Street Magic bl-1

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Chapter Eight

  She'd never intended to rescue him, of course. Of all the strung-out lost boys in London, Jack was the least in need of that.

  Pete knew she'd been spending too much time around Southwark when the shifty bloke on the steps of Jack's squat waved to her.

  And she waved back. "Jack in?"

  "Nah," said the kid, sniffling and shivering even inside his parka. "He moved on last night. Prolly over near Borough High Street in the close. There's a few beds."

  It was twilight, witchy and shadowed along the narrow street. The night citizens were beginning to stir, but there was enough daylight left to allow her safe passage to Jack's latest shooting gallery.

  He was nodding against the wall in the front room, burning cigarette dangling between his lips and a crackling copy of London Calling on the turntable. Pete pushed the needle off track with a squeal and Jack cracked one eye.

  "Hasn't anyone told you it's rude to burst into other people's houses?"

  "I need to talk to you," Pete said. She crossed her arms and made sure to appear stern and unyielding. Jack was in the throes of a hit, and damn it all, he'd listen to her one way or another.

  "I recall we've played this scene before," said Jack. "Only this time you haven't got my stash to threaten me with. So what are you going to do, DI Caldecott—beat me about the head with a great bloody stick?"

  "Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind," Pete assured him. Jack exhaled a cloud of blue, the nubby cigarette falling to the floor. He didn't appear to notice, tapping his dirty fingertips to the time of "Clampdown." A stray line of blood painted the path between the clustered punctures on his forearm, and Pete stooped to press the napkin she'd received with her breakfast buttie against the spot. The faint smell of eggs and ham rose between them, blending the tobacco and the sour undertone of the squat into something almost home.

  "Someone who didn't know would almost think you cared," Jack muttered, but he didn't pull his arm away.

  "I care," Pete said. "I care about Diana Leroy and Patrick Dumbershall."

  Jack yawned languidly. "Who, now?"

  "You know bloody well who they are," Pete said, slipping one end of the metal links from her belt around Jack's wrist. He jerked as soon as the handcuffs clicked closed and Pete's wrist bruised with a sharp jab.

  "You slag!" Jack spat when he realized what Pete had done. "If you're still trying to get into me knickers, there's better ways."

  "Your knickers don't concern me in the least," Pete said crisply.

  "Please, Pete," Jack said with a pathetic jangle of the cuffs. "Don't do this to me. I can't do another stretch. Prison's bloody murder for me." He was like the roving harlequin at a carnival, trying on masks until he found one that the audience favored, one to draw them into his web of seduction and illusion.

  And in that other time, with the other Jack, it would have worked. Pete knew she'd be helpless, she'd go stand in his circle and feel his black magic flow through them both.

  But now all she saw was Jack grinning at her as the smoke man came, and she felt the screaming vibrations inside her own head as her mind struggled to contain something that no one was meant to endure. And his pathetic attempts to con her weren't helping.

  "Get up," she snarled, hauling Jack to his feet. He was light, far beneath healthy, like a starving vampire or a reanimated sack of bones. Pete turned her head determinedly so Jack wouldn't see the pity on her face. Pity was something neither of them wanted. "You're coming along to the Yard and we're going to talk about the two more missing children."

  Jack dug in his heels. "I can't leave me things, some cunt'll nick them."

  Pete stopped, making Jack stumble closer to her by their connected arms. "I am going to get some bloody answers out of you, Jack Winter, and I prefer to do it in the comparative clean and comfort of a place that is not a druggie squat, so you are going out that door and I don't give a fuck whether it pleases you or not."

  Jack blinked. Pete had never known she had the ability to leave him at a loss, and it was rather powerful. Well, nights upon rainy nights of dealing with drunken soccer hooligans who decided just because she was small and slight that she was easily intimidated would put steel into any woman's backbone.

  "I get some clean clothes, yeah?" Jack said as Pete forcibly led him out the door and down the mossy steps to the Mini. "And a drink. God, I'd murder a pint."

  "You get to sit down in the car and shut your gob," said Pete, thrusting Jack into the passenger side of the Mini. She clipped her end of the cuffs to the door bar and got in.

