Soul Trade

25.

After they all ran until Margaret’s short legs and Jack’s abused lungs couldn’t take it any more, Pete found a small cottage tucked into the hills, locked up long enough that leaves had piled against the front door and moss had grown on the sills.

“Thank Christ for posh twats and their vacation cottages,” she said, peering in the window.

“Odd person to thank,” Jack said. He was still breathing hard and heavy, and Pete didn’t know if it was from the running or the burden of Donovan stabbing him in the kidney when his back was turned.

“Let’s get inside,” she said, as mumbles and moans echoed through the fog. “Hills are lousy with folks gone George Romero.”

Jack got the door open with a few words, and Pete locked it again when they were all inside and slid the ancient sofa in front of it. She pulled a chair close to the fireplace and put Margaret in it, wrapping a blanket around her thin shoulders. “You all right, luv?”

She shook her head without a word, and Pete sighed. Stupid question. Margaret might never be all right again.

Jack opened the damper and piled some wood in the grate, muttering “Aithinne” to get it going.

“Thought we were fucking dead,” Margaret said at last.

“Not yet,” Pete said, trying to paste on a cheerful face. Margaret’s baleful expression told her she’d failed miserably.

“Can’t say I’m surprised every last one of those Prometheus Club cunts was holding out on us,” Jack said. “But I do think a fucking-over as deep and thorough as this one is pretty impressive. Once they manage to harness the soul well, we might as well just throw open the door and welcome the apocalypse.”

“I thought you said that ritual was bunk,” Pete said, casting a meaningful look at Margaret.

“’Course it’s not bunk,” Jack said. “That Morgenstern bitch knows what she’s doing, much as I hate to pay her any kind of compliment. All she needs to get things kicking off is that soul cage.”

“Speaking of,” Pete said, feeling in the pocket of her jacket. “I’m so sorry I made you responsible for this, Margaret. I never meant to.”

In the low firelight the soul cage danced, as if the interior were alive and moving, trying to find any egress to the larger world. “Who d’you think it is?” Pete said, turning it in her hands.

“Crotherton, probably,” Jack said. “He seems like a patsy type, all Dudley Do-Right and noble.”

“Preston gave me this,” Pete said. “Out of everyone, he trusted me, and I walked right back into Morwenna’s grasp and practically gift-wrapped the thing for her.”

“All that tells you is that he had shite for brains,” Jack said. “Probably so buggered from being close to the soul well he didn’t know his own name.”

“He tried to warn me,” Pete said. The soul cage’s energy writhed, turning colors under her grasp. She imagined poor Jeremy Crotherton, just looking for his friend, getting a whack on the head and a horrific end as worm food in that awful cellar. Add the indignity of having Morwenna Morgenstern suck out his soul, and it was a crap day all around.

“And you didn’t listen because he came across as a crazy fuck,” Jack said. “Blame isn’t needed at this late stage, Pete. A plan would be nice, though.”

Pete found a blanket for herself and wrapped up in it, inhaling the musty odor of mothballs and damp. “You want me to plan a full frontal assault on a bunch of mages who’ve already got us beat? I can do it, but it’s not going to end any way except with us dead.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Margaret muttered. In the low light, Pete saw that dirt streaked on her face and her T-shirt was torn, things she’d missed in the frantic escape. “We’re dead anyway.”

“Luv, don’t talk that way,” Pete sighed. “Jack and I are going to find a way to get you out of here.”

“And go where?” Margaret whispered. Pete saw a shadow flick in front of the windows, and away. A shiver ran through Margaret, though the cottage was almost stuffy as the fire blazed. “My parents are out there. All the people are out there. We’re the last normal ones. Where’m I supposed to go?”

“She’s got a point,” Jack muttered. “We’re either target practice for the Prommies or worm food. I don’t exactly relish either choice.”

“You want a plan, you could try being the least bit helpful,” Pete snapped. “I’m not the one who’s been running with mages his entire life. What happens if Morwenna gets hold of the soul cage she made?”

Jack sighed, but he played along. “Likely she’s channeling the power of Purgatory through her, giving herself regular old Hulk powers like that stupid, stupid story about the Merlin. And you need a soul to do that—something agonized, in enough pain to lure in the things capable of taking up residence in you and lending you the sort of power Morwenna is after.” He poked at the fire. “Mage soul is the only kind that will do, and the more pain Crotherton was in when he died, the better it’ll work.”

