Street Magic

cook supper. You're not cursed. You've got magic, and people will try to abuse it, but you're in control of it. You're holding it in your hands.'

Pete swallowed and managed to nod. 'I suppose I am.'

Jack lifted her chin and looked in her eyes. 'Oi. You believe me, don't you?'

Pete started walking again, arm around Jack's waist. She let herself lean on him, and he stumbled a bit so she let him lean on her.

'Of course I do.'

EPILOGUE The Streets

'The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?'

—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

Chapter Forty-six

The sky spat rain as winter took hold, and Pete crouched inside her slicker, trying to hoist her umbrella over Jack's much higher head while still gaining the benefit of coverage.

'Give it up, luv,' he said, taking it from her and handing it to a hobo nodding near a tube vent.

'I'm cold,' Pete protested, her teeth chattering. 'If I catch pneumonia and die I'll rattle around your flat for the rest of your life, throwing vases across the room and making the telly explode.'

'First of all,' Jack said, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, 'that's a poltergeist. You'd be a shade. Second of all, I don't own a telly.'

'That bit about me dying didn't faze you at all, eh?' Pete asked. Jack shrugged.

'You haven't yet, luv.'

Pete checked her wristwatch. 'I should go. I have my last postsurgery checkup in an hour.'

'Going to have a nice Frankenstein scar, are you?' Jack asked.

Pete unbuttoned her slicker and pulled up her jumper to show the slightly jagged line of stitches on her stomach, like an elongated Z. Jack winced. 'You stuck yourself a good one, didn't you?'

'I had to be sure I'd make it over to you,' Pete said. 'I don't think a light scratch would have exactly done it.'

'I should get you a taxi,' Jack said, stepping to the curb. Pete pulled him back.

'I'll manage on the tube—I've made it a whole week without getting so dizzy I fall over.'

They paused at the entrance to the Metropolitan line. Finally Pete said, 'It's all right. I know you don't like hospitals.' She didn't mention that thanks to her injury-fueled journey into Jack's nightmares, she knew exactly why he didn't care for them.

'Meet you at the Mayfair afterward.' The Mayfair Arms was the pub around the corner from Pete's doctor's surgery. She nodded.

'We'll have a bite of supper. Jack, there's something I need to ask you, now that things have settled…'

Jack's eyes unfocused and he looked past her, down the stairs of the tube. 'Oh, bugger all…'

Pete was spun around and into a portly gentleman wielding a briefcase as Jack shoved past her and took the stairs into the tube two at a time. Pete blinked the rain out of her eyes. 'Bloody hell. Sorry. Sorry,' she apologized to the man.

'Those louts should be arrested,' the man huffed. Pete took off after Jack as quickly as her healing incision would allow. She'd been at her desk in MIT ever since she'd been released from the hospital three weeks ago, and it was driving her mad. Newell refused to tell her when she might be back on duty as an active inspector. Her only comfort was that he seemed to believe her story of following the kidnap suspects to Highgate and getting stabbed in the ensuing struggle. Ollie, bless him, had covered his end and made no mention of Jack in his reports.

'Jack!' she shouted over the rumble of late-afternoon commuters packing the station. His blond head bobbed behind a pillar, headed for the tracks.

Pete caught up with him just as his feet crossed the safety line and his arms reached out in a scooping motion, to pull an invisible phantom back from the spitting rails.

The shriek of the train's horn blinded Pete to everything else, and she snatched Jack by the collar of his coat and deliberately fell backward, praying her weight would be enough to hold him.

The train blew hot dragon's breath in her face as the brakes locked and it squealed to a stop. The sound mingled with a few screams from waiting passengers who had witnessed Jack's attempted swan dive.

'It's fine!' Pete shouted above the echoes of the train. She dug out her warrant card and flashed it to the four corners, keeping one knee firmly planted on Jack's arm as he struggled under her. 'Metropolitan Police. I have the situation under control.'

Missing a train was worse than a man almost landing on the tracks to most of the commuters around Pete, and they moved on, whispering among themselves.

'The girl… she went right over the edge… she burned up on the rails…' Jack's eyes were mostly white, and he twitched restlessly as if in a fever dream.

