Street Magic

Pete sighed and ran water over her cigarette to extinguish it. 'All right. Back in an hour.'

Chapter Fourteen

The address belonged to a set of flats thin and sooty as a Victorian chimney sweep. The crinkled moon face of an old woman stared at Pete from the second floor before a sad floral-sprigged curtain twitched shut.

Pete climbed five flights that smelled of smoke and too many cabbage dinners until she found the door to number 57. She'd expected a shriveled old man, a gnome with a Gandalf hairdo and a sage twinkle in his eye, so the large Rastafarian who opened the door raised her eyebrow. Just a little, though.

He looked Pete up and down, flashing a gold front tooth. 'May I 'elp you?'

'I…' said Pete. Then, with a thrust of her chin, 'Jack Winter sent me.'

'Jack Winter,' said the Rasta. It came out soft and heavy with thought. Jahck. Pete desperately hoped that the man wasn't someone Jack had managed to get after him during the time he'd been away.

'He asked me to get some books for him,' Pete elaborated. 'And a briefcase.'

A grin split the Rasta's face. 'You much more beautiful than the last one who come around on Jack Winter's orders, miss. Come you in.'

Pete stepped over the threshold, feeling inexplicably comfortable when she did so. The flat was spare of furniture and had only one rag rug on the scarred floor. The narrow windows were leaded and let in a weak trickle of light. What the flat did have was a proliferation of oddities that would cause P. T. Barnum to spasm with joy—jars and boxes on the wall-to-wall cases, books piled to Pete's chin in the corner, books on every surface, along with rows and rows of vinyl records and an old '78 turntable. Connor had listened to Elton John's early albums on his. It was in the hospital room when he died, needle ready to drop on 'Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road.'

'What he send you for? You want tea maybe, and a sausage roll?' asked the Rasta, peering at Pete around the doorjamb leading deeper into the flat.

'No, no, thank you,' she said. 'In a bit of a hurry, you know.'

'Have your look, then.' He gestured at the bookshelves. 'I have business to attend to.'

'I… well, thanks,' Pete called as she heard a door close deeper in the flat. After a moment a luxurious scent, dark and secret-tinged as a lover's trysting place under ancient trees, drifted into the main room.

Pete found the books easily enough, and after digging through a pile of LPs on the bookcase found a scratched copy of Dark Side of the Moon. Behind it, sitting dusty and patient as a faithful retainer on the shelf, was a plain black briefcase. Something rattled like knucklebones when Pete picked it up, and she decided not to get unduly curious until she had her privacy.

She straightened up and found herself face-to-face with a head in a jar. It looked like it had been in the jar for at least a hundred years. The skin was sallow and pickled, and the eyes gazed at nothing through their cataract film. 'You bloody owe me, Jack,' Pete muttered. She shouted, 'Got everything, thanks!' to the silent flat. No one answered before she took her leave, but she could swear the head was grinning at her.

Chapter Fifteen

She called, 'I'm back,' to the silence of the flat when she opened her door again. Jack was sacked out on the sofa, his blond head dipped to his chest, light tremors running through his shoulders all the way down to the tips of his fingers.

Pete dumped the books and the briefcase on the floor by her front door and hurried over, kneeling down. 'Jack? Jack, what's wrong?'

'Her wrists are bleeding and bleeding,' Jack muttered. 'It's sliding down her arms in little red rivers, swirling away down the pipes, and we're all drinking it, we're all watching and waiting for her to raise the blade and cut again.'

Pete grasped his shoulders, giving a shake. 'It's not real, Jack.' She would have to hunt down the estate agent who sold her and Terry this flat and bloody strangle the man. First the shade and now this, some bird who had slashed herself in Pete's bathtub.

'I can hear her crying,' Jack whispered.

'I got your briefcase,' said Pete desperately. 'Jack, please just talk to me.'

He rubbed his hands over his face and with great effort met Pete's eyes. 'Lawrence didn't give you any trouble?'

'His manners far exceed yours,' Pete said, handing Jack the books and the briefcase.

One side of Jack's mouth curved. It was a far cry from the devil-grin, but Pete took what she could get.

'Right,' said Jack, running his fingertips along the scarred leather of the briefcase. His caress revealed the case was locked and bore no combination knobs, just an engraved plate that depicted a snake, eating its own tail.

'What's in there?' said Pete.

'Something of mine,' said Jack.

'Seems like you don't want anyone inside,' Pete observed.

'Oh, them that know, know better than to go into anything I own,' said Jack. 'This bloody lock was from Marius Cross, the previous owner.'

Pete had a good idea of what had happened to Marius Cross, locked briefcase or no. 'Did you take it from him?'

'From his cold body,' said Jack. 'Believe me, luv, he had no need of it.'

