Soul Trade (16 page)

This, though—this demon was something other, and she had no idea what she was walking into. If playing nice with these deranged parents for a few more hours was what it took to learn more, then she could
be nice.

On the stage, the festival was breaking up. “That’s all for today,” Philip said. “Remember, you can come by the house—that’s 79 Exeter Court—between the hours of noon and four to book a private consultation, and we’ll do this all again in three days’ time.”

The crowd dispersed in remarkably good humor for what they’d just witnessed, talking and laughing. A pair of sturdy-legged women
in hiking boots and shorts discussed where to go for lunch as they brushed past Pete.

“Meg!” Norma bellowed. “Get your arse over here!”

Before the girl could move through the crush of people, someone in the crowd pulled Norma aside, thrusting a handful of money at her and babbling about a private session.

Pete jumped a bit when Margaret touched her arm. “I saw Mr. Crotherton,” she said, voice
barely above a wind’s whisper across the barren green. “Couple of weeks ago, he came by the house.” Her voice was slow and muddled, and Pete thought Margaret might actually be drugged. If she wasn’t possessed, that would be the easiest way to keep her docile.

“You’re sure?” Pete bypassed shock and crouched so she could look at Margaret. She didn’t have to crouch as far as she’d had to four years
before—Margaret had shot up several inches. If she survived this ordeal, she was going to be tall and pretty as an adult. “Did anything happen?”

Margaret shrugged, a gesture as disaffected as Pete would have expected from a thirteen-year-old girl. “My dad sent him on his way. He hung about for a bit in the garden, waving some kind of compass about.”

“Scrying,” Pete said, more to herself than
Margaret. Scrying for the demon, no doubt. Pete wished she could talk to Crotherton and ask him what he’d found.

“Mum told me not to tell,” Margaret said. “But you’re a detective inspector, so I reckon it’s okay to tell you.”

Pete didn’t correct her as she saw Norma start to elbow her powder blue bulk back through the crowd. “Margaret,” she said quickly. “I’m going to be honest with you—you
do know there’s something terribly wrong with all of this, yes?”

Margaret’s large eyes unexpectedly filled, and she blinked rapidly. “Shit,” she said, swiping at her tears. “I hate it, Inspector. I…”

“There’s my good girl!” Norma Smythe boomed, clutching her arm around Margaret and grasping her shoulder hard enough that the girl gasped. “Don’t she look lovely onstage, Miss Caldecott? She loves
the attention.”

Philip came gliding up, his sharkish grin firmly in place, even though the folds around his eyes said he wanted to give Pete a punch in the teeth. “You and your bloke’ll be joining us for supper, I hear?” he said.

“If you’ll have us,” Pete told said. “I know we didn’t get off on the best foot, Mr. Smythe, and for that I apologize.”

He smirked at her. Making a copper apologize
to him must be some kind of lifelong fantasy for a stain like Philip Smythe, but if it got her what she wanted, Pete would smile and kiss his arse for as long as the day lasted.

“More the merrier,” he said at last. “Always thought you were a bit of a bitch during the investigation, but after what you did for our Margaret you’re welcome any time.” He offered his hand, and Pete shook. His handshake
was limp and sweaty, as insincere as his words, but there was no prickle of magic there. Philip Smythe was a dead wire, in more ways than one. Pete thought that after she’d figured out what was going on in Overton, she’d see that Philip made a return visit to Pentonville. A fraud charge from these phony meetings should keep him away from Margaret until she was in university, away from her poisonous
parents.

“I can’t wait,” she told him aloud, and looked over at Jack, fidgeting at the edge of the crowd. He jerked his chin at her, the universal
Let’s get the Hell out of here
gesture. If there were any other way, she would have waited, gone in to do a proper exorcism, with tools and spells and the ritual that such a thing commanded.

But she didn’t have time, so she was going in blind.

She
just hoped it wasn’t the last mistake she ever made.

16.

The Leroys’ semi-detached brick was a far cry from the Smythes’ untidy pile of a house. Mrs. Leroy, a small, nervous woman who didn’t keep her hands still for more than three seconds at a stretch, had scrubbed the place within an inch of its life. Even Pete’s obsessively tidy father would have called it compulsive.

“Drink?” Philip Smythe gestured at Pete with a bottle of gin when she
and Jack stepped over the threshold.

