The Stygian Brother had been right about that much—he needed out of London. And he needed to convince Pete to come with him.
CHAPTER 2
“I don’t understand,” Pete said at breakfast. She insisted on cooking for them unless she was vomiting so much from morning sickness she couldn’t lift her head off the loo tiles. It was as if she was insistent that Jack would find no fault with her, when she finally broke it off officially, and for good. He wouldn’t have anything to recriminate with. Not that he would have, even if she’d lain about all day shouting at him to bring her chocolate. He was the one at fault here, not Pete.
“Not much to understand, is there?” Jack said. “Pretty much everyone in the greater London area who can sling a spell is clamoring for me blood, and we need to lie low until they find something else shiny to hold their attention.”
“No,” Pete said, “I mean I don’t understand why I have to go.”
“Because like it or not, they think you and I are in this together,” Jack said. “A matched pair.”
Pete’s fingers twitched as she picked up their plates, but that was all she betrayed. Jack hopped up from his chair. “Let me. Need a smoke anyway.”
He carried the plates into the kitchen, dumping them in the sink with soap and hot water. He slid open the window and blew his smoke in that general direction.
“I don’t want to do it,” Pete said, so quietly he nearly didn’t hear her over traffic. She stood at the arched entryway to the kitchen, hands folded protectively over her stomach. “It’d be one thing if it was just me, but the little one isn’t paying for your mistakes, Jack. I think this is enough.”
When he thought about Pete chucking him, Jack felt nothing—just the same numbness that cropped up when most people decided they’d had enough of him. Non-feeling. It didn’t matter one way or the other, because it was always going to be this way. But now, he felt something, and it wasn’t a feeling he enjoyed. It was all the things he didn’t let in—anger, because Pete, in his eyes, wouldn’t even give him a chance, and disgust because she was right not to, and the big nasty monster, guilt, because as usual Pete was right. She’d been paying for his mistakes, in one manner or another, for over a decade. He’d already decided to let her go. These feelings cropping up like weeds would die back eventually. He was just doing the decent thing, that was all—keeping an innocent kid and its mother safe.
“Please,” he said, flicking the fag out the window and coming to Pete. She flinched when he took her by the shoulders, but didn’t let herself lean away. Pete was tough. Tougher, in a lot of ways, than he’d ever be. “Look, Pete, I know that you didn’t want this, and that it was a stupid thing for both of us to get into, but it happened. You can think whatever you want of me and when this blows over you can light out and never look back, but until then I’m not letting anything happen to you. Or the kid. It’s my mess, and for once I’m cleaning it the fuck up.” He realized he was squeezing her hard enough to feel bone. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Pete stared at the stained vinyl, pocked with clusters of yellow flowers and cigarette burns, rather than look at him. “Are we really in danger?” she said.
“Believe it,” Jack said. “Fucking Stygian Brothers almost took me head off last night, and they’re far from the most organized outfit I’ve slagged off.”
Pete tightened her jaw, and then pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket. “I was planning to do this on my own,” she said. “I wasn’t going to tell you until my flight had lifted off from Heathrow.”
Jack took the scrap, tried to summon the non-feeling again and not let Pete’s words sting him. The paper bore Pete’s neat, round Catholic school handwriting. Benjamin Mayhew Investigations, Venice Beach Blvd., Los Angeles. An American phone number was scribbled beneath.
“Who’s this?” he said.
“Used to be a cop in Los Angeles,” Pete said. “We met at a seminar a while back. He’s gone private, now, and I guess he was always in the life, because he heard about me from someone around a month ago and e-mailed our business address. Said he had a problem only I could help with.”
“Wait.” Jack waved the scrap, not believing that Pete of all people could fall for such shit. “You were going to fuck off without telling anyone, never mind me, and wander into an obvious trap?” He felt a throb start at his temples that could be from the bottle he’d killed last night, or from pure irritation.
