McCorkle’s hand tightened on her. “You snark again and I’ll rip your tongue out of your head and swallow it whole.” He sat back on his heels and waited. Pete stared at him, refusing to blink first, but she kept quiet. Ghosts were the worst bits of you—rage and pettiness and fear—and McCorkle had hated her more than enough in life to do everything he’d threatened.
“I don’t know what you’re doing here.” McCorkle leaned in so he was almost whispering in her ear. “I’m just glad you came.” He lifted a finger toward the half-caved in roof. “You see those things up there? The carrion birds of the Underworld? They scavenge us like meat.” He snorted, and a bubble of bloody snot grew on one nostril. “Suppose I am that. Meat. But now…” He petted the spot under Pete’s chin where he’d cut her. “Now, we’ve got something live to feed them. Had me a snake when I was a boy, used to swallow mice that trembled just the way you are now. Predators love live meat.”
Pete stared into McCorkle’s sunken face. She realized that the lack of panic probably meant her mind had simply said “fuck it” and gone into standby mode until she could have a proper breakdown. She had to put that off as long as possible, preferably when she wasn’t a hairsbreadth from her eternal reward. “Naughton killed you,” she said. “Those others as well?”
“He’s been at it for a while,” McCorkle said. “Carver was very impressed with his old boss man.”
“But not you,” Pete ventured. The old scenario—distract the mad bastard until she had time to come up with something clever. Distract herself so she didn’t simply start screaming.
“We were schoolmates, Gerry and I,” McCorkle said. “Brain on that bastard was big and squashy, but he was a klepto even then. Mum used to beat the Hell out of him, and sweets and cigarettes would pop out of his pockets while he mewled and whinged.”
“So naturally when you became the very brightest of the dirty coppers, you turned to your mate with all of the best scratch,” Pete said.
“He didn’t want to sell me that thing, but his obese whore of a mother needed some hip wotsit. Could have told her fat arse to lay off the Guinness and chips and gotten the same result,” McCorkle said. “Then I start getting harassed. Sods in suits, jabbering about witchcraft. It was fucking comical. Thought so right up until Gerry got himself sliced. Thought so even as I did the same.”
“I could’ve told you not to trust a spoiled public school brat who mucks about with corpses,” Pete said. “Honestly, McCorkle, that shouldn’t have been a hard one even for someone like you.”
“I don’t have to justify myself to you, you fucking Irish twat,” McCorkle said. “Someone tells you you’ve bought a reliquary for a dead god, you tell them to fuck off and stay on their meds. Don’t pretend you were so open-minded, before you spread your legs for all that nonsense.”
He drew a hunting knife out of his belt and waggled it in Pete’s vision, huge as Nelson’s column. “The only thing I need from you is to decide whether I gut you and leave you for the crows before or after I fuck you senseless.”
Pete’s heart sped up, even though she shouldn’t have a heartbeat at all in this place. The orchid trance was tipping over into actual death, and her only hope was that Mosswood would pull her out before McCorkle carved her up. But that would leave Jack behind, so she forced herself to stop shaking, reach up, and close her fist around the blade of McCorkle’s knife. “Don’t talk your power-and-control rapist shit at me, you poncey little cunt. You’re not the worst nightmare I’ve seen. Not by fucking far.” The blade slid into her hand as though her flesh were warm and buttery, and her blood was hot when it dribbled down her forearm. The pain of severed nerves came more slowly. Pete ignored it. Pain was tertiary.
“The only thing you can do to me,” McCorkle snarled, “is beg not to be alive when I violate you like the little Catholic whore you are.”
“First of all,” Pete said. “I haven’t been inside a church voluntarily since I was thirteen. Second of all, if you were going to do it, you’d’ve done it by now. Not your fault. I imagine at some point, your balls rotted and fell off.” Pete didn’t think about her bloody hand, the cool steel in her grip, Mosswood or Jack or any of it. McCorkle was all that mattered. He was standing between her and Carver. Between her and getting back to the daylight world with her soul.
