Pete chuckled softly. “I’ll take my chances, I think.”
Jack put his head back against the rest, trying to drain the tension of Pete’s company from his neck. He preferred birds he could compartmentalize. Friend, fuck, foe. Pete was a combination of all, or none. She wasn’t easy, and the old Jack didn’t like that. The present Jack just felt like a useless wanker for having to lie.
He didn’t think he could sleep, but the draft of warm air from the heating vents, combined with blood loss and exhaustion, dropped him into a drowse.
He woke to Pete’s shaking. She pointed out the wind-screen and Jack saw black turrets, dead trees, and a slice of sky tarnished silver by moonlight.
“That’s the place?” he said. “Christ, where’s the lightning and the sinister albino butler?”
He put his hand on the door, and it was far as he got.
The Black shuddered and pulsed around the house, and Jack grabbed his head as a spike of pain split the front of his skull. The Black wasn’t just around the house, it was in the house, a part of it as much as beams and mortar, a great swirling well of magic, dragging him under, dragging him to drowning . . .
“Jack!” A small cool hand slapped him across the face, and the sting was enough to quiet the scream of the void.
He’d fallen out of the car and onto damp gravel. The stones dug divots in the side of his face, and a finger-light mist kissed his eyelashes with droplets.
Pete helped him sit up, and when he looked at the house again it was perfectly silent, just a house surrounded by overgrown gardens and backed by the sweep of the moor. “Fucking hell,” Jack muttered, brushing mud off his cheek.
“Everything all right?” Pete crouched down with hands on knees to examine his eyes and breathing, like they taught you in a first-aid course.
“Not sure.” Jack shook himself, shrugging off the last vestiges of the Black. It slithered reluctantly back into the small, secret place inside his head where his talent resided, hissing as it coiled up and went back to sleep.
Pull yourself together, Winter, the fix whispered. Until you can’t any longer, and you come begging for a taste.
“Fuck off,” Jack grumbled. Pete cocked her head.
“Excuse me?”
“Not you,” Jack said. He pulled his boots under him and climbed up to his feet. The maneuver took him several more steps than it had even five years ago. Jack decided creaky knees and a back permanently out of line from sleeping rough on squat floors were the least of his worries at the moment. He could be a vain sod when his head wasn’t breaking apart like an egg. “Let’s get on with this sorry endeavor and see what skeletons Naughton has rattling around his family manse.”
Chapter Eleven
The interior of Nicholas Naughton’s mansion was much like the exterior—grim, dusty, and unwelcoming. Pete hit the light inside the double front door, igniting exactly two bulbs in the fifty-lamp chandelier looking down on a marble entry so thick with dust even Pete’s petite frame left footprints.
A grand stairway lead up to a landing of peeling wallpaper and rotting carpet, and two hallways trailed deeper into Naughton’s residence like dark, clotted veins. The place smelled of rot and damp—cemetery smells, with the musical accompaniment of rats and bugs scuttling over the decaying bones in holes Jack couldn’t see.
He took in the shrouded furniture, the third-rate landscapes hanging from the picture rails in the narrow front parlor, the stained walls and cracked mirrors that reflected jagged, mismatched Jacks back to his gaze. “This is what Danny Naughton lived with? Cross and crow, I’d hang meself within the week.”
“Kitchen’s this way, looks like,” Pete said, flipping another switch. The lights along the hall flickered ominously. One bulb exploded in a blue cacophony of sparks.
“Not that I’m terribly keen to see the state of it,” Jack said. Something slithered, fluttered, across the underside of his mind and then the mansion settled, went as quiet as a coffin.
A house shouldn’t echo so silently in the unseen spaces. All things had a footprint in the Black. The Naughton manse was a void, a space into which you could fall and lose yourself.
