Street Magic

Chapter Forty

'Inspector.' A hand gripped her shoulder, tentative and shaky. Not Jack. 'Inspector.'

Pete opened her eyes, though the light seemed very bright, and ached, forcing her to lower her lids and peer at whoever-it-was through a forest of eyelashes.

'Ollie.'

Ollie Heath sat back on his heels, the tight set of his jaw loosening when she spoke. 'Thank God. Thought you'd gone and punched your ticket.'

'No,' Pete said, soft and brief out of necessity. She felt as if she'd drunk up all the alcohol in London, and then vomited it back up and drunk some more. Her tongue was cottony and her skull pulsated steadily as if one of those cymbal-clashing monkey dolls had her head in its grasp.

Pete saw milling figures in somber blue outside Jack's bedroom door, and two in green carrying a paramedic's case.

She bolted up. 'Margaret.'

'The girl's fine, just fine,' said Ollie. 'I called the bus for your friend, actually. He could barely stand upright, and he's got himself some nasty burns on his hand… scratched all to Hades too, all over his body. Strangest bloody thing I've ever seen.'

Ollie propped pillows against the wall, staying crouched next to Pete as she craned to see into the rest of the flat. 'Margaret is safe.'

'Safe and sound and gone home with her mum,' Ollie confirmed. 'Now, I know DCI Newell is waiting to hear you tell exactly what the bloody hell happened and where you've been for the last three days, and I have to say I wondered myself—'

Pete clasped her hand around Ollie's wrist. 'I can't. You have to just trust me, Ollie, and not breathe a word to Newell.'

Ollie nodded slowly. 'I'll always want to know how you found that child in time, Pete.'

'You wouldn't believe it,' Pete assured him. Ollie stood.

'Likely not. I'll go let Mr. Winter know you're awake. He was troubled when he called. Claimed you passed out.'

'I did,' Pete said. Everything after she took Jack's hand was an inkblot on the narrative, obscured by folds of pain and ghostly hisses. 'Wait,' she said as Ollie walked out, the belated truth breaking through her foggy mind. 'Jack called you?'

'Took your mobile and did it,' said Ollie. 'He was terribly concerned over you and the fate of the girl.'

'How about that,' Pete mused; She could only imagine Jack's conversation with Ollie when he called to report the missing Margaret Smythe found.

'Seems an all-right bloke, if a bit on the shifty side,' Ollie observed. 'Want me to send him in?'

'Please,' Pete said, pulling her hair into a knot at the base of her neck and attempting to work the kinks out of her arms and shoulders. Everything hurt, as though she'd run for kilometers beyond measure and then gone a few rounds with a drunken Chelsea fan on game day.

Ollie disappeared and a moment later Jack replaced him, not hurrying or rushing in but just there, as if Pete had willed him into being. She blinked and then narrowed her eyes. 'One day you're going to tell me how you do that.'

'Do what, luv?' He pulled the straight-backed chair up to the mattress and leaned down to put one finger under her chin. 'You look a bit worse for wear.' The corners of his mouth crinkled a little and his eyes darkened to a deep-sea color with what Pete would classify as relief, if it were anyone but Jack.

Pete examined him in turn. Except for neatly wrapped bandages on his palms he was untouched, rumpled, and smelling of day-old tobacco. As usual, and Pete couldn't have been more grateful.

'If it wasn't for your hands I'd believe I dreamed the ghost, everything,' she said.

Jack's eyes rippled again, slate. 'You didn't.'

'I know,' Pete said quietly. 'What have you told the police?'

'Not a bloody thing,' said Jack. 'I've taken a pinch before, Pete. I can keep me mouth shut.'

Pete tilted her head back and shut her eyes, the solid and the real finally seeping back into her skin. 'Then it's over. I'll make up a story for Newell, and you'll corroborate it, and it will be over.'

A silence stretched, and Pete opened one eye. Jack was staring out the window, past the telephone wires and the chimney pots on the opposite block of flats, watching as slivers of mist collected and filtered the sun to a tarnished sheen that turned his hair molten and his skin paper.

'It's not,' he said finally. 'It's not finished.'

Pete swung her legs over the side of the mattress and sat up, even though dizziness rocked her like a ship in high wind. 'What do you mean, Jack?'

He stood up, knocking the chair over, and paced away. 'Come on, Pete!' he snarled. 'Don't play the sweet school-girl with me. You know what that thing was in the graveyard! You saw it.'

'I don't,' said Pete, shaking her head once. 'I was focused on Margaret. And you. It was from my dream. That's all.'

'From your dream because you've bloody seen it before.' Jack slumped. He looked like a doll with cut strings, disjointed and laid aside. Pete got up and made her unsteady way to him.

'Whatever it is, Jack—just tell me.'

'It's worse,' he said. 'It's about to get much worse. That ghost… I swear I sent him back, Pete. I did.' Jack's voice threaded with frustration, as if he'd reached into his top hat to produce a dove and found a dead cat instead. 'He can't have existed in the thin spaces for a dozen years on his own.'

