Street Magic

but no loosening of his grip on her.

'Pete. Pete.' Jack held up his hands. 'I'll be right behind you, luv. I promise. Believe me. No harm will come to you. Believe me, please.'

He was coming as close to begging as Jack would ever come, Pete knew. And fuck, she wasn't going to die on the floor of a pub, at the hand of a reject from the Cure reunion tour.

She worked her head free of the sorcerer's grip. 'I believe you.' Before she heard Jack's reply, if there was one, the walls of the Lament blurred and fell away to rushing black, and everything fell away, leaving Pete dangling before she slammed back to earth.

'You like that?' The sorcerer's face was in the light now, the electric lamps of the regular world's Highgate Cemetery. 'Shadow-stepping. Mages can't translocate like that. Only sorcerers.'

'My knees are positively weak,' Pete said. Treadwell's sorcerer jerked her arm, black petals of smoke blossoming on his other palm.

'Don't be smart. I could take your face off.'

'Will it save me from having to listen to you rattle on?' Pete gave the sorcerer her worst glare as he marched her through leaning rows of headstones.

'Winter doesn't like his women mouthy. Wonder he let you stick around as long as you did.'

'There's a lot you don't know about Jack Winter,' Pete said.

The sorcerer barked a laugh. 'As much as you did when you got tangled up with him in the first place, you silly chit?'

Pete looked at her feet for a few steps. 'No,' she said finally. 'I knew far, far less. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm here now, stolen and harmed by you, and that because you stole me you're fucked when Jack finds us.'

'Petrifying,' said the sorcerer. 'Move your little damsel act right along.' He shoved her and she tripped over a low tombstone.

'Let go of me!' Pete cried, jerking against the man's grasp. He stopped her, grabbing her by the upper arms, squeezing until Pete knew most women would let tears slide down their cheeks. She stayed silent, still. She would never cry.

'You listen,' growled the sorcerer. 'Winter doesn't care about you, you understand that? He let us steal you away. Now, you keep your mouth shut and your head down and our master might see his way to letting you go… or keeping you as an amusement. That's a better future than what Winter can offer you on his best day.' He pulled her along the path again, Pete's feet digging furrows in the earth as she resisted him.

They walked, or rather the sorcerer walked, dragging Pete, for a long while, clear across the old part of the cemetery. Pete smirked. 'Looks like your teleporter is off prime. You should have Scotty in to calibrate that.'

The sorcerer paused when they were in the oldest part of the cemetery, amid the weeds and the forgotten sunken graves. 'You're not afraid of what we're going to do to you,' the sorcerer stated, disappointment pulling at his face. His witchfire flared with a snap and he patted Pete down, taking away her mobile, the keys to the Mini, and anything else that might constitute a weapon.

'Jack will come for me,' said Pete with a thrust of her chin. 'And when he does I—far from a damsel, thank you—am personally going to make you sorry for this entire night and the rest of your wasted life.' She could lie convincingly to everyone—it was her own doubts that were the problem. Jack wasn't here and the Black wasn't snapping and hissing in the way that meant he was near.

'You tell yourself anything you like, girl,' said the sorcerer, tossing her things into the weeds. 'But the fact remains, you're all alone.' He turned Pete so they were pressed back to front, his arm across her throat. 'Look there.'

Over the humped, half-collapsed roof of the closest mausoleum, Pete could see torchlight, and hear low voices in the sort of contemplative chant that should accompany confession and absolution.

'That,' hissed the sorcerer, his hand sliding up and down Pete's throat, stroking her skin and leaving a trail of shivers. 'That is magic's future. Not Jack Winter. Not the old ways or the old gods. It's men, taking what they want. What our master started, we'll finish.'

'They might,' said a Manchester drawl from Pete's back. 'But you? All you'll be getting is a concussion and some pretty new bruises.'

Jack raised a burial urn over his head and smashed the sorcerer's skull with it, ash and bone fragments raining around Pete. The sorcerer staggered and went to the ground, raising his hand, his magic gathering.

'Don't,' Jack snarled. 'If you value the bits that make you a man, don't.'

Pete jumped away from the sorcerer as he made a grab for her, his teeth bared in fury. She stomped on his outstretched hand, eliciting a howl.

Before she could find something to tie the sorcerer up with, Jack stepped in and snapped his head backward with a jackboot to the face. 'The next time you touch Pete, I kill you where you stand,' he said.

Trembling in Pete's hands and everywhere reminded her that she was still in the cemetery, that Treadwell was there, sending tendrils of ice across the Black.

Jack came to her, his chest rising and falling in time with the waves of fire in his eyes, and the icy whispers quieted when he got close enough to touch.

He took Pete's chin in his hand, turned her face side to side, brushed her cheek with his thumb. 'You still got all your fingers and toes, then?'

Pete jerked her head away. 'What the bloody hell took you so long?'

'I did have to bargain for a means of transport that'd get me here before they carved your eyes out, didn't I?' Jack said. 'And let me tell you, riding with the dullahan is not something a bloke ever gets used to. The smell alone—'

'Treadwell is over there, beyond the tomb,' Pete broke in. 'Jack, Mosswood told me that the only way to exorcise him—'

'The coffin nail, I know.' Jack waved the notion away. 'I want you to stay with me, do you understand?'

'Oh, like you stayed with me in the pub?' Pete followed him between the gravestones, Jack marking a straight line, not even attempting to hide his advance. 'Answer me!' she demanded. 'How could you let them snatch me? I don't like being the damsel in distress, Jack. It's bloody demeaning.'

