Pete found her pocket knife in an obscure corner of her jacket and grabbed Jack's palm, slicing it deeply as she dared. He yelped. "Bloody hell, woman! When did you get so violent?"
"That should be sufficient, yeah?" Pete said, indicating the warm crimson stream that flowed freely over Jack's palm.
"Good gods, yes, quite sufficient if you want me to die!" Jack said.
"Give over with your drama and do something about these cunts before they finally manage to aim!" Pete shouted, ducking another blast.
Jack swore at her, but smeared the blood on the floor in front of him and said, "An't-ok, tabhair do dhroim."
The spell began to expand, revealing the ashy bones of Roddy, and lit across the flat, over the walls and the floor, digging in to every crevice and engulfing the three remaining sorcerers before they could react to the mass of magic that slammed them backward into the walls. The air filled with ash and the floor tilted crazily as Jack's magic met the spells living in the bones of the flat, the concussion jolting Pete down to her marrow.
Jack grabbed her arm. "Time to run again, luv, I'm afraid."
"I agree," Pete said as a massive section of the outer stone wall fell away, exposing the skyline of London, twinkling serenely in the late night. "Fucking move!"
She and Jack ended up having to jump for it as the front room of the flat collapsed, roaring in on itself with beams and stone, making an abattoir for the four men within.
Pete rolled over and sat up, dizzy, Jack swimming back into focus above her. A warm nettle of pain cut across one cheek and she touched blood. "I felt it," she said. "Before Roddy pushed you through the door." Her voice was thick and far away.
"I know you did, luv," Jack said, dabbing at her cheek with his sleeve. He glanced back at the ruin. Two of the bodies were half out of the rubble, frozen in tableau. Their eyes stared at Pete with the stony hatred of the dead.
"He played it very well," said Jack. "Didn't tip off."
Pete glared back at the bodies. "Broken knuckles don't hurt that much."
"I don't know about you," said Jack, helping Pete to her feet and offering her a Parliament, which she accepted, "but I'm about through playing with these bastards."
"Through, and thoroughly bored of this Sturm und Drang," said Pete. "We need a new plan, Winter."
Jack worried his thumbnail as he exhaled a cloud of smoke, and then said, "First thing we need to do is find a set of pliers."
The Arkanum's kitchen was largely intact except for cracks in the floor that let Pete look through clear to the ground story, and half the cabinets gone. Pete located a toolbox under the sink and gave Jack a pair of needle-nosed pliers, while he went to an overturned apothecary desk and rooted in the cubbies until he came up with a black bottle of liquid.
"Let me guess—the blood of virgin brides and plump, innocent babies," Pete said.
"Ink," said Jack. "Black number ten. You've become very morbid." He took a shallow stone dish, the pliers, and the ink and went to the nearest body, gripping the sorcerer's index finger and working the pliers under the nail.
"Mage's manicure, then?" Pete asked. Jack grunted and yanked, and with a wet sound of torn paper the man's nail came off. Jack examined it.
"A bit sticky, but it will do," he pronounced. He set the bowl on the floor and told Pete, "Find north."
Pete peered out the massive gap where the wall once was and located the Thames. "That way." She pointed out a rough north, over her shoulder.
Jack oriented himself and poured the ink into the bowl, then dropped in the nail. It floated, tiny tendrils of sundered flesh disappearing into the black viscous pool.
He blew on the ink and muttered, "Amharc." Jack's breath made ripples in the ink. The nail began to spin, lazily at first and then faster and faster, carving a trough in the liquid.
"The Black sees him," Jack muttered, ink from the center of his eye spilling across the blue. Pete felt that electric prickle on her skin as magic took hold.
"The ghost?"
Jack nodded grimly. "He's touched this bloke. Touched all of them, if what Abby said held any truth at all. It's tied to them, and now I can see it right back."
Abruptly, the fingernail stopped spinning and sat deathly still, pointing directly northeast. The surface of the ink quivered ever so slightly as the magic pulsed.
"You know what's northeast, don't you?" Jack asked as he stood, his eyes flickering plain again.
Pete nodded once, over an icy knot in her gut. "Highgate Cemetery."
