Black London 05 - Soul Trade

mum must have told you that.”
    “She didn’t tell me much,” Jack said. “’Cept to fuck off down to the corner and get hersome more fags.”
    “I thought she’d be all right,” Donovan said, his voice so quiet that it would have been lost if not for the echo of the small stone room. “She was on medication when I left. I thought she could handle it.”
    “She was always on medication,” Jack said. “Neighbor’s medication, boyfriend’s medication, the type you buy from the hoodies who hang around the car park behind the ASDA.That was sort of the central fucking issue in me childhood, Dad. ”
    “You act like you think I wanted it to end up this way,” Donovan said. “It’s going to sound like a load of shite cliches, but I was young, Jackie. I did a stupid thing.”
    “’M really not interested in a touching moment replete with swelling violins,” Jack said. “So why don’t you kick on about whatever it is you really want and thenleave me in peace?”
    “What’s happening in this town?” Pete interrupted. Donovan and Jack could be going in circles all night. “You called them worms, those things at the Killigan house,” she said. “Not demons. You know something.”
    “I know a little,” he said. “Mostly what I extrapolated after I found out that poncey cunt Jeremy Crotherton had stuck his nose in it.”
    Donovan knew Crotherton. Thatcertainly made Pete look at him in a new and not entirely flattering light.
    “You and Jeremy were mates, then?” she said. Keeping it casual. Letting Donovan lead. If there was one thing she’d learned about Winter men, it was that they liked to think they were the ones in charge.
    “Better question is how you knew Jeremy,” Donovan said with his snakelike smile. He held her there, pinned to the spot,but Pete swallowed the knot in her throat and lied.
    “Just of him. Heard he’d gone missing along with the other folks when we came looking for the demon.”
    “That the sort of thing you two do for a romantic date, then?” Donovan cut his eyes between Jack, who curled his lip at his father, and Pete, who tried to paste a smile on her face. “Hunt up a demon summoner?”
    “Freelance,” Pete said. “Localconstabulary hired us.” She banked on Donovan having the same aversion to anything carrying a badge that his son did, and sure enough he gave a snort of derision.
    “Working for civilians, like this was that TV show about the wizard with the talking skull and the twatty name.”
    “Pays the bills,” Jack said. “But I suppose you get your bankroll from our substantial family fortune, right, Dad?”
    “You’re funny,” Donovan said. “Must get that from your mum.” He shed his coat, hanging it on one of the hooks meant to hold a vase of flowers, and wandered the permieter of the small room, reading the names engraved on the wall. “No, I make money the old-fashioned way, by taking it from mages who are too lazy to do grunt work like tracking a demon summoner themselves.”
    “So who sent you here?”Pete said.
    “Crotherton’s family,” Donovan said casually. “Jeremy and I were school mates.”
    “I hope they weren’t banking on an open casket,” Jack muttered. “Because old Jeremy is passed on with a side of undead, extra crispy.”
    “I imagine I’ll be a bit more delicate when I break the news,” Donovan said. “But when I tracked Jeremy here, I realized that this wasn’t any ordinary sort of possession.”

    “They’re not even demons,” Pete said. Jack shot her an alarmed look, eyes widening, but she looked back and begged him with her expression to just play along. I’ll explain later, she mouthed.
    Donovan tapped the closed door. “We’ll be safe here for a while. Eventually the rest of the horde is going to realize something’s up, but not many have the stones to toe up with a wraith. Once it’s darkwe can maybe move.”
    Pete thought of the raven, telling her to run. That this was a dead man’s town. It hadn’t been wrong. Just her stubborn fault she hadn’t listened to it. “I can’t hide until dark,” she said. “I’ve got to go and get Margaret.”
    “And who’s Margaret?” Donovan said.
    “She’s the last kid,” Pete said. “The only one the worms didn’t get their hooks into.”
    “Then she’s dead,” Donovansaid. “Just like the rest of them. No help. We want to stay in control of ourselves, not join the walking dead out there, we stay hidden.”
    “Fuck off,” Pete told