Street Magic Part 29

Treadwell laughed inside her mind, icicles growing over and around her few shreds of precious consciousness, and Pete stopped fighting.

I am a conduit, she whispered. I am a shaper of magic I am a shaper of magic. Treadwell cried out as their power touched and sparked.

The pain ceased and Pete had the giddy feeling of standing on a precipice, toes hanging into open s.p.a.ce. Behind her, the freezing encroachment of Treadwell traveled ever forward, and in front was something vast and deep.

Take my power, Pete told Treadwell. Take it into yourself and rid me of it. I do not want this. I never wanted to be this. Take it, take it, take it Take it into yourself and rid me of it. I do not want this. I never wanted to be this. Take it, take it, take it& She touched the void in front of her, felt it flood through her being, painless but so vast it was as if all the pieces of her had blown away. She had ceased to be Petunia Calde-cott, had joined into the ancient mystery of what came after life, and what had come before. The power formed and shaped and bowed and when Pete opened her eyes, she saw the shrouded man standing before her.

"This is yours," he said, and held out his hand, hot and slick with blood. Pete looked into his face for the first time, a young face, a human face, streaked with dirt and old scars on top of his chieftain's armor, washed clean of the blood of battle.

"This is no one else's," the shrouded man said, and over his shoulder Pete discerned a thousand shadows, ravens all, and below them a tall woman with eyes like marbles and hair made from feathers who touched the shrouded man's shoulder and gibbered in his ear. A single tear worked down his cheek, and he reached out and grabbed Pete's hand, uncurling her fingers to expose her frozen blue palm. "You must take it now, at last."

Into her hand, Pete let him drop the small beating bird's heart, and then the magic took away her vision and she couldn't see the shrouded man or the raven woman anymore. From the heart, warmth spread and just for a moment Pete felt right and at home here, on the edge of everything.

Then Treadwell's freezing talons clamped down around her neck, the completion of the circuit, and he took all the magic from her, drew it into himself with a cry of ecstasy as Pete felt herself husking away.

He pulled back, or tried to, and a heat rose around them, all of Treadwell's icy power going to steam. You& you You& you tricked tricked me me! Treadwell howled.

"I didn't," Pete told him softly. She felt their two talents rubbing ragged edges against each other, Treadwell's fraying as he wailed. "But I will die to keep you from coming back."

The magic rushed into him, more and more, filling up the reservoirs, and Pete clamped her own hand around Treadwell's skeletal one, refusing to break their connection.

You are mine! Treadwell shouted. Mine, and I will live& I will Mine, and I will live& I will live& live& The magic did not burn Pete, but filled her, lit every corner of her, burned down into her darkest core, where all her knotted fears lay. She saw Treadwell for what he was, a shattered, tattered echo of the sorcerer he'd once been, stretched thin between too many worlds. She saw the magic for hers, and how it could not be anyone else's.

"Go back," Pete commanded, locking her grip around his wrist, watching the magic burn him from the inside, turning his shadow to ash. "You are dead, and you belong with the dead. Go back, Algernon Treadwell, and trouble the living no more."

Treadwell screamed defiance, but even as he howled he was pulled backward, away from Pete. The raven woman seized him, raked her talons through Treadwell, stared him in the face.

"Your circle has closed, Algernon. So it must be for us all."

He tried to scream, but the ravens fell on Treadwell, lifted him up and took away his eyes and his tongue and carried him through the bleak gates of iron and sorrow, the signpost to Purgatory atop their spires.

I will find another. Treadwell sighed, the last tremor of his existence in the Black. I will find another who lives for power and cares not, and then I will come to claim you, Weir I will find another who lives for power and cares not, and then I will come to claim you, Weir.

"p.i.s.s off, w.a.n.ker," Pete told him. "I'm not afraid of you."

Treadwell's mouth gaped wide in wordless agony and then the raven woman cawed and the gates slammed shut with a clang that sent blackness into Pete's bones. The magic faded, the vision along with it, and she felt damp gra.s.s under her knees and palms, night dew soaking her trousers and cuffs.

Jack grabbed her, held her, looked into her eyes. "Pete. Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Pete, you're all right?"

"Yes." Pete tested her voice, found it raspy, as though she'd been out in a cold day for too long. "I mean, no. b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, Jack, I'm stabbed." She hacked out a cough and saw a few droplets of blood fly forth to land on the wilted gra.s.s. "Oh& that's not very good&"

"Come on." Jack helped her up as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour. "Got to get you to a hospital. And me, toosodding sorcerers jabbed me well and good. Probably get lockjaw."