Chapter Thirty-nine
Pete had never walked through the cemetery gates again after the emergency responders had taken her out through the small stone arch on the day of the ritual. She'd passed them hundreds of times, though, always aware.
But she'd stayed on the outside. Never walked in. Never broken that unspoken barrier between her nightmares and the reality she'd constructed after Jack's death and her break with feeling anything, believing anything except what the light showed her.
"You're sure this is the place?" Pete said. "I mean, 'northeast' is a rather general classification."
"The scrying medium said northeast," Jack said, "and there aren't any other great bloody haunted cemeteries in this direction that I know of."
The wind kicked up and Pete shivered, although it was a late-autumn wind, not a cutting winter gale. Jack stopped walking, his boots crunching on gravel. "You going to be all right, Pete?"
"Of course," she said. She took out her mobile, hoping it made her look brisk and businesslike—anything but afraid, which she was, and hating herself for it. She couldn't shake afterimages of black smoke and flickering candle flames, and the echoes of Jack's screaming.
"Ollie Heath, please," Pete said when New Scotland Yard's operator picked up. Ollie had just mumbled "Hullo" when Jack snatched the mobile from her and shut it off.
"Oi!" Pete protested, but he shushed her.
"Hear that?"
Pete listened, heard nothing but the wind twisting through the trees and through her hair like the searching fingers of a ghost.
Twined with the wind, a cluster of whispers fluttered against her mind.
"Something's awake," Jack muttered. "Awake and walking, and ten to one it's our boy. Hold off on the copper brigade just for now. Don't want those nice blokes' wives collecting their pensions because they got eaten, do you?"
Pete shook her head. The whispers weren't audible, not really; they just filled her skull from the inside like razor blades, multitudinous and harsh. "Right," said Jack, starting to walk again. He moved slowly, with a noiseless control, and looked much younger and fitter than his scars and sunken cheeks, "Ghost-killing, first form: You can't. Don't try—don't shriek or throw rocks at it or try to send it on to its final reward. If little Maggie—"
"Margaret."
"Close enough, aren't I? If she's still alive you grab her and you run like the fucking legions of Hell are snapping at your heels."
"And what do you do, while I'm running?" Pete asked.
Jack lit a cigarette with a click of his tongue and inhaled. "Distract it long enough to fill my end of our deal and get my arse back to a normal sort of existence."
"So in just a few minutes, we'll be all through?" Pete felt her forehead wrinkle. "I don't think I like that, Jack."
"Plenty of unlikable things in life," he said. "Save the sorrys for when we actually make it away from here with our souls and sanity intact. If the ghost is strong enough to compel living humans to snatch children and then feed off them, it had one hell of a temper in life, and death is piss-poor for softening your impulses."
"How do we hold it off?" Pete swiveled her gaze through the shadows. The headstones tilted and faded and grew older, granite and angels with their arms and wings fallen off. The path narrowed, for pallbearers and mourners instead of automobiles.
"We're alive," said Jack. "We belong here. It doesn't. So there's that, and I've got a shield hex if things get uncivilized." He looked Pete over and she f
elt calculated and weighed again, Jack still testing her worth. "I won't lie," he said. "If you were an experienced Weir you'd be a real help directing my magic, but as it is, just try not to leave your arse in the wind."
Pete bristled, the quick sting of accumulated intolerance from her fellow inspectors and now from Jack sending her anger to the surface. "I am not helpless."
"Neither is the ghost," Jack said. "And unlike you, it has the benefit of already being dead."
Pete didn't respond. She thought about the children's blank white eyes, and tried to force her feet to move forward and follow Jack.
He stopped, and came back and took her hand. "Be fast. Be strong. Don't look it in the face," he said. "That's the best and only advice I can give."
"Not like the last time," Pete said quietly. Jack shook his head.
"Nothing like it. Come on, let's get the girl and get out of here."
As they walked, toward a pool of silver light growing around a bend in the path, Jack didn't let go of Pete's hand and she didn't try to pull away.
