Soul Trade bl-5

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “What are you going to do, sweetheart?” Jack spread his hands. “Sit on me?”

  Morwenna slammed her palms onto the tabletop hard enough to rattle silver and china. “I said enough.”

  The shapeshifter glared daggers at Pete, but she refused to look away, and after a moment he settled back, grumbling.

  The breakfast proceeded in relative silence, Pete using the time to choke down poached eggs and toast and check out the other mages seated around her. They mostly regarded her as if she were something sticky on their shoe, and she finally pushed back when her stomach was in such a tight knot she couldn’t swallow another mouthful. “It’s been eventful,” she said to Morwenna. “But unless you’re going to tell me what we’re doing here among all these bastards who clearly want to light us on fire, I think we’re done.”

  There was a general murmur of unease along the table and Victor slid up behind her, putting a hard hand on her shoulder. “Sit down, Miss Caldecott,” he growled.

  Pete rotated her neck so their noses were almost touching. “Get your hand off me.”

  Everyone was staring at her, including Jack. Pete could tell from their expressions that whatever she did next would likely mean the difference between walking out of the Prometheus Club and the Manchester police finding her body months hence, if they found it at all.

  “Morwenna, I’ve had enough of this,” Victor said. “She’s not Promethean material. You want the crow-mage, fine, but we don’t need her.”

  “Victor,” Morwenna said, narrowing her eyes. “Not now. Let Miss Caldecott alone.” She left her seat and gestured to Pete and Jack. “Let’s have a chat, the three of us.” She gave the rest of the Prometheans a dazzling smile. “Please enjoy your meal. There will be a general business meeting at noon in the conservatory.”

  She took Pete by the elbow, smiling in a conciliatory fashion until they cleared the dining room, and then her grip tightened and her expression became stony. “What is wrong with you? Do you want to get both of us into the shit?”

  “Hey!” Pete jerked her arm from Morwenna’s grasp. “You’re the one who wanted us here so badly you had to force us.”

  “She doesn’t just want us,” Jack drawled. “She needs us.” He regarded Morwenna with a lip curl. “Got yourself into a tight spot, didn’t you, darling? Something you can’t handle in house.” He leaned past Pete and into Morwenna’s space. “I can smell it on you. You’re desperate.”

  Morwenna gave Jack a hard shove through the door into the conservatory and slammed it behind them. “I’m not so desperate I won’t lay you on the floor if you cross me, Mr. Winter.”

  Pete inserted herself between the two before Jack could do something stupid like get into a hex-slinging contest with Morwenna and whatever Prometheans were on the other side of the door.

  “All right, all right. It’d help a lot if you’d stop being vague and tell us what the fuck is going on.” She felt jangled. The weight of so many mages who clearly wished her ill still pressed against her, making her heart beat faster and sweat trickle down the groove of her spine. “It’s clear we don’t fit in here, Morwenna, so I’m with Jack—what’s happened to bring us all together?”

  Morwenna flopped on one of the sofas, and though it was barely ten in the morning snagged a decanter and poured herself a drink. “This is my first time at the head of the table. The gathering of the club only happens, in full complement, every hundred years or so,” Morwenna said. “The last time was during the early days of the Great War. My grandfather sat at the head, and he narrowly survived a poisoning attempt.” She flinched. “My great-uncle, his brother, wasn’t so lucky.”

  She fished around in her pockets for a moment, then turned to Pete. “You couldn’t spare a cigarette, could you?”

  Pete shrugged. “Gave it up. New mum and all.”

  “Here,” Jack said, extending his pack of Parliaments. “Now tell us what somebody knocking off your relatives has to do with Pete and me.”

  “The Prometheans aren’t perfect, but we do try to do right,” Morwenna said. “Not always what people outside think is right, but what maintains balance, harmony. What keeps people safe.” She lit the cigarette and inhaled, exhaling with a shudder. “There were, once upon a time, those who disagreed with our views. They formed a splinter group, and broke with us, around the time of the Hundred Years’ War. They named themselves, in typical arsehole fashion, after Prospero.”

  “Bloke from The Tempest?” Jack muttered. “Cunts.”

