Authors: Caitlin Kittredge
“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.”
“Could have fooled me,” Jack grumbled.
“Be quiet and be fuckin’ respectful,” Philip continued. “This isn’t a trick. This is a gift to us all.” He gestured to the back of the stage, where thick plastic hung as a makeshift curtain.
“Welcome the kids, please.”
As they came out, all Pete could do was stare. Margaret sat as far as she could from the others, folding in on herself. Bridget Killigan came forth, walking as if she were moving underwater, arms spread in front of her. Philip took her arm and guided her to her seat. “There, luv,” he said.
Pete’s mouth opened, and her air grew short. Bridget Killigan couldn’t walk.
She couldn’t do anything. She was blind and catatonic, a victim of Algernon Treadwell’s hungry ghost. He’d drained everything that made her Bridget and left a shell, but he hadn’t filled it. He hadn’t been after a body, just her strength. Jack had been Treadwell’s end goal, and Pete had stopped him, but she hadn’t been fast enough. He’d taken three children, three children who should
not
be up
and walking around.
Diana Leroy and Patrick Dumbershall walked out together, clutching hands. Patrick, who still had one eye that wasn’t completely clouded with cataracts, helped her into her seat before feeling his way to his own.
Jack leaned down and pressed his lips into her hair. “Do you have any idea what the hell is going on?”
“Less than none,” Pete said. She was almost afraid to keep
watching, but any outburst now would just draw attention, and she didn’t think the rapt crowd would take too kindly to that. Self-proclaimed pacifists were the first ones to start throwing rocks at the riot police, that much she knew.
A pudgy woman with purple ribbons woven through her hair and a skirt swirling around her ample bottom stepped up, and Philip hopped off the stage, presenting her
the mic. “Go ahead. Ask one question.”
The woman focused on the four children. Margaret dropped her gaze, foot kicking at the wood, but the other three stared serenely ahead, white gazes unblinking.
“Will I ever find someone to love me?” the woman asked, her voice wavering.
“Hey, now,” Philip said. “Before we hear the answer, let’s give this sweet lady a round of applause for being so brave.”
The crowd set up an earnest clapping that made Pete want to kick every one of them in the shins.
Bridget Killigan traced her hand against the air. “I see a man, but he will be taken from you before love blossoms. You will remember him, when you are alone.”
The woman stared for a moment, and then bowed her head. “Thank you. I know you speak the truth.” She crumpled a fiver in her fist and shoved
it at Philip before pushing through the crowd and disappearing.
Pete reexamined the whole setup. The tent, the crowd of adoring followers, the patter from Philip … it was a confidence scam, but that didn’t explain how the children were up and talking. Faith healers relied on spectacle and giving people what they wanted, and Bridget’s answer had been the opposite.
Another woman, this one young
and 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 and
turning 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 in
the 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 light
out, 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 at
least 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 keep
your 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 through
the 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 future
was 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 make a broken body ambulatory, give voice to a silent tongue and sight to ruined eyes?
Actual demonic possession was rare; because
most demons strong enough to possess were strong enough to mold their own human shapes. Pete had never seen a demon in a human body with her own eyes. It was harder than it sounded—you had to wrestle the living into submission, subvert their will, and ride their body like a bucking horse.
Of course, Pete supposed, picking on catatonic children made the whole game a lot easier.
“Sure as I can
be,” Jack said. “I’m not gonna get close enough to poke and prod them, that’s for sure, but I don’t know any other nasty that can do what they’re doing.” He was pale, and small beads of sweat had collected in the hollows of his cheeks and across his upper lip. With his second sight, Jack saw the children for what they really were—hollowed-out bits of flesh containing something that had never been
human and never would be.
“All right,” Pete said, staying still and quiet and trying not to telegraph alarm with her words or her face. Up on the stage the prophecies went on, the tone grimmer and grimmer. The worse someone’s future was, the wider Bridget, Diana, and Patrick grinned and the more poor Margaret looked like she might throw up. “So what do we do now?”