“So very well, then,” Pete said, thinking of the stricken terror frozen on Crotherton’s face when she’d found his body in the cellar.

“Like gangbusters,” Jack agreed. “She wants to be top of the heap, and if we give her that thing she will be.”

Pete looked from Jack to Margaret. She thought of their friends in London. Lily. Everything she knew, engulfed in this endless fog. Every face that was familiar, white-eyed with a worm looking out. Or worse, simply shambling about, chewing on the neighbors and waiting to die.

“Fine,” she told Jack. “I couldn’t care less if Morwenna gets what she wants out of this.”

He blinked at her, and Pete spread her hands. “Do you? Let the Prometheans and the old gods fight it out. I don’t care. I care about us surviving until the next sunrise.” She hefted the soul cage and gave Jack a smile. It wasn’t much of one, wan and exhausted as she was, but she did try. “This is the last bargaining chip we have. Morwenna gets us away from here, she can have it and then we’re done with her and I no longer give a fuck what her plan is.”

“They’re not going to do anything in the dark,” Jack pointed out. “Give you a few hours to realize this is a bad fucking plan.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got,” Pete said. “We’re not going to beat her, Jack. Maybe a year ago I’d have been inclined to try, but things are different now.”

She prayed he wouldn’t argue with her anymore. She was too tired to keep trying to convince Jack that the attack plan wasn’t always the best plan.

“Never thought I’d see the day when fucking Prometheans beat me,” he grumbled.

“In the morning we’ll make the exchange,” Pete said. “And we’ll be alive, Jack. That’s the best deal I can think of. Only your pride is keeping you from seeing that.”

“I’m tired,” he snapped, and stretched out on the floor, rolling away from her.

Pete watched the fire for a long time, trying to believe the lie she’d told Jack, and Margaret, and herself, and not having any luck.

26.

When what passed for morning crept through the fog, and the villagers had retreated to whatever dank holes they crawled into to hide from the daylight, Pete, Jack, and Margaret walked the path Pete’d followed twice now, one asleep and once in memory.

The black rocks poked up all around them, but Pete saw tire tracks in the grass now, and a cluster of figures at the top of the hill.

Silver shapes flitted about, too, a pale counterpoint to the ravens that perched in a loose ring on rocks and twisted trees, and the occasional bloated corpse.

“Shit,” Jack muttered, scrubbing his thumb across his forehead. “He’s brought those fucking monsters with him.”

“Let me handle this,” Pete murmured. “Keep Margaret safe. That’s your job.”

“Pete…” he started, but she cut him off with a look, and then raised her voice toward the Prometheans.

“Oi!” she shouted from what she judged to be a safe distance. The wraiths turned to her as one, and their fangs glowed in the mist.

“If you want your precious little rock back, you’re going to call off your low-rent Dementors and speak to me, Donovan!” Pete bellowed.

Faster than she’d give his a man his age credit for moving, he appeared from the clot of the ground, trailed hotly by Morwenna. They slowed, and the wraiths withdrew as he got close to Pete. Donovan sneered through the scratches and bandages on his face. “You’re like a cockroach, aren’t you?”

Pete pulled the soul cage from her pocket. “I believe you’re looking for this.”

Donovan’s eyes lit up, and he snatched for the soul cage, but Pete whipped it out of reach. “Ah-ah. You promise us safe passage out of here—a real promise, this time, and then we’ll talk.”

“How about I let my friends here drink you dry and take it from your corpse?” Donovan snapped.

Pete dropped the soul cage to the ground and positioned her boot over it. “I’ll smash this thing to bits before they even get a drop.”

Morwenna gave an involuntary cry, and Pete pinned her with her worst glare. “I want out of here, Morwenna. I didn’t ask to be any part of this, and I’m done. You do what you want with the soul cage, but before you get it, you do what I say for once.”

Morwenna pursed her lips, as if all this were a minor annoyance. Donovan, on the other hand, looked ready to pop.

“I’m going to clean your mind out, you little bitch,” he snarled. “Give it over, or the last thing you’ll remember will be your daughter dying in your arms, over and over again.”

“You so much as breathe on her and I’ll kill you,” Jack snarled. “I was ready to let you go—not forgive you, but at least get on with me life—but you just made my shit list all over again, boyo.” He toed up to Donovan, and Pete realized with a start that Jack was taller than his father, by a good few inches, and when he was angry he blew Donovan out of the water in terms of the hard man act. “I would like nothing better than to wring the life from your carcass by inches for every miserable fucking day of me life since you left but especially for this one, so please—fucking talk to my wife again.”

