Soul Trade

15.

Pete stayed perfectly still. No breath passed her lips, and if she could, she would have stilled the blood in her veins. “Are you sure?” That was a silly question. Demon should have been her first guess, given what Morwenna had told her. Besides, what else could make a broken body ambulatory, give voice to a silent tongue and sight to ruined eyes?

Actual demonic possession was rare; because most demons strong enough to possess were strong enough to mold their own human shapes. Pete had never seen a demon in a human body with her own eyes. It was harder than it sounded—you had to wrestle the living into submission, subvert their will, and ride their body like a bucking horse.

Of course, Pete supposed, picking on catatonic children made the whole game a lot easier.

“Sure as I can be,” Jack said. “I’m not gonna get close enough to poke and prod them, that’s for sure, but I don’t know any other nasty that can do what they’re doing.” He was pale, and small beads of sweat had collected in the hollows of his cheeks and across his upper lip. With his second sight, Jack saw the children for what they really were—hollowed-out bits of flesh containing something that had never been human and never would be.

“All right,” Pete said, staying still and quiet and trying not to telegraph alarm with her words or her face. Up on the stage the prophecies went on, the tone grimmer and grimmer. The worse someone’s future was, the wider Bridget, Diana, and Patrick grinned and the more poor Margaret looked like she might throw up. “So what do we do now?”

“Got to get them one by one,” Jack murmured. “I can’t exorcise three bodies at once. I don’t even know if they’re Named or just travelers.”

Pete swallowed hard. Named demons were the 666 leaders of the legions of Hell, the big hard men. If a Named was responsible for this, they were, as the Americans put it, up shit creek. Thinking about trying to exorcise a Named demon made her throat constrict. She felt as if small rocks were embedded in her chest, making her breath burn. “I could touch them. Find out their true names and use them in the exorcism.”

“No,” Jack hissed, harsh enough that the people around them looked. Pete glared in return until they went back to staring at the stage.

“It’s not like we have a lot of other options,” she said. “And I know the parents will let me get close enough if I play into their bullshit.”

The cash collection basket came by, heavy with coins and rustling with notes—many of them twenty or fifty pounds. Jack nimbly pocketed a hundred and twenty quid before passing it along to the woman next to him. “Pete, I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen if you try to empty out a demon with your talent. The last time you tried, you nearly burned down me flat and both of us with it.”

“I don’t want to,” Pete told him, fidgeting at the implied criticism of his words. The Named that she’d accidentally exorcised just after she’d met Jack hadn’t been much of a fighter—more of a skulker, really—and even getting rid of him had nearly killed her. “I haven’t forgotten that I have a tendency to go apocalyptic when I brush up against demon magic, but I don’t see that we have much of a choice. You’re never going to have time to set up a proper exorcism—these kids are being watched like hawks.”

She wasn’t letting a demon worm its way into Margaret Smythe, and it was simple as that. Margaret was the only one who’d survived Treadwell with her mind intact, which was probably why she hadn’t been possessed yet. Yet being the operative word.

Before Jack could say anything else, Pete started for the stage, moving through the thick knot of people waiting at the mic, until she found Norma Smythe. “So,” she said brightly, amazed at herself and how easy it was to sound cheerful. “This is quite a show.”

“Yeah,” Norma said, relaxing when Pete smiled. Norma Smythe liked attention more than she worried about Pete being untrustworthy. It had been the same way when Algernon Treadwell had taken Margaret—she’d been more interested in crying for the telly cameras than she was concerned about Pete finding anything untoward during her home visit. “Margaret ain’t showed any abilities yet, but since Philip had the idea to organize this…” She dropped her voice conspiratorially. “That twat Dexter Killigan might think he’s in charge, but we’re the ones who are…” she searched for the word, her heavily made up brow crinkling. “Monetizing it,” she said at last. “Philip said we might get on Tricia if this keeps up. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?”

“A huge one,” Pete agreed. Norma Smythe went back to frowning.

“Dexter’s not gonna be happy you’re poking about.”

“Oh, don’t fret,” Pete said. “Like I told your husband, I have no authority. I’m just looking into one of the men who went missing, and I’m very glad I was able to see how you’re all … aiding your children’s recovery.” The lie burned like acid. When this was over, when Crotherton’s demon was back in Hell and the Prometheans were off her back, it was going to be hard not to come back to Overton and put the fear of all the gods into the Smythes.

“You should come to supper!” Norma exclaimed with a wide, sloppy grin that bespoke a handful of small white pills. “Mrs. Leroy hosts this big supper after every festival. Middle-class cunt that she is, tryin’ to show everyone up.” Norma pulled out a fag, patted her too-big blue blazer down for a lighter, and gave a defeated sigh. “Should give this up, anyway. Ain’t good for the kids, and those poor sick ones is so delicate. Not like my baby.”

Personally, Pete thought there wasn’t much that could put a dent in Diana, Bridget, or Patrick in their present condition. She’d seen a demon take a hit from a lorry and shake it off as if he’d collided with a shopping cart. That sort of demon, she knew how to handle. They were like Belial and his ilk. The Prince of Hell was at least rational, interested in making bargains with Pete and Jack that helped him leverage his spot as one of the ruling Triumverate of Hell. Really, it was no worse than dealing with a shady lawyer, albeit one who had the power to incinerate most of London with a flick of his fingers.

This, though—this demon was something other, and she had no idea what she was walking into. If playing nice with these deranged parents for a few more hours was what it took to learn more, then she could be nice.

On the stage, the festival was breaking up. “That’s all for today,” Philip said. “Remember, you can come by the house—that’s 79 Exeter Court—between the hours of noon and four to book a private consultation, and we’ll do this all again in three days’ time.”

The crowd dispersed in remarkably good humor for what they’d just witnessed, talking and laughing. A pair of sturdy-legged women in hiking boots and shorts discussed where to go for lunch as they brushed past Pete.

“Meg!” Norma bellowed. “Get your arse over here!”

Before the girl could move through the crush of people, someone in the crowd pulled Norma aside, thrusting a handful of money at her and babbling about a private session.

Pete jumped a bit when Margaret touched her arm. “I saw Mr. Crotherton,” she said, voice barely above a wind’s whisper across the barren green. “Couple of weeks ago, he came by the house.” Her voice was slow and muddled, and Pete thought Margaret might actually be drugged. If she wasn’t possessed, that would be the easiest way to keep her docile.

“You’re sure?” Pete bypassed shock and crouched so she could look at Margaret. She didn’t have to crouch as far as she’d had to four years before—Margaret had shot up several inches. If she survived this ordeal, she was going to be tall and pretty as an adult. “Did anything happen?”

Margaret shrugged, a gesture as disaffected as Pete would have expected from a thirteen-year-old girl. “My dad sent him on his way. He hung about for a bit in the garden, waving some kind of compass about.”

“Scrying,” Pete said, more to herself than Margaret. Scrying for the demon, no doubt. Pete wished she could talk to Crotherton and ask him what he’d found.

“Mum told me not to tell,” Margaret said. “But you’re a detective inspector, so I reckon it’s okay to tell you.”

Pete didn’t correct her as she saw Norma start to elbow her powder blue bulk back through the crowd. “Margaret,” she said quickly. “I’m going to be honest with you—you do know there’s something terribly wrong with all of this, yes?”

Margaret’s large eyes unexpectedly filled, and she blinked rapidly. “Shit,” she said, swiping at her tears. “I hate it, Inspector. I…”

“There’s my good girl!” Norma Smythe boomed, clutching her arm around Margaret and grasping her shoulder hard enough that the girl gasped. “Don’t she look lovely onstage, Miss Caldecott? She loves the attention.”

Philip came gliding up, his sharkish grin firmly in place, even though the folds around his eyes said he wanted to give Pete a punch in the teeth. “You and your bloke’ll be joining us for supper, I hear?” he said.

“If you’ll have us,” Pete told said. “I know we didn’t get off on the best foot, Mr. Smythe, and for that I apologize.”

He smirked at her. Making a copper apologize to him must be some kind of lifelong fantasy for a stain like Philip Smythe, but if it got her what she wanted, Pete would smile and kiss his arse for as long as the day lasted.

“More the merrier,” he said at last. “Always thought you were a bit of a bitch during the investigation, but after what you did for our Margaret you’re welcome any time.” He offered his hand, and Pete shook. His handshake was limp and sweaty, as insincere as his words, but there was no prickle of magic there. Philip Smythe was a dead wire, in more ways than one. Pete thought that after she’d figured out what was going on in Overton, she’d see that Philip made a return visit to Pentonville. A fraud charge from these phony meetings should keep him away from Margaret until she was in university, away from her poisonous parents.

“I can’t wait,” she told him aloud, and looked over at Jack, fidgeting at the edge of the crowd. He jerked his chin at her, the universal Let’s get the Hell out of here gesture. If there were any other way, she would have waited, gone in to do a proper exorcism, with tools and spells and the ritual that such a thing commanded.

But she didn’t have time, so she was going in blind.

She just hoped it wasn’t the last mistake she ever made.

16.

The Leroys’ semi-detached brick was a far cry from the Smythes’ untidy pile of a house. Mrs. Leroy, a small, nervous woman who didn’t keep her hands still for more than three seconds at a stretch, had scrubbed the place within an inch of its life. Even Pete’s obsessively tidy father would have called it compulsive.

“Drink?” Philip Smythe gestured at Pete with a bottle of gin when she and Jack stepped over the threshold.

“Thanks, mate,” Jack slid up and relieved Philip of the bottle, refilling his dented flask before passing it back. Mrs. Leroy was already shooting them murderous looks, but she pasted on a fake smile when Pete caught her eye.

“I owe you a great thanks for what you did for our Diana,” she said.

“Just wish I could have gotten here sooner,” Pete said. “It looks like you’re holding up well. All of you.”

“Mr. Killigan started a support group back in London so we could all find each other and share our stories,” Mrs. Leroy said. “That man, he’s a saint. So patient. Helped us so much with our poor child.”

“And all of this? The tent and whatnot?” Pete asked. “His idea?”

“Oh heavens, no,” Mrs. Leroy said with a laugh that sounded more like a scream. “That was Mr. Smythe’s idea. Said we had an obligation to share our girl’s gift with the world, and he’s right. What Diana can do comes from a higher place.”

“An obligation, eh?” Pete said. She eyed Philip Smythe, holding court in the corner with two men she assumed were Mr. Leroy and Patrick Dumbershall’s father. They were laughing, grins wide as shark mouths.

“Mrs. Leroy…” Pete started, but the woman cut her off.

“Carrie, please.”

“Carrie,” Pete said. “This isn’t easy to ask, but have you noticed anything … odd about Diana since all this started?”

Carrie Leroy gave a start, as if Pete had reached over and stuck a pin in her arse. She swiveled her head slowly, smile still in place, clocking the other parents in the room. “Not here,” she murmured through clenched teeth. “Meet me in the kitchen.”

Then she pitched forward into Pete, knocking her drink down her shirt. “Oh, no!” Carrie exclaimed. “I’m just too clumsy for words. Do come with me, Miss Caldecott, and I’ll take that stain out.”

Jack gave Pete a look over Margaret Smythe’s head. He’d been talking with her the entire time, laughing and showing her sleight of hand tricks with quarters and cigarettes. Margaret was smiling for the first time since Pete had arrived in Overton, slowly and nervously, but she was acting less dopey than she had been in the morning.

If Margaret was with Jack, she was safe for the time being, so Pete let herself be tugged into the kitchen.

“Sorry about your blouse,” Carrie Leroy said. “I couldn’t … I had to…” She started to shake, and she buried her face in her hands.

“Hey,” Pete said. “It’s all right. Really.”

“No, it is not,” Carrie said. “It hasn’t been all right since we came here.” She sniffed deeply, then looked Pete in the eye. “You have a spare cigarette?”

“Sorry, no,” Pete said. She wondered if there was such a thing as quitter’s guilt.

“Out here,” Carried said, pushing open the back door. It opened onto an alley barely wide enough for the bins sitting against the brick wall. Carrie lit the butt of a fag from a chipped ceramic dish on the ground and wrapped her arms around herself. “My husband’d knock my teeth in if he caught me smoking.”

“I have a theory about what’s going on, if you don’t mind,” Pete said. Carrie Leroy didn’t stop her, so she rolled it out.

“Diana isn’t the child you remember. She started acting strange not long after you all moved to Overton, and things just got worse. She doesn’t act like a child. And when people started disappearing, you suspected things were off the rails, but it wasn’t until Jeremy Crotherton poked around that you really knew.”

Carrie looked at her askance, one penciled-in eyebrow up. “Those people were just hikers,” she said. “Stupid gits. But you’re right … Diana…” She sucked the last life out of the fag, then scraped it out against the back wall of her house.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Carrie said. She wasn’t shaking now, just cold and flat as an expanse of roadway. “To have your child snatched away from you. But you get used to it, you go on, even when your marriage falls apart and your daughter sits staring out the window day after day even though she can’t see.” She coughed, deep and rattling, a sound that spoke to damp cellars and too many cigarettes. “You move to the country because your husband worships at the altar of Dexter bloody Killigan, as if that man knows everything. You stay trapped in this shitebox with a husband who can’t stand you, and then one morning your child looks up at you and her eyes focus and she says “‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’”

Pete chewed her lip, wishing it was a fag. “You know it’s not Diana.”

“’Course I do,” Carrie snorted. “I saw her MRIs. I know there’s nothing in her brain except dust. Whatever’s walking and talking through her skin, it’s not my Diana.”

“Can I ask you why you didn’t leave?” Pete said. “Or call someone like Jack and me? Hell, you could even have talked to Crotherton when he showed up.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Carrie said, her voice thick with weariness. “And I can’t leave or call for help because she knows. She and the other two see everything. They watch us even when they can’t see us. It’s like we’re prisoners. Prisoners of those things that took our children.” Her whole body quivered, and Pete put a hand on Carrie’s shoulder to steady her. No prickle of the Black there either. Just a tangle of wrath and sadness that threatened to explode into Pete’s mind. She let go after a quick squeeze.

“The only reason they don’t know I’m talking to you now is that they’re resting,” Carrie whispered. “They like saying those horrible things to people, but it takes the fight out of them. It’s the only time we get any peace.”

Pete looked back at the lit kitchen door. “Where are they?”

“Dexter Killigan keeps them at his place,” Carrie said. “He took it the worst. Wanted his girl back so bad he can’t see what’s become of them. They don’t like to be apart, and he does whatever they want. Acts like all of this is fucking business as usual.”

Pete remembered the stricken face, cheeks sunken and eyes impossibly dark, of Dexter Killigan beside Bridget’s hospital bed. “It’ll be all right,” she lied. “Jack and I are here to help you.”

Carrie sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. “No one can help me now, Miss Caldecott.”

“Carol Anne!” Mr. Leroy bellowed from the kitchen. “Where’d you get to? I need a refill!”

