in front of a locker stuffed with street clothes.

She spun when Pete stepped into the room, her eyes widening at the sight of Jack. “What in the—this is the women’s changing room, Ms. Caldecott.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Sorry about this.”

Nasiri simply stared at her. “Never thought it’d be you,” she murmured. “Wanted to think you were better than that. Stupid.”

“Look,” Jack said, flexing his fists and blocking the door with his bulk. “We just want—what’s the bastard’s name?”

“Carver,” Pete supplied.

Nasiri looked between the two of them. “You don’t want to do this,” she told Pete. “Whatever they’ve promised you, you have no idea what you’re about to do.”

“They didn’t promise me anything,” Pete said. Nasiri’s calm and her lack of expression weren’t jibing. She should at least be furious, if not scared out of her wits. “What I’m doing is nothing you need to be concerned with.” She took Nasiri by the shoulder of her coat and steered her to the door. “I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to have to get rough if you make noise or don’t cooperate. Let’s go. Get him out of the fridge.”

Nasiri shuffled into the hall with Pete’s prodding, head down. “All right. If that’s the way you’re going to be.” She glanced back at Pete with each step as they walked to the cold room. The arctic air flowing from the vents above ruffled the plastic sheeting that lay over the corpses, transparent shrouds that did nothing to hide their last wounds and grimaces. Aside from the dead, the room was deserted.

Jack shivered next to her. His eyes were nearly white, and she knew the dead in the tiny, metal-lined room were troubling his sight. She nudged Nasiri. “Just give us Carver and we’ll be out of your way.”

Nasiri began checking the dead’s ID tags. “You still have to get out of here with him, you know.”

Pete cast her eye on a pair of jumpsuits hanging on hooks by the door. “Nobody will notice one more body wheeling in and out, Nasiri. You know as well as I do the dead spook the holy Hell out of most decent sorts.”

The doctor stopped at Carver’s corpse, double-checking the metal tag holder affixed to his body. “Then I suppose you’ve thought of everything. I won’t try to talk you out of this terrible choice again.”

“That’d be nice,” Pete agreed. “Get his paperwork, too.” Nasiri was entirely too calm. If someone had snatched Pete and forced her to hand over a corpse, she’d at least give a try at bashing them in the teeth.

“All right,” Nasiri said sadly, and turned to move among the carts to the wall where a row of clipboards with intake paperwork for the dead resided. Even in the arctic chill, Pete felt sweat on her palms. Her aches were a hundred times worse after having a few hours to set in, and dizziness was coursing over her in waves. At any moment they’d be discovered, by another pathologist or simply a hapless mortuary assistant going about their morning routine. Jack could take care of that. She just had to focus on getting Carver. Get the corpse, and she’d have leverage on Nick Naughton.

She wasn’t terribly surprised, still, when Nasiri swung the metal clipboard holding Carver’s paperwork in a wide parabolic arc, slamming into Pete’s injured shoulder. The clipboard came back and smacked Pete across the temple.

There was a flash, like a camera in her face, and Pete was on the floor. The cool tile pressed against her face, leaving a crosshatch of marks.

Nasiri’s foot, in its plastic mule, came close and nudged Pete, who decided it was best to simply stay still. Above her, Nasiri picked up something from a surgical tray and pointed it at Jack. “I’m a doctor, crow-whore. I know how to cut a man so he bleeds. Get down there next to your woman.”

Jack stayed where he was, the animal stillness that came over him when he faced something unexpected freezing him in place. “How’d you know who I am, luv?”

“You people assume everyone around you is a blithering idiot,” said Nasiri. “You assume we think about takeaway and telly and football, and that we don’t see.” She went to Jack, grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, and yanked him to his knees, pressing the scalpel against the soft part of his neck, beneath his jawbone. “I see you, crow-whore. I see those bony, bloody wings across your back, and I can taste the ashes in your mouth.”

Pete’s temple had started up a rhythmic throbbing, and she felt blood trickling down the edge of her eye socket and following her cheekbone. It cooled almost as soon as it hit the air. Another damned head wound for her collection. “Leave him alone. This was my idea.”

Jack shook his head as he got down on all foors, and then touched his stomach to the floor, keeping his chin up. “She’s not just an especially observant sawbones, luv.”

Nasiri narrowed her eyes. “And psychic visions on top of it. Aren’t you a bright lad?”

Pete risked raising her head. Nasiri, from below, was a terror, her coffee-cream skin and wild black hair crackling like a storm cloud, while her eyes knifed directly into Pete’s. Not to mention the knife in her fist, sharp as the cold air and big as a house. “Whatever you think’s going on here, it’s not,” she said. “I’m not a necromancer.” The Nasiri of before, the skeptic, was long gone, and Pete felt monumentally idiotic for taking the act at face value.

Nasiri flicked the knife toward her. “You and this piece of demon-chewed flesh here are going to give Carver over to the same bastards that sliced off pieces of him in the first place, to save your own arse. That about cover it?”

“Not mine,” Pete said quietly. “Ollie Heath’s.”

Nasiri’s stony expression twitched at that, but she tightened her fingers on the scalpel. “You’re a lying bitch.”

“No,” Pete said carefully. “I wouldn’t be here if they were only on to me. Ollie got pulled in because of things I did.” She raised her head, and tried to sit up. Her spinning skull gave her mixed results. “He’s innocent in all of this. I’m just trying to fix what I put wrong, Nasiri. I swear.”

“Then why are you here with this?” Nasiri snarled, and moved the knife to Jack. Jack met her eyes, a smirk playing across his lips.

“I know what you are now.” He raised a finger and pointed it at her like a gun. Nasiri took a step forward.

“Don’t fucking move, either of you!”

“Half-breed,” Jack said. “You’ve got a bit of dirty old human in your veins, don’t you?”

“You shut your gob,” Nasiri snarled. “You know nothing about me. Your blood is just as filthy.”

“Filthy, yeah,” Jack said. “All of us humans are filthy and wicked. Didn’t find that out, pretending to be one?”

Nasiri’s lips peeled back and her limbs went stiff. She was going to cut Jack, and Pete made a decision. She didn’t bother trying to leap and disarm Nasiri with her hands, but lashed out with her boot, steel toe connecting with Nasiri’s knee. The joint went pop, and Nasiri crumpled, bringing her face to face with Pete.

“Fuck.” Nasiri’s face was pale. “You broke my fucking knee.”

Pete knocked the scalpel away. It rattled across the tile and came to rest under a rolling gurney holding the corpse of the skinhead Nasiri had been working on. “You all right?” Pete said to Jack.

“I’m aces, luv,” he said. “No thanks to this crazy cunt.”

Nasiri clutched her knee. “You’re filth on my boot. That’s right—sludge at the bottom of the Black. Sewage.”

“Enough,” Pete told her. “I don’t care about your refined sensibilities, Nasiri. I just want Carver’s body.”

Nasiri levered herself up with difficulty, clutching the edge of Carver’s gurney and holding her leg in a lame crook. “You really have no idea what’s going on here, do you? What these men are doing to the Black?”

“Unrest, black magic, blah fucking blah,” Pete said. “I don’t care about that. I care about Ollie.”

“No,” Nasiri said. She twitched the sheet back from Carver’s face. “I mean him. This poor bastard. I heard you talking to Heath in the museum. I know you don’t have a clue what happened to him to bring him back here.”

“And you do?” Pete said, folding her arms. “I find that unlikely.”

“Listen,” Nasiri said. “Just give me five minutes to explain. I like you, Pete. I’m trying to help you.”

“Why should we trust a fucking word that comes out of your mouth?” Jack said, folding his arms in a mirror of Pete’s gesture.

“Because unlike you, crow-mage”—Nasiri sniffed—“I don’t lie whenever my lips move.”

“Fine,” Pete said, forestalling Jack with a hand from smacking Nasiri. “You have thirty seconds. Speak.”

Nasiri reached for a mop leaning against the wall, using it as a makeshift crutch. “You didn’t have to work me over,” she told Pete. “I wasn’t going to really hurt you. I’m on your side.”

Jack gave a laugh that echoed off the tiles, over the giant’s-breath roar of the refrigeration unit. “A thing like you, on our side?”

“Didn’t say your side, did I?” Nasiri snapped. “On Pete’s.”

“Oi,” Pete said. “Get on with it or I’m going to take that stick away, smack you in the skull with it, and wheel Carver out of here.”

“You know the carvings are Babylonian, right?” Nasiri said. “The things in his skin?”

Pete sighed. “I got that bit. Babylonia or Brighton, makes no fucking difference to me. All necromancer’s dirty tricks, isn’t it?”

“Well, you should care,” Nasiri said. “Because this isn’t a spell. Not a hex or a curse or anything that’s usual in the Black. I’ve never seen it.” She passed her fingers over Carver’s cheek. The knife cuts had puckered and widened as his skin tightened with slow decay, and the edges were wrinkled as if he’d just stepped out of a bath. Nasiri sighed. “There’s a long, old word for it. Translated simply, it goes something like soul cage. A binding that tethers a soul to a corpse, but doesn’t animate. Not a zombie or a ghoul. More like … a lure. An anchor for something much larger than a human ghost.”

“Fuck me,” Jack said softly. He pulled off the sheet and examined Carver more closely. “This poor sod is a bloody mess, in more ways than one, but a soul cage? Those are campfire stories.”

