Soul Trade bl-5

by Caitlin Kittredge

  “All right, then,” Pete said, telling her mobile to give her a map to the address she’d gotten from Ollie. “Come with me.”

  The Smythe house was only about half a mile from the square, but it was the most uncomfortable half mile Pete had ever walked. She could feel stares, hear whispers, and sense the rising crescendo of unearthly magic all around them. It was as if they’d tripped an alarm, and now the electric fence was on and charging the air itself to prick her skin.

  Jack grimaced and rubbed his forehead. Pete glanced at him. “You going to make it?”

  “It’s not even sight,” Jack said. “Something else. Whole damn place sets me teeth on edge.”

  “If everything were all right, we wouldn’t be here,” Pete said. “Think it’s some residue from the summoning? Maybe that’s what made Crotherton bugger off.”

  Maybe it’s what sent Preston over the edge.

  Or maybe she was just tired and far too edgy. She stopped at the correct house number and looked up the walk, not sure what to expect.

  The Smythe house looked normal from the street. White plaster, red tile roof, almost like an Italian villa plopped down in the middle of green England. A neat garden with a weathered fence containing late mums and lilies. It was a far cry from the dank council house the Smythes had occupied when Pete had first met Margaret’s mum, after Margaret had been kidnapped by Treadwell’s agents.

  The lights were off, but she pushed through the gate and up the path. The gate springs gave a shriek, deafening in the quiet night. Jack stayed on the street, eyes roaming through the darkness. Just knowing he was behind her gave Pete the nerve to pound on the door.

  After a minute of thumping, she started to hope that they weren’t home, or had moved, or anything that would save her from having to talk to Margaret’s parents. But then the lamp flared on above her head, and the door flew open.

  “What!” a skinny man in an undershirt and pants barked. “It’s one in the fuckin’ morning! Did you lose your watch up your arse?”

  “Mr. Smythe?” Pete said, purely as a formality. She recognized his craggy face and sad, rapidly retreating gray hairline from the family photos she’d seen in London.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he shouted in response. “I told you lot, you wait for the morning like everyone else! Go camp on the green with the other freaks and stay off our personal property!”

  Pete didn’t bother asking him what he was on about. “Sir, you don’t know me, but I worked your daughter’s kidnap case. I’m afraid my friend and I have come to Overton on business and we’re in a bit of a spot. Might we come in?” Honestly, she was glad it was Margaret’s father and not her gin-soaked, teary-eyed mother. Being shouted at by convicts was familiar ground, one she could navigate.

  Mr. Smythe drew back visibly, as if she’d brandished a tire iron at his testicles. “You’re a copper?”

  “May we come in?” Pete asked again. Let him think she still had a badge, if it made life easier. It wasn’t a crime not to correct an assumption.

  “Well, this ain’t a fuckin’ B&B,” Mr. Smythe said. “My wife and kid are asleep, and whatever it is can wait until mornin’.”

  “I’m afraid it can’t,” Pete said. “I’ve been asked to look into the disappearances in the area, and there was a mixup at our lodging.”

  She tried a different tack, giving Mr. Smythe a warm smile. He curled his lip, as if a small dog had pissed on his shoe. “I know it’s a terrible imposition, but I and the investigation would certainly benefit from it.”

  She kept smiling and put her foot over the threshold, closing in on Smythe’s personal space. Like any scrawny rat who’d been locked up, he shrank back instinctively, out of blade distance.

  Pete stepped inside. The Smythe house smelled the same as their old one—stale cigarettes, overpowering floral cleaner, and the faint tang of rancid takeaway grease. Mr. Smythe gave her a dull glare. “Come in then, I guess,” he muttered.

  “Thank you so much,” Pete said, borrowing the false cheer her mother often employed when she was trying to cajole Pete and her sister into doing something they didn’t want. She turned and gestured to Jack, who hopped up the steps and grinned at Philip Smythe.

  “Really appreciate it, sir.”

  Smythe regarded Jack with a slack jaw, eyes working over every inch of him. “You a copper too?”