“Coming, dearie!” Carrie shouted. “Just running the bin bag outside!” She looked at Pete, eyes wide and animal. “We’d better get back before they realize what we’re doing. My husband’s too stupid, the Dumbershalls are too terrified, and that chavvy bastard Philip Smythe is too greedy to realize what we’ve really gotten involved in.”

It was quite a scam Philip Smythe had going, Pete thought. Convince the other parents that his own kid had similar abilities. Watch the cash roll in with absolutely no regard for what might really be happening.

“I need you to keep Margaret someplace out of the way,” Pete said to Carrie. “Jack and I are going to the Killigans’ to look around.”

Carrie chewed on her lower lip. “You don’t know what they’re capable of, Miss Caldecott. They’ll be so angry that you’ve interfered…”

“It’s all right,” Pete told her. “At this point, I guarantee I’m angrier than they are.”

17.

The Killigan house sat at the end of a road at the top of the village, tucked among the hills. A wide yard full of trimmed rosebushes put the scent of rotting flowers and manure into the air. The house was shut up tight, windows blindfolded with thick blackout curtains, and a shiny new top-end deadbolt sat in the mildewed wood of the front door.

Jack crouched and examined the lock. “Bad news,” he said, grimacing.

Pete sighed. “Hoped you wouldn’t say that, given your talent for unlocking locked doors whether they like it or not. Can’t you pick it?”

“This thing?” Jack yelped a laugh. “Not on me best day. This is designed to knock out professional thieves. I can’t even hex it open. It’s got protection charms on it. The whole house does.”

Pete regarded the white-painted brick, flaked and chipping like cheap makeup on the tail end of a long night. “So Killigan knows enough to protect his house. More than the others can manage,” she said.

“Not exactly A-level work,” Jack said. “But they’ll do for anything this side of a demon.”

“That’s the problem,” Pete said, regarding the Killigan house as the moon slipped from behind a cloud and made the white hulk glow. “A demon is what Killigan’s dealing with.”

“About that,” Jack said. He sat on the stoop and lit a fag, carefully blowing the smoke away from her. “This Crotherton fella was all hot that demon summoning was going on in the back of beyond, but none of these cunts have the talent the gods gave a stray cat.”

“So what are you saying?” Pete said. “They didn’t summon the demon, they were just victims? Figured that much out for myself, thanks.” She nudged his arm. “I used to be a cop, you know.”

“If you do it right, your demon doesn’t go fleeing into the extras from Village of the Damned,” Jack said. “It stays right where you put it and does your bidding, until you fuck up and it eats your face whole. So either whoever summoned this thing fucked up…”

“Or this is the summoner’s bidding,” Pete said. All at once the low-level craving for a fag vanished. She’d seen sorcerers do plenty of sick and twisted shite in her time with Jack, but siccing a demon on kids was a new low.

“I think it’s a possiblity we have to consider,” Jack said. “What they have to gain by making spooky soothsaying kidlets, I have no fucking idea. But this sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. I think Crotherton was half right, about the summoning. I just think his nose was so far up Morwenna Morgenstern’s shapely arse he couldn’t look for bits of the bigger picture.”

“Oi,” Pete said, turning her nudge into a jab. “You’re not supposed to look at anyone’s arse but mine.”

“And yours is definitely tip-top in my book, darling,” he said. “This does leave us with the matter of being exactly where Crotherton was before he buggered off—nowhere.”

Morwenna wasn’t going to like nowhere. Pete was fairly sure she’d have a fit, one that ended with more threats and more shite tossed on Pete’s doorstep.

She stood up, regarding the Killigans’ door. “Then we go inside. I’m fairly sure Crotherton never got this far.”

Jack shrugged. “I’m all for a bit of B and E, luv, but unless you’re going to shimmy up the drain pipe like Catwoman, we’re out of luck.”

Pete sucked in a breath as the wild energy of the Black surged around her. Here, on the outskirts of Overton, it was less tainted and strangled. The farther from town she got, the easier the magic came.

“I have an idea,” she said. “But you’re not going to like it.”

Before Jack could protest or even question, Pete stepped into the Killigans’ ragged rose bushes, the thorns grabbing at her jacket, flesh, and hair. Pete levered herself up onto the raised bed next to the front window, then turned her back and smashed her elbow through the glass. The wavy single pane shattered on impact, and Pete felt the charms Dexter Killigan had set about the place grab hold of her.

The magic slithered over her hands, across all of her bare skin. It felt like the slick underbellies of dirt-dwelling things, smelled like leaf rot and mildew. She held on, gripping the frame of the window, small pearls of leftover glass slicing her palm. The hex groaned in pleasure at her blood, and the power covered her, trying to find ingress via her eyes and mouth.

She’d only done this once before, with a hex designed to kill rather than merely shoo away, but back then she’d had the advantage of being a complete bloody idiot with no idea that using her talent to siphon something so powerful could kill her.

Now, she was aware with every atom of her being as the Weir woke up, snarling and hungry, feeding on the slippery marsh magic of the hex. It fed with an alacrity that alarmed even Pete, and she felt the Black flow into her as if she were completely hollow, only a vessel.

Which she would be, if the Weir had its way.

Pete was aware of Jack shouting, but she couldn’t understand the words. She pulled the hex to her and refused to let go, even when it began to struggle.

The rush hit as the hex withered and died, the euphoric high of pulling in power not her own. Just as quickly the sick burning developed in Pete’s guts, the knowledge that her mere flesh could not contain a carefully woven spell.

She screamed and dropped to her knees, the thorns cutting at her. The pain brought her back, let her expel the magic of the hex and feel it dissipate. Only frayed ends of the spell were left now, nothing that could hurt them.

When she came back to herself, she was looking up at scaly rainclouds and the glow of the hidden moon. Jack stood over her, hands gripping her coat, face pale as a corpse. “I’m all right,” she said. Her voice came out choked and raspy. That fit—she felt as if someone had wrung her neck, shaken her, and dropped her to the ground.

“Are you crazy?” Jack demanded. “I mean, are you completely off your nut? You could have really hurt yourself.”

Pete let herself be still for a moment. She ached like she’d run miles, but that was usual. Her scratches stung in the cold, wet air, but other than her cut palm and the redoubled ache in her arm from Mickey Martin’s attack, she was in one piece, and that was about the best one could hope for.

“I’m all right,” she said again.

“Stupid,” Jack said. His expression hurt Pete more than the slight. It was the one he reserved for people he thought beneath him, who weren’t clever enough to circumvent anything that hurt or was unpleasant.

“What else are we supposed to do?” Pete asked, standing up. All around her, the rosebushes hung black and ashy, flowers reduced to nubs. The ground itself was dead, the grass and dirt ravaged from the magic that had flowed back into the ground.

Jack glared at her, but he didn’t have an answer. Pete waved him off. “Just stand back.”

She put her boot against the deadbolt, gauging the distance. She didn’t want to kick in the door itself, but the doorjamb. Bust apart the housing of the lock, and even the strongest door wouldn’t have anything to hold it shut. The trick was hitting right, and not breaking your foot off in the process.

Pete took a breath, willing herself to stay upright, and drove her boot into the apex of the door and the jamb. The wood splintered, and another kick dislodged the door entirely. Musty air breathed out, air that hadn’t touched the outside in months, coated with the faint, sweet odor of decomposition. The hair on the back of Pete’s neck, trained by a hundred crime scenes, prickled as she stepped inside.

“Fuck me,” Jack said, voice echoing in the empty room. “Smells like something crawled up a bum’s arse and died.”

Pete shushed him with a gesture. There were times—not many—when she missed her pistol, and this was one of them. Not that bullets were much use against demons. She could punch holes in their host body, but she couldn’t kill a demon. Not unless she burned them from the inside out with pure magic, and that could just as easily kill you as them.

Inside the Killigans’ home, things were bare and dusty. A few spare pieces of furniture were shoved in one corner of the sitting room. The kitchen held only a table and a single chair, and dishes rimed with spoiled food were piled on every surface. The drone of flies hung heavy in the room, even in the chill of the darkened house.

Trying not to breathe too deeply of the stench, Pete moved on to a back parlor fitted with windows that would usually look over the back lawn and out to the hills. Now they’d been covered in spray paint, hasty frantic marks in a splash of colors that looked like the inside of a particularly bad acid hit.

Pete backed out. “Nobody here.”

“There’s a cellar,” Jack said. The door was thin, barely the width of a person, and when Pete opened it, she saw a ladder leading down into darkness.

“Of course,” she grumbled, putting her foot on the first rung.

“Oi,” Jack said, and Pete prepared to scream if he tried to stop her, but he only handed over his lighter.

“Thanks,” she said softly. Jack could surprise her. He was too stubborn for his own good, taciturn and unreliable and everything she should run from, especially when she had Lily to consider. But there was this side, too. The Jack she’d first met, the Jack she loved, the Jack who’d never leave her.

Dirt met her boots when she reached the bottom of the ladder. It was an old cellar, older than the house above it, from a time when food rotted slowly in the dark, and the dead who passed in winter stayed down there until the ground wasn’t frozen any longer.

Pete flicked the lighter wheel and examined her surroundings. There was a small brick arch leading to an antechamber across the dirt space from her, and Pete picked her way toward it. The lighter flickered, and she thought she heard a low sound. Laughter, maybe.

Just keep walking, she told herself. Not the worst place you’ve ever been. Not even close.

Before she reached the support arch that framed the larger cellar, her foot caught on something firm but yielding.

Pete pitched into the dirt with a grunt, the impact knocking most of the fear out of her. What good was she if she went on her arse the moment someone turned out the lights?

She rekindled the lighter and illuminated a canvas-wrapped bundle, crawling with more of the blowflies she’d seen upstairs. Pete drew back the canvas gingerly and winced at what she found, then scrambled up and went to the ladder.

“Jack,” she said. “Remember when I said I thought Crotherton hadn’t made it here?”

“Yeah?” he said, brows drawing together.

Pete tried to breathe through her mouth, to cut out some of the putrefaction scent rising from the open canvas. “I was wrong,” she said. “I just found him.”

“Do you need me to come down?” Jack asked. He tried to make the question casual, but she knew that any time there was a dead body, there was the chance of an associated angry ghost, one that would hook on to Jack’s sight like a hawk striking a rabbit.

“No,” Pete said. “Stay put and keep watch.”

She went back to Crotherton, crouching. He was turning colors, the gentle blooms of green and black mold under his skin telling Pete he’d been moldering in the basement for at least a week.

She felt bad for Jeremy Crotherton, just doing his shit job like any street-level plod. His lips had pulled away from his gums, and even though Pete knew it was just an effect of decomposition, she put the canvas back over his face. She didn’t need to think about how his last expression looked like he’d been screaming.

So the hikers had disappeared, then the bird-watching couple, and now Crotherton. Had they been early victims, before the demon had found a perfect host body? Sacrifices required to complete the summoning? Demons were varied as people and required everything from catsup to still-beating hearts as tribute.

Or was she sneaking around a house that wasn’t her own with a dead man in the cellar, just asking to be fitted for something she hadn’t done by the local coppers?

Honestly, Pete decided, she didn’t care. She’d found Crotherton, and now she had to get Margaret Smythe out of here. Morwenna and her little shell game with the Prospero Society could go piss up a rope.

“Have you come to play with us?”

Pete whipped toward the support arch, raising the lighter.

A small white face stared back at her, half-buried in the earth. Bridget Killigan had carved herself an alcove in the cellar wall, and she and Patrick and Diana were pressed into their individual dirt dens, staring at Pete with unblinking eyes.

“I think you’ve all had enough time to play.” Pete advanced toward the three figures, trying to get a better look at them. Maybe if she was lucky, the thing inside the children would be in a chatty mood.

She’d ignore the nauseating fact that she was talking to something living inside the bodies of three children she’d tried and failed to save. Ignore that this was a nightmare she’d had more than once.

This bastard was going to learn Pete Caldecott was made of sterner stuff than falling apart when faced with living nightmares.

Her foot bumped against something else yielding, and she glanced down to see Dexter Killigan lying face down on the cellar floor. A tray lay just north of his outstretched hand, and a shattered plate next to it. Flies had already massed on the raw meat the plate had carried, and maggots wriggled under the lighter’s glare.

This time she wasn’t surprised at the corpse. The poor sod was likely much happier wherever he was than he had been here, serving the whim of something he had to know wasn’t actually his Bridget.

Pete looked back up at the three figures and frowned her most disappointed and motherly frown. “I don’t know what kind of fuckwit takes over children’s bodies, but it wasn’t your smartest move. You’re small and fragile. Easily handled.”

Bridget laughed. It was low, rough. Her throat distended as she spoke, as if something were trying to claw its way free of her skin. “Jeremy thought so, too. Big boy that he was. He actually tried to exorcise us.”

The others laughed, bullfrog throats throbbing, and Pete fought to keep from turning around and running until she was out of air. “I can’t do that,” Pete said. “But what’s waiting for you upstairs sure can.”

“The crow-mage doesn’t scare us,” Bridget snarled. “You don’t scare us.”

Pete stepped over Dexter’s body, holding the lighter within snuffing distance of Bridget’s face. “You don’t scare me either,” she said. “So I guess we’re even.”

“Lies,” Patrick hissed, turning the upper half of his body to face Pete. She winced as she heard his vertebrae crack, spine unhinging. Even if she and Jack pulled off an exorcism, these poor kids weren’t going to be long for the world. And maybe that’s for the best, she thought.

“We scare you all right,” said Diana. “You used to be the fearless one, but everything scares you now. You think about her every waking moment. Your blood given form. Your Lily.”

Bridget started laughing again. “She has dreams about Lily being like us. Dreams about the demons who want to possess her.”

Pete didn’t usually give in to temper—that was Jack’s problem, not hers. She could hold herself together past the point of screaming. But not this time. This time, she wasn’t even aware she was moving until she’d dropped the lighter and wrapped her hands around Bridget Killigan’s throat in the dark. Until the laughter choked to a stop. Until their talents clashed.

“Don’t you ever,” Pete snarled, in a voice so grating and enraged she couldn’t believe it sprang from her, “use your filthy Hell-spawned mouth to say my daughter’s name.”

Not even her voice—Connor’s voice, as if he were reaching out to lend her every last ounce of rage she could pour into the words.

Bridget gave a choking gasp, but she was still laughing. “There’s your first mistake, Weir,” she croaked. “We’re not from Hell.”

Pete started, but she couldn’t have let go if she tried. She was lost in the demon’s power, as her talent opened up and drank it down. The Weir was hungry, denied the power of the hex, and now it wasn’t letting go until it had its fill.

“Stop … stop…” Bridget vomited up bile, the green of the bottom of a pond. Pete felt her palms burn, nerves screaming as if she’d thrust them into an oven, but she couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go, until the thing grinning at her from Bridget Killigan’s face burned, too.