McCorkle tried to pull his knife back, but Pete grabbed the hilt with her other hand, closing her fingers over his slimy digits. “I can help you,” she said, not blinking. If she blinked, or thought, she’d go mad with terror. Fear was the only sane response to something like McCorkle, to being in the thin spaces and so close to death at all.
“Help me? Do you realize where we are?” McCorkle barked a dead man’s deformed laugh, born from collapsed lungs.
“I know that you can’t leave again, unlike me,” Pete said. “I know it was Naughton who fucked you in the arse and sent you here. All of you. All I want in return is Carver.”
McCorkel’s face twitched spastically, his nerves running wild. “And what’ll you do for me?”
“I’ll send Nicholas Naughton down here in my place,” Pete said. “And him, you can do whatever you like with.”
She watched him with all her copper instincts, trying to pick a hint off of his mangled face. McCorkle sniffed deeply. “Why should I trust you? Naughton’s sent near a dozen of us down here, trying to cage his bloody demon or demigod or whatever it is. You won’t do any better against him.”
“I’m not like these sad things.” Pete pointed at the other ghosts, clustered a little way away. “As for Nick Naughton—I hate that bastard more than Hitler.”
“You’d slice him cold-blooded, for me?” McCorkle grinned and slowly released his grip on the knife. “I think I’m in love.”
The blade clattered to the boards, and Pete tucked her hand under her T-shirt, trying to sop up the free-flowing blood. It felt like she’d pressed a poker against her palm, red hot and prickling.
“Give me Carver,” she said, “you get Naughton. Soul for a soul. Even you can do that math, Freddy.” She got to her feet and raised the index finger on her good hand. “Oh, and Jack’s leaving here, too.”
“No,” McCorkle said at once. “The crow-mage stays.”
“Fine,” Pete said. “Then you might as well get on with the cutting and the raping, because Naughton is far too clever for the likes of you. You’ll be here until the crows out there suck you dry like a milkshake.”
“For a good little girl, you do seem to love sticking your fingers into the fires,” McCorkle said, and then bellowed gutturally. The trio of ghosts reappeared, dragging Jack.
Pete narrowed her eyes, a black sense of unease crawling up from the pit of her mind, where her talent lay. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He hasn’t told you?” McCorkle said. “How he crawled up out of Belial’s charnel house, like the snake in the garden of Eden?”
“I don’t care what Jack did for Belial,” Pete told McCorkle. It was none of his bloody buisness. He was a ghost. She was allowed to lie to those sorts of creatures.
“Belial?” McCorkle’s tongue flicked in, out. “No, I don’t think it’s the Prince you have to worry about. I’d wager it’s the Hag.”
“Jack’s a servant of the Morrigan,” Pete said. “It doesn’t mean a bloody thing.” She turned to go, but McCorkle snatched her arm. Jack extricated the kerchief from his mouth and started for them.
“Get your fucking hands off her.”
“Don’t think I will,” McCorkle told him. “You hear things, out here in the nothingness. Echoes from the Underworld, from the Hag herself, and the army she’s gathering at her feet. We hear the dead whispering, from inside the wall. So unless you want me to tell your little flower here what I’ve heard … you be sweet to me, crow-mage.”
Pete expected Jack to curse, sneer, and possibly set McCorkle on fire with his mind. She didn’t expect him to freeze, an expression close to panic on his face.
“Don’t,” he told McCorkle. “Or I’l
l…”
“Or you’ll what, crow-mage?” McCorkle snarled. He let go of Pete and spread his arms. “I’m a piece of flesh and soul trapped in the maw of Hell, Winter! Do your fucking worst!”
Jack closed distance and took Pete’s hand. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get the fuck away from here.”
“Go!” McCorkle crowed. “Carver’s on Blackfriars Bridge. He’s waiting for you, Petunia Caldecott. And so’s the truth!”
Jack yanked her along and they were clear of the warehouse and the horrid mortuary stink of the Thames. “Move it,” he said. “You’re bleeding like a pig and the crows’ll be thick as flies.”
Pete shrugged free of his grasp and stopped walking. She knew that McCorkle hadn’t been lying, at least not completely. She knew with the certainty that her talent gave her, that certain events were inexorable and fixed, and that the truth couldn’t be buried. “Are you?”
