“Simple enough,” Jack said. “Come to a city where the demon’s not welcome, spread around a story of a taxi accident that probably really happened, shove an anonymous gangster’s corpse in the grave in his place, and poof.” He spread his fingers. “No more lightly talented, unlucky musician with a short lifespan for the demon to find.”
Pete pulled a face. “First thing we learn in the Met—people don’t just vanish.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “Even mages.” You could get a new face and a new identity with varying degrees of magic, but to erase other people’s memories of you—that was the trick. Memories were the spine upon which the Black rested its weary flesh and blood. Memories were the only thing truly a man’s if he moved among the creatures of Faerie and Hell.
“People don’t just disappear,” Jack echoed.
“I said it,” she agreed. “Who here might know? What about that git Seth?”
Jack held up his hands. “Not Seth.” His scalpel cut was healing crookedly, puffy and red around the edges. He needed a real hospital, real stitches from a real doctor. “Seth shot his bolt,” he said. “He thinks I’ve gone over to sorcery, and I think he’s a fucking cunt. It’s safe to say we’ve reached an impasse.”
“He did try to kill you.” Pete folded her arms in such a way that Jack knew Seth would be eating through a tube if Pete had reached the scene a few seconds earlier.
“I’ll see him again someday, settle it, probably have to put the mad old man down.” Jack sighed. “Selling me out to the demon of Bangkok . . . I swear. He’s gone senile.”
“Who, then?” Pete stopped walking as her stomach rumbled. “Bloody hell, I’m starving.”
Jack realized they were near Robbie’s stall at the edge of the night market and gestured. “Oi, mate. You got anything to eat around here?”
While Robbie troubled his neighbor, a noodle cart, for two pasteboard containers heavy with spice, Jack rubbed the back of his neck. His head and his muscles ached. His arm hurt at the slash and at the injection site. Pete’s mouth twisted nervously.
“You all right?”
“Falling apart,” Jack said. “I’m discovering that I’m not as young as I once was.”
“Fuck me, I could have told you that,” Pete scoffed. Jack nudged her in the ribs.
“Oi. Watch that mouth, missy.”
“Or what?” Pete cocked her eyebrow, corners of her mouth dancing with a grin. Robbie handed her the noodles and she sucked down a mouthful with her chopsticks, watching him over her food with a hooded gaze.
“Or I might just take it into my head to show you the error of your ways,” Jack said. He was decently sure that Pete, the dedicated and driven inspector, had no idea the effect she had on men. Especially when she gave them that wicked come-hither look while smiling her arse off at their expense.
“I’d like to see you try,” she teased. Jack tasted the noodles, felt his stomach give a warning gurgle, and passed them to Pete.
“There’s a way we might find Hornby,” he said, to distract himself from sicking up all over Robbie’s stall. “It’s not pleasant or easy but it’s a pretty reliable scry if you can get past that.”
“Good.” Pete finished both portions and chucked the cartons in a bin. “When can we do it?”
Jack tilted his head, found the sound of sirens and screaming on the night air. “As soon as I find a corpse.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
The accident was a scooter accident, and the man in the street was broken nearly in half. A lorry idled nearby, the driver arguing with police. Bhat changed hands, and the police returned to their vehicle, inching away from the scene through traffic.
Crowds on the pavement pressed close. A camera flash added its punctuation mark, bleaching the dead man’s skin paper white.
The corpse collectors carried a canvas field stretcher of the type used by the Territorial Army, and they set it on the damp street. Rain water and blood mingled in the gutters, slick black flowing down into the sewer and out to the river.
Jack stepped into the street, boots splashing in the current from the rain, and approached the corpse collectors. “Oi. Speak any English?”
One of them nodded, so Jack produced his wad of bhat. “There was a bloke died earlier today, in the hospital up the road. Name of Jao. Where’d you take him?”
The man shrugged. “I didn’t pick him up. Lemme ask my friend.” After an exchange, he pointed at Jack’s money. “Give us that and you can ride along.”
Jack nodded, but pulled it back when the man reached for it. “Her, too?”