As the Black surged around them, a tidal wave smashing on rocks, the shape of the thing inside Bridget—the true thing, which gave life and speech to the little girl’s body—began to show itself. It was cold and slithering, a thing that dwelled in the dark of the earth, driven by a hunger only sated by wholly consuming its hosts. They would sicken and die, withered husks of what they had been. Bridget was such a host—entirely hollow, left to be filled by this presence, this thing that wormed its way through vast empty expanses Pete only caught a glimpse of, ashy gray earth topped by a sky the color of pus and blood, triple suns oozing endlessly from one side to the other. Three children were enough for the thing and its companions, three of them escaping that miserable place to come here, to this breathing and fertile and verdant place.

Not from Hell.

Not a demon.

Shit, Pete thought, even as Patrick and Diana set up keening screams to go along with Bridget’s wail.

“Your name,” she bellowed at Bridget. “Tell me your name or I’ll burn you out of her!”

“You can’t finish us off!” Bridget screamed, though by rights Pete’s grip should have crushed her vocal cords. It didn’t matter any longer. Bridget Killigan was dead, had probably been dead the moment this crawling, slithering madness had taken up residence in her flesh.

Pete put her face as close as she dared to Bridget’s ear, as the Weir howled at the power it drank down.

“Watch me.”

“We are not of earth, not of Hell,” Bridget hissed back, and Patrick and Diana took up the chant. “Not of the Black, not of magic. We are the nothing, the endless.”

Bridget stared at Pete, white eyes bulging and turning slowly crimson as tiny veins popped one by one. “We are the end.”

Pete loosened her grip a fraction at that, but the Weir had taken hold now and there was no letting go until it had its fill of this strange power that felt as old as the earth and rock itself. Pete’s talent flashed that endless white place, that desperate scrabbling, the emptiness of being completely alone in the universe.

The Weir didn’t care what it showed Pete, though. It just wanted power, and Pete heard herself scream as the pain that followed the euphoria rushed up at her and hit like a freight lorry.

All three children screamed along with her, but before Pete could finish draining the thing riding Bridget, heavy arms grabbed her from behind and yanked her away, tossing her into the wall. Earth clods rained down on Pete’s head, and she went to her knees, the cloying power of the thing inside Bridget coursing through her. It was like drowning in shallow mud, cold and unyielding and so, so hungry.

She managed to roll and get a look at the shape looming above her, just before Dexter Killigan’s boot hit her in the face. Lightning struck inside her skull, and she tasted dirt and blood when she hit the floor.

The power was still there, still scrabbling to be let out, but the more imminent danger helped Pete get a handle on her talent, if only for a few seconds.

“Kill her, Dexter,” Diana said, voice flat. “Kick her ’til her brains come out.”

Pete rolled away from Dexter, curling around her vital organs, while he loped after her. There was a black indent in the side of his head. Old blood had dried on his cheek and around his eye, and the flesh around the wound had festered to the color of old moss. He was a little fresher than Crotherton, but not by much. Dexter Killigan shouldn’t be up and walking around, never mind kicking seven kinds of Hell out of her. Should and were rarely intersected in the Black, though, so Pete concentrated on not getting beaten to death by a zombie. She could figure out how Dexter Killigan had joined the ranks of the recently alive once she’d gotten out of the cellar.

And once she’d figured out what the thing riding Bridget had been.

Dexter lunged for her again, and Pete grabbed his ankle and yanked as hard as she could. Dexter stumbled off balance, crashing into the dirt wall, and Pete made it to her feet and made a beeline for the ladder. Her skull rang, and everything blurred at the edges as if she were underwater. Splinters bit into her palms, and she felt the wet sting of the blood she was leaving behind.

She screamed again when she crashed into Jack coming down, and he caught her, looking past her at Dexter, the children, and Jeremy Crotherton’s shroud, which was starting to twitch and ripple as the corpse within moved of its own accord.

“Don’t let them go!” Bridget snarled. “Kill them, Daddy! Kill them for me.”

Jack’s eyes went wide. “The fuck is all this, then?”

Dexter managed to grab at Pete again, but she knocked him off balance and he went down, scrabbling in the dirt for her legs, snarling and baring his teeth. “Zombie, you bloody idiot. What’s it look like?”

“That’s not a zombie,” Jack said. His eyes were as wide as a child who’s just discovered that Santa Claus is real, and he eats brains. “Zombies are bespelled, red thread and voodoo and shit, not … this.”

“Call ’em whatever you want,” Pete gasped, kicking at Dexter. “They’re the walking fucking dead, and I’d like to get out of here.” The steel toe of her boot dislodged Dexter’s nose, turning it to the side, but he paid less attention than if a mosquito had bitten him.

Jack grabbed up a brick from the cellar floor and smashed it across Dexter’s face. The rotten flesh collapsed, revealing the skull beneath. For somebody who’d been alive less than a day ago, Dexter was going quick. Whatever magic kept him slavering after them like an undead guard dog was rapidly turning him to compost.

Dexter fell back, one of his milky eyes dangling out of the bony socket, and Jack shoved Pete. “Go.”

She scaled the ladder and yanked him up after her, adrenaline making him weigh no more than a heavy sack. Pete collapsed, panting, as Dexter moaned and snarled in the cellar, lacking the motor skills to chase them.

After he went quiet, and the blood roaring through her head was the only sound Pete heard, the three children came to the edge of the ladder, turning their faces up, and bared their teeth. Their gums were starting to go black, and they hissed in the language that Pete had heard inside her head when she’d touched Bridget.

“Never seen a demon that can reanimate the dead,” Jack panted. “Clever little bastards, aren’t they?”

“They’re not…” Pete started, but before she could say more Dexter Killigan crested the cellar ledge with a single leap, staggering toward them. He snatched up a carving knife from the block on the countertop and came for Pete.

“Shit!” Jack yelped, yanking her out of the way. Pete still felt muzzy—the smack on the head had definitely slowed her down, and that wasn’t acceptable in this situation. She dashed through the kitchen door and shut it, hearing Dexter’s body hit the other side. She threw the bolt and stumbled after Jack to the front door.

“This way,” Jack panted, pushing her toward the hill. “We can find some cover up here.”

“You know how to kill a zombie?” Pete asked. She wanted to vomit, or possibly just lie down on the ground and curl up in a ball, but she kept moving.

“’Course I know how to kill a zombie,” Jack growled. “I told you: that back there ain’t a fuckin’ zombie, any more than I’m a ballet dancer.”

Pete tried to catch her breath, beyond the ragged panting that sawed at her lungs. Dexter’s kick had knocked the wind from her as well as the sense.

At least the magic she’d pulled down had dissipated a bit. It was still there, vibrating in her, but she wouldn’t know how to release it now without killing someone innocent. She was crap at offensive magic, and always had been. The spell-slinging was Jack’s thing.

Glass shattered behind her, and Dexter Killigan burst from his home’s sunroom window, landing on the grass, finding his feet, and charging after them with his knife. He was fast, faster than they could move, and his lips drew back in a feral grin, the kind Pete had only seen on PCP addicts or the profoundly insane.

“Shit!” Jack said. They ran, but Pete could already see it would have the same effect as trying to outrun a pack of wolves. Sooner or later they’d get tired, and slow, and Killigan was so bloody fast …

He was going to catch them, and he was going to kill them unless she came up with a plan.

You know you want to, the Weir cackled. Burn it down, Petunia. What’s the worst that could happen?

Beside her, Jack caught his foot in a rabbit hole hidden by dry grass and went down, cursing. Pete swayed, but she forced herself to stay up. She braced herself against the muddy ground, watched the blade of the knife, impossibly sharp and shiny for something that had come from the filthy house, grow larger and larger in her vision. She was going to take the knife, either by disarming Dexter or getting him to stab her instead of Jack, but just before he drew back his arm to make the kill shot, a voice rang across the hillside.

“Sciotha!”

Dexter lurched and jerked to one side, falling in a heap as his legs became useless logs. Pete swayed uncertainly, trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Dexter Killigan moaned and squirmed, reaching for his knife and shimmying across the grass toward her like a snake.

Pete let the spell fly before she even realized it had left her lips, the only flashy spell she knew.

“Aithinne.” Such a simple word, not shouted or cried out but whispered. Still, the Weir heard, and her talent responded. Bright white flames engulfed Dexter Killigan and the grass around him, then rushed in a gout toward the house. Windows shattered and anything not brick went up with a roar of displaced air.

The rose bushes were ash, drifting through the damp air like snow.

Almost as if the land around her, the Black itself, were responding to the inferno, it began to rain.

Pete collapsed to her knees in the mud, her heart thudding. The insidious whisper of her talent was gone, and in its place was just a ragged hole.

In the flames, she saw three small white figures, untouched, emerge from the hulk of the Killigan house and start toward them across the scorched grass. Pete was having a hard time seeing straight through the heat, but she perceived a tall figure in front of her, dressed in a dark coat and holding out his hand. “Now that was damn impressive,” he said. “But it’s not quite pie-and-a-pint time yet. Let’s get out of here before those worms get their hooks into you.”

“Yeah,” Pete said, ignoring the hand and levering herself to her feet. Just because she’d cast a spell that would normally take four mages and a quart of whiskey to accomplish didn’t mean she was going to get sloppy about touching strangers. “Let’s go, Jack. I don’t want to get near those things again if I can help it.”

He didn’t answer, and she turned to look at him. You burned him up, her traitorous inner voice screamed before she really got a look at him in all the smoke and ash. You burned up everything, including Jack!

But he was fine, only still. Jack stared at the man in black, eyes fixed and mouth slightly open, as if the man were more terrifying than anything the three children could do to him. “Is it really you?” he finally rasped. “You’re really fucking here after all this time?”

The man in black canted his head, as if the question puzzled him. “Of course it’s me, Jackie. Who else would I be?”

“Jack?” Pete said again. The expression on Jack’s face had gone from shocked, the only bit of vulnerability she’d ever seen him display in public, to something hard and carved from ice. Pete knew that face, too. It meant things with Jack were about to get ugly.

She shifted away from the man in black, regarding him now through her pounding headache as an interloper. “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Who is this bloke, Jack?”

“Petunia,” Jack said with a weary sigh, passing a hand across his face. “This is Donovan Winter. My father.”

18.

Pete stared at Donovan, unable to think of a single thing to say, while he nodded to her. “Good to meet you. Now can we get the fuck away from the worms before they turn us into more of what your bird here just burnt up?”

That seemed to stir Jack into motion. He got up, though he grunted when he put weight on his ankle.

“Here.” Donovan grabbed Jack under one arm. “Double time, boy. Make me proud.”

Jack grunted. “Fuck off.”

“That’s no way to talk to your old man,” Donovan said, veering to the side of the hill. Pete percieved a path, nearly overgrown, worn into the skin of the earth. Stones caused her to stumble. Even with short children’s legs, it wouldn’t take the three things long to close the distance. Panic climbed her throat, burning and sour.

“Just over this ridge,” said Donovan. “Come on, luv, you can manage it.”

A low stone wall grew out of the mist like the spine of a lizard, and Donovan hopped over it at a set of rotted wooden steps. On the other side, held in the hollow of the valley, Pete saw a collection of small stone buildings, scattered and leaning as if a hand had dropped them on the grass.

Tombs.

Jack balked, breath coming in a rusty wheeze, and Donovan tugged on him. “Now, now. I know it seems crazy, but they’re not going to follow us if we can make it to the fence.”

“No…” Jack mumbled, eyes clouding over. Pete made it to his side as he swayed and started to fall.

“Shit,” she grunted as his full weight hit her. “Jack, it’s all right. Stay calm.”

“What on earth is wrong with him?” Donovan demanded, glaring at Pete as if it were her fault. Behind them, the three figures started down the back side of the hill, Patrick helping Bridget and Diana over the wall. They didn’t even have to run. They could take their time, let their prey see them coming.

“He has second sight,” Pete said to Donovan. “Cemeteries are bad news for him. He can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.”

Jack’s breath was shallow, and he clung to Pete, fingers knotted in her shirt, head cradled against her chest. She rubbed the back of his neck, trying to hold back her talent, which clamored to take all of the energy stirred up by Jack’s visions and drink it down as it had soaked up Bridget’s magic moments before.

“Fuck,” Donovan sighed. He took Jack’s other arm, easing some of the weight off Pete. “Of course my son is a psychic who can’t stomach the dead. Why would this be easy?”

“Your idea to come here,” Pete grunted as they dragged Jack inside the rusted, half-fallen iron fence around the graveyard.

“I didn’t know he was psychic, did I?” Donovan snapped.

“Maybe if you’d stuck around for more than five minutes, you would,” Pete said. Donovan cocked his eyebrow, but he kept quiet as they passed among the headstones into the cool corpse-handed embrace of the mist that clung to Overton like spider silk to skin.

Close in, standing amid the mausoleums and falling-down monuments, Pete saw what had so agitated Jack.

Shapes moved between the tilted gravestones, shimmering as they drifted from place to place, long spectral fingers sinking into the earth before moving away. Some perched on the rooflines of the mausoleums, swaying with each breath of wind and watching the surrounding country with their blank silver eyes.

“Wraiths,” Pete breathed. She found she couldn’t take her eyes off them.

Donovan smirked. “I see Jackie doesn’t just keep you around for your looks.”

On the hill above, the three figures slowed, then stopped a dozen yards from the fence, watching Pete with unblinking white eyes. Donovan shoved open the door of the closest mausoleum. A wraith drifted down from the roof, but Donovan hissed at it under his breath, and it drifted away.

“Just a little aversion hex,” he said. “Make ’em think we’re not all full of soul energy for them to suck up like an espresso.”

Pete let Jack down on top of the sarcophagus in the tomb, and he groaned before shutting his eyes and curling in on himself.

“He going to man up, or is this an ongoing thing?” Donovan asked, folding his arms across his raven-colored wool coat.

Pete ran her hand over Jack’s forehead, brushing sweaty lines of platinum hair away from his skin. She felt a stab of desperation, that knee-jerk need to do anything to make his pain stop.

Except there was nowhere else to go, nowhere the children wouldn’t find them. It was the wraiths or die screaming. “Depends on how long we’re here,” she said to Donovan. “He can hold it back with the dead, but this is different.”

There had to be twenty wraiths in the graveyard, ghosts that went up to eleven. Jack shuddered under her hand, scrabbling at it with his fingers until she laced hers in. “Shh, luv,” she soothed. “Just hold on and it’ll be over soon.”

“Not soon,” Donovan said. “We stay here unless we want those wee little monsters to send us the way of dear old dad,” Donovan said. “They won’t come close enough for the wraiths to drain them, and the wraiths won’t go too far from the spirit buffet in the graveyard, so we’re all right for the time being.”

Pete chewed on her lip. She didn’t think “all right” applied to any facet of the situation, but most of all not to Jack. “He can’t stay here.”

“Poor little Jackie always did have a delicate constitution,” Donovan said. “Thought that boy would turn out more like me. I’ve looked just like him waking up from a hangover and I soldiered through.”

