Street Magic bl-1

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "I don't know what Treadwell wants." Jack sighed. "He's been hovering between this world and the land of the dead for a dozen years, just gathering rage, and power with no rhyme or reason behind it."

  Pete sipped her tea. It was stale, and the water tasted like minerals. "He's seen you now. He knows you're still about."

  Jack's eyes gleamed, like midnight ice. "Good. Been an age since I had a decent fight."

  "Treadwell is a ghost," Pete said. "Like you so helpfully pointed out, he is already passed on. I seriously doubt a few lines of Irish and some witchfire are going to put a dent in his plans. Assuming angry ghosts have plans."

  "Without a doubt," said Jack. "Haven't the foggiest what they are, but I don't think it involves rainbows and leprechauns doing a jig."

  Pete put her mug into the sink and held out her hand to Jack. "What?" he demanded suspiciously.

  "Give me a fag," she said. "I need it if I'm going to help you."

  Jack conjured a Parliament, but held it back. "Pete… you don't have to be involved. Treadwell doesn't want you—I'm the one who called him, challenged him."

  "Jack Winter," said Pete, "if you expect me to believe you have gone altruistic and noble at this late date, you must be around the fucking bend."

  He handed her the cigarette and she lit it from the burner. "Can't put much past you."

  "No," Pete agreed. She inhaled, exhaled, felt the slow burn down her throat. More cases solved over fags and tea than she cared to count. This should be no different. She shouldn't be panicking, but her stomach bounced as Jack rubbed the point between his eyes and sighed.

  "Why did you?" she asked. "Why try to give me an out, after all that yelling you did about having to work with me in the first place?"

  He smiled, grim. "Pete, I've gone to a lot of funerals. Forgive me if I didn't want to spend another Sunday in a wet graveyard and choke down warm pasta salad in some pub, because I know that flaky sister of yours wouldn't kick out for anything decent at the wake."

  Pete dragged, watched the column of ash grow long and gray, and said, "You think I'm going to die."

  Jack shrugged. "Someone is, luv. This isn't one of the times that there's a happy ending."

  "Is there ever?" Pete muttered. She stubbed out the Parliament and threw it down the drain. Jack watched her, eyes narrowed.

  "You having second thoughts?"

  Pete turned on him. He wasn't calculating her any longer, wasn't weighing. His face was folded shut, but his eyes gleamed with a light Pete had never witnessed.

  "I'm thinking that at least I won't die in a bed with needles and tubes stuck in me," she said, softer than a sigh. Jack unfolded himself from the wall and took up her hands. He'd gotten more solid, Pete realized, his hands heavy and the fingers free from tremors.

  "It will end badly, Pete, but we'll be together this time around. I promise you."

  "You're promising me, now?" She smiled a little, and the afterimage of Connor and the road she had looked down toward him faded.

  "You promised me," Jack said. "Even if I'm a bloody liar, it's the least I can do."

  "And are you? A liar, I mean," Pete asked. Jack let go of her and picked up his jacket.

  "We'll find out."

  Chapter Forty-three

  "So we just hang around Highgate and wait for Treadwell to show up again?" Pete asked as they crossed into the Black in an alleyway behind a kebab shop.

  "I have a distinct feeling that when Treadwell wants his presence known, he'll send me a message," Jack said.

  The Lament's red door was shut, and no music drifted to Pete's ears. "Closed on Sundays," Jack said by way of explanation.

  "It's Friday…" Pete started, but then shook her head. "Never mind."

  Jack kicked aside the mud mat, and examined the square granite flower pots on either side of the door. "Ah, leave it out. Where does that ruddy publican hide it?"

  "Looking for this?" Mosswood stood in the street with a newspaper under his arm, backlit by the gaslight on the corner. He swung a small iron key on a fob chain.

  "Even better than breaking in," Jack said. "Need to speak with you."

  "I should think so," said Mosswood. He opened the Lament's three locks and pushed the door wide, motioning Pete and Jack in. "The Black has been a veritable hive of gossip since your and Miss Caldecott's ghostly assignation."

  "What's old chilly-boy after?" Jack asked.

  "Why, your suffering, I imagine," said Mosswood. "Algernon Treadwell was not known for his humor in life, or his mercy. I once saw him put out a man's eyes for daring to meet his."