“Enough!” Morwenna shouted. She extended her hand to Pete. “I’ll take you out of here after I finish the ritual.”

“Not good enough.” Pete shook her head. “Now or never.”

“Then I might as well just have Victor shoot you—if he has the stones,” she tossed at Victor over her shoulder, “because I’m not leaving until I get what I came for. You can either leave with me at that time or not at all.”

Pete felt a grimace of pure irritation at how thoroughly Morwenna could take control of a situtation, but she moved her boot. Donovan swooped in and scooped up the soul cage, shoving her back so she would have gone on her arse in the mud if Jack hadn’t been there to catch her.

Morwenna nodded. “Good. Victor, take them up the hill and keep them quiet while we do what needs doing.”

Victor prodded all three of them into a loose knot at the edge of the black rocks. Pete watched the cairn rise from the mist. The pull was so strong she could feel it like a second heartbeat, and it was clear Morwenna was wallowing in it like a pig in a sty as she placed the soul cage at the apex of the black rocks.

Most rituals weren’t all chanting and incense, wearing robes and scribing ancient symbols. All you really needed for a ritual was a little chalk, some talent, and an intent.

The Prometheans moved into a circle, leaving Morwenna at the center. Donovan smirked at Pete over his shoulder.

“Can’t say I ever pegged you as a quitter, sweetheart,” he told her. “Disappointing. But then again, most of what Jackie’s chosen to do with his life is disappointing.”

Pete stayed quiet. Her stomach flipped, and she wondered how long she had, this close to the soul well, before she became another one of the shambling villagers. She wondered what had become of the hikers and the birdwatchers who’d come too close to this place. Worms? Or did they simply go mad and fall down a ravine somewhere to die?

“To the oldest of the old ones, to the things before men and the time before time,” Morwenna said. For the first time since Pete had met her, she spoke reverently and quietly, none of her usual arrogance in her posture.

“We bring you this gift,” Morwenna said, voice just above a whisper. “The soul of a mage, to do with as you will.”

She reached out and started to place her hand on the soul well. Pete looked at Jack. She had to time it just right, so no one had a chance to react.

“You know how you said letting her win was a bad idea?” she whispered to Jack.

He stared at her. Beyond him, Pete saw white shapes encroaching through the mist—worms, called back by the energy she could feel rising around her even now, strong enough to drown everyone in its path.

“For once, you were right,” Pete said, and shoved Donovan hard, knocking him aside.

“I am open to receive you!” Morwenna cried. “Come to me with all the power of the Merlin!”

Donovan grabbed for Pete, but she dove toward Morwenna and knocked the woman out of the way, closing her own fist over the soul cage.

All at once, the rising energy disappeared. Everything stopped, sound and breath and air. Pete thought she heard Margaret scream, and then she was in the void, inside the soul well, and the white nothingness had consumed her.

27.

The raven alighted on a tree above Pete. It was gray and long dead, just a husk barely able to support the bird’s weight.

I did tell you, it said.

“I’m not letting Morwenna use this place,” Pete said. “She’ll cover England in worms and zombies, and she’ll think she’s doing it for the greater good. So I’m shutting the well.”

No … the raven started. You don’t know what could happen …

The soul well wasn’t a physical drop, not really. It rushed up at her, a vortex of mist, full of shapes and screams. She was on a white plane with a gray tree, nowhere, among the stars. She was spread out across a thousand light years and compressed down to a single point, all at once.

“The worst thing that can happen is that I die,” she said. “But this thing started, and it’s got to have an end.”

It started because of what the crow-mage did, the raven sighed. It will not end, not simply because you want it to.

“There’s one sure way I know to drain power out of a place,” she told the raven.

No! The bird let out a distressed cry. You know that will be the end of you …

“Then I’ll end,” Pete said. “I told you, nothing lives forever.”

When she’d made the decision to lie to Jack the night before, to stop Morwenna, the shadow had been in the back of her mind, the whisper that it might come to this. But she couldn’t hesitate. As much as Belial might insist otherwise, she couldn’t do anything else. Couldn’t risk her daughter growing up in a world ruled by the white nothing.

Or by Morwenna Morgenstern.

