Street Magic

"Bloody hell…" started the first.

"Forget it," said the second. "Treadwell's starting the spell. Finish her and be quick about it, 'less you want to explain to him why we weren't standing in the circle."

The circle of magicians began chanting in Latin, forming around Jack. The sorcerer with the knife made a swipe for her, but Pete grabbed the knife above the blade, fighting the sorcerer for it, gaining a hold and breaking the man's wrist.

He screamed, and Pete looked at the last, her blood racing in time with the swelling gusts of the Black swirling around them. She had to do something, with no magic and no power of her own.

Pete turned the knife in her hand, placing the tip against her own abdomen.

You can hurt and bleed and die in the thin spaces.

She might not come back from this decision, but there was nothing else. Jack had come for her, faced Treadwell, and now he was dying again. Dying not because of his pride but because he'd stayed to help her in the first place.

Pete felt the blade of the knife break her skin, just, a bead of hot blood sliding down her stomach.

"Treadwell!" she screamed, her voice coming out raw. Treadwell turned his dreadful eyes on her.

What is the meaning of this?

"If you want Jack Winter so badly," Pete said, her hands shaking well and truly now, "then you can bloody well come and take him from me." She raised the knife and drove it into her stomach, deep and with enough force to lodge it there. The pain spread immediately, a rush of vertigo that spiraled her down and down into the icy, bottomless reaches of the Black.

Chapter Forty-four

She opened her eyes in a small neat room, painted blue. The sitting room, from her family's old flat. Pete was standing in the center of the braided rug their mother had bought in a jumble sale in the high street, when Pete was a baby.

"Quite the view, isn't it?"

Jack spoke, his back to her as he leaned against the window, his forehead pressed to the leaded glass. Pete followed his gaze and gasped.

London was on fire, as far as the eye could see—blue flames, consuming everything down to char. Steam rose off the Thames and the city was filled with the wail of air raid sirens. The sky, what Pete could see through the smoke that burned the fine skin inside her nostrils, was streaked with bloody red as a sun wreathed in flames set to the west.

"Jack," Pete rasped, trying not to choke on the poisoned air, "where are we?"

"Inside my dying moments. The last flicker of my nightmares," Jack said. He exhaled smoke with each breath. "The dark place of the soul, in between."

"In between life and death?" Pete said.

"Of course." Jack breathed more smoke. "The world, and what comes after. I'm not really here."

"No?" Pete edged backward a step.

"No," said Jack with a sigh. "No, Pete, I'm already dead." As Pete watched, unable to force herself to move, Jack's eyes flamed, and then the flame spread and became a helm, a raven's beak and a raven's sleek wings, engulfing his body, burning him away. Jack didn't scream, just looked at her, arms spread, the fire rushing across the carpet and up the walls until it was all around her.

"No," Pete muttered. "No, no, no." She ran, keeping her body low, throwing her jacket over her head to protect it from a fiery snowfall of paint flakes and ash. The front door of the flat was locked and she beat her shoulder against it until it burst open, tumbling her into bright fluorescent light and the smell of ammonia.

There was no disorientation this time. Pete would know the hospital room with her ears swaddled and both eyes put out. The slow hiss of oxygen and the almost imperceptible plip-plip of the IVs resounded in a space that was too small and too stale, holding a hovering, waiting Death for too long.

Co

Outside the city was lit, sparkling like broken glass under full night. Visiting hours, Pete remembered, would be long over. Still, the door swished open and someone let in a brief burst of chatter from the hallway.

"See you on third shift, Shirley luv," a nurse called, and then silence fell again as the door shut.

Jack came to Co

"Can't say much, really," Jack muttered. "You never liked me. Right to. Had nothing but bad intentions for your MG." He laughed once. "Least she slipped me enough details for me to be your fake son. Did you know family can come by after visiting's closed? Bet you didn't. Doesn't look like your girls fancy hanging about too much. Can't say I blame them."

"You bastard…" Pete hissed.

Jack methodically searched the bedside table and pocketed the dose of Percocet the nurse had left should Co

Co

Jack sighed, his mouth thi

"Stop!" Pete cried. "For God's sake, that's my da!"

Jack turned to her. He scratched his jaw under the stubble and shrugged one shoulder. He was never quite still.

"What am I supposed to do, Pete?" Jack spread his hands. "I'm not really here. You're just walking the halls, admiring the paintings."

"You dream about this," Pete stated, motioning around the hospital room. "Stealing his painkillers. Talking to him."

"Only lately," said Jack. He began to shiver. "I only nicked from the terminal cases, me, but I suppose it don't matter. Lot that I did that'll become fuel for nightmares, I'm sure. Thanks to you."

"I don't have much time," Pete said desperately. "I wounded myself pretty badly just to get here. Where are you, Jack?"

"I'm where he keeps me," Jack whispered, voice a husk. "At the center of it all. Stay away, Pete. Wake up. Just wake up…"

Jack reached for her and Pete ducked him, hitting the wheelchair release for the door and backing out as Jack doubled over in a fit of shivers and coughs.

"Bloody hell, what now?" she muttered. Her voice came out hollow and she felt as if her blood had turned to stone, cold and disco

"He can't hear you." The man who spoke was tall and rangy, knotty little muscles warping his prison tattoos. He wore a stained undershirt and shorts and boots, and didn't speak to Pete but to the woman who cowered on the floor across the tiny sitting room, nursing a cut lip. The fiat was poor, wallpaper peeling off, floors scarred, and out the greasy window Pete could see a skyline that was not London.