“Got to get them one by one,”
Jack murmured. “I can’t exorcise three bodies at once. I don’t even know if they’re Named or just travelers.”
Pete swallowed hard. Named demons were the 666 leaders of the legions of Hell, the big hard men. If a Named was responsible for this, they were, as the Americans put it, up shit creek. Thinking about trying to exorcise a Named demon made her throat constrict. She felt as if small rocks
were embedded in her chest, making her breath burn. “I could touch them. Find out their true names and use them in the exorcism.”
“No,” Jack hissed, harsh enough that the people around them looked. Pete glared in return until they went back to staring at the stage.
“It’s not like we have a lot of other options,” she said. “And I know the parents will let me get close enough if I play into their
bullshit.”
The cash collection basket came by, heavy with coins and rustling with notes—many of them twenty or fifty pounds. Jack nimbly pocketed a hundred and twenty quid before passing it along to the woman next to him. “Pete, I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen if you try to empty out a demon with your talent. The last time you tried, you nearly burned down me flat and both of
us with it.”
“I don’t
want
to,” Pete told him, fidgeting at the implied criticism of his words. The Named that she’d accidentally exorcised just after she’d met Jack hadn’t been much of a fighter—more of a skulker, really—and even getting rid of him had nearly killed her. “I haven’t forgotten that I have a tendency to go apocalyptic when I brush up against demon magic, but I don’t see that we
have much of a choice. You’re never going to have time to set up a proper exorcism—these kids are being watched like hawks.”
She wasn’t letting a demon worm its way into Margaret Smythe, and it was simple as that. Margaret was the only one who’d survived Treadwell with her mind intact, which was probably why she hadn’t been possessed yet.
Yet
being the operative word.
Before Jack could say anything
else, Pete started for the stage, moving through the thick knot of people waiting at the mic, until she found Norma Smythe. “So,” she said brightly, amazed at herself and how easy it was to sound cheerful. “This is quite a show.”
“Yeah,” Norma said, relaxing when Pete smiled. Norma Smythe liked attention more than she worried about Pete being untrustworthy. It had been the same way when Algernon
Treadwell had taken Margaret—she’d been more interested in crying for the telly cameras than she was concerned about Pete finding anything untoward during her home visit. “Margaret ain’t showed any abilities yet, but since Philip had the idea to organize this…” She dropped her voice conspiratorially. “That twat Dexter Killigan might think he’s in charge, but we’re the ones who are…” she searched
for the word, her heavily made up brow crinkling. “Monetizing it,” she said at last. “Philip said we might get on
Tricia
if this keeps up. Wouldn’t that be a laugh?”
“A huge one,” Pete agreed. Norma Smythe went back to frowning.
“Dexter’s not gonna be happy you’re poking about.”
“Oh, don’t fret,” Pete said. “Like I told your husband, I have no authority. I’m just looking into one of the men
who went missing, and I’m very glad I was able to see how you’re all … aiding your children’s recovery.” The lie burned like acid. When this was over, when Crotherton’s demon was back in Hell and the Prometheans were off her back, it was going to be hard not to come back to Overton and put the fear of all the gods into the Smythes.
“You should come to supper!” Norma exclaimed with a wide, sloppy
grin that bespoke a handful of small white pills. “Mrs. Leroy hosts this big supper after every festival. Middle-class cunt that she is, tryin’ to show everyone up.” Norma pulled out a fag, patted her too-big blue blazer down for a lighter, and gave a defeated sigh. “Should give this up, anyway. Ain’t good for the kids, and those poor sick ones is so delicate. Not like my baby.”
Personally, Pete
thought there wasn’t much that could put a dent in Diana, Bridget, or Patrick in their present condition. She’d seen a demon take a hit from a lorry and shake it off as if he’d collided with a shopping cart.
That
sort of demon, she knew how to handle. They were like Belial and his ilk. The Prince of Hell was at least rational, interested in making bargains with Pete and Jack that helped him leverage
his spot as one of the ruling Triumverate of Hell. Really, it was no worse than dealing with a shady lawyer, albeit one who had the power to incinerate most of London with a flick of his fingers.