  By the time they cleared the wharves and drove over the bridge back into the City, Jack was nodding again, in the dream place between the heroin and the barren expanse of needing it. Pete slapped his shoulder with her free hand. "Keep awake. This isn't a minicab."

  "Mmph," said Jack. "Bloody hell, you're violent. Got some sort of repressed urge you're takin' out on me?"

  "My urges are none of your sodding business," Pete snapped, then pressed her lips together. He still had that current, that disconcerting air that made her blurt out things that should have stayed a secret.

  Jack smirked. "So you say, luv."

  "Why don't you make this easy on yourself and tell me what you know about the missing kids," Pete suggested as she turned onto a thoroughfare crowded with taxis and the late rush hour.

  "I know fuck-all," said Jack promptly. "May I please be let go now, Inspector? I'll be ever so good and won't cause a fuss again."

  Pete gripped the wheel. She wanted to throw her two hands around Jack's neck, but the Mini's steering wheel would have to do. "You told me exactly where to find Bridget Killigan and when, and you expect me to believe that you know nothing about two other children abducted by the same bloody person in the same bloody way?"

  "I do, and I don't." Jack nodded. "Let me out of the fucking car, Pete. I'll crash us into an abutment if that's what it takes."

  Pete crossed two lanes of traffic and screeched into the bus dropoff zone, laying on the Mini's brakes in a way the manufacturer never intended. "Sod you, you bastard!" she yelled. "You think just because you're some poor wounded addict I'm supposed to believe your line of innocent bullshit?"

  "What I think," Jack yelled back, "is that you've turned from a sweet girl into a harpy from hell, and that I bloody hate the sight of you and if you don't unlock these bloody handcuffs right now, I'll hurt you, Pete. I swear to whatever gods you pray to."

  It flamed up in his eyes first, the bluer light of witchfire. Pete gasped as it spilled from his fingers, his lips—pure raw magic seeping out and forming a tangible golem of Jack's rage. Of his magic.

  Pete wanted more than anything to turn her eyes and pretend that she was just tired, or just crazy, or just… But the weight of knowing laid itself upon her, knowing in the pit of her stomach, the thing that wouldn't go away no matter how many years spanned between Jack holding her hands as the flames wreathed them and Jack glaring at her now, melting her skin with his stare to reach the truth underneath. And she could ignore it, but she'd never stop the knowing, stop seeing things she shouldn't know for truth or fiction, or be able to deny what the witchfire wreathing Jack meant.

  It spilled off him in waves now as he jerked against the cuffs, touching the spiked tips of his hair and gathering at the corners of his mouth, racing over the dials in the Mini's dash. Where it kissed Pete's rigid body, it stung.

  A shudder passed through her, like she'd just been doused with ice water. Jack's breathing was the loudest thing inside the car, ragged and enraged. Everything was bathed in blue.

  "Bloody hell," Pete whispered. "You weren't lying."

  "Magic," Jack agreed with a hiss, his lips parting. The witchfire retreated and coiled about his head like a blazing ice crown, angry and chained.

  Pete swallowed as a lorry whooshed by her window, horn blaring. "I know you can tell me what happened to those children." She didn't add, And now I have to believe that what happened to you really h
appened, and God, Jack, you just made every nightmare I've had for twelve years real again. Her stomach and her vision both lurched but she kept herself steady, from the outside anyway. The outside mattered.

  "Very probable," Jack agreed, settling back into his seat. The witchfire abated until there was only the slightest glow to his eyes.

  "Then tell me," Pete said. She heard a begging tone creep in, and hated herself for it.

  Jack eyed her for a moment and Pete tried unsuccessfully not to feel naked. The drugs had muted Jack's vitality but they did nothing for his gaze, which burned hotter than she'd ever remembered, fired with rock-bottom desperation.

  "I might tell you," he considered. "But I've got a couple of conditions if I should decide to divulge my specific arcane knowledge."

  "Name them," said Pete instantly. She'd clear whatever-it-was with Chief Inspector Newell later—right now Diana and Patrick's timetable was winding inexorably down.

  "Condition one: I get a shower, clean clothes, a place to stay—and not some dodgy hostel you shove witnesses into either, a real place," Jack said. "Whether or not I decide to tell you anything, you take me there right now."

