Street Magic

'Because God knows, the biggest concern I have right now is insulting a demon,' Pete muttered. She was being snarky mostly because she could feel the pull against her skin and her mind, that same prickle that had overtaken her in the tomb long ago. Nervous twitches sprang to life in her gut.

'Jack,' she said. He flicked his fingernail against a twist of paper and a slow ember started, curling a little smoke into the air. He dropped it inside the circle and the smoke curled and spread but never crossed the boundaries.

'Jack,' Pete said again, louder. Jack glanced up at her.

'Yeah?'

Pete fidgeted. The circle vibrated a little at the edge of her vision, caused a ringing in her ears. 'This will be different, won't it?'

Jack's irritation sluiced away and he gave her a regretful smile.

'Yeah, Pete. This time will be different. You have to trust me, right?'

To believe you, Pete thought. Trust is another thing. But she didn't say it out loud. Jack hadn't earned that, in spite of her dependence on him now that her flat was destroyed. It was just her feeling, the same one that let her know she was walking down a bad alley and would do well to turn around.

'Hrathetoth!' Jack said, not shouting but definitely commanding something. 'Hrathetoth, the offering has been placed upon the consecrated ring and I command thee, at my will, appear.' Jack sounded as if he were reading off a tube schedule between High Barnet and King's Cross, but the lack of ceremony did nothing to put Pete at ease. That was how it had started, before.

Something sparked and popped in the center of the circle, over the pool of catsup. 'Come off it, Hrathetoth!' Jack snapped. 'I compelled you; now show your weasely little face. It's not as if you have a choice.'

A screech like a cat in the jaws of a bulldog stood the short hairs on Pete's neck on end, and then a snarling, twitching, fur-covered blob materialized in the circle, growing cohesive and gaining tiny horns and clawed toes and a pair of glowing yellow eyes.

Hrathetoth the imp looked, on the whole, like an angry dust lion grown to unusual size and gifted with teeth and limbs. 'Crow-mage!' it shrieked when it caught sight of Jack. 'Explain yourself!'

'Cut that out,' Jack said, flicking another catsup packet at Hrathetoth with a bored movement. 'We both know this is the most excitement you'll have in a decade.'

Hrathetoth blinked his lanternlike eyes at Pete. 'Who is she? She is pretty. Pretty and dark, like a starless sky, or the inside of a rhinoceros.'

'You'll forgive him,' said Jack as Hrathetoth decimated the packet and began licking up catsup. 'Demons don't really grasp the concept of metaphor and simile.'

'Is she going to heeeelp you?' Hrathetoth grinned widely, showing too many rows of spiked needle teeth. 'Because you know you can't save yourself, crow-mage, and—'

He let out a gurgle as Jack's hand flashed out and wrapped around Hrathetoth's throat. 'Listen here, you piece of deception given form, I'm not in the mood. I need the Trifold Focus and I need it now, so bloody go get it.'

'Can't be done!' Hrathetoth squeaked. 'Grinchley wards his house against intruders! Strong wards, with nasty mean teeth.'

'Then find a way around them,' Jack growled, and the witchfire flared to life in his eyes. His grip on Hrathetoth started to steam and the demon squealed in pain. Pete rapidly came and put a hand on his shoulder.

'Jack, maybe he's telling the truth.'

'He's a bloody demon, Pete. They don't understand truth—just how much flesh they can take off your hide in exchange for the favor.' He shook the imp. 'Isn't that right, Hrathetoth?'

'Yes… yes…' Hrathetoth agreed. 'Villainy and deceit down all the days! But Grinchley is guarded, crow-mage, by things bigger and hungrier than me and I can't change it!'

Jack jerked Hrathetoth closer to the edge of the chalk. 'I told you to fucking quit with the 'crow-mage'!'

'No!' Hrathetoth screamed. 'Don't break it!' Pieces of his fuzzy black fur dropped off and burned away as they touched the chalk.

'Afraid of dying? Then get me the Focus!' Jack bellowed. 'I command it!'

'If you break the ring, not only will it be me, but the pretty darkling, too!' Hrathetoth rasped. 'She did not cast it. She is not protected from what breaks through.'

Jack looked back at Pete like he'd just remembered she was still about. 'So she isn't,' he said after a long moment. He breathed in, nostrils flaring, and the witchfire went out. 'All right, you fuzzy little bugger, you got me on a technicality. But don't think we won't be speaking again.' He let go of the imp and said in a bored tone, 'I release you, return no more until you are called.'

Hrathetoth vanished with a pop of palpable relief. Jack rubbed his hands over his face and got to his feet. 'Sodding Hellspawn.'

'So there's no chance, then,' Pete said. 'This Grinchley has the Trifold Focus and the next time I see Margaret, she'll be like the others.'

'The girl will be dead,' said Jack. 'The beastie will suck her dry. The other children, there wasn't much there except innocence and maybe a few echoes of talent from some great-great-ancestor to feed on. Molly—'

'Margaret,' said Pete.

'Whatever. She's one of us.'

'Us.' Pete arched an eyebrow. Jack waved a hand.

'I mean like me. With her significant, she's likely a witch—if she were touching dark magic she'd be skinning cats and setting other children's jumpers on fire.'

'There's a difference.' Pete was honestly surprised. ''Mage' and 'sorcerer' not just a semantic thing?'

' 'Course there's a difference,' Jack snorted. 'Different as punk and disco.'

Pete started to say how that was a pretty poor analogy, but Jack held up a hand. 'Simply: Witches work with light energy. Sorcerers work with nightmares.'

'And mages?' asked Pete.

'Mages dip in both,' said Jack. 'We're in the shadows, but not the dark.' He shook his shoulders, as though he'd just taken a hit of speed. 'Calling Hrathetoth was quite the workout. Energy's still up. Want to see a trick?'