“Thanks, mate,” Jack slid up and relieved Philip of the bottle, refilling his dented flask before passing it back. Mrs. Leroy was already shooting them murderous looks, but she pasted on a fake smile when Pete caught her eye.

“I owe you a great thanks for what you did for our Diana,” she said.

“Just wish I could have gotten here sooner,” Pete said. “It looks
like you’re holding up well. All of you.”

“Mr. Killigan started a support group back in London so we could all find each other and share our stories,” Mrs. Leroy said. “That man, he’s a saint. So patient. Helped us so much with our poor child.”

“And all of this? The tent and whatnot?” Pete asked. “His idea?”

“Oh heavens, no,” Mrs. Leroy said with a laugh that sounded more like a scream. “That
was Mr. Smythe’s idea. Said we had an obligation to share our girl’s gift with the world, and he’s right. What Diana can do comes from a higher place.”

“An obligation, eh?” Pete said. She eyed Philip Smythe, holding court in the corner with two men she assumed were Mr. Leroy and Patrick Dumbershall’s father. They were laughing, grins wide as shark mouths.

“Mrs. Leroy…” Pete started, but the
woman cut her off.

“Carrie, please.”

“Carrie,” Pete said. “This isn’t easy to ask, but have you noticed anything … odd about Diana since all this started?”

Carrie Leroy gave a start, as if Pete had reached over and stuck a pin in her arse. She swiveled her head slowly, smile still in place, clocking the other parents in the room. “Not here,” she murmured through clenched teeth. “Meet me in
the kitchen.”

Then she pitched forward into Pete, knocking her drink down her shirt. “Oh, no!” Carrie exclaimed. “I’m just too clumsy for words. Do come with me, Miss Caldecott, and I’ll take that stain out.”

Jack gave Pete a look over Margaret Smythe’s head. He’d been talking with her the entire time, laughing and showing her sleight of hand tricks with quarters and cigarettes. Margaret was
smiling for the first time since Pete had arrived in Overton, slowly and nervously, but she was acting less dopey than she had been in the morning.

If Margaret was with Jack, she was safe for the time being, so Pete let herself be tugged into the kitchen.

“Sorry about your blouse,” Carrie Leroy said. “I couldn’t … I had to…” She started to shake, and she buried her face in her hands.

“Hey,”
Pete said. “It’s all right. Really.”

“No, it is not,” Carrie said. “It hasn’t been all right since we came here.” She sniffed deeply, then looked Pete in the eye. “You have a spare cigarette?”

“Sorry, no,” Pete said. She wondered if there was such a thing as quitter’s guilt.

“Out here,” Carried said, pushing open the back door. It opened onto an alley barely wide enough for the bins sitting
against the brick wall. Carrie lit the butt of a fag from a chipped ceramic dish on the ground and wrapped her arms around herself. “My husband’d knock my teeth in if he caught me smoking.”

“I have a theory about what’s going on, if you don’t mind,” Pete said. Carrie Leroy didn’t stop her, so she rolled it out.

“Diana isn’t the child you remember. She started acting strange not long after you
all moved to Overton, and things just got worse. She doesn’t act like a child. And when people started disappearing, you suspected things were off the rails, but it wasn’t until Jeremy Crotherton poked around that you really knew.”

Carrie looked at her askance, one penciled-in eyebrow up. “Those people were just hikers,” she said. “Stupid gits. But you’re right … Diana…” She sucked the last life
out of the fag, then scraped it out against the back wall of her house.

“You have no idea what it’s like,” Carrie said. She wasn’t shaking now, just cold and flat as an expanse of roadway. “To have your child snatched away from you. But you get used to it, you go on, even when your marriage falls apart and your daughter sits staring out the window day after day even though she can’t see.” She
coughed, deep and rattling, a sound that spoke to damp cellars and too many cigarettes. “You move to the country because your husband worships at the altar of Dexter bloody Killigan, as if that man knows everything. You stay trapped in this shitebox with a husband who can’t stand you, and then one morning your child looks up at you and her eyes focus and she says “‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’”

Pete chewed
her lip, wishing it was a fag. “You know it’s not Diana.”

“’Course I do,” Carrie snorted. “I saw her MRIs. I know there’s nothing in her brain except dust. Whatever’s walking and talking through her skin, it’s not my Diana.”

“Can I ask you why you didn’t leave?” Pete said. “Or call someone like Jack and me? Hell, you could even have talked to Crotherton when he showed up.”

