Street Magic Part 14

Hrathetoth blinked his lanternlike eyes at Pete. "Who is she? She is pretty. Pretty and dark, like a starless sky, or the inside of a rhinoceros."

"You'll forgive him," said Jack as Hrathetoth decimated the packet and began licking up catsup. "Demons don't really grasp the concept of metaphor and simile."

"Is she going to heeeelp you?" Hrathetoth grinned widely, showing too many rows of spiked needle teeth. "Because you know you can't save yourself, crow-mage, and"

He let out a gurgle as Jack's hand flashed out and wrapped around Hrathetoth's throat. "Listen here, you piece of deception given form, I'm not in the mood. I need the Tri-fold Focus and I need it now, so b.l.o.o.d.y go get it."

"Can't be done!" Hrathetoth squeaked. "Grinchley wards his house against intruders! Strong wards, with nasty mean teeth."

"Then find a way around them," Jack growled, and the witchfire flared to life in his eyes. His grip on Hrathetoth started to steam and the demon squealed in pain. Pete rapidly came and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Jack, maybe he's telling the truth."

"He's a b.l.o.o.d.y demon, Pete. They don't understand truthjust how much flesh they can take off your hide in exchange for the favor." He shook the imp. "Isn't that right, Hrathetoth?"

"Yes& yes&" Hrathetoth agreed. "Villainy and deceit down all the days! But Grinchley is guarded, crow-mage, by things bigger and hungrier than me and I can't change it!"

Jack jerked Hrathetoth closer to the edge of the chalk. "I told you to f.u.c.king quit with the 'crow-mage'!"

"No!" Hrathetoth screamed. "Don't break it!" Pieces of his fuzzy black fur dropped off and burned away as they touched the chalk.

"Afraid of dying? Then get me the Focus!" Jack bellowed. "I command command it!" it!"

"If you break the ring, not only will it be me, but the pretty darkling, too!" Hrathetoth rasped. "She did not cast it. She is not protected from what breaks through."

Jack looked back at Pete like he'd just remembered she was still about. "So she isn't," he said after a long moment. He breathed in, nostrils flaring, and the witchfire went out. "All right, you fuzzy little b.u.g.g.e.r, you got me on a technicality. But don't think we won't be speaking again." He let go of the imp and said in a bored tone, "I release you, return no more until you are called."

Hrathetoth vanished with a pop of palpable relief. Jack rubbed his hands over his face and got to his feet. "Sodding h.e.l.lsp.a.w.n."

"So there's no chance, then," Pete said. "This Grinchley has the Trifold Focus and the next time I see Margaret, she'll be like the others."

"The girl will be dead dead," said Jack. "The beastie will suck her dry. The other children, there wasn't much there except innocence and maybe a few echoes of talent from some great-great-ancestor to feed on. Molly"

"Margaret," said Pete.

"Whatever. She's one of us."

"Us." Pete arched an eyebrow. Jack waved a hand.

"I mean like me. With her significant, she's likely a witchif she were touching dark magic she'd be skinning cats and setting other children's jumpers on fire."

"There's a difference." Pete was honestly surprised. "'Mage' and 'sorcerer' not just a semantic thing?"

" 'Course there's a difference," Jack snorted. "Different as punk and disco."

Pete started to say how that was a pretty poor a.n.a.logy, but Jack held up a hand. "Simply: Witches work with light energy. Sorcerers work with nightmares."

"And mages?" asked Pete.

"Mages dip in both," said Jack. "We're in the shadows, but not the dark." He shook his shoulders, as though he'd just taken a hit of speed. "Calling Hrathetoth was quite the workout. Energy's still up. Want to see a trick?"

"No," said Pete, feeling her lips twitch. Just for a second, she glimpsed the Jack from a dozen years ago, without the long shadow that lay across him in the present.

"Come on," said Jack, taking her hand. "Humor me a bit. Take your mind off the missing girl."

"Nothing will do that," Pete said from experience. She'd dreamed of victims for months afterwardbattered wives, stolen children, decimated spirits that clung to her, tearing at her hair and hissing all through her unwaking hours. Pete woke screaming so often that Terry had invested in earplugs.

Jack cupped her hand, palm upward, and conjured a spurt of witchfire in his fingers. He blew a breath over it and the fire flared and drifted upward, settling like milkweed into Pete's palm. It turned the shape of a daisy, then a tiny, perfect oak tree, and finally a duck.

Pete bit the inside of her cheeks and looked up into his face. Jack was grinning at her. "How can you be dour when you've got a tiny duck?" he asked.

She laughed, short, but it was the first real laughter that had come since she'd found Jack again. "You're b.l.o.o.d.y weird, Jack Winter."

