Street Magic Part 11

"He's doing a hitch in Pentonville," Ms. Smythe said, her eyes fierce. "And we're still married, I suppose."

Pete set down the stuffed penguin that sat on the center of Margaret's bed. The penguin was wearing a black mesh s.h.i.+rt and his feather ruff was purple. "What did he go in for?"

"That has nothing to do with this," Ms. Smythe snapped. "My husband never wanted the b.l.o.o.d.y kid in the first place."

Pete crossed the distance between them and bored into the other woman until she dropped her eyes to the ratty pilled carpet under her bare feet. "Your daughter is gone gone, Ms. Smythe. She has been stolen from you without a trace of anyone coming in or leaving. She's vanished, and if I don't find her, she is going to suffer horribly, just like the three other children. You have five days, starting from last night. That's how long& he& keeps them." She stopped herself from using it it just in time. "Then they're blinded, and muted, and returned to you just a husk." just in time. "Then they're blinded, and muted, and returned to you just a husk."

Ms. Smythe swallowed a sob, her chin tucked to her chest. Pete said, very softly, "Is that what you want?"

"G.o.d help me," Ms. Smythe whispered. "I always knew something would happen to that child. She's& she's not all right, you know."

"She was abused?" Pete wondered if that might be the link between all of the children, some psychic thread that attracted hungry ent.i.ties.

"No!" Ms. Smythe rounded fiercely on Pete. "I never put up with anything of the sort under my roofyou check, with your smug London smirk you're giving me. I had one of my boyfriends put away for having that very idea, last year. It's in the records. You check check."

"Fine, fine. I believe you, ma'am." Pete put her hands out. "What, then? What's wrong with your daughter?"

"Who said anything was b.l.o.o.d.y wrong?" Ms. Smythe cried helplessly, then vanished down the stairs before anything else could be said. Pete smelled the tang of cheap f.a.gs and more whisky and heard the telly volume go back up.

"Crazy bint," she muttered. Ms. Smythe hadn't ejected her from the house, though, so Pete went back into Margaret's bedroom and looked out the window, down into a tiny overgrown garden that looked like a th.o.r.n.y green maw, a Fae place that would swallow little children. In front of her face, a ghost of a spiderweb swayed in the air. The spider had long since vacated.

Behind Pete, in the reflection of the gla.s.s, something on the far wall s.h.i.+mmered and twisted under her eyes, and made the center point of her forehead twinge like the symbol Jack had drawn in blood when the shade appeared.

Pete touched the spot on the wall and found it slightly warm, and took out her penknife and sc.r.a.ped a little bit of the paint away. Oily black stuff flaked onto her shoes, roofing tar or old. motor oil. "Ms. Smythe!" Pete shouted in a tone that brooked no argument. "I need to speak with you for a moment longer!"

She took her pocketlight and shone it at an oblique angle to the wall, and the shape under the paint jumped into sharp relief. It didn't hurt, like the things Jack painted in blood& it was solid, like pressing your forehead against a cool iron bar on a warm day.

Ms. Smythe appeared with a snuffling and a cloud of smoke. "What is it now?"

"You painted over something here," said Pete, pointing to the spot she'd sc.r.a.ped off. "Who did this?" She'd take a rag of paint thinner to the wall herself, if it would lead to whatever was taking children. She'd go wrestle Jack out of whatever gutter he was napping in and shove it in his face until he'd be forced to give her help.

"Margaret did it."

Pete froze, felt the p.r.i.c.kles over the backs of her hands and the underside of the instincts that she tried to ignore, the electric fence that sparked to life when she got too close to things that were malignant. "Why on earth?"

"She were a silly child, Inspector. You have to understand that. Always seeing things where there weren't any. She said it was to keep them out."

Pete looked at the wall. The lumpy sign didn't feel wrong wrong, it was just overwhelmingly present, on a plane that wasn't the three dimensions Pete's mind was accustomed to. She followed the line of sight, to the narrow leaded window overlooking the garden, replete with cobwebs and dead oak leaves. "Keep who out, Ms. Smythe? Margaret thought someone was trying to hurt her?"

"Something," Ms. Smythe muttered. "But you have to understand, she were just given to fancies& too many books, or not enough friends, and I fully blame myself for that part of it; if she were a normal little girl she wouldn't do those things."

"Ms. Smythe&" Pete rubbed at her forehead. It was starting to throb dully, and it had nothing to do with the magic-thick air of the bedroom. "Who? Who or what was your daughter afraid of?"

"She said&" Ms. Smythe took a large breath and let it out in a rush. "She said it were to keep the fairies out. The garden folk that lived down below. She said they whispered to her and kept her awake because she was bright and they were twilighther words, not mine, Inspectorand they wanted to take her away." Margaret's mother's eyes glimmered and Pete saw that she'd been wrong, that real grief and desperation were hovering underneath the booze and the television interviews. Things had been wrong in the Smythes' world long before Margaret was taken. "If only she'd been a normal little girl&"

"It's all right, Ms. Smythe," said Pete, patting the taller woman on the shoulder. "Margaret has time yet, if we're dealing with the same individual."

