Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

“You’re right about that, ” she said. “But I wasn’t talking about that , was I? The fact that you happen to be my sperm donor has very little to do with what’s happening now.”

He picked up the whiskey bottle and threw it. Not at Pete, because he didn’t want to hurt her. He just needed to break something, to hear the crash and feel the glass fragments bite into the soles of his boots when he crossed the room to the front door. Break something or break himself, and he couldn’t allow himself that luxury right now.

At least it was out in the open. She’d never even considered that they’d do it together. And that was fine by him. Like he needed a brat on top of all the other problems in his life. Maybe if he said that line enough times he’d start to believe it.

Jack almost missed the BMW idling across from his flat. His pulse was throbbing, and his lungs were constricted down to fist size. She wanted a fucking absent father, he’d show her one. He could be on a boat to Ireland in forty minutes, cadge a passport from a bloke he knew in Belfast, and from there make his way anywhere he pleased. Sooner or later someone would come looking for him via Pete, and she’d wish she’d listened to him then, wouldn’t she? But you couldn’t tell Pete anything, and Jack almost wished he’d be there to see her face when necromancers showed up on the front stoop.

He tried to let the anger flow, and the lies with it. Hoped they would eventually be true too, because the alternative was that he was alone again, and it was remarkable how quickly that had become the worst fate imaginable.

“Mr. Winter.” The car window rolled down and with it, out rolled black magic, rendolent and velvety against his senses. Jack nearly flipped the occupant of the car the bird and kept walking, but then he saw the face, craggy and nearly the same color as stone, topped by a wide-brimmed hat.

“Oh, fuck me,” he said.

Ethan Morningstar egressed his poncey ride with surprising grace for a man of his size and bulk, and gave Jack a smile that held all the warmth of a tombstone in January. “You’re more eloquent than usual, Jack. Been taking your vitamins? Men of your age need to start considering these things, you know.”

Jack set his feet and let a tendril of power uncurl inside his head. Morningstar was a dangerous, unpredictable snake of a man, and it wouldn’t surprise Jack if he tried to open him like a Christmas pudding just for the fun of it. “Get the hell out of my patch, Ethan,” he said. “We don’t want what you’re selling.”

“I’m here informally,” Morningstar said. “A friendly gesture, if you will.”

That made Jack laugh. The Order of the Malleus was never friendly, not to people like him. With mages, they tended more to thumbscrews and waterboards. “Whatever you say, Ethan. I’m still telling you to fuck off.”

Morningstar leaned against the fender of his motor, which creaked and shifted under his weight. He might look like somebody’s surly headmaster, but every bit of his bulk was muscle—muscle he knew how to use. Jack had to admit, so far the witchfinder was being remarkably civil. That in and of itself bothered him.

“I was hoping after you failed to set Nergal on the waking world like a hungry dog, somebody would do my job for me,” Morningstar said. “One of the other mud-grazers would creep up on you in the dark and put a knife in your ribs, and that’d be the end of it. But like the man says, we can’t always get what we want.”

“I’ve got another one,” Jack said. “‘Oh bondage, up yours.’”

Ethan sucked his teeth, then folded his arms. “This can’t go on, Jack.”

Here it was. The nightstick, the Taser, the needle full of dream-time. Waking up in a dank basement tied to a chair whose wood was already soaked with other men’s blood. Tortured and prodded until the Malleus had extracted all of his useful information, then fed into a crematory furnace by a discreet and sympathetic mortuary worker. Fascists, magical or not, didn’t employ a lot of variety.

Jack braced himself. “I’m not going to go quietly.”

“I don’t care how you go,” Ethan said. “Just that you do. Get out of my sight, get out of my city, and don’t come back.” He stood up and moved into Jack’s space, so that they could’ve kissed if Jack had been remotely interested. “How did you put it? If I see you on my patch again, I will kill you. You’re spreading chaos, making the other spell-dabblers nervous, and somebody innocent is going to be hurt. I won’t allow that.”

Jack felt his heartbeat peak and recede, like a tide smashing on a rock. “That’s it?”

“What did you think I was going to do, stuff you in the boot and take you away to a secret prison?” Morningstar chuffed. “Not hardly. Maybe I’m soft in my old age. Maybe I just remember that your little girlfriend did give us Nergal’s reliquary when it was all said and done. Maybe I think you’re not worth the time it’ll take to clean the blood off my boots.” Morningstar opened his door and got back into his car. “You’ll just have to wonder, won’t you?”

He started to pull away from the curb, then tapped the brakes. “Speaking of Petunia, take her with you. The same rules apply, and she’s a lot more dangerous than you. She comes back here and sows more trouble for London, the Malleus will be forced to take steps.” He tipped his head, grinning wide for the first time, then gunned the engine. The BMW roared away into Mile End traffic like a black shark, but not half as beastlike as the driver.

Pete was standing on the stoop of their flat, watching him with folded arms while he crossed the road again. “Was that who I think it is?”

“None other,” Jack said. “And it looks like I’m coming with you, whether you want it or not.” He held up a hand when Pete started to object. “Look, I’ll stay out of this thing with your friend Mayhew. But I can’t stay in London and I’d just as soon go someplace that’s not pissing down rain.” Los Angeles was as good a place as any. He could look up some old mates from his band days, have a laugh, and get away from London and all of the memories it implied. And if he was closer to Pete until she had the kid, so much the better. She’d made her feelings clear, but Jack wasn’t prepared to be that much of a shit father. Letting your kid and its mother get murdered because you two had a spat wasn’t parent of the year material in anyone’s book.

Pete flapped her hands. “Fine. But it’s not a bloody comic book team-up. You’ll let me conduct my business with Mayhew and you’ll stop dragging me into this ridiculous feud of yours.”

“Fine,” Jack agreed. “Consider me a ghost, luv. You won’t even know I exist.” Pete went inside without another word.

It took Jack remarkably little time to pack up what he needed from the flat. He’d have thought that after nearly twenty years, he’d have more essentials. But the books, aside from a few rare grimoires that he could hock for cash if he needed it, the vinyl, the odds and ends that one collected after twenty years of living half in and half out of the Black … they suddenly seemed like so much junk, piled up in all the corners and crevices. Whoever eventually broke in here wouldn’t find anything worth salvaging, unless they were into moldy takeaway or vintage porn.

Jack packed up a few changes of clothes, his leather, his least disreputable pair of boots, and the master reel of his band’s first and only album. The Poor Dead Bastards had something of a cult following, and maybe he could trade it for something, if he needed to. He hadn’t been to Los Angeles since the early 1990s and what he remembered didn’t exactly inspire fits of joy. He’d need money, and he’d need to make a good impression on the locals. American mages tended toward pompous and territorial, instilled with the idea that they were special, as if there weren’t tens of thousands just like them the world over.