  “You don’t know half the story,” Morwenna said. “The Prospero Society is everything we’re not. They don’t want balance. They want power. They want to tear us down, and they count demons among their number. When the Black falls, it will be because a Prosperian kicked the stilts out from under it.” She leveled her gaze at Pete. “Preston Mayflower was a good man. He was invaluable to us.”

  She went to a painting hanging over the piano, a bland landscape showcasing a few crookedly painted cows, and took it off the wall. Behind it, Pete saw a digital screen, and when Morwenna brought it to life a map of the UK appeared, covered with different symbols and bands of color. “These are all the known trouble spots in the Black, all instances of mages going rogue, hautings or possessions, and uses of black magic. We track areas where the Black and the daylight world mingle, too.”

  “Thin spots,” Pete whispered. The map was so rife with color that it appeared to be diseased, and she shivered looking at it. If ever there was tangible proof things were sliding over the edge into chaos, this was it.

  “Preston was able to locate them for us,” Morwenna said. “He was a geomancer—he detected unbalanced power in the earth, the Black poisoning the land, that sort of thing.”

  Pete took a seat so her posture wouldn’t give her away. She kept her expression neutral, and thanked her lucky stars that Jack didn’t know any more than he did. He couldn’t trip her up.

  “Preston was in Hereford, scouting out some unrest reported by the local mages. We thought it might be a case of a demon summoning gone wrong. But when Preston came back…”

  Morwenna drained her glass and rolled it in her hands. Her cheeks flushed from the drink, and she screwed her eyes shut. “He was different. Before, he was my friend. But something happened to him. He became erratic, and he refused to come back to Manchester. We dispatched another mage, Jeremy Crotherton, to bring him back and find out what the Hell was going on, but…”

  She sighed and rubbed her fingers across her temples, carving vicious red indents in the skin. “We think the Prosperians got to Preston. He started threatening to go public, to reveal us to the daylight world, and we haven’t heard from Jeremy since he went to Hereford. Poor Preston,” she said softly. “He didn’t deserve this.”

  Morwenna drew out her mobile and scrolled through her voice messages. “This was the last message from Jeremy,” she said. “You can see why we’re concerned.”

  A hiss of static emanated from Morwenna’s phone, and then a reedy voice came through. “Morwenna, it’s Jeremy. I can’t … I mean, I can’t keep this up for much longer. Preston’s off the rails, he’s…”

  A scraping sound cut off the voice, and then there was a crash and a scream. Jeremy cut back in, panting so heavily Pete almost couldn’t make out the words. “I’m sorry, Morwenna,” he rasped. “I tried, but the soul cage is too strong. This place is too strong. For the love of all you hold dear, don’t send anyone else to—” Jeremy’s voice hitched, and then it was obvious he had dropped his mobile. “What are you doing here? You stay away from me! You stay—”

  The message cut off with a screech of feedback. Morwenna thumbed her voicemail off and tucked her phone back into her pocket, resuming her defeated posture. “The next time I saw Preston, he was in ruins. Raving, completely mad. The Prospero Society got to him and they twisted him and they made him do things for them.”

  She abruptly sat up and stared at Pete. Pete felt the gaze penetrate all the way to her core. This was the Mor
wenna she’d first seen—cold and devoid of feeling. “I know he reached out to you at the train station, Pete. It’s very important that you tell me what the two of you talked about. Preston was not a well man and he’d become paranoid, convinced we were out to harm him.”

  Pete felt the weight of the soul cage in her pocket. If Morwenna knew she had it, there’d be no chance of her walking away from this. “What you said,” she shrugged. “He told me to stay away from you, and he rambled a bit. I got away as quickly as possible.”

  “And the soul cage that Jeremy talked about,” Morwenna said. Pete could see the vein jumping in her neck. It mirrored Pete’s own heartbeat, and Jack’s. He was sitting perfectly still, wire-strung, ready to run or fight at a moment’s notice.

  Pete met Morwenna’s gaze and didn’t blink. “I don’t know what that is,” she said evenly. “Sounds like a nasty bit of work, though. Preston’s doing?”

  “Just something Jeremy thought might be useful intelligence,” Morwenna said, then sat back. Pete felt as if she might pass out. She looked at Jack instead, trying to reassure him silently that she had this under control.