Nasiri snatched the sheet and smoothed it back. “You, of all people, should know that most ghost stories start out being true.”

“What’s Naughton going to do?” Pete said. “Roll him out at parties to impress the ladies?”

“A soul cage is the most ancient of necromancies,” Nasiri said, almost reverently. “The first act taught to the bone-shapers by their dead gods. The man transformed is a soul but not a soul—a soul stripped bare and screaming. It’s more than a lure, really—an offering, a torch in the darkness of the Underworld. The necromancer that did this…” She shook her head. “Well, he’s a bastard you don’t want to meet up a dark alley, that’s for bloody sure.”

“Figured that out for myself, thanks,” Pete muttered.

Jack rubbed his chin. His fingers made the sound of match scratching over matchbook. “You’re so smart, Doc, what’s the payday? Who’s this bloke being dangled for?”

Nasiri kept her hand on Carver. “I know the dead, crow-mage, but I’m not a necromancer. I don’t get involved with their sick little hobbies.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so kind, luv,” Jack said. He showed Nasiri his smile that was like a knife in the kidneys—sudden and sharp. “You’ve got the stink on you, the death stain.”

Nasiri’s nostrils flared and she backed up against the gurney as Jack invaded her space, but she didn’t blink. Pete had to give Nasiri credit for nerve. Staring at Jack’s blazing blue gaze was like putting your skull inside an oven. His magic flowed from his pores like sweat, and it could drown you.

“You smell like funeral pyres,” Jack whispered. “Like smoke and ash. So don’t pretend you’re so holy, Doctor. You know the dead as well as old Nicky Naughton does.”

“I know the dead enough not to twist and deform them,” Nasiri said quietly. “I know the dead through my blood, not my lust.” Her knuckles went pale on the mop handle. “Now back up to a polite distance, Mr. Winter, before I jam this in your arse.”

Pete thought it was really too bad that she and Nasiri stood at odds. She was beginning to like her quite a lot.

“Leaving that aside,” Nasiri said. “The necromancer in question made a bollocks of this, since Carver ended up here instead of a vessel for some tentacled beast from beyond time.”

“She’s right,” Jack said. “His soul is still here. Hasn’t been made an offering. Faint, though. This kind of death should make one bastard of a ghost. I should be screaming.”

Pete looked at Carver, and though she would have rather shoved her hand into a bin full of hypodermics, she reached out and put a hand on his chest. His skin felt like marble after a rain—hard and cool, but also oddly slippery, like some kind of alien life still pulsed under his pulpy muscles, rigor come and long gone.

She couldn’t see, as Jack could, the dead, but Carver gave not a twitch to her senses, not a trickle of power into her mind. “So what’s Naughton going to do when he finds out his offering is a pile of scrap?” she said.

“Not going to be dancing, I’d bet,” Nasiri said. “But he could still recall Carver’s soul and sacrifice him again, if he’s good as he seems. Carver’s out there somewhere, not crossed over and not bound. Waiting for the first clever bone-shaper to pick him up and use him. Your man Naughton’s got his work cut out, but it’s possible.”

“I’d really like to know what he was supposed to be an offering for,” Pete said. Naughton wouldn’t ask for a worthless corpse. He’d have a plan. A backup, a workaround, because he was a clever bastard. Much cleverer, Pete had to admit, than she currently felt.

“Soul cages are made for nothing nice and cuddly,” Nasiri said. “Take my word on that.”

Pete took her hand off Carver. She looked at her feet, her plain ordinary boots that had the same plain ordinary scuff on the left toe and the same broken lace she’d knotted at least fifteen times rather than replace it. The tile beneath was still spotted with her blood, and she stooped and wiped it up on her fingers. Jack had taught her not to leave her blood lying around. The less friendly citizens of the Black could have a party with the blood of a Weir, the kind that ended with her naked body in several dozen pieces.

“I can’t give this to him,” she said, realizing rather sadly and anticlimactically that she couldn’t simply do the quickest, easiest thing to get Ollie out of harm’s way and take Naughton off her back.

“Pete,” Jack started, and when she turned to him with a hard look he tilted his head at the door. “Can we talk about this?” he murmured.

Nasiri gave a grunt. “My office is a lot warmer,” she said. “And I’ve got to go find a medic and have this knee looked at before it’s the size of a melon. I won’t rat you out.”

As soon as the door to Nasiri’s cramped office shut behind them, Jack turned on her. “What the Hell are you playing at?”

“I can’t,” Pete said quietly. “If half of what Nasiri says is true, I’m sorry, but I can’t let Naughton even have a chance at finishing his ritual. It’d be like handing a vial of anthrax to a disgruntled mail worker and telling him to throw a bloody party.”

“Oh,” Jack said. “You hear a spooky story and suddenly you’re Joan of fucking Arc? Ready to ride into battle?”

Pete sank into Nasiri’s chair, unable to keep upright any longer. Her head joined the throbbing chorus of her body, and the dizziness hadn’t abated. “You’re being a cunt.”

“I know what men like Naughton are capable of when you try and make them blink,” Jack said. “And so do you. You weren’t half as heroic a few months ago. What’s changed?”

“I found out you’d sold your soul and then you got your arse hauled off to the pit.” Pete prodded her head, feeling the pulpy spot where she’d grow another bruise. “Kill or be killed. That’s the rule you gave me, Jack, before you fucked off to play with your good friend Belial—”

Jack’s snatched her by her front, lifting her out of the chair and slamming her backward into Nasiri’s sagging shelves of medical references and bulging files. An avalanche of A4 slithered down on Pete’s head as the wind went out of her. “You know nothing about Hell,” Jack hissed. “And you know fuck-all about what happened to me while I was there. Fucking got it?”

Pete felt that her eyes were wide and her expression slack, in the liquid moment when she could only stand frozen. She hated that split second, the one that let a crack of pain show through the stone-carved nonexpression she’d cultivated over a hundred dead bodies and a thousand unpleasant encounters with live men. Because this wasn’t simply another drunken hooligan or pompous DI who thought a shaft and balls gave him automatic reign. It was Jack, and he was looking at her as if she were a complete stranger.

The falling feeling in reality lasted only a heartbeat, and then Pete’s blood sped up, and she wriggled free and hit Jack in the nose with her closed fist, not caring if she broke him or herself. Jack cursed and lost his balance, knocking into Nasiri’s desk and sending her laptop to the floor. “Fuck!” he shouted. Blood dripped down his face, landing on his chin and soaking the faded fabric of his shirt.

“You bastard,” Pete told him. “You think I had an easy time of it alone? You think I was welcomed into your old circles with open fucking arms?” She grabbed up a handful of papers and flung them at Jack, crippled birds that landed in a snowdrift around his boots. “You fucking abandoned me, you piece of shit, and I’m supposed to put up with your crap now because you’re what? Lazarus with fucking post-traumatic stress?”

Jack snatched at her hand and Pete yanked it away. If he touched her she was going to scream. “I can’t imagine what happened to you there,” she said. “But you didn’t even fight. You just let him take you, and…”

The wet on her face wasn’t blood, and her eye stung. The room blurred around her. “You didn’t let me help you,” Pete said desperately. “You didn’t do anything…”

Jack grabbed her again, by her upper arms, and Pete didn’t fight him this time. Jack pressed his lips against hers, hard enough to pulp her own lips, and Pete’s hands clutched his shirt. She tasted Jack’s blood, and shared his breath as he reached up and grabbed the back of her head with one hand, tangling her hair.

“Pete,” he said finally, barely a rasp of air. “Pete…”

She broke it off, knowing if she touched him for one more second, she could never stop. Would never be able to survive if he were gone again.

Jack let go and pushed a hand through his hair. “What could I have done, you know? I’m just a man, Pete. And not even a very good one.”

Pete smoothed her shirt where Jack had popped a button off. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Jack got a handful of tissue from the box on Nasiri’s desk and pressed it against his nose, red still flowing. “Suppose I had that coming,” he said through the baffle.

“What happened to you?” Pete blurted. “How did you come back?”

Jack pitched the bloody wad into the bin. “Pete. We’ve been over this.”

“I meant in Hell,” she said, not wanting to look at him. If she looked at him, she could never ask the question. “Before you came back. What did Belial do?”

“We’re on to you now,” Jack said, and Pete didn’t miss the stiffness in his voice and body. “I’m telling you, you don’t want any part of some noble scheme to save the fucking world. Not now. Just give them Carver, get Heath out of hock, and walk away.”

“I can’t,” she told Jack, and he threw out his hands.

“Of course you can’t. Because you’re Pete fucking Caldecott, defender of all that’s good and true. Dragonslayer to the last.”

“I’m not any of those things,” Pete said. “But if you think I’d let a sweatstain like Naughton get exactly what he wants by threatening my life and my friends, you really have forgotten a lot about me, Jack.”

He sniffed blood, some catching on his upper lip when he smiled. “I never forgot you, Pete. Not once, in all the time I was in Hell.”

Pete felt the same pain she’d get, just above her gut, when she’d see something that unexpectedly reminded her of Jack these six months past. The difference was, he was here and it still hurt. And the Hecate’s voice was in her head, always, unceasing as a tape loop. Kill the crow-mage.