Jack stopped walking, heaving a dramatic sigh. 'Treadwell wanted to play with me, and he wanted to make me suffer. I could sit around wringing my hands and waiting for his flunkies to bring back sliced-off bits of Pete, or I could let him think he'd gotten one over and meet him head-on.' He grinned. 'So relax, Pete. You weren't a damsel. You were bait.'

Pete slapped him, so hard he rocked back on his heels. Jack rubbed his jaw. 'Are you quite finished?' he asked.

'Now I am.' Pete nodded. 'Do something like this again and I'll rip your sodding balls off.'

'Received loud and clear,' Jack agreed. He started walking again. 'Hello, you bastards!' he bellowed. 'Here I am! The crow-mage, come walking to your doorstep!'

The sorcerers of the Arkanum appeared, some blending out from the shadows, some stepping out from hiding spots. 'Winter,' one hissed, teeth flashing under the sodium lights.

'Ready, luv?' Jack said to her, barely a rumble in his chest.

'It's Petunia.' Pete gripped Jack's hand firmly, a slow spread of warmth passing up her arm.

Jack looked at her in askance as the sorcerers conjured red witchfire, a circle of bloody pinpoints springing to life around them. 'What is?'

'My name,' Pete told him. 'It's Petunia.' She could feel Treadwell behind her eyes, pushing and guiding with fingers like living icicles.

'Dreadful,' Jack muttered. 'Don't blame you for shortening it.'

'I wanted you to know,' Pete said.

Jack squeezed her hand. 'I do, Pete.' He breathed in and the magic crackled around him, the Black leaching from the ether to gather and swarm.

Pete shut her eyes. Jack exhaled and said, 'Cosain.'

The shield hex blossomed, growing and spreading outward, a stone bubble that decimated the circle of sorcerers, breaking bones and bloodying faces. The hex coalesced and held, shimmering against the night light. 'In my bag,' said Jack, indicating a battered satchel with his chin. 'Take out the hammer and the coffin nail while I hold the hex, will you, luv?'

Pete dug in the satchel, which contained any number of unpleasantly slimy and smelly things, and pulled out a wooden mallet and a large square-headed nail. The nail sent a jolt of white-heat magic through her hand when she touched it.

'Here.' She nudged them into Jack's hands.

'Cheers,' he muttered. 'Here goes bloody nothing.'

Jack closed his eyes and knelt in front of Treadwell's burial spot, raising the coffin nail and the hemlock hammer. 'Algernon Treadwell!' he commanded. 'I call you forth to face me. Arise, spirit!' He hit the nail. 'Rise!' Again and again the hammer fell, driving the nail into the earth to the hilt.

Outside the shield hex, the sorcerers regained their feet but they simply stood, watching, burning witchfire the only sign of life.

'Jack…' Pete touched his shoulder. The expectancy of the sorcerers, their smiles, sent a chill stronger than any magic through her.

'Treadwell!' Jack shouted again. 'Come on, you bastard! Come here and meet me!'

With a tiny sigh, a point of silver light blossomed, like a pinpoint into another world. Petty and theatrical as always, Jack Winter.

'No,' Jack replied as Treadwell coalesced. 'No, this time I'm just sending you back. Nothing petty about it.'

Treadwell's hollow silver eyes fastened on Pete. Your mage should learn to mind his hexes. As I am challenged, so I begin.

The spirit exhaled Latin under his breath, and Jack grabbed his head, teeth grinding. The shield hex wavered and went out, and two sorcerers jumped in to pull Pete away from Jack, who went to his knees.

Treadwell raised Jack's chin, one long-taloned ice finger digging a bead of blood out of Jack's skin. So easy. So very disappointing.

'Jack…' Pete flung herself against her captors. 'Jack!'

'Kill me, if you will,' Jack growled. His eyes were blue fire, no white or iris left. 'But believe that I'll pull you right down into the bleak city with me, you hollowed-out misty wanker.'

I believe, but you are so very wrong about me, Jack. Your death is not my desire. Contrary to all presuppositions, you have made yourself useful.

'The fuck are you on about?' Jack demanded.

Your mind is corrupted and your talents are weak and fleeting, ensnared by too many bargains, Treadwell hissed. But your body— your body will do admirably.

For the first time that Pete had seen, Jack faltered and looked utterly displaced.

'What the fuck are you on about?' he managed. 'You dead never make any bloody sense.'

It was a simple thing, Winter…to draw you out, and to draw you to me. All it took was a stroke to your pride, to give you a chance to best me. And you appeared, you and your form, mine for the taking.

'The bansidhe. The Arkanum,' Pete whispered. Treadwell froze the air around him, and her cheeks and fingers were numb.

Lures, Treadwell agreed. The correct ones, it appears. Not enough to stop the crow-mage, but enough wind to change his flight.

'You think I don't have a plan?' Jack snarled at him. 'That I'd just rush in any door you opened?'

I think you cannot resist the chance to prove what a wicked sort of man you are, Treadwell said. And I do not think that you have any more plan now than you did when I killed you the first time.

Treadwell laughed, a steam hiss across the surface of Pete's mind, and at his gesture one of the sorcerers stepped in behind Jack and drove a long knife into his kidneys.

Rebirth is painful, of course, Treadwell murmured. Transformation is by definition an agony of the soul. But rest assured, crow-mage, I've only brought