  “On Her Majesty’s secret service,” Jack said with a perfectly straight face, and Smythe blinked at him.

  “I don’t know about this…” he started, but a door banged open and Pete watched Norma Smythe came stumbling down the hall, scrubbing at her face. Margaret’s mother was wearing a lavender nightgown that stopped far north of what Pete wanted to see, and yesterday’s makeup still lingered on her eyelids like bruises.

  “The fuck is all this racket?” she muttered, before focusing on Pete. “I know you.”

  “We’ve found ourselves in Overton without a place to stay,” Pete said, “and your husband was kind enough to offer the spare room.”

  “Haven’t got a fucking spare room,” Norma grumbled. “Kid’s in it.” She fixed her gaze on Pete, and it was less bleary than Pete had hoped. The Norma she knew was an afternoon drinker and considered sobriety an untenable state. “Thought you’d left the Met. Tried to call you at the one-year of you finding my baby, and they said you’d left.”

  “I’m investigating a private matter,” Pete said without missing a beat. “A man named Jeremy Crotherton who’s gone missing.”

  “Crotherton one of them hippie hikers?” Philip said. “Good luck finding him, then. Probably got stoned and pitched down a ravine.”

  “Mr. Crotherton’s … family is very concerned,” Pete said. She looked back at Norma, trying to come up with a way to make this more palatable, but she caught sight of movement at the top of the stairs and her heart nearly stopped. “Hello, Margaret,” she said softly. “How are you, sweetheart?”

  “I’m very well, thank you,” Margaret said. Her tone was heavy, like she’d downed a fistful of painkillers. “Have you come to see me?”

  “I’m sorry, luv, but I’m here for something else,” Pete said. “A man named Jeremy Crotherton. You haven’t heard anything, have you?”

  “Oi,” Philip said. “You ain’t a copper, so don’t talk to my kid. You can sleep on the foldaway, but in the morning I want you gone.”

  “That’s fine,” Pete murmured, her eyes still on Margaret. The girl’s gaze was wide and unblinking, and Pete could see her vibrating with panic from three meters away.

  “Meg, get your arse back in bed,” Norma snapped at her daughter. “You’ve a huge appearance tomorrow.”

  “What’s tomorrow?” Pete kept her tone conversational. The Smythes weren’t going to catch on she knew they were full of shit. Not from any betrayal of her eyes or face, anyway. She might not be as good a liar as Jack, but she could fool two greedy, chavvy council rats for a few minutes.

  “A meeting,” said Norma, lighting a cigarette from a pack on her end table and sucking on it like it dispensed champagne and Vicodin. “Tent meeting, what like they have over in America. You haven’t been following the news story?”

  “She’s been busy putting her nose in other people’s lives,” said Philip. “You think London cares about the back of beyond?”

  “Stop being a twat,” Norma shot back. “You were locked up, you didn’t see it—whatever else she is, this lady brought my little one back to me.” She lunged for Pete and enfolded her in a vodka-scented hug before Pete could dart away. She wondered how quickly you could suffocate against another woman’s tits while Norma Smythe mumbled into her ear, “I can never thank you. Never ever thank you enough.”

  “It’s … it’s all right,” Pete said, wriggling free. “Just doing my job and all that.”

  “My Margaret was so much better when she came back,” Norma said. “And the other parents were so lovely about what had happened. When we found all four of these poor children could do the same … so
rt of things, well. We’ve attracted quite a local following, and tomorrow’s our biggest ever. Someday we’ll be larger than Glastonbury, Philip reckons.”

  “You should come,” Philip broke in. “See for yourself, then you can call the care workers off our arse. It ain’t like we’re auctioning off our kids to the highest bidder.”

  “I’d love to see what you’ve been up to,” Pete said. “Tomorrow, you said?”

  “Eight a.m. sharp,” Norma said. “But people are already camped on the green to get a good viewing spot.”

  “Oh, for the great detective inspector, I’ll see we get her a front-row seat,” Philip said. Something slithered across his face that was malicious and unpleasant, the anticipation of seeing someone he hated in pain.

