Street Magic

moved on to the next stack. 'Mages couldn't use bloody textbooks, like everyone else,' she muttered. Whatever had happened with Jack before he stormed out would not happen again, not if Pete could help it. The feeling of being the transformer on a live wire was unpleasant enough to last several lifetimes.

Pete lofted the lamp to look for more books, catching a Poor Dead Bastards poster with curling corners on the wall opposite. She tried the drawers of the chest, found them open. 'Let's see what you keep hidden,' Pete muttered, half convinced that Jack would hear her, wherever he was.

He had that odd prescient knowledge of a clever devil, one that appeared when you spoke his name.

Herbs and crystals on leather thongs, shriveled birds' feet, a collection of vellum scraps covered over with Jack's scratchy handwriting crumpled in one corner, a marijuana pipe, and a slide whistle made up the entirety of the drawer's contents.

'Nothing,' Pete muttered. Nothing that would show why Jack had run away, again. Or why he refused to admit what had gone on when they vanquished Talshebeth.

She sat down on Jack's dusty mattress and sneezed. It smelled like him, whisky and Parliaments and that slightly burnt scent that was his alone.

Pete realized that all the fear and rage had left her and her limbs were lead. She scanned the pages of a few more books, making a go of it, and then gave in to her body's shouted signals to catch a few hours of sleep. If she wasn't on her game, she wouldn't be of any use to Margaret or anyone else.

Shoving a pile of Jack's clothes off the mattress to make a space for herself, Pete heard something crackle inside the pocket of his leather jacket, the same one he'd worn the first time she'd met him. Pete pulled out a many-times-creased piece of vellum, greasy and frayed at the edges.

Pete Caldecott

221 Croydon Place, #32

London

Pete's hand shook as she recognized her old address, the one she'd lived at with Connor until he'd taken sick, but hadn't moved to until several years after she'd lost contact with Jack. The paper was worn enough and the ink faded to believe it was a decade old. Jack had found her and held this scrap, but he'd never come to her, never written or called. He'd just kept this little bit of information near his heart.

She stared for a moment longer, and then Pete threw back the blanket. She was tired, of Jack's contradictions and his secrets. She pulled on her shoes and coat and left the flat, leaving the door unlocked as usual in case Jack came home.

Chapter Thirty-three

Pete walked through Spitalfields, feet ringing off the cobbles that the Ripper's shadow had stalked one hundred twenty years before. She let herself be pulled from street to street, through pocket parks and alleys until she fetched up at a rusted iron gate. A padlock dangled limply from a chain that was nearly eaten away, and a swift kick sent it clattering.

Inside the gate was unlit night. Pete wrapped her coat around her more tightly and walked into it.

She would swear up and down that the pub Jack had taken her to the first time was in an open street, bright red door banded with iron facing out, but now it was simply there, at the other end of the alley.

Music drifted out when Pete pulled on the great iron handle, and a bouncer who hadn't been about the last time stopped her with a large hand, nails lacquered black. 'Going somewhere special, miss?'

Pete drew in a breath. The man was massive, shaven-headed with Maori tattoos crawling over the bare flesh. He grinned and displayed a missing front tooth when she gaped at him. 'I'm looking for Mr. Mosswood,' she said finally, willing herself to be firm.

'You got business with the Green Man.' The bouncer raised an eyebrow in surprise, but didn't question her. He stepped aside and Pete walked in.

The band onstage could have been playing an Irish folksong, or 'God Save the Queen'… the music dove and dipped, never more than a snatch intelligible, but it was still beautiful and at the same time left Pete feeling stricken, as though she'd left pieces of herself scattered everywhere to be picked over by the crows.

'The eponymous Lament,' said a familiar voice. Pete spun to see Mosswood sitting cross-legged at a table, chewing on the end of his pipe.

'Mr. Mosswood.'

'Just Mosswood,' he said, blowing a lazy smoke ring.

'Lament for who?' Pete said. 'Or what?'

'You've heard of Nero, surely, and the music he played while the empire burned,' said Mosswood. 'This is the same music. The music that played when Cain slew Abel and the sound that will be at the end of the world.'

Even though a fire was roaring in the pub's wide grate, Pete shivered. Mosswood indicated the chair opposite him. 'You are obviously troubled a great deal to come here without an escort, Miss Caldecott. Please. Sit down.'

'I don't need an escort,' said Pete reflexively.

'I suppose you don't.' Mosswood knocked out his pipe against the edge of the table and took his leather tobacco pouch out of his coat. 'You wouldn't have been able to find your way here again if you were not touched by the Black.'

A cup of tea appeared on the edge of the table, a tiny hand sliding back below eye level, and Pete started.

'Thank you, Nora,' said Mosswood. 'And another of the same for Miss Caldecott. Sugar?'

'No sugar,' Pete said, regarding the small earthy-colored creature with an arched eyebrow.

