Street Magic

A kidnapper. Someone who would blind an eight-year-old girl. Bridget Killigan turned her face to Pete, and hissed at her to let the sorcerer die.

'Tell me where the fucking children are before he does worse to you,' Pete said aloud to the sorcerer she'd punched. Later, when she was alone and safeguarded, she could break down. Now, Patrick and Diana had no chance without her, the cold and unflappable detective inspector.

'G-gods…' the sorcerer quavered, looking like nothing but the frightened boy that he was. 'We didn't… I mean, you can't just…'

'Your gods are not here for you,' Pete rasped. 'Tell me now.'

The sorcerer did what many other criminals of Pete's acquaintance had done before him—he scrambled to his feet and ran, catching his shoulder on the door of the crypt, falling, up and running again for Old Brompton Road.

Jack raised his right hand and Pete felt power pull against her mind like a tide. 'Let him go,' she said. Jack considered, the blank slaty look back in his eyes. Coldhearted, Pete identified it. She should chase the git herself, but then she'd leave both Jack and the dead sorcerer unattended. Pete flexed her fists in frustration as she watched the live specimen clear a garden wall and disappear from view.

'Yeah, all right,' Jack said. 'Run on, little man. Let him tell all his mates what went on here when they're buggering each other at the disco later on. Or applying eyeliner, or whatever it is those black little bastards do nowadays…'

'Will you shut up!' Pete shouted. Something skated across her hearing, just beyond her range. A dry, strangled cry. Sobbing, from under the stones. 'They're here,' Pete breathed with relief. 'Patrick and Diana.'

Jack blinked at her, a few tendrils of ice-white curling back from the color in his eyes. Then he was himself. 'I don't see anything in this musty place.'

'Under the flags,' said Pete by way of explanation, casting around for the trapdoor to the lower level of the crypt.

'Here,' said Jack, bracing himself against a sarcophagus carved with the relief of a small girl, smaller than Bridget Killigan or Diana. Pete joined him and pushed. Something in her back gave and she tried not to think about the next time she'd have to chase down a suspect.

The sarcophagus moved with a groan and a rending of stone. A huff of stale air greeted Pete, the essence of the long dead rushing into the wider night.

Crying continued, dry heaving sobs from a body whose tears had long since dried up and was too shattered to speak.

'Patrick? Diana?' Pete shouted. 'It's the police. Call out if you can hear me.'

Nothing greeted her except the whispering sobs, and Pete cursed as she crouched and dropped herself into the darkness. The fall was longer than she expected and she landed hard, going down on one knee. 'Bugger all!' Back, knee—she'd be in fantastic shape the next time something nasty showed up while she was helpless in the loo.

A blue shine blossomed above her, and Jack's face slid over the gap in the ceiling, witchfire dancing lazy ballet around the ringers of his right hand.

'Thanks,' Pete whispered. The bottom level of the crypt was old, lichens and cobwebs undisturbed, warnings to trespassers that no one except the dead resided.

In the corner, chained to the ancient slabs by a pair of rusty manacles, Patrick and Diana crouched, naked and crying. The relief that coursed through Pete was indescribable, a slackening of muscles and a quickening of the heart.

Then she saw their eyes. They were gray in the witchfire, but under a good bulb they would be white. Blind. Drained.

Pete pressed her palms to her face. 'Fuck it,' she said quietly enough that no one except her and the angel and demon on her shoulders would hear. She had found the children, but their monotone whimpers told the same tale as Bridget Killigan—the fracturing of a mind and the ruination of a life.

'Anyone alive down there?' Jack called. 'I'm going to feel awfully silly having topped this git if it was for nothing. 'Course, he did deserve exactly what he got…'

'I'm going to throw you my mobile,' Pete said. She swallowed her defeat in a hard ball that scraped down her throat, and made sure she was in control. She was Inspector Caldecott. Finder of lost children. Logical. Unemotional.

And again, too late…

'Call the number in the memory for DI Heath and tell him you're with me. Give him the address.'

'You're not going to bring the kids up?' Jack said, snatching her mobile out of the air when she threw it. He poked suspiciously at the keypad.

Pete bit her own lip hard enough to bleed it, steeled herself for the sight and turned back to the blinded children. 'No. Not until someone brings the bolt cutters.'

Chapter Seventeen

'Bloody hell,' said Ollie Heath. He passed a hand protectively over his thinning crop of hair and regarded Pete with pity. 'We're not having much luck with this, are we, Caldecott?'

The ambulance carrying Patrick and Diana to A&E had long since pulled away, leaving police and forensics to go about their grim business. Pete patted herself down for a fag. The packet was empty. She cursed.

'Er, don't take this wrong,' said Ollie, lowering his voice, 'but who's the dodgy bloke you were with when you called in?' He inclined his head toward Jack. Jack was slouched against the outside of the graveyard gate, under the arch with the last of Pete's Parliaments in his mouth, eyes closed. Smoke drifted up and wreathed his face. He might have been a ghost himself.

'He's the tip,' said Pete. Ollie's eyebrows crinkled his expansive forehead.

'Thought you said that was nothing.'

'It turned into something.'

'Not like you to hang about with an informant, Caldecott,' said Ollie with concern.

'I know him,' Pete admitted. 'He's an all-right bloke.' A lie, one that came without thinking. Nobody had asked probing questions about the dead sorcerer yet, and Pete intended to be the one to have the first attempt at Jack on that score. For all of Jack's hostility, she'd thought him harmless, and now the sorcerer's blood was on her.