'Let's just get on with this,' said Pete, ignoring the gnawing in her gut, the same as when she'd stood in the circle on the tomb floor.

'Be a luv and get me a needle, or a sharp paring knife… something to prick meself with,' said Jack. Pete spread her hands out, already shaking her head.

'No, Jack. No more blood.' Did he think she was stone stupid, after the last time?

'Every second you spend arguing with me is another one that the precious hope of our nation's future has lost,' said Jack sensibly.

'You're not supposed to make even a little sense,' Pete muttered. She rummaged inside her ottoman's storage for the sewing kit and handed Jack a needle. 'It's disconcerting.'

'Seamstressing is never a hobby I pegged as one of yours,' said Jack. He pricked himself without a wince or a sigh and rubbed his bloody finger pad along the lock. The snake uncoiled and the case gave three clicks.

'It was Terry's kit,' said Pete. 'His shirts were hand tailored, so he mended them if they got damaged.'

'Ponce.' Jack snorted. The briefcase lid popped up, ominous as a crocodile's mouth.

'Just because someone can put things back together instead of breaking them down to shambles doesn't make that someone a ponce,' Pete snapped. 'You're a real sod, Jack.'

'That's hardly news, luv.' He looked at her over the battered leather of the case. 'You're doing a deal to defend some bugger that you dumped out on his arse.'

Pete rubbed her thumbs against her temples. Jack took a flat mirror and a velvet sack out from the case. The sack rattled again, like a snake.

'For your information,' she said quietly, 'Terry left me.'

'Not surprising, that,' said Jack. 'I just guessed you'd be the one to do the leaving, since you seemed to be a hand at it when I knew you last.'

'Oh, bugger you,' Pete snapped. 'You and your little bag of marbles.' Just when Jack seemed to be letting his rage go, it burst forth again, like an infection of bad spirit.

'It's not marbles,' said Jack. He set the mirror on the ottoman and shook the bag once, giving Pete a grin that made her feel cold rather than comforted.

'What is it, then?'

'Bones, luv,' said Jack. He dumped out the sack. The white chips hit mirror glass with a death rattle. 'It's a bag of bones.'

Pete flinched away from them instinctively, feeling a frisson of cold crackling intensity from the bones, each one round with a black center where the marrow had been picked out. They had been polished to a high shine and made a sound like beads as Jack gathered them up and rattled them between his fists. 'Always feel so bloody silly doing this. Marius was an old vaudun, and they do like their theatrics and their headless chickens.'

'Please tell me we don't have to kill birds to get a result,' Pete muttered. She was starting to feel foolish rather than bothered by Jack and his shaking of the bones. This was a scene she'd watched in too many silly films for it to carry the least hint of sincerity.

'Don't be stupid,' Jack said. 'Just get the brats' pictures and put them on the mirror so I have something to focus on, and stand bloody well back.'

Pete extracted the wallet-sized snapshots of Patrick and Diana from their case files, and placed them carefully on the mirror, which was rimmed with a black wooden frame and was as cold as mercury in arctic air. The spine of fear, from the deep place in her mind where her nightmares lived, pricked Pete again and she drew back, as far as she could without making it outwardly obvious she was having doubts.

Jack started to shake the bones faster, the clacking blending into a low whir, and Pete thought his eyes had rolled back in his head until she realized he was still looking dead ahead, and white was rubbing out the blue of his irises, stealing out from the center of his eyes like frost.

'Jack?' Pete said hesitantly. She felt as if the air were pushing in on her, something inexplicable rising in the room as Jack's head tilted back and his hands rattled like he was seizing.

'Jack!' Pete cried as he stiffened and then with a spasmodic gasp flung the bones down onto the mirror and the pictures of the children.

The bones stayed where they fell, as if they were magnets. Pete thought she caught a glimpse of a dark reflection in the mirror before Jack sighed and rotated his head from side to side. 'Fucking trances. Always give me neck a cramp.'

The reflection flapped its wings and disappeared. It would have been less than a single frame of film. Pete allowed herself to be sure she'd imagined it. Jack's witchfire and his visions were his things. She did not see them, and she did not want to.

'That's it, then?' she said. Her voice came out weak and soft and she swallowed to make it hard again. 'That seemed awfully simple.'

Jack gave her a skewering glance before he hunched to examine the bones. He'd started to shiver again. 'Well, it wasn't, so sod off.'

'You can use that blanket on the back of the sofa if you like,' said Pete. Jack sneezed, and used a corner of the blanket to blow his nose.

'Cheers.' He passed his hand over the bones, fingers splayed, once, twice, three times. 'Ah,' he said at last, the syllable acres from pleased.

'No good?' Pete deflated inwardly, space containing the wild hope that Jack could repeat his magic with Bridget on the new missing children, that his pithy pronouncement would roll forth and everything would be real and simple again, collapsing.