“Jack.” Pete waggled her fingers in front of his face, expression letting him know he’d gone to the vacant place like an addled teenager chewing on mushrooms. “You coming?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, moving himself along. The fluctuations of energy around the house could be nothing special—or they could be why Danny Naughton had strung himself up. For a sensitive who didn’t know his own power, such a place would be unbearable. That feeling, of your head too full and your heart pumping too hard, Jack knew firsthand. It whispered, Come to me like a siren on the rocks, searing the compulsion into a psychic’s mind until the psychic would do anything to make it stop. Booze. Smack. Chisel to the forehead. Jack knew this firsthand, too.
He just hoped Pete wouldn’t pry into it overmuch. Jack’s head and his heart that still beat out of sequence after the shock in the drive weren’t putting him in a confessional mood.
The kitchen was no better than the rest of the place—Jack wagered it was even worse than his own pre-war one burner/one kettle setup in Whitechapel. At least nothing furry was alive in his sink drain.
Pete wrinkled her nose at the mice scuttling around the baseboards and the mold blossoming everywhere else. “He might have had it cleaned before he sent us here. Jesus.”
“Somehow I think Naughton is more the flashy type than the one to grab a mop, luv.” Jack dropped the tattered kit he’d packed in a rush back at the flat on the kitchen table. He’d leave the discovery of every casting implement and important bit and bob he’d forgotten in his hurry until tomorrow. “I’m off to find a bed without anything residing in it.”
“Best of luck,” Pete said, hiding a yawn with the back of her hand.
“Tomorrow we’ll take a proper look around,” Jack said. “See if this wasn’t all a laugh cooked up by Nancy Lad to make Danny Boy hang himself.”
“Why would Naughton want his brother dead?” Pete sighed.
“That’s your department, luv,” he said. “I just exorcise the ghosts. Assuming there are actual spirits and not just bloody great rats in this place.”
“I’ll go pay respects to the local constabulary tomorrow,” Pete said. “I saw a sign for Princetown back at the last fork. They’ll have proper police to check on the Naughton’s history and see if Nick lied to me.”
“As if that’d be a bloody surprise,” Jack said, more to himself than Pete. She rolled her eyes at the kitchen ceiling, stained with browned and mellowed continents of unknown origin.
“This possessive streak is becoming less and less attractive, Jack.”
“Just looking out for you,” he protested. Pete held up a hand.
“You made it clear after Blackpool we’re not anything, Jack. So don’t pretend this is for my benefit and not to make yourself feel bigger.”
The silence ran long and thin, and Jack contemplated whether he should put his fist through the wall or merely break Naughton’s tacky family china against it. He didn’t have much pride, but he had enough to dislike it when attractive women called him on his shite. Jack discarded all of his arguments while his blood beat in his ears. Pete had heard them all at least once. Finally he decided it was simpler to change the subject entirely. Blackpool was months past, and seemed like an eternity. There was no point in standing under the storm it had stirred in him when he could be indoors.
“Princetown, you say?” Jack rubbed his chin. Had to do something about the beard before he started looking like a fucking hippie.
“That’s what the sign read,” Pete said, dropping her own luggage. She found and mounted the servants’ stairs, which lead them to a back hall and a warren of rooms filled with boxes, naked dressmaker’s dummies, and camp cots for the eponymous servants.
The bedrooms for the gentry were numerous and nearly as cluttered.
“Danny was a bit of a pack rat,” Pete said.<
br />
“Crazier than a bowl of bar nuts, you mean,” Jack said, as they encountered one room filled entirely with back issues of Penthouse, stacked neatly by year, and jar upon jar of kosher pickles, also arranged by year.
“That as well,” Pete agreed. She found the master suite, a great oppressive four-poster dominating the scene like the set of a particularly dull vintage porno film. “This will do for me.”
“And you’re welcome to it,” Jack said. Even the colors of the room, muted bloody purples and bruised blues, depressed him. “Don’t let the ghosties bite.”
“Jack.” Pete put her hand on his arm. “Do you know someone in Princetown?”
“Why?” Jack said. “Jealous?”
“No, but when I said the name you reacted like someone had stuck a hat pin in your arse.” Pete took her hand away. “You owe another gangster money?”
