Street Magic Part 9

He snorted and swung his eyes to the window. The sun was high, catching motes of dust across the panes, and Pete knew she was already late for work.

"Like you don't know," Jack said finally with a shrug so disaffected Iggy and all of the Stooges would have burst into tears of envy.

"That's just it," said Pete. "I don't don't know, Jack." She stood up and he met her, looked down with that bitter quirk to his mouth that warned of rage just beneath. She shouldn't press, but Pete did, because she was d.a.m.ned if she let Jack linger on with his contempt and his silence. "What happened that day, in the tomb?" she asked softly. "I've thought and dreamed about it so much, Jack, but I never really remember. What happened that made you hate me this much?" know, Jack." She stood up and he met her, looked down with that bitter quirk to his mouth that warned of rage just beneath. She shouldn't press, but Pete did, because she was d.a.m.ned if she let Jack linger on with his contempt and his silence. "What happened that day, in the tomb?" she asked softly. "I've thought and dreamed about it so much, Jack, but I never really remember. What happened that made you hate me this much?"

Jack's lip curled and his eyes blackened again, and Pete steeled herself for something, she didn't know exactly what, but the air between them had charged.

"You really don't remember?" Jack said, that predatory cold flickering in the depths. Pete shook her head, throat dry.

"How about that," Jack murmured. "If you're telling the truth."

"What reason would I have to lie?" Pete said.

"You know more than you're admitting to yourself," Jack said. "You saw him, same as me. You were there there, until you let go." The last two words could have cut flesh.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Pete said automatically, although images of the smoke man flamed behind her eyes.

Jack considered her for a moment, as if he weren't sure what to do with an inconveniently dead body, and then his anger slipped back over his face and he threw up his hands. "Then b.l.o.o.d.y well figure it out, Pete," he snarled. He went into the toilet and slammed the door.

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," Pete swore, slumping back on the sofa and pressing her pillow over her face.

Chapter Nineteen

Pete waded through the day of papers and questions and frowning stares from Chief Inspector Newell and took the tube home next to a beautiful Indian couple who smelled of sweat and spices.

"Home, Jack," Pete called reflexively as she entered her front hall. The flat was dark and she saw the glow of a cigarette tip coming from the sofa. Jack exhaled a cloud of smoke and it shone blue-white in the reflection from the streetlamp.

"About time," he said, swinging himself upright. "We've got places to go."

"Where?" said Pete. She didn't flick on the light. Talking to Jack, seeing only the ember of his f.a.g and the flash of his eyes was oddly appropriate, a mirror of hundreds of dreams where he appeared as nothing more than shadow with bits of substance.

Jack grinned and she saw the ivory gleam of his teeth. "You'll see."

They took the tube at Jack's insistence. He jumped the gates and then threw up his hands when Pete glared at him and swiped her Oyster card twice. "Come on, Caldecott, don't give me that look."

"Where are we going?" Pete asked again as the train roared through the tunnel, slicking back Jack's hair. They were the only people in the Mornington Crescent station, alone under the flickering fluorescent tubes with smoke and graffiti on the tiles.

"You'll know when we get there," said Jack, holding the door for her. The tube rattled past Euston, on into stations that were barely lit, the humps of dozing b.u.ms flas.h.i.+ng past, leather-clad youths staring out into the tunnel with s.h.i.+ning animal eyes, transit police wrapped in blue nylon armor like weary sentinels. Pete wrapped her coat around her, crossing her arms across her stomach.

"Don't worry about them, luv," Jack whispered. "I'm here."

Pete turned to look at him in the intermittent flashes from the tunnel lights, each exposure imprinting Jack in stark relief. "That's why I'm worried, Jack."

He sighed and threw his head back, worrying an unlit cigarette between his lips. "We're meeting a friend of mine."

"Are you and this friend on good terms?" Pete wondered. Jack lifted one shoulder.

"Last time I saw him, probably a decade ago, he and I had a slight difference of opinion."

"About what?" said Pete, feeling the cold breath from the train window on the back of her neck.

"Long story," said Jack with a lazy grin. "But it involved two nights in Liverpool and a dancer named Ca.s.sidy. She did this bit where she put her leg up over her head&"

Pete held up a hand. "Is he going to try and bash our skulls in?"

"No," said Jack. "Not his style."

"Thank G.o.d for small favors," said Pete.

They got off the tube at Charing Cross and walked up the center of a nearby mews, the slick cobbles ringing under Pete's boot heels. Big Ben chimed eleven o'clock in the distance, amplified in the mist so that it echoed from every direction. Pete could smell the Thames, the wet rotting atmosphere that soaked into brick and clothing and hair.

"This way," said Jack, his Parliament springing to life without the aid of a light. Pete blinked. Jack exhaled and held out the f.a.g. "Care for a taste?"

"I'm quitting," Pete said perversely. Jack laughed, and it turned into a cough.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. I hate this f.u.c.king wet weather."

