Street Magic

He crossed the space between them so quickly Pete barely saw his shadow, gripping her by the shoulders and pushing her against the nearest set of bookcases. The jars and lacquer boxes rattled over Pete's head as her skull slammed into the edge of the shelf. 'What does a pretty, simple girl like you want a Trifold Focus for, hmm?' Grinchley murmured. 'Such a unique item would only be of use to a sorcerer, or a cheap mage with delusions of power. So which is your friend, Inspector? Is he a true student of the blacker arts, or is he a pathetic conjure-man on the street corner with cards up his sleeve, dreaming of a power he cannot hold?'

'He's the type that would melt flesh off your bones for that insult,' Pete choked. She wrapped her hand around Grinchley's wrist, which felt like a slender tree trunk, and exerted the pressure points. Grinchley grunted, lips peeling back from his teeth.

'You fight. Stirring effort, but it won't help you.' He lifted his other hand to touch Pete's cheek. 'I'm not surprised he picked you—the worthless mage. Beautiful, not too delicate, but easily broken by terror or sorrow.' His eyes blazed, like Jack's, but their fire was gold and terrible as an angel falling in flames. 'Someday he planned it, of that I'm sure. He wants to shatter you, Inspector. Pity I got there first.' He reached over Pete's head and brought out a length of rotted and frayed rope. With a flick, he wrapped it around her neck.

'The Dead Man's Snare,' Grinchley murmured, reverently as any curator. Pete choked as the smelly thing contracted of its own will, wrapping around her neck so tightly she felt instant bruises on the flesh beneath.

'This particular specimen was collected and cursed at Tyburn, after its length had stretched thirteen murderous bastards on the hanging tree.'

The rope grew and grew, rewrapping itself around Pete's neck each time, twisting a hangman's knot. She tried to shove her fingers under the moldy cord, but to no avail. Black started to creep around the edges of her vision.

'It still hungers, Inspector,' Grichley said, stroking her face. 'And the more you fight, the lustier it will be. So by all means, dance. Dance the dead man's jig. Every movement you make prolongs your death.'

'How will you… explain… killing… a police officer?' Pete managed. Grinchley raised one shoulder.

'It wouldn't be the first time someone in a position of authority has come sniffing at my collection. I deal with the most faithful and esteemed servants of the Black, Inspector. I am discreet.'

She wasn't getting out of this with mere talk, then, and the blasted rope was so tight she could barely speak. You'll know when the time for talk is past, Connor said. You'll know it and you'd better take swift action, girl, lest you want to end life dirty and bloody and broken.

Pete drew up her knee and with the last of her air planted a kick squarely between Grinchley's legs. He moaned and doubled over, and Pete reached out and swiped what looked like a bone- handled athame from a low display. She shoved it between her flesh and the Dead Man's Snare, and the ancient strands parted, recoiling from the metal and freeing her air.

'All right, Grinchley,' she said. Her voice was barely a whisper. She touched her throat and the flesh was tender and rigid with forming bruises. 'Get over behind the desk.'

The skin of an affable older gentleman had slipped away entirely and Grinchley staggered to the desk under her guidance. He was lumpy and ill formed, like a golem, and his eyes and teeth glittered in the low light. Pete knew this was what Grinchley's last thief must have seen, just before he ended his nightmare in the Thames.

She tucked the snare into her back pocket, and then unplugged the telephone and tossed the cord to Grinchley. 'Tie your legs, and use a real knot.'

'You really think you can do anything, command anything of me?' Grinchley hissed. 'My magic will tear you limb from limb and then—'

'Firstly,' said Pete as she pulled out the cord of a lamp and tied Grinchley's arms behind him. 'If there's one thing I've learned in the past week it's that real mages don't ramble on, they just do it.' She secured the knot with a tug. 'If you had magic other than tawdry rope tricks, you would have used it, you silly git.'

Grinchley started to spit invectives, but Pete picked up a wadded message slip from his desk and stuck it in his mouth. 'Secondly, I'm leaving here with the Trifold Focus, and I am out of time to fuck about with you, Grinchley, so either tell me where you keep it or I start slicing.' She raised the knife and let it catch the light of the fireplace.