“I’m not running on demon fuel,” Jack said, too quickly. “I’m still flesh and blood. You should know after what we did.”
Pete shut her eyes. Don’t look. Don’t let him put the lie in your mind. “Are you who you were, Jack? Did the Morrigan do something for you? To you?”
Jack didn’t answer her. He only started walking again, and Pete was left to either follow or be left alone in crumbling, poisoned London.
CHAPTER 30
In Pete’s waking life, Blackfriars Bridge was a cluttered span of taxis and people, the red wrought iron appearing too delicate and lacy to support the load of London’s populace. Now it was sooty black and canted to one side, pilings groaning as the black tide of the Thames rushed around it.
At the center, where the river ran deepest, a single lamp was still lit, flickering like a firefly in a jar. Under the lamp waited a man, or at least a man-shaped shadow.
“Spirit,” Jack said, rubbing his index finger against his temple as if his brain itched. “Not a ghost. That’s a soul. At least that McCorkle wasn’t a liar on top of a great pasty twat.”
“Carver?” Pete called, cupping her hands around her mouth. “Gerard Carver?”
The shadow didn’t move, except to raise a hand and lower it again.
“Careful,” Jack said. “You stay here long enough when you’re not all the way dead, you get as crazy and vicious as those scavenger souls.”
“I think I’m tipping over,” Pete said. She could feel the mist now, the cold on her skin, every inch of her nerves and blood, as if she were really here as opposed to only visiting. “I’m smaller and I took the same dose. We need him before Mosswood pulls us out.”
“Fine, then,” Jack said. “What was that? Go big or go home?” He started straight for Carver, paying no mind to the holes in the road bed.
Carver looked better than he had in life, wearing a tweed suit and a midly interested expression, ginger beard neatly trimmed. “I knew someone would come,” he said. “You’re not any of Naughton’s.”
“Should bloody hope not,” Jack said.
“He did send us,” Pete said. “He wants you back. You cocked up his ritual.”
“Nicholas cocked up his own ritual,” Carver said viciously. “Tried it without the reliquary, in what might as well have been broad fucking daylight. Hated that arrogant bastard.”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Ethan Morningstar is big into the hatred, from what I’ve seen.”
Carver blinked at her from behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. “I might have known Ethan would hire on sorcerers. Always did have more drive than sense, God bless him.”
“Oi, you ginger cunt,” Jack said. “God’s not here. Never has been.”
“You cannot return me to my flesh,” Carver said, expression slipping into terror. “You don’t know what Naughton’s tried to do.”
“Reliquary, necromantic ritual, human sacrifice,” Pete said. “It’s a summoning, isn’t it? Some big nasty burrowed down in the muck of the Underworld.”
“So much worse,” Carver said with a laugh that sounded like ashes. “I’m not going back. I’ll stand here until the ashes have burned down and the dragon has wrapped himself around the world. That will be my final service to the Order. I’ll repent for all my necessary sins at last.”
Pete cut a glance at Jack, who rolled his eyes heavenward. “Madness sets in quicker for some,” she said.
“He’s not mad,” Jack said. “He’s just spouting that thirdhand apocalyptic crap. Jesus freaks and necromancers, I told you. And this bright lad is both.”
“Crow-mage,” Carver said, “you of all people should know that I’m speaking the truth. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“He’s here with me,” Pete said. “We’re taking you with us, so I suggest you don’t kick up a fuss.”
Carver smiled, and his mouth was a black slice in his pale face, his skin pulling back into a wide mockery of joy. “Winter’s not here with you, little one.”
“Shut up,” Pete told him. “I don’t need to be riddled by dead men.”
Carver stepped into the light. His eyes were pure black, the eyes of a ghost, seeing countries and dreamscapes far beyond living sight.
“The crow-mage isn’t your man, Weir. He’s come through fire. He’s changed.”
Pete waited for a rebuttal, but there was silence from Jack, and Carver began to laugh. The sound was like a nail in Pete’s skull. She became aware Jack was out of her eyeline, standing just behind her and to the side, looking down at his boots. “Jack?” she said softly, the plunge in her stomach having nothing to do with the cant of the bridge.