"I'm that," he said. "Ask anybody." The fire duck snapped its bill and ruffled its wings. Pete held her hand out, watching the witchfire burn, when suddenly the duck blurred and lost cohesion as if acid had been poured over it. The fire began to seep seep, to travel inward, through her skin, lighting it from the inside so the bones of her hand stood out as if she'd been struck by lightning.

A heat like a crematory furnace raced up Pete's arm, into her head and heart, and she screamed before everything exploded behind her eyes and she collapsed, the only sensation the shrieking feedback inside her skull.

The black bird spread its wings before Pete, and she knew this wasn't like the other dream. She was cold, and the spider-legged sensation of being in the wrong world crawled over her.

No longer in the Stygian darkness, she stood on the hilltop of a windswept battlefield, hundreds of bodies inkblots against blood-sodden gra.s.s.

The crawling of magic resolved into a hooded figure with wings and a dark face. The bird cried, the force of the cold and the malevolence in its voice pus.h.i.+ng Pete backward. She found herself pinned by glowing yellow eyes and a woman's red mouth parted to show a raven's beak.

This is not your place. You are unwelcome here.

The black bird's talons closed around her heart and Pete tasted her own blood frozen on her tongue, and in her ears, cawing laughter fell.

"Take it." The shrouded man's tatters whipped in the wind from the black bird's wings, which beat up smoke from the burial fires all around, swirling it faster and faster until Pete could feel herself being swept away, body replaced by the smoke-man and voice by the horrid screech of the black bird.

"Take it," said the shrouded man, thrusting his fist toward Pete. But she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and watched as her own hand dissolved into smoke.

Pete screamed and jerked awake into Jack, who toppled over backward. "f.u.c.king h.e.l.l! You scared the s.h.i.+t out of me, Caldecott!"

Panting, feeling droplets on her skin like she'd been scalded by freezing rain, Pete wrapped her arms around herself. "What& what the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l was that? was that? That That was your parlor trick?" was your parlor trick?"

Jack crouched on his heels, ignoring her sputtering, and took Pete's chin between his thumb and forefinger. "You've got a ghost on you," he breathed. "It's right there, in your eyes."

"I'm& possessed?" Pete pulled away. She was freezing, and Jack's words caused gooseflesh to break out on her arms. "Shouldn't I be screaming, or levitating, or spewing obscene Latin phrases backward?"

"Not a possession," said Jack. "A spirit rider. Like& you've been touched, by someone with blood on then-hand, and they've left fingerprints on you. They follow and watch and whisper in your dreams."

Her breath misted when she exhaled, and Pete s.h.i.+vered. "It's the spirit. The one that's feeding on Margaret?"

"It's a good guess," said Jack. He rubbed a hand over his face. "b.o.l.l.o.c.ks. I should have guessed, with your nightmares& should have b.l.o.o.d.y known."

"Don't blame yourself," said Pete. "/ didn't know they were anything but bad dreams." And she didn't volunteer the other part of the dreamthe shrouded man, and the beating heart, and the advent of the black bird. That was hers, and not Jack's, to know. "Nothing good ever comes from the Black," she murmured.

"This one, this isn't from the Black," Jack said. He patted down his pockets and then conjured a f.a.g. "Coming to you in your dreams, sinking claws into your soul, it's living in the in-between."

Pete rubbed her palms over her arms and felt the heat of friction. "Wherever it's b.l.o.o.d.y from, I wish it hadn't picked me."

"The in-between, the thin s.p.a.ce. The realm between life and death." Jack exhaled a halo. "There's not many living that touch the cold s.p.a.ce, Pete. Be glad it didn't try to pull you in."

"I'm still alive," Pete said. She felt the small sharp-toothed gnawing of the craving for a smoke of her own. "Can't s.n.a.t.c.h my soul out from under me."

"Soul's a tricky thing." Jack grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. "And you can hurt, bleed, and die in the thin s.p.a.ces, Pete, be you flesh, phantom, or something other."

"Just make the dream stop," Pete sighed. "I haven't slept in weeks and I'm becoming distinctly peevish from it."

"FU get something for it," Jack promised. "You'll be all right by yourself for a few hours?"

Pete stood when he did, although the walls of the room pulsed ominously and she was dizzy. "Will you you, Jack? You're not exactly equipped to be running around the city."

He drew back, closing off as if she'd hit him in the mouth. "After everything that's happened in the past days and you still think I'm running off to b.l.o.o.d.y score."

"Jack, it's what you've been doing for a dozen years," said Pete. "I need you to be clean and sharp when we find Margaret, and whatever has her."