Pete made a face at the small ambulance. It was an ancient Cadillac, insignia blacked out with spray paint, the low chassis and dented fins giving it the visage of a shark. “In that? With the corpse?”
“It’s that or I give up, go home, and get to know the more intimate crevices of Hell,” Jack shrugged. Pete’s jaw twitched, but she nodded.
“All right.”
The ambulance pulled away from the accident site with a jerk that moved Jack, Pete, and the corpse to the left as if they were on strings. Pete let out a breath as the corpse’s bloody hand flopped into her lap. “Jack, when this is over I am going to shove your head so far up your arse . . .”
Jack nudged the corpse back onto the canvas sled with his boot. “Get in line, luv. I’m popular on that score.”
They rode through newly rain-washed streets, neon bouncing off the dew and refracting Bangkok into a thousand shards of glass.
The hospital was larger and newer than Jao’s lair, and Jack caught a glare from a nurse when he and Pete walked through A&E with the corpse delivery.
Morgues, as far as they went, were not Jack’s favorite places on earth, along with police stations and shops that sold a lot of glass figurines. Morgues were cold and their magic was spiky, the layer between the Black and the light world thinned by death and the dead themselves, who crowded in close as he crossed the threshold.
Jack saw ghosts, the first other than the dead GIs since he’d arrived in Bangkok. Most were still and silent, wearing their Y incisions and their last injuries like permanent black and silver tattoos. A few bore the twisting cloaks of ethereal malignancy, pain and rage spilling across the tiles from their sunken black eyes and gaping black mouths.
Jack fought against the nausea that boiled up in his guts. The fix was having its revenge.
At least the dead told him they were in the right place. Jao’s spirit would draw every scrap of dead magic within the vicinity, a necromancer’s soul an irresistible morsel.
If Jao had been a different sort of person in life, Jack might have felt a bit of pity. Then again, his arm was still throbbing and swollen, so perhaps not. Jao and Rahu and the lot of them—they could rot in their miserable little city on their corpulent, stinking river.
The corpse carriers deposited their bundle and the one who spoke English eyed Jack. “You still want to see him?”
Jack cast his eye at the tray of instruments waiting for the return of the unlucky charnel worker in the morning hours. “I want to do more than that.”
The corpse man rolled out a tray, and Jao’s milky, suffocated eyes, shot through with pink spider veins, stared up at the ceiling. The corpse man held out his hand. “I can’t just leave you alone in here, you know.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jack shoved the last of his bhat into the corpse carrier’s hand. “I know the score, mate. Give us a moment for my trouble?”
The man nodded and he and the partner retreated with their sled. Jack pinched the sanitized plastic covering off the instrument tray and picked up the Stryker saw, the whining darling of B-horror directors everywhere.
Pete frowned. “Jack, what are you doing?”
“Something sacrilegious in nearly every way you can think of,” said Jack. “Learnt from a Stygian Brother back when they’d stolen Lawrence’s death—you want to find something, nothing homes in faster than a piece of black magician.”
Pete pressed a hand over
her mouth. “Please tell me you’re speaking in terms of a vial of blood or a lock of hair.”
“Petunia, he’s dead,” Jack explained as he gave the saw an experimental rev. “And he was a nasty bugger when alive, so if you’re going to lose your supper over this of all things, go wait outside.”
Pete’s eyes narrowed. “Just because I can stand some of the things you get up to doesn’t mean I like them.”
“Fair enough.” Jack slipped on a cotton mask and a pair of goggles that pinched at the temples. He flipped the switch, and lowered the Stryker saw to Jao’s neck. The blood mist against his goggles was fine, coagulated, and nearly black. The salt-iron tang of it filled the air.
The saw faltered when it reached the spine, and Jack pressed down with all of his strength. He was rewarded when Jao’s head flopped back, nerveless, the skull thunking on the metal tray like Jack had dropped a bowling ball.
Jack looked at Pete, who had backed up against the far wall. Her pulse was pounding in her neck like a jackhammer. “Find me something to carry this in,” he said, indicating Jao’s head.