The whispers crested and dissipated as they rounded the corner and found themselves faced with a half-collapsed mausoleum, two sorcerers fidgeting to either side of the entrance, and between them—
Pete choked as the air went out of her, and she felt the buzz-saw whine of magic all around her. The ghost was a column of black smoke, vaguely human, burning silver sockets where eyes should be.
"I told you not to look at it!" Jack hissed, digging his nails into her palm. The air rippled and a shield hex blossomed in front of Pete, heavy and gleaming.
"Oi, you!" one of the sorcerers shouted. "You, get out of here!"
"Fucking hell," said the other. "That's really Jack Winter. He came."
Slowly, the ghost coalesced into a figure made of shadow wisps and dark, the eyes topping a cruel mouth that curved in a black slit.
Jack Winter, it hissed. Pete's body was numb, stiff with shock.
"Jack," she said. "It's from my dreams… that's the thing… I saw it." No response came, and she became aware that Jack was no longer holding her hand.
"Jack?"
He was staring at the ghost, shaking his head slowly back and forth. Jack's eyes had gone white, whiter than Bridget Killigan's, a snow-driven color that was icy and depthless. "No," Jack murmured. "No, no, no. I sent you back…"
Pitiful words, crow-mage, for one arrogant as yourself, the ghost said. I will feed on your spirit and sculpt your bones.
"Let's give 'em some room," said one of the sorcerers.
"What about the bloody kid?" hissed the other.
"Leave her, 'less you want to get mage guts all over you!" the first shouted, as the ghost let out a howl that ground Pete's teeth together. "Let's sodding go!"
They vacated the entrance to the tomb and Pete saw Margaret Smythe crouched, with her arms around her knees, eyes blessedly brown and impossibly wide peeking over the tops.
Pete looked back at Jack. He stared at the ghost, and the ghost grinned at him, gaping and toothsome. No more chatter, crow-mage? No more pithy words from the old tongues to expunge me?
"You're not him!" Jack shouted. He held up his hand and the shield hex became like a wall of heavy water, rippling and impenetrable. "Now piss off!"
The ghost laughed, a scrape against Pete's mind that hurt so much she staggered. It turned, its face sliding along the smoke column of its body to regard her.
Your dreams are most intriguing, young miss. The pity lies in the weakness of your flesh.
"Not weak," Pete ground out. She held out her hand. "Margaret. Come along, luv."
"No!" Margaret shook her head furiously, scooting backward into the mausoleum.
She has grown fond of me, you see. Children are sometimes so very foolish, the ghost murmured, like the moan of a dying mother.
Pete turned on it, careful not to meet the silver orbs distorted by the shield hex. "I swear to everything above and below that if you've hurt her I'll follow you all the way down to the underworld and find a way to kill you again."
The ghost snarled and raised a smoke-hand tipped with black claws. Pete made a dive for Margaret. She felt the swipe, felt it grab the ends of her hair and the seams of her shirt, barely missing skin, the magic burning as if she'd touched supercooled metal.
She had the thought I should be dead as she hit the ground, snagging Margaret's hand and pulling her close, balling up her body around the little girl and rolling away from the shrieking spirit.
When she opened her eyes Jack stood above her, both hands extended, the shield hex glowing blue-hot around the edges as the ghost struck it again and again. Jack wobbled under each blow, and Pete saw a ribbon of blood begin to leak out of his nose.
"Not exactly like you remember, is it, you wispy cunt," he ground out. "Pete, run," he said. "Run for your life."
The light of the shield hex reflected off the ghost's teeth and Pete shook her head. "Not leaving you. Can't."
Margaret was sobbing, but in relief, not terror. Pete reached out her free hand and laid it on Jack's arm.
"Pete…" he started, but she gripped his hand before he could protest.
"I know what I'm doing," she said. It was a complete lie, and it didn't seem to appease Jack, but by then it was too late.
Just as with Talshebeth, Pete felt the dial on her senses pushed to maximum—the shriek of magic and the burning of Jack's skin on hers, the same wind roaring through the well-kept trees and between the tombs. The storm discor-porated the ghost, all except a black skeleton that thrashed and howled as the gale of shield magic pelted it.