'Brownies,' said Mosswood when Nora had scuttled away. 'Not very intelligent, but love menial tasks. Useful for housework, if you need someone to come in.'

'I'm here about Jack,' Pete said, putting her palms flat on the table.

'Oh, I doubt that.' Mosswood blew on his pipe and smoke sprouted as the tobacco lit of its own volition. 'You are here about what's happening to you, my dear. Jack is merely a side effect of all this.'

'I don't—' Pete started.

'How much has Jack told you about this? The Black? The magic that he works?'

Pete sighed. 'Not much, and before tonight I didn't want to know. I'd convinced myself a long time ago that all this'—and here she gestured at the pub, the music, and brownies scuttling under tables—'wasn't real. But tonight…'

'Tonight was different,' Mosswood said, examining her with a penetrating gaze. For all of his well-groomed shab-biness, the patched coat and sleek beard, Mosswood's eyes were inhuman, black and flat like stones. 'Tell me.'

'I… Jack and I were trying to get rid of a demon—that's a long story, entirely separate—and I touched him, really touched him because I was scared, and all this power just… appeared.'

Mosswood scratched his beard and sucked on his pipe. 'More power than the irredeemable Mr. Winter usually commands. Impressive.'

'What's so impressive about that?' Pete said.

'Mages, in the great order of the Black, are candle dames,' Mosswood said. 'Jack Winter is an acetylene torch turned on full. Do you see?'

'I just want to know what happened when I touched him,' said Pete.

'Afraid of it, are you?' Mosswood nodded. 'Bright girl.'

'I'm not afraid of anything,' Pete snapped. 'If it was just my life, I wouldn't be here. There's an innocent child at stake and I need to know that Jack is telling me the truth, when he decides to tell me anything. Whatever happened could affect my ability to help her. Or anyone.'

'Jack Winter telling the truth,' Mosswood mused. 'There's something I'd like to see.'

'Listen,' Pete said. 'I'm not stupid. I know something happened that wasn't meant to the first time Jack and I tried magic together. I don't think mages make a habit of working rituals that leave them on Death's doorstep. And now, the same thing almost blew his flat to smithereens earlier tonight.'

'It is not a thing,' said Mosswood. 'Magic is not an object.'

Pete dropped her eyes at the rebuke, wishing she'd never come. Being in the Black made her feel as if she were half in and half out of icy water, displaced and distracted.

Mosswood finally sighed. 'I can only venture a guess, you understand…'

'Anything,' said Pete with relief. 'Wild speculation, baseless rumor… I've already spent over a decade thinking I'm crazy for believing any of this.'

'Many thousands of years ago,' said Mosswood, 'there was a class of magicians, used by the old gods to speak for them… druids, priestesses of the Morrigan, a class of the Celt's battle shamans… you see?'

Pete nodded. The brownie set a cup of strong hot tea at her elbow, and she sipped reflexively. The way Mosswood spoke, it was easy to imagine sitting at the foot of the great standing stones, watching hooded figures dance in the starlight.

'The term 'magician' is a fallacy, really,' said Mosswood. 'They were called 'Weirs,' in the old tongues. Shapers of magic.'

'Weir.' Pete tasted the word, swallowed it down with her next swig of tea. 'And what did the Weirs do, Mr. Mosswood?'

'Just Mosswood,' he said again. 'Weirs are odd and frightening, Miss Caldecott, because…' He sighed and sucked his pipe. 'I fear I am doing you a disservice by saying this, but… Weirs escape classification. They do not tend toward magic the same way mages and sorcerers do. They are transformers, amplifiers, able to perceive the truth in dreaming, and if they are connected to a mage or sorcerer, terrible, terrible things have happened.'

'What sort of things?' Pete drained her mug to the bottom, bitter tea leaves touching her tongue.

'Well,' said Mosswood, 'you don't think the Hindenburg explosion was really an accident, do you? Or Three Mile Island? Or the Tunguska meteor?'

Pete sat back, rubbing her arms. The cozy pub had become freezing cold. 'So if I am… a Weir, and I've connected with Jack…'

Mosswood blew a ring of smoke, his eyes murky. 'Then may whatever god you believe in watch over you both. Someone of Jack's abilities, amplified by a Weir, would be like a storm sweeping from the netherworld to flatten everything outside the Black.'

'Weirs amplify mage's talents?' Pete felt her heartbeat slow in numb anticipation.

'Of course,' said Mosswood mildly. 'Why do you think virgin girls were so popular with magicians in the old times? It wasn't for their conversation.'

A low shudder started in Pete's stomach and worked its way toward becoming a clear thought. She saw Jack, in his torn T-shirt and black jeans, jackboots and metal bracelets gleaming in the candlelight. Standing across the circle from her, inside the dark still tomb. Reaching out, to take her by the hand.

Afraid, luv? Don't be. I'm here, after all.