“I don’t know who
that is,” Carrie said, her voice thick with weariness. “And I can’t leave or call for help because she
knows.
She and the other two see
everything
. They watch us even when they can’t see us. It’s like we’re prisoners. Prisoners of those things that took our children.” Her whole body quivered, and Pete put a hand on Carrie’s shoulder to steady her. No prickle of the Black there either. Just a tangle
of wrath and sadness that threatened to explode into Pete’s mind. She let go after a quick squeeze.

“The only reason they don’t know I’m talking to you now is that they’re resting,” Carrie whispered. “They like saying those horrible things to people, but it takes the fight out of them. It’s the only time we get any peace.”

Pete looked back at the lit kitchen door. “Where are they?”

“Dexter
Killigan keeps them at his place,” Carrie said. “He took it the worst. Wanted his girl back so bad he can’t see what’s become of them. They don’t like to be apart, and he does whatever they want. Acts like all of this is fucking business as usual.”

Pete remembered the stricken face, cheeks sunken and eyes impossibly dark, of Dexter Killigan beside Bridget’s hospital bed. “It’ll be all right,”
she lied. “Jack and I are here to help you.”

Carrie sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. “No one can help me now, Miss Caldecott.”

“Carol Anne!” Mr. Leroy bellowed from the kitchen. “Where’d you get to? I need a refill!”

“Coming, dearie!” Carrie shouted. “Just running the bin bag outside!” She looked at Pete, eyes wide and animal. “We’d better get back before they realize what we’re
doing. My husband’s too stupid, the Dumbershalls are too terrified, and that chavvy bastard Philip Smythe is too greedy to realize what we’ve really gotten involved in.”

It was quite a scam Philip Smythe had going, Pete thought. Convince the other parents that his own kid had similar abilities. Watch the cash roll in with absolutely no regard for what might really be happening.

“I need you to
keep Margaret someplace out of the way,” Pete said to Carrie. “Jack and I are going to the Killigans’ to look around.”

Carrie chewed on her lower lip. “You don’t know what they’re capable of, Miss Caldecott. They’ll be so angry that you’ve interfered…”

“It’s all right,” Pete told her. “At this point, I guarantee I’m angrier than they are.”

17.

The Killigan house sat at the end of a road at the top of the village, tucked among the hills. A wide yard full of trimmed rosebushes put the scent of rotting flowers and manure into the air. The house was shut up tight, windows blindfolded with thick blackout curtains, and a shiny new top-end deadbolt sat in the mildewed wood of the front door.

Jack crouched and examined the lock. “Bad
news,” he said, grimacing.

Pete sighed. “Hoped you wouldn’t say that, given your talent for unlocking locked doors whether they like it or not. Can’t you pick it?”

“This thing?” Jack yelped a laugh. “Not on me best day. This is designed to knock out professional thieves. I can’t even hex it open. It’s got protection charms on it. The whole house does.”

Pete regarded the white-painted brick,
flaked and chipping like cheap makeup on the tail end of a long night. “So Killigan knows enough to protect his house. More than the others can manage,” she said.

“Not exactly A-level work,” Jack said. “But they’ll do for anything this side of a demon.”

“That’s the problem,” Pete said, regarding the Killigan house as the moon slipped from behind a cloud and made the white hulk glow. “A demon
is what Killigan’s dealing with.”

“About that,” Jack said. He sat on the stoop and lit a fag, carefully blowing the smoke away from her. “This Crotherton fella was all hot that demon summoning was going on in the back of beyond, but none of these cunts have the talent the gods gave a stray cat.”

“So what are you saying?” Pete said. “They didn’t summon the demon, they were just victims? Figured
that much out for myself, thanks.” She nudged his arm. “I used to be a cop, you know.”

“If you do it right, your demon doesn’t go fleeing into the extras from
Village of the Damned,
” Jack said. “It stays right where you put it and does your bidding, until you fuck up and it eats your face whole. So either whoever summoned this thing fucked up…”

“Or this is the summoner’s bidding,” Pete said.
All at once the low-level craving for a fag vanished. She’d seen sorcerers do plenty of sick and twisted shite in her time with Jack, but siccing a demon on kids was a new low.

“I think it’s a possiblity we have to consider,” Jack said. “What they have to gain by making spooky soothsaying kidlets, I have no fucking idea. But this sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. I think Crotherton was
half right, about the summoning. I just think his nose was so far up Morwenna Morgenstern’s shapely arse he couldn’t look for bits of the bigger picture.”