Soul Trade (8 page)

There’s no doubt of that
, Pete thought as she looked at the crystal, watching the soul within move beneath the surface. “Preston didn’t exactly strike me as the type to work with necromancy and black magic,” she said. “Though I admit he did come across as completely off the wall.”

“The real question is,
why you? Why pass on something so rare to a complete stranger?” He fixed his gaze on Pete. The full power of Jack’s gaze, with blue fire magic dancing behind it, was something to behold. It could pin her to the spot, for good or for ill, and she knew without a doubt that she was being looked through, inside and out. He didn’t use it often, but now Pete felt her breath catch. His eyes were one of
the things that had made Pete fall for him in the first place. She’d been young and dumb, for sure, but even now she couldn’t deny that Jack’s gaze still mesmerized and drew her in.

“I don’t know,” she said in a whisper, and left it at that. She never understood why other people expected her to rescue them, to save the world and avert disaster. She was just Petunia Caldecott. An ordinary woman
who happened to be able to do one extraordinary thing. She certainly wasn’t a mage of Jack’s caliber.

Jack sat back and sucked on his lower lip. “Damned if I know why, either.”

“I know you didn’t want to come back here,” Pete said. “And I’m sorry about this stupid geas, and I’m so grateful that you’re here with me.”

The soul cage couldn’t lead to anything good. Prometheus Club or not, why the
fuck had Preston given it to her? How could he be sure she wouldn’t simply flip it back to the Prometheans to get on their good side?

Not that she would. She didn’t like people who assumed she’d toe the line just because they put on a good show of force. Her da had taught her better than to knuckle down to bullies.

And there was Jack to consider. Preston’s own words were on a repeat she couldn’t
stop:
If you must go, don’t take the crow-mage with you.

But the Prometheus Club hadn’t given her a choice. Attend or die. It didn’t get more clear-cut than that.

So she’d have to do what she always did when life in the Black threatened to eat her alive—she’d keep her eyes open and her instincts sharp, and whoever wanted to do Jack harm or use him for their own ends would have to go through
her.

She put the soul cage back into her coat, deep in a zippered pocket, and let Jack pay the check. “Let’s go,” he sighed. “Maybe Manchester will seem a little more hospitable now that ’m pissed.”

He leaned on her on the way out of the bar, and Pete let them walk in silence, enjoying the closeness and the warmth of his body. It lasted for half a block, until Pete heard echoing footsteps and
felt a prickle in the Black, one that wasn’t hard to decipher.

“Someone’s following us,” she told Jack. “Keep walking, don’t look back, don’t act different.”

He tensed, some of the muzziness disappearing from his expression. “Black’s going crazy,” he said. He gave a shiver, and Pete could only imagine what he was seeing.

“I know,” she said as Jack gave a low grunt of pain, the assault on his
sight making him shiver against the length of Pete’s body. “I know, but just keep walking when I let go of you. Get back to Wendy’s and I’ll meet you there.”

“Why?” Jack demanded, balking. “What are you going to do?”

Pete let go of him, taking advantage of his slowed reactions to shove him forward. She wheeled around. “I have no idea,” she said, mostly to herself.

Jack, to his credit, didn’t
try to white-knight it. He just kept going, melting into the shadows quick as a black cat.

Alone in the street, Pete was only half surprised to see the man and woman from the train station. The woman pointed a crimson-nailed finger at her. “Petunia Caldecott,” she said. “You’ve been avoiding us.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” Pete said. She swiveled to the left and to the right. Alexandra Park
had plenty of nooks and crannies for more assassins to hide in, but it appeared to be just the three of them.

“Not yet,” said the woman, “but I know you. And I know what that ink stain on your hand means.”

The geas flared, and the pain returned tenfold when the woman spoke. Pete forced herself to keep her expression neutral and not flinch. She was good at not flinching, no matter how much it
hurt. The Prometheans looked far more ordinary than she would have expected, a bit posh, even. Magicians weren’t supposed to be posh. The ones with actual talent usually looked more like either vagrants or escapees from an old Dracula film. Even Nicholas Naughton, the necromancer whose help nearly wiped London off the map with Nergal, had looked like a slightly scruffy country gent, all turtleneck
sweaters and scuffed boots.

“I should have known you two were Prometheans, what with all the skulking and talking in circles,” Pete told her. “Is this the part where you threaten me with car batteries and pliers?”