'Well, obviously he did,' Pete murmured. 'I have a notion feeding on children helped with that.'

'No,' said Jack firmly. 'No, it doesn't work that way, Pete. He should have been called back into the land of the dead. For him to linger, to get so strong… he's had assistance, of the most grievous kind.'

'Don't like the sound of that,' Pete said.

'And you shouldn't,' said Jack. 'Whoever would keep him close to this world… there's a nutter with black plans, mark my words.'

'Got a theory?' she asked, and Jack rubbed at the point between his eyes as if he were trying to erase something.

'Haven't a bloody clue. I swear, Pete,' he said again, more to himself than to anyone present. 'I sent him back.'

'Who is he?' Pete asked, rising and stepping around Jack to face him. Jack closed his eyes, rubbing his hands over his face. In the direct foggy sunlight, all of his scars and premature lines were stark. Jack looked old, hollowed out and collapsing.

'His name is Algernon Treadwell,' Jack said finally, from behind his hands. 'And he's what I summoned out of the tomb twelve years ago.'

'Pete.' Ollie stuck his head into the bedroom. 'We're clearing out—you'll need a lift back to your flat, yeah?'

'No,' Pete said faintly, not taking her eyes from Jack. He looked resigned, dragging the toe of one boot back and forth across the dust on the floorboards.

'No,' Pete said louder. 'I need to stay here for a bit.'

'Well… ring me when you're in,' said Ollie. 'I'll be at the Yard doing up the reports.'

Pete nodded, and Ollie backed away. A few seconds later the front door banged shut.

Sighing, Pete went to the window and leaned her forehead against the glass.

'Jasper Gorson,' said Jack. Pete didn't move. She felt like a column of ice, frangible and nerveless.

'Don't tell me this is the one time you're not going to ask 'Who's that.'' Jack sighed. 'You want to know what happened, I can see it.'

'I want to know?' Pete murmured. She saw that limestone door scaled with moss roll back, and felt the cool dry breath of the tomb on her face. She had made a circuit and come back to stand in front of it, a dozen years hence. There was nothing to do but face up.

'I suppose I do,' she said. 'I would like to know the hours of my life that I've spent in nightmares since you did this, Jack. I would know how long I waited for you to come back, and tell me it was all a terrible mistake. I would like to know, because then I could quantify exactly how much of my suffering whatever you were hoping to accomplish was worth to you.'

Jack's jaw knotted. 'I was a stupid kid, Pete, the same as you. I didn't know what would happen.'

'The hell you didn't,' Pete hissed, stepping in and jabbing a finger into his chest. Jack took a hasty step back.

'When things went wrong you bolted without a glance backward. All that rot… 'Oh, Pete, I waited for you for so very long…' Pure rubbish. You didn't bloody care what happened to me! I should bash your bloody face in, you fucking bastard!' The high ceiling rattled echoes back and Pete realized she was shouting.

'Fine. I didn't, when I started,' Jack said. 'And when Treadwell came after us, you ran away and left me for dead.'

'I thought you were dead—'

'And then you were able to shut out the Black, and I hated you for it. But I know now, Pete, so do you want to hear it or not?'

Pete nodded tightly, knotting and unknotting her fists to keep from hitting a wall, or Jack.

'This is how it was,' Jack said softly. 'Back then the two most reputable mages in the Black were me and Jasper Gorson. Gorson had been bragging for weeks that he'd raised a black spirit, flashing this grimoire it had supposedly transcribed for him.' He produced a Parliament and chewed on the end before an ember flared. 'So me back got up, and I went looking for a spirit to raise and tap into, as well.'

'Jack, did it ever occur to you that Gorson may have been a fucking liar?' Pete asked.

'Of course he was a liar,' Jack snapped, 'but try telling that to the stupid sods who hang around the Lament pub.'

Pete thought of Arty and Abby, and Hattie Page. 'Go on.'

'I got the books and I looked and I found him,' Jack said. 'Algernon Treadwell.' He shivered and sat down, resting his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands. 'He was a sorcerer, the worst of his time. Feared. Tried, tortured, and killed by witchfinders in the winter of 1836. I paid off a groundskeeper to show me Treadwell's tomb, and then…' He looked up at Pete, smoke drifting from his nose and mouth. 'Then your bloody sister brought you to see me play at Fiver's.'

'Did you know what I was?' Pete asked quietly. 'Was it that from the first minute?'

'No,' Jack said. 'No, it took me a few days to realize why I always felt like I was grasping at power lines when you were in the room.'

'And then you wasted no time at all.' Pete clapped her hands together. 'Bravo.'

'Pete, you have to believe I didn't mean—'

'I believe you,' she said. 'I believe that you didn't want to get killed.' She went to the hooks in the entry and took her coat and bag.

'You can't leave!' Jack exclaimed. 'Treadwell is still about!'

'What's he going to do?' Pete snapped. 'Rattle chains and write redrum on the mirrors?'