She couldn’t do it. Jack might not be Jack, and the Hecate might do terrible things to her when refused, but if she could foil Naughton, she could at least go with her head up.

Jack wiped the last of the blood off on his jeans and tilted his head toward her. “Suppose you’ll need some help dispensing justice and protecting damsels, then,” he said.

Pete squeezed his hand. Jack squeezed it in return, and for the first time since he’d pulled her from the pit, he looked like the man she’d watched walk away from her. “Thought you’d never ask.”

CHAPTER 23

“I hope you’re happy,” Pete said as they left the police station. “I’m never going to get a lick of help out of the medical examiner’s office, ever again. Nasiri will blackball me from here to Liverpool.”

“Eh,” Jack said. “Ifrit are touchy. Territorial. Plus, I think she fancies me a bit. She’ll get over her bashed kneecap.”

“That’s what she is?” Pete headed for the tube station, taking them through the gates and to the platform.

“Yup.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “Nasty little soul-suckers. Good thing she’s got some human blood. Otherwise she probably would’ve just gnawed on our limbs until she felt better about her life.”

“Better question,” Pete said. “What are we going to do about Gerard Carver? Seeing as we don’t actually have him?”

“That corpse isn’t what Naughton’s after,” Jack said. “I’d bet you a quid.”

“Carver’s soul,” Pete said.

“The one that should still be with his body, but is not,” Jack said. “It’s a mystery. Let’s call Scooby Doo and have done.”

“Naughton could raise him,” Pete said. She didn’t know why she even gave the idea voice, because it was insane. “Why couldn’t we?”

Jack favored her with a crooked eyebrow. “What?”

“We could summon him,” Pete said. She never would have suggested such a thing even a month ago. She put it down to being desperate, dizzy, hurting, and out of ideas. Between the Order, Naughton, and Ollie being locked in a freezer waiting to get fitted for a bucket of cement around his feet, she didn’t see any way out that didn’t make her the villain even without resorting to necromancy. “Not raise him back into his corpse, but bring back his ghost. Summon him, like those gits tried to summon Algernon Treadwell last spring.”

Jack paused near the bus stop that would return them to Whitechapel. “Have you lost your bloody mind?”

Pete lifted one shoulder. “Like they say in America—go big or go home.”

Jack looked hard at her for a moment, and Pete became interested in a wad of gum near her toe. Jack had his brushes with black magic, but Pete had the feeling that her being the one to bring it up was breaking some sort of silent contract between them, Pete the innocent and Jack the mage, who’d seen every unspeakable thing that crawled through the underside of the Black.

“Even if you weren’t talking about something that could get both our intestines ripped out through our arseholes by Carver’s hungry ghost, it wouldn’t work. He’s still tied to his flesh. He’s not crossed into the Underworld, like that woman Nasiri said. Carver’s in-between, and there’s no ghost, just an echo in the flesh. His soul is in the thin spaces, wandering hither and yon. Really, it’s just a question of who gets him first—the Bleak Gates, Naughton, or some nasty like Nasiri scavenging the in-between for lost souls.”

Pete stepped aboard the bus as it squealed to a stop at the curb. “Soul, then. What if we were the ones to recall Carver’s soul? Be one definitive fucking bargaining chit with Naughton.” Not to mention it would both solve her problem with Morningstar and prevent Ollie from having any fingers lopped off.

“Finding a wandering soul isn’t like picking up loose change off the street,” Jack said. “And putting him back in that body is still necromancy, Pete. I know I ain’t always been the one on the bright and shining path, but black magic like that is going to leave a stain.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Pete said. She climbed to the upper deck of the bus and took the front seat, London passing beneath her feet. “I’m past caring, Jack. This isn’t like other things we’ve come up against. This is…”

“This is worse,” Jack said softly.

Pete pressed her forehead against the bus window. “What’s happening, Jack?” she said, in the same tone.

“End of the world,” he said. “End of the Black. Who knows. Been coming a long time, this storm. The smart ones, they realized. I was the stubborn sod who ran out in the rain without my umbrella.”

“And now?” Pete said.

“Now I don’t know what I am,” Jack said. “Trying not to let it bother me.”

“Help me,” Pete said. “You can’t stop whatever’s happening in the Black but you can put a collar on Naughton once and for all.” She faced him. “You know I’m right,” Pete insisted. “We can’t hand Carver over and we can’t walk away unless we do. This is the only way.”

Jack scrubbed a hand across his face. “Not going to be easy. Black magic is always the trickiest. Like playing catch with nitroglycerine.”

The bus jerked Pete as it stopped and started, and she gripped her seat. “If it were easy, Jack, I wouldn’t be asking you for help. I’d have solved it already.”

His mouth curled and for just a moment, he looked like himself, before the veil dropped down again and he said, “Suppose you would.”

They rode in silence after that, disembarked in silence, and walked down Mile End Road in silence. Pete was content to keep things that way until they reached the flat, but a black shadow standing eerily still and ramrod straight on the front steps changed her mind. She plucked at Jack’s leather, stopping him a dozen meters or so from the flat.

“Law?” he said, taking in the rangy figure and his black coat and hat.

“Worse,” Pete said. “Self-righteous cunt.” She closed distance and jabbed her finger into the man’s chest. “What are you doing here, Ethan?”

“Miss Caldecott, really,” he said, backing out of range and brushing at the front of his coat. “I don’t have endless patience, you know. So here I am, Daniel bearding the lion in her den.”

“Please,” Pete said. “You’re about as much a man of faith as Graham Norton is a Cub Scout.”

“My faith is as vast as my wrath,” Morningstar said, with that small, calm smile that seemed to constantly play across his crooked mouth. Pete wondered how many different times Morningstar had gotten his face bashed to make him quite so asymmetrical. “Have you what I’m looking for?” he said. “Or am I going to be forced to use more direct persuasion?”

“Sorry, Ethan,” Pete said. “You’ve been bumped to the back of the line as far as threats and menacing.” She pulled out her key and shouldered past him to open the door. “But do take it up with Nick Naughton down in Southwark. In fact, I think you two twats would get on famously.”

Morningstar grabbed the collar of her jacket and yanked her back down the steps to face him. “I’d really hoped I’d talked some sense into you last time, but I can see there’s only one thing you’ll understand.” He reached inside his jacket, but before he could draw his pistol Jack spoke.

“Fuck me!” He pointed at Ethan. “Was trying to place those enchantments you’ve got riding on you, but you’re the real article, aren’t you, mate?” Jack extended the point into a poke, prodding Morningstar’s arm. “Petunia, look. A witchfinder in the flesh.”

“We’ve met,” Pete said, struggling against Morningstar, who still held on to her as he would a naughty puppy.

“Oh, top notch,” Jack said. “Never thought I’d see one of you blokes up close. Thought you died out about the time we stopped putting leeches on sick folks and tossing villains in the stocks.”

Ethan drew his spine straight. He had a few good inches on Jack, and thickness as well, but amusement was no longer crawling across his face like a snake across furrows of earth. “You lay a hand on me again, Mr. Winter, and I guarantee I’ll take your filthy index finger off and carry it home for my mantlepiece.”

Jack grinned at Morningstar, showing all his teeth. “Now that is impressive. No magic, nothing but a commanding presence and a dashing hat, and you’ve got me pissing in me knickers.” He clapped Morningstar on the shoulder, and Ethan did pull the pistol from his coat then, holding it down in the fold so that passersby would never notice it.

“One warning, Winter,” Morningstar rasped. “That’s all I give. Petunia here still has a shot at salvation. Maggots like you are beyond hope. Go back in the gutter with your junkies and perverts and heathens, before you press my good nature any further.”

“You did,” Jack agreed. “You did warn me, mate. You were very clear.” In the next moment, Pete heard the familiar snick of Jack’s flick knife, and the silver was in his hand. His other grabbed a fistful of Ethan’s coat, backing him into the brick wall of the flat hard enough to dislodge chips of paint and a shower of brick dust. “Now let me tell you something,” Jack said, in the same pleasant and oily tone. “You ever come near Pete again, you so much as look at her crossways or think about her during one of your little tent-revival wankfests, and I am going to shove your own balls so far down your throat you’ll think you’ve immaculately conceived the second coming of Jesus Christ Himself.”

Jack pressed the blade into Ethan’s cheek, leaving a dent in the fat of his jaw that Pete watched trickle a little crimson. “I’ve never seen a witchfinder, but I’ve seen what they leave behind,” Jack said. “Their fucking so-called morality that does nothing but put the facade of God’s will on your torture squads and your hate crimes. I wager you’ve probably put the screws to a few friends of mine, mate.” Jack turned the knife, so the point pierced Ethan’s skin and blood flowed in earnest. “And unlike you,” he said, “I never had any good nature to speak of, so why don’t you jog on before I decide I’m not really in a forgiving mood?”

Ethan managed to smirk, and Pete had to be a little impressed. Even with a knife at his neck and Jack glaring at him with witchfire behind his eyes, Ethan wasn’t even sweating. “You wouldn’t cut my throat on a street full of people in broad daylight, Winter. You’ve got an ego the size of Westminster but you’re not stupid. The Order’s got files on you that would curl hair.”

Jack leaned in, mouth almost against Morningstar’s ear. “Then you know,” he breathed, and Pete had to lean forward to hear, “that I know so, so many ways to make you hurt that won’t leave a single mark.”

