Street Magic

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You are too late, Treadwell whispered, already beginning to thin around the edges as Jack began to strengthen, stop choking, and stand upright. Helpless little thing. How I pity you.

The cemetery scene washed out, the ink of nightmares running off the page, and Pete felt the cord, frayed down to a few strands, pull her backward and away. She reached for Jack, tried desperately to stay, but he stood tall now, Treadwell's magic in him.

'I'm sorry…' Pete called. 'I'm sorry…'

And she woke. The pain from the knife wound was incendiary, blade still lodged in her stomach. She pressed down on the cut and pulled the knife out, wincing as a dribble of dark red-black blood came with it. Pain was good, Pete reminded herself. Pain means you are not in shock, that you have a chance to stand up and walk away. Still, she retched from dizziness as she tried to sit up, and fell again, body shrieking alarm.

Beside her, Jack stirred and then opened his eyes, sucking in air as if he'd forgotten how. His eyes were gray and ringed, shined like two-pound coins, and the smile that split his face was cruel as a straight razor.

'Treadwell,' Pete said, her voice thickened with shock.

'My stars,' said Treadwell softly, through Jack's lips. The voice was Jack's, but also not Jack's, the accent lilting into something musical and antiquated instead of a Manchester drawl, timbre scaling downward into menace. 'If someone had told me what abominable condition the crow-mage had left himself in, I would have attempted this with another candidate entirely.'

He blinked and looked all around, eyes widening. 'I say, who are these people?'

Pete saw no one except the few sorcerers who had remained, al! watching anxiously just out of arm's easy reach. 'Master… ?' one said hesitantly. 'Master Treadwell, is there anything you need?'

Treadwell groaned and pressed a hand against Jack's wound, slicking his palm with blood. 'A surgeon, you fool. Fetch me a surgeon before I pass through the bleak gates a second time!' He shook his head, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of Jack's hand. 'Who are these silent, staring imbeciles? Why are they permitted to bear witness?'

Pete pushed harder against her wound and spoke. 'You didn't know? About Jack's sight, I mean.'

Treadwell turned on her with a hiss, his eyes flaring silver. 'What do you speak of…' And then he cried out and threw his hands over his eyes, stumbling away from Pete. 'Treachery! What are you, woman?'

'You see me,' Pete repeated the words of the child in Jack's nightmare, of Bridget and Patrick and Diana. 'You know what I am, Treadwell.'

Treadwell gasped, and pulled himself straight, staring at her with one hand shading his eyes. 'A speaker for the old ones. Of course. How else would Winter have bested me?'

'You think about that for a minute, Algy.' Pete tossed her head with a carelessness she did not feel, one that sent rolling breakers of nausea all through her. 'You can have Jack—you do have Jack, and his talents. You can have his sight and his body that's probably going to give out on you in another ten or fifteen years—you didn't know back in the old days what long-term heroin abuse will do to a person.' She got to one knee, putting all her weight on a headstone—steady, Pete—and even though unconsciousness seemed like a blessed port she stood, and faced Treadwell.

'His sight almost drove him mad, and that was with a lifetime of practice, of years and years and bloody decades to try to control what he sees. With you coming into it all at once, Treadwell…' She managed to shake her head. 'It doesn't look sunny for you, mate.'

'I have seen the dead!' Treadwell bellowed. 'I know what phantoms may appear! I am not frightened by death!'

'No, 'course not,' Pete said. 'That's why you tried so bloody hard to cheat it. You're a terrible liar, Treadwell. You see the shades even now, all around us, and you can't shut them off. Nothing shuts them off. Jack used the needle every day for twelve years and even that didn't completely take the sight away. So you're welcome to it—sit there in your rotting body and be reminded every second of what's waiting for you when it ends.'

Treadwell's eyes narrowed and he stepped toward Pete, obvious from the set of his shoulders that he thought he frightened her. 'A woman who talks as much as you is surely bargaining, Weir. What do you propose for me?'

This was the place she should have come the first time, Pete thought. The last dozen years were a borrowed echo, a desire not to see the true road to her death.

'Me,' she said, her voice coming out a whisper. 'Use me, Treadwell. Give Jack back the time he has left and take me. I'm strong. I have power.' Admitting it nearly broke her, a final dismantlement of the careful construct she'd placed around her mind after the first ritual. 'I have all the power you'll ever need, Treadwell. You can shape me any way you like. Take me.'

Treadwell considered for only a second, his gaze gleaming with a hunger that was nearly palpable. 'I accept.'

'Master…' the sorcerer started. Treadwell turned on him.

'I am your master now! Keep silent!' The sorcerer cowered. Treadwell's eyes rolled back in his head and he exhaled, silver smoke running out of Jack's mouth and nose and silver tears coursing down his cheeks. It crossed the small space between them, unbelievably cold, it should be killing her, something this cold. Pete's lungs seized as crystalline chill spread across her skin, her face, and she felt Treadwell all through her, a malignant reptile mind, power and ice.

Dimly, she watched Jack shake himself awake, take in the scene, grab his hair in anguish as Treadwell's soul flowed through her, freezing and killing her. It's all right, Pete thought, wishing she could speak.

Treadwell laughed inside her mind, icicles growing over and around her few shreds of precious consciousness, and Pete stopped fighting.

I am a conduit, she whispered. I am a shaper of magic. Treadwell cried out as their power touched and sparked.

