Street Magic bl-1 Read online

  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 Cassidy. 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 God 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 fag. "Care for a taste?"

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

  "Bloody hell. I hate this fucking 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 bloody skin and a man in an Arsenal jersey disappeared into an alley.

  Jack snorted. "Didn't peg you for an easy shock, Caldecott."

  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 bloody hell is going on."

  Jack rolled his eyes at her, taking a long drag on his cigarette. "Anyone ever told you you're too damned 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 cocked her head, listening to the bell ring through to twelve and telling herself she was crazy, or the clock was faulty, or that something 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 passage, 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. "Shining ones. Unseelie. Call 'em what you will, nobody here wants the treacherous little buggers 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. If you can't stomach the truth then go back now."

  Pete's heart danced, scraping 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 bastard. That we'd end this. Not you, all alone striding into the darkness. We. Now get your bloody hands off me before I have a boot between your balls."

  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 prickle, 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 bumping against the pilings on the Thames. Pete shut her eyes and fixed what the pub 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 glassy 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 clusters of small round tables and bowed heads, and the massive 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 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 others—a 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?" Amusement crinkled his mouth and lit those black stone animal eyes. Pete's throat, when she tried to swallow and speak, scraped 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 bloody 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 arsed 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 pass off your bloody Fae nectar on a human, I'll shove your little horned head up your arse 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 fucking Winter," Jack said, releasing him with a push that rattled clean glasses on the bar back.

  The publican bleached even paler than he already was, if it were possible. "I—I 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 piss off."

  The publican filled his order and retreated to the opposite end of the bar, where he assiduously pretended to polish glasses.

  "Creepy wanker," Pete muttered, shaking off the last vestiges of the publican's cold, ancient aura.

  "Just a satyr," Jack said. "Walking bollocks 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."

  Pete's gaze was drawn to the back corner of the pub, where roof beams and lamplight conspired to create a slice of shadow. A solitary figure sat, fragrant green-tinged smoke from his pipe rising to create the shape of a crown of young spring leaves before dissipating.

  Jack nudged her arm. "Come on." He picked up the two pints of Newcastle Brown and started toward the table with a measured step. If Pete didn't know better she'd call it reluctance, or a sort of respect.

  The man seated alone and smoking was unremarkable, as far as men went. Pete would pass him boarding the tube or in a queue at the news agent's without a glance, although he did have lines of mischief at the corners of his mouth and eyes, and they glowed pleasantly brown. He was older than Jack, wearing a well-trimmed black beard and a soft sport coat patched at the elbows.

  Jack set the pints down on his table and grinned. "Been a long time, Knight."

  When the man turned to look at them, Pete heard a rushing sound, as if a spring wind had disturbed a sacred grove, and with great clarity she saw a tree, ancient, branches piercing the sky while the roots reached down and grasped the heart of the earth.

  "Well," said the man. "Jack Winter. I next expected to see you lying in state at your premature funeral, yet here you are disturbing my evening. Well done."

  Shaking his head, Jack gestured between the man and Pete. "Detective Inspector Caldecott, Ian Mosswood. Mosswood, this is Pete."

  Mosswood raised one eyebrow in an arch so critical Pete felt the urge to stand up straight and comb her hair. "Pete. How frightfully unusual."

  "You know, Mosswood," said Jack, slapping his shoulder, "in this ever-changing world, it's good to know you're still…" He gestured to encompass Mosswood's jacket. "Tweed."

  "I presume," said Mosswood, eyeing the pint of ale, "that since you came over here and bothered me you have some reason." He turned his pipe over and tapped it out against the table's edge. Fragrances of grass and cut wheat filled Pete's nostrils.

  "Bloody right," said Jack, pulling out a chair and straddling it backward. "I need to pick your leafy brain, Mosswood. Brought you the requisite offering and everything, just like a proper druid. Sorry for the lack of white robe and virgin, but Pete's sheets are all striped and I wouldn't presume to guess as to her eligibility for virgin."

  "Sod you," Pete responded, flicking Jack the bird.

  Mosswood picked up the ale and sniffed it with distaste, his prominent nose crinkling.

  "Get off it," said Jack. "You know it's your favorite."

  "It is a sad day when a Green Man's allegiance can be bought for an inadequately washed pint glass of malted hops and stale yeast," said Mosswood with a disapproving curl of his lip. "But such is the way of the world, sadly. I accept your offering. What the bloody hell are you bothering me over, Jack?"

  "Problems," said Jack. "Got a nasty, nasty ghost or hungry beastie on the prowl—some misty tosser with an appetite for little children. I need to find him, and find a way to hurt him bad before I exorcise the bastard back to the Inquisition."

  Mosswood looked up at Pete, who stood awkwardly by his elbow, not sure she was invited into a conversation that had obviously picked up just where it left off the last time the two men had seen each other.

  "Sit down, my dear," he said with a small smile. "Don't let this foolish mage's ramblings inhibit you."

  "Oh," said Pete, "I don't." She pulled out the remaining chair and sat. "Thank you."

  "She is considerably lovely," Mosswood told Jack. "And polite. What in the world is she doing with you?"

  "Funny, you git," said Jack with a humorless smirk. "How about telling me what I need to do to flush out this bugger?"

  Mosswood relit his pipe, taking tobacco that smelled like shaved bark from a leather pouch and tamping it down carefully with his thumb. The pipe was carved from a black wood, slightly glossy, the nicks from the knife that had wrought it visible, a tiny story along the well-rubbed stem and barrel. "What you want to begin your search is a Trifold Focus. I do not know of any in existence, but I'm sure one of your other… sources will be more than happy to oblige the information for the price of an immortal soul or two."

  Jack drained his New
castle and gave Pete a satisfied grin. "I told you he'd come through."

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They walked out of the fog and found the Mini waiting. Big Ben chimed midnight once more and Pete said a silent thank-you to be away from places where the air was not the same and she could feel invisible eyes on her all the time.

  Jack sat closemouthed during the ride and he was chalk colored by the time they reached Pete's flat. "You all right?" she inquired when he stumbled and fetched against the wall just inside her door.

  "Yeah…" Jack's jaw set. "No. No, I'm not." He made a run for the bathroom and Pete heard him retching miserably.

  It was so easy to forget, when Jack was sarcastic and smoking a Parliament, throwing out smiles and pinning her with his hard eyes, how she'd found him less than a week ago. Skinny, wasted, and his body still screamed for a fix even now.

  Pete hesitated for a few more seconds, listening to Jack choke, then nudged the bathroom door open with her toe and crouched beside him, placing a hand on the back of his neck. Jack's skin was cold and slick, like he'd just been pulled from a pool of oily, lifeless water.

  "Don't… don't…" he gasped, finally managing to draw a breath. The loo stank of old ale and sweat with an undertone of something darker, burned from crossing a barrier that flesh was not meant to. "I'm all right," Jack muttered, sitting back on his heels and wiping the sweat away with the flats of his palms from his face. "It takes a lot out of you. Crossing to and from the Black. I'd forgotten how fucking difficult that is."

  "I feel fine," said Pete quietly.

  "Well, aren't you bloody well special," Jack snapped. Pete stood and held out her right hand, trying not to let it shake with anger that Jack might take for timidity.

  "Give it to me."

  "Give what to you?" Jack muttered, leaning his head back against the tile wall and breathing through his nose. He hadn't stopped sweating even though rain was washing the windows of the flat with intermittent sleet and Pete's fingers were cold because the radiators were turned down.