"Move to Arizona, then," Pete snapped. The row houses got older, arched and leaded windows staring out black and blank into the night. Pete caught movement in the corner of her vision and whipped her head to the left. A woman in black latex that gleamed like b.l.o.o.d.y skin and a man in an a.r.s.enal jersey disappeared into an alley.

Jack snorted. "Didn't peg you for an easy shock, Calde-cott."

Pete stopped in the street and crossed her arms. "I'm not, Jack. I came after you, didn't I? And on that matter, I am not going another step until you tell me what the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is going on."

Jack rolled his eyes at her, taking a long drag on his cigarette. "Anyone ever told you you're too d.a.m.ned stubborn for your own good?"

"Constantly," said Pete. "What is this?"

Jack sighed. "Pete, I told you the night you found me that I only had one condition for doing this, yeah?"

"You did," Pete agreed cautiously.

"I asked you to believe me," said Jack. "So believe me now when I say I can't tell you where we're going and who we're meeting. You're just going to have to hold your knickers on and see." He turned with a ripple of fog and tobacco smoke and kept walking. Pete swore under her breath and followed, trying to ignore the roiling in her stomach that told her dark things were on their heels, just outside the pools of streetlamp light.

Once or twice she heard a snuffling and squealing, nails clacking on paving stones. She kept her eyes on the uneven blond spikes of Jack's hair and didn't look back.

Then Big Ben chimed midnight.

Pete stopped and c.o.c.ked her head, listening to the bell ring through to twelve and telling herself she was crazy, or the clock was faulty, or that something something logical and sane was going on here. logical and sane was going on here.

"You heard it," Jack stated. Pete sighed and stopped trying to pretend. Clocks that chimed midnight at half-eleven and shadow creatures were what Jack asked of her. So be it.

"I did." She nodded. "What does that mean?"

Jack dropped his Parliament to the stones. It hissed and went out as he ground it under his heel. "It means we're here."

Chapter Twenty

Jack led Pete up a side pa.s.sage, not even wide enough for the Mini to squeeze through, to a squat stone building with a red door bound in iron.

"They expecting an invasion?" Pete said, gesturing at the entry.

"The three bands means this is neutral territory," said Jack. "The iron is to keep out Fae."

"Fae," Pete echoed. "You mean fairies."

"Kindly folk," said Jack. "s.h.i.+ning ones. Unseelie. Call 'em what you will, n.o.body here wants the treacherous little b.u.g.g.e.rs in their pub."

"And just where is 'here'?" Pete asked.

Jack took her lightly by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. Calm, they were icy as a glacier under a cloud-covered sky. "We're in their place now, Pete. It's nearly always midnight and the things from your nightmares are crawling in the shadows."

"And I'm supposed to be frightened, after seeing you murder somebody casually less than a day ago?" Pete demanded, moving his hands off her ungently.

He grabbed her again, and slammed Pete against the outside wall of the pub hard enough to make breath leave her lungs. She struggled, and Jack locked his bony fingers against her flesh, more than enough to bruise. "This is not the daytime world that you know, Pete," he said, his voice grating like he'd just smoked a pack of unfiltered. "This is the Black. It is a hard realm with little mercy for the unprepared. People die here, Pete, and it's usually because someone else has decided to kill them. It is the way things are the way things are. If you can't stomach the truth then go back now."

Pete's heart danced, sc.r.a.ping her rib cage with panic. She allowed none of it to show on her face, raising her eyes to the sky and inhaling a sharp, cold draught.

Above her, something with stone for skin grumbled and settled itself more comfortably on its perch, ugly dog face serene.

Pete forced herself to look only at Jack. "I told you, I'd do what was necessary to catch this child-stealing b.a.s.t.a.r.d. That we'd end this. Not you, all alone striding into the darkness. We. Now get your b.l.o.o.d.y hands off me before I have a boot between your b.a.l.l.s."

Jack let go of her arms and lifted the gryffon-headed knocker on the pub's door. He let it fall three times, and the red door swung open with a moan of ill-oiled age. Jack made a courtly gesture to Pete. "After you, luv." He grinned as she stepped into oil lamps and noise and smoke. "Welcome to the Lament Pub," Jack said. "And welcome to the Black."

Pete stepped over the threshold and felt a p.r.i.c.kle, not on her skin but across the reflective surface of her consciousness, like a smooth stone stirring ripples in a pool. Ambient power drifted and swirled differently here, the air molecules arranged out of order and the light and shadow slippery. Her eyes refused to focus. She felt an overwhelming pressure on her skull, as though her senses were all overloading at once, smell and taste and sound rising to levels that threatened to drown her. This was worse than when her intuition knifed her mind Worse than her dreams, than the tomb itself, full of ghosts and darkness. The magic of the place reached inside Pete's skull and clawed it clean, leaving her trembling.

Jack's hand closed on her wrist, a touch that was steadying but not rough. "Easy, luv. It's always worst the first time you cross in."