Pete moved stiffly, and got him an orange biohazard bag, which Jack in turn stuffed into a tote left behind by a morgue worker. Pete’s color hadn’t improved. “I’m going to be sick.”
“If you’re dealing with bastards, sometimes you’ve got to get dirty,” Jack said. “Be a bit of a bastard yourself.”
Pete put as much distance between herself and the bag as possible. “Jack, I don’t think I could do what you just did. Magic, fine. Demons, very well. But things like this . . . I just can’t.”
“You could, Pete.” Jack zipped the bag closed. “Just pray you never have to.”
Jao’s head was leaden, and Jack felt the tendrils of bad magic seeping into the air around him. The ghosts crowded after Jack, Pete, and Jack’s burden as he crossed the threshold back into the hospital, watching him through the swinging doors, their whispers teasing his sight until it felt like a thin needle piercing his brain.
Jack exhaled, massaging the center of his forehead. Pete eyed him. “What is it now?”
“Nothing,” Jack said. “But sometimes, I think I made the wrong bloody deal.”
“By most people’s definition, any deal with a demon is a wrong one,” Pete grumbled.
“Here it comes.” Jack shouldered the bag. “The self-righteous tongue-lashing from your spot of Catholic guilt. Go ahead, luv—I’m ready.”
“I’m not saying a word,” Pete told him, and kept her promise while they left the hospital and found a motorbike taxi. Jack told the driver, “Nearest river bridge, and hurry it up.”
Pete stayed silent while they poked inch by inch through the crush of motorbikes and cars converging on the choke point of the river’s edge. She stayed silent when Jack paid the driver with pounds sterling, and she stayed silent when he walked to the center of the pedestrian walkway and peered into the river.
“How long are you going to be in a snit?” The sewage stink of the river, mixed with salt and cooking oil, wafted up to put greasy little fingers all over his face.
Pete sniffed. “As long as I bloody well please.”
“Look.” Jack let out a sigh. The river was crowded with long boats and water taxis, but this spot looking toward the skyscrapers and away from the slums would do. “Whatever you want to say, let it out and have done. This silent treatment is for twat couples on the telly. It’s not for us.”
“Oh.” Pete’s tone bit down hard and let Jack know that his usual style of git with a bit of arsehole mixed in might have landed him in uncharted territory. “There’s an us now, is there?”
Jack stopped, his hands knotted in the plastic wrapped around Jao’s head, and shut his eyes. “Pete, what do you want me to say? Want me to run into the street and declare me love? Burst into song? I don’t know what we’ve got any more than you do.”
“If I have to tell you what we’ve got, Jack, then fuck it anyway. It’s not bloody worth it.” Pete paced away a few steps and leaned on the railing. “Never was.”
Jack set Jao’s head back in the bag. “You think I don’t know, Pete?” He stood up, went to her, grabbed her arm. His hand slipped against her sweat. “That I’ve been stupid and reckless and deserve what I’ve got coming because I’m a coward and a liar? You think it doesn’t follow me like shadow wherever I walk on this earth?” His fingers pressed down, and they would bruise, but Jack couldn’t stop himself. He’d frayed, and worn, and now he’d broken. “Tell me, Pete. Tell me what exactly you don’t understand about my wasted, wrecked existence, because from where I’m standing it’s not that fucking complicated.”
Her eyes filled but her fist came up, thumped against his chest like a second heartbeat, over and over. “How you could do it!” she shouted. “How you could do it when you’re Jack Winter!” She slumped against him, her fist unclenching. They’d traded bruises, now. Stood square and equal. Pete gave one shuddering breath and drew herself upright. “You’re not supposed to be the one with scars, Jack,” she whispered. “Because if you can be broken, that means I have to pick up the pieces, and it terrifies me, knowing what I know now, to think you won’t be there beside me someday soon.”
Jack conjured a smile. Pete didn’t need to see the dark, twisted, terrified mess inside his chest. She needed to see his armor, the Jack she’d met a dozen years ago. “They haven’t got me yet, luv. And if this goes right, they won’t.” He passed the backs of his knuckles down her cheek. They came away warm, wet, and salty.
