Soul Trade (6 page)

Jack came up behind
her, and Pete nearly jumped out of her skin when he spoke. “This fuckwit bothering you?”

“No…” Pete started, but Preston was already off and running toward the taxi line and the street beyond.

“Who was that?” Jack said.

“He was … I don’t know. Random nutter, I think,” Pete said, though the thought nagged at her that Preston had been entirely too frightened to have made what he said up out of
the ether. “Told me the Prometheans weren’t what they seem.”

Jack snorted. “In other news, water is wet, Arsenal’s defence is shit, and the Pope wears a silly hat.”

“That’s how I felt,” Pete agreed. She told herself to shake the vague feeling of unease as they made their way to the end of the taxi line. Preston Mayflower didn’t have to be a portent of certain doom. He could be crazy or, worse,
he could have been sent by the Prometheans themselves as a test, to see if Pete would be a good little soldier if faced with an excuse to try to slip her geas and get away.

Whatever the reason, she didn’t have the energy to play games with yet another set of shadowy intrigues. She barely had the energy to drag her bag along the curb.

The ache of exhaustion was the excuse she gave herself afterward
for seeing a streak of purple from the corner of her eye but not realizing what was happening until it was far too late. Preston Mayflower shoved his way through the throng at the curb, broke through the taxi line ahead of them, and cast a frantic look over his shoulder. His face was nearly the same color as his windcheater, and sweat flew in a sparkling arc from his balding head.

Pete followed
his line of sight, her mouth forming into a shout, and saw two people pressing through the crowd behind him, the sort of nondescript that usually lent itself to undercover cops. One man and one woman, beige coats, dark hair, nothing remarkable about them. Except the look of fear they elicited from Preston Mayflower.

A taxi slammed on its brakes, tires screeching, and the driver leaned out his
window to scream a curse. The woman of the pair got nearly close enough to touch Preston as he dodged into traffic, but he took another loping step forward, eyes bugging out in terror and seeing nothing in front of him.

All of it happened in the space of two heartbeats, from her first view of Preston to the squeal of hydraulic brakes and the sickening, final impact of a body making contact with
a Manchester city bus.

Cries went up from the taxi line and the bystanders. A transit copper came running, yelling into his radio, while the bus driver dismounted his vehicle, face ashen and hands shaking.

“He was just
there
…” the driver cried. “Nothing and then
there
…”

The woman of the pair reached Preston’s body and bent down, rolling him onto his back. One leg and one arm were twisted behind
him, and the body made a sound like a sack of apples being tossed about. To any casual observer, the woman was administering aid, checking a pulse and pulling at Preston’s eyelid, but Pete watched her other hand creep across the windcheater, inside the pockets, and feel around the waistband of his stained trousers. She looked at her companion and shook her head imperceptibly, and by the time
the copper reached the scene, they had melted into the crowd, two beige vapors gone on the wind.

Pete swallowed the scream that had never gotten further than the back of her throat as Jack stared at the body. He asked, “Holy Hell, did you see that bastard leap?” but she didn’t really hear him.

She felt the weight of the wrapped parcel Preston had forced on her inside her own pocket, and a chill
crept over her exposed skin, all the way down to her bones.

Whatever was inside the parcel, Preston Mayflower had just died to give it to her.

Jack gripped her arm before she could pull out the object and open the paper. His touch created a warm spot on her frozen skin. “Come on,” he said in her ear. “Rest of the cavalry’ll be here soon. No point in still hanging about when they show up.”

Pete allowed herself to be led away, and soon the crowd had shut them off from the scene in the street. She could still hear the sick impact of the body and the squeal of tires, though, and see the panicked expression in Preston Mayflower’s eyes. If that had even been his real name.

She hadn’t felt good about coming to Manchester, but she had allowed herself to think it might work in her favor—clearly
the Prometheans didn’t want her dead, just obedient. If she did what they asked, or at least heard them out, she’d be able to get out clean.

Now, though, she wasn’t sure. Not of her plan, or of anything, including the Prometheus Club’s true intentions. But she couldn’t break the geas, Jack couldn’t break the geas, and she wasn’t naive enough to think anyone they went to in Manchester about the
problem wouldn’t run straight to the Prometheus Club with the news that Pete Caldecott was trying to skip out on their invitation.