Morningstar paled at that, blood startling crimson against his sallow skin. “If you kill me,” he said, tone measured, “there will be no corner of the earth safe enough. My brothers in the order will track you and crush you.”

Jack stepped back, spreading his arms. “Then come find me, darling. You seem to know right where I am. I’d delight in leaving a few of you bastards twitching and pissing themselves in my wake.”

Ethan straightened his coat, and produced a handkerchief to dab at the blood on his face. He put his pistol back in holster with a smooth motion and then looked at Pete. “I’m sorry you’ve chosen this, Miss Caldecott. Your mother will be, as well. We’ll pray for you.”

“Do me a favor and save them for yourself, Ethan,” Pete said, making a shooing motion. “My soul’s no concern of yours.”

Morningstar sniffed, as if the pair of Pete and Jack were unreasonable children, then turned on his heel and left, holstering his pistol.

Jack took Pete’s chin his hand, turning her face from side to side. “You all right, luv? Did he hurt you?”

“Him? Fuck, no,” Pete said. “He might eventually bore me to death, but he’s never put a hand on me.”

Jack nodded, nostrils flaring as he watched Ethan retreat, coat flapping like an ill omen as he cut a swath through the crush of Mile End. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”

“You…” Pete chewed on her lip for a moment. “You seemed to fancy Morningstar about as much as I do.”

“Eh, necromancers and Jesus freaks aren’t so bloody different,” Jack said. “Fucking fanatics, whatever colors they fly. Frothy-lipped, glaze-eyed tossers, the lot of them.”

Pete let herself in and held the door for Jack. “Thank you,” she said, after she’d shut it and heard the lock click. At least Ethan hadn’t also violated her home. If she’d come back to find his Puritanical silhouette darkening her threshold, she simply would’ve had to move.

“Nobody touches you,” Jack said simply, and mounted the steps to the fourth floor.

Upstairs, Jack surveyed the flat slowly, while Pete took off her coat. “Hadn’t really looked around yet. You didn’t change anything,” he said with surprise. Pete threw up her hands.

“Where to begin? It’s the fucking Mount Kilimanjaro of paper in here.”

Jack wagged his head. “You couldn’t bear the thought of it nice and tidy in here, could you? It’s unnatural.”

Pete dropped her eyes. “That’s it,” she said, the words more acid than she meant. Now that he was here, flesh and blood and warm and smelling how he always had, she felt pathetic. Keeping his things. Not even changing the furniture around. His clothes still in their drawers and closets, even the vintage dirty magazines he didn’t think she knew about in their box on the high shelf in the bedroom.

She was worse than any of the victims’ families she’d seen. She’d turned the place into a fucking tomb, simply because losing one more bit of Jack would have pushed her past the point of no return.

Jack dropped onto the sofa, and put his foot on the ottoman. A little stuffing oozed out. “I’d murder a drink.”

Pete picked up the bottle from the side table, where she’d left it, and Jack took a pull. “Carver,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, like I said, pulling a soul from the in-between isn’t an apprentice-level trick.” Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Counting on your brilliance,” Pete reminded him. “I’m just the magical spittoon, remember? There for the filling.”

A line drew between Jack’s dark brows. “Don’t say that,” he told her. “You’re not just some dumpster for whoever wants you, Pete. You know that.”

“Yeah? You being gone certainly seems to have raised the notion in some of the finer denizens of the Black. I’m becoming downright paranoid every time I leave the flat.”

“Paranoia’s good at keeping you alive,” Jack said. “Take the insomnia and the facial tics as bonuses.”

Pete smacked him on the arm. “I do not have facial tics, you wanker.”

Jack got up and went to his books, running his fingers reverently over their battered spines. “Thought I’d never be back here again. Truly.”

“Me, either,” Pete told him. She hadn’t meant to, but it made Jack stop moving, hold on to the shelf with one hand until his knuckles were white.

“I’m sorry, Pete.”

She shrugged. “Let’s just figure out how to get Ollie out of his mess, shall we? We can cry and fling things later.”

“Or never,” Jack said. He lit a cigarette and dumped out a box he found on a high shelf onto the floor. Odd bits and bobs of crystal and feather landed in a heap, along with what looked like a round game board, painted with an unblinking eye at the center and tiny boxes, barely larger than Pete’s thumbnail, each inscribed with a character that may have been part of a language once, many thousands of years ago.

“You can scry for lost things,” Jack said. “Never looked for a soul before. What a grand new adventure I’m on.” He grabbed up a handful of the other things in the box, a flat black stone and a ragged gray and silver feather.

“Thought you needed a map to scry,” Pete said. She didn’t particularly like looking at the board. The lines were too close and many, imbued with a sense that they might simply crawl away at any moment.

“That is a map,” Jack said, banging it onto the low table by his elbow. “Of Hell.” He went to the kitchen, fishing in drawers until he found a roll of DIY twine.

Pete traced the lines with her finger. The top of the board was curiously sticky, as if the varnish on it wasn’t quite dry. She decided she didn’t want to know. “Of course it is. Silly of me to wonder.”

“Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there’s no rhyme and reason there,” Jack said. “You know how demons love routine and regimenting.” He sat down at the table across from Pete, letting out a sigh as he crossed his legs. “We really need some more chairs in here.”

“Awfully domestic of you,” Pete said. Jack fixed the stone and the feather to the twine. The stone was perfectly round with a hole drilled in the center. It swung free when Jack let the twine unfurl from his fingers, like an eclipsed moon hovering above the concentric circles that made up the maps of Hell.

“Fuck domestic,” Jack muttered. “Pushing forty is too old to be sitting like a bloody hippie.”

Pete had seen Jack scry before, though never with such conventional media. Once, memorably, there had been a severed head involved. He stretched out his arm, letting his eyes fall closed. The string trembled a bit and then fell still. Pete watched him, feet tucked under her. Jack had been skinny the entire time she’d known him, but he’d sprouted wiry muscles since she’d seen him last, blue veins standing out against his pale skin.

As she watched him, Pete saw something that made the air catch in her throat. Jack’s forearm was pale, pristine, and unmarked. But not just his ink had vanished. The track scars that had stippled his skin like a black constellation were gone. Even his wrists were bereft of the thin white lines that ran up the inside of his arm, neat and precise in the way only a razor could mark your flesh.

Before she could look and see if he was different in any other way, Jack’s eyes popped open and he let the stone fall with a thunk. “No joy. I can see him a bit but he’s a slippery fuck. That bone magic Naughton threw on him feels like taking a power drill to the skull.”

Pete put out her hand. “Let me try.”

Jack blinked at her. “You serious?”

“Please, Jack.” Pete let her eyes roll. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen it done enough times.”

He handed over the stone, lips quirking. “Look at you. Necromancy, scrying—soon you’ll be throwing me over and pushing out Naughton at his own game.”

“That isn’t funny,” Pete said.

“It is a bit,” Jack said. “Remember when you thought magic was something gits in top hats did on a stage?”

When Pete took the stone, their fingers touched, and Jack’s were icy cold. The prickle of his talent this time felt like a static shock, not like the usual warm awakening of nerve endings his touch brought to her talent. The owl-eyed woman’s words jumped into Pete’s head. He’s not the Jack you know.

“You all right, luv?” Jack said. “I really was just taking the piss. I know you’re not a sorcerer.”

“I’m fucking exhausted and my best friend is being held hostage by necromancer,” Pete told him. “Forgive me if I’m not turning cartwheels.”

“Pete…” Jack said, but cut himself off, his jaw ticking. “Forget it.”

Pete let the stone dangle from her fingertips, holding her arm steady, breathing in and out through her nose to still her pulse and her nerves. She felt the Black tugging on her, trickling through the conduit in her, a warm and yet frozen prickle all up and down her skin. Under her, the stone began to swing, the twine tugging back and forth against her fingers.

Quickly as it had come to her, it was gone again. When she’d hexed the zombie, she’d grabbed hold of the magic, dug her fingers into it and scraped furrows from its flesh. Now it was as if she were trying to scoop a live goldfish out of a bowl of grease.

“Shit,” she muttered. Jack’s fingers brushed the back of her neck, resting on the nape. He’d moved behind her, his body bringing no warmth with it. Pete shivered.

“Relax,” he murmured, his breath on her ear. Whiskey and cigarettes permeated her nostrils. “You have it,” Jack murmured, his fingers grazing her skin. “You’re so close.”

Pete felt the floor drop away from her. Touching Jack was usually enough to make her dizzy. Touching him when the magic was up filled up her reservoirs to overflowing and started an enormous pressure against her brain. The Weir knew what needed to be done, even if Pete didn’t in her waking mind, and it wanted to drink Jack dry.

The pendulum swung in concentric circles, the twine burning her fingers with friction. Pete shuddered, Jack’s proximity and his fingers on her skin raising goosebumps.

She shouldn’t be so close. She shouldn’t be letting his talent fill her. When mages and Weirs allowed each other too close, terrible, terrible things could happen.

Yet she couldn’t pull away, and she began to see, as the pendulum swung, the lines on the board move and change under her gaze. They crawled and twined back on one another, formed dragons and thorns and twisted thickets of spellcraft, writ small on the board. They reached out for Pete, psychic feelers inviting her to pick out the hidden picture in layer after layer of ink and varnish. She saw, with Jack’s power feeding her, and watched the layers of the Black peeling away before her. There was London, stinking, screaming London full of its smoke and rivers and the iron veins of the tube deep beneath the earth. The graveyards and the forgotten souls, passing through the thick yellow mist of the Thames.

