Black London 05 - Soul Trade

answer had been the opposite.
    Another woman, this one youngand slender, sporting rainbow dreadlocks, took the mic, but a man in a nylon windcheater pushed her out of the way. “Excuse me…” Philip started, but the bloke shouted. Red-faced, he looked more like a farmer than someone who’d be in line to talk to fortune-tellers.
    “Here’s the thing,” he shouted. “I think this is a load of shit. You lot ain’t no better than the gyppos, coming into our town andturning it into a circus. Can’t say anything useful. You want us not to run you out, tell me somethin’ I can use. Tell me the lotto numbers.”
    There were murmurs of assent from the back of the tent, where a complement of four other similarly large and ale-bloated men lurked. “Nice to see the local racists are out in force,” Pete murmured.
    “Eh, it’s been a while since I booted one of those inthe balls,” Jack said. “Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen to your girl.”
    Margaret was visibly shaking at the confrontation, but Diana Leroy cocked her head at the man. “You’re not nice,” she said, her voice singsong.
    “What I thought,” the man said. “Fuck off back to your sideshow. Don’t want none of your shite around here.” He pushed a fat finger into Philip’s chest. “And if you don’t lightout, we’ll make sure you leave.”
    “Your wife doesn’t know.” Diana’s voice rang over the yells from the local yobs, and the grumbles from the hippie set. “She doesn’t know what you do when you go to Hereford first Saturday of the month.”
    The punter’s lip curled as Pete watched, waiting for the moment she was going to have to save Philip Smythe from getting his arse handed to him. Maybe then atleast he’d be civil to her.
    “You’re guessin’,” the punter sneered. “You’re doing that shite from the telly where you guess at me until you get it right.”
    “Your wife doesn’t know about Geoffrey, or that you like to force yourself on boys even younger than him,” Diana said. “And she doesn’t know you’re the one who gave her the clap. But she’ll find out, because you’re not smart enough to keepyour stories straight. One night you’ll stumble home drunk, and she’ll be waiting for you with your rifle. She’s smarter than you think. It’ll look like suicide, and you’ll never hurt anyone, ever again.”
    The silence endemic to Overton reigned with a heavy hand. Philip Smythe gave the punter a smug look, folding his arms. “You asked, mate.”
    The punter dropped the mic and shoved his way throughthe crowd, violent and churning in his panic. He knocked aside one of his friends and kept going across the green, until he was just a speck.
    Pete looked at Jack, feeling cold all over again, down to her bones. “Are they really doing it? Telling the future?” Divination wasn’t exact. It was a hard discipline to master, and not a talent that came naturally. You could get snatches, but the futurewas fluid. The Black could always change. Events were not immutable. Nobody could speak with the accuracy of Diana and Bridget, but they seemed so certain. And more importantly, so did their marks.
    “I don’t think so,” Jack said. He rubbed the center of his forehead. “I think they’re reading what’s already there, not the timestream.”
    “Mind reading’s not a first-year trick either,” Pete muttered.

    “And what sort of nasty do we know that excels in picking apart your deepest fears for their own amusement?” Jack said, tensing up and staring at the stage with his glacial eyes unblinking.
    Pete looked at the children onstage, save Margaret, in a new light. She might not have Jack’s vast store of knowledge, but this one was easy. She’d seen it before, firsthand, up close and far too personal.“Oh, fuck,” she breathed, turning back to Jack. His face went grim, and he didn’t take his eyes off Bridget, Patrick, and Diana.
    “’Fraid so, luv. Those kids up there aren’t kids. Those are Crotherton’s demons.”

 
    Part Two
    Possession
    Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d
    In one self place; for where we are is hell,
    And where hell is, must we ever be.
    —Christopher Marlowe,
Doctor Faustus

 
    15.
    Pete stayed perfectly still. No breath passed her lips, and if she could, she would have stilled the blood in her veins. “Are you sure?” That was a silly question. Demon should have been her first guess, given what Morwenna had told her. Besides, what else could