“Of course not!” The woman looked genuinely offended. “If you’d just alerted us you were reaching the gathering early, Miss Caldecott, we could have arranged rooms for you and Mr.
Winter at our headquarters in the city center.”

“Maybe I’m happy where I am.” Pete folded her arms. The woman gave her a smile that suggested the very idea was adorable.

“Because a tip in Alexandra Park is your idea of a vacation?” The woman tsked. “Manchester is so much more, Miss Caldecott. You don’t need to shack up with Wendy Macintosh and try to hide from us. We
want
you here.”

“Yeah,”
Pete told her. “That’s sort of the problem, isn’t it?” She felt a complete lack of surprise that Wendy and the woman from the Prometheus Club had talked. Wendy was the type who’d look after her own arse. A survivor in all the ways that mattered.

Pete figured she’d been planning to meet the Prometheans eventually. But not like this, not when everything was on their terms. If she ever saw Wendy
again, she was going to fetch the woman a smack that would shake those yellow teeth out of her head.

“You can try to keep running,” said the woman, evidently seeing the flash in Pete’s eyes. “But I’ll have a leg locker hex on you before you can take two steps. I don’t want us to start off on this sort of ground, Miss Caldecott. I want us to get along.” She stepped forward and extended her hand,
gesturing to a long black car that pulled up to the curb.

Pete thought of Preston Mayflower, the expression of panic and despair etched on his face just before the bus hit.

“Fine,” she said, pasting her best faux-civil smile on her face. “We can be friends, if that’s what you want.”

The woman grinned back at her as she ushered Pete into the car. “I’d like nothing better.”

8.

The ride was, by Pete’s count, less than five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The woman touched one hand across the back of Pete’s neck as soon as they sat down in the rear seat, and a veil of blackness dropped over Pete’s eyes. She gave a start. “What the fuck is this?”

“Shh,” said the woman. “Just a little obfuscation hex. Procedure for all visitors not formally inducted into
the club.”

“Well, I’ve already seen
you
,” Pete snarled. “And what you did to Preston.” She waited, hoping that she’d provoke something out of her companion other than smooth platitudes.

“Poor Preston,” the woman purred. “He was a wayward soul. The type you really wish you could help, but alas, even we can’t save everyone.”

“And Wendy?” Pete asked. “You got a whole network of sad sacks keeping
eyes on the city for you?”

“Wendy doesn’t deserve any of your ire,” she said. “Aside from her inability to keep her mouth shut the moment she clapped eyes on Mr. Winter, she didn’t do a thing. We have our own ears on the … grittier side of things here in the city.”

Pete felt a touch on her shoulder. “Hush, now,” the woman said. “You’ll get answers as soon as I’m allowed to give them.”

Pete
went quiet, not because the woman had ordered it but because she knew she wouldn’t get anything else useful. She was talking to the Prometheus Club’s PR—somebody who had a glib answer for everything, and who unpleasant truths slid off of like oil skated across water. If she wanted real answers, she was going to have to play.

She just hoped Jack had gotten out of trouble’s way, although knowing
him, it was more likely he’d run into it head first. To pass the time, Pete counted—turns the car took, seconds that ticked by. They circled the same route twice, and Pete knew she wouldn’t be able to find the place by walking if she tried. So far, the Prometheans were beating her soundly at the game of being clever.

She didn’t like it, not at all, but she swallowed her resentment as the car
purred to a stop.

“Here we are,” said the woman. “We’ll get you and Mr. Winter settled in rooms, and then we can all have a chat.”

“Jack?” Pete’s voice sounded strangled, and she silently kicked herself for betraying her nerves. “He’s here?”

“Mr. Winter is not as sneaky as he might like to imagine.” The woman’s voice swelled with amusement. “He gave my partner quite a talking-to on the ride
over, in language I would not repeat.”

“Trust me,” Pete said. “I’ve heard it all. I want to see him. And I want you to take off the magic blindfold—I’m through with cloak-and-dagger shite.”

“I told you,” said the woman. “Patience. You’ll see Jack soon enough, and we’ll be inside momentarily.”

“If you’ve done anything to hurt Jack…,” Pete started, but the woman cut her off with laughter.