“Listen,” Pete said, dropping her voice into Official Copper. “He’s an unusually strong psychic, and this place is a nightmare factory, so unless you want him to be catatonic and drooling on himself within the hour we need to find somewhere else.”

Donovan grinned at her, which Pete found both infuriating and utterly familiar. It was the same kind of smile Jack had, when he thought he was in control of a situation. “Bossy little thing, aren’t you?”

“I appreciate that you helped out with Dexter Killigan,” she said. “But that doesn’t make you the general.”

“I think it does make me the man who saved your arse, seeing as it would be all full of zombie bites by now if I hadn’t thrown that little leg-locker hex,” Donovan said, grinning even wider. “Though I’d never let that happen. You’re far too adorable.”

“I had it handled,” Pete said. “Need I remind you that I was the one who actually burned that bastard up?”

Donovan pursed his lips. “You know, I’d like you much more if you didn’t frown.”

“And I fancy I’d like you much more with a mute button,” Pete snapped back.

“For the love of all that’s fucking sacred,” Jack groaned. “Will the both of you shut it? Me head hurts enough as it is.”

Pete crouched at Jack’s side, examining him for signs that the sight was eating into his mind, permanently altering the pathways, making him unable to tell the dead from the living.

The mausoleum was dim, the only light coming from the small, smeared window above the sarcophagus, but she could see that Jack’s skin had taken on a sick pallor, with spots of red on his cheeks and forehead. His eyes, though, were mostly clear, only rims of white encroaching on the blue. “This is not fucking comfortable,” he told Pete. “Help me up.”

She got him up and helped him sit on the small rickety bench under the window. His ankle had swollen, and he favored it badly. Pete cursed to herself. You couldn’t run with a bum ankle, even if you had a place to run to.

“You all right?” she asked softly, tilting her head at Donovan. Jack’s father looked like an older, paler version of his photo, long dark hair replaced by a short salt-and-pepper crop. He still carried himself ramrod straight, though, and still looked, in Pete’s estimation, like the world’s champion tosser.

“’Course I’m not bloody all right,” Jack said. “Are you?” His brows drew together. “That Killigan bastard knocked you pretty bad.”

“I’ll be fine,” Pete said. “He just jostled my head a bit.”

“Not her vulnerable area, fortunately for you and I,” Donovan said, looking out the door of the tomb before shutting it tight. “I hope she’s magnificent in the sack, Jackie, because so far all I’ve heard is mouth, mouth, mouth.”

Jack didn’t speak the word of power fully—it was more of a hiss of air and anger—but the hex smacked Donovan like a fly swatter and flung him backward into the wall of the tomb. Mortar and loose dirt rained down around him as he crumpled to the floor.

“Good boy!” Donovan said, clambering back up with a wince. “I see somebody managed to teach you a few tricks.”

“You talk to her again and the last trick you learn will be how to swallow your own teeth,” Jack said, trying to stand. He didn’t make it, and he sank back down hard.

“By all means, let it out,” Donovan said. “Got a lot of feelings pent up in that bleached blond head, Jackie? Let me have it, son. Let’s get all the daddy issues on the table, since you clearly didn’t learn to let bygones be bygones from that hysterical mess of a mother. Knew I never should have left you with her.”

“You’re right,” Jack snarled. “You shouldn’t have. But I always assumed you knew you were leaving me in a miserable shithole with a pill-popping teenage mother to be smacked about and forgotten and not fed. Always thought you just didn’t give a shit.”

Pete stayed quiet, watching Donovan carefully to make sure he didn’t return the hex, ready to leap on him and kill him with her bare hands, if necessary, if he made a move on Jack.

Not just for the threat he posed now. For everything that was on Jack’s face as he looked at his father. The resemblance was stronger the more she looked, but Pete thought the eyes were what arrested her the most. Donovan’s eyes were Jack’s eyes, crystal blue with the same cold depths that could never be plumbed.

“You’re a grown man,” Donovan said. “So I’m going to skip explaining myself, you’re going to skip the daytime talk show crying bit, and we’re going to get straight to the apology.” He drew himself up. He was broad where Jack was skinny, but their height and build were similar. Pete squeezed Jack’s hand as Jack growled something obscene under his breath.

“I’m sorry, Jackie,” Donovan said. “I didn’t do right by you. But I’m here now and we’ve got a situation, so what say we both act like the adults we are and fix this mess?”

“I say take the apology and shove it up your arse until it squeaks,” Jack shot back. “This working out like you hoped? Do all your families welcome this load of shit? What number am I?”

“First and last,” said Donovan. He sat down on the edge of the sarcophagus with a sigh and rubbed a hand over his chin. Pete watched all the arrogance ran out of him like used dishwater. “You’re me only son, Jack. Your mum must have told you that.”

“She didn’t tell me much,” Jack said. “’Cept to fuck off down to the corner and get her some more fags.”

“I thought she’d be all right,” Donovan said, his voice so quiet that it would have been lost if not for the echo of the small stone room. “She was on medication when I left. I thought she could handle it.”

“She was always on medication,” Jack said. “Neighbor’s medication, boyfriend’s medication, the type you buy from the hoodies who hang around the car park behind the ASDA. That was sort of the central fucking issue in me childhood, Dad.”

“You act like you think I wanted it to end up this way,” Donovan said. “It’s going to sound like a load of shite cliches, but I was young, Jackie. I did a stupid thing.”

“’M really not interested in a touching moment replete with swelling violins,” Jack said. “So why don’t you kick on about whatever it is you really want and then leave me in peace?”

“What’s happening in this town?” Pete interrupted. Donovan and Jack could be going in circles all night. “You called them worms, those things at the Killigan house,” she said. “Not demons. You know something.”

“I know a little,” he said. “Mostly what I extrapolated after I found out that poncey cunt Jeremy Crotherton had stuck his nose in it.”

Donovan knew Crotherton. That certainly made Pete look at him in a new and not entirely flattering light.

“You and Jeremy were mates, then?” she said. Keeping it casual. Letting Donovan lead. If there was one thing she’d learned about Winter men, it was that they liked to think they were the ones in charge.

“Better question is how you knew Jeremy,” Donovan said with his snakelike smile. He held her there, pinned to the spot, but Pete swallowed the knot in her throat and lied.

“Just of him. Heard he’d gone missing along with the other folks when we came looking for the demon.”

“That the sort of thing you two do for a romantic date, then?” Donovan cut his eyes between Jack, who curled his lip at his father, and Pete, who tried to paste a smile on her face. “Hunt up a demon summoner?”

“Freelance,” Pete said. “Local constabulary hired us.” She banked on Donovan having the same aversion to anything carrying a badge that his son did, and sure enough he gave a snort of derision.

“Working for civilians, like this was that TV show about the wizard with the talking skull and the twatty name.”

“Pays the bills,” Jack said. “But I suppose you get your bankroll from our substantial family fortune, right, Dad?”

“You’re funny,” Donovan said. “Must get that from your mum.” He shed his coat, hanging it on one of the hooks meant to hold a vase of flowers, and wandered the permieter of the small room, reading the names engraved on the wall. “No, I make money the old-fashioned way, by taking it from mages who are too lazy to do grunt work like tracking a demon summoner themselves.”

“So who sent you here?” Pete said.

“Crotherton’s family,” Donovan said casually. “Jeremy and I were school mates.”

“I hope they weren’t banking on an open casket,” Jack muttered. “Because old Jeremy is passed on with a side of undead, extra crispy.”

“I imagine I’ll be a bit more delicate when I break the news,” Donovan said. “But when I tracked Jeremy here, I realized that this wasn’t any ordinary sort of possession.”

“They’re not even demons,” Pete said. Jack shot her an alarmed look, eyes widening, but she looked back and begged him with her expression to just play along. I’ll explain later, she mouthed.

Donovan tapped the closed door. “We’ll be safe here for a while. Eventually the rest of the horde is going to realize something’s up, but not many have the stones to toe up with a wraith. Once it’s dark we can maybe move.”

Pete thought of the raven, telling her to run. That this was a dead man’s town. It hadn’t been wrong. Just her stubborn fault she hadn’t listened to it. “I can’t hide until dark,” she said. “I’ve got to go and get Margaret.”

“And who’s Margaret?” Donovan said.

“She’s the last kid,” Pete said. “The only one the worms didn’t get their hooks into.”

“Then she’s dead,” Donovan said. “Just like the rest of them. No help. We want to stay in control of ourselves, not join the walking dead out there, we stay hidden.”

“Fuck off,” Pete told him, and pushed open the door. Donovan hauled her back by the arm.

“You go out there, I can’t protect you,” he snarled. He was strong, stronger than Jack by a long way.

“You just showed up, so maybe you don’t know,” she told him. “But I’m not the one needs protecting.”

“I have a hard time believing you’re seriously willing to die for some snot-nosed kid that’s not even yours,” Donovan said. “That’s not human nature. ’Least not any I understand.”

“There’s a lot you don’t understand, then,” Pete said. Donovan relaxed his grip, giving a sigh.

“I’ll come with you, then.”

“And leave Jack by himself?” Pete said. “I don’t bloody think so.”

“If you want to see either of us in one piece again,” Jack said, “please do not leave me alone with this arsehole.”

“I set up protection barriers around the tomb,” Donovan said. “They’ll hold the wraiths off while we go get your brat.”

“Margaret,” Pete said. “Her name is Margaret.”

“I could not care less what her name is,” Donovan said. “But if this’ll get you to listen, then so be it.” He swept his arm toward the door, black coat flapping like the wing of a dire bird. “After you, Milady.”

Pete looked back at Jack, who leaned his head against the stone, swiping at the sweat on his face. It was painfully clear he couldn’t stay here much longer, but Margaret was in more immediate danger. Pete just hoped she wasn’t making the sort of choice she’d have nightmares about in the years to come.

“While we’re young,” Donovan said, as Pete hesitated on the steps of the tomb. Watching the wraiths flit among the tombstones was surreal, like watching a group of panthers strolling along Oxford Street.

“That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you,” Pete muttered. Donovan chuckled, dry as kindling.

“I can see why my boy likes you. That mouth good for anything except clever quips?”

“Keep it up and you’ll find out what my foot is good for,” Pete told him. “If it’s this or silence, then let’s agree to shut the fuck up.”

They passed the iron fence on the other side from the Killigan house, and Pete found a dirt road winding back toward the village. The mist pressed in, keeping them hidden from all eyes, trailing spectral trails of moisture across Pete’s face and hair.

She walked quickly to keep pace with Donovan’s lanky city-dweller stride, praying silently that she wouldn’t be too late to keep Margaret from become just another white-eyed dead girl.

19.

“So, you and my son,” Donovan said, having kept quiet, by Pete’s count, for precisely two and a half minutes. “What’s happening there?”

Pete concentrated on her footsteps, digging the steel toes of her boots into the mud and gravel as hard as she could, pretending they were Donovan’s face. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“Not the sort of conversation you have during the first hour you see your kid,” Donovan said. “So I’ll ask you instead, gorgeous: Are you two sleeping together, or is it an adorable sort of telly-friendly unresolved sexual tension gambit?”

Pete decided that she could see, after less than an hour with Donovan, why Jack’s mother had chosen to get stoned out of her mind while they were together. “I’ve got a better hideously rude non sequitur for you: After thirty-five years, you show up now?” she countered. “What prompted you, exactly? Need a kidney?”

Donovan smirked at her. “Not hardly. I’d wager I’m in better shape than a man who spent half his adult life slamming smack into his bloodstream, even if he is my son.”

Pete went quiet at that. She hadn’t been sure how much Donovan knew. He didn’t seem aware of her talent, or the extent of Jack’s, and she was happy to keep it that way.

“It was the sight,” Pete said. “The heroin helped keep it manageable. He thought it was the only way.”

“Until you came along?” Donovan said. “Love of a good woman and all that rot?”

Pete gave an involuntary snort of mirth. “Not hardly.”

The B road merged with the wider road into the village, and Donovan stopped walking, regarding the shifting mists before them.

“You’re observant, whatever else you are. Been here for a week and you’re right—I do know a little. Not much, but a little.”

“They’re not demons,” Pete said, and Donovan nodded.

“So what are they?” she asked.

He laughed. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t still be in this fucking back of beyond shitehole, would I?”

Pete wrapped her arms around herself. The Black stung her again, that odd strangled feeling of wild magic directed into an unnatural channel.

“The magic is all wrong,” she said. “It feels like static on a telly, except it’s in my head.”

Donovan’s lip pulled up in a disconcerting imitation of Jack’s grin. There wasn’t any warmth to the expression, though—unlike Jack’s face, looking at Donovan’s was like looking at a great white shark, an apex predator devoid of anything recognizably human.

“I have a feeling if we find out what’s causing that bit of ruckus, we’ll have solved the whole thing, Watson.”

“Not Holmes?” Pete said. She started forward, trusting Donovan at her back. It might be the last mistake she ever made, but she needed to draw him out so he would think things were fine when she hit him with her next verbal punch.

“You seem rather comfortable as the sidekick,” Donovan said, walking beside her. “Just going by what I see.”

“I do hold Watson’s contempt for roundabout bullshit,” Pete said. “So why don’t you get down to what you really want to say to me, Donovan?”

Jack’s father lifted one dark eyebrow. “Which would be?”

“You’re not here for Crotherton,” Pete said. “You’re here for Jack and the Prospero Society.” She glanced at Donovan over her shoulder, and the slight hitch in his gait told her she’d been right to voice her suspicions.

“What gave me away?” he asked at last, having the gall to look amused.

“Oh, let’s see,” Pete said, ticking her fingers. “Somebody from Jack’s past, so we’d feel an instant connection to you for good or ill. Showing up with perfect timing to save us from a problem you lot created. Agreeing to help me with only the most pathetic of token protests.”

Donovan shook his head. Droplets of moisture had collected on the tips of his short hair, and they rolled down his face, giving the impression that even in the chill he was sweating. Or crying. Pete knew better, though. Sociopaths like Donovan Winter never sweated, never felt the prickle of a tear they didn’t manufacture themselves.

“I stand corrected,” he said. “You are Holmes.”

“Left my violin at home,” Pete agreed. “But I do all right.”

“You got one bit wrong, though,” Donovan said. They walked through the green, which was empty and littered with garbage, crumpled sleeping bags, half-collapsed tents, and empty lager bottles. Pete kept her eyes out for any movement in the fog, but found none.

“Oh?” she asked, only half paying attention to Donovan now. Morwenna had better pin a fucking medal on her, or better yet give her a fat stack of cash. Using Jack’s own father had been a master stroke on the Prosperians’ part. Who better to recruit Jack than the man he hated, yet most wanted to please?

“We didn’t do this,” Donovan said, sweeping his arm over the empty field. “Crotherton really was here of his own free will, looking for that fat fuck Preston Mayflower. What he found, well…” He shrugged. “Who can say? But those things aren’t anything I’ve run across. Not demon, not spell-spawned. It’s like they come from someplace where magic doesn’t work right, and the longer I’m in Overton the worse it gets.”

