Street Magic

'Worse!' Jack shouted. 'Thought-forms! Shadowy bloodhounds!'

They crossed the attic, tumbling over trunks and bundles, and Jack used his elbow to smash a window that had been painted shut. 'You first,' he panted. 'Out.'

Pete looked at the street fifteen meters below, back at Jack. 'Are you quite mad?'

The smoke-shadows flowed under the door, through the cracks in the floor. They had grown steel claws and teeth, and darker hollows for eyes.

Jack opened his mouth to cajole, or yell, but Pete held up a hand. 'Never mind. I'm going.' She hoisted herself through the broken window and onto the slippery roof, but instead of letting go and plummeting for the street she gripped the gutter so hard she thought the skin on her knuckles would split and climbed toward the ridgeline.

She watched the shadows swipe at Jack, catching the leg he still had inside the window and leaving lines of crimson. 'Bugger!' Jack yelped. He spread his ringers wide and exhaled, and a flock of smoke-crows blossomed from his palm. The crows cawed and swooped, catching the sorcerer's hounds with their talons and bills.

The shadows screamed and vanished, the crows with them. Jack grinned. 'Couldn't sustain his will when someone co-opted his trick. Probably has a small cock, too.'

'Come on,' Pete yelled, nearly losing her grip. She pulled herself up onto the flat square top of Mad Chen's turret roof and helped Jack, who flopped over with a wheeze.

His coughing turned to chuckles, then to laughter. 'Bloody hell. I'd forgotten how much fun this is.'

Pete cocked her head. 'Fun? You've got a fucking strange idea of fun.'

The wood next to Jack's head exploded, driving splinters into Pete's arm. Another sorcerer appeared out of the shadows, the yellow clouds oozing corrosive fumes from his hands. 'How many of these wankers are there?' Pete shouted. The sorcerer stopped just short of her feet and smiled in the manner of a small boy who likes to burn ants.

'Looks like I get your skin and your talent, Winter, and the chance to get over.' He grinned.

Jack rolled on his side and stood, ducking the sorcerer's reach. He grabbed the shorter man by the back of the neck. 'You'll get over something, that's sure.' He rotated his grip and tossed the sorcerer off the edge of the roof. The man screamed until a sound like a breaking tree trunk cut off the cry.

Pete peered over the edge, saw the broken doll shape and a dark stain spreading. 'Think he's dead?'

Jack lit a Parliament, drew once, and flicked the rest after the sorcerer. 'About to wish he was.'

The man was conscious, groaning, when Pete and Jack climbed down to the street. 'If more are coming after us,' said Pete, 'we're a bit exposed.'

Jack gripped the sorcerer under the arms, struggling against the stocky weight. ' 'S why we're getting the fuck out of here.' He attempted to pull the moaning sorcerer along the pavement. The man's leg was twisted, a lump of displaced bone under his skin, and he yelled. Jack wheezed and dropped him. 'You need to get on a diet, boyo.'

Pete rolled her eyes and banded her arm across the sorcerer's chest, a lifesaving carry on dry land. The door of Mad Chen's banged open and the male sorcerer appeared, trailed by his renewed thought-forms, which seemed to have grown a few dozen more steel teeth since Pete saw them last.

'Bollocks,' she said, dragging the sorcerer along the pavement. 'What the hell happens now, Jack? I don't think your little trick with the birds will be quite as scary out in the open.'

'Never fear, Pete. Our chariot awaits.' Jack stepped into the street and let out a piercing whistle. 'Taxi!'

One moment the street was empty and the next a gleaming black cab, smooth lines and lantern headlights, something from the black-and-white era, sat idling at the curb, stopped in a swirl of leaves and winter wind. The rear door swung open of its own accord.

Jack grabbed the sorcerer's legs. 'Get him in.'

Pete folded the quietly sobbing man into the back of the cab and scrambled inside, sliding on butter-colored leather seats. Jack knocked on the partition and told the shadowed driver, 'Sodding floor it!'

The cab lit out with a squeal of tires, taking the corner with a lurch that threw Pete against the door, the handle thudding into her gut.

'One thing about the Black,' Jack said as they roared through empty nighttime streets. 'You can always find a cab when you really need one.'

The driver turned his head slightly. 'What destination, please?' His voice was smooth and bell-like, more suited to an angelic choir than a slightly threadbare cab. It gave Pete a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach.

A gas streetlamp caught the driver's eyes, and they shone silver.

Jack grunted softly and held his forehead. 'Fae,' he said through clenched teeth.

'Driving a cab?' Pete raised an eyebrow.

'Fae love human devices,' Jack muttered. 'Plays hell on the sight, let me tell you.' To the driver he said, 'Whitechapel, Mile End Road, number forty-six.'

'Right away, sir,' purred the Fae. His teeth, silver like his eyes, were a row of needles.

The sorcerer moaned, his eyes flicking weakly between Pete and Jack. 'Where are you taking me?'

Jack thumped him on the crown of his head. 'Shut it. No questions from you.'

'What are we going to do with him?' Pete whispered. 'Can't very well leave him on the street to be picked over.'

'Who says I can't?' Jack muttered. 'Tosser tried to kill me. But no, I've got something in mind.'