Jack blew out a breath. It was a fair question, and had it been anyone besides Pete asking he might have shrugged, even made a joke of it. “That’s all you think of me? Bad man with bad debts?” The words came out far harsher than he’d intended.
“I didn’t mean . . . ,” Pete said. Then her face set, hollowed out and as tired as his own must be. “Let’s face facts, Jack. You’ve a lot of carnage in your wake and I like to know what I’m getting into when I’m with you.”
“There’s nothing sinister in Princetown,” Jack snapped. “Just another lot of musty old ghosts, like this place.” And because it was Pete and not anyone else, he felt compelled to twist the knife he’d landed. “You have sweet dreams, luv, since you’re so bloody innocent.”
Jack slammed the door on Pete’s thin-lipped face and stomped down the grand staircase, wanting to break his fist on something vulnerable but settling for a smoke instead.
He stopped on the landing, breathed out, lit the fag, breathed in. Sweet, blessed nicotine. Every addict’s pity fuck.
A shape shimmered in the broken mirror, over Jack’s left shoulder. His own profile half obscured by smoke, he fixated on the spot, unsure if he’d even seen it.
Wasn’t that every poxy haunting he’d ever seen on telly? Smoke, shadow, and no substance?
Jack exhaled at his reflection. The mirror sucked all the color out of its view, drained everything but his face down a black whirl pool.
“Come on then,” Jack sneered. “No cameras. No whimpering psychics. Just you and me, a pair of mean old bastards.”
Nothing moved beyond him in the glass. Jack shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. Mirrors were useful, but not this water-spotted mess. Old mirrors, made with silver, were what attracted spirits. New glass just served to spook over-tired mages.
Jack opened his eyes, resolved to have one more fag and then bed, when a pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him down the stairs.
Chapter Twelve
He landed on his back, on the stone, and saw stars as all of his air escaped in a last, mocking puff of blue smoke.
Jack choked, unable to do anything except flop like a hooked mackerel while his mind screamed at him from the primal place of blood and birth to Run, run you stupid cunt, get free before it kills you.
He pushed the panic away, focused on his various bits, the quick mental check one developed after one had taken a few beatings. No lancing pain in his sides, his hands, or his legs, no bone scraping muscle anywhere, but he’d had the wind knocked out of him, properly.
“Jack?” Pete appeared at the top of the stairs, barefooted and barelegged, wearing a stretched Siouxsie shirt as a nightie. “Jack!” She took the steps two at a time, landing next to him on the cold floor, able fingers feeling his pulse and checking his pupils. “What happened? Did you black out? It’s a miracle you’re not gushing blood all across the floor.” Her words blended together, skipped and flowed over one another like water over rocks and mingled with the current ringing in his skull.
Jack shut his eyes because it seemed a remarkably good plan. Enough beatings also taught that sometimes, you didn’t want to get up. You just lay there and bled until the hurt passed and whoever had put you down in the first place lost interest.
The plan worked well, until Pete slapped him hard across the face. “The nearest hospital is thirty-five kilometers away and if you think I’m driving you there in my night things, you’re bloody stoned.”
Jack forced himself back to the surface of waking. Everything was quiet again. No shapes fluttered in the mirrors and no great howling morass cried to him across the Black. The Naughton mansion was, to his senses, dead as a doornail once more.
Pete laid the back of her hand on his forehead, cradling his skull on her knees. Her nightshirt was cut out in the collar and from his vantage Jack could see the top curves of her breasts, Snow White skin dusted with a helping of Black Irish freckles. He gave what he hoped was a sickly but courageous smile.
“That feels good, luv.”
Pete followed his eyes and huffed. “Sit up, you wanker.”
Jack did as he was told, with great reluctance on the part of his swimming vision and screaming muscles. Pete went and fetched her penlight from her kit, shining it in his eyes.
“Your pupils are the same size,” Pete said. “Your head isn’t bleeding badly. Just don’t go to sleep for a few hours.” She held out her hand and Jack let her pull him up. The Naughton’s foyer swayed agreeably, like he’d chased the fag with some high-grade opium.