"She always read booksthick grown-up books, with more of those symbols in them," said Ms. Smythe. "She'll be terrible bored if they're not treating her well and giving her a bit of telly and something to read."

"I'll find your daughter," said Pete with a conviction she neither felt nor believed. Ms. Smythe just shook her head and slumped slowly downstairs, and Pete followed after she shutter eyes to block the feedback from the sign on the wall out of her mind.

Chapter Twenty-three

After she finished in Bromley, Pete once again drove through the rain-grayed streets of Southwark, searching every bowed face for Jack's familiar planar cheekbones and burning glacial eyes.

She ended up in front of the rotting row house where she'd found him and realized he wasn't a phantom, a remnant of nightmare given flesh. Something tapped on her window and Pete's heart leaped along with her body. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," she muttered, rotating the handle to roll the gla.s.s down. The youth in the jacket leaned into her face, breathing out sausages and sour mash whisky.

"You on a bust?"

"You think I'd tell you?" Pete arched an eyebrow. He grinned wider.

"Jack's your mate. He told me, you came around, that he was in the Four Hors.e.m.e.n 'round the corner."

"Thank you," said Pete, more to get him and his sausage stink away than anything. She didn't want to see Jack nodding in the back booth of some cut-rate goth club. She didn't want to see the fresh needle marks. But she set the parking brake and locked the Mini and walked down the damp bricks to the small black door of the Four Hors.e.m.e.n.

It wasn't like she could do anything else. Jack drew you in, inexorably, like the orbit of a dying star. And besides, she owed him a smack for running off.

The pubit was a pub, not a club or a dodgy barwas dark and smelled like damp rot with an overtone of grease baked onto every surface. Jack's bleached head flashed under the half-dark fluorescent tube lights, dipping toward a gla.s.s. A bird's bill and a bird's body in the shadows, dark-feathered wings and gleaming eyes.

"Another girl is missing," said Pete without preamble when she reached his table. Jack raised his head, red-shot eyes and a blurry smile swimming into view.

"Knew you'd come looking for me."

Pete took the gla.s.s out of his hand, the gesture feeling as if it were carved in granite. "You're drunk."

"Very good, Inspector." He grabbed a green bottle with a black label and swigged directly. "I am p.i.s.sed, in body and spirit, and I will continue to crawl inside this whisky bottle until that bloke in the corner with the slit throat shuts up about his mother."

Pete glanced over her shoulder. The corner booth was empty. "You're not fixing."

"Aren't we the bright penny," Jack slurred, taking another drink. Pete grabbed him by the arm, but he slipped it and batted at her. "No, Inspector, this time we're not making any clever deals. No threats and no banter. You shot your bolt with me and while in a moment of insanity I may have asked for your help, I now fully agree that I am worthless to the world at large. You've put me in my place, right and proper."

Pete grabbed Jack's bottle and upended it, letting the whisky flow out into his lap. He yelped and jumped up, the amber stain spreading like a gut shot. "Stop sodding crying," Pete told him. "Another girl is missing."

"So?" Jack muttered, slumping squis.h.i.+ly back into his seat. Pete waved at the lurking publican.

"Coffee. Black and hot as you can make it. So, Jack, she was like you. Or at least had the potential to be."

As if she'd dropped him in a porcelain tub of ice, the unfocused sorrow flowed out of Jack's face and the edge, sharp as a flick-knife, returned. "Are you sure?"

"I wouldn't be in this b.l.o.o.d.y place if I wasn't," Pete said. "What in b.u.g.g.e.r-all is that smell smell?"

"It's kidney pie every lunch hour. Specialty of the house," Jack said. "The girl. How old?"

"Ten," said Pete. "Her name is Margaret"

Jack cut the air with a finger. "I don't care what her name is." The publican slammed down a dingy cup of coffee in a saucer with sugar and cream packets tottering at his elbow. Jack swigged it and made a face. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Could strip paint off your motor, that. What's really important is the significant."

"What's a significant?" Pete said.

"Novices usually have something around them, an animal or a piece of the earth, a physical piece of the magic that they can cling to. Anything in the room, feathers or odd rocks or a pet poisonous spider?"

Pete closed her eyes and rotated slowly through Margaret's room, the pink bedspread worn thin, the secondhand desk. The little girl's mobile over the bed, gently drifting make-believe constellations that repeated in paint on the ceiling.

"Stars," she said. "A star. They were on everything. Pink, mostly, if that makes a difference."

Jack swore into his coffee. "What kind of star?"

"Five-pointed," said Pete. "Just a usual star."

"Not usual," said Jack. "The star is the witch, a white pract.i.tioner and a channel for pure energy. A b.l.o.o.d.y open line to the white side of the next world."

"I'm not going to like where this is going," Pete stated. Already she felt it, the dark undertow of magic against her skin. The thing that blinded children, that ate their memories and their life force, laughed at her quietly from the corner of her dream crypt. "The girl was drawing symbols on her walls. She said Fae were after her."