Pete put her hands on her hips. “I’m quite capable of getting into and out of my own trouble, Jack. I managed it nicely before I met you, and after, too. Besides, Mayhew is an all-right bloke. American, but, you know. Not one of those types.”
“Even his name makes him sound like a git,” Jack said. “And what’s this problem only you can help him with?”
Pete snatched the paper back. “First of all, you’re far more of a git than Mayhew ever was, and I don’t know. I figured I’d ask when I got to Los Angeles.”
“No,” Jack said. “Over my dead, cold, and possibly violated corpse. This is just more shite drummed up by somebody who wants to explain to me the error of my ways, and use your dead body to do it.”
“You’re not in charge of me, Jack,” Pete said. “Just because you managed to reproduce with me doesn’t automatically make you smarter. So fuck you, stay here and play your little revenge games with your ridiculous friends. I’m leaving.”
Well, he’d handled that brilliantly. Pete wriggled free of him and slammed into the closet, emerging with her battered Samsonite.
“Pete…” he started, but she held up a finger.
“It won’t work, Jack. I tried, but it won’t. I’m not pointing blame—this is as much me as it is you, but I will say that if you didn’t have the pathological need to be the hero, and to protect me when I don’t fucking need it, none of this would’ve ever happened.”
He tried to keep his mouth shut, but self-control had never been one of his strong points. Hell, if he was honest, it’d never even been a point at all. “Your getting knocked up has very little to do with me being a hero,” he snapped. Pete stopped short, boring holes in him with her glare.
“You’re right about that,” she said. “But I wasn’t talking about that, was I? The fact that you happen to be my sperm donor has very little to do with what’s happening now.”
He picked up the whiskey bottle and threw it. Not at Pete, because he didn’t want to hurt her. He just needed to break something, to hear the crash and feel the glass fragments bite into the soles of his boots when he crossed the room to the front door. Break something or break himself, and he couldn’t allow himself that luxury right now.
At least it was out in the open. She’d never even considered that they’d do it together. And that was fine by him. Like he needed a brat on top of all the other problems in his life. Maybe if he said that line enough times he’d start to believe it.
Jack almost missed the BMW idling across from his flat. His pulse was throbbing, and his lungs were constricted down to fist size. She wanted a fucking absent father, he’d show her one. He could be on a boat to Ireland in forty minutes, cadge a passport from a bloke he knew in Belfast, and from there make his way anywhere he pleased. Sooner or later someone would come looking for him via Pete, and she’d wish she’d listened to him then, wouldn’t she? But you couldn’t tell Pete anything, and Jack almost wished he’d be there to see her face when necromancers showed up on the front stoop.
He tried to let the anger flow, and the lies with it. Hoped they would eventually be true too, because the alternative was that he was alone again, and it was remarkable how quickly that had become the worst fate imaginable.
“Mr. Winter.” The car window rolled down and with it, out rolled black magic, rendolent and velvety against his senses. Jack nearly flipped the occupant of the car the bird and kept walking, but then he saw the face, craggy and nearly the same color as stone, topped by a wide-brimmed hat.
“Oh, fuck me,” he said.
&n
bsp; Ethan Morningstar egressed his poncey ride with surprising grace for a man of his size and bulk, and gave Jack a smile that held all the warmth of a tombstone in January. “You’re more eloquent than usual, Jack. Been taking your vitamins? Men of your age need to start considering these things, you know.”
Jack set his feet and let a tendril of power uncurl inside his head. Morningstar was a dangerous, unpredictable snake of a man, and it wouldn’t surprise Jack if he tried to open him like a Christmas pudding just for the fun of it. “Get the hell out of my patch, Ethan,” he said. “We don’t want what you’re selling.”
“I’m here informally,” Morningstar said. “A friendly gesture, if you will.”
That made Jack laugh. The Order of the Malleus was never friendly, not to people like him. With mages, they tended more to thumbscrews and waterboards. “Whatever you say, Ethan. I’m still telling you to fuck off.”