If she did this, if she gave in to the howling energies around her, that would be that. The end, a period as final as her father’s lung cancer or a bullet fired from a gun.

If she did this, Lily would never know her. Jack would never be the same.

But if their world was this, the white place full of nothing but wasteland and misery, then it wouldn’t matter anyway. If she did this, her daughter would grow up in a world that allowed light and good dreams next to all the shadows and black magic swirling around her. Jack would get to remember her as strong, standing beside him, rather than wrung out, spent, and given up.

So she didn’t hesitate, but instead stepped forward until even the tiny white slice of world faded away, and there was nothing but her, alone in the in-between.

It was nothing like the last time she’d visited, when she’d tried to hold Jack’s soul back from crossing into the Land of the Dead. She stood in front of the flat where her family had lived when she was a tiny kid, and everything looked very normal.

A shape opened the door and stepped out, and Pete saw the elegant woman in black, feathers for hair and obsidian eyes.

“You again,” the Morrigan sighed. “Can’t get rid of you, can I?” She grinned, blood dribbling from her pointed teeth. “Besides, I thought you belonged to my sister.”

“The Hecate washed her hands of me,” Pete said. “Wouldn’t do what she wanted.”

“She’s mercurial, that one,” said the Morrigan. “What a marvelous word, mercurial. Like mercury. Ever-changing, never still. Much like me.”

“Not the word I’d use,” said Pete.

The Morrigan laughed. “Here you are, trapped in Purgatory, faced with the gods, and you’ve still got a mouth.” She moved to Pete and stroked her cheek. “How rare you are, Pete.”

“I’m not trying to trifle with you,” Pete said. “I’m trying to shut the door that’s been opened from here to the daylight world.”

“Yeah,” the Morrigan said. “And I come here, at great personal risk, to tell you there’s only one way to do that.”

“I already know the price,” Pete sighed. “I’m not afraid of dying.”

The Morrigan shook her head. “You’re afraid of leaving him behind, though. Your Jack.” She made a spiteful sound. “You’re not the one he’s meant for, Petunia. I am. And I’ll have him, make no mistake.”

“Then why not just let me die, any number of times you could have?” Pete snarled. “Why keep fucking up my life, instead of just ending it? You’ve made it clear you have that power.” She jabbed her finger into the Morrigan’s chest. All her fear was gone now. When she had decided this was the end of the line, her fear had released her.

Nothing the Morrigan could do now would make anything worse.

“If I killed you, Jack would never help me,” the Morrigan said. “He’d spend eternity in Hell first, and you know it.” She spread her arms and feathers bloomed, wings forming from her fingers. Her eyes turned yellow, and the feathers spread over the rest of her body, covering her face as it elongated. “But if you’re lost in a noble fight I help you with, only to just barely let victory slip away, then Jack owes me his allegiance. And I’ll have it, Pete. Make no mistake.”

“I know all I have to do is channel the soul well. Let the Weir take it,” Pete said. “You’re not going to tell me anything I don’t know.”

“Is that what you think? How simple a creature you are,” the Morrigan said, laughing. Her feathers rustled, and her eyes narrowed in pleasure.

Pete set her jaw. “Tell me, then, since you’re so keen to see me fail.”

“You can’t close a well by channeling it,” the Morrigan said. “There’s more power in Purgatory than a hundred Weirs could absorb in a lifetime, never mind that woman who started this mess. No, you’ve crossed over with that sacrificial soul, and now you have to find a way back. Pull the well after you and collapse it.”

She grinned, and the blood rivulets on her chin gleamed crimson in the harsh white light of this empty place. “But you won’t make it. No one who enters Purgatory makes an exit. That’s why they call it Purgatory, Petunia. I’m afraid, as your dear Jack put it, that you’re worm food.”

The Morrigan spread her wings. “And now, he’s all mine. Enjoy eternity, Petunia. It’s going to be a much easier road now that you’re not standing in it.”

Pete’s hand flashed out, before she even really thought about what a horrible, suicidal idea it was, and latched on to the Morrigan’s arm. “You’re wrong about one thing,” she said.

The Morrigan gave a crow’s cry, struggling.

“One thing did make it out of here at least once,” Pete said. “You.”

She opened her talent, with no hesitation, let the power of the goddess she held flow into her. “Maybe I don’t have to drain Purgatory,” Pete hissed in the Morrigan’s ear, so close their bodies shared a heartbeat. “Maybe I just have to drain you.”