  Mosswood stalked across the main floor and led Pete and Jack to a private room done like a club in leather wingback chairs and Persian rugs. Bookshelves lined the walls and an ornate fire grate nested in the corner. Mosswood muttered and green flames sprang to life.

  Jack paced, examining the books, but Pete sat opposite Mosswood. "Thanks for your help."

  "And who said I was helping you?" Mosswood raised his eyebrows and began to tamp tobacco into his pipe.

  "You don't have a choice," said Jack with an unpleasant smile. "Treadwell will know I came calling on you. He won't believe you didn't help me, so you might as well."

  Mosswood sighed and looked at Pete. "I see you made the choice to continue. Regretting it yet?"

  Pete looked to Jack, who reiterated the question with his expression. "Not yet," Pete said honestly.

  "I don't know how much time we have," Jack said to Mosswood. "Mind if I get on with it? Everything on my account, as per usual."

  The Green Man sighed and puffed his pipe. "Do your worst."

  Jack went to a set of apothecary drawers on the other side of the snug room, drawers that made up a dizzyingly vast section of shelf with their tiny, precise labels, and began opening them at random, examining their contents with the avid enthusiasm of a fetishist in an underwear store.

  "Is there anything I can do?" Pete asked.

  "Not until Treadwell shows up and tries to push me heart out through my nose again," Jack said. He took two leather pouches on thongs from a drawer and tossed one to Pete. She loosened the thong and looked inside.

  "Salt?"

  "Earth. Life," said Jack. "Wear it when we go back to the graveyard." He tucked what looked like charcoal into his pocket along with a fresh chunk of chalk. "Got to piss. Back in a moment."

  "So we just sit here," said Pete glumly, when Jack had left.

  "One word of advice." Mosswood tapped his pipe stem against his teeth. "Jack is taking everything with him that he can think of. Charcoal is a focus for mage talents. He's got the salt because he doesn't believe his shield hex will protect him. But the only certain way to exorcise Treadwell is the way it's always been. Take a coffin nail and drive it into the spot where he was buried."

  "That seems awfully simple," Pete said. "Are you saying Jack doesn't—"

  "Jack will try to make his point before he gets down to business," Mosswood said. "He has the unfortunate human vice of pride. I'm telling you this in case Jack doesn't get his chance to deal with Treadwell. For your own good, accept the possibility of that occurrence."

  Pete looked into the fire. She tried to imagine facing Treadwell alone, Jack gone away, and couldn't. She knew her inability made her the sad, guileless little girl who couldn't protect herself, just as before. Pete swallowed a lump of bitter acid at the memory of her own trust, and how last time it had led to the end of everything.

  Not this time, she promised. Treadwell won't take Jack away again.

  The embers pulsed, and the fire snuffed out as the front door of the Lament creaked open and brought the knife-edged autumn gale with it. "I'll go shut it," Pete said, relieved to be out of the weighty silence of Mosswood's presence.

  "Don't—" Mosswood started, but Pete stepped into the main room of the pub and immediately saw her mistake. Felt it, as the dark magic wrapped around her. Three sorcerers wielding the bruise-colored witchfire she'd come to recognize stood arrayed between h
er, the entrance, and any possible weapon behind the bar.

  "Jack—" Pete opened her mouth to shout, at the same time balling her fists. Magic be damned—she would go down kicking and punching, if that was what it took.

  One of the sorcerers flowed across the floor in a haze of blue-black fire and clamped one hand over her mouth, his other arm pinning Pete in a breath-taking hug. "Don't scream," he hissed. "Time enough for that later."

  "Let her go," said Mosswood. He stood well clear of the sorcerer's reach, but he looked stern and not like someone Pete would trifle with, were she in a position to.

  "Bugger off, Knight." The second sorcerer sneered. "Matters of the Arkanum don't concern you."

  "Matters in my pub do," said Mosswood. "And if you sorry lot are the best of the Arkanum I will eat my tobacco pouch with salt."

  "We just want the crow-mage," the one holding Pete snarled. "But if you'd like to become incentive, feel free to step between us and him."

  Jack appeared from the archway painted with gents, wiping his hands on his shirt. He stopped when he saw the tableau. "What's the matter—couldn't Treadwell come out and play? Or did a spare wind get him stuck in a chimney pot somewhere?"