'Listen, I'll finish up here if you'd like,' said Ollie, laying a hand on her shoulder. Jack's eyes, hooded and black under the sodium light, focused on Ollie and Pete felt a distinct vibration, like a spirit had just breathed on the back of her neck.

'Thanks, Ollie,' she said, ducking out from under his hand. Ollie Heath was truly harmless, slow and dedicated to the job. Pete wouldn't be unleashing Jack on him. 'Ring me as soon as the hospital will let us talk to the kids, yeah?'

'Right,' Ollie agreed. 'Go get some sleep, Caldecott—you're chalky.'

I just saw a ghost, Pete thought. She smiled at Ollie for appearances, and went to collect Jack.

'No one's yet asked about the dead man,' she told him. He shrugged.

'I'll just tell 'em you did it. You're allowed to do stuff like that. Line of duty and all that shit, yeah?'

Pete pressed her lips into a line. 'You won't be telling anyone anything, because we're going home.' For once, Jack was silent and he slouched obediently back to the Mini. Pete couldn't decide if it was providence or bad luck that Jack was staying with her a time longer.

They drove through Chelsea's midnight streets in silence. The Mini's lights barely sliced the fog, and more than once Pete saw black shapes move among the swirling gloom. Her spine danced as the Mini bounced over cobbles in the old, walled part of the city, the cold heart hushed and damp as a shallow grave.

'There's something out there,' she said aloud, not really knowing why the words came, but knowing she was right.

'Yeah,' said Jack, leaning his forehead against the glass. 'There is.'

'You killed someone tonight,' said Pete. 'We should get it clear now—don't you dare do a thing like that again while you're on my watch. Do you want to land us both in jail?'

Jack sighed and managed to look mightily annoyed with his eyes closed and his head tilted back. 'Anyone ever mention you're a terrible nag? You're going to put a husband straight into an early grave.'

'I bloody well mean it, Jack!' Pete cried. 'What gives you the right to be executioner?'

Jack opened his eyes and sat up. 'Pull over.'

'You all right?' asked Pete. The Mini's headlights illuminated windowless flat blocks and closed-down shops. She wasn't stopping unless there was a dire emergency.

'Just pull over and don't argue!' Jack snapped. Pete jerked the Mini to the curb and set the brake with a squeal.

'What?'

Jack pointed to a tumbledown doorway with an unassuming lit sign over the frame: royal oaks public house. 'If you insist on moralizing at me about the dead toerag, I need a drink.' He unfolded his skeleton from the Mini's passenger seat and stepped into the street, crossing in front of the car. Pete felt the passing urge to press on the gas and run him over, but instead she shut off the engine and dogged his heels into the pub.

It was low and smoky inside, but older than Pete realized—the long bartop was carved from the trunk of a single tree, all the knots and scars, and mellowed paneling held in ancient cigarette smoke. Concentric rings stained the plaster ceiling and a jukebox that looked like it had weathered the Blitz burbled out Elvis Costello. The basso bounce of 'Watching the Detectives' blanketed conversation in secrecy.

Jack landed on the nearest stool with a clatter of feet and bony elbows. 'Pint of bitters,' he told the publican, 'and a whisky.'

'Just the whisky,' Pete said, digging for her wallet. The publican was big and shave-headed, Latin phrases in ink cascading up both of his arms under his cutoff shirt. He grunted when he caught sight of Pete's warrant card as she paid the bill.

'Mother's milk.' Jack sighed as he downed the whisky.

'Don't think you can get pissed enough to avoid talking to me,' Pete warned.

'Fucking hell!' Jack said, slamming his glass on the bar. 'What d'you want me to do, Pete, rush up to midnight mass and confess my sins? Would it help if I sent a tin of biscuits to the wake? What?'

'I'm not saying he didn't deserve it.' Pete sighed. 'He kidnapped those two children, and he was going to give us a bad time. Jack, I can't tell you how often I've wanted to do just what you did, to some wankstick or other I find on the job. But you can't—'

Jack's hand snaked out and wrapped around Pete's wrist, drawing her in until she could smell the old Parliaments and the new whisky that drifted off his skin. He squeezed until her bones grated and Pete cried out, attempting to pull free. But for that second, Jack was strong again, his eyes burning with the fire that consumed whatever it touched.

'Can't what, Pete?' he whispered with a snarl. 'Can't go around killing people? Can't because that's what's good and right and proper? Well, Pete, I'll tell you a secret.' And his eyes went from flaming to the deepest dark, inky and wicked. 'We're not dealing with everyday thieves and killers any longer. This is the world of magic. People murder in this world, and people die, and it's the bloody way of things. I'm not sorry for putting a cold fist around that git's heart and he wouldn't be sorry if it were the reverse. Magic kills, Pete. Get used to it.'

After a long moment when all she heard was her heartbeat, Pete said, 'You're hurting me.'

Jack made a disgusted noise and released her. ''Sides, was I supposed to let those tossers laugh at me and do nothing? My name used to mean something to those demon-buggering gits. Bloody kids should learn some bloody respect.'

Pete's hands still shook from the memory of the boy's face. She wrapped them around the whisky glass and downed her drink in a swallow. 'Bit late for that, seeing as how one is on his way to