“Bitch!” the Morrigan screamed, but Pete was beyond caring. The power was vast and cold, the power of death carried across every war, every plague, every place from the beginning, when death had taken root in bloody soil and spread its pall across the world.

Her body convulsed, the pain warning Pete that wherever her physical form was, she was burning from the inside out. The pain worked as an anchor, keeping her focused as the magic flowed from the Morrigan to her, more and more even as the Morrigan screamed and took flight with Pete still wrapping her in a tight embrace.

As they fell through Purgatory, Pete saw the place for what it was as her talent amplified her connection to the Black—not a block of flats but a blank place, a place of stone and ash dropping endlessly into a screaming void absent of stars, the cold of space encroaching. White things wriggled in the darkness like maggots in rot, reaching for her, so close that Pete knew that in another few seconds, she’d have been consumed by the worms and the Morrigan would have had Jack all to herself.

“You keep this up and you die!” the Morrigan screamed. “I’ll have your soul, and it will be tormented in my army for eternity!”

Pete watched the Morrigan’s inhuman gold eyes as they fell, never blinking. “You didn’t believe me,” she said, “but I was telling the truth. I’m not afraid of you. Or death. I’m afraid of leaving the world to people like the Prometheans. I’m afraid of letting Jack down, and I’m afraid my daughter will forget me.”

She dug her fingernails into the Morrigan’s flesh, and at the touch of the goddess’s blood, Pete’s vision was filled only with magic, only with the power that was pouring into her so quickly it was a wonder she wasn’t turning to ash.

“But you, Hag?” she hissed. “You don’t scare me one fucking bit.”

The Morrigan screeched, a sound so inhuman it echoed off everything in Purgatory, and then the white flashed away and Pete heard other sounds, sounds of the world she knew.

“Pete?” Jack’s voice echoed as if from a tunnel. Like breaking the surface of a frozen pond, her eyes flew open and she saw a spotty gray sky, clouds drifting, felt a thumping on her chest like a hammer.

“Fuck off!” she shouted at Jack, who stopped using his clubbed fists to pump at her chest. “What the Hell are you doing?”

“CPR,” he panted. “You stopped breathing.”

“You’re doing it all wrong,” Pete said. The pain wasn’t from the CPR, though. It was the power, burning her from the inside. The Morrigan was gone, but an eternity of power harvested from the dead still rode Pete’s mind. Her vision blurred, her heart stuttered, and she felt her muscles go rigid and spastic with convulsions.

All at once Jack disappeared, shoved bodily out of the way by Donovan, and Morwenna was bending over her.

“She channeled it right into her,” Morwenna breathed. “I can’t believe it. Donovan, we can still do it. She’s got enough juice to light up Manchester.”

“Hurry up,” he said. “And Victor, will you please fucking keep control of my son? He almost smashed her ribcage to bits.”

Morwenna grabbed Pete’s face between her thumb and forefinger, squeezing hard enough to carve half-moons into Pete’s flesh. “I don’t care what happens to her body, Donovan. I just want what’s riding it. Winter’s far too much of a weakling to carry this kind of power. It’s evident that I’ll be taking up the mantle of the Merlin. Look how the power responds to me.”

She placed her fingers on Pete’s forehead and inhaled. “Give the power to me, old ones,” she murmured. “I await you, your worthy servant, worthy of the gift first given one hundred generations past.”

It was as if someone had placed a magnet against her. Pete felt all the power rush to the surface of her mind and travel through the pathways of her neurons toward Morwenna’s voice. In the woman’s clenched fist she saw the soul cage, still coaxing the vast energies of the emptiness toward the pain and suffering of the mage soul inside.

Well, she thought absently. At least I’m not going to die in the mud. Might even make it to a hospital if I’m lucky.

Beyond the roaring of the Morrigan’s magic, she heard a scream. At first she thought it was Margaret, but it was Morwenna, mouth open wide as it would go, a grotesque red slash of rage and disbelief.

The power left Pete as abruptly as it had come, and she fell back into the mud, that hit-by-a-lorry feeling worse than ever.

Beyond the circle of mages, Margaret gave a small shudder, a jolt, and then passed her hands over her face.

“What the fuck just happened?” she asked Jack.

“It’s her,” Victor said, his voice soft and full of awe. “The magic chose her.”