The pain ceased and Pete had the giddy feeling of standing on a precipice, toes hanging into open space. Behind her, the freezing encroachment of Treadwell traveled ever forward, and in front was something vast and deep.

Take my power, Pete told Treadwell. Take it into yourself and rid me of it. I do not want this. I never wanted to be this. Take it, take it, take it…

She touched the void in front of her, felt it flood through her being, painless but so vast it was as if all the pieces of her had blown away. She had ceased to be Petunia Caldecott, had joined into the ancient mystery of what came after life, and what had come before. The power formed and shaped and bowed and when Pete opened her eyes, she saw the shrouded man standing before her.

'This is yours,' he said, and held out his hand, hot and slick with blood. Pete looked into his face for the first time, a young face, a human face, streaked with dirt and old scars on top of his chieftain's armor, washed clean of the blood of battle.

'This is no one else's,' the shrouded man said, and over his shoulder Pete discerned a thousand shadows, ravens all, and below them a tall woman with eyes like marbles and hair made from feathers who touched the shrouded man's shoulder and gibbered in his ear. A single tear worked down his cheek, and he reached out and grabbed Pete's hand, uncurling her fingers to expose her frozen blue palm. 'You must take it now, at last.'

Into her hand, Pete let him drop the small beating bird's heart, and then the magic took away her vision and she couldn't see the shrouded man or the raven woman anymore. From the heart, warmth spread and just for a moment Pete felt right and at home here, on the edge of everything.

Then Treadwell's freezing talons clamped down around her neck, the completion of the circuit, and he took all the magic from her, drew it into himself with a cry of ecstasy as Pete felt herself husking away.

He pulled back, or tried to, and a heat rose around them, all of Treadwell's icy power going to steam. You… you tricked me! Treadwell howled.

'I didn't,' Pete told him softly. She felt their two talents rubbing ragged edges against each other, Treadwell's fraying as he wailed. 'But I will die to keep you from coming back.'

The magic rushed into him, more and more, filling up the reservoirs, and Pete clamped her own hand around Treadwell's skeletal one, refusing to break their connection.

You are mine! Treadwell shouted. Mine, and I will live… I will live…

The magic did not burn Pete, but filled her, lit every corner of her, burned down into her darkest core, where all her knotted fears lay. She saw Treadwell for what he was, a shattered, tattered echo of the sorcerer he'd once been, stretched thin between too many worlds. She saw the magic for hers, and how it could not be anyone else's.

'Go back,' Pete commanded, locking her grip around his wrist, watching the magic burn him from the inside, turning his shadow to ash. 'You are dead, and you belong with the dead. Go back, Algernon Treadwell, and trouble the living no more.'

Treadwell screamed defiance, but even as he howled he was pulled backward, away from Pete. The raven woman seized him, raked her talons through Treadwell, stared him in the face.

'Your circle has closed, Algernon. So it must be for us all.'

He tried to scream, but the ravens fell on Treadwell, lifted him up and took away his eyes and his tongue and carried him through the bleak gates of iron and sorrow, the signpost to Purgatory atop their spires.

I will find another. Treadwell sighed, the last tremor of his existence in the Black. I will find another who lives for power and cares not, and then I will come to claim you, Weir.

'Piss off, wanker,' Pete told him. 'I'm not afraid of you.'

Treadwell's mouth gaped wide in wordless agony and then the raven woman cawed and the gates slammed shut with a clang that sent blackness into Pete's bones. The magic faded, the vision along with it, and she felt damp grass under her knees and palms, night dew soaking her trousers and cuffs.

Jack grabbed her, held her, looked into her eyes. 'Pete. Oh, bloody hell, Pete, you're all right?'

'Yes.' Pete tested her voice, found it raspy, as though she'd been out in a cold day for too long. 'I mean, no. Bloody hell, Jack, I'm stabbed.' She hacked out a cough and saw a few droplets of blood fly forth to land on the wilted grass. 'Oh… that's not very good…'

'Come on.' Jack helped her up as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour. 'Got to get you to a hospital. And me, too—sodding sorcerers jabbed me well and good. Probably get lockjaw.'

'He's gone,' Pete murmured. 'Treadwell. Back… back into the bleak gates. I sent him away… to the raven woman, and she took him…'

Jack looked down at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. 'Un-bound exorcism is a nice trick, Petunia. Only met a handful that could manage it without a circle.'

'Treadwell made me mad,' Pete said. 'And don't sodding call me 'Petunia.' Just because… I shared a confidence… doesn't make it a bloody invitation.'

'Glad to see near death hasn't softened you,' Jack said. 'I'd be disappointed if nearly losing your soul to a hungry ghost was all it took.'

The neat visitor's hut came into view a few hundred meters down the path.

'Jack…' Pete ground her feet to a stop, causing them both to stumble. 'I touched magic. I… I used it. What does that mean? What's going to happen?'

Jack wrapped his arm more tightly around her shoulders and didn't answer for too long, time enough to choose what not to say, but Pete didn't care any longer, just cared that he was there, next to her, solid and corporeal and Jack.

'It means just what I thought all along, luv—you're strong. No matter what any toerag psychiatrist says, you've got a talent. And a temper.'

'I tried so hard not to…' Pete started to cry, and choked it back with a breath that made her hack more blood, in turn.

'Pete.' Jack held her, rocked her. 'It doesn't mean the end of your life, luv. May seem that way, but you'll still pay your electric and go to work and eat greasy takeaway when you're too tired to