  "If you want her back, come to Highgate and don't try any of your mage's cleverness," said the sorcerer holding Pete.

  "You honestly think I couldn't drop you dead where you stand?" Jack asked, pleasant and soft.

  The sorcerer began to laugh. "Anything you do would put the chit at risk, and I don't think you want that."

  "Maybe I don't care," Jack said. His eyes flamed to life.

  "Maybe you should do as you're told," the sorcerer snapped, "and maybe you'll be in time to keep your girlfriend from the touch of him."

  Jack looked at Pete, and sighed. "They've got me bent over properly. I'm sorry, luv."

  Pete tried to say, "What the bloody hell do you think you're doing letting me become a hostage," but she was too muffled by the sorcerer's fingers. She kicked at him instead and caused a groan but no loosening of his grip on her.

  "Pete. Pete." Jack held up his hands. "I'll be right behind you, luv. I promise. Believe me. No harm will come to you. Believe me, please."

  He was coming as close to begging as Jack would ever come, Pete knew. And fuck, she wasn't going to die on the floor of a pub, at the hand of a reject from the Cure reunion tour.

  She worked her head free of the sorcerer's grip. "I believe you." Before she heard Jack's reply, if there was one, the walls of the Lament blurred and fell away to rushing black, and everything fell away, leaving Pete dangling before she slammed back to earth.

  "You like that?" The sorcerer's face was in the light now, the electric lamps of the regular world's Highgate Cemetery. "Shadow-stepping. Mages can't translocate like that. Only sorcerers."

  "My knees are positively weak," Pete said. Treadwell's sorcerer jerked her arm, black petals of smoke blossoming on his other palm.

  "Don't be smart. I could take your face off."

  "Will it save me from having to listen to you rattle on?" Pete gave the sorcerer her worst glare as he marched her through leaning rows of headstones.

  "Winter doesn't like his women mouthy. Wonder he let you stick around as long as you did."

  "There's a lot you don't know about Jack Winter," Pete said.

  The sorcerer barked a laugh. "As much as you did when you got tangled up with him in the first place, you silly chit?"

  Pete looked at her feet for a few steps. "No," she said finally. "I knew far, far less. But that doesn't change the fact that I'm here now, stolen and harmed by you, and that because you stole me you're fucked when Jack finds us."

  "Petrifying," said the sorcerer. "Move your little damsel act right along." He shoved her and she tripped over a low tombstone.

  "Let go of me!" Pete cried, jerking against the man's grasp. He stopped her, grabbing her by the upper arms, squeezing until Pete knew most women would let tears slide down their cheeks. She stayed silent, still. She would never cry.

  "You listen," growled the sorcerer. "Winter doesn't care about you, you understand that? He let us steal you away. Now, you keep your mouth shut and your head down and our master might see his way to letting you go… or keeping you as an amusement. That's a better future than what Winter can offer you on his best day." He pulled her along the path again, Pete's feet digging furrows in the earth as she resisted him.

  They walked, or rather the sorcerer walked, dragging Pete, for a long while, clear across the old part of the cemetery. Pete smirked. "Looks like your teleporter is off prime. You should have Scotty in to calibrate that."

  The sorcerer paused when they were in the oldest part of the cemetery, amid the weeds and the forgotten sunken graves. "You're not afraid of what we're going to do to you," the sorcerer stated, disappointment pulling at his face. His witchfire flared with a snap and he patted Pete down, taking away her mobile, the keys to the Mini, and anything else that might constitute a weapon.

  "Jack will come for me," said Pete with a thrust of her chin. "And when he does I—far from a damsel, thank you—am personally going to make you sorry for this entire night and the rest of your wasted life." She could lie convincingly to everyone—it was her own doubts that were the problem. Jack wasn't here and the Black wasn't snapping and hissing in the way that meant he was near.

  "You tell yourself anything you like, girl," said the sorcerer, tossing her things into the weeds. "But the fact remains, you're all alone." He turned Pete so they were pressed back to front, his arm across her throat. "Look there."

  Over the humped, half-collapsed roof of the closest mausoleum, Pete could see torchlight, and hear low voices in the sort of contemplative chant that should accompany confession and absolution.