“So I guess you won’t be saving us again if we run into more worms,” Pete said.

Donovan shook his head. “You saved yourself back there, missy. I can’t throw around the flashy shite like you and my boy. The leg-locker is about the extent of it.”

“So you’re not the Prospero Society’s hard man?” Pete said, feigning disbelief. “Then why send you to talk us in? Haven’t you heard Jack and I are dangerous types?”

“From half of the hedge-hexers and kitchen witches in the UK,” Donovan said. “But when it comes to human mages, I’m not worried. I’m more of a person to person sort of magic user.”

When Pete gave him a blank look, he spread his hands. “I’m a mind-bender, dear. I can make you think you love me, or you hate that bloke over there and want to punch him in the teeth.”

“You mindfuck people,” Pete said. “All at once, so much about you makes sense, Donovan.”

“Came in handy with Jack’s mum,” Donovan said. “You ever try to convince a bipolar pill addict to calm down and give you the knife without magical powers of persuasion?”

“I appreciate you slipping that bit about her being a nutter in there,” Pete said. “Make me think you know all about my troubles with Jack and his sight.”

Donovan shot her a glare, the first expression she’d seen of his that Pete judged genuine. “I spent a lot of time dealing with smooth talkers when I was a cop,” Pete said. “So if there’s a recruitment spiel, get to it. Otherwise, let me find Margaret and you can do whatever it is you came here to do.”

“Started out just getting you to come over to our side,” Donovan said. “Now, it’s finding out what’s going on here for the men upstairs.”

“I hate secret societies, and I hate sorcerers, and I hate deadbeat parents more than the two of them combined,” Pete said, slowing as they reached the populated area of Overton. “So why the fuck, when I’ve already given the Prometheus Club the finger, would I consent to join Darth Vader and his merry band?”

“Because I’ve looked into you, Pete, and you don’t like to lose,” said Donovan. “And when the Morrigan makes her move on the daylight world, that’s exactly what the Prometheans will do. They’re a Bic lighter in a hurricane. The Prospero Society is smart enough to realize you don’t beat the Morrigan by ordering her to stop all this nonsense and go back to her room. They know that you have to play dirty.”

He grinned at Pete again, and the shiver it sent up her spine had nothing to do with the chill mist. “I know that about you, too. I know you’ve flat out made bargains with demons to get your way, Petunia. That’s the sort of dirty pool that plays very well among my colleagues.”

Pete didn’t want to look at him, so she did a quick sweep of the road. It was lined with cars and caravans, and Pete caught a flash of movement from behind a few. The guillible sods who’d come to the tent meeting that morning stumbled forth and glared suspiciously at Pete and Donovan as they passed, unblinking eyes watching them until Pete finally glared back. “What’re they waiting for? A written invitation to eat our brains?”

“They can’t help it,” Donovan said. “It’s this place. This village. It works on you, makes you think strange things.” He cast a look down at Pete. “You must have noticed it, even only being here overnight. Had any bad dreams?”

Pete returned his gaze steadily. He was fishing, and it didn’t take a former copper to see through him. “Slept like a baby,” she said. “Besides, prophetic visions are more Jack’s territory.”

“I know you’ll do anything to save him,” Donovan said. “That’s why eventually you’ll say yes to the Prospero Society. To whatever it takes.” His words, calm and soft, still cut, and Pete felt the salvo all the way down to her bones. She didn’t bother snapping back. Men like Donovan lived for setting you off balance, and she was too sensible to play that game. If he wanted her to get defensive, proclaim her innocence, she wouldn’t. Because she wasn’t. She had made a deal with Belial—not just a Named demon but a Prince of Hell, for fuck’s sake—to save Jack from the Morrigan. What she’d resort to next time, to keep Jack or Lily from the Hag’s darkness, she had no idea.

But Donovan was right—it would be whatever was necessary.

“How well does the mindfuck trick really work?” she asked, to turn her thoughts from the dark, raven-filled place where they’d wandered.

“I can’t keep all these bastards at bay, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Donovan. “But I can misdirect the ones around the brat long enough for a snatch and grab.” He grinned. “Hope those short little legs can move if they have to.”

“Worry about your hex, not my legs,” Pete said. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you chatting up your son’s woman is poor form?”

“More than once. Can’t say it ever sank in, though,” Donovan said.

The Leroys’ semi-detached drifted into view, a wind ruffling the mist and drawing back the curtain. Music still drifted from the open front door, but as they drew closer Pete heard the drone of a record stuck on the last five seconds, over and over. She stepped through the door and saw an old-fashioned turntable in the corner. Beer bottles and spilled food covered every surface, and flies clustered thickly, just as they had in the Killigan house.

“This whole place is rotten,” Pete murmured, and jumped when she realized Donovan was just behind her.

“Top to bottom,” he agreed. “So where’s your little friend?”

“Not sure,” Pete said. Please don’t be dead, Margaret. “Carrie?” she called softly, not wanting to risk waking anyone who might be less than friendly. She’d been chased by enough creepy crawlers for one day.

A snore emanated from the sofa. Mr. Dumbershall lay on the cushions, half on and half off. Vomit crusted his face, and the smell of ale was thicker than air. Pete pressed a hand against her nose to avoid retching. She needn’t have worried, though, because Donovan gagged, staggering back.

“Fuck me, is he dead?”

“No,” Pete said. She forgot that not everyone, mage or no, regarded dead bodies as ditchwater dull. Donovan’s wobbly expression did give her a tiny thrill of superiority, though—if he tossed his guts like a first-year rookie, she’d be delighted.

Dumbershall shifted in his sleep and groaned, eyelids twitching. “Just drunk,” she told Donovan. Pete wouldn’t blame any of them for turning to drink, or worse, when they saw what was happening to their children.

“Suburban bacchanal,” said Donovan, surveying the ruins of the gathering, the stained carpet, the mildewed wallpaper. “How sadly typical.”

“I’m sure you’re used to a better class of bacchanal,” said Pete. “So sorry to disappoint.” The stairs were narrow, and she kept her foot near the wall to avoid creaks or snaps that would alert anyone conscious to their entry.

“Never was really a Dionysian,” said Donovan. “Did attend an orgy once, in Blackpool, and met these twins who…”

Pete held up her hand at a small exhalation of air very near her ear, over the squalling music from downstairs. “Did you hear that?”

At the crest of the stairs was a narrow closet, probably a dumbwaiter at one point, now closed off with a cheap folding door. Pete pushed it aside, and found Margaret and Carrie crouched on the floor, half-covered by hanging duvets and linens. Carrie gave a small cry, but Margaret just rocketed forward and grabbed Pete around the waist. “Get me the fuck out of here,” she mumbled into Pete’s shirt.

Pete nodded, gesturing for Carrie. “Donovan, help her up,” she said.

“Gladly,” he said, extending a hand and a smile to Carrie. She took his hand and climbed shakily to her feet.

Pete almost thought they’d gotten away, when she saw a shadow at the foot of the stairs, soon joined by a second, standing and waiting, perfectly immobile. In the sitting room, the record player screeched, needle skidding across the vinyl. Next to Pete, Margaret jumped, clinging to her even harder.

“Donovan,” Pete whispered. He came to her shoulder, Carrie clinging to him like a burr.

“Yeah, I see ’em,” he said. He moved around Pete and called down the stairs. “Hello, gents. No need to get upset. Why don’t we all just gather ’round and have a drink and a laugh.” His voice was slow and soothing, far from the scratchy rasp Pete had gotten used to. She felt gentle waves of power roll over her, and a sense of well-being stole into her mind. Beside her, Margaret whimpered and shivered.

“What’s he doing?”

“Magic, luv,” Pete said, as Donovan jerked his head at them. She started down the stairs with Margaret and Carrie. “Don’t worry about it,” Pete said. “We’re getting out of here.”

When she pulled abreast of Donovan, he touched her on the shoulder. “I think they’ll be in dreamland for a few minutes more,” he said. “But let’s not hang around to find out, yeah?”

The men, including Mr. Leroy and Mr. Dumbershall, stared into the distance, nodding their heads and smiling as if listening to music only they could hear. Pete herself felt wonderful—of course they’d make it back to the graveyard. Of course things would be all right. Donovan was here, and he had everything taken care of. She couldn’t believe, in that moment, that she’d ever doubted him. He was Jack’s blood, after all, and she trusted Jack implicitly.

The feeling of bliss and the lightness in her head lasted precisely until the end of the Leroys’ walk. Outside, a crowd had gathered, villagers and travelers, including the hippies who’d been asking questions and the big brute who Bridget had chased off.

Everything came crashing down, and a wave of nausea rolled over Pete. Margaret made a small, strangled sound. Carrie gasped and stopped short.

Pete looked back at Donovan, whose face went slack. “Shit,” he said softly.

“Took the word out of my mouth,” Pete said.

Donovan’s breathing was shallow, and he backed up a step, nearly knocking into Pete. “I can’t do this many,” he murmured. “You and I could run for it, but Mumsy and the brat are deadweight.”

He looked Pete in the eye. “A Prospero would leave them.”

“Thank fuck for all of us I’m not a coward like you, then,” Pete growled. “Now grab hold of your balls and do what you can.”

Donovan, hands shaking, drew himself up. Pete felt the Black wriggle around them, as if the skin of the world were a living thing, and the crowd parted, just enough for them to get through single file.

“Move your arse,” Donovan said through clenched teeth. “This ain’t lasting long.”

“You first,” Pete told Margaret, pushing the girl ahead of her. Margaret swiveled back, hesitating.

“Miss Carrie?”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Carrie whispered. Donovan shoved past her and followed Margaret, hustling her by the arm. Pete decided that when they were somewhere without this strange, staring horde of hostile villagers, she was going to give him a good smack. Or possibly a kiss, if he actually managed to keep the crowd from rioting before they reached the graveyard.

The mob had grown exponentially even as they stood in the Leroys’ yard, hundreds upon hundreds of vacant-eyed people staring as one at Pete, Donovan, and Margaret. Carrie brought up the rear, shuddering every time she brushed arms with someone in the crowd.

Pete could see the rear of the mass of people, the stragglers wandering down the road toward them as if they’d woken from a dream and were still disoriented, when she heard a low exhalation of breath behind her and the big brute who’d nearly disrupted the gathering turned and fixed his gaze on Carrie Leroy.

“Run,” Pete said, but it was already too late. She watched as the brute grabbed Carrie and dragged her down to the ground. The people around him moaned quietly, and then they too turned, staring down at her, lips parted and crimson, dehydrated tongues flicking between their teeth.

Carrie Leroy only got out one scream, as Pete watched, her stomach tumbling into infinity. One scream, as the brute clamped down on her throat and the blood welled up, red and thick and steaming against the cool air.

Pete started back, out of reflex, into the moaning horde, who closed on Carrie with a speed belied by their stupor. Cloth ripped, and with it flesh; teeth flashed and chins became stained with blood. Pete found herself against a wall of warm, moving, heaving bodies, each of them fighting to draw closer to Carrie, where she lay on the ground, thrashing and croaking out the last breaths of her life. No matter how Pete hit at them, how many she threw aside, there was another body in front of her, and she felt hands rake through her hair and teeth snap against her fingers.

“Miss Caldecott!” Margaret grabbed her by the arms and hauled her backward, her strength greater than what Pete would have expected from a skinny teenage girl.

“No!” Pete screamed, and she was shocked at how loudly her voice resonated off the houses around them. “I can’t just leave her there!”

Margaret’s face was streaked with grime and tears, but she tugged harder at Pete. “Nothing to do for her now,” she said, barely audible through her sobs. “Please, Pete. Please just come.”

Pete saw that their avenue was rapidly closing, and she turned and followed Margaret. Because the girl was right—there was nothing else she could do.

Donovan stopped a dozen yards ahead and gestured at them wildly. “The fuck you doing? Trying to fight off a mob with your bare hands? Get to running!”

Behind them, the bulk of the crowd still clustered around Carrie’s body, but the outliers had focused their attention on Pete and were moving after her. Pete grabbed tightly to Margaret’s hand. “Don’t look behind you,” she said. “Don’t look anywhere but straight ahead, and don’t stop running until I tell you.”

Margaret was fast, and she didn’t have a problem keeping pace with Pete and Donovan. Pete ran until she felt like her lungs would explode, but her distance and stride were definitely easier since she’d kicked fags. Maybe all that nonsense in zombie movies had something to it. If only she could solve this problem by putting a few bullets in the skulls of the undead and calling it a job well done.

The graveyard was uphill from the village, and Donovan started to flag before they’d gotten halfway. The villagers, on the other hand, had only gained speed, and they were moaning and crying now, their voices echoing off the surrounding hills, creating a drone of hunger and pain that was all Pete could hear besides her own thudding heart.

When Donovan stumbled and fell, Pete fought the urge to shout at him and instead let go of Margaret’s hand. “Keep running,” she said. “Straight into the graveyard, and into the biggest tomb. Jack’s there. He’ll take care of you.”

Margaret hesitated, and Pete gave her a none too gentle shove. The time for coddling was long past. “Go!” she shouted. “Fast as you can!”

She ran back to Donovan, giving the lead villager a shove backward and causing him to tumble while she pulled Jack’s father up with her other arm. “Move,” she snarled at him. “If you die out here before Jack gets to kick you in the teeth for all those miserable years you weren’t around, I’ll find a necromancer to raise you up and kick your arse myself.”

Donovan ran, panting, his face a dangerous shade of cardiac-arrest crimson. “Bossy little bitch on top of it all. Hate to tell you this, luv, but you’re a tailor-made Prospero.”

Pete felt hands snatch at her hair and the back of her jacket, but then they were through the graveyard fence and the crowd clustered outside, moaning and pawing at one another as they fought not to get pushed through the iron. One of the wraiths drifted over, its mouth opening into a fathomless maw, and quicker than a hawk strike, it snatched one of the punters from the front of the crowed, wrapping him in silvery tendrils. The rest of the crowd drew back.

The punter thrashed and screamed until he went still, skin taking on a blue cast and frost growing on his eyebrows and in his hair. A black shape writhed inside the wraith’s silvery body, then disspated like ink in water.

Pete looked next to her, to where Donovan stood, eyes intent and lips moving. “Power of persuasion, luv,” he said, and turned to head for the mausoleum.

Pete watched the figures fade into the mist until a wraith brushed by her, and she hurried after Donovan.

20.

Inside the mausoleum, Margaret crouched next to Jack, brushing hair back from his forehead. “I think he’s sick,” she told Pete when she came in.

“He’ll live.” Donovan slumped, sucking in a deep breath. “And so will you, thanks to us. Hope you’re grateful.”

“Will you shut your gob for ten seconds?” Pete said, crouching beside Margaret. “You all right, luv?”

Margaret nodded. Her face was streaked with dirt, the river tracks of tears cutting through, but she took a deep breath, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I’m all right. I feel bad for poor Miss Carrie, though. She only ever tried to help me, ever since my da brought us to this stupid place.”

