Much as she had grown to hate the woman in the short time she’d known her, Pete had to admit Morwenna was right. Jack had chosen to stay human, stay away from the Morrigan, and ignore the fate his very birth had marked for him. And because of that, their lives were shit and Pete was constantly checking over her shoulder, waiting for the next stone to drop on their heads.
Still, it was a better life than being the dead general at the head of the Morrigan’s army of lost souls, devoid of any humanity, the puppet of the very thing that had brought forth war and death from primordial mud.
“This was inevitable, the moment you chose to turn your back on your purpose,” Morwenna continued. “And now you’ve left us no choice. Things have been set in motion that require the full brunt of the Prometheans’ intervention, and that includes you and Miss Caldecott.”
A moment later a man in a black suit appeared, the sort of cheap, boxy number favored by private bodyguards. He was carrying Pete’s and Jack’s bags, and he dropped them unceremoniously in front of Morwenna.
“Thank you, Bruce,” she said. To Pete, “Now that we’ve spoken and you understand that you will assist us, we’ll put you in a suite and return your things.” She held out Pete’s bag to her and had the audacity to smile. Pete snatched it roughly. Morwenna had worn out her self control. She felt snappish and dangerous, ready to bite the head off the next bastard who crossed her.
Morwenna offered Jack’s kit to him, but kept him at arm’s length. Whatever else she was, Pete conceded, she wasn’t stupid. “We don’t want to be your adversaries, Jack. You’re the one who set that dynamic, not us.”
Pete did a cursory check of her bag. Everything appeared to be there, minus her mobile and all the cash and plastic from her wallet. The Prometheans left nothing to chance.
“Let me ask you something,” she said to Morwenna, straightening up. Her baton was still in her bag, but if she was honest with herself, that wouldn’t net her anything except the chance to go down swinging. “If I said fuck off and we both walked out of here now, can you honestly tell me there’d be no repercussions?”
“No,” Morwenna said. “Honestly? The time for that passed when Jack turned us down the first time. You’ve seen it, Pete. The chaos, the wrongness of the Black when it whispers to you. Things are past the event horizon, and it’s how we come out the other side that matters now. We need Jack, and you, to solve the problem that’s cropped up before the ripples destroy everything you and I know.”
“Why me?” Pete sighed. “I can’t do anything useful. My talent just burns things down.”
Morwenna closed her hand around Pete’s shoulder. “Let’s talk, you and I.”
Jack moved closer to her, but Pete held him off with a glance. His jaw jumped, but he picked up his bag and turned to the guard. “All right, big’un,” he said. “Let’s see this suite you’ve got.”
Morwenna led Pete back into the room with the rock, the soft dripping of the water making Pete’s hair stand out in a frizzy halo. Morwenna appeared as polished as ever. “You really don’t know, do you?” she asked. “You don’t know the first thing about the Black, or about what you are.”
Pete took a few steps toward the plinth rising from the water. She’d seen plenty of Roman ruins as a schoolkid, taken a weekend to Bath when she’d been engaged to her ex-boyfriend Terry and seen the steam rising off the hot springs. Back in her old life, when things were simple. This seemed different though, carved from the living rock as it was, with the building constructed around it much later.
“I know enough,” she told Morwenna, but the other woman shook her head.
“You are a beginner, Pete, practically a white-robed virgin, offered up for sacrifice. It’s criminal what Jack let slip through his fingers. Seth McBride, for all his failings, at least taught him to take care of himself in this harsh realm we inhabit. You didn’t get any of that.”
“You don’t know him,” Pete said. “So kindly shut up about it before I do walk out of here and leave you in the lurch.”
Morwenna frowned, pretty face going pinched, but then she pointed at the rock. “Even you must know the story. The arm reaching from the lake, clutching the blade that would unite the warring tribes and give us England as we know it.”
“You can’t be serious,” Pete said. The rock could have held something long and straight, long ago. The groove had been nearly worn away by time and moisture. “That’s just a story,” she said. “And a silly one at that. Moist woman rises from lake, gives farmboy magic trinket, hijinks ensue? Please.”
