Soul Trade Read Online Free PDF

We’re emphatically not Their Kind.”
    “I suppose we’ll find out,” Pete said. “When wego to Manchester.”
    Jack raised one eyebrow as if she’d lost her mind.
    “We can’t very well not go,” she said. “I’ve got a compulsion spell on me, and I’m not chopping off my hand. We’ll go, we’ll be civil, and we’ll figure out what they want from us, then find a way to graciously decline.”
    Jack sighed, then nodded. “Fucking Manchester. Could’ve been anywhere, and they chose Manchester.”
    Petetwined her fingers with Jack’s. The pain had cooled some, and his touch soothed the burn of the ink. The back of his hand, pale as a corpse, was covered in his own black ink, feathers and thorns twining in a pattern that could make you dizzy if you stared at it long enough. Jack’s tattoos used to be haphazard, but now they covered nearly his entire torso in the same pattern.
    Something else she’dbeen ignoring—the change that Jack had undergone when he’d stopped Nergal. He’d had to make a bargain with the Morrigan, the patron goddess of his talent, and when Pete couldn’t sleep, she often thought about how some day, the Hag would be back to collect.
    But for now, there was this mess. Her mess. At least this time it was something she’d done herself and not something Jack had walked into.That was oddly comforting. Her problem, her solution, no collateral damage.
    “How bad could it possibly be?” Pete whispered, turning to plant a kiss on Jack’s jawline. His stubble rubbed her skin, and she concentrated for just a moment on the feel of him and not on all of the myriad shitstorms that swirled around them like a rotating crop of nightmares.
    “You say that now,” he said, with a laughas dry as old bones, “but just you wait. It’s the dirty North, luv, not a weekend in the country.”
    “Perhaps,” Pete said, settling back against Jack’s chest, listening to his heartbeat and Lily burbling in the other room. Jack was real, solid, the only thing she could count on to be real and solid now. “But it’s not as if I have a choice.”
    Go to Manchester, into who knew what sort of situationwith hostile mages, or stay in London and perish under the geas if she couldn’t figure out a way to reverse it in time. It was the story of her life: shit choices, but the only ones available to her.

 
    4.
    As the train raced toward Manchester the next morning, Pete watched the fields and towns slip by, punctuated by trees and arials. She tried to keep her eyes open, but no sleep combined with the little she’d managed to snatch in the previous weeks meant the rocking of the train put her under.
    It felt strange to be going somewhere without Lily. She’d gotten used to taking the pram, the diaperbag, and everything else any time she and Jack attempted anything more complicated than a quick trip downstairs to the small off-license next door.
    “Don’t you worry,” Jack’s friend Lawrence had said when Pete dropped off Lily at his doorstep earlier in the morning. “I got three little sisters, changed more diapers than I wanna remember. She and me, we’ll have a good time.” He bounced Lily inhis massive arms and she cooed, trying to reach up and grab his dreadlocks. Lawrence chuckled, then fixed Pete with an unsmiling gaze. “What should I do if you don’t come back?”
    Pete felt as if somebody had kicked her legs out. “Excuse me?” she’d said, hating the wobble in her voice. Jack had disappeared on one of his errands to one of his many shady mates, saying there were things he neededbefore they went to Manchester, so she was on her own, the only one who could answer. She’d never wanted to smack Jack in the head more than at that moment.
    “Clear you two are mixed up in some badness.” Lawrence shrugged. “Don’t think it’s a crazy question.”
    “I…” Pete swallowed the hard stone that had grown in her throat. “My mum, I suppose,” she said at last. “She’s, um … she’s