Jack lifted a shoulder. "Probably are, but this thing isn't a Fae. They have their rules and their ceremonies and their love of s.h.i.+ne and innocence, but what's taken the girl isn't Fae, and we've got bigger problems now than those little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. If whatever is out there starts feeding on Megan"

"Margaret."

"b.l.o.o.d.y whatever. It will gain energy like there's no next minute. It will infuse itself with pure magic until it's bright as a dwarf star and then I won't be able to do f.u.c.k-all with an exorcism, and we're all b.u.g.g.e.red."

"Mosswood told you how to find this thing," said Pete. She raised her index finger when Jack opened his mouth to object. "I know know that you can find it, so why aren't we looking right that you can find it, so why aren't we looking right now now? Before Margaret ends up blind and spiritless?"

"It's not that simple," Jack grumbled.

"Oh, no," said Pete, jerking the whisky bottle away as Jack went for it again. "What happened to 'Poor me, the Robert Smith Fan Club doesn't respect me, now I've to prove what a big strong mage I am?'"

Jack glared at her, pursing his lips when she set the whisky bottle out of reach. Finally he said, "Anyone ever tell you you're a stubborn little bit?"

"You," said Pete. "And I knew it already. Come on, then." She took Jack by the elbow and helped him out of his chair. He stumbled against her and Pete snaked an arm under his. "Don't you dare try to get a feel."

"I don't even like you, remember?" said Jack. Pete grumbled under her breath as they came out of the tavern into dim silver sunlight.

"Let's walk for a bit," said Jack when she pointed them toward the Mini. "Clear me head."

Pete nodded. Jack turned them to the river, the salty, laden air seeming to soothe him. He still leaned heavily on Pete and she let the silence stretch, allowing herself to think for a few footsteps rung on brick that there were no missing children, no ghosts. Just her, and Jack, together in a day full of mist.

"This isn't going to be easy, you know," Jack said. His hand on Pete's shoulder tightened for a pulse beat, and she looked up at him. Jack caught her eye and curled his mouth in a not-quite smile. He looked to Pete as if he were smiling at a story of a grimly ironic death.

"Mosswood said all we needed was the Trifold Focus thing," said Pete. She didn't like the smile. It shot straight to the same black place where the daylight echoes of her nightmares resided. Her skin chilled where it touched Jack, like she'd brushed the hide of something swampy and old.

"Mosswood says a lot of things, but in all the years I've known him, I've never heard the whole truth," said Jack. "The Trifold Focus is a scrying tool, not a magic wand."

"You use magic wands?"

"Don't be a smarta.r.s.e," Jack said. "The fastest way to find a ghost is to ask something that traffics in them."

"Something?" Pete demanded.

"A mage on his own could spend years sorting through all the pathetic bits of spirit left behind from suicide and traffic accidents and b.u.g.g.e.r knows what else," said Jack. He stopped at the rust-bubbled iron railing at the edge of the Thames, the slimy bricks breathing sea smell over the boiling brown water. "Mosswood's given me a direct line."

"Will you stop being cryptic?" said Pete. She put her hands on Jack's shoulders and said, "Tell me what I have to do to save Margaret Smythe. Whatever it is. I'll do it."

Jack shook his head, staring at the water. "You call in a favor, Pete. You ask what's already on the other side, the things that crawl in the tunnels between the veils. You call up a demon and cut a deal."

Pete's carefully practiced expressionlessness, the mask she wore just like Jack wore his devilish smiles, slipped then. She felt her lips part and knew the disbelief had started in her eyes. "You did say demon. We're talking Faust Faust. 'The Devil and Daniel Webster,' Dorian b.l.o.o.d.y Gray&"

"The Devil," said Jack. "The Devil doesn't exist, Pete. He's the fear in our reptile brains. Demons Demons exist. The Tri-fold Focus is used to call them and compel them into your will." exist. The Tri-fold Focus is used to call them and compel them into your will."

Pete pressed a hand to her forehead and turned her back on Jack. The Thames stirred gently, black ripples s.h.i.+vering like raven feathers.

"I can't let you do this," she said finally. "There's got to be another way."

"No," said Jack. "And if you really believed there was, you'd be able to look me in the eye." He walked over to her, swaying just a little. The air around Pete crackled. "Was a time I did this sort of thing often," said Jack quietly.

"Was there a time when you asked me to help you?" Pete whispered. Jack sucked in a breath, then sighed and sat down on the curb. Pete watched him light a Parliament and draw deep. Blue smoke drifted out of his nose to mingle with the haze above the river.

"Not that time," said Jack. "Or any other. Not demons. Never you."

Pete watched him sit, hunched, smoking, his platinum spikes flattened on one side from where he'd slept. She stood the same distance from Jack now that she'd stood from him across the circle in the tomb. Nothing flowed over her skin now. The ripples underneath her thoughts were quiet. Jack hadn't lied to her.

Pete went and sat down next to him, pulling out her own pack of f.a.gs. "All right, then," she said, lighting hers off the end of Jack's. "How does one call a demon?"

PART TWO

The Black

"It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?"

Bram Stoker, Dracula Dracula