“King Arthur and his knights? Yes, that’s a fairy tale,” Morwenna said. “But there was a man, not Arthur, but a mage, who many centuries past united the Black. Who protected men from Fae and showed the demons that our world wasn’t theirs for the taking. Who stopped the bloody battles between rival factions and made us see that we could work together, one man from each tribe, on a council that would protect all of us from the end times. He had no name anyone remembers, so Prometheans gave him the name of a hawk, both predator and guardian, watchman and warrior. The Merlin was the first one to shape the Black, Pete, and his is the only seat in the Prometheus Club that’s remained empty since he disappeared. Conditions now are ripe for his return, for a mage of immense power to claim his seat.”
“And you think Jack is this … person?” Pete said. It was a ludicrous idea. Jack wasn’t a chosen one of any stripe. He’d find the very idea hilarious.
“I have no idea who the Merlin might be,” Morwenna said. “Jack is filling his own seat, that of crow-mage. But our reliable texts say when the outlook is hopeless and the odds stand stacked against us, he will appear. Once in a thousand years, the Merlin will return to unite the Black against destruction. And I can tell you that this is the time, Pete. This is it.” Morwenna touched the rock with her fingertips, and then drew back. “Our darkest hour.”
Pete sighed. Morwenna might be well-dressed and not overtly insane, but she had delusions like members of the rest of the groups Pete and Jack had run across. “Fine, you’re looking for your Luke Skywalker. What’s this problem no one but Jack could possibly solve?”
“We’ll brief you both when the rest of the Members arrive in the morning,” Morwenna said. “I just wanted to impress on you how seriously we need Jack’s involvement.”
“And what about me?” Pete said, thinking that Morwenna had a lot of nerve acting as if Pete would take anything she said with any seriousness after that tale. She’d heard saner theories from deranged crack addicts on the streetcorners in Peckham.
“You’re the Weir,” Morwenna said, as if that explained everything. “We haven’t had one for nearly a hundred years. Not since my great-great grandmother sat at the arm of Queen Victoria. It’s a seat long empty, but trust me when I say you’re desperately needed.”
“I can’t be what you need,” Pete said. “You said it yourself—I’m a neophyte. My talent doesn’t listen to me, and I couldn’t care less about gods and monsters and how they want to end the world.”
“You are, because you’re the only one,” Morwenna said, giving Pete a look as if she were very stupid. “You’re the only Weir in Britain, Petunia. Maybe the world.”
That stopped Pete in her tracks. She felt a curious sick sensation, as if she’d fallen and her body hadn’t quite caught up with her plummeting stomach yet.
Of course she’d wondered, about all of it. Her gift, which seemed to be rare and peculiar. But she’d never thought she was the only one. Weirs were rare, but rare didn’t mean unique. She couldn’t be all alone with her talent. There had to be at least one other who knew the ever-present threat of the Black, the energy threatening to fill her and burn her from the inside out.
“I can’t be,” she whispered at last. She felt weak and fragile, out of control and dizzy, as if the floor had heaved under her feet.
“As far as we can tell, you are,” Morwenna said. “And our resources are vast, Pete.” She squeezed her shoulder, and this time Pet
e felt a pulse of power, deep and true as the blade of a broadsword. The kind of power that could cleave or heal with equal ease. Morwenna was easily the most powerful human mage she’d encountered, and would give some of the inhuman a run for their money. “You should be proud,” Morwenna said softly. “It’s a rare and wondrous gift you possess.”
“Yeah,” Pete said, as Morwenna walked away and left her staring at the plain gray rock. “Gift’s not the word I’d use.”
10.
The suite was a far cry from the bare room they’d put Pete in, and Jack was sitting on the bed smoking when she came in. She favored him with her worst copper look. “Must you?”
“What?” he said. “Not like I care if I yellow the Prometheans’ plaster.”