So she’d go. She’d be a good little soldier, at least for now. But she wouldn’t trust the bastards who’d forced her to come here one bloody inch.

She let Jack hold on to her as they walked a block over and down, then hailed a cab. Nobody followed them, and Pete forced
herself to relax until they were away from the center of the city and heading into Jack’s old stomping grounds.

6.

Pete hadn’t grown up on a council estate, but she’d had plenty of school friends who had, and she knew the drill. Suspicious of outsiders, and angry at their lot in life, and they didn’t give a fuck about much of anything.

Council estates in London were mostly cut from the same cloth—tower blocks where her friends lived stacked on top of one another like past-date merchandise, filled with
noise, cigarette smoke, and older boys who leered at them any time they had to pass by in the stairwells or the garden.

The cabbie who drove them sped away, his taillights smears of red in the pools of dark created by broken streetlamps. Pete looked up and down the street, but they were the only souls about. The sun was still setting over the Beetham Tower in the center of the city, but the shadows
here were already long. Alexandra Park, Jack’s old estate, contained squat brown semi-detached houses, rusty iron gates, and windows covered with tatty curtains that twitched in sequence as the residents of the estate scrutinized the outsiders. It was as if a child who was shit at taking care of his toys had discarded a model town and left it to moulder and rot.

“Feels like home already,” Pete
said, staring down a particularly cheeky bitch who peered at her from her front garden, glaring as if Pete had just kicked her pets.

“Lot better than it was,” Jack muttered, lighting a cigarette. “Back then, someone would’ve chucked a bottle at you and someone else would’ve pulled a piece and demanded all your worldly goods.”

He pointed to a corner shop, windows bright with fresh vegetables
and hand-lettered signs in Farsi. “That place burned down in eighty-eight or eighty-nine, ’cos of some hooligans. Mum was too stoned to keep me inside, so I watched the whole thing from the pavement until the fire brigade shooed me away.”

“Dare I ask what greasy friend of yours we’re bunking with in this charming hamlet?” Pete said. Alexandra Park wasn’t any worse than wandering down the wrong
street in Peckham, but there was an undercurrent of hostility that she’d never felt in her hometown. They weren’t wanted, and both the residents of the estate and the currents of the Black drifting through like oily water made sure that Pete knew it.

Jack kicked his boot over the broken pavement, all at once unable to meet her eyes. Pete pursed her lips. “What? What about this am I not going
to like?”

He sighed. “Tried a few numbers. One’s dead, one’s a guest of Her Majesty for the next five to seven years, so if we want to stay off the screen, this is our only choice.”

Pete cocked her eyebrow, letting Jack know she didn’t appreciate the ultimatum. “Spit it out. What’s wrong with the bloke?”

Jack stamped out his fag. “Nothing’s wrong with
her.
Not all me friends have some inherent
character flaw.”

“Oh” was all Pete said. She’d been prepared for most anything, except that. It wasn’t as if she shouldn’t have guessed. It wasn’t as if she could explode, stamp her foot, and demand to go home. Jack had slept with other women—she’d slept with other men, too. She’d just smile, be calm, and put up with whatever ex or former fling he’d dragged her to with the style and grace befitting
a fucking grown-up.

“It’s just up there,” Jack said, sidling away from Pete as if she might bite him. She forced herself to put a smile on her face and pretend her stomach wasn’t in a knot. It wasn’t the woman—it was coming face to face with Jack’s history, the part of his life he’d never spoken about for more than two sentences.

This woman would know it all, far more than Pete. She’d have memories
that Pete could never share.

Which was far more of a reason to be flamingly jealous than sex. Pete breathed deep as Jack hopped the steps of one of the dingy council houses and pounded on the door with the flat of his hand. She could be gracious for however long they were stuck here.

The door burst open, and a blonde wearing a bright red top and fitted jeans exploded from within the house. “Jackie!”
she cried, and threw her arms around Jack, nearly knocking him off his feet. “Come here, you bastard!” the woman cried. “Let me get a look at that mug!”

Or she could try not to kick the woman’s teeth in, Pete revised. Graciousness might be a peak she couldn’t summit.

“Fuck me,” Jack said, patting the blonde on the back while trying to wriggle free. “’M not fifteen any longer. Be gentle with
me.”

