Free Dark Days by Caitlin Kittredge

are so bad we couldn’t go anywhere else,” Pete continued. “That ought to scare you, and if it doesn’t, consider this: If you try to keep this girl against her will—a girl I consider my child— I will burn this pile of bricks to the ground with your carcass inside it, and make it my personal mission to fuck up your little club’s agenda from here to kingdom come.”
    Morwenna swallowed hard, cheeks flushed and hands fluttering ever so slightly with nerves. Jack caught Pete’s eye and nodded. Shock and awe were the only things mages like the Prometheans understood. You can think you’re top of the heap, until one of your herd is ripped apart in front of you, and then you’re off balance and scared.
    Good, Jack thought. He wanted Morwenna Morgenstern scared.
    “If you help Pete and Jack, I’ll consider coming here once a month to be trained,” Margaret said. They’d gone over this part carefully before the call. “But only once a month, and only if Jack or Pete is with me. And if I don’t like it, I’m quitting. You lot don’t have one tiny say in what I do or don’t do with my talent.”
    Morwenna straightened her spine, a boxer shaking off a bad round, spitting out the blood and putting her defenses back up. “What sort of help do you require? A catastrophe of your own making, no doubt.”
    Jack tried not to let the accusation smart. It figured, the one time he hadn’t backed himself into a corner with a demon deal or a slagged-off primal creature of Hell on his arse, and Morwenna assumed he’d caused the whole mess.
    “The Black and the daylight world,” he said. “Barrier’s going to rupture unless we find the bloke who set things in motion and send him back downstairs for a spanking and no supper from the Princes.”
    And I’m having visions of the apocalypse that may have already been triggered. Even if I do what Belial wants, there may be no way to stop it.
    He pushed the thoughts down. They weren’t any that Morwenna or whatever pet mind reader she had eavesdropping needed to hear.
    “And that’s all you have?” Morwenna said, mouth crimping in the cruel smile of a girl who’s just realized her rival came to school with her skirt tucked into her tights. “‘A bloke’? Care to be a bit more specific?”
    Jack thought of Belial confronting the demon, of how easily the demon had turned the Fenris, and took out his pen. “He’s been kicking this symbol around,” he said, grabbing up a pad from next to an old-fashioned rotary phone to sketch on. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. Also, he’s not a Named—he’s an elemental who got too big for his britches. Thought maybe with all your vast high and mighty anointed-one mage knowledge, you might’ve run across the symbol somewhere.”
    Morwenna reached for the pad, but Jack held it back. “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “Not until you promise me—a real promise, none of that crap where you use some clever language loophole—to abide by Margaret’s terms.”
    Margaret crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes, a pitch-perfect imitation of Pete that would have made Jack laugh, had this been anywhere else, any other time.
    Morwenna’s jaw bunched and relaxed, and she let out a long-suffering breath. “I promise that I shan’t try to keep Margaret here against her will. I make no promises, however, about trying to persuade her to join us on our own merits, and leave you two idiots in the gutter where you belong.”
    “I wouldn’t live here if it was raining piss and this was the only place with a roof,” Margaret said. Morwenna squeezed her eyes briefly, while Margaret gave Jack a wide smile.
    “I feel so terribly for what they’ve put in your head, child,” she said. “I really do.”
    “Oi.” Jack snapped his fingers. “Less sob-sistering, more information.”
    “Assuming you know anything,” Pete scoffed.
    Morwenna grabbed the paper from Jack and stormed back toward the double doors. “Well, come on!” she snapped