'What girl?' Pete demanded. 'Jack, there was nobody going over the edge but you.'

He blinked at her, and then sagged. 'Fucking hell, Pete, I'm sorry.'

Pete slumped when she realized that Jack had not, in fact, gone any madder than he already was. Her knife wound hurt a great deal from the fall. 'Your sight.'

He nodded, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. They were their natural color when he took his hands away. 'I saw her clear as day. Pretty little blond thing, couldn't have been more than fifteen. She went down those steps with such purpose… I knew what she was about, just had to be in time to stop her…'

Pete got to her feet with some difficulty and offered Jack an arm. He took it, and kept leaning on her. 'I can't do this, Pete. I maintained while we were trying to find Treadwell but I can't anymore. I'm very sorry.'

Hearing Jack speak in a defeated tone wasn't normal—it was tilt-the-sun-the-wrong-way odd, in fact. Pete looked up at him. 'No, Jack.'

'You should go on to your appointment,' he said. 'I'm going to take care of this problem. I'll be at home if you're looking for me.' He grinned without humor. 'Though I don't suppose you would.'

'If you go get a fix,' Pete said. 'Enjoy it. It will be the last time.'

Jack laughed, not a pleasant sound, knife-edged with desperation. 'Going to chain me up in your cellar and take my demons out, Pete?'

'No,' Pete said. 'You and I are going to do what you should have done at the start of all this, and find a way to hold back your sight without sticking death up your arm twice a day.'

'Can't be done,' said Jack. He shook his head, speaking more, but Pete's train pulled into the station and drowned him out. She inserted herself into the line of boarding passengers, looking back at Jack as he walked away.

'Use a clean sharp!' she shouted after him, drawing any number of odd looks.

'Can't be done, Petunia!' he yelled again, without looking at her. 'You can't ride in on the white steed and pull me back from the dragon's jaws!'

Pete glared at the back of Jack's head as the train moved out of the station. 'Just watch me.'

Chapter Forty-seven

It was nearly eight by the time Pete arrived at Jack's flat, long dark. Her wound was pleasantly numb after the shot of painkillers Dr. Abouhd had given her, clucking over the recent inflammation.

She tried the door and found it unlocked, as usual. The flat was dark and still except for the rotten ice-cold spittle of rain brushing against the high windows.

'Jack?' Pete said softly, fearing the worst. He grunted and turned on a low lamp with a red shade, a new addition since the last time she'd been. He had a new, marginally less tatty sofa with lion's feet, and a matching chair as well. 'Been shopping?' It was the most inoffensive thing Pete could think to say.

Jack grunted again. 'Downstairs neighbor died. Mrs. Ramamurthy. Nicked them before her ruddy son and his ruddy MP3 player blaring ruddy techno music could sell it off.' His eyes were hooded and dreamy, and his voice had that underwater quality of deep sleep.

'How long ago did you take the hit?' Pete asked.

'Not long…' Jack murmured. 'Forgot how bloody sweet it tastes.'

'Then you'll have a good memory to tide you through yet another long and painful withdrawal,' Pete said pleasantly. Jack moaned.

'Sodding sadist.'

'And enjoying every minute of it, make no mistake,' Pete said. She patted his leg. 'I'll put the kettle on and get started.'

'With what?' Jack demanded, throwing an arm dramatically over his eyes as Pete switched on the wall sconces.

'Jack, you have eight billion bloody books in this place—one of them has got to have something to help hold back the sight.'

'You think I haven't checked?' Jack demanded. His petulance was a relief, much closer to normal.

'I think that I am going to check to satisfy myself,' Pete said. 'And that you are going to help me.'

Jack moaned and sank back on the sofa again.

Pete put the kettle on and went to the wall of books. They were in no discernable order she could see, the volumes in languages she could read few and far between. Wasn't this a brilliant bloody idea?

'Have you thought about tattooing?' she said a good time later, after Jack was sitting upright and had poured three mugs of hot tea and a glass of whisky into himself.

Jack shrugged. 'Got a few. Tattoos protect you from the physical, though, hexes and the like. The sight is a doorway between this land and the land of the dead.'