Soul Trade (11 page)

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?”

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 Morwenna 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.”