  “So Preston is on the side of the big bad evil and this Jeremy bloke is MIA?” she said. “After chasing demons in Hereford? What exactly are Jack and I supposed to do about all of that?”

  “The Prospero society wants an insider among the Prometheans,” Morwenna said. “They tried for Preston, but he couldn’t stand up to their techniques and he went over, genuinely tried to help them get inside our organization. But you…” she smiled at Pete, and it was as if they hadn’t been ready to go at each other’s throat a moment ago. “You’re more used to this sort of thing. Down and dirty, in the trenches. You’ll be perfect.”

  Pete was learning quickly that she preferred the sort of bastard who let you know flat out they hated you. Morwenna’s hot and cold act was going to give her a heart attack.

  “Just hold up here,” Jack said. “Your whole purpose was for us to be fucking bait?”

  “Think of it as an opportunity to do some good,” Morwenna said. “An actual insider would be far too dangerous—the Prospero Society clearly has no trouble reaching inside a mage’s mind. But you and Pete can go to Hereford, find Jeremy, and figure out who the Prosperians’ agent is. It’s the best way.”

  “It’s a shit way!” Jack exclaimed. “Why should we do your bloody grunt work?”

  “Because you don’t have a choice,” Morwenna said. “And neither do we. For the good of everyone in the Black who doesn’t want to see the world swallowed whole by something like Nergal, you’ll do as I say.”

  Pete’s first impulse was to tell Morwenna to bend over and cram it straight up her own arse, but logic dictated the woman was right. Even if they could fight their way out of here, she and Jack already had too many enemies. They didn’t need a group as powerful as the Prometheans wanting a piece of their hides as well.

  “Jack,” she said. “Let it be. She’s right.” She went and sat next to him, putting a hand on his knee, and favored Morwenna with the sort of look she usually reserved for the killers and rapists she ran across on the murder squad. “If you try and fuck me over, and more importantly if you harm one hair on Jack or our daughter’s head, there is going to be such fire rained down on you it will make the end of the world look like a chuch fete by comparison. You reading me, Morwenna?”

  “The Prospero Society won’t be able to resist the two of you,” Morwenna said without missing a beat. “This isn’t a game, a tug of war, any longer. This is stock your pantry and batten down the hatches before the war comes to your doorstep.”

  “So what, we swan around Hereford until a creepy bloke in a long coat makes overtures?” Pete said.

  “Oh, didn’t I mention?” Morwenna said. “You’ll be among old friends in Hereford, Pete. When Jeremy arrived he found the place has become something of a mecca for those buffeted by the Black—ordinary folks who’ve seen things they don’t understand. It’s like they’ve got their own little social club, right there among the weekend Wiccans and those nutters who hunt the Loch Ness monster.”

  Pete felt an uncomfortable frisson of regret crawl up her spine. “I don’t follow you,” she said.

  “There were quite a few traumatized families after the Algernon Treadwell business back in London, I heard,” Morwenna said.

  Pete tensed her hand on Jack’s leg until he grunted in pain, and she felt the words grit out of her as if she’d swallowed a handful of stones. “What are you saying, Morwenna?”

  “The children you saved—or failed to save—are in the village in Hereford where we last heard from Jeremy,” Morwenna said. “He found it quite peculiar, so many survivors of a spirit attack in one place, but I imagine for you it’ll be like a reunion.”

  “You knew,” Pete spat. She wanted to slap Morwenna in the face. Jack was holding her in place now as her body vibrated with fury. “You knew this whole time that I’d run into those people.”

  “Consider it added incentive,” Morwenna said. “We have no inkling what Preston found in Hereford, but it was bad enough to spread like a virus through the community and utterly corrupt him. So if you want to save those innocent babes, I suggest you get moving.”

  “I’ll do it,” Pete told her, standing. “Because I know when I’m beaten, and you’ve left me no choice. But don’t think we’re friends after this.”

  “I have enough friends,” said Morwenna, also standing and smoothing her skirt. “What I need are allies.” The fleeting moment of vulnerability was gone and she gripped Pete’s hand, her fingers like warm iron bands around Pete’s small bones.