Morningstar leaned against the fender of his motor, which creaked and shifted under his weight. He might look like somebody’s surly headmaster, but every bit of his bulk was muscle—muscle he knew how to use. Jack had to admit, so far the witchfinder was being remarkably civil. That in and of itself bothered him.
“I was hoping after you failed to set Nergal on the waking world like a hungry dog, somebody would do my job for me,” Morningstar said. “One of the other mud-grazers would creep up on you in the dark and put a knife in your ribs, and that’d be the end of it. But like the man says, we can’t always get what we want.”
“I’ve got another one,” Jack said. “‘Oh bondage, up yours.’”
Ethan sucked his teeth, then folded his arms. “This can’t go on, Jack.”
Here it was. The nightstick, the Taser, the needle full of dream-time. Waking up in a dank basement tied to a chair whose wood was already soaked with other men’s blood. Tortured and prodded until the Malleus had extracted all of his useful information, then fed into a crematory furnace by a discreet and sympathetic mortuary worker. Fascists, magical or not, didn’t employ a lot of variety.
Jack braced himself. “I’m not going to go quietly.”
“I don’t care how you go,” Ethan said. “Just that you do. Get out of my sight, get out of my city, and don’t come back.” He stood up and moved into Jack’s space, so that they could’ve kissed if Jack had been remotely interested. “How did you put it? If I see you on my patch again, I will kill you. You’re spreading chaos, making the other spell-dabblers nervous, and somebody innocent is going to be hurt. I won’t allow that.”
Jack felt his heartbeat peak and recede, like a tide smashing on a rock. “That’s it?”
“What did you think I was going to do, stuff you in the boot and take you away to a secret prison?” Morningstar chuffed. “Not hardly. Maybe I’m soft in my old age. Maybe I just remember that your little girlfriend did give us Nergal’s reliquary when it was all said and done. Maybe I think you’re not worth the time it’ll take to clean the blood off my boots.” Morningstar opened his door and got back into his car. “You’ll just have to wonder, won’t you?”
He started to pull away from the curb, then tapped the brakes. “Speaking of Petunia, take her with you. The same rules apply, and she’s a lot more dangerous than you. She comes back here and sows more trouble for London, the Malleus will be forced to take steps.” He tipped his head, grinning wide for the first time, then gunned the engine. The BMW roared away into Mile End traffic like a black shark, but not half as beastlike as the driver.
Pete was standing on the stoop of their flat, watching him with folded arms while he crossed the road again. “Was that who I think it is?”
“None other,” Jack said. “And it looks like I’m coming with you, whether you want it or not.” He held up a hand when Pete started to object. “Look, I’ll stay out of this thing with your friend Mayhew. But I can’t stay in London and I’d just as soon go someplace that’s not pissing down rain.” Los Angeles was as good a place as any. He could look up some old mates from his band days, have a laugh, and get away from London and all of the memories it implied. And if he was closer to Pete until she had the kid, so much the better. She’d made her feelings clear, but Jack wasn’t prepared to be that much of a shit father. Letting your kid and its mother get murdered because you two had a spat wasn’t parent of the year material in anyone’s book.
Pete flapped her hands. “Fine. But it’s not a bloody comic book team-up. You’ll let me conduct my business with Mayhew and you’ll stop dragging me into this ridiculous feud of yours.”
“Fine,” Jack agreed. “Consider me a ghost, luv. You won’t even know I exist.” Pete went inside without another word.
It took Jack remarkably little time to pack up what he needed from the flat. He’d have thought that after nearly twenty years, he’d have more essentials. But the books, aside from a few rare grimoires that he could hock for cash if he needed it, the vinyl, the odds and ends that one collected after twenty years of living half in and half out of the Black … they suddenly seemed like so much junk, piled up in all the corners and crevices. Whoever eventually broke in here wouldn’t find anything worth salvaging, unless they were into moldy takeaway or vintage porn.