  "That," hissed the sorcerer, his hand sliding up and down Pete's throat, stroking her skin and leaving a trail of shivers. "That is magic's future. Not Jack Winter. Not the old ways or the old gods. It's men, taking what they want. What our master started, we'll finish."

  "They might," said a Manchester drawl from Pete's back. "But you? All you'll be getting is a concussion and some pretty new bruises."

  Jack raised a burial urn over his head and smashed the sorcerer's skull with it, ash and bone fragments raining around Pete. The sorcerer staggered and went to the ground, raising his hand, his magic gathering.

  "Don't," Jack snarled. "If you value the bits that make you a man, don't."

  Pete jumped away from the sorcerer as he made a grab for her, his teeth bared in fury. She stomped on his outstretched hand, eliciting a howl.

  Before she could find something to tie the sorcerer up with, Jack stepped in and snapped his head backward with a jackboot to the face. "The next time you touch Pete, I kill you where you stand," he said.

  Trembling in Pete's hands and everywhere reminded her that she was still in the cemetery, that Treadwell was there, sending tendrils of ice across the Black.

  Jack came to her, his chest rising and falling in time with the waves of fire in his eyes, and the icy whispers quieted when he got close enough to touch.

  He took Pete's chin in his hand, turned her face side to side, brushed her cheek with his thumb. "You still got all your fingers and toes, then?"

  Pete jerked her head away. "What the bloody hell took you so long?"

  "I did have to bargain for a means of transport that'd get me here before they carved your eyes out, didn't I?" Jack said. "And let me tell you, riding with the dullahan is not something a bloke ever gets used to. The smell alone—"

  "Treadwell is over there, beyond the tomb," Pete broke in. "Jack, Mosswood told me that the only way to exorcise him—"

  "The coffin nail, I know." Jack waved the notion away. "I want you to stay with me, do you understand?"

  "Oh, like you stayed with me in the pub?" Pete followed him between the gravestones, Jack marking a straight line, not even attempting to hide his advance. "Answer me!" she demanded. "How could you let them snatch me? I don't like being
the damsel in distress, Jack. It's bloody demeaning."

  Jack stopped walking, heaving a dramatic sigh. "Treadwell wanted to play with me, and he wanted to make me suffer. I could sit around wringing my hands and waiting for his flunkies to bring back sliced-off bits of Pete, or I could let him think he'd gotten one over and meet him head-on." He grinned. "So relax, Pete. You weren't a damsel. You were bait."

  Pete slapped him, so hard he rocked back on his heels. Jack rubbed his jaw. "Are you quite finished?" he asked.

  "Now I am." Pete nodded. "Do something like this again and I'll rip your sodding balls off."

  "Received loud and clear," Jack agreed. He started walking again. "Hello, you bastards!" he bellowed. "Here I am! The crow-mage, come walking to your doorstep!"

  The sorcerers of the Arkanum appeared, some blending out from the shadows, some stepping out from hiding spots. "Winter," one hissed, teeth flashing under the sodium lights.

  "Ready, luv?" Jack said to her, barely a rumble in his chest.

  "It's Petunia." Pete gripped Jack's hand firmly, a slow spread of warmth passing up her arm.

  Jack looked at her in askance as the sorcerers conjured red witchfire, a circle of bloody pinpoints springing to life around them. "What is?"

  "My name," Pete told him. "It's Petunia." She could feel Treadwell behind her eyes, pushing and guiding with fingers like living icicles.

  "Dreadful," Jack muttered. "Don't blame you for shortening it."

  "I wanted you to know," Pete said.

  Jack squeezed her hand. "I do, Pete." He breathed in and the magic crackled around him, the Black leaching from the ether to gather and swarm.

  Pete shut her eyes. Jack exhaled and said, "Cosain."

  The shield hex blossomed, growing and spreading outward, a stone bubble that decimated the circle of sorcerers, breaking bones and bloodying faces. The hex coalesced and held, shimmering against the night light. "In my bag," said Jack, indicating a battered satchel with his chin. "Take out the hammer and the coffin nail while I hold the hex, will you, luv?"

  Pete dug in the satchel, which contained any number of unpleasantly slimy and smelly things, and pulled out a wooden mallet and a large square-headed nail. The nail sent a jolt of white-heat magic through her hand when she touched it.