Still she watched, more and more filling in before her gaze, the ghosts and the things beyond the psychic clamor of the city, the slithering black spaces between the worlds. She saw what Jack saw and she spun onward, weightless, chasing a bright ember in the blackness populated only by screaming, clawing spirits that had lost their way between the Black and the land of the dead, sucked into the singularity of nothing that was the in-between.

Gerard Carver’s soul was on fire, and as Pete drew closer she could hear him scream, over the howl of the Black. Before him rose the great iron gates of the Underworld, their spires poking into an orange sky, a sky reflecting the flames of Hell.

The Bleak Gates. Pete had never been so close, never felt their overwhelming draw. In the darkness around her, things were moving. They winked across Carver’s soul like owls across the face of the moon. Pete reached out, sure that she could touch him, and then the darkness closed in, and she felt herself fall. Toward the Bleak Gates, toward the Underworld, a living soul bright amidst the silver contrails of the dead drawn to its magnetic pole. Past the Bleak Gates, past the dead, and straight down to the lowest realm, where the demons waiting beyond the turrets of Hell welcomed her living flesh with hungry cries.

She came back with a scream, realizing she was flat on her back, staring up at the flat ceiling. Jack leaned over her, pressing his fingers into her neck. “Breathe, Petunia.”

“I saw…” Pete tried. Her throat was raw, parched dry, and she swallowed hard. “I saw Carver.” The desert dryness was still on her skin, the barest kiss of the air of Hell, and Pete brushed herself all over, as if she were trying to rid her skin of a swarm of insects.

Jack pulled her up and onto the sofa, putting a glass of whiskey in her hands. Pete drank it down, and the hot burn of the cheap liquor finally helped the trembling in her hands subside. “We have to stop doing that,” she told Jack.

“Scrying?” he said, taking the bottle for himself. Pete shook her head.

“Touching.”

Jack grimaced. “If that’s what you’d like, luv, try wearing shirts with collars for a change.”

Pete let the remark pass without fetching him a slap. She was wrung out. “Carver was somewhere dark near the Bleak Gates. Full of screaming.” Those screams echoed in her head, and would echo for a long time, Pete had a feeling, whenever she shut her eyes at night. They were the screams of the lost, of minds ripped so far asunder they could never be put back together.

“Thin spaces,” Jack said. “The places where things that fall through the cracks end up.” He set the bottle down. There was barely an inch left. “The good god-fearing types call it purgatory.”

Pete shivered. “I can still feel it all over me.”

“If Carver’s close enough that you saw the Gates, we’ve got precisely shit for time,” Jack said. “Won’t be long before something or other snaps him up, or he gets caught up with the dead and the things that live beyond the Gates tear him to bits. They don’t take kindly to trespassers.”

“And Naughton’s got to have others looking,” Pete said. “I really doubt he’d put his faith in me.”

“There’s only a few ways to visit the thin spaces,” Jack said, “and the only one that makes sense for something flesh and bone is to be near death. I doubt Naughton’s brigade of matched thugs is keen to mess with that sort of acid trip.”

Pete didn’t ask if Jack had visited the howling void where Carver resided during any of his near-death experiences—she had a feeling if he had, it probably wouldn’t be a topic of conversation that’d win her any favors. “We’re fucked, aren’t we?” she said instead. Jack killed the whiskey bottle and set it on the carpet by his boot.

“Likely.” He seemed content to let that sit, but Pete stood up, pacing the track that usually belonged to Jack, when he was thinking or simply too wound up to sleep.

“I guess we just have to be game for it,” she said. “The thin spaces.” She’d never thought it would really work, but she owed it to Ollie and her mum to at least try and break them out of what they’d gotten into. If taking a return trip to that place was in the cards, Pete supposed it would be a deal easier than attending Ollie’s funeral.

“No,” Jack said instantly. “No. I went along with this until we found where he was, but I’m putting me fucking foot down hard. Nobody who wants to keep on breathing in this world goes to that one, at least alive.”

“Oh, very well,” Pete said. “Since you have all the answers, then, how else do you propose the two of us wrest Ollie back from the bosom of a dozen necromancers with bad attitudes and prevent Nick Naughton from turning this city into something out of the Book of Revelation?”

Jack slammed his hand on the table. “Do I look like I have all the bloody answers, Petunia? Is that what you think?” He sat back and rubbed the spot between his eyes furiously. Pete recognized the telltale sign that Jack’s sight was bothering him. “Look,” Jack said. “I like Heath well enough. He’s a good bloke, and I’ll help him any way I can, but I’m not starting another ritual that ends with you, me, Ollie, or the whole bloody Kingston Trio of us in A&E or more likely, on a fucking slab.”

The patience Pete had held on a tenuous tether snapped, and she shouted. “What then, Jack? Give up? Ask Naughton nicely to please repent and change his ways? Or roll over and let him do what he likes? Because that’s not on my list of options.”

She went to the front door of the flat, jabbing her arms into her jacket, wishing she could drive her fist into wall, slap Jack—something. “You stay here and mope if you like. I’m going to find someone who can actually help Ollie.”

Jack jumped up from the sofa. “Pete, wait.”

She ignored him, snatching up her keys and unlocking the deadbolt. Jack closed the space between them and slammed the door shut again, barring it with his arm. “I said wait, goddamn it! I’m not finished talking to you!”

Pete rattled the door, which did precisely no good against Jack’s new bulk. “The time has well and truly fucking passed, Jack. I’m done talking.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” he asked her. “The Black isn’t like the daylight world. Things don’t always work out like they should. Bad things happen to good blokes for absolutely no fucking reason at all, and it’s shit, but you pick up and you get on with things.”

Pete stopped trying for the door, and slumped against it instead. Standing was still a dodgy proposition. “That’s my world, too, Jack. If you’d spent any time in it you’d realize that.” She spread her hands. “You said near death is the easiest way to find Carver. What are the others?”

“Oh no,” Jack said. “That’s not an option, trust me.”

“I’m not stupid enough to swallow a handful of pills and hope for the best,” Pete said. “So spill it, Winter, ’fore I beat it out of you.”

Jack shoved his hand through his hair, but he let go of the door and conjured a fag, lighting it before he talked. “There’s a flower, a kind of orchid, that puts you under, down deep to near dead. Very Timothy Leary, lick the face of Jesus type of shit, but it will put you in the twilight long enough to dip into the thin spaces.”

“Brilliant,” Pete said. “I’m in.”

“Well, if it were that simple, every git with long flowing hair and a book on Wicca would be doing it, wouldn’t they?” Jack said. “Your soul leaves your physical form, Pete. You’re vulnerable to anything floating in the in-between, and if you don’t have the correct words to bring yourself back, well…” He made a poof motion with his hands. “You’re so much dust on the boot of the universe, aren’t you?”

“Don’t come if you’re scared.” She tossed it off lightly, but she felt the ball of unrest grow in her stomach, the one that had led to nothing but trouble in the past. But what was her life these days except bad luck and trouble? Doing the ritual and downing some toxic flowers couldn’t make it any worse.

“Right, I’m warning you off tripping to the brink of both physical and psychic death because I’m scared of the boogeyman.” Jack’s lip curled up, and the flash of smugness made him look a bit like his old self before it faded. “I’ve been dead before, Pete. It’s not one of the things that scares me at the moment.” He reached out and ran a thumb over her cheek, bringing his new cold with him. “ ’Sides, who’s going to help you out of trouble this time if I don’t ride along?”

“Lawrence,” Pete said.

“Lawrence?” Jack barked a laugh. “Luv, Lawrence would piss himself at the very thought of what you’re asking me. He’s a good little boy.”

“He’s got more balls than you do right at the moment,” Pete said. “I’m doing it, Jack. You can come along or not.” With that, she did open the door.

She heard Jack sigh “Fuck me all the days of my life,” and then he was walking beside her to the lift.

CHAPTER 24

They crossed into the Black and found the Lament, but Jack hesitated at the door. “I think you should do this bit alone.”

“For the love of all that’s holy,” Pete said. “Have you got bloody stage fright?”

Jack grimaced. “My little sojourn to the pit hasn’t exactly made me popular with people like these, in case you didn’t realize.” He pointed at the door. “Look, just go in and tell Mosswood I need to talk to him. He’ll understand.”

“Maybe we should fit you for a giant nappy,” Pete said. “Perhaps warm you a bottle.”

“Will you just fucking get this over with?” Jack demanded. He wasn’t smiling, not on his mouth and not in his eyes, which stared daggers of ice through Pete.

She ducked her head. “Sorry. Not like anyone’s making you be a twat,” she muttered, pushing the pub door open. The Lament, never a rowdy place, fell dead silent as the punters caught sight of her. She saw Mosswood at his usual table, glass halfway to his lips. Taking a step forward felt like stepping into an electrical storm. The magic in the Lament was up, and it wasn’t friendly. Everything on Pete that could prickle stood on end. She kept her chin up and her shoulders square, passing quickly through the tables to Mosswood. A storm of whispers and muttering grew up around her, a rising tide of hostility that held an almost physical weight. If she’d still been a copper, she would’ve called for backup, but her backup was skulking outside, smoking and too much of a twist to come in himself.