"You're a cynical and mistrustful b.i.t.c.h," Jack said, crossing his arms.

"Yeah, and people like you made me that way," Pete snapped. She rubbed her forehead. Staying upright was a task.

"Now I remember why I walked away from you, Calde-cott," Jack said. "This kind of treatment would convince a bloke to stay dead."

"Well, I b.l.o.o.d.y danced a jig on your grave!" Pete shouted, but Jack slamming the door drowned her out.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The flat was silent after Jack left, suffocatingly so. Pete poked in the wardrobe in the bedroom, the kitchen cabinets, and found nothing except dust and damp. "Sod you, Jack," she muttered. He was running off, wasting time, and she was supposed to sit home. Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely.

Leaving the flat unlocked, Pete left via the front door and found herself in a narrow hallway that could have easily hosted gaslight trysts a hundred years ago. A rickety lift with a folding gate lowered her to the street and she walked until she found a bus shelter where she could talk un.o.btrusively. One lesson from Jack's reappearance that tickled her spine: Things didn't need to be near you to be watching you.

Pete dialed her mobile, waded through the voice directory for New Scotland Yard, and waited with her stomach flipping while the extension rang.

"Ollie Heath." Ollie sounded as though he had a mouthful of shepherd's pie.

"Ollie, it's Pete."

"Pete!" he shouted. "Where the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l have you been? Newell is s.h.i.+tting chestnuts!"

"That sounds uncomfortable." Pete punched on speaker-phone and pulled up her mobile mail client. "Look, I'm sending you a name and I want you to e-mail everything you find to my mobile."

"You got a lead?" Ollie said.

"I will," said Pete. "Once I talk to him." She tapped Ol-lie's e-mail into the address bar and sent the message.

"Got it," said Ollie a moment later. "Though Newell'll have my hide for helping you out." He whistled. "Caldecott, what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are you doing messing about with Travis Grinchley?"

Pete drew in a breath. A pointed question and a good one. "He has something I need to move the kidnapping cases. And to find Margaret Smythe," she said.

"Be careful," said Ollie. "People that cross Grinchley end up in baggies. Little ones. For sandwiches."

"Just send me the information when you have it," Pete snapped, "and don't editorialize."

"All right, all right," said Ollie. "What should I tell Newell when he asks me yet again yet again where you've gotten off to?" where you've gotten off to?"

Pete stepped out of the shelter and headed for the Stepney Green tube, weaving between taxis stopped at a red light. "Tell him I went to the graveyard."

In Hatton Cemetery, the headstones sat in neat lines, sentinels against the living. The gra.s.s stayed mowed and solitary figures and families moved among the rows, placing flowers or standing with their heads bowed.

Pete pulled a few weeds from the base of Connor's headstone. A vase of pink carnations with rotted edges sat in front, tipped over.

"MG, you sodding witch," Pete muttered, picking up the carnations and dumping them into the nearest trash can. Her sister came up from High Wycombe, always managing to miss Pete's own infrequent visits, left cheap flowers purchased outside the cemetery, but never cleaned the grave.

Connor had encased MG's feet in stone when she wanted to fly, with peyote or boys or music. Pete's adventure in Highgate hadn't helped matters. MG never forgave either of them for clipping the wings of her wild, carefree, imaginary life.

"I know you wouldn't approve, Da," Pete murmured, smoothing the turned earth over the grave. "But I know you wouldn't have me leave a little girl to get murdered, either." She sighed and stood, brus.h.i.+ng the graveyard dirt from her knees. "What I'm saying is, if I don't come around for a while& Jack will take care of your spot. I think I can at least count on him for that."

Her mobile burbled, and Travis Grinchley's address and relevant personal details appeared onscreen. Pete stood for a moment longer, reading Connor's epitaph. May angels usher you on to paradise May angels usher you on to paradise.

"I'm sorry, Da," she said, and left between the rows of headstones before she lost her nerve.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Travis Grinchley's narrow Camden house was three stories of red brick veined with climbing ivy and granite-block bones. Someone had spray-painted no future across the bricks at eye level.

"b.l.o.o.d.y hooligans," said a reedy voice from Pete's left. A wizened man in a frock coat and spats clutched a cl.u.s.ter of plastic shopping bags filled with takeaway cartons.

"You live here?" Pete said, finding both the fact that Grinchley had a butler and that he dressed the poor man like this this vaguely unbelievable. vaguely unbelievable.

"I'm Mr. Grinchley's manservant, among other functions," said the gnome, pulling himself upright with a creak of spine. Pete stepped in and took the bags from him, flas.h.i.+ng her warrant card with her free hand.

"It's imperative I speak with Mr. Grinchley. Is he in?"