After a time the cab glided to a stop in front of Jack's flat and he jumped out quickly, leaving Pete to drag the sorcerer onto the curb. She banged the man's broken leg against the running board and he screamed.

'Sorry, mate,' Pete apologized. 'But you did rather bring it on yourself.' She leaned back into the cab. 'How much do I owe you?'

Jack grabbed her by the collar and yanked her back out. Pete struggled furiously, and reared back to slap him. He caught her hand, fingers squeezing her wrist bones together. 'Don't you know better than to make deals with the Fae?'

'He's a bloody cab driver!' Pete protested as the taxi disappeared at the end of the street, taillights winking when it rounded the corner.

'Never offer to repay a Fae,' Jack said tightly. 'And never allow them to strike a bargain with you. The cab is on my account. I'll pay up when they decide my debt is due and not a moment before.'

'I'm truly sorry. I didn't know,' Pete said. 'Now let go of me before I fetch you a smack.'

Jack heaved a sigh and pushed his hair every which way with his fingers. 'You wanted to learn the Black, and how to survive in it… consider that lesson the first.' He dropped her wrist. 'Sorry if I hurt you.'

' 'S all right,' Pete muttered. Her skin was slightly pink where Jack had touched her.

The sorcerer managed to haul himself onto his elbows, attempting to crawl away down the street. 'Will you look at this git,' Jack exclaimed. He pointed a finger at the sorcerer and muttered, 'Sioctha.' The sorcerer jerked, all of his limbs going rigid. Pete put her face in her hands.

'Did you explode this one's heart, too?'

'Nope,' Jack said triumphantly. 'Just stiff. A little magic rigor mortis until he tells me what I want to know. Get his other arm.'

Together they dragged the sorcerer up the creaking fire escape to the flat, and once inside Jack rolled the man onto his back and put a boot in the center of his chest.

'Get the frying pan, or a phone directory—something heavy to bash him in the good kneecap if he gets smart,' he said to Pete. 'Right,' he addressed the sorcerer. 'You know who I am, and what I can do, and I'm going to let you go now with the provision that if you try any tricks, what's left of you will fit inside a syringe. Got it?'

The sorcerer tried to speak, huffed breath through his nose and his immobile lips, eyes going wide.

'Good,' Jack said conversationally. 'Bi scaoilte.' The sorcerer shuddered and relaxed. Jack pressed down harder with his boot. 'Who are you bloody working for?'

'Roast in hell, Winter, you doped-up has-been!' the sorcerer shouted.

'Oi,' Pete said. She picked up a heavy bookend from Jack's shelf. 'What's your name?'

'Roddy,' the sorcerer spat. 'Roddy Post.'

'Well, Roddy Post,' said Pete. 'Are you going to answer my friend's questions?'

'Go bugger yourself!' Roddy moaned. His face was pale, twin stains of crimson in the hollows of his cheeks.

Pete knelt, lifted the bookend, and brought it down on Roddy's right hand. He howled. Jack raised his eyebrows.

'You've got issues, luv.'

'Fine…' Roddy sobbed. 'Fine, I'll sodding tell you whatever you want.'

'Like a cheap notebook, you are,' Jack said. 'Folding when she only tapped you with that thing.'

'Don't be too hard on him,' Pete said, giving Roddy a thin smile. 'You'd be amazed at what a couple of broken knuckles will do for a bloke's outlook.'

Jack's expression went from amused to something darker, deeper, as if he were taking Pete's measure. 'All for the sake of the child, eh?' he asked her.

Pete looked at Roddy, his pale drawn face. 'Of course,' she murmured, and set the bookend down because it was suddenly very heavy.

'Now, then,' said Jack. He went into the kitchen and brought back a chair. 'Pete, help the bloke to sit up.'

Pete heaved Roddy into the seat and Jack stood in front of him. 'Talk. Who's trying to kill me and why?'

Roddy's ragged breathing smoothed. 'I can't tell you.'

'Bloody hell…' Jack muttered, raising his palm and opening his mouth to speak another word of magic.

'I can show you,' Roddy said sullenly. Jack cocked his head, as if weighing Roddy's sins to decide if he lived or died.

'Well, all right then,' he finally said with his old grin. 'Pete, let's bear up poor Roddy's leg and let him lead the way.'

Chapter Thirty-eight

They drove through stone canyons, the old parts of the city, strongholds of visiting royalty, reclaimed as hotels and bars, neon hidden in crevices between the hand-hewn rock walls.

'Here,' Roddy muttered. 'Pull over here.'

Pete eased the Mini to the curb on Ironmonger Lane and looked up at the stone edifice. 'What's here?'

Roddy looked at his feet. 'The Arkanum.'

Jack choked. 'You're not serious.' He craned out the window to look up at the building. 'Incredible.'

'What's the Arkanum?' Pete asked Roddy.

'The Arkanum is the collective of darkness, the society of secret and shadow. We see and do what you only dream of, and we pull the strings of the bright, living world.' Roddy muttered all of this, his voice blurry with pain and resignation.

Jack rolled his eyes and popped the door open. 'A eighteenth-century collective of sorcerers wiped out by witchfinders and who never got the bloody hint.' He leaned back in. 'How many in there, Roddy?'