“No!” Morwenna screamed, starting for Margaret. “It’s mine! I made the offering! I said the words! I’m the one who bloody stepped up when it counted!”

Victor put an arm out and stopped her as easily as you’d stop a small child throwing a fit. “I’m sorry, Morwenna,” he said. “But she’s the Merlin. The Weir’s energies chose her.”

One by one, the mages of the Prometheus Club turned to Margaret, some staring with blantant hostility, others with curiosity.

“Guess that explains why you’re not a worm, luv,” Jack said, squeezing Margaret on the shoulder.

“Please accept my apology,” Victor said, extending his hand to Margaret. “And consider this a formal offer to take your seat at the head of the Prometheus Club.”

“Don’t do it,” Jack said instantly. “Worse than school. Make you wear an ugly suit like his. Install a stick up your arse on your eighteenth birthday.”

Margaret just blinked, looking at her hands. “I feel weird,” she said, sticking herself to Jack like a burr. “I just want to go back to Manchester.”

Morwenna dropped to her knees in the mud. Pete watched tears streak down her crimson face as sobs racked her body. “I’ve given my whole life,” she said. “I’ve given everything. Everything I had and more. Don’t I deserve something? Anything?”

Pete managed to pull herself into a sitting position, which hurt but wasn’t impossible. She tried standing and found that wasn’t bad, either.

“Donovan,” Morwenna pleaded, grabbing at Donovan’s hand. “You stood with me when everyone thought I was insane to try to become the new Merlin. You know it can’t be this … this … brat!”

Donovan looked at Morwenna, then at Margaret, and gave a shrug. “Sorry, luv,” he said. “Tough break.”

Morwenna leaped at his back faster than seemed possible for a sobbing woman in a tight skirt, and Pete shouted. “Donovan, look out!”

Morwenna grabbed for the gun in Donovan’s waistband, but he knocked her back into the mud. Morwenna raised her hand and started to speak a word of power, but Donovan whistled, sharp and high, before she could get it out.

Pete saw the shapes advance through the fog, cutting it like sharks in water, and she ran to Jack, pulling both him and Margaret into a crouch and covering the girl’s eyes.

Only she had the vantage to see what happened.

The wraiths flew at Morwenna, drawn by the energy Pete could feel crackling across her skin and pulsing through her blood. Donovan’s talent was in full force, and the wraiths found easy prey as Morwenna struggled to get up from the mud. She barely made a sound, could only moan and quiver a bit as the wraiths drank her dry.

Victor and the other mages watched dispassionately, not blinking, Victor’s expression a flat slate of nothing.

“We can go,” Pete said, releasing her hold on Jack and Margaret. It was hard to let go of Jack, but she made herself do it. “The well’s closed. It shouldn’t be affecting our senses any longer.”

“No,” Jack said, harsh as the sound Morwenna had made. “We’re making sure she’s dead.”

They watched as the wraiths drank, then drifted away, sated, at Donovan’s bidding. Pete tugged on Jack. “We really need to go.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Donovan intoned. “The Merlin comes with us.” He stuck out his arm to Margaret. “Come, child.”

Margaret stepped back, shaking her head wildly. “Get away from me. I don’t know you.”

“Either we take the Merlin, or I leave your bodies for the ravens,” Donovan snarled. “Those are your options.”

He fixed Jack with a look of utter contempt. “I had hoped you’d take up your seat, boy, but now I’m almost glad I’ll be disposing of you. You’re nothing but a disappointment, Jack, in every way possible.”

Jack started to reply, but Pete all at once knew she’d had enough of Donovan Winter. Enough to last her a lifetime, and then some.

She set herself and hit him, in the soft spot just under his cheek. Donovan’s head snapped around as the sound of the punch echoed back from the hillside.

Donovan dropped, mud splashing all over him, bruise already in full bloom. “You’ve seen what I can do,” Pete told him, keeping her eyes on the rest of the Prometheans. “You lot so much as send a stray thought my way again and you know what’ll happen. I can light every last one of you ablaze with a finger snap, so I suggest you use those few brain cells you have, Donovan, and stay out of our lives from now on.”

She glared around at the rest of the staring faces. “Anybody else got a problem with leaving the Weir to her business?”

Nobody did.

She took Margaret’s hand and started to walk away, but Jack stopped.