“Hello, Ian,” she said. She started to sit down but Mosswood shot up, grabbing her by the wrist and pulling her within kissing distance.

“Are you completely insane?” he hissed.

“Not that I know of,” Pete said. “But I suppose if I have gone insane, I’d think everything was normal, wouldn’t I?”

Mosswood didn’t smile. “I know, Petunia. Where is he?”

“Outside,” Pete said. “For some reason he got the notion he wouldn’t be welcomed with open fucking arms.”

“Idiot,” Mosswood snarled, not clarifying whether he was referring to her or Jack. He made for the door, still holding her. Pete was forced to follow him or have her arm dislocated.

“Oi!” Pete shouted, digging her heels in. “You’re hurting me, Ian.”

Mosswood stopped walking and let go of her, causing Pete to slam into him. “You stupid bint!” he shouted. “How dare you come in here as if everything were up in roses!” Lower he muttered, “Keep walking if you want to get out of here alive. You have no idea what that fool Winter has let you in for.”

Pete gaped, but she forced herself to keep going, throwing a few more token curses for show as Mosswood hustled her outside and then distanced himself, fixing his cuffs and collar and shaking himself like a cat with its fur going the wrong way.

“I’ve seen some displays of rampant stupidity in my time,” he told Pete. “But that one nears the top of my list.”

“I’m still not seeing why walking into my local was so offensive,” Pete told him.

“You walked in knowing full well you were with him.” Mosswood jerked his chin at Jack. “And that, my dear, is not a tenable place to be at the moment.”

“Ignoring my popularity contest,” Jack said. “I need to speak with you, Ian.”

“I should hope so.” Mosswood sniffed. “Though it did take you long enough. Jack Winter, the man not content to cheat death once, but a matched pair of miracles. Can’t even be bothered to drop in on his old mates. I see how it is.”

“Need your help,” Jack said. Mosswood rolled his eyes heavenward.

“Of course you do. Why else would you turn up, unless you wanted something, Jack?” He pressed his palms together and pointed them at Pete. “I implore you, whatever he’s tangled you in this time, back away. You’ve enough trouble on your own head as it is, getting into that spat with Nicholas Naughton.”

“Nicholas Naughton can fuck himself with his gran’s tea service for all I care,” Pete snapped. “I need your help, Ian. We need your help. I know you’ve seen what’s happening in the Black, and if you think a bunch of necromancers coming out in the lead will help things, well. Maybe you’ve been sitting in that pub for too many centuries.”

Mosswood drew himself up, his presence all at once outgrowing his sad tweed jacket and raggedy trousers, dark eyes flaring with power. “I will not be cajoled to throw down my gauntlet on any side. I don’t concern myself with a rumpus between a few humans slinging magic they don’t understand.”

Jack let out a laugh, short and gravelly as a smoker’s cough. “You and I both know that’s utter shit, Ian. Before you went soft and poncey and started dressing like Harry Potter’s creepy uncle, they used to sing songs about your … involvement … in mortal affairs.”

“Even if I were inclined to help you, Jack,” Mosswood said, “I can’t. This isn’t my fight. When the dust clears, and the smoke’s gone, and the blood has soaked back into the earth, I expect I’ll continue on much as I have.” He made a motion to go back to the pub. “You, on the other hand … you’ve never been one of the survivors, Jack.”

Jack muttered a string of curses and then kicked the side of the Lament, hard. “Forget it,” he told Pete. “He’s just another Fae fuck cowering behind his mystique. See how he likes a world made of cinders, with all his bloody trees—and followers, for that matter—a pile of ashes.”

“Lovely imagery,” said Mosswood. “If you’re quite through with your speech, I was in the middle of a pleasant evening.”

“You really think you can just sit in your pub while this storm passes you by?” Pete asked Mosswood. Her voice bounced off the alley, rolled back and forth through the ripples of the Black. “You think that you’re going to walk back out of that bloody pub after Naughton finishes what he started and the world will be exactly the same?” She took Mosswood by the shoulder and turned him to face her. “It won’t be. I’ve seen it in the daylight world, you know. Not magic, but drugs and guns and gangs. Naughton’s the tip of the iceberg. Under the water, there are other things. Dark days are coming, Ian, and you won’t be immune. Not you or any of your kind. Not Jack and certainly not fucking me. I’m not the type to lie down and die. With or without your help, I’m still going to try and stop this from happening.”

Mosswood gave her a withering glance. “Take your hands off me, Miss Caldecott.”

“I think you’re afraid that what I’m saying is absolutely true,” Pete told him, “and that when the blood and the dust settles, you’ll be just as dead as the rest of us.”

Mosswood stared at her for a long time. His eyes were dark and green, the color of a deep forest where no light could penetrate and ancient things without eyes slithered beneath the roots of trees. “By staying with Winter, you’ve signed your own death note,” he said at last. “He’s not the man you think he is, Petunia. He never has been.”

“You’ll either help us or you won’t,” Pete said. “You can bang on all day, but I don’t have to listen.”

Mosswood dropped his chin to his chest. “Dare I ask what it is you even want from me?”

“Nightsong orchid,” Jack said. “I’d get it from my usual supplier, but my lines have dried up. Me being dead and all.”

Mosswood pointed at Pete. “You know what nightsong orchid is used for, I take it?”

“She does,” Jack said. “This whole fucking circus is her idea. And that’s the other half. You bringing me back when I’ve gotten what I went under for.”

“Oh, is that all,” Mosswood said. “I’m going back inside.”

“Please, Ian!” Pete said. She didn’t dare grab him again, but she went after him to the pub door. “It is my idea,” she said. “It’s the only one I’ve got. I’d make excuses as to why, but know you don’t care, so will you help us or not?”

The green man took his hands off the door. “I suppose I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t at least see how badly this turns out.” He gestured to the alley, pulling his sport coat around him. “Lead the way, Miss Caldecott, to our damnation.”

CHAPTER 25

The shop Mosswood led them to was the only lit window in a deserted close, golden lamplight spilling in a slow burn on the dark cobbles outside. The buildings around it were ramshackle, window glass destroyed, in one case merely a pile of rubble. Far off, Pete thought she caught the wail of a siren before it faded into nothing.

Time and memory were fluid in the Black, and she thought she’d never really get used to walking from a nineteenth-century pub to Blitz-era London in the space of a few blocks.

Mosswood knocked, and they waited. Several heartbeats went by, Pete’s breath misting the chill air. Now that she had a moment, in the stillness, with Jack standing silent beside her, all of the doubts she’d shrugged off in the heat of Jack reappearing came crawling back, like rats and roaches after the lights went out.

She didn’t stand a hope against Naughton. He was a necromancer and a psychopath to boot. She didn’t stand a hope of hiding from the Hecate, even if she was never going to carry out their bloody orders. And even if she somehow got one over on Naughton and managed to evade the owl-eyed woman, Ethan Morningstar would be waiting for her with open arms and a pair of pliers.

But there was still Ollie. Still Jack. And because of them, she had to at least try. If she went down kicking, it at least wouldn’t be a bad death. Better than her father’s, pale and wretched in a hospital oncology ward. Better than Jack’s, being led into the fold of a demon while it whispered in his willing ear.

She straightened her spine as the door opened, though she realized she needn’t have bothered, because the woman before them was so stooped Pete had a good six inches on her. Pete wasn’t tall by anyone’s standards, including her own, so the crone was verging into comical territory.

“What?” she demanded crossly. “Can’t you read?”

Pete noticed there was a small notecard jammed crookedly in one of the door’s panes: HRS 11–7 DAILY. SHUT HOLIDAYS.

“Now, Irina,” Mosswood said. “Is that any way to talk to your dear friend?”

“Friend?” The woman peered up at him, lip curling back to reveal an impressively white and sharp set of dentures jammed into her wrinkled red lips. “You’re no friend of mine, Green Knight, any more than the Inland Revenue or the bloody clap.”

Jack let out a snort over Pete’s shoulder. “I think I like this one, Ian. Ex-girlfriend?”

Ian shot Jack the sort of glare Pete had seen often as a teenager, when she’d tried to sneak in late and Connor had caught her dressed in short skirts and smelling of lager and smoke.

“You,” Irina said, catching sight of Jack. “You’re no better, are you? Just the crow hag’s rent boy, bringing bad black trouble like rot wherever you go.”

“To be fair,” Jack said. “ ’M more like a high-priced escort. Talent like mine’s too good for streetcorners.”

“Go away,” said Irina. “The lot of you.”

Pete, seeing she was about to slam the door, said the phrase beloved of pushers the world over. “We can pay you.”

Irina hesitated, peering up at her. Her face was framed by a red scarf, as if she were merely an overgrown doll. Her eyes, surrounded by crow’s feet, were nearly clouded over. Irina was blind as a bat, but she moved with the alacrity of a school-aged athlete and snatched Pete’s wrist.

“Ohhh,” she cooed. “So we’ve brought a proper good and true vestal virgin with us to sweeten the pot, have we?”

“I’m not very good,” Pete said. “And I’m hardly a virgin. Sorry to disappoint.”

Irina carried on stroking as if Pete hadn’t spoken. “Her,” she said. “You two wait out here.”