“
Hurt
? That’s the absolute last thing on my mind, trust me.” She leaned close enough so that Pete could feel her breath, smell the cloying orchid reek of her perfume. “Even if he is a degenerate demon follower with a black mark on his soul.” She drew back, and the perky false note was back in her voice. “That’s not my concern.”

Pete felt the air change, dry and recycled against her face, and she
was marched down a long hall—approximately fifty-seven steps—before going through a door and being sat on a bed.

“And here we are,” the woman said. “You’re free to come and go in the club, but know your geas is still active. It’ll lay you flat if you try and cross the threshold to the outside.” Her heels clacked, and Pete heard the moan of ancient hinges. “I am sorry about that,” the woman said,
after a moment. “But it’s necessary. You must understand that we can’t fully trust you.”

The door slammed, shaking the floor under Pete’s feet, and as she heard a latch click the hex cleared from her eyes. Pete screwed up her face in the wash of bright light from the chandelier above her head, before she fumbled at the switch to dim it.

“Of course,” she grumbled as she checked out the room.
“You toss me in the back of a car, threaten me, and on top of it force me to come to Manchester, and it’s
me
who has the problem with trusthworthiness.”

The room wasn’t new or nearly as posh as she would have expected from the fancy motor and the woman’s outfit. Plaster cracked at all the edges of the windows and doors, and the floor was nearly black with old varnish and wear. The windows, leaded
and wavy so she couldn’t see out, were painted shut. Pete heard an echo of a car horn from far below—too far to drop, even if she could have gotten the casement to open.

Escape options rapidly dwindling, she forced herself to keep examining everything. Even if she wasn’t going to bolt straightaway, she might as well figure out as much as she could about the Prometheus Club. It always paid to
know exactly what sort of wankers you were dealing with, especially in the Black.

She touched the door and didn’t sense any protection hexes. The door itself was hewn from heavy oak and iron, banded three times to keep out Fae. The door wasn’t locked, and the hinges screeched again as Pete pulled it open, using small and cautious movements as she stepped into the hall. She checked for cameras,
and found nothing obvious, but she figured a group like the Prometheans wouldn’t need to nip out for a microphone and recorder if they wanted to listen in on her.

Still painfully aware of the geas, Pete moved slowly down the hall, trying to act as if she were just going for a stroll. No hexes snatched at her, no curses bit into her flesh.

The Prometheus Club wasn’t just devoid of spells, it
was devoid of magic, full stop. She’d rarely sensed a place that was such a dead space in the invisible tides of the Black. It felt like there was a tiny empty spot in her skull, setting up an echo and throb.

This would all be right in the end, she told herself. Lied, was more like it, but she needed to stop herself from doing anything rash while the Prometheans could still hurt her or, worse,
hurt Jack. This wasn’t the first time she’d been on the wrong side of magic, with just her wits and whatever she happened to have in her pockets.

She kept going, walking through hallway after hallway done in the same monastic dark wood and plaster. The Prometheus Club was kitted out with flourescent lights and ugly, dank carpeting, but otherwise was very much as it must have been when the mages
took up residence. She navigated narrow hallways that doubled back on one another and locked doors that slowed her down every time she had to use her bank card to slip the antique latches. There was a complete absence of other people.

She hadn’t thought this out before leaving her room to wander about like a simpleton trying to find Jack. And then what was she going to do? Stroll out the front
door? There was no way that bint in the good suit was letting her go until she’d had her say.

Desperation breeds sloppiness, Connor Caldecott would have told her. She’d learned that before she was even aware of it, watching her father get ready for work every day, double and triple check his gun and his kit, make sure his warrant card was in full view, the simple laminated slip displaying his
narrow face and combed-back hair, raven black above a brow that she couldn’t remember ever not being furrowed.

At last, Pete found a stairwell and felt her stomach unknot just a little. Stairs at least meant she was going somewhere. She took them two at a time, forcing herself to be slow and quiet as she opened the door at the bottom. A long, narrow hall greeted her, lit only by the flickering
glow of candles set into notches in the wall. Pete reeled as all at once the magic absent from the upper floors launched at her like a flood tide. So much power it nearly took her feet out from under her, made her grab the wall to stay upright. Pete gagged. This wasn’t right. The Black here was too strong, too overwhelming. She’d crossed a barrier and triggered some kind of terrible drowning trap
made of magic.