After a long moment of staring into her eyes, Grinchley grunted and spat out the paper. 'You're made of less breakable porcelain than it appears at first glance, Inspector.'

'Lucky, lucky me. Where's the Focus?' said Pete, keeping her voice flat. All she needed to hurt Grinchley, to bleed him, was contained in the memory of Bridget Killigan, of the bleeding tracks in Jack's skin, and the invisible pressure of a Fate measuring off the last moments of Margaret Smythe's existence. But she'd let the threat do the work unless he pressed her. She was still the detective inspector, not a thug.

'The Focus is in my vault room.' Grinchley sighed. 'In the cellar, at the back of the house.'

'There,' said Pete. 'Isn't being reasonable a simple thing?'

'You'll pay,' Grinchley said as she left him tied. 'You'll pay in blood for this, little Inspector. Not today and not tomorrow and perhaps not until the end of your time on this earth, but you've put your hand in a wolf's mouth and you'll—'

Pete slammed the library door shut on him and followed a dark broad hallway toward the rear of the town house. The cellar door wasn't locked, and Pete paused at the foot of the stairs. Connor would have said this was too easy by half. Grinchley should have fought harder. He should have locked his doors, at the very bloody least.

Her footfalls were nearly silenced on thick Persian carpet over the stones and it was only a draft against her neck that warned Pete of someone behind her. She spun to see a huge man in an undershirt and black trousers swing a massive fist at her face.

She ducked, but not fast enough and the blow glanced off her skull. Pete fell and the air sang out of her as she hit the floor. The man hulked above her. A line of stitches paraded across his neck and around his right arm at the shoulder, purple and infected. His eyes were mismatched, green and blue, and he grinned at Pete through bloody teeth. 'Trespasser.' The word ground out from a throat that might have been patched together after a cutting.

For a few precious seconds, Pete was unable to do anything except stare. It cost her any chance to get away—the golem grabbed her by her collar and simply dragged her along, ignoring Pete's kicks and shouted curses except for a grunt.

They turned a corner and the smell of bleach invaded Pete's nostrils as she slid along a floor of worn linoleum. The golem hauled her to a stop in a scrub room, brightly lit as the rest of Grinchley's town house was shadowed.

'I'd so hoped you wouldn't cause any trouble, Inspector.' Perkins sighed. His frock coat was missing and a dish-towel was over his shoulder. 'But it appears you were rash. Take her into the operating theater, if you will.'

The reanimated servant grunted and picked Pete up again. 'It takes orders from you…' she said. The thickness in her head lifted a fraction and she saw past Perkins's stooped shoulders and sagging skin. 'You're the sorcerer.'

'Of course,' said Perkins. 'One of Mr. Grinchley's objets d'art, if you will. He does pay handsomely for my services, and my brethren benefit from Grinchley's expertise in antiquities of an… impure nature. Now I don't believe I'll bore you with the details, Inspector. We've all watched a James Bond film or two.' He nodded to the servant. 'I'll be down momentarily.'

The servant half dragged Pete to a metal security door and worked the handle clumsily with his free hand. One limb was small and boyish with manicured nails and the other was flat and scarred; a dock worker's hand.

The operating theater was a catacomb, buried long before the town house sat atop it, slimy stone steps leading down to the round killing floor. Pete skidded and fell the last three steps, landing in a heap. The servant kicked her in the stomach, rolling her along like a lumpy carpet.

Pete felt something prick her as she hit the opposite wall of the stone chamber. A numbness spread over a patch of skin on her hip and she slipped her hand into her trouser pocket. The syringe she'd taken away from Jack greeted her, cap loosened and tip dripping. The golem dragged a heavy pair of shackles from their bolt in the wall toward her, moaning softly to himself.

When he came near, reaching for her arms with a grasping gesture, Pete rolled over and jammed the syringe into the inside of the golem's thigh, where a fat artery would have pulsed in life.