  “You’ve got them,” Pete said, squeezing back, not wanting to be the first one to let go. “By dint of being a devious bitch.”

  “Welcome to the fold,” Morwenna said with a thin, razor-sharp smile. “You’re a Promethean now.”

  11.

  Jack stayed quiet until the Prometheans had deposited them, their mobiles and IDs, and their luggage on the sidewalk, and he glowered as the cab wound back toward the train station. Pete sighed as they pulled to the curb and the taxi driver waved away her cash. “It’s taken care of, luv.”

  “You going to pout much longer?” she asked Jack.

  Jack’s lip curled. “This is a little beyond pouting.”

  “Look,” Pete said. “By rights, I should be the one in a snit. She tricked me, and she’s a damned liar. At least we’re out of there.”

  “Yeah, and thank Christ and his fleet of rowboats for that,” Jack said. His whole frame twitched, unease evident with every breath. He looked like he had in the bad old days, when he was looking for his next fix of either magic or heroin. Pete felt the uncomfortable sensation of memories that she’d rather stayed drowned breaking the surface.

  “I’m sorry,” Pete said softly, hefting her suitcase. She felt uncomfortable looking back at the spot where Preston had died. Was what Morwenna said true? Had he been dipping into black magic that drove him crazy?

  Or would the Prometheans would have done worse to her if they’d found the soul cage? “I’m sorry, Jack,” she said again. “I was trying to do what wouldn’t get us killed or put on yet another hit list. Forgive me if I’m not sufficiently guns a-blazing for your taste.”

  “Petunia, it is not just you anymore!” Jack burst out, his voice echoing off the broken brick fronts of the nearby flats. “It’s me, and it’s Lily, too. You call me irresponsible, but you’ve never once thought about yourself in all this. You have an obligation to stay in one piece now. We need you.” He gripped her by the hands, harder than Morwenna ever had, so hard she inhaled a sharp breath. “I need you.”

  Pete looked at her boots, willing her tears not to spill. “I know, Jack. I’m doing this for you.” She looked at him. “How much longer do you think either of us can avoid the Hag? What will happen to Lily then?”

  Jack wasn’t given to demonstrations, so Pete was surprised when he wrapped his arms around her hard enough to driv
e the air from her lungs. She returned the gesture, patting his back, hands caressing the rough leather. “I’d never let that happen,” he muttered against Pete’s neck. “I’d never let her hurt you.”

  “Jack,” Pete sighed. She drew back at arm’s length. “You can’t promise that. I can’t promise that nothing will happen to me during this little stunt Morwenna cooked up, but I can promise that if I don’t do it, eventually things will go past the point of no return, and that’ll be in. End reel, roll credits. And seeing as I like things the way they are, I’m going to do my damndest to make sure the Morrigan never gets her Hell on earth.” She squeezed Jack’s hand. “I’m not afraid. Not of this. I’m more afraid you won’t be with me.”

  Jack looked at the floor sighed heavily. “’Course I will,” he said. “You’re the only person I stick me neck out for. You know that. Anyone else would be shite out of luck.”

  “You’re so romantic,” Pete said.

  “That’s me,” Jack agreed, pulling her close again. “Man of the fuckin’ year.”

  The loudspeaker was blatting that their train was about to depart, so Pete bought two rushed and hideously expensive tickets from the machine and jogged onboard with Jack. Once she’d sat, the last thing Morwenna had said really hit her, almost pressing her physically into her seat.

  It had been a long time since the Treadwell case—not in years, but certainly in experience. She hadn’t kept in contact with the families of any of the children Algernon Treadwell had drained of soul and feeling to sustain his spirit, and she’d gotten the distinct feeling they wanted it that way.

  Now, though, she was going in blind, and she didn’t like it. She brought her mobile to life, flipping through numbers to find the only name from her days on the Met still in her directory. Though it was long after his shift ended, he answered on the second ring.

  “This better be the world endin’, Pete.”

  “Isn’t it always, Ollie?” Pete said, steadied a bit at the sound of his thick Yorkshire accent. Ollie was from a time when none of it—ghosts, demons, the collateral damage of people like the children Treadwell had fed on—existed for her. Just the usual atrocities, wrought by and on plain old humans.