Pete looked down, sniffed like she hadn’t let the tears come at all. “You promise me?”
“Promise,” Jack said. And he meant it, for fuck-all a promise from him was worth. For Pete, he’d kick and fight and bare his teeth until the demon dragged him into Hell with claws in his hide. “Now, I need to concentrate on scrying, so what say we kiss and make up?”
Pete choked a laugh. “Because nothing’s romantic as a head in a plastic wrapper. You sweep me of my feet, Jack Winter. Truly.”
He dipped his head and planted a light brush of lips on her forehead. “I do me best.”
Jao’s head still stared at him bug-eyed when he unwrapped it, lips swollen and tongue threatening to pop out from the mouth. Jack forced the jaws open with his finger and dug in his bag for herbs. He stuffed in his scrying mediums, a flat black stone, a twist of feather, and a clump of sage. He gathered Jao’s hair in a clump, attaching a length of linen string in a hardy knot.
Jack cradled the head in his arms and stepped up on the rail, toes hanging into space, black water flowing under his feet like the tide of souls into the Bleak Gates.
He held the head out in front of him like a rugby ball, wrapping the string around his knuckles. He lowered the thing by degrees, until it dangled a few meters above the water, and the feedback of black magic traveled up his arms and across his skin, burrowing deep.
“Someone’s going to see us,” Pete warned.
Jack rocked against the weight of the head, and the heady rush of energy all through his nerves. “’Course they will. However, I wager no one’s going to bother the crazy farang and his severed head.”
Pete made a face, like she’d report him to the coppers herself if she had a choice. “Just be quick. That head is absolutely creepy.”
The string in his fist gave a twitch, and Jack held up his free hand to Pete. “Hush.”
Scrying wasn’t like summoning or exorcism. It was a quiet art, precise and delicate, requiring a steady hand and a steadier mind to keep the sharp pinpoint of focus on whatever it was you sought. Mages used ink, mirrors, or plain stone pendulums to find nearly anything. White witches stared at crystals and sorcerers used the writhing, sticky energy of necromancy to scry with human bodies.
Mages could find ghosts, missing things, lost people, but to find a human being who wanted to stay hidden and cemented their chances with magic—that was the realm of the darker arts.
The head moved. It swayed back and forth in a parabolic arc abo
ve the river water. Water, the great current that bound the spirit world and the light one, channeling the sorcerous energy into Jack’s search.
Jack said, “Miles Hornby.”
The head came to a stop at an angle, rigid, white eyes staring north. They rolled back toward Jack.
He felt the magic squirm from his grasp, winding down the string to take up residence in Jao’s skull. Jack’s skin crawled, like it was trying to separate from his flesh and bone.
The sorcery spoke, in a voice that was older than bone and more wicked than any demon. It filled Jack up until it spilled over, and as he watched the head’s jaws began to work, the swollen tongue flopping with the effort needed to form a word.
Jack’s stomach and his balance lurched as the scrying spell gripped him, and he strained to hear the worlds borne on the spell. For a moment, there was only the rushing water and the hiss of the long boats poling underneath the bridge, and then his arm jerked as the spell snapped home.
“Kâo Făn Wat,” the head gasped, and then the string broke and the thing plunged into the river with a splash, disappearing beneath the dark and oily waves.
Jack let go of the string, felt it slip through his fingers and follow the spell down into the depths. The long boats passing by paid no notice to the slowly dying pool of ripples on the river. They paid even less attention to one lone white nutter standing on the rail.
Pete grabbed him when he swayed, and Jack jumped down. The heroin had left behind a feeling of being hollow on the inside, a carapace around a dusty left-behind set of innards, owner long since moved on.
“So?” She let go of him quickly and put an arm’s length between their bodies. They may have made up the fight but he wasn’t forgiven.
“Kâo Făn Wat,” Jack said. “Whatever that means.”
“A wat is a temple,” Pete said. “Learnt that from Tomb Raider. What direction?”
Jack pointed to where the head had come to rest. “That way. Never heard of Kâo Făn Wat. No idea what it is.”
Pete grimaced. “Fantastic. Now what do we do?”
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