  He'd never tell her anything useful, of course. Pete wasn't stupid and she could see from the way Jack talked and held himself that he was hating her for something, that her need for what he had was getting him off.

  But she wasn't stupid, so she said, "Done."

  "Condition two," said Jack. "If I tell you something, Pete, no matter how bloody outlandish it sounds to your cotton-packed copper ears—you listen. And you believe me."

  How she'd wanted to do that, every second they'd spent together. Couldn't, because admitting the truth of the matter with Jack would have driven anyone reasonable mad. Believing him would be admitting that everything in the world wasn't in plain sight, and it ran contrary to Pete's whole life, the new one she'd built after Jack.

  "Pete," Jack snapped. His expression was hard-edged, the mask in place, waiting to see if she'd give in to his demands.

  "Yes, Jack," she said with a sigh. "I'll believe you."

  Chapter Nine

  Jack glared suspiciously at the door of Pete's flat. "This doesn't look like any bloody hotel I've ever seen."

  "It's not," said Pete, peeling the package notices and the card from the estate agent off the door and sliding her key home. "It's my flat."

  One dark eyebrow crawled upward on Jack's forehead. "And this is part of our arrangement how, exactly?"

  Pete flicked on lights and put up her bag and coat, motioning Jack inside. "It's a very nice flat. You can have a shower and put on some of Terry's old clothes."

  "Who in bloody fuck-all is Terry?"

  "My ex-fiance," said Pete shortly, "Bath's down the hall. I'll put the kettle on."

  She left Jack standing and went into the kitchen, careful to keep her back turned so he wouldn't catch on she was watching him. After a moment and a spate of muttering, she heard Jack go down the hall. A door closed and water ran in the basin, rattling the old pipes like a disgruntled poltergeist.

  Pete moved swiftly. She threw the bolts on the front door and locked the padlock she and Terry had never used because the area wasn't that bad, shoving the key deep into the catch-all drawer in the kitchen. All the windows were painted shut and covered with safety lattice, so he wouldn't be getting out that way. No back stairs.

  Pete crossed herself reflexively, a move she hadn't performed in the eight years since Connor's death, but which seemed highly appropriate now.

  She would not allow herself to think about what Jack would say once he emerged from the loo. He'd be bloody angry, but she figured that in his diminished state she could probably take him on. Plus, there were always the handcuffs.

  "I'm starved," Jack announced. "Call for takeaway."

  Pete jumped and silently berated herself. He was silent as a shade, just as he'd always been, appearing practically out of ether.

  Jack's mouth curled into a slow grin. "Sorry. Didn't mean to frighten you."

  "Not frightened," said Pete. "You never frightened me, Jack."

  "Come now, Pete," he teased. "I was the scariest thing your little head ever laid eyes on."

  Pete handed him a menu for the curry stand at the corner. "For a time," she said. "A very short time, until I realized what was standing just behind you, in shadow."

  The grin vanished and Jack's grim set returned. "And you didn't stick around long then, did you? Ran right back to Daddy and safety."

  "Saffron rice or naan?" Pete said quietly.

  Jack gauged her, seeing if his pinprick had drawn blood. Pete didn't let him know that ever since he'd appeared back at her shoulder all the old wounds had slipped their stitches. She was bleeding in the open, her scars exposed.

  But fuck if she'd let Jack and his new, persistent hostility see it.

  And she succeeded, because he shrugged in an elaborate display of apathy and said, "Rice, I guess."

  One of these days, she'd ask him about that rage he carried like a stone on his back. Pete dialed for takeaway and ordered two curries. If Jack ate, it would be a good sign—not all was lost if he ate.

  She turned from the phone and saw him examining the photograph of herself and Terry on the fireplace mantel. Pete had laid it facedown, but Jack picked it up. "This the bloke?"

  "That's Terry," Pete confirmed.

  "He looks like a git."

  "Thank you for the assessment," Pete said. "You look like a transient, but we won't delve into that comparison, will we?"

  "Ouch!" Jack said with what may have been a faint admiration. "You bloody well learned to go for the bollocks, didn't you?"