“Like Hell we will,” Jack said.

Pete put a hand on Jack’s chest, feeling angry breath under the scarred leather. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not like this is my first time on a buy.”

Jack’s jaw ticked, but he only favored Irina with a glare. “Anything happens, you won’t have a corner black and secret enough to hide from me.”

Irina muttered something that sounded as if it were Russian and defintely derogatory before dragging Pete inside. “Your man seems to think he’s in charge.” She chuckled.

“He often does,” Pete said, and yanked her hand free of Irina’s grasp. “No offense,” she said, when the old woman’s face crinkled. “You’re a bit clammy.”

Irina began pulling sacks and boxes from one of the overflowing shelves on the shop wall. “What you need? Love potion? Fae nectar? We got some hydroponic hash my son Mikel grows. Mellow and sweet. Keeps you dreaming even when you’re awake.”

“If I wanted pot,” Pete said, “don’t you think I’d find an easier way to get it?”

Irina stopped throwing her merchandise around. “Let’s see your money, then.”

“Let’s see if you have what I’m after,” Pete countered. The first rule of illicit transactions was not to appear eager. Don’t flash your cash. Don’t look vulnerable, or strung out, or more trouble than you’re worth. Above all, don’t act like a cop.

“All right, all right,” Irina said, flapping her skirt and settling into an armchair at least as old as she was, and twice as decrepit. Her accent went from being raspy East End to a carefully educated diction, her syllables a bit too round to be native to British soil. “Obviously, you’re not here to waste my time. I’ll bring the usual dance to a halt, and you tell me what’s so important you bring the Green Man and that to my door.”

“Fair enough,” Pete said. “I’m after nightsong orchid.”

Irina sat forward, painted eyebrows wiggling. “That’s hardly a gateway drug.”

“I’m not a gateways kind of girl,” Pete told her. “Can you get it or are you wasting my time?”

“Of course I can.” Irina sniffed. “But I’d dearly love to know why you want it.”

“I’d love to know why you pretend to be a crusty old Romany with a Cheapside accent,” Pete told her. “But I’m polite enough to figure out it’s not my fucking business.”

Irina started to laugh. “A little thing like you can’t afford to be acting like she’s tougher than a coffin nail,” she said. “Somebody’s going to cut that smile right off your pretty face.”

She rose and went to the beaded curtain that hid the back room from Pete’s view. “Harvesting what you want is specialized. Wait here.”

Pete did as she said, and when the curtain clacked closed, she took the opportunity to look around the room. Aside from the tarot spread—in no particular order, just all of the most terrifying of the Major Arcana arranged to scare customers—there was the usual jumble Pete would expect from a second-rate magic shop. But it seemed like so much clutter carefully obscuring the face of something else, like a stage set. Irina’s outrageous costume alone would tip off any respectable mage that the place wasn’t worth their time.

She went to the shelves, moving things aside until she could see the wall. The plaster was scarred and carved with black markings, and Pete moved more boxes and clutter. A cigar box full of gris-gris, resplendent with beads and feathers, bounced off her foot and scattered its contents across the boards.

“Shit,” Pete muttered. The markings were clear now. They weren’t the harsh symbols that covered Gerard Carver, but they weren’t pleasant to stare at either. Pete couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d seen the swooping marks and lettering somewhere before. They matched a silver-tongued language, one that humans in the Black steered well clear of.

“It’s Fae.” Irina came out of the back room holding a bell jar, within which rested soil and a tangle of green stems topped by one perfect silver flower.

“Is it?” Pete said. Of course. She’d read in one of Jack’s books that Fae language was never spoken aloud by men, in hopes of avoiding the sort of curse that got you a donkey’s head or napping for a hundred years.

“If you’re looking for Fae orchids, you knew that already,” Irina said.

“I’ve seen it before,” Pete admitted. “Not quite this much. What is it?”

“You ask a lot of bloody questions,” Irina fussed. “You a cop?”

“Used to be,” Pete said. “Now, I just want to take my silly plant and go.”

Irina went to a set of apothecary drawers behind the shop counter and gestured her over. “You sure you know what you’re about, tripping on this shit, little woman? You really think you can swim back out of whatever dark cave it is you’re diving into, when you’re done?”

Pete spread her hands. “What I do with it is my business.”

“And I suppose you being tangled up with Jack Winter hasn’t got any bearing on you wanting this little darling whatsoever,” Irina said. It was casual, but there was bite behind the words. She drew out a baggie, the sort expensive markets kept out for measuring spices into, and a pair of delicate surgical scissors with tips like silver fangs.

“Jack is also my business,” Pete said. She knew it was bad form to smack an old woman, but she had a feeling perhaps this time she’d get a pass.

“I am indentured to a Fae,” Irina said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I traffic their plants and whatever else they care to have humans imbibe, and in return they protect the shop and its neutral ground for anything nasty. Really, a very snug arrangement. I wish I’d had it when I was a girl living in Dolgoprudny. The monsters there were men, but monsters all the same.”

“This is fascinating,” Pete said, “really, but I’m in a bit of a rush.”

Irina handed her a pair of sound-dampening earphones, the sort you’d wear to stand by a jet engine. “The song can drive you insane,” she said. “If you’re not someone it knows.”

“It knows us?” Pete looked suspiciously at the orchid under the bell jar.

“Knows me,” Irina said. Pete clamped the apparatus around her ears and watched Irina coo as she lifted the jar off. Pete didn’t hear anything, just the beat of her heart, but she smelled the scent, far too sweet with an undertone of something rotten. She could choke on it, as Irina stroked the stamens of the orchid, lips moving, almost as if she were distracting the thing before she put the scissors against the stem and lopped the flower neatly off.

She waved at Pete, and Pete removed the headgear. She was glad to see Irina package the flower with the acumen of a chemist, taping it shut and cutting off the scent before Pete passed out. “There,” she said. “I’ll even give you the police discount.”

“How kind,” Pete said, as Irina accepted her wad of notes and rooted below the counter for change.

“Not really,” she said. Pete watched her rise with a pistol in her petite, knotty fist.

Pete lifted her hands slowly, so that Irina wouldn’t get the wrong idea. “Something I said?”

“If you think,” Irina gritted, “that I’m letting you walk out of here and give the crow-mage the power to walk between worlds, then you’re sorely fucking mistaken, miss.”

“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Pete said quietly. “Jack isn’t the one…”

“Winter is an obscenity,” said Irina. “A whore of the blood gods that would tear the Black to shreds and suck the marrow from its bones. I might serve the Fae but I would never serve them, and never allow him the power this holds.”

Pete had always been crap at negotiations. The whole diffuse the situation, calm the hostage taker, win/win situation shite had never been her forté. If she wanted insanity and confused rambling, she’d call her sister.

“Gun’s a bit pedestrian, don’t you think?” she said to Irina. The old woman grinned at her.

“You’re not made of stone. Or Kevlar.”

“That I’m not,” Pete had to agree. “Look, why don’t we just back this up, you’ll listen this time when I tell you this orchid is not Jack’s doing, and we’ll part ways with no harm done?”

Irina sneered. Her wrinkled forearm was bare from holding out the gun, and Pete saw an Orthodox cross tattooed to the inside. It rippled when her wasted muscles flexed. “The harm’s already done.” She took the safety off the pistol. It was a nickle-plated .22 with a mother of pearl grip, a lady’s gun. Exactly the sort of piece Pete would expect from a crazy old woman running a magic shop.

“I don’t know what you think you know,” she told Irina, keeping her voice calm and steady, just like in her training. “But it was my idea to get the orchid, and my idea to go to the Underworld. Jack’s innocent.”

“Jack Winter is not innocent,” Irina told her. She looked as if a gust of wind would snap her in half, but her grip on the gun never slackened and her aim never wavered.

“Who among us is?” Pete said. This had all gone pear-shaped. Irina wasn’t budging, and the utter lack of feeling in her face told Pete she’d shoot her if it came to that. Irina was a hard old bitch, and whatever dusty Russian mafia uncle had taught her had done a bang-up job.

Pete made the decision to finish this at almost the same moment the hex was on her lips, and she felt the peculiar tug in her gut as it sprang across the space between her and Irina. “Sciotha.”

It didn’t work like it had with the zombie. Nor like when Jack did it, flinging his talent in a wide, sharp arc to wrap around his target and take them to ground. Irina’s own magic, or perhaps the Fae writing all around them, caused the hex to run wild, smashing a row of the apothecary jars behind Irina’s head. It did snatch at the woman’s gun arm, though, and Pete relied on the fact that she wasn’t eighty and a raving nutter to do the rest.

She jumped the counter, knocked the pistol down to Irina’s side, and put her fist hard into the old woman’s face. Cartilage crushed under her knuckles and the small, gravelly crunch was nearly drowned out by Irina’s scream.

Pete tried to shake the pain from her fist as she watched Irina roll around on the floor behind the counter. She went for the pistol again, but Pete kicked it out of the way. “Give me the fucking orchid,” she said. “And I’ll be going.”

Irina stopped thrashing about and went limp. Blood dribbled from her nose. Pete crouched and twisted her head to the left. “Don’t choke on your own blood, you stupid bitch,” she sighed. Irina curled into a ball, spitting more Russian curses. Pete left her where she was and plucked the orchid from the countertop, shoving it inside her jacket. Ollie better appreciate what she was going through for him. Punching old ladies in the face was above and beyond the fucking call of friendship and cameraderie.