He said nothing, didn’t move, and Carver continued to laugh.
“You crawled out of Hell, you came through fire, and she didn’t find that suspicious?” He shook his head at Pete. “You stupid, stupid bitch.”
Pete pointed a finger at him. “You, shut your gob. Jack, what is he talking about?”
Jack finally raised his head. “You didn’t know what it was like there. In Hell. I was there for good. I belonged to Belial.”
“Jack…,” Pete started. “You didn’t…” Jack had never believed in destiny, any more than Pete had. The Morrigan had marked him as her own, but to Jack it didn’t mean anything more than his sight and a mildly irritating nickname. Jack detested his patron goddess even more than Belial. He wouldn’t have.
“She came to me at my lowest, and she explained what I’d always known, really. She’d put her mark on me, named me as the crow-mage for this moment, when the Black is in flux, dying and coming up from the ashes. Who’s standing when that happens is up to her. She’s the Hag, Pete. She’s the raven of war, the bedmate of death.”
Pete’s throat tightened as Jack went on in a flat shell-shocked tone barely audible over the rush of water. “There is a storm sweeping over the Black, and when it clears the shadow of the crow will reach across every face in it. It’s the Hag’s time, and the crow-mage stands at the head of the Hag’s army of the dead. Not the necromancers, not the Hecate, and nobody else. I’m her walker, Pete. I’m the hand of death. And I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
He stepped forward, stretching out his hand to Carver. “Gerard Carver, I bind you soul and spirit to your earthly flesh, life after death, until my word says otherwise. My will is your will, living and dead, ashes and dust.”
Pete felt the flare of magic, dark and sooty as the air around them. Black magic always felt like a needle, loaded with a drug and primed straight into her senses. It was hot coals and glacial ice, the stench of decaying flesh and of the fires of Hell, all at once. Jack shivered as the incantation passed through him.
Carver kept grinning. “You wait,” he told Pete. “He’s not finished.”
Pete couldn’t stir herself. She thought another bargain with Belial would be hard enough to take, but this … this told her that Jack had well and truly been broken. Hell had taken the one man she’d thought unbreakable and snapped him in two. He was the crow-mage now, truly, and he was to the Morrigan what she’d sworn she’d never be to the
Hecate.
“Jack,” she said at last, “just let go.” She grabbed his shoulders and faced him toward her. “I don’t care. I know why you did it, and I would’ve done the same. I was wrong to say those things about you. I couldn’t survive Hell. I’m sorry, Jack. But you can walk away. You’re not the Morrigan’s slave. You don’t have to help her burn the Black.”
The Hecate hadn’t been wrong. That was the worst bit. If she’d killed Jack, the moment he’d come back, none of this would be happening. The Morrigan wouldn’t have her walker and Naughton wouldn’t have a shot at Carver, because Pete never could have done this ritual herself.
If she’d killed Jack, she’d have also killed Ollie, and let Naughton get away with two murders, at the very least.
There was no if for her, though, right as the Hecate was.
She never could have done it. She’d still be standing right here, because much as heroin and adrenaline were Jack’s drugs of choice, he was hers. The only thing she could never kick. The only person she’d ever needed, in the way of aching bones and desperate, clawing craving.
All she could do now was show him that was the truth.
“Just come back,” Pete whispered. “Don’t let her, Jack.”
“You are a servant of the Morrigan, Gerard Carver,” was all he said. “Bound to serve the crow-mage and only him. So it is now, so it is forever until you pass or the world does.”
“No…,” Pete told him. “No, Jack, we have to bring him back. Ollie will die…”
“I’m sorry,” Jack said. He looked at her and then his gaze darted out to the water. “But this is my price, Pete. This is my task. Deliver the necromancer’s offering to the Morrigan, to use as she sees fit. Or she’ll give me back to Belial and we can never…” Jack drew a breath. “I can never go home again.” He reached out and put his hand on her cheek. “I had to betray you this time, Pete, so that I can be beside you the next. When the storm breaks. Please, just say you understand me.”
“I don’t understand any of this!” Pete shouted. “How could you, Jack? How could you?”
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