“Oh, and Dad,” he said, as Donovan struggled to get to his feet. “You can slag me off all you want, but as far as disappointing you goes…” He grinned at Donovan, and it was the Jack grin Pete knew, not the pale imitation his father used. “I can’t remember when I’ve been more fucking proud of meself. You ever come near me family again, I’ll fucking kill you.”

He turned his back and said to Pete, “Let’s go, luv. I’ve had me fill of the country.”

“That makes two of us,” Pete grumbled. “I’ve got so much mud on me, I may never leave greater London again.”

As they descended the hill and found one of the Prometheans’ parked cars to take, Pete realized she could see again. The fog had lifted from Overton. The black cairn marking the soul well was knocked over, and the tree had withered down to a twisted stump.

The sky was clear.

The ravens had gone.

28.

It was a simple enough matter to convince the care workers in Manchester to let Pete take custody of Margaret, at least temporarily. The Smythes didn’t have any relatives, and Pete was a responsible sort who actually wanted to take control of a belligerent thirteen-year-old. The care worker practically threw the paperwork at her with a bow on it.

When they were on the train back to London, Margaret dozing, Pete put her head on Jack’s shoulder and finally let her eyes close. “How are you?” she asked softly.

He sucked in a breath, and then she felt his arm slide around her, fingers squeezing hard enough to leave a mark. “How d’you think I am?”

“Feeling like shite, probably,” Pete murmured. “Same as me.”

“Too right,” Jack sighed. “This was a Hell of a week, Petunia, I won’t lie. ’M as bloody and battered as I ever have been.”

“I’m sorry I lied to you,” Pete said, so softly she didn’t know if Jack heard her over the roar of the train.

He was quiet for a moment, and then she felt his chest expand with a sigh. “If you’d told me you were planning to channel the soul well, I’d’ve done something boneheaded to stop you.”

“You had to know I wouldn’t just lie down for someone like Morwenna,” Pete said.

“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “But you did right not telling me, and I can admit that.”

“I hated it,” Pete confessed, feeling a hot prickle in her eyes and willing them to stay dry. “The thought of never seeing you or Lily again. But I hated the thought of us living in a place like that more.”

“I think about it sometimes,” Jack said. “One or the other of us not making it. I’m not like you, Pete. I can’t even consider it.”

Pete found his hand and squeezed it. Jack wasn’t one to rush in on a white horse. She’d made peace with that long ago, and it was fine. She could be the hero, and he could be the rock. It’d be a nice change for once. “You would. If it was me or Lily. You have. You’re the bravest man I know, Jack Winter, and that’ll never change.”

“You think that’s it?” Jack said. “That the Prometheans’ll listen and stay away?”

“I don’t know,” Pete said, not wanting to voice what she did know. She’d merely hit pause on what was coming, not ended it. The Morrigan was more intent than ever on having Jack for her own. The Black was irreparably broken, and the appearance of the soul well was only the first major crack in the walls between worlds.

“I don’t even bloody care at this point.” Jack put his arm around her, holding her to him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About Donovan and all of that. You think you don’t give a fuck about those people, and then they show up and they slice you right to the fucking core, like you were six years old again. To think for a few seconds there I actually considered forgiving that cunt…”

Pete stopped him, shaking her head. “Jack, your parents were horrid, awful, selfish people, and Donovan made the choice to mess with black magic and try to grab a little more power rather than do right by his son,” she said. “Don’t fucking apologize for him.”

He laughed, rough and regretful. “We’ll do better. Especially now that it seems we’ve got two.”

“We will,” Pete agreed. “I mean, how hard could it possibly be to do better than my crazy mum and your homicidal dad?”

Jack kissed the top of her head. “You always know exactly what to say to a bloke.”

“It’s my superpower,” Pete said. She nestled into Jack’s chest again. “It all worked out,” she said. “I mean, as well as it ever does for us.”

Jack stared out the train window, and Pete followed his gaze. The sky was gray and peaceful, as if the world held its breath, above the spires and down into the deepest core of the earth, where the dead lay silent.

A deception, but one she could let Jack live with, at least until the end of the train line.

He drifted off after a time, leaving Pete alone with the memories of what she’d seen on the hill, under the black cairn.

I’ll have him in the end, the Morrigan whispered in her ear, and Pete knew, deep down in the place where she knew things beyond thought or reason, and discerned the veracity in the old gods’ words with her talent, that the Hag spoke the truth.

And that she was going to have to figure out how to prove the Morrigan wrong.