He held on to Pete. “I’m spent, luv.” He brushed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Though you could always keep me awake.”
“Fuck off.” Pete gave him a gentle shove with her free hand.
Jack swapped his grip for her waist under the nightshirt, fingers slotting between Pete’s ribs, pulling her flush against him. They were a good fit.
“’M not joking, Pete.” The terrible thing was, he wasn’t. If Pete had, in that moment, put her hands on him in return, Jack wouldn’t have stopped himself.
Not for the demon, not because Pete was an innocent in matters of the Black. Jack knew one thing surely about himself and that was, he was rubbish against temptation. Pete was flame and he was paper, and if he touched her he’d burn. No question about the matter.
“Get some rest,” Pete said softly. “I’m sure the ghosts will keep until morning.”
Jack rubbed the back of his skull, where a lump roughly the size of the Isle of Man was rising. His back would be a mass of bruises by morning, if the ache along his shoulder blades was anything to go by. “Not this one,” he said. “Pushy bastard. Quite literally.”
Pete’s brow wrinkled. “Will you be all right?”
Jack flashed her a grin. It was a cold comfort as she stepped away and adjusted the shirt to cover the flash and curve of skin on her exposed shoulder. “’Course. Go back to bed, darling. I’ll sit up for a bit to make sure me brain stays inside its house.”
Pete started up the stairs, and then turned back and went on tiptoe, planting a kiss on his bruised cheek.
Jack watched her go and then shut off the arthritic light and sat on the stairs in the dark, watching the ember of his last fag glow like a dying, faraway sun.
In a way, the poltergeist shoving him arse over teakettle had been a gift. It meant there was something in Naughton’s house, something dead and full of screaming, clawing rage. The dead silence lied to him, just as he was lying to Pete. It hid the thing that crept and crawled in the Black, exposed itself and vanished again like a movie-screen phantom. The intermittent magic of the Naughton house was a puzzle, but it wasn’t one that could distract him from exorcising a poltergeist. Poltergeists were solid, a good fight and good practice for exorcism. Plus, he could ratchet the charge into the stratosphere for that cunt Naughton, if only to make up for nearly turning his brain into pudding in the man’s grand entry.
Jack exhaled and watched the smoke rise and curl its fingers around the air until it disappeared, his own small spirit that was soon vanquished.
The ghost meant he was needed, for at least
a little longer. It meant the company of the dead, the only presence Jack had relied on since he was fourteen years old. He had its scent, and even though his sight was changeable and treacherous in this curious vortex of Black and nothing, Jack was going to run it to ground.
If nothing else, the ghost meant he wasn’t alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Pete moved under him, her body arched against the iron shackles that held her wrists above her head, flush against the stone. The air tingled, chill, drops of dew collecting in the hollows of her clavicle, the planes of her stomach, crowning her nipples in crystal tears.
A ring of torches and a ring of watchers closed Jack and Pete inside surely as a lover’s embrace. On the stone within a circle of stones, Jack touched her, put his mouth on her skin, tasted sweat and bitterness from the blue woad the women had painted on her, before she was brought to him, in the circle, on the stone, with the scent of rowan in the air.
Pete met his eyes, her slim pale thighs bruising under the pressure of his hands. Jack knew this place, in the primal sense memory of his magic, and from the same memory the ritual power curled around him, whispered what it wanted, begged him to close the circle.
Pete struggled as Jack moved her legs akimbo, gasped as he placed himself against her, warm wet burning him against the cold contrast of the stone.
Pete held his gaze, her own eyes wide and pooling. “Please. Please, Jack . . .”
The chanting crested, the power of the place with it, and Jack fell over the edge, into the swirling vortex of the Black . . .
The Mini’s car horn cut through the fog of sleep, and Jack winced as light and sound hooked their claws in his consciousness and dragged him into the waking world.
He felt wrung out and stiff, hungover without the fuzzy memory or naked bird in his bed to make it at all worthwhile.
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