“Can’t believe you’re still standing, much less walking and talking,” the blonde said, slugging Jack on the arm. “The way we all went back then, thought you’d be six feet down for sure.”

“What can I say?” Jack said. “The bad pennies always turn up.” He stepped back and held the blonde at arm’s length. “It’s good to see you too, luv.”

Before the blonde replied, she finally noticed Pete
was there. Her expression narrowed, and Pete felt as if a bright and critical spotlight had been turned directly in her eyes. Jack’s friend might be a chavvy blonde with a big grin on her face, but her eyes were the same as Jack’s—those of a suvivor who’d seen and absorbed too much in their lifespan. Pete decided then and there that she wasn’t turning her back on Jack’s childhood sweetheart, not for
a split second.

But it didn’t mean she had to be a cunt, either, so she stepped up and extended her hand. “I’m Pete.”

If the blonde thought the name was odd, she didn’t let on, just crushed Pete’s small fingers in a dockworker’s grip. “Wendy.”

“Good to meet someone Jack was mates with back in the day,” Pete said, leaving off the snide implication that they’d been far more than that. She didn’t
want to start up with the pissing contest before they were even in the door.

“Oh, Christ!” Wendy barked a laugh. “Mates from further back than I care to admit.” She elbowed Jack. “You’d be a wanker to tell this cute little thing me real age.”

Jack grinned back at her, the genuine smile he reserved for people and situations he trusted. “Your secret’s safe with me, luv.”

Pete removed the uncertainty
from that equation. Wendy and Jack had definitely slept together. She might grit her teeth until they were nubs, but she wouldn’t get territorial. Wendy was doing them a favor, and Pete was going to take the high road if it killed her.

“Should we step inside?” she suggested. “Lot of eyes around here.”

“Good idea,” Jack said. To Wendy, he flashed another charming grin. “Appreciate you helping
us lie low, darling. We’re in a bit of a spot.”

“An’ none of your noncey little mage friends would help you out?” Wendy clicked her tongue against her teeth. “For shame.” She gestured them inside. “C’mon. Nosy old bint across the street’s got nothing better to do than poke in my business, and the rest of them are just waiting to paint rude things on me front door when I’m not around.”

Pete followed
Jack, kicking the door shut behind her with a hollow thump that she tried not to compare to a coffin lid.

Wendy’s council flat crouched on the shoulders of an empty one below it. Narrow as the stairs were to the flat in London, these were half the size, shadowed and perfumed with decades of smoke, cooking oil, and stale piss. All council flats of a certain age smelled the same. Pete had been
to enough of them on welfare visits for the Met to know what lay beyond the door—gray carpet, a rusty radiator, leaky windows, and a kitchen that smelled constantly of damp rot.

Wendy’s flat didn’t disappoint, although it was snug and dry, and rife with protection hexes. Pete felt them skitter across her face like a welter of tiny spiders when she stepped over the threshold. That was rude—one
waited to be invited in when entering a mage’s dwelling—but she wasn’t in a polite sort of mood, so she shoved through the hexes, not particularly caring if she left the ends in tatters.

“Not a lot of room,” Wendy said. “But what’s mine is yours and all.”

“Thank you, luv,” Jack said, touching the back of her hand. “I mean it. Most mages aren’t mad enough to take on the Prometheus Club.”

Wendy
laughed again, the husky bark endemic to chain smokers. “You could always convince a girl to be a bit mad, luv.” She winked at Pete. “This one’s got a touch of the devil about him. Drove me mum mad, us seeing one another.”

“Where is your scary old hag of a mother?” Jack asked. “Terrorizing old men down the rest home?”

“Christ, no,” Wendy said. “She kicked off near ten years ago. About time,
too—if I’d had to see her into her twilight years, all her screeching about Jesus and his seven fucking dwarves or what have you, I’d’ve topped meself.”

“And not a soul would blame you,” Jack said, setting his bag down and looking about the place. “I’m going to wash up, luv,” he said, and then left Pete alone in the sitting room with Wendy.

Pete stood in the center of Wendy’s stained Ikea rug
like a knob, waiting for an invitation to sit, smoke, or even fuck off, but Wendy went back to ignoring her until she’d lit a fresh fag from a pack lying on the sofa.