Black London 05 - Soul Trade

bit down hard enough to draw blood when her arm spasmed again. “Fuck,” she hissed. She simply couldn’t be laid up right now—not only did she have more jobs booked over the coming weeks, but it was also going to be impossible to hold, feed, and change a baby with one working arm.
    “You all right?” Wolcott’salarmingly orange brow furrowed.
    “I’ll manage,” Pete said. Wolcott considered for a moment, and then nodded.
    “Right. I’m parked up on the high street. Should get on home, probably.” She started to walk away, then turned back. “He’s … it’s … that thing’s not … coming back, is it?”
    “No,” Pete said. “That’s done with.”
    “And those things he said to me … they’re not true.”
    Pete shrugged, the lastof her ability to sugarcoat gone. “I don’t know what he said to you, Wolcott. I can’t know if any of it was true.”
    The constable’s mouth turned down at the edges, and she glared at Pete. “You know, them up in the squad was right about you.”
    “What, that I’m a nutter?” Pete shrugged and immediately regretted it, feeling the twinge of battered tendons.
    “No,” Wolcott said. “That you can be a bitof a bitch.” She made her way through the churchyard and out the gate, not looking back.
    “No argument from me on that score,” Pete muttered, feeling for the keys to her battered red Mini Cooper. They’d fallen from her pocket in the struggle, along with her wallet and her mobile, scattered across the grass. Pete collected everything, and then gave a fresh yelp as she straightened up and almostbumped foreheads with a tall figure in a black coat and hat.
    Her first thought was Shit, shit, shit as she braced herself to come face to face with a squad of witchfinders, the only sort of gits who favored the “Orson Welles circa The Third Man ” look.
    When the figures merely stood impassively, however, she got a second look. Their hat brims were pulled low, and what faces she could see had thecorpselike pallor and waxy, unhealthy skin that normally only cropped up on zombies. Their mouths were free of red stitching, though, and the way they’d appeared out of thin air wasn’t terribly zombielike. Zombies were brutes, and they were generally no good at sneaking about.
    “Petunia Caldecott,” said the leader. His voice didn’t make her name a question. The other four stared at her, motionlessas the headstones all around.
    Pete figured there was no point in arguing. “Yeah?”
    The figure extended a hand. His fingers were long, the nails nonexistent, pulled out by the root, gnarled scar tissue in their place. Pete gingerly took the black envelope offered, being careful not to touch the thing. Skin-to-skin contact in the Black was often worse than grabbing a live wire—and there was plentyof black magic that could be passed with only a touch. After the scene with the wraith that ate Mickey Martin, she wasn’t about to take any more stupid chances tonight.
    “You are cordially invited to attend the tenth full gathering of the Prometheus Club,” said the figure. His voice was oddly high and reedy, as if he were on the verge of having his vocal cords wriggle their way out through histhroat.
    “I … have no clue what you’re on about,” Pete said, holding the envelope by the corner. In any other place, on any other night, this would smack of bad live theater, but she was rattled enough not to antagonize the waxen men. There was something about their mannerisms and the way they’d just appeared out of thin air that hinted to Pete that they were dead serious.
    “The patrons of thePrometheus Club do hope you will choose to attend, Weir,” said the lead figure.
    “It took five of you to tell me that?” Pete asked, flicking her gaze quickly between the pale men. It wasn’t exactly a secret that she was a Weir, but those in the Black were usually a bit more circumspect about saying it to her face. She scared people, and she wished she didn’t, but the Weir was something to be afraidof. Hell, she was afraid of it.
    “We are messengers,” said the lead figure. “We have delivered our message.”
    “Yeah, well,” Pete said. “Tell your club to shove it. I don’t particularly cotton to shadowy errands, especially ones that come with an implied threat.”
    “That is a pity,” said the figure, and he tilted his head so that Pete caught a bit more of his face and a flash of his eyes. Or wherehis eyes should have been. The thing