Jack pulled both of them away, scooping Margaret up in one arm and dragging Pete with the other, although he told her later that he'd had to half carry her because as soon as the ghost's silver eyes winked out under the assault of Jack's talents, Pete blacked out and woke up on Jack's mattress, in his flat, alone.
Chapter Forty
"Inspector." A hand gripped her shoulder, tentative and shaky. Not Jack. "Inspector."
Pete opened her eyes, though the light seemed very bright, and ached, forcing her to lower her lids and peer at whoever-it-was through a forest of eyelashes.
"Ollie."
Ollie Heath sat back on his heels, the tight set of his jaw loosening when she spoke. "Thank God. Thought you'd gone and punched your ticket."
"No," Pete said, soft and brief out of necessity. She felt as if she'd drunk up all the alcohol in London, and then vomited it back up and drunk some more. Her tongue was cottony and her skull pulsated steadily as if one of those cymbal-clashing monkey dolls had her head in its grasp.
Pete saw milling figures in somber blue outside Jack's bedroom door, and two in green carrying a paramedic's case.
She bolted up. "Margaret."
"The girl's fine, just fine," said Ollie. "I called the bus for your friend, actually. He could barely stand upright, and he's got himself some nasty burns on his hand… scratched all to Hades too, all over his body. Strangest bloody thing I've ever seen."
Ollie propped pillows against the wall, staying crouched next to Pete as she craned to see into the rest of the flat. "Margaret is safe."
"Safe and sound and gone home with her mum," Ollie confirmed. "Now, I know DCI Newell is waiting to hear you tell exactly what the bloody hell happened and where you've been for the last three days, and I have to say I wondered myself—"
Pete clasped her hand around Ollie's wrist. "I can't. You have to just trust me, Ollie, and not breathe a word to Newell."
Ollie nodded slowly. "I'll always want to know how you found that child in time, Pete."
"You wouldn't believe it," Pete assured him. Ollie stood.
"Likely not. I'll go let Mr. Winter know you're awake. He was troubled when he called. Claimed you passed out."
"I did," Pete said. Everything after she took Jack's hand was an inkblot on the narrative, obscured by folds of pain and ghostly hisses. "Wait," she said as Ollie walked out, the belated truth breaking through her fog
gy mind. "Jack called you?"
"Took your mobile and did it," said Ollie. "He was terribly concerned over you and the fate of the girl."
"How about that," Pete mused; She could only imagine Jack's conversation with Ollie when he called to report the missing Margaret Smythe found.
"Seems an all-right bloke, if a bit on the shifty side," Ollie observed. "Want me to send him in?"
"Please," Pete said, pulling her hair into a knot at the base of her neck and attempting to work the kinks out of her arms and shoulders. Everything hurt, as though she'd run for kilometers beyond measure and then gone a few rounds with a drunken Chelsea fan on game day.
Ollie disappeared and a moment later Jack replaced him, not hurrying or rushing in but just there, as if Pete had willed him into being. She blinked and then narrowed her eyes. "One day you're going to tell me how you do that."
"Do what, luv?" He pulled the straight-backed chair up to the mattress and leaned down to put one finger under her chin. "You look a bit worse for wear." The corners of his mouth crinkled a little and his eyes darkened to a deep-sea color with what Pete would classify as relief, if it were anyone but Jack.
Pete examined him in turn. Except for neatly wrapped bandages on his palms he was untouched, rumpled, and smelling of day-old tobacco. As usual, and Pete couldn't have been more grateful.
"If it wasn't for your hands I'd believe I dreamed the ghost, everything," she said.
Jack's eyes rippled again, slate. "You didn't."
"I know," Pete said quietly. "What have you told the police?"
"Not a bloody thing," said Jack. "I've taken a pinch before, Pete. I can keep me mouth shut."
Pete tilted her head back and shut her eyes, the solid and the real finally seeping back into her skin. "Then it's over. I'll make up a story for Newell, and you'll corroborate it, and it will be over."
A silence stretched, and Pete opened one eye. Jack was staring out the window, past the telephone wires and the chimney pots on the opposite block of flats, watching as slivers of mist collected and filtered the sun to a tarnished sheen that turned his hair molten and his skin paper.
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