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inquired.
    “I take exception to liars,” Jack said. “Rich, poor, fuck-ugly, or otherwise.” Although really, today Jack and Naughton were just alike. Minus the fuck-ugly bit on Jack’s part.
    Pete came over and put her hands on Jack’s shoulders. “I’m not an idiot, you know,” she said. Her touch was cool, vibrating with power, not altogether unpleasant. Jack had a flash of second sight, of lips crushed against his and pale, pale skin turning rosy under his hands.
    He shifted so Pete wouldn’t see his face or any other traitorous part of him. “I know that, Petunia,” he said softly.
    “Then tell me what the bloody hell is wrong with you. You’re pale as a ghost, you’re puking in the loo, you’re surly to a paying client—surly for
you
, and that’s saying something, and now you don’t want a job you would have jumped on with a rugby tackle a few weeks ago.” Her mouth lifted at one side. “You’re Jack fucking Winter. You chase the monsters, not vice versa.”
    Jack felt Death’s specter following him patiently, ticking off the seconds on the gears that unfurled the Bleak Gates to allow a new soul through. Jack would stop the clock as long as he could, had to, even if it meant becoming ten times worse a liar than Naughton.
    “Nothing’s wrong, Pete,” he said, making sure not to look her directly in the eye, nor look away. The stare of Truth, practiced over a hundred arrests and a hundred more dodgy meetings with mages and Fae in the Black. “Tea was past its date, or I could be catching the flu—as for Naughton, I think he’s a sanctimonious cunt and nothing more. There’s no monsters in his mansion. Bats in the belfry, maybe. You know how the landed gentry love their inbreeding.”
    Pete rolled her eyes and went on tiptoe to brush her lipsacross his forehead. “He’s giving us five hundred quid to go chase his bats, so speak for yourself, but I’m packing up and heading to Dartmoor tomorrow. Just as soon as I check with my friend in the murder squad about Danny Naughton.”
    Jack lifted one shoulder. The money was the thing—he was flat broke and Pete’s savings were what you’d expect from an ex-civil servant. If he wanted to keep his new-found habit of eating, Nancy Naughton was his meal ticket. He’d just have to deal with the demon afterward. And Pete would need the money, if he was gone . . .
    Not if,
the fix whispered.
When, Jack. When.
    “Guess there’s no harm in it,” he said. Famous last words.
No harm in it
. How many disasters had he preceded with just those words?
    “And you
were
the one whingeing about parlor tricks and useless jobs,” Pete said. “This might be real. Think of that. A real spook-house instead of this inheritance and last wishes tripe, which, I admit, gets on my last nerve as much as yours.”
    “Bloody Algernon Treadwell all over again,” Jack muttered, rubbing at the center of his forehead. The pain had retreated a little, but only a little.
    Pete sobered immediately.
    “I didn’t mean it like that. Jack, I don’t blame . . .”
    He held up his hand to stop her. “Go cash the check before Duke Nancy changes his mind. I’ll round up a few exorcism tools from Lawrence while you check with CID.”
    Pete nodded her assent and backed out of the room too quickly. She grabbed her bag and her jumper, and a moment later the door slammed. She was fleeing a discussion of Algernon Treadwell and her ghost sickness, and Jack didn’t blame her in the slightest.
    He went to the kitchen, fishing in the cramped cabinetsfor a bottle of vinegar. Pete wouldn’t allow hard liquor in the flat since she’d moved in. All roads led to the fix.
    Jack personally thought it was bloody stupid—he’d been a junkie, not an alcoholic, and right now he’d murder a pint of anything. But he washed his mouth out and pulled on his leather to go visit Lawrence in Bayswater Road. He thought walking to the tube station might shake the breath of the demon off his neck, but