'No,' said Pete, feeling her lips twitch. Just for a second, she glimpsed the Jack from a dozen years ago, without the long shadow that lay across him in the present.

'Come on,' said Jack, taking her hand. 'Humor me a bit. Take your mind off the missing girl.'

'Nothing will do that,' Pete said from experience. She'd dreamed of victims for months afterward—battered wives, stolen children, decimated spirits that clung to her, tearing at her hair and hissing all through her unwaking hours. Pete woke screaming so often that Terry had invested in earplugs.

Jack cupped her hand, palm upward, and conjured a spurt of witchfire in his fingers. He blew a breath over it and the fire flared and drifted upward, settling like milkweed into Pete's palm. It turned the shape of a daisy, then a tiny, perfect oak tree, and finally a duck.

Pete bit the inside of her cheeks and looked up into his face. Jack was grinning at her. 'How can you be dour when you've got a tiny duck?' he asked.

She laughed, short, but it was the first real laughter that had come since she'd found Jack again. 'You're bloody weird, Jack Winter.'

'I'm that,' he said. 'Ask anybody.' The fire duck snapped its bill and ruffled its wings. Pete held her hand out, watching the witchfire burn, when suddenly the duck blurred and lost cohesion as if acid had been poured over it. The fire began to seep, to travel inward, through her skin, lighting it from the inside so the bones of her hand stood out as if she'd been struck by lightning.

A heat like a crematory furnace raced up Pete's arm, into her head and heart, and she screamed before everything exploded behind her eyes and she collapsed, the only sensation the shrieking feedback inside her skull.

The black bird spread its wings before Pete, and she knew this wasn't like the other dream. She was cold, and the spider-legged sensation of being in the wrong world crawled over her.

No longer in the Stygian darkness, she stood on the hilltop of a windswept battlefield, hundreds of bodies inkblots against blood-sodden grass.

The crawling of magic resolved into a hooded figure with wings and a dark face. The bird cried, the force of the cold and the malevolence in its voice pushing Pete backward. She found herself pinned by glowing yellow eyes and a woman's red mouth parted to show a raven's beak.

This is not your place. You are unwelcome here.

The black bird's talons closed around her heart and Pete tasted her own blood frozen on her tongue, and in her ears, cawing laughter fell.

'Take it.' The shrouded man's tatters whipped in the wind from the black bird's wings, which beat up smoke from the burial fires all around, swirling it faster and faster until Pete could feel herself being swept away, body replaced by the smoke-man and voice by the horrid screech of the black bird.

'Take it,' said the shrouded man, thrusting his fist toward Pete. But she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and watched as her own hand dissolved into smoke.

Pete screamed and jerked awake into Jack, who toppled over backward. 'Fucking hell! You scared the shit out of me, Caldecott!'

Panting, feeling droplets on her skin like she'd been scalded by freezing rain, Pete wrapped her arms around herself. 'What… what the hell was that? That was your parlor trick?'

Jack crouched on his heels, ignoring her sputtering, and took Pete's chin between his thumb and forefinger. 'You've got a ghost on you,' he breathed. 'It's right there, in your eyes.'

'I'm… possessed?' Pete pulled away. She was freezing, and Jack's words caused gooseflesh to break out on her arms. 'Shouldn't I be screaming, or levitating, or spewing obscene Latin phrases backward?'

'Not a possession,' said Jack. 'A spirit rider. Like… you've been touched, by someone with blood on then-hand, and they've left fingerprints on you. They follow and watch and whisper in your dreams.'

Her breath misted when she exhaled, and Pete shivered. 'It's the spirit. The one that's feeding on Margaret?'

'It's a good guess,' said Jack. He rubbed a hand over his face. 'Bollocks. I should have guessed, with your nightmares… should have bloody known.'

'Don't blame yourself,' said Pete. 'I didn't know they were anything but bad dreams.' And she didn't volunteer the other part of the dream—the shrouded man, and the beating heart, and the advent of the black bird. That was hers, and not Jack's, to know. 'Nothing good ever comes from the Black,' she murmured.

'This one, this isn't from the Black,' Jack said. He patted down his pockets and then conjured a fag. 'Coming to you in your dreams, sinking claws into your soul, it's living in the in- between.'

Pete rubbed her palms over her arms and felt the heat of friction. 'Wherever it's bloody from, I wish it hadn't picked me.'

'The in-between, the thin space. The realm between life and death.' Jack exhaled a halo. 'There's not many living that touch the cold space, Pete. Be glad it didn't try to pull you in.'

'I'm still alive,' Pete said. She felt the small sharp-toothed gnawing of the craving for a smoke of her own. 'Can't snatch my soul out from under me.'

'Soul's a tricky thing.' Jack grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. 'And you can hurt, bleed, and die in the thin spaces, Pete, be you flesh, phantom, or something other.'

'Just make the dream stop,' Pete sighed. 'I haven't slept in weeks and I'm becoming distinctly peevish from it.'

'FU get something for it,' Jack promised. 'You'll be all right by yourself for a few hours?'

Pete stood when he did, although the walls of the room pulsed ominously and she was dizzy. 'Will you, Jack? You're not exactly equipped to be running around the city.'

He drew back, closing off as if she'd hit him in the mouth. 'After everything that's happened in the past days and you still think I'm running off to bloody score.'

'Jack, it's what you've been doing for a dozen years,' said Pete. 'I need you to be clean and sharp when we find Margaret, and whatever has her.'

'You're a cynical and mistrustful bitch,' Jack said, crossing his arms.

'Yeah, and people like you made me that way,' Pete snapped. She rubbed her forehead. Staying upright was a task.