“I do, too,” Pete said, stroking Margaret’s hair. “I’m so sorry you had to see that, luv.”

Margaret shrugged. “It’s all right. I’m with you lot now.”

Pete wondered what exactly the Smythes had done to their daughter in the intervening years to make her this flat and closed off. She’d want to murder them a lot more if she didn’t think the mob outside would take care of the pair soon enough. Not that mindless living zombie would be a great leap for either Philip or Norma Smythe.

Pete stripped off her jacket and wrapped it around Margaret, who sank into it with a sigh. “Thanks. It’s so cold here. Never gets any warmer.”

“Stay put, luv, all right?” Pete said, guiding her to the small prayer bench under the stained glass window. “Don’t go outside, whatever you do.”

“You kidding?” Margaret said. “I’m not going anywhere with those things about.”

“Smart girl,” Pete said, patting her leg. She looked back at Jack, still prone on the ground. Donovan was bent from the waist, looking him over.

“So far, I can’t say I’m very impressed,” he said. “Your reputation is a lot worse than your reality, son.”

“Up yours,” Jack grumbled, and Donovan chuckled, the round low sound echoing in the tomb.

“That’s more like it,” he said. “That’s the Jack Winter I was expecting to meet.” He poked at Jack with his toe. “You could stand to have a little more spine, Jackie. Maybe that’s my fault, leaving you to be raised by your mum.”

Jack’s cheeks colored, and he started to lever himself up, but fell back with a groan, pressing his hands over his eyes.

“I never wanted to leave you,” Donovan said, “but I was foolish. I thought you had my blood, and you’d manage to grow some stones on your own. Guess I was wrong.”

Pete felt her stomach clench, a sensation that was all too familiar to her. It felt good to have a target for her rage, though. She could gather all the pain and confusion and fear of the past few days and turn it on Donovan. She grabbed him by the arm and jerked him away from Jack. “Outside,” she snapped when he started to protest. “No more spewing your crap in front of Jack.”

Donovan followed her out, stumbling slightly when she pulled him down the steps. “My son might be into the kinky stuff, but don’t think I won’t smack you if you get too touchy-feely.”

“I would love to see you try that with me,” Pete told him. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not Jack’s mum. I hit back.”

Donovan rocked back on his heels. “Oh, calm your self-righteous little soul. I never raised my hand to Hannah. I’m not in the habit of knocking women around. Or abandoning my children, though I don’t expect you to believe me.”

“Good, because I think that’s a load of bollocks,” Pete said. “You admitted to me your entire talent is based around lying. Got to tell you, Donovan—I’m not your biggest fan.”

He spat an impatient sigh and then pressed his hands together, as if she were a small child who was being willfully obtuse. “I don’t have to explain myself, but would it help you to know I tried to take Jack with me when I had to leave Manchester and Hannah pitched such a fit I backed off? She threatened to have the council round, and then the police. And I wasn’t exactly on the straight and narrow back then. Would I have been any use to Jack in prison?”

“Here’s a thought—you could have stayed put and fucking raised your kid,” Pete said. “But that’s hard work and I get the feeling you’re allergic.”

“I told you, I was stupid,” Donovan said. “I was doing a lot of work back then for a gangster named Harold Combs—Hatchet Harry, to his mates—and being the pet mind-bender of a man who chopped people’s thumbs off for fun had gotten me into hot water. There were threats.”

“Imagine that,” Pete said. She folded her arms, but at least Donovan wasn’t trying to shine her on with his talent. He looked tired, as if the words put a weight on him with each sentence he spoke.

“Before you come at me again with those terrier teeth, by the time I made it back to Manchester Jackie had lit out, and the next I heard, he was in shit up to his arse with the Fiach Dubh. Now, you might have the juice to toe up against the crow brothers, but I’d learned my lesson. Jack was fine, and he didn’t need me.”

“He wasn’t fine,” Pete said softly. She thought about the first time she’d seen Jack after he’d vanished on her when she was sixteen, thirty pounds lighter, hollow eyed, haunted. “He was killing himself as fast as he could.”

How much of that could Donovan had prevented, if he’d just shown up? How many nights spent sleeping in doorways, how many doses of skag, how many years of a black hole inside her where Jack should be?

“I can’t change the past,” Donovan said. “Not even the gods themselves can do that. But now we’re all in trouble, and for once I can be on my son’s side when he needs me. I’m sorry you don’t like my methods, but I’m doing what I can.”

Pete felt the fight drain out of her. The rage swirled away like the mist around them, drifted up among the wraiths and was lost. “Don’t think I don’t know that you tried to lay the sodding mojo on me back there,” she said as a parting shot. “And don’t think this has changed my opinion of you. I think you’re a piece of shit, and I’ll be watching you every second until we get out of this horrid place.”

“Fair enough,” Donovan said. “You think what you like, dearie.”

“I always do,” Pete said, and they glared at each other for a moment until she decided she’d played the hard act enough and dropped her arms down, sitting on the steps of the tomb. “So what now? You’ve been here, what’s your bright idea for getting past the zombie horde?”

“They’re not…” Donovan started, but Pete flipped up her hand.

“Whatever. Talk.”

Donovan heaved a sigh and sat next to her, patting his pockets. “Got a cigarette?”

Pete shook her head. “I’m off them since I had the baby.”

He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Too good and pure for words, aren’t you?”

“Talk,” Pete reminded him. Around them, the wraiths flitted, clustering over an old corner of the graveyard. Several of them converged on one grave, and Pete sighed as she saw a flash of silver spirit energy and felt rather than heard a spectral scream rake over her mind. Another poor ghost, caught up in the feeding frenzy.

“This isn’t normal,” Donovan said. “You felt it in the village, how the Black stops flowing. All of this, with the wraiths and the creepy village and Hell, even the fog.” He swatted at a tendril of mist. “Do you know where we are?”

“Herefordshire,” Pete said. “Village of Overton.”

Donovan nodded. “Too right. And just over the border in Wales is where a lot of the airy-fairy types think Camelot used to lie.”

“You are joking?” Pete said. “I mean, Camelot? That’s a story.” Morwenna’s idiotic story about the Merlin and the thousand-year cycle came back to her, but what were the odds that was anything except a load of crap, designed to make Pete more willing to work with her?

“You may have heard another story,” Donovan said. “Of a lady in the lake who gave a mage unimaginable power, the power to live for a thousand years, to return when the end of the world was near.”

“Second verse, same as the first,” Pete said. “Have you got a theory about what’s going on here, at this moment, or do you want to spin me the same tale as Morwenna Morgenstern did back at the Prometheus Club?”

“Herefordshire is riddled with holy wells,” Donovan said. “Pilgrims been coming since the lion-baiting days to drink from the water. Curative properties and all that.” He leaned forward, eyes bright with a fever light. Droplets of moisture hung from his skin, and he couldn’t keep his hands still. “But there’s another sort of lake that occurs, in the fabric of the Black. I think you’ve felt it before, when you and my boy ran up against Abbadon. All that old boy wanted was Hell on earth, but the principle is the same—a tear, a void in the Black leading to another place.”

Pete thought of the white place, the bleeding sky, the feeling of endless nothing that was worse than any torture Belial and all his legions in Hell could dream up.

“That’s your theory?” she said. “We’ve run into the magic porthole to nowhere?”

“I think we’ve run into what could give a mage the power to unite the Black, at least for a short time,” Donovan said. “Power so thick it’s corrupting everything in range. But that’s only my theory, and I can’t check it with the higher ups.”

“And why not?” Pete said. “Afraid they’ll think you’re as far around the bend as I do?” She didn’t trust Donovan, but she couldn’t come up with a better explanation for the creeping wrongness that was spreading across the hills and through the people of Overton.

“No,” Donovan said, ducking his head sheepishly, not meeting Pete’s eyes. “I can’t check in because I can’t leave.”

Pete felt as if the air were touching her bare skin, all at once, all over her body. The deep sort of cold she only felt when making contact with something from the Land of the Dead shot through her, deep down and straight to her core. “What do you mean, can’t?” she whispered.

“I mean I walk to where the motorway should be, and I find myself back here,” Donovan said. “I try to make a call, and my mobile battery goes dead. I’ve walked tens of miles away from this bloody village and I always end up right back here. It’s the void, wherever the worms come from—it’s fucking with the Black, and once you’re in it you don’t get out.”

Pete felt panic rising on a tide of bile in her throat and swallowed hard to keep from screaming. “There’s got to be something you haven’t tried.”

“I’ve tried locator spells, scrying—hell, I even broke into the pub and tried to dial out collect. I’m stuck. It’s all chaos and rude magic writhing around this place from the tear. Imagine what’ll happen if it spreads. It’ll infect the earth. Infect the spirit of anyone nearby. Allow all sorts of dark-dwelling monsters like the worms to run free.” Donovan rubbed a hand over his face, dislodging the mist. “It poisons everything, and it will just keep coming. Preston must have stumbled onto it, and that idiot Crotherton couldn’t see that they weren’t dealing with a demon but with something like Purgatory itself, the way Dante understood it.”

“That’s a lot of shit and you know it.”

Pete and Donovan both whirled and gaped at Jack, standing unsteadily in the door of the tomb, supporting himself against the jamb on one side and a hand on Margaret’s shoulder on the other.

“Jack!” Pete went to him and examined him, even though he tried to wave her off.

“Don’t fuss,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“You look like a pile of entrails shat out on a sidewalk,” Pete told him. “But I’m just glad you’re awake. Try to stay that way.”

“I hardly think I made up something that’s happening in front of your eyes for my own amusement, boy,” Donovan said. “I’m only telling you based on what I’ve seen.”

“Voids of magic that grant you eternal life and power?” Jack grumbled. “Yeah, tell me another.”

“How long exactly were you eavesdropping?” Donovan demanded. Pete felt a smile twitch over her face.

“Long enough,” Jack said. “Just because you’re stuck doesn’t mean we have to hang around here.” He looked at Pete. “We did what Morgenstern wanted. Now we’re leaving. Aren’t we, Margaret?”

Margaret looked between Pete and Jack with wide eyes, and Pete soothed her with a hand. “Don’t put her in the middle of your fight with Donovan, Jack.”

Jack’s jaw knotted up, and his hands twitched. “Donovan, is it? Haven’t you two gotten cozy.”

“Enough,” Pete said. “You know it’s not like that, so stop trying to pick a fight with me. You’re going to stay with Margaret, and I’m going to try to find a way to get in touch with Morwenna.”

She grabbed Donovan’s arm and drew him close. “You need to say to Jack what you said to me. And don’t start anything while I’m gone.”

“Your wish is my command, my dear,” he purred, and Pete shoved him away before she could get any of Donovan’s slime on her.

“No,” Jack said, causing Pete to pause in mid-stride.

“What d’you mean, no?” she said.

“No, you’re not running out there by yourself,” Jack said. He pointed at his father. “Go with her.”

Judging by his expression, Donovan was at least as surprised as Pete at his son’s pronouncement. “I don’t think she’ll have me, Jackie,” he said. “She’s only got eyes for you, and being the hero of the hour.”

“Fuck off,” Pete said. It wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have another body around. At least Donovan could keep the villagers off her arse long enough to figure out how to get in touch with Morwenna. “You better keep up,” she told Donovan. “If you fall behind, that’s where you’re staying.”

“Mercenary and cold, just like I like my women,” Donovan said. “Lead the way then, Ice Princess. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

21.

Pete decided to skirt the village, staying to the side streets, and she walked in silence with Donovan until they reached the police call box she’d spotted on her way into Overton. It felt like months ago. Had it really been less than three days since she’d come to this place?

A dial tone buzzed encouragingly in her ear when she picked up, and she used her old code from the Met to bypass the direct line and dial out. Whatever was fouling the lines in town had missed the rickety call box. Morwenna picked up before the phone had even completed one ring.

“I trust you’re calling with good news, Petunia.”

Pete cast a look at Donovan and forced a smile into her voice. “Would I be calling with bad, Morwenna?”

Donovan lunged forward at the mention of Morwenna’s name, but Pete knocked him back with the force of her glare. Trust me, she mouthed, though at this moment she couldn’t care less what happened to Jack’s father. He was in bed with black magic, and he deserved what he got. Much as she resented calling in the cavalry, she wasn’t leaving Margaret and Jack to be consumed by the infection spreading through the village.

“That depends on if you’re going to tell me you found Crotherton,” Morwenna said.

“Oh,” Pete said, gripping the phone at the memory of the Killigans’ basement. “I found him, all right. There’s much more, Morwenna—”

“And the Prospero Society’s agent?” Morwenna snapped. Pete sighed.

“Right next to me,” she said.

“Excellent. We’ll be there shortly,” Morwenna said.

“I don’t think you understand…” Pete started again, but Morwenna cut her off.

“You can explain it all to me in person. Now go to the village square and wait for me with the Prospero Society’s agent. And Pete?”

Pete gave up on warning Morwenna. If she and the Prometheans wanted to rush in blind, that was their problem. “Yes, Morwenna?” she said with exaggerated politeness.

“He better be there,” she said. “If you tip him off, it’s your arse.”

Morwenna hung up, leaving the phone buzzing once again in Pete’s ear. Donovan was staring at her, face red and hands quivering with rage.

“You,” he spat. “You treacherous little bitch. You dimed me out.”

Pete spread her hands. “How else exactly am I supposed to get her here, Donovan? Like it or not, the Prometheans are probably the only ones who can get us away from here. You two can duke it out all you like when she arrives. It’s no skin off my nose either way.”

She pointed back down the road. “I need you to go get Jack and Margaret and meet me in the village square. You better hurry, too—if you’re not about when Morwenna shows up, I’d say it’s time we bought a cottage and settled down in Overton to enjoy the zombie apocalypse.”

“I did not agree to this,” he snarled. “I told you the Prometheans don’t care about you one way or the other, but you didn’t want to listen.” He spread his hands. “I’ll get Jack to you, but then I’ve got to light out. You brought Morwenna down on us, you take your chances. I’m sorry—I didn’t want to, but you pushed me.”

“But you did,” Pete said, surprised at how calm she sounded, given how slagged off Donovan looked. “You didn’t want to abandon Jack, but you did. Didn’t want to get him involved in this, but he is. Your son needs you and you’re running. You’re in this for yourself, Donovan. That’s obvious. So if you want to save your arse, stop with the indignation and do as I say. Morwenna is the only one strong enough to stop this spell.”

He stared at her, eyes burning, mouth working with too many curses to actually articulate. Then he stomped to the center of the road and threw up his hands. “Fine! I’ll meet you back in the square. If you haven’t been chewed to bits by then.”

Without another word, Donovan turned and stormed off. Pete started to walk back to the village as well, but she caught the raven gliding across her vision like a flicking across the sun. As quickly as it came, it was gone, but Pete wrapped her arms around herself and jogged the rest of the way, keeping her eye out for wayward villagers. Many lay on the pavement and in their gardens as bloated corpses, not moving. A few reached lamely for her as she jogged past, but they were sluggish in daylight, even the diffuse, gray light of the half-day that dawned on Overton.

