Chapter Eleven

The interior of Nicholas Naughton’s mansion was much like the exterior—grim, dusty, and unwelcoming. Pete hit the light inside the double front door, igniting exactly two bulbs in the fifty-lamp chandelier looking down on a marble entry so thick with dust even Pete’s petite frame left footprints.

A grand stairway lead up to a landing of peeling wallpaper and rotting carpet, and two hallways trailed deeper into Naughton’s residence like dark, clotted veins. The place smelled of rot and damp—cemetery smells, with the musical accompaniment of rats and bugs scuttling over the decaying bones in holes Jack couldn’t see.

He took in the shrouded furniture, the third-rate landscapes hanging from the picture rails in the narrow front parlor, the stained walls and cracked mirrors that reflected jagged, mismatched Jacks back to his gaze. “This is what Danny Naughton lived with? Cross and crow, I’d hang meself within the week.”

“Kitchen’s this way, looks like,” Pete said, flipping another switch. The lights along the hall flickered ominously. One bulb exploded in a blue cacophony of sparks.

“Not that I’m terribly keen to see the state of it,” Jack said. Something slithered, fluttered, across the underside of his mind and then the mansion settled, went as quiet as a coffin.

A house shouldn’t echo so silently in the unseen spaces. All things had a footprint in the Black. The Naughton manse was a void, a space into which you could fall and lose yourself.

“Jack.” Pete waggled her fingers in front of his face, expression letting him know he’d gone to the vacant place like an addled teenager chewing on mushrooms. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” Jack said, moving himself along. The fluctuations of energy around the house could be nothing special—or they could be why Danny Naughton had strung himself up. For a sensitive who didn’t know his own power, such a place would be unbearable. That feeling, of your head too full and your heart pumping too hard, Jack knew firsthand. It whispered, Come to me like a siren on the rocks, searing the compulsion into a psychic’s mind until the psychic would do anything to make it stop. Booze. Smack. Chisel to the forehead. Jack knew this firsthand, too.

He just hoped Pete wouldn’t pry into it overmuch. Jack’s head and his heart that still beat out of sequence after the shock in the drive weren’t putting him in a confessional mood.

The kitchen was no better than the rest of the place—Jack wagered it was even worse than his own pre-war one burner/one kettle setup in Whitechapel. At least nothing furry was alive in his sink drain.

Pete wrinkled her nose at the mice scuttling around the baseboards and the mold blossoming everywhere else. “He might have had it cleaned before he sent us here. Jesus.”

“Somehow I think Naughton is more the flashy type than the one to grab a mop, luv.” Jack dropped the tattered kit he’d packed in a rush back at the flat on the kitchen table. He’d leave the discovery of every casting implement and important bit and bob he’d forgotten in his hurry until tomorrow. “I’m off to find a bed without anything residing in it.”

“Best of luck,” Pete said, hiding a yawn with the back of her hand.

“Tomorrow we’ll take a proper look around,” Jack said. “See if this wasn’t all a laugh cooked up by Nancy Lad to make Danny Boy hang himself.”

“Why would Naughton want his brother dead?” Pete sighed.

“That’s your department, luv,” he said. “I just exorcise the ghosts. Assuming there are actual spirits and not just bloody great rats in this place.”

“I’ll go pay respects to the local constabulary tomorrow,” Pete said. “I saw a sign for Princetown back at the last fork. They’ll have proper police to check on the Naughton’s history and see if Nick lied to me.”

“As if that’d be a bloody surprise,” Jack said, more to himself than Pete. She rolled her eyes at the kitchen ceiling, stained with browned and mellowed continents of unknown origin.

“This possessive streak is becoming less and less attractive, Jack.”

“Just looking out for you,” he protested. Pete held up a hand.

“You made it clear after Blackpool we’re not anything, Jack. So don’t pretend this is for my benefit and not to make yourself feel bigger.”

The silence ran long and thin, and Jack contemplated whether he should put his fist through the wall or merely break Naughton’s tacky family china against it. He didn’t have much pride, but he had enough to dislike it when attractive women called him on his shite. Jack discarded all of his arguments while his blood beat in his ears. Pete had heard them all at least once. Finally he decided it was simpler to change the subject entirely. Blackpool was months past, and seemed like an eternity. There was no point in standing under the storm it had stirred in him when he could be indoors.

“Princetown, you say?” Jack rubbed his chin. Had to do something about the beard before he started looking like a fucking hippie.

“That’s what the sign read,” Pete said, dropping her own luggage. She found and mounted the servants’ stairs, which lead them to a back hall and a warren of rooms filled with boxes, naked dressmaker’s dummies, and camp cots for the eponymous servants.

The bedrooms for the gentry were numerous and nearly as cluttered.

“Danny was a bit of a pack rat,” Pete said.

“Crazier than a bowl of bar nuts, you mean,” Jack said, as they encountered one room filled entirely with back issues of Penthouse, stacked neatly by year, and jar upon jar of kosher pickles, also arranged by year.

“That as well,” Pete agreed. She found the master suite, a great oppressive four-poster dominating the scene like the set of a particularly dull vintage porno film. “This will do for me.”

“And you’re welcome to it,” Jack said. Even the colors of the room, muted bloody purples and bruised blues, depressed him. “Don’t let the ghosties bite.”

“Jack.” Pete put her hand on his arm. “Do you know someone in Princetown?”

“Why?” Jack said. “Jealous?”

“No, but when I said the name you reacted like someone had stuck a hat pin in your arse.” Pete took her hand away. “You owe another gangster money?”

Jack blew out a breath. It was a fair question, and had it been anyone besides Pete asking he might have shrugged, even made a joke of it. “That’s all you think of me? Bad man with bad debts?” The words came out far harsher than he’d intended.

“I didn’t mean . . . ,” Pete said. Then her face set, hollowed out and as tired as his own must be. “Let’s face facts, Jack. You’ve a lot of carnage in your wake and I like to know what I’m getting into when I’m with you.”

“There’s nothing sinister in Princetown,” Jack snapped. “Just another lot of musty old ghosts, like this place.” And because it was Pete and not anyone else, he felt compelled to twist the knife he’d landed. “You have sweet dreams, luv, since you’re so bloody innocent.”

Jack slammed the door on Pete’s thin-lipped face and stomped down the grand staircase, wanting to break his fist on something vulnerable but settling for a smoke instead.

He stopped on the landing, breathed out, lit the fag, breathed in. Sweet, blessed nicotine. Every addict’s pity fuck.

A shape shimmered in the broken mirror, over Jack’s left shoulder. His own profile half obscured by smoke, he fixated on the spot, unsure if he’d even seen it.

Wasn’t that every poxy haunting he’d ever seen on telly? Smoke, shadow, and no substance?

Jack exhaled at his reflection. The mirror sucked all the color out of its view, drained everything but his face down a black whirl pool.

“Come on then,” Jack sneered. “No cameras. No whimpering psychics. Just you and me, a pair of mean old bastards.”

Nothing moved beyond him in the glass. Jack shut his eyes and rubbed his temples. Mirrors were useful, but not this water-spotted mess. Old mirrors, made with silver, were what attracted spirits. New glass just served to spook over-tired mages.