The golem shuddered and let out a choked sound that was almost a sob. He took one more shambling step and collapsed backward.

Pete pulled herself up on the ragged blocks of the wall and checked for injuries. She was bruised but not bleeding, her knees and the back of one hand scraped from the fall. She made the executive decision that she'd live, and stepped over the downed creature to fix on a door.

The operating theater had iron shackles bolted into the walls at intervals along the curve of the stones and a modern drain set into the floor over a steel autopsy table. Blood trickled down the table's grooves, an insistent hollow dripping against the damp stone.

On the tabletop, a half-assembled golem blinked milky eyes as a spinal cord waiting for hips and legs twitched like a tail. Pete skirted it as widely as she could, but the eyes still rolled after her and teeth unfettered by a tongue chattered.

Just beyond the table was a door, iron bubbled with rust and age. It had no visible handle that Pete could see, and she pried her fingers into the cracks at the edge and only succeeded in bloodying her nails. 'Sod your aunt,' she hissed in frustration.

The ceiling of the theater had no skylight or vent, and the walls, for all their age, were bricked tightly with mortar and moss. The golem on the table hissed at Pete, jerking its arms as it tried to reach for her.

Pete leaned against the wall and shut her eyes, trying to keep her panic in check enough so that she wouldn't scream. She'd be all right. One way or another, she'd be all right.

Jack, should have listened to Jack, should have known that you running off would go this way. Now what will you do? All of the normal whispers and shivers of magic that Pete had come to recognize in her renewed time with Jack faded in the operating theater and her skin felt slick with something else, cold and silken as spoiled milk.

This is the Black. People die here, and usually because someone's decided to kill them.

'Shut up, Jack. Since when are you bloody right about anything?' Pete muttered. She tried her mobile, got no signal underground, and paced a few times, keeping clear of the golem. She was truly, properly fucked. Trapped in here until Grinchley or Perkins decided what to do with her.

'They'll find my bones when they knock-mis place down to make a motorway,' Pete said. The golem keened and hissed. 'Be quiet!' Pete shouted at it, because it was better than crying in frustration.

A groaning and scrabbling began from outside the iron door, and Pete steeled herself for anything, but Perkins appeared, pushing open the massive gate with some effort.

He caught sight of the first golem, still and spent on the floor. 'Oh,' Perkins said. 'Oh, dear.'

Pete snatched up a scalpel from the rolling tray by the surgery, which also held bundles of half-rotted herbs and a black candle smeared in blood alongside the precise row of instruments, and stepped into Perkin's view. 'He was a lightweight.'

Perkins turned to her, his eyes glittering. 'Do you have any idea how long it takes to animate one of those, you stupid girl? You've cost me months.'

Pete allowed herself a smirk that she did not feel. 'Well, it's not exactly a model airplane, is it?'

Snarling, Perkins raised his hand, black mist crackling with ice trailing from his fingertips. 'Pain,' he said simply, and Pete felt every muscle, every tendon and joint in her, seize with the worst kind of agony. It was fever-pain and torn muscles and a dull rusty nail in her flesh all at once.

A high buzzing scream cut the air, hers, and she fell back against the surgery table, vision blacking out. The half-golem on the table latched its teeth around her wrist and the cold pressure against her bones sent her into panic.

Pete heaved against the golem, and the flesh of her wrist tore as the golem went flying through the air with a hiss, landing on Perkins like a sack of lead pipes. Pete scattered the herbs and the candle, feeling her hand grow slick and warm as blood pumped out of the tear in her skin. The cold wet magic in the room shifted, loosened, and the golem let out a scream of victory.

Perkins fell over and the golem clawed at his face and chest, latching its teeth to his throat and gnawing with fierce desire until Perkins's neck artery fountained blood and he gurgled, going still. The golem continued to eat, blood flowing through it and onto the floor through its loose-ended entrails.

The pain Perkins had laid on her lessened slowly after he died, not at all like Pete would have expected from a spell, but it did lessen and she did climb the slippery stone steps back into the