"He's gone," Pete murmured. "Treadwell. Back& back into the bleak gates. I sent him away& to the raven woman, and she took him&"

Jack looked down at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Un-bound exorcism is a nice trick, Petunia. Only met a handful that could manage it without a circle."

"Treadwell made me mad," Pete said. "And don't sodding call me 'Petunia.' Just because& I shared a confidence& doesn't make it a b.l.o.o.d.y invitation."

"Glad to see near death hasn't softened you," Jack said. "I'd be disappointed if nearly losing your soul to a hungry ghost was all it took."

The neat visitor's hut came into view a few hundred meters down the path.

"Jack&" Pete ground her feet to a stop, causing them both to stumble. "I touched magic. I& I used it. What does that mean? What's going to happen?"

Jack wrapped his arm more tightly around her shoulders and didn't answer for too long, time enough to choose what not to say, but Pete didn't care any longer, just cared that he was there there, next to her, solid and corporeal and Jack Jack.

"It means just what I thought all along, luvyou're strong. No matter what any toerag psychiatrist says, you've got a talent. And a temper."

"I tried so hard not to&" Pete started to cry, and choked it back with a breath that made her hack more blood, in turn.

"Pete." Jack held her, rocked her. "It doesn't mean the end of your life, luv. May seem that way, but you'll still pay your electric and go to work and eat greasy takeaway when you're too tired to cook supper. You're not cursed. You've got magic, and people will try to abuse it, but you're you're in control of it. You're holding it in your hands." in control of it. You're holding it in your hands."

Pete swallowed and managed to nod. "I suppose I am."

Jack lifted her chin and looked in her eyes. "Oi. You believe me, don't you?"

Pete started walking again, arm around Jack's waist. She let herself lean on him, and he stumbled a bit so she let him lean on her.

"Of course I do."

EPILOGUE The Streets "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles The Hound of the Baskervilles

Chapter Forty-six

The sky spat rain as winter took hold, and Pete crouched inside her slicker, trying to hoist her umbrella over Jack's much higher head while still gaining the benefit of coverage.

"Give it up, luv," he said, taking it from her and handing it to a hobo nodding near a tube vent.

"I'm cold," Pete protested, her teeth chattering. "If I catch pneumonia and die I'll rattle around your flat for the rest of your life, throwing vases across the room and making the telly explode."

"First of all," Jack said, pus.h.i.+ng his wet hair out of his eyes, "that's a poltergeist. You'd be a shade. Second of all, I don't own a telly."

"That bit about me dying didn't faze you at all, eh?" Pete asked. Jack shrugged.

"You haven't yet, luv."

Pete checked her wrist.w.a.tch. "I should go. I have my last postsurgery checkup in an hour."

"Going to have a nice Frankenstein scar, are you?" Jack asked.

Pete unb.u.t.toned her slicker and pulled up her jumper to show the slightly jagged line of st.i.tches on her stomach, like an elongated Z. Jack winced. "You stuck yourself a good one, didn't you?"

"I had to be sure I'd make it over to you," Pete said. "I don't think a light scratch would have exactly done it."

"I should get you a taxi," Jack said, stepping to the curb. Pete pulled him back.

"I'll manage on the tubeI've made it a whole week without getting so dizzy I fall over."

They paused at the entrance to the Metropolitan line. Finally Pete said, "It's all right. I know you don't like hospitals." She didn't mention that thanks to her injury-fueled journey into Jack's nightmares, she knew exactly why why he didn't care for them. he didn't care for them.

"Meet you at the Mayfair afterward." The Mayfair Arms was the pub around the corner from Pete's doctor's surgery. She nodded.

"We'll have a bite of supper. Jack, there's something I need to ask you, now that things have settled&"

Jack's eyes unfocused and he looked past her, down the stairs of the tube. "Oh, b.u.g.g.e.r all&"

Pete was spun around and into a portly gentleman wielding a briefcase as Jack shoved past her and took the stairs into the tube two at a time. Pete blinked the rain out of her eyes. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Sorry. Sorry," she apologized to the man.