  Pete looked to Jack, who grimaced at the magic that even now ran all over Pete like thorns against her bare skin. “Make it two spots,” she said. “We wouldn’t miss it.”

  13.

  Pete passed the night next to Jack on the Smythe’s spring-infested rollaway bed, pressed into him out of necessity as much as need. It lacked a lot of the glamour it had held when Pete was sixteen, and when she managed to fall asleep, she opened her eyes to find herself standing on a hillside, wearing only her underwear and one of Jack’s shirts. Dew coated the soles of her feet, and mist curled low amid lichen-crusted stone walls and a single tree that bent over a cairn of black stones.

  She looked behind her and saw her footprints in the long grass, a silvery trail leading back over the hills, presumably toward the village. She didn’t know how far she’d come, just that she was here now.

  She was only half-surprised to see the raven from her other dream. It lighted on a tree branch and croaked at her. Pete heaved a sigh. “Your mistress can creep around my mind all she likes. Doesn’t change my answer.”

  She took a few steps forward, wet grass brushing her calves. Cold found her through the thin material of her shirt, and she wrapped her arms around her waist. She wasn’t usually cold in dreams.

  “That’s because this isn’t a dream.”

  She stared at the raven. She’d never heard an agent of the Morrigan speak to her so directly, not inside her mind. “It isn’t?”

  The raven ruffled its pinion feathers and adjusted its grip on the branch. “You’re awake. Does this really feel like a dream?”

  Talking bird and all, it was substantially less horrible than most of Pete’s prophetic dreams. “I don’t know.”

  “You need to leave,” said the bird. “Right now.”

  “Let me guess,” Pete said. “You and the Morrigan have your own plans for this place.” It would explain the magic wound through this place tightly as the rock met the earth, tightly as the roots of the tree in front of her.

  “This place? No. This is not our place,” said the raven. “Nor the place of any living thing. Not of gods, or of men. It is a place of death, a place that will lead only to your destruction, Weir.”

  The raven rotated its head to her, stared into her eyes. “Stop looking for Jeremy Crotherton and stop trying to appease the Prometheans. In the long run, it’s not going to matter anyway. Run,” it said. “Run and don’t look back.”

  “Says the talking bird,” Pete grumbled. “Perched up there in his fancy little tree.”

  “I can only talk to you in this place,” said the raven. “Only here, where it’s strongest.”

  “I fucking hate you types and your talking in circles,” Pete said. “Do you know that?”

  “It’s spreading,” said the raven. “And you need to get away from the heart of it before it infects you like…”

  “Pete!”

  The scream cut through the mist, and Pete turned, all at once feeling frozen, damp, and footsore. “Jack? What the fuck is going on?”

  He came running, blond hair bobbing through the mist until he was fully in view. “The fuck are you doing?” he gasped, leaning over and bracing on his thighs. He fumbled a cigarette and lit it with the tip of his finger.

  Pete looked to the raven, but it had flown. She was alone. “Sleepwalking, I guess,” she said.

  “You scared me,” Jack said, regaining his breath. “I woke up and the window was open and you’d done a runner. We’re five fucking miles from the village.”

  “Seriously?” Pete regarded the hillside with more scrutiny. “I thought I was dreaming…”

  Jack grasped her by the arms and examined her face. “What happened, luv?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But I don’t feel well.” The longer she stood, the more sick and dizzy she felt, like when she’d had morning sickness with Lily to the power of ten.

  This is not a place of gods or of men, the raven said, and Pete looked back at the cairn of stones. The entire place vibrated with power, as if what was in front of her was slightly out of focus. The vague unease she felt in the village had turned itself to full-blown panic.

  “Yeah, I can’t say I fancy it,” Jack said. “I was too worried to really pay attention but now…” He flinched. “There’s bad mojo running through here.”

  Pete let him put his jacket around her and his arm in turn, and lead her back to the road. “What time is it?” she said. She felt small, out of place, and sick to her stomach. She’d never sleepwalked, not even as a child. Never woken up like that, alone and vulnerable.