  "I may have picked up a skill or two since you last knew me," Pete agreed. Jack slouched on her sofa and flicked on the telly, changing until he found a Manchester game. "You got any lager?"

  "Not for you," Pete said. She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, brushed her straight black hair behind her ears, where it promptly fell free again. How could Jack Winter be sitting there, watching telly and waiting for takeaway and demanding a drink? She'd seen what Jack could do with little more than a thought and a muttered word or two of the old language, and she had entrapped him into her flat, her home.

  Was she mad?

  A knock made her start. Jack barely stirred, asleep within seconds once he relaxed.

  "That'll be curry," Pete said. Jack snored, familiar and at the same time as alien as if she'd invited Frankenstein's monster to sleep on her sofa.

  Pete paid for the takeaway and tried to eat, but she kept craning over the sounds of Manchester winning to see if Jack was awake. But he slept, still as a breathing corpse, until Pete dumped her dinner into the bin and sat down to write reports on the two missing children that Jack was supposed to help her find. Two days now, when it faded to black outside her windows, Two days—hardly any time at all.

  She could wake Jack up, but what purpose would that serve? And if she were completely honest, would a part of her admit to a certain Tightness at Jack being in her flat, at Jack being alive at all?

  Pete felt her eyelids drift down, dreamily, and she let herself sleep lulled by Jack's rattling breath and the receding waves of sound from the telly. She woke to the ITV logo bouncing around the screen and Jack's incensed expression, his knotty hand on her shoulder, shaking her.

  "Let go!" She brushed him off.

  "Open the bloody door!" he grated.

  Pete yawned and blinked, not intending to appear indifferent, but she did, and Jack kicked at her scatter rug. "Fuck it, open up!"

  "What could possibly be that important at this hour?" Pete said, rubbing her temples. Purely rhetorical, because she knew without having to ponder. It was the only driving force junkies obeyed.

  "Well, let's start with you sodding locking me in!" Jack said.

  Pete stood, flexing her foot where it had gone to sleep. "It isn't a safe neighborhood, Jack." Flimsy. Didn't Da teach you to be a better liar than that? She prayed, another h
abit that she'd mostly excised since Jack and Connor had died. Please, let this work out in my favor. Don't let hint see how afraid I am of what he can still do.

  "I'm leaving now," he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. "Thanks for the curry and the washup."

  "You've only just gotten here," Pete protested, in what to her ears sounded like a fairly innocent manner. "And you didn't eat a thing."

  "I've just… got to go," Jack said. "Open the door, please?"

  He was begging. Fuck all, the heroin must have its jaws around him tight to make Jack Winter resort to that.

  Pete drew in a breath through her nose. She met Jack's eyes and said, "No."

  They narrowed and hardened to ice chips, and his pleasant visage peeled back to show the beast under the skin. "What d'you mean, 'no'?"

  "Just what I said," Pete replied with a sigh. "It's late. Whatever-it-is can wait till morning."

  Jack grabbed the picture of Pete and Terry and hurled it at the opposite wall. Glass shattered into snow fragments, blanketing the wood floor.

  He rounded on Pete, and she tensed. The blue light flamed up in his eyes and he gripped her by the upper arms, face inches away. She could see that he hadn't shaved, that he had a faint scar vertically along his right cheek—he didn't have that before—and that if she didn't yield to his drive to get a fix, he would have no trouble at all killing her.

  "Let. Me. Out," Jack said slowly.

  "Won't do it, Jack," Pete whispered. "We can stand here until the sun comes up."

  He squeezed and Pete bit the inside of her cheek. His misery made him bloody strong. "If you don't get me my fix," Jack said, "you can forget about our little bargain to save poor innocent Patrick and Diana. You'll have killed them over me. Now me, I could live with that on my head, but I doubt you can, Pete. You're far too good and pure."

  "You don't know me so well any longer," Pete said. Jack sighed, looking at the floor between them, shaking finitely all over his body.

  "Don't know what you're doing to me, do you? Probably the closest you've ever come to it is renting the Trainspotting video." He leaned in, their mouths and skin millimeters apart. "Pete, you don't know. You have no idea what it is to need this. Please. I'm asking you now. Let me out to get my fix, so it doesn't all go horribly wrong."