The square was as deserted as when she’d first arrived in the village, and Pete sat on the edge of the St. Francis statue, keeping the bronze monk’s feet at her back. She had a good view from the small hump of earth, and she watched white shapes wander to and fro in the fog.

No sign of the worms, for now, but at least two of them were still out there. The thought of touching them again, of seeing that place of nothing from which they came, made Pete want to scream.

She sat, perfectly still and quiet, counting off the seconds in her head, and that worked for a few minutes, before her eyes started roaming again and her nerves started pinging. The pull of the void was stronger than it had been even this morning.

How long before it spread beyond Overton? How long before it reached Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, London?

Movement stalled her wondering, and Pete was almost thankful for it. It wasn’t the slow rolling gait of a spirit-poisoned villager, and it wasn’t the quick flicker of a raven. This was a deliberate gesture, and as a slim figure appeared in the door of the inn across the square, it grinned and beckoned to her.

Pete’s stomach plummeted. She’d know the trim suit, the dark hair, and the permanent sneer anywhere. Of all the fucking things in existence, this was the one bastard who could make her day even worse.

Still, she got up and walked, because to ignore him would invite even worse consequences.

“Hello, Petunia,” Belial said when she was close enough. “Thought it was about time you and I had a heart-to-heart.”

22.

“Look at you,” Pete said, staying out of reach of Belial’s black nails and shark’s teeth. “Swanning about England, and nobody even had to summon you. You’ve come up in the world, Belial.”

“I don’t mean to brag,” he purred as the door of the inn shut behind Pete, “but I am a prince now.”

“Forgive me if I don’t go weak in the knees,” Pete said. The front room of the inn was like every other sad pub in every other tiny village she’d ever seen—a few sticky tables, video poker, and dusty signs advertising lager on the walls. “I’ve got more pressing matters to deal with than you.”

Belial’s eyebrows went up. He could pass for a man, if you didn’t look too closely. Black hair, black eyes, pale skin, and a funeral suit. The thin man who held out his hand and offered you bargains beyond your wildest dreams—all he wanted in exchange was everything.

But Pete had encountered him far too often to feel the swell of terror that should accompany confronting a Prince of Hell.

“You’re rather less pleasant than the last time we met,” he said. “I don’t know as I like it.”

“Then fuck off and leave me alone,” Pete said. “I don’t owe you anything this time. We’re square—we got rid of Abbadon and you cleared my note. Mine and Jack’s. I believe the phrase ‘Never darken my doorway again’ might have been used.”

Belila inhaled, narrow nostrils flaring. “Did it ever occur to you that I simply missed you, Petunia?”

“Bollocks,” Pete said. “Spit it out, Belial.”

He grinned at her, tongue flicking between his pointed teeth. “I do see what you mean by pressing matters. What sort of place have we come to? Something about the way the air tastes … I haven’t gotten a whiff of magic this black for a thousand years.”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Pete sighed. “Something about a void in the Black leading to an in-between place like nothing anyone has ever seen, unlimited power, big bad evil, blah blah blah.”

Belial clicked his black nails on the tabletop. “Soul well,” he purred. “Well, well. That is worth rolling out of bed for.”

“You’ve dealt with these things?” Pete asked. Absurdly, she felt relief. What had it come to when Belial, once the specter of her nightmares, made her feel safer?

“No,” Belial said, and laughed. “I look stupid? I stay the fuck out of the in-between, Pete. It’s the place for lost souls, lost things. I’m a creature of Hell. They’d love to pick my bones clean over there.”

“The worms,” Pete said, fishing to see if Belial actually knew anything or if he was just fucking with her head, which was probably the demon’s favorite hobby after showing up where he wasn’t wanted and ruining her day.

“That’s cute,” he said. “That you give them little nicknames. They’re Ba’tsubuota b’ad la d’anasha.”

“Bless you,” Pete said, curling her lip in what she felt was a fair impression of Jack. “Need a tissue?”

“That’s the closest I can get in a human language, you insufferable brat,” Belial said. “Aramaic—literally, a thing that is not a man. The antithesis of a living person. Nothingness. In Hell, we call them the Undone—pieces of a human soul that got lost either coming or going, and ended up in the nothingness that lies between everything.”

He sat back and folded his arms, regarding Pete. “If a piece of their place is spilling into the daylight world, you’ve got your delicate little hands full. Touching Purgatory throws everything off kilter.”

“I know all that,” Pete said. “Out of balance, unnatural, et cetera.”

“Not just unnatural,” Belial said. He cocked his head at her. “You don’t know anything at all, you realize that? You’re so blissfully ignorant that sometimes it hurts my back teeth.”

“Fuck off,” Pete said. “I’m not in the mood for witty banter with you of all people.”

“But I’m not a person.” Belial grinned. “Not by a long shot.” He cracked his knuckles. “Sweet little Petunia, I came here to chat with you about another matter entirely, but this is far more interesting.”

“Just tell me,” Pete sighed. You could never shut a demon up—they loved the sound of their own voices more than any creature Pete had ever encountered. “And if you have any advice for shutting this leak down and getting rid of the zombies in the bargain, I’m all ears.”

“Did you say bargain?” Belial gave a low growl and Pete hitched back reflexively. “My favorite word, dear Petunia. You know that.”

“Forget it,” Pete said. “I’ll clean up this mess on my own, just like always.”

“Ah, yes,” Belial said. “Always so ready to rush into the fire, aren’t you, Petunia? Always so ready to die a bloody, heroic, pointless death. It’s not an attractive habit, you know. I much prefer your Jack’s inclination toward inveterate cowardice. He’s going to far outlive you if this keeps up.” His red tongue flicked again. “Tell me, do you think he’ll fare well as a single daddy?”

“Fuck you,” Pete snapped. “You had a few inches with me, but that’s it. Get lost. I didn’t summon you, so just go away and bother some other poor sod.”

She got up and stormed back outside, slamming the door after her. Her heart was thudding and her breath was short, as if she’d just run a long, long way.

After far too short a time for Pete to feel any semblance of calm, the door creaked open again. Belial’s thin white hand, tipped with black nails, extended a blank pack of cigarettes and shook it. “Not very smart,” he said as Pete grabbed one and lit it, inhaling viciously. “Taking favors from a demon.”

“You’ve never done a favor for me in your life,” Pete retorted. “You just keep me around because it amuses you to see me suffer.”

Belial tsked. “That right there proves you don’t get it. You and I have a far more beneficial relationship, Pete, and you know it. Now do you want to hear why I traipsed up from the Pit or not?”

The fag tasted sour, like burnt rubber on the back of her tongue. Her throat wasn’t used to the harshness, and whatever noxious unfiltered thing Belial was smoking made her gag. She threw it down and stamped on it. “What you said back there, about me needing to be a hero. Isn’t true. I just want to stay alive and keep Jack and Lily safe. I just want to get out of here and go home.”

“Then hear me out,” Belial said. “And instead of kicking and screaming against what’s happening, use your head. Unlike the crow-mage, you do have a brain. ’S why I’ve always preferred dealing with you.”

Pete shivered at the thought that she was the preferred company of a demon. How sick was that? “Don’t see why,” she said. “Jack’s got far more to offer.”

“And he gives it so easily,” Belial scoffed. “What’s the saying—never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent? Jack has his uses, Petunia, but when it comes to the bargain I know if I can get over on you, I’m doing my job.”

“Is your job today to annoy the piss out of me?” Pete said. “Because you’re blabbing circles and not saying anything useful.”

“Demons exist to keep humans in check,” Belial said. “To feed on their baser impulses. We’re the carrion eaters of the Black, Petunia. We keep sin, stupidity, and evil from spreading too far. I thought you’d have figured that out by now.”

“You have ten seconds before I well and truly leave,” Pete said. “You got something useful to tell me about how to get rid of this void in the Black?”

“Think about it, Petunia.” Belial’s voice was dark and silky as the mist, and his fag smoke smelled like crematory ash.

“Think about what?” she sighed.

“Everything,” Belial said. “Your whole sad little human life.”

“Right, then,” Pete said. “I’ve had my quota of riddles for, well, ever, so I’m done now, thank you.”

“You act like everything that happens is some mystical hand of fate,” said Belial, and the playful tone was gone from his voice. It was harsh and commanding, befitting a Prince of Hell. “Like all you’re trying to do is make the world safe for the queen to sit in Buckingham Palace, the punters to drink in the pubs, and that sad waste of skin Jack Winter to stumble from one disaster to the next.” Belial held up his hands to preempt Pete’s wringing his neck, or so she supposed. “How many times can you save him before you accept that you’re a bigger piece of this than Jack ever was, Pete?” He turned his black, black eyes on Pete, and she stopped breathing. The demon was arresting, even in his human form, enough to stop a person’s heart for a split second.

“You’re the last of your kind,” Belial whispered, reaching out to brush his pointed nails down Pete’s cheek. Mere contact triggered visions in her, of vast plains of shimmering sand covered with crucifixtions like pins in a pinboard, of a vast city with triple smokestacks spewing waste from crematory furnaces into the sky, of the bone fields that stretched on forever, bleached white skulls of the dead staring endlessly into the bloodred skies of Hell.

“So I’ve heard,” Pete murmured, sick and dizzy on the glimpse of the demon’s psyche her talent triggered.

“The last of your kind, and you fight and you fight to stop what’s coming, but you can’t avoid it, Petunia,” Belial said. “You can only take your place, the one you like to pretend doesn’t exist.” He moved his hand away and smiled at her, thin and entirely too knowing. “But it does. Nergal tried and the Morrigan tried and Abbadon himself tried to use you, and it. But it wasn’t theirs to begin, was it? It’s always belonged to you. The last Weir, the one who will stand at the eye of the storm when it finally comes.”

Pete could barely get the words out, her throat raw and swollen as if she’d been screaming for hours. “What storm? What are you talking about?”

“The end.” Belial shrugged. “Demons are pragmatic, Pete. Worlds rise, worlds fall. Things end. And all of this, what’s happened here in this nasty little village, the old gods stirring, the bleeding of the Black into everything else, it’s all a signal that the countdown has started flipping over. I’m not upset by it, but I am bemused that you refuse to see the truth.”

Pete glared up at the demon. “I’m sure you’ll tell me, so out with it.”

“The truth is that you have always been the beginning of the end,” Belial said. “The one who’ll finally bring wrath and ruin to the Black. You can pretend every one of these things is coincidence, that you’re an ignorant pawn, that you don’t understand your talent, but you’re lying to yourself.” Belial lit another cigarette, drew long and hard, and exhaled a cloud of blue-tinged smoke. “The truth is, you were always meant to end up right here, Pete. The moment you were born, everything you’ve done since, has all led to right here. And you are the beginning of the end of all things. You always have been, and when it happens, all you can really do is be ready.”

He put out his cigarette and straightened his tie. “So the only advice I have for you is don’t stop it. Don’t fight it. Let Purgatory spread. And be ready to rise to your rightful place in the aftermath.”

He craned his neck and grinned at Pete as she felt her cheeks grow hot with rage. “I really came here to talk to you about Jack, but it looks as if your little rescue party has arrived, and as I have no truck with demon hunters, I’m going to make myself scarce.”

“Wait!” Pete shouted, grabbing for him and finding only smoke. “What about Jack?”

“If you survive this, we’ll talk again,” Belial said. “I did like this world, but there’s no stopping it now. Good-bye, Pete.”

Before she could blink, he was gone, leaving only the tinge of cigarettes and black magic behind.

“Fucking demons,” Pete hissed, as Donovan, Jack, and Margaret appeared from one street, while Morwenna’s fleet of black cars appeared from the other, screeching to a stop in the square.

Pete looked between them, then took a deep breath of cold air that burned her lungs all the way down. Caught in the middle, and no help for it.

As usual.

23.

Morwenna stepped from her black Mercedes, trailed by Victor, and clacked across the square on her heels to Pete. “Is that him?” she asked, pointing at Donovan.

“That’s him,” Pete confirmed. Morwenna started to brush her aside, but Pete put her hand on Morwenna’s shoulder.

“There’s just a few things we need to get straight,” Pete said.

Morwenna looked at Pete’s hand as if it had turned into a spider. “I beg your pardon?”

“We did what you asked,” Pete said. She cast a look back at Jack and Donovan. Jack stood with Margaret, keeping himself between the Prometheans and the girl. Donovan fidgeted next to them, shooting Pete a glare that she felt could have melted her on the spot.

“And I’m glad I was able to put my faith in you,” Morwenna said, trying to shove past Pete again.

“That’s not it,” Pete said. “Before you go after Donovan, I want your promise that nothing will happen to Jack or Margaret, or Lily. That you’ll get us all out of here.”

Morwenna gave her a condescending smile. “We’re not mobsters, Pete. We’ll take care of this.”

Pete gripped Morwenna’s suit jacket, the soft wool prickling under her fingers. “Promise me,” she said. “None of us alone can break the hold this place has, so you promise me you’ll get us out of here, or he’s going to run, and I’m going to help him. Then you’ll never know how far the Prospero Society has gotten into your ranks, and you’ll still have a soul well spreading all over the UK.”

Victor started to move for her, to separate Pete from Morwenna, but Morwenna waved him off. “Fine,” she told Pete. “You have my word. Now get out of my bloody way.”

Pete lifted her hand from Morwenna and retreated to stand with Jack and Margaret. “I think we’re all right now,” she said to Jack under her breath. “Donovan’s not going to let himself be taken, so get ready to duck.”

“Miss Caldecott,” Margaret said, tapping her. Pete shushed her.

“It’ll be all right, luv. Just stand by me.”

“And that’s my cue,” Donovan said. “It’s been fun, but I’m off.”

“What a shock,” Jack mumbled as Morwenna and Victor drew closer, forming a loose line to keep Donovan from rushing them. Pete thought that was a supreme display of overconfidence—she would have brought a lot more men.

“Jackie, believe me when I say that this isn’t how I wanted to end things,” Donovan said. “Now I’d best be going. You take care, boy.”

Pete braced herself. There was going to be a shitstorm when Donovan ran, but Morwenna had to take them out of here. She simply had to. Pete didn’t allow herself to worry that Morwenna might be vindictive enough to go back on her word. Or might figure out Donovan escaping was part of Pete’s plan. At least Margaret would be safe. She was innocent. Morwenna had to see that.

“Miss Caldecott!” Margaret hissed urgently, grabbing at her arm. Pete turned.

“I said it’ll be fine, Margaret. You’ll be on your way back to Manchester soon enough.”

“That woman is dangerous,” Margaret whispered.

“Miss Morgenstern leaves something to be desired in personality,” Pete said. “But she’s not a bad sort, Margaret. Calm down.”

“No,” Margaret hissed. “I know her.”