  Get it together, Caldecott, she told herself. Strange shite had happened to Preston and Jeremy Crotherton, too. If anything, this meant she could finish the job and get away from the Prometheus Club all the quicker.

  “Around seven, I think,” Jack said. “Took me a while to find you. Don’t worry, we’ll still make the Smythes’ freak show if we hurry.” He looked down at her as they walked, bumpy asphalt poking at Pete’s feet, and frowned. “What do you think is going on here, Petunia? Really?”

  “You’re asking me?” Pete had to laugh. “You really must have no fucking idea.”

  “Nope,” Jack said. “Never run into anyplace that felt like this. Not a mass grave, not a sacrificial site. This is new.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” Pete said, as the mist began to burn away under a pale and overworked sunrise. “But I know whatever it is, it can’t be good.”

  14.

  Pete might have spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what the fuck was happening, but there was Margaret to think of, and barely time to pull on real clothes and comb her hair before she and Jack were off again, moving toward the village green with a crowd clutching rucksacks and portable chairs, sporting a higher-than-average ratio of natural fibers and New Age bangles. Some were travelers, but some looked like ordinary folk, rumpled and red-eyed and not used to sleeping rough.

  Pete didn’t tell Jack about the raven, or about what it had said. There was enough going on this morning—later, she could tell him the whole story and see if he had any idea what they might have stumbled into.

  The green was just a flat space at the edge of the village, bounded on one side by a series of stone buildings and on the other by rolling open country. A hill fort looked down over the grassy expanse, blocking the light and trapping the mist in a low bowl of shadow and chill.

  The crowd congregated under a white tent, the sort used for church fetes or picnics.

  A plywood stage had been constructed at the edge of the green, and four small chairs sat across the length. Pete intended to slip in the back of the tent, but Norma Smythe spotted her and dragged her to the front of the crowd, to assorted grumbles from the surrounding hippies.

  “Oh, shut it,” Jack said. “Smear some more patchouli on your nethers and calm down.”

  Norma gave him a dirty look, and Pete tried to smooth her over with a smile. “Sorry. We’re just a bit tired.”

  “Stay here,” Norma said. “We’ll find you when it’s over.”

  Pete looked for Margaret, but when she found her, she was being held tightly by Philip, who gripped her arm as though it were a leash. Margaret had circles under her eyes ev
en deeper than Pete’s, and she slumped in her father’s grip like a broken toy.

  “Shit,” Pete muttered. She had to speak to Margaret alone and find out what was going on. She chewed on her lip and tried to look interested in what was happening onstage.

  “All right, then. We’re starting.” Pete tried not to stare when she caught sight of Bridget Killigan’s father. The last time she’d seen Dexter, bent over his daughter’s hospital bed, he’d looked wrung out but still lively. Now he was gaunt and pale, looking close to keeling over but for the microphone he clutched to hold himself upright. “I’ll tell you how this works, then I’ll turn this over to Philip,” Dexter Killigan said. His voice, even amplified, was a thin shred of what Pete remembered. “You can ask one question. The children will answer. Their answers cannot be disputed or argued over. You may not ask another question.” He paused, staring out at the silent massing of people with unfocused eyes. “That’s it, then.” With a limp gesture, he passed the microphone to Philip and slumped offstage.

  “This is great,” Jack said against her ear. “When do you think they’re going to start falling on the ground and jabbering at snakes?”

  “Be quiet,” Pete snapped, not even pretending to indulge him. You didn’t even have to be observant to sense the wrongness. It was like watching a parade of mental patients try to convince you they were perfectly sane and really did hear space aliens transmitting in their fillings. They might have the right words and gestures, but something would be slightly blurred, slightly wrong.

  “All right,” said Philip Smythe. “Those of you who’ve been here before, welcome back. Consider letting some new folks take a turn at the front. Also, consider pitching something in the bucket when it comes around, yeah? We’re running on your gas.”

  “Bring on the kids!” someone shouted, and Philip glared into the crowd.

  “You put that tongue back in your head. This isn’t a carnival sideshow.”