Pete shut her eyes and breathed, just as she'd breathed the first time she'd encountered a corpse. A drowned man, a homeless drunk b.u.mping against the pilings on the Thames. Pete shut her eyes and fixed what the pub should should be in her mind, just as she'd seen the corpse as it was against the backs of her lids, no life in the black gla.s.sy eyes. She gritted her teeth and slowly opened her eyes again. be in her mind, just as she'd seen the corpse as it was against the backs of her lids, no life in the black gla.s.sy eyes. She gritted her teeth and slowly opened her eyes again.

The low thread of conversation in the pub bubbled, just beyond hearing the words of the individual voices, and a cloud of cigarette smoke hung low over the cl.u.s.ters of small round tables and bowed heads, and the ma.s.sive ebony-topped bar. A man sitting with his back to her flexed his shoulders and Pete saw, just for a moment, the long reach of bone wings before they glimmered and vanished beneath a glamour of a rat-eaten coat. A dance floor and a jukebox with the original 45s crouched awkwardly in one corner, out of place in the old pub, which should have had Shakespeare and Marlowe bending their heads together in a dark nook.

And it was all slightly odd, and very usual, with none of the blurring heart-racing wrongness wrongness that had engulfed Pete when she stepped inside. The cries of magic softened, and retreated, taking the pain in her head with them. The staring faces, a few with pointed teeth, turned back to their drinks and conversation. that had engulfed Pete when she stepped inside. The cries of magic softened, and retreated, taking the pain in her head with them. The staring faces, a few with pointed teeth, turned back to their drinks and conversation.

She glanced back to see Jack with a contemplative half-smile on his face. "Thought you'd adjust," he said as if he'd bet against Pete with himself.

"Who's this friend we're here to see?" said Pete.

"The third time you've asked me," said Jack. "If I were the devil, I'd be compelled to answer." He helped Pete out of her jacket and threw it on the curled iron hooks just inside the door. There were several othersa motocross leather, a woolen cape, a fur with the skull of the unfortunate wolf still attached.

"Yes, but you'd take my soul in return," Pete said with her own smile.

Jack stared past her into the middle distance before he returned her gaze. His was clouded and almost mourning. "What makes you think I haven't, luv?"

Pete rolled her eyes. "I'm getting a drink." She took a stool and gestured to the publican, a palely beautiful young man with black spiked hair and silver piercings cascading up both ears and gleaming in his nose. He dipped his head to acknowledge her and Pete saw flashes of Celtic warriors, branded and painted for sacrifice and battle.

"What'll you have, luv?" he intoned with a slow-burning smile and a bare muscled arm placed on the bar in front of Pete. His skin was whiter than alabaster, white as dead skin, and it fairly glowed against the dark bar top.

"I'll& a pint of&" Pete blinked. His eyes were black& a moment ago they'd been green.

"A pint of what, miss?" Amus.e.m.e.nt crinkled his mouth and lit those black stone animal eyes. Pete's throat, when she tried to swallow and speak, sc.r.a.ped painfully.

"A& I& lager on tap?" The necessary connective tissue for a complete sentence eluded her.

"Would you like mead? Or maybe an oaken ale," said the publican. He leaned in and Pete could hear the drums, smell the smoke of the Beltane fires and the b.l.o.o.d.y screams of the rival tribesmen who had died under his blade.

"Oaken ale," Pete murmured, thinking with that sensation of being outside herself that she was very, very close to a man whom she didn't know at all, thinking wild savage thoughts about him, and that she couldn't be a.r.s.ed to care, because he was beautiful. Wild. "What's that?"

"Something you don't want," said Jack, leaning on the bar next to her.

With an audible snap, whatever was holding Pete in the publican's eye broke and she sat up straight, her cheeks hot.

"I was just having a bit of fun, mate," said the publican with an amused look that telegraphed unbearable smugness. "Didn't know she was spoken for."

"You do now," Jack snarled. "And the next time you try to pa.s.s off your b.l.o.o.d.y Fae nectar on a human, I'll shove your little horned head up your a.r.s.e and hold it there until you stop twitching."

"No harm done!" the publican exclaimed, holding up his hands. "Didn't realize she was mortal. Take your ease, old-timer, and have something to drink."

Jack's hand flashed out, like a fatal serpent, and gripped the publican by the throat, fingers digging into his voice box. "Do you know who I am, you sodding barn animal?" he hissed. The publican gurgled. "I'm Jack f.u.c.king Winter," Jack said, releasing him with a push that rattled clean gla.s.ses on the bar back.

The publican bleached even paler than he already was, if it were possible. "II didn't know, sir. Forgive me, mage." He dipped his head again, this time to avoid eye contact with Jack.

"Give me two pints of the Newcastle," said Jack, "and p.i.s.s off."

The publican filled his order and retreated to the opposite end of the bar, where he a.s.siduously pretended to polish gla.s.ses.

"Creepy w.a.n.ker," Pete muttered, shaking off the last vestiges of the publican's cold, ancient aura.

"Just a satyr," Jack said. "Walking b.o.l.l.o.c.ks with a brain-stem attached. Pay that one no mind."

"Please tell me he is not who we are here to see," Pete muttered. She felt like she'd touched rotted meat, or a brick wall slick with mold and moss.

"No." Jack gestured over his shoulder. "He's back there, alone. As usual."