Pete blinked. The cold was back, curling around the base of her spine. Morwenna was less than ten steps away. Pete crouched, looking at Margaret’s thin face, her eyes almost impossibly large with fear.

“How do you know Morwenna?” she said quietly. “Tell me exactly.”

“I saw her,” Margaret mumbled. “When that Crotherton bloke came round, she was with him. She waited in the car, but I saw her. She was staring up at my window.”

Pete felt a stone drop into her guts, the weight of knowing she’d been wrong smashing into her like a lorry. Wrong, stupid, and decieved.

“Pete…” Jack said, and when she looked up he had his hands raised, fingers spread as if he were waving to her.

“Stand up,” Donovan told her. “Don’t make me force Jackie to harm himself, because that’d be a real heartbreak on my part.”

Donovan wasn’t just chattering—Pete looked at his fist and saw a slim black pistol there. “I guess when your only hex is so limp, that’s necessary, yeah?” she said.

“It does the trick,” Donovan said, giving Jack a gentle prod. “Stand still, Jackie. This isn’t going to get ugly if I can help it.”

Pete straightened up slowly, keeping her movements easy and calm. She put one hand on Margaret’s shoulder and stretched the other out to Donovan. “There’s no need for that.”

“There’s a very great need,” Morwenna said. She folded her arms, the smug curl of her lip just begging to be smacked out of existence. “We’re not going to rough you up, Pete, but you are slippery. So forgive the harsh treatment.”

Get it under control, the part of her that sounded like Connor snarled. Stop staring and start thinking.

“Got to hand it to you, Morwenna,” Pete said out loud. “Getting Donovan to flip—that was pretty tricky.”

“Oh,” Morwenna said, patting Jack down with efficient movements, “not at all.”

Jack grinned at her, showing all his teeth. “Little higher and to the left, luv.”

Morwenna sent him a disgusted look and then stood, brushing off her hands. “Spare me, Mr. Winter. You’re not nearly as charming as you think.”

“A Prospero goon in your pocket,” Pete persisted. “It’s like you didn’t need me at all.” There was a lot about this she didn’t understand, but the machinations of the Prometheans didn’t interest her. All that mattered was that she’d been set up, and their ride out of Overton had vanished.

“Pete, Pete,” Morwenna sighed, performing the same patdown on Pete as she had on Jack. “There is no Prospero Society. That was just to get you out here.”

It felt like a punch. Of course—she should have seen it from the very start. One secret mage clubhouse strained credulity; two was a stupid plot from a bad movie.

“Sorry,” Donovan said with a shrug. “They needed someone to play the villain, and let’s face it—for you two, I fit the bill.”

Morwenna stood up again. “Who better than Jack’s estranged father to get you on the right track?”

“I know that Crotherton’s not the point of all this, then.” Pete seized on the chance to slot in the missing pieces. Morwenna wasn’t a Dr. Doom type, but she was chatty, and anything Pete could learn would help them get out of this mess.

“It’s very simple,” Morwenna said. “You’re a wild card, Petunia, wherever you go. You never listen to anyone but yourself, and in this case I knew you’d find me what Preston killed himself to avoid giving up. But only if I told you not to—only if I sent you here with some utterly mundane task that you’d rebel against.”

Pete felt her teeth grind. “You used me to find the soul well.” She resented being tricked—being used was beyond the pale.

“Will use,” Morwenna said. “None of us can stand to be in close proximity. The only reason we’re not already shambling is because we’re all mages. But none of us are Weirs.” There was the smile again, cold and satisfied. Morwenna thought she was very smart indeed.

“Well, you’re shite out of luck, then,” Pete said. “Because I don’t know where it is. So do your worst, because that won’t change anything.”

“Fine by me,” Morwenna said. “You’ve been nothing but a pain in my ass since the day I realized we needed you and Jack to pull this off.”

“Pull what off?” Jack scoffed. “The soul well ain’t going to make you immortal, luv. It’s going to drain you dry and fill you up with something blank and evil and that’ll be the end of you.”

“If I want ignorant prattle, I can get it from the telly,” Morwenna snapped. “I don’t need the live show. And if you’d stuck with anything long enough to learn about the Black, Mr. Winter, you’d know that the soul well can grant power to the mage who knows the proper ritual steps, which I do.”

“So that line about Jack being the Merlin?” Pete said. “Just something to string me along?”

“I fully believe Mr. Winter is the Merlin,” Morwenna said, as Jack’s eyes went wide. “It’s just a shame he’ll never get a chance to realize his potential. There’s no room for mavericks or loose ends in what’s coming, and sadly you’re both.”

Pete shook her head again, drawing Margaret closer to her. “We’re not helping you.”

“I understand you want safety for this child,” Morwenna said. “And for your own. If you don’t help, I can guarantee they’ll die screaming.”

Margaret flinched under Pete’s hand, and Pete had to admit Morwenna had thought up an answer for every angle.

She thought about the raven, when she’d woken up from the dream. This is a place of death. Run and never look back.

“I don’t know how to get back there,” she admitted. “My talent got drawn in, not me. I woke up and I was there.”

“Not a problem,” Morwenna said. “Donovan, might I borrow you for a moment?”

Victor took up Donovan’s position behind Jack, while Donovan approached Pete. “Don’t worry, luv,” he said. “This’ll only hurt for a minute.”

Pete tried to shy away, tried to pull back, but Donovan caught her, his powers sweeping away her own talent like so much flotsam under a flood. His talent drowned Pete, and when she opened her eyes, everything had vanished.

24.

Pete saw nothing but the mist, the slivery shapes of the wraiths darting through it like fish above a reef. Her feet were bare, and she dug her fingers into the graveyard earth to see if she was awake. Pebbles dug into her flesh and dirt crept under her nails.

The graveyard was empty, and she was colder than the air would suggest. So maybe not dreaming, but not awake, either. The mausoleum was tumbled down, covered in black lichen, and the village beyond, what she could see, was ravaged by fire and time. Tendrils of smoke, the same gunmetal color as the sky, wafted upward like the tentacles of some great creature, reaching for the last vestiges of light sinking in the west.

This time, there wouldn’t be any sudden awakening at her destination. This time, Pete followed the flight of the ravens, dark ink blots on the dirty paper of the sky, and walked. The gravel bit into her feet. She was dressed only in her sleep clothes, one of Jack’s T-shirts, underwear, and little else, same as last time.

The landscape wasn’t entirely unexpected. She’d seen a lot of strange things, and a slice of the in-between bleeding into the real would could bring visions of the future. Or the possible future. Or just her own fears.

She decided to keep her head down as she passed a pile of bodies—the villagers, now naked and bloated with a week’s worth of rot, rivulets of black and green working their way under the skin where veins used to lie.

It wasn’t real, she reminded herself. It was just power acting on her frail human neurons, her fear center, electricity dancing through her cerebral cortex. It wasn’t a real future, it was just Donovan shredding through her memories and making her see things.

Pete tried to push back, to see things as they really were, but her vision skewed and pain cut her from head to toe.

Donovan’s power felt like a net of barbs over her talent and consciousness, and Pete knew that pushing harder would only make her catatonic. There wasn’t much she could do when a mind-control spell had its hooks in her. And now, Donovan wanted her to show him the soul well, the place her talent had been so drawn to she’d walked there in her sleep.

She had to play along or see Margaret and Lily and everyone she cared about hurt. So Pete pressed on through the memories, tainted by the proximity of the soul well, showing her all the things she feared most.

It felt like eternity, the walk over rocky paths and rough-grassed hills that cut at her feet and snatched at her ankles. She’d begun to despair of ever seeing the spot, but she kept walking, kept following the ravens. They stopped occasionally, to perch on the corpse of a dead cow or peck at the eyeball of a fallen villager, but they moved west. Always west.

The power in the earth swelled and groaned, a thrumming like buried cables that Pete could discern through the soles of her feet. The sound reached her ears like the entire world was breathing, sleeping, but not for long. When she came over the hill and saw the twisted tree and the pile of stones, she felt almost an anticlimax, as if the strangest part of the journey were over.

I told you to go away, the raven croaked at her. Why did you not heed? It stretched its neck and wings, staring at her with its stone eyes.

“I’m not the Morrigan’s bitch,” Pete said. “You don’t get to order me about.”

The raven opened its beak wide, and Pete thought if it were a person, it would laugh in her face. The Morrigan’s desires and those of your allies will never match, Weir, it said. My lady makes no secret of what she wants.

“War, apocalypse, and Jack leading the way,” Pete snapped. “I know exactly what she wants. And by the way, these aren’t my allies. This dream state I’m in right now was forced on me.”

And why do you think what men and demons want is so very different? said the raven. What has given you the illusion that you and the other humans have disparate desires? You are all grasping for a little more life, a little more power.

“I don’t want power the way Morwenna Morgenstern means to get it,” Pete told the raven, itching to pick up one of the rocks from the cairn and whip it at bird’s smug black bulk. “I’m not a psychopath.”

When the day comes that Jack stands at the head of the Hag’s army, Morwenna Morgenstern will be prepared, said the raven. Not you. Does that not trouble you?

“I don’t want immortality,” Pete said. “I don’t give a toss about anything except shutting up the soul well, keeping this infection from spreading, and keeping my family out of harm’s way.”

That’s all? The raven sounded genuinely puzzled. Not even the faintest thought of immortality?

“Nothing lives forever,” Pete told it. “Not me, not Morwenna. Not even the Hag.”

Then I wish you well, the raven said, since I couldn’t sway you. The Hag will see you if you attempt to close the well or to stall the reckoning a little longer. She sees everything.

Pete wrapped her arms around herself. Standing here, the power of the soul well leaking into her mind, she felt small and frail. She was small and frail, in the face of this thing. Humans in the Black didn’t last long. They were specks compared to the lifespan of a Fae, or a demon, or a thing like the Morrigan.

But she was here now, and she needed to wake up before Donovan’s zeal to see what she saw blew out the circuits of her mind for good.

The stones piled in a cairn over the well were sharp, lava glass, nothing that could be dug out of the earth of Herefordshire. Pete stretched out her fingers, touched them, and felt the feedback of power. She sensed a vast space, full of white vapors, gibbous bodies, sharp edges. Emptiness, more complete than anything she’d experienced. And always, a screaming. Echoing endlessly, because the place was as infinite as the pain it induced.

Biting down on her lip, Pete closed her fist around the rock and gave a sharp tug. There was no pain for a long moment, even though blood flowed freely. Then she heard voices. She felt someone shaking her and the sharp, hot sting of broken skin on her fingers.

“Come on, luv, wake up!” Jack’s rough hands slapped her lightly on the cheek. “What did you do to her?” he demanded.

“I told you, she’ll be all right,” Donovan said. “No worse than taking a couple of sleeping pills.”

“This is clearly not the same thing,” Jack snarled.

“Instead of second-guessing me, why don’t you say thank you?” Donovan growled. “We got what we needed without any bloodshed. Your little tartlet came through.”

Morwenna gave a slight twitch of her head. “I wish you wouldn’t make it so theatrical, Donovan. Eyes rolling back in the head and all.”

Margaret stared at her as well, and Pete guessed she’d been babbling like some kind of streetcorner nutter. “I’m sorry, luv,” she said quietly, “but it’s for the best. Need to keep you safe, don’t I?” She turned on Morwenna, putting steel in her voice even though her head throbbed so from Donovan’s invasion that she was seeing double. “A bargain’s a bargain. Get her out of here, now.”

“I’m sorry,” Morwenna said with a shrug. “But as I’m sure you’ve guessed, deception is a necessary part of this endeavor. We can’t have any witnesses to what we’re attempting.”

She gestured to Victor. “Please dispose of the girl. The rest of you, fan out through the village. Start looking for what Preston took from me.”

“No!” Margaret cried, jumping behind Pete. Jack gave a snarl.

“This is what you’re about, you slag? Murdering kids?”

“I’m about saving England,” Morwenna snapped. “What do you think will happen if the soul well is not controlled? If it is not channeled into a mage? It will spread, Jack, and what’s happened in Overton will look like a low-budget zombie film compared to what’s coming.”

Pete felt the whirling in her head redouble. The immediate panic of Morwenna’s order lapped up against the sinking in her gut when she realized that the soul cage was still in her jacket pocket. In the jacket that Margaret was currently wearing.

“Victor!” Morwenna snapped as a complement of Prometheans started down the side streets of the village. “Are you deaf?”

Victor drew back, frowning. “I don’t kill children. I’m not an assassin.”

“You are precisely what I tell you to be, Victor,” she hissed. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

Margaret started to shake behind Pete, and Jack moved in, gripping her arm. “Pete…” he said, low. “Do something.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” she hissed as Morwenna went to Victor and shook him by the lapels of his expensive suit.

“Do as I say!” she shouted. “She’s one girl! Take care of it.”

Victor drew back, wresting himself from her grip. “No. It’s not going to happen, Morwenna. Find someone else.”

“Idiot,” she spat at Victor, then turned on her heel toward Pete and Jack. “Donovan,” Morwenna snapped, and Pete’s heart skipped in time with the sound of him checking the chamber on his pistol.

“Sorry, Jackie,” he said. “We all do things we don’t want to because we must.”

“For the greater good?” Jack growled at his father. “Or just because you’ve bought into the lies this bitch has fed you?”

“I’m beginning to sense that you can’t or won’t see the bigger picture,” Donovan said. He aimed the pistol between Margaret’s eyes, and the girl let out a strangled little cry that Pete mirrored involuntarily.

From the corner of her eye, Pete saw the shadow descend, gliding above the rooftops before it turned on the breeze and bore directly toward her. She ducked at the last second, pulling Margaret with her as the raven fell on Donovan, black wings frenzied as it raked and pecked at his face.

Donovan screamed, and in the sky Pete saw a dozen dark shadows, the rest of the ravens she’d seen in the village, watching over the people and the graveyard.

Pete took the opportunity. She hooked Donovan’s leg with her foot and shoved, sending him tumbling into the loamy earth. The ravens covered him, black and shiny, rippling backs like oily water. One looked Pete in the eye.

Go. Find the edge of the village.

“What about Jack and Margaret?” she asked.

Jack is the Morrigan’s favored son, the raven said. He and the girl have the same protection offered to you. Now run.

“Bitch,” Donovan gasped from the ground, but Pete ran without looking back. She couldn’t care less what sort of fate befell Donovan.

“Go,” she snapped at Margaret as more and more ravens descended, alighting on Morwenna and Victor as well, spreading out to follow the other agents of the Prometheus Club, who shouted and ran for cover as the fog filled up with black bodies and the birds’ guttural cries.

Jack paused at the edge of the square, watching the rippling mass of birds that covered Donovan. Pete grabbed his arm and yanked, not being gentle. “Don’t tell me this is the time you pick to get sentimental,” she said.

“No,” Jack said after a heartbeat. “Fuck ’im.”

They ran, all three, and Pete didn’t look back again until the low cottages of Overton were out of sight in the fog.