"Those louts should be arrested," the man huffed. Pete took off after Jack as quickly as her healing incision would allow. She'd been at her desk in MIT ever since she'd been released from the hospital three weeks ago, and it was driving her mad. Newell refused to tell her when she might be back on duty as an active inspector. Her only comfort was that he seemed to believe her story of following the kidnap suspects to Highgate and getting stabbed in the ensuing struggle. Ollie, bless him, had covered his end and made no mention of Jack in his reports.

"Jack!" she shouted over the rumble of late-afternoon commuters packing the station. His blond head bobbed behind a pillar, headed for the tracks.

Pete caught up with him just as his feet crossed the safety line and his arms reached out in a scooping motion, to pull an invisible phantom back from the spitting rails.

The shriek of the train's horn blinded Pete to everything else, and she s.n.a.t.c.hed Jack by the collar of his coat and deliberately fell backward, praying her weight would be enough to hold him.

The train blew hot dragon's breath in her face as the brakes locked and it squealed to a stop. The sound mingled with a few screams from waiting pa.s.sengers who had witnessed Jack's attempted swan dive.

"It's fine!" Pete shouted above the echoes of the train. She dug out her warrant card and flashed it to the four corners, keeping one knee firmly planted on Jack's arm as he struggled under her. "Metropolitan Police. I have the situation under control."

Missing a train was worse than a man almost landing on the tracks to most of the commuters around Pete, and they moved on, whispering among themselves.

"The girl& she went right over the edge& she burned up on the rails&" Jack's eyes were mostly white, and he twitched restlessly as if in a fever dream.

"What girl?" Pete demanded. "Jack, there was n.o.body going over the edge but you."

He blinked at her, and then sagged. "f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, Pete, I'm sorry."

Pete slumped when she realized that Jack had not, in fact, gone any madder than he already was. Her knife wound hurt a great deal from the fall. "Your sight."

He nodded, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips. They were their natural color when he took his hands away. "I saw her clear as day. Pretty little blond thing, couldn't have been more than fifteen. She went down those steps with such purpose& I knew knew what she was about, just had to be in time to stop her&" what she was about, just had to be in time to stop her&"

Pete got to her feet with some difficulty and offered Jack an arm. He took it, and kept leaning on her. "I can't do this, Pete. I maintained while we were trying to find Treadwell but I can't anymore. I'm very sorry."

Hearing Jack speak in a defeated tone wasn't normal-it was tilt-the-sun-the-wrong-way odd, in fact. Pete looked up at him. "No, Jack."

"You should go on to your appointment," he said. "I'm going to take care of this problem. I'll be at home if you're looking for me." He grinned without humor. "Though I don't suppose you would."

"If you go get a fix," Pete said. "Enjoy it. It will be the last time."

Jack laughed, not a pleasant sound, knife-edged with desperation. "Going to chain me up in your cellar and take my demons out, Pete?"

"No," Pete said. "You and I are going to do what you should should have done at the start of all this, and find a way to hold back your sight without sticking death up your arm twice a day." have done at the start of all this, and find a way to hold back your sight without sticking death up your arm twice a day."

"Can't be done," said Jack. He shook his head, speaking more, but Pete's train pulled into the station and drowned him out. She inserted herself into the line of boarding pa.s.sengers, looking back at Jack as he walked away.

"Use a clean sharp!" she shouted after him, drawing any number of odd looks.

"Can't be done, Petunia!" he yelled again, without looking at her. "You can't ride in on the white steed and pull me back from the dragon's jaws!"

Pete glared at the back of Jack's head as the train moved out of the station. "Just watch me."

Chapter Forty-seven

It was nearly eight by the time Pete arrived at Jack's flat, long dark. Her wound was pleasantly numb after the shot of painkillers Dr. Abouhd had given her, clucking over the recent inflammation.

She tried the door and found it unlocked, as usual. The flat was dark and still except for the rotten ice-cold spittle of rain brus.h.i.+ng against the high windows.

"Jack?" Pete said softly, fearing the worst. He grunted and turned on a low lamp with a red shade, a new addition since the last time she'd been. He had a new, marginally less tatty sofa with lion's feet, and a matching chair as well. "Been shopping?" It was the most inoffensive thing Pete could think to say.

Jack grunted again. "Downstairs neighbor died. Mrs. Ramamurthy. Nicked them before her ruddy son and his ruddy MP3 player blaring ruddy techno music could sell it off." His eyes were hooded and dreamy, and his voice had that underwater quality of deep sleep.