Pete slumped on the bed next to him. She realized she was incalculably tired. She could run on adrenaline for a while, but eventually she’d hit the wall. She’d usually been good for about forty-eight hours on the Met before she’d crash and have to take a rest on the bunks in the nap room. And that was when she was poring over leads and collating evidence, not running for her life, smacking goons in the head, and listening to Morwenna’s insane theories.
“You all right?” Jack asked. Pete laid her head on him as he leaned back against the pillow. She listened to his heartbeat, slow and thumping, a far-off train rolling over uneven track.
“No,” she said at last, looking up into his face. He had dark stubble along his jaw, and the vertical scar he’d gotten from the business end of a beer bottle glowed in the low light. His face was familiar to her, gave her a feeling that things were all right, even when they really weren’t. “Jack,” she said, “have you ever heard of another Weir?”
“Well, ’course I’d heard of them,” he said. “How else would I know what you were when you showed up?”
“I mean another person like me, alive as we speak,” she said. “Have you ever even heard of one?”
Jack considered for a moment, exhaling a stream of smoke before setting his fag in a saucer. “Heard, sure. Rumors and the like. Heard there was one in India. Maybe China.”
“Morwenna said I’m the only one,” Pete blurted.
Jack chuffed. “Morwenna’s a great idiot. She’s so blinded to the real world, all she can do is parrot that musty old legend about how the Prometheans are going to unite the Black under their banner.”
“What would it mean?” Pete said. “If I was the only person in the world who could do this?”
“It would make you very fucking sought after,” Jack said. “But you know that. You’re nobody’s puppet, Pete. ’M not worried about you.”
“They’re not as bad as I thought, honestly,” Pete murmured. “The Prometheans. Crazy, yeah, but I don’t get the sense they’d murder us in our beds.”
“You just say that because you didn’t grow up watching them snatch your friends off the street and manipulate mages they felt were beneath them. For fuck’s sake, Pete, they threw a bloke under a bus.”
“He threw himself,” Pete said softly, although the memory of Preston’s terrified face did a lot to throw the smiles and polite words of Morwenna into relief.
“Don’t tell me you’re actually thinking of taking them up on this asinine offer to join their little glee club?” Jack said, raising his eyebrow.
“No,” Pete said. “Of course not. We’ll do what we have to to placate them and get back home. Like we planned.”
“Good,” Jack said. “No place for us with people like them, Pete. They don’t have our best interest in mind. Whatever that ginger bitch Morwenna says, they just want to use us.”
Pete sat up, irritation swelling in her. “Then why are you still here?”
“You heard them,” Jack said. “Don’t fancy spending the rest of my life ducking into alleys to avoid a Promethean death squad, is all. Had a hard enough time avoiding them when I was a kid.”
“You don’t talk about it much,” Pete said. “Being a kid.”
“’Cause I wasn’t one,” Jack said. “I had a miserable, shitty childhood, and I’d just as soon leave it behind. All right?”
“Fine,” Pete said softly. She didn’t know why she’d expected Jack to suddenly open up. Perhaps because with Lily, he’d have a chance at a do-over. Or maybe because she’d known him since she was sixteen, but still didn’t really know him, beyond the moment they’d met. There were still gaping holes in Jack’s life that were entirely dark to her.
Not that she thought he kept secrets. Jack’s secrets were large and nasty and had teeth, and had a way of not staying secret for long. It was just that he knew nearly everything about her—her mother leaving, Connor dying, her engagement to her ex, Terry, everything in between. She knew Jack better than anyone, but his past was still almost wholly dark to her. It made for an odd relationship, the Jack she knew and the parts that remained hidden, an incomplete picture whose details she could never quite see.
“Luv, don’t be mad,” Jack said, and kissed the top of her head. “I just don’t want to talk about it. And I don’t want to be here, but I don’t see as I have much of a choice. And that makes me itchy, and I’m sorry if I snapped at you.”
Pete started to tell him to forget it, they had bigger things to worry about, but she found herself nodding off, and before she realized anything, it was light out and there was a knock on the door. She opened it and found another black-suited guard, a woman this time, who gestured Pete into the hall. “Breakfast is served, Miss Caldecott,” she muttered.