Jack packed up a few changes of clothes, his leather, his least disreputable pair of boots, and the master reel of his band’s first and only album. The Poor Dead Bastards had something of a cult following, and maybe he could trade it for something, if he needed to. He hadn’t been to Los Angeles since the early 1990s and what he remembered didn’t exactly inspire fits of joy. He’d need money, and he’d need to make a good impression on the locals. American mages tended toward pompous and territorial, instilled with the idea that they were special, as if there weren’t tens of thousands just like them the world over.
Pete had allowed them to get on their flight together, since it was her charge card that was financing the venture. They took the fast train to Heathrow, found the Virgin flight to LAX, and Pete proceeded to ignore him again. She took the window seat and fell asleep, or at least pretended to, as soon as they were in the air.
Jack decided the only antidote for his hatred of being locked inside a large metal lipstick tube suspended above the earth was to get as drunk as the twenty quid in his wallet would allow, and flagged down a flight attendant.
He drifted in and out, and when he woke for good, the plane had touched down and they were on the tarmac at LAX.
Pete climbed over him and got her carry-on bag. “Been fun,” she said, and got ahead of him, cutting herself off with a herd of slow-moving passengers.
“Yeah,” Jack muttered, shouldering his own bag. “Like getting teeth pulled in the middle ages.”
CHAPTER 3
LAX was interminable, moving walkways shunting along herds of people, most of whom were wearing sunglasses. Coming from a place where the sun was a luxury, if not an outright oddity, and if you wore shades you never wore them indoors, Jack decided they were all cunts.
He got through customs, got out to the curb, and found himself facing a wasteland that went on as far as the eye could see. Palm trees poked above the landscape here and there, and the roar of jets competed with the drone of the nearby freeway.
“Christ,” Pete said at his elbow. “It’s a bit 1984, isn’t it?”
“I think you’d need a few more government billboards and few less birds in midriff tops for that,” Jack said. He looked down at her. “You ditching me, then?”
Pete kicked the dirty concrete. “Look, Jack. I was really angry, and I still am, but…” She drew a deep breath, and then made a face. “Even the air here tastes dirty. Anyway, I think the thing to do is stick together. At least until great swaths of the UK don’t want us dead any longer.”
“I really am sorry,” he said quietly. He was, too. He wasn’t sorry often. Sorry was for people who lived their lives looking for something to regret, and when you’d gotten as many friends killed as he had, you could be sorry straight down to the bottom of a whiskey bottle or the
point of a needle full of smack. There was no future in being sorry for every fucking thing.
But this was Pete. And he was sorry, for both of them.
“Save it,” she said. “I don’t want you to pity me. I just want you to stop walking around like a kicked puppy.”
“Then stop kicking me,” Jack snapped. “I know your life plan didn’t include a kid, Pete. I know it didn’t include me, and I know you’re slagged off that you have to put up with either of us. I know you blame me. Fuck it, I blame me. I know it all, that you’re done with me soon as the sprog makes an appearance. So until then, can we just agree that’s how it is and leave off kicking a dead horse in the balls?”
Pete blinked, and Jack let himself imagine that for a moment, she’d wanted to deny what he was saying, but then she nodded. “Sounds good. We’re colleagues, nothing more.”
“Fantastic,” Jack agreed. He’d protect Pete until the baby came, and then he’d go his way and she’d go hers. And that would be that. No need for crying or hair-pulling on either end.
He knew he’d never believe that one, but Pete wasn’t leaving him much of a choice.
A long, low convertible, in a shade of yellow Jack would describe as “violent sunshine,” pulled up in front of them, and Pete took up her bag. “That’ll be Mayhew,” she said. “I told him to meet us here.”
“Christ,” Jack said. “If I’d’ve known he was bringing a boat, I would’ve worn a life vest.”
“Behave,” Pete muttered, moving to shake hands with the car’s driver. Mayhew was short, but not too short; fat, but not too fat; with a smile that was sincere, but only just. Completely average and utterly unremarkable. He must’ve made a hell of a cop.
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