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it’s a real place, see? Supposed to be a collection like you ain’t never seen. Holding every manner of dark evil thing that any dark evil man has lost through history, includin’ their minds.” He extended the square of paper toward Pete, and she saw it wasn’t a scrap but a piece of stock, worn round at the endges. “Antiquarian gave Jack this,” Lawrence said. “ In your time of dying , he told him. Wanted his memories and his spells. You call on him with that.”
    “And the Antiquarian,” Pete said, taking the card and turning it. “He’ll help me?”
    Lawrence folded his shaking fingers into a tent. “If you call what those things do help. Yeah. He do that, and gladly for you, I’m sure.”
    “Good.” Pete looked at the card. The lettering was faded to a mellow brown, nearly unreadable, and the words weren’t in a language she understood. “How do we get in touch?”
    Lawrence took the card back. “If you’re really serious about this nonsense, I do a bit of divination with the cantrip on this here card and we meet when they say we meet.” He tossed the card on the table and got up, opening the door. Pete took the hint, stopping on the threshold to touch his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”
    “One thing in return for all this, I ask,” Lawrence told her, folding his opposite hand over hers. “I’ll be with you when you talk to these bastards.”
    “Oh no,” Pete said immediately. “Lawrence, I couldn’t ask you…”
    “Listen.” Lawrence shrugged her off. “I made Jack a promise. I promised him that I always look out for you, and I take that serious. A promise to a mage on his deathbed about as serious as they come.” Lawrence’s mouth quirked. “ ’Course in Jack’s case, I made it in the loo at Paddington Station…”
    “Lawrence, that’s sweet and all,” Pete said. “But this is my problem. The last thing you want is necromancers calling at your door.”
    “I made Jack a promise,” Lawrence insisted. “You either go with me, or I’ll burn that divination up right now and you won’t be goin’ at all.”
    “You’re a stubborn git, you know that?” Pete said. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have backup when she went chasing after a clutch of necromancers who’d already proven they were willing to slit one throat, and Lawrence was large, imposing, and motivated backup to boot. “You can come,” she allowed. “But you don’t flip your lid if you hear something you don’t like, yeah?”
    “Yeah,” Lawrence said. “Doubt you gonna show me anything Jack hasn’t already.”
    “Very well,” Pete said. “You call me when you’ve got something.” She descended Lawrence’s untrustworthy stairs, boards groaning under her boots.
    “You tell trouble,” he called after her, “he comes around, just keep his ass right on movin’.”
    “Right,” Pete muttered, shouldering through the front door and back into the rush and hum of the world. “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

CHAPTER 9
    The city mortuary at Wapping was plain and practical, with nothing haunted or ethereal in its makeup, and Pete appreciated that fact. Ghosts were easier to deal with if they appeared among steel refrigerators, faded by fluorescent bulbs.
    She found Dr. Nasiri in one of the autopsy rooms, working over a skinhead with an impressive sector of his skull cracked apart like a clay flowerpot.
    “Hello there,” Nasiri shouted over the whine of her Stryker saw. “Put on a mask and booties, will you?”
    Pete did as she asked. “I’d hoped to get another look at Mr. Carver,” she shouted back. “And possibly some closeups of his wound patterns.”
    “Sure. I’ll get you copies when I’m done here,” Nasiri said. She put the saw aside and lifted out a section of the skinhead’s ribcage, the way Pete would lift the top off a plastic tub. The Y-incision and the thin line of the saw blade bisected his blurry hand-done tattoos and a ragged