Pete nodded and shut the door again, to find Jack slipping into his leather jacket. The thing was probably older than she was, and it was terribly battered, but Pete was glad Jack wore it. It was familiar and comforting. For her part, she felt for her mobile before she realized it was missing, then stepped out empty handed. It felt odd to be defenseless, but she wasn’t. She had Jack with her, and she had her gift. Morwenna, at least, seemed to be in awe of it, so that gave her some currency, at least until they realized she was a screwup who could barely keep herself from being incinerated.
“Lovely little breakfast,” Jack said as they walked. “Wonder how many babies they’ve roasted on spits.”
Pete gave him a sharp elbow. “Try to be nice, all right?”
“’M always nice, me,” Jack said. “You’re the one who’s not nice.”
Pete didn’t have time to retort. In the peculiar way of the club, they’d already arrived in a posh dining room replete with wood paneling, china cabinets, and a table long enough to seat a dozen more people than currently occupied it.
Everyone stopped talking and fixed their stares on Pete and Jack as they entered, and only Morwenna looked as if she didn’t want to rip their heads off and serve them as entrées.
Jack was right—she wasn’t particularly nice. But she could behave herself, a skill he sorely lacked. Social niceties would take one a long way. Suspects were much chattier when coppers got them a fag and a cuppa than when they began by shouting and beating them with telephone directories.
The guard gestured them into two seats at the end of the table, the farthest from Morwenna, who sat at the head. Pete was the buffer between Jack and the rest of the guests, even though the bloke next to her glared—or she thought it was a glare. She couldn’t be sure under the layers of flesh that compressed his face like a deflated balloon. He was easily the largest person she’d seen up close, and he regarded her with a slow, heavy gaze.
“Little slip of a thing, aren’t you?” he said. “I expected more from a Weir, especially one reputed to be such a great bloody bitch.”
“I won’t make any of the obvious retorts,” Pete said. “Because they’re all far too easy.”
“All right,” Morwenna said from the head of the table. “Let’s at least pretend we’re all adults for the duration of the meal. Make Miss Caldecott and Mr. Winter feel welcome.”
“I’d be happy to,” said the big bastard, grinning at Pete and brushing his finger over her forearm. “I’m a very welcoming sort
.”
“Touch me again and after I break that finger off, it’s going up your arse,” Pete told him, beaming her sweetest smile at the assembled gathering. A few chuckled, but the majority still looked like they’d rather murder her than welcome her.
Jack shifted in his chair and took a sip of tea. “Now I know what a custard cake at a fat camp feels like,” he grumbled.
“I’d like to thank you all for coming,” Morwenna raised her voice above the chatter. “It’s always good to have everyone in the clubhouse.”
The big bastard gestured at the ten empty chairs. “I’d hardly say we’re fully assembled, Morwenna. If this is the showing you could get, I have to wonder if voting you into that seat was a hasty idea. You’re far too pretty for such heavy duties.”
“The gathering isn’t for five days yet, Gregor,” Morwenna shot back, cheeks heating and eyes shooting fire. “We’ve plenty of time to assemble the full complement of the club.”
Gregor snorted, a sound that may have been either an attempt at a laugh or the first signal of a cardiac arrest. “Whatever you say, dear.”
“I do say,” Morwenna said. “And seeing as how I’m the head of the council, why don’t you shut your fat fucking gob and show me a little bit of bloody respect?”
Pete worked hard to suppress the smile that bloomed on her face, but she did a poor job. Gregor snarled under his breath, the full-bodied growl of a bear or a lion rather than a human sound. Pete inched her chair away from him, closer to Jack.
“Shapeshifter,” he said by way of explanation, under his breath. “Smelly, bad-tempered arseholes with no manners.”
“And great hearing,” Gregor snarled. “You’re going to pay for that insult, crow-mage.”
“What are you going to do, sweetheart?” Jack spread his hands. “Sit on me?”
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