She was nearly to the door when Irina spoke up. “His living again has made things so much worse. We thought we might be safe when Belial took him, but now … you have no idea.”

Pete rubbed her forehead. The stuffy shop and the flower smell were coming at her in waves, urging her to simply lie down and sleep for about a decade. “And what are you? Fucking Batman?”

“The Fae see things that mortals never will,” Irina rasped. “I keep my company with them, with other things older and wiser than humans, and all said the same—it’s a blessing the crow-mage is dead. And when he came back they told me something else.”

“What did they tell you?” Pete asked, though the knot in her stomach knew the answer.

“They told me that the end times are coming,” Irina said, voice thick with blood. “And that the crow-mage and his Weir the cause.”

CHAPTER 26

Pete shut the door softly behind her when she exited Irina’s shop. Her fist hurt, and her head was throbbing. How many hours had she been awake? Too bloody many to bother counting. It would only depress her.

Jack flicked away his fag when he saw her and lifted himself from the spot where he’d leaned against the derelict flats, the half-wall behind him showing a little bit of pinkish London night sky. “Old woman talk your ear off?” he said.

“We had a difference of opinion,” Pete told him. She shoved her scraped knuckles into her pocket.

“We should go,” Mosswood said. “Having that bag of Fae foulness is like having a duffle full of hundred-pound notes. Every thieving thing in the Black will be down on us.” He walked to the end of the close and ducked through a ruined doorway.

They emerged from the Black across the road from the Smithfield Market, its ornate tri-colored iron gates shut, streetlamps on either side spitting in the mist. The Smithfield Market was a working meat market, and if you were an early riser or a tourist, you could wander among the bloody slabs of beef and barking vendors in the predawn light, the scent of blood and flesh curling up in your nose along with fog and damp. Pete saw a shadow detach from the gates as she, Jack, and Mosswood turned toward the Farringdon tube station, long coat and slouched hat making him little more than a memory of a shape in the fog. She flicked two fingers at the Order thug and kept walking.

Jack and Mosswood had two topics of conversation on the tube ride and the walk to the flat—whether Mosswood was a twat and whether Jack knew what he was doing. “You’re really going through with this?” Mosswood asked Jack for what had to be the tenth time.

“Fuck me, again?” Jack said. “Ian, I’ve had experience with both tripping and dying, so please, just sit yourself over there and make sure nothing hideously violates my comatose body.”

Mosswood settled himself on the sofa with a grunt. “For the one who dragged me into this, you’re not being very hospitable.”

Pete caught Jack’s eye over Mosswood’s head and said, “Tea, Ian?” When Mosswood nodded, Pete gestured Jack into the kitchen. He wasn’t going to like her question, had dismissed her before, but Pete had begun to feel a weight on her, the sort she’d get at the Met when a case was about to go sideways. She’d spent enough time among liars to realize when she was being lied to, and she lit the burner under the kettle and then faced Jack. “Aren’t you going to ask me what’s wrong?”

Jack shrugged. “Is something?”

Pete slammed the mugs onto the countertop. “You know damn well, Jack. Ever since you rose from the fucking grave my life has been nothing except death threats and sinister figures nipping at my heels.” She met his eyes. Jack’s eyes were devoid of life, flat as a stagnant pond, as they’d been ever since he had returned. They were victim’s eyes, soldier’s eyes, witnessing the same trauma over and over again, knowing it was coming but unable to look away.

“What happened?” Pete said. “I know I said I wouldn’t ask, but if we’re doing this, we might not make it back. At least not me. I need to know if you really don’t remember, Jack. How you came back.” Why you came back. What happened in Hell to make the Hecate order me to murder you on sight.

“I’m not talking about this.” Jack picked up a mug and rooted in the cabinets for the tea. “Not now and not ever. Not with you.”

Pete grabbed his arm, and turned him to face her. “No. You tell me what the fuck is going on.” She voiced what she’d seen in his face. “Something that you’re not telling me is under there, and whatever it is, I want to know. Now, please.”

Jack looked down at her hand, back at her face. “Unless you’re planning a quick jerk before the festivities, get your hands off me.”

His voice was cold, and Pete felt a stab low in her gut at the fact that his expression never even changed. Jack Winter is not the man you knew.

“What happened to you, Jack?” Pete whispered. “Who are you?”

He put his hand against her face, tender for a split second and then his thumb and fingers tightened along her jaw, pulled her close enough to almost brush his lips with hers, and Pete felt her flesh twinge where his finger-pads would leave marks come the morning. “You don’t want to know,” Jack whispered, as the shriek of the kettle overtook Pete’s senses. “So for your own continued good health, stop asking.”

After a moment of sharing breath, Pete brought her hand up and smacked Jack hard on the cheek. “You arse. Let go of me.” He did, and Pete felt her cheek where she’d have finger-shaped marks. “That really hurt.”

“Life hurts,” Jack said. “Surprised you haven’t figured that out by now. Or do you save your brilliant insights for things you know nothing about, like my time in Hell?”

“Oh, very well, fuck you,” Pete snapped. “When I’ve gotten Ollie out of harm’s way, you can just pack up and move along. I don’t want your shit piled on me.”

“Then maybe you should stop opening your legs and pining after me,” Jack said. Pete grabbed the mug from his hand, resisting the urge to spill it on his crotch, and dunked a teabag for Mosswood.

“Don’t worry. As soon as I’ve got Ollie back from Naughton, you and I are done.” She moved to take the tea to the sitting room. “You’re not the same. You never would have said that to me six months ago.”

“I’ve been to Hell, Pete,” Jack said. “You try it, and see if you’re still a ray of fucking sunshine.”

Pete took Ian his tea rather than respond. Jack had a lot of enemies in the Black, people who’d breathed easier when he was secreted away in the pit. They couldn’t be happy he was back, and they would spread any rumor that would get more of the Black wanting him gone all over again. Like Irina, with her stone expression, and the Hecate, with her incessant, unchanging order. Pete couldn’t ignore the signs, no matter how badly she might want to.

Something was wrong about Jack, and his coming back hadn’t been a reprieve. His appearing back in her life wasn’t fortune. Quite the opposite. Jack’s secret, whatever it was, had the Black in an uproar, and because of that, Pete knew it could only be a few things. Not possession, but perhaps something else. Belial wouldn’t need Jack’s body if Jack gave his soul over voluntarily.

Had he cut a deal with Belial? Here on a demon’s errand, tempered and remade in the fires of Hell into the one thing the old Jack would have spit on without a second thought? Jack as a sorcerer was a terrifying enough thought. Jack as a sorcerer with powers gifted to him by one of the generals of Hell didn’t even bear contemplating.

But right now, Ollie came first. He couldn’t defend himself. Pete could handle Jack Winter. And if she couldn’t, at least nobody else would be dead because of it.

“You should probably lie down,” Jack said, coming in behind her, as if nothing had happened in the kitchen. Pete’s face was still hot where his fingers had gouged her, as if she’d stood too close to a fireplace.

“On the floor?” she said. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d swept the sitting room.

“Either that or keel over where you stand once you’ve dosed yourself.” Jack stretched out on the carpet. “Your choice.”

Pete stripped off her jacket and lay down next to him on the threadbare Persian, foot to head. Jack sat up and chalked a crooked circle around them, into the pile. “Bit of binding, he said. “So our souls don’t fly straight up the fucking chimney.” He handed the chalk to Mosswood. “Anything dodgy happens, you close that bastard and pull us straight back. Not more than a few hours in any case. This shit will eat holes in your brain.”

“I have done a ritual before, you know.” Ian crouched stiffly next to Pete. He pressed a clump of the sticky silver flower into her palm. “Chew, and spit it out before you go under,” he said. “Don’t choke.”

“You do realize this is completely fucking mad,” Jack said, before he shoved a clump of the stuff into his own mouth and chewed.

Pete bit down on her share of the orchid. It didn’t taste like much at first, as if she were outside on Guy Fawkes and had breathed in a taste of cordite from the fireworks. A cold tingle stole over her tongue, and Pete tasted rusty iron that spilled over into the taste of blood, and down her throat with a grasp like freezing water. She managed to turn her head and retch the vile thing out, as Mosswood had instructed, before blackness crawled across her vision, and her heart roared in her ears like a tube train passing by.

Pete felt as if she were stripped of skin and muscle and bone and only her nerves were left, throbbing. Her heart thudded like she was still running suicides at Hendon with the other PCs. She could almost smell the mud, her own sweat, breath razoring in and out in time with the thump-thump-thump of her heart as her boots dug into the peat and her own cold sweat wet down her clothes. Could almost see the weak dawn light that cast everything cold and blue while she and the other recruits ran the course. Could feel the sharp stab of exhaustion in her side, letting her know she’d vomit the moment she stopped running.

Pete felt every inch of her body begin to turn numb. It started in her fingertips, as if she’d gone outside on a cold day and forgotten mittens. The numbness crawled straight to her heart, and Pete felt her pulse slow to nearly nil.

Just before her vision bled to solid black, she felt Jack’s fingertips touch hers, a tingle of power that rippled up her arm like electricity. She squeezed his hand, and it was the last thing she felt before the Black reached up with its great dark hand and pulled her down.