Street Magic Part 3

Pete drew in a breath, wis.h.i.+ng desperately it was the end of a Parliament. Sod it, before this morning she'd been meaning to quit quit. Jack had raked all her old vices to front and center.

"Sorry, sir. What is it you wanted to see me on?"

"The Superintendent has deemed it appropriate to dedicate a small auxiliary parking structure to Inspector Caldecott, senior. Your father," said Newell as if she might have forgotten. He gave the impression of examining Pete over his gla.s.ses, even though his nose was bare. "They would like you to write a brief statement to be engraved on the plaque that will bear his name, if that isn't too taxing."

b.l.o.o.d.y foolishness. Connor coughed at her from that hospital bed, so diminished but still full of fight. Tell him to sod his parking structuredid my job and never asked for anything more Tell him to sod his parking structuredid my job and never asked for anything more.

"Of course, sir," she said aloud, willing Newell, Don't ask about Bridget Killigan Don't ask about Bridget Killigan.

"Very well," said Newell. "You're dismissed."

Relief, and a f.a.g waiting outside.

"And Inspector?" said Newell. Pete's feet ground to a halt against her will.

"Sir?"

"Don't think that I won't be asking for a full accounting of the Killigan matter when the girl is released from the hospital."

d.a.m.n you, Jack. "Of course, sir." Pete tipped her head in deference and escaped into the wider office.

"Someone sent you papers by courier," said Ollie, with a nod toward the flat tan package on Pete's desk. The return label was the crest of Terry's architectural firm. Pete ripped the package with a letter opener, being more vicious than she strictly had to be.

Tight orderly lines of black type marched across the columns and Pete swore in a whisper before she punched up an outside line and called Terry at work.

"Mr. Hanover."

"This is not not the price we agreed on, you w.a.n.ker," Pete gritted into the mouthpiece. Ollie raised his eyebrows at that, and strategically went to refill his tea mug with hot water. the price we agreed on, you w.a.n.ker," Pete gritted into the mouthpiece. Ollie raised his eyebrows at that, and strategically went to refill his tea mug with hot water.

On the other end of the line, Terry sighed. "The estate agent priced it for a quick sale, Pete, just like you wanted. You told me yourself you didn't want to waste any time haggling over the flatjust get it sold."

"Yes." Pete turned her back on the MIT room at large and stared at the National Health advisories pinned to the wall behind her desk. "Yes, I do want it sold, sold at the price we gave the estate agent."

"The market's gone downhill since then. Martha said"

"Who the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is Martha?"

She could picture Terry's sour pout when he answered. "My new estate agent. Miss Tabram."

"She's Susan's a.s.sistant, the one who had her knees stuck in your ears when I came over to sign the credit check forms last week?"

"We're seeing each other." Terry sounded far too relaxed for Pete to do anything except get into her car, drive to his firm, and shove his drafting pencil into his ear ca.n.a.l. She couldn't, so she snapped, "Raise the price up, Terry. I'm not going to waste my time with your f.u.c.king about," and slammed the receiver down with a crack like bones snapping.

"Now I really do need that f.a.g," she said to Ollie when he sat down again. "He ordered my food on our first date and he hasn't stopped shoving his b.l.o.o.d.y opinions down my throat since."

A clerk came through the maze of desks and touched Pete on the shoulder. "Sorry to bother you, Inspector& four persons to see you waiting in the visitor's room."

Pete wrapped her fist longingly around the crumpled pack of Parliaments in her pocket.

"Not the ruddy press, is it?" said Ollie suspiciously. "PR office has been ringing off the hook with tosspots wanting an interview with you, Pete."

"It's not the press," said the clerk. "It's& well&" Her tan brow crinkled nervously. "They wouldn't exactly say, Inspector& only that it was very urgent."

"All right, all right." Pete sighed. "I'll be out in a moment. Tell them to keep their knickers on that long."

Ollie found Pete half an hour later, in her customary spot near the parking shed for the armed response vehicles.

"What happened, Caldecott?"

Rain peppered the puddle at Pete's feet, and she threw her cigarette into it, where it floated on the oil-stained water like a tiny corpse. "Two more."

Ollie sagged a bit, and rubbed his forehead. "b.u.g.g.e.r it. When?"

"This afternoon," said Pete. "After school. Two children, friends, live near each other. They didn't come home, and the parents thought they'd run away."

"I'll tell Newell," said Ollie, making a move for the door.

"I did it," said Pete. "Patrols are searching the neighborhood. I'm following momentarily." Even to her ears, she sounded flat and uninterested, as if a boring program were on BBC 4 but she couldn't be bothered to change the channel.

She could lie and say it was Jack's fault, for jerking her about rather than telling the truth, but it was hers. Two more children. An agonizing five days, if she was lucky, before they showed up in the same fas.h.i.+on as Bridget Kil-ligan. Pete didn't even bother to tell herself that these were just suspicions, not fact. She was too tired to deny that she was certain.

"I'll fetch my car, head over there as well," said Ollie.

"Heath, wait," said Pete. Ollie paused. "Would you& would you mind going on ahead and taking point on the case, just for today?"

Ollie's lips pursed. "You've been eerie ever since we found the Killigan child, Caldecott. You need a bit of rest. If that's what you're asking for, take it. With my blessing."

"Not a rest," said Pete. She felt mad, as if she were standing on a cliff with paper wings strapped to her back. But the simple fact, the only fact fact in this at all, was that Jack had been right. Never mind in this at all, was that Jack had been right. Never mind how how, he'd found Bridget. He would find the two new missing.

Pete didn't allow herself the glaring thought that her faith in Jack was as misplaced as it had ever been. Or the new wrinkle, that he hated her for something she couldn't fathom.

"Not a rest," Pete repeated to Ollie. "There's something that I have to do. It may take me thirty-six hours or so, Ollie& cover my a.r.s.e with Newell until then?"

Ollie Heath, G.o.d bless him, just nodded. "Of course, Pete."

He went to look for the missing children, and Pete went hunting for Jack, not knowing if she was going to hit him or embrace him when they met, just that she needed to find him, and so she would.

Chapter Eight

She'd never intended to rescue him, of course. Of all the strung-out lost boys in London, Jack was the least in need of that.

Pete knew she'd been spending too much time around Southwark when the s.h.i.+fty bloke on the steps of Jack's squat waved to her.

And she waved back. "Jack in?"

"Nah," said the kid, sniffling and s.h.i.+vering even inside his parka. "He moved on last night. Prolly over near Borough High Street in the close. There's a few beds."

It was twilight, witchy and shadowed along the narrow street. The night citizens were beginning to stir, but there was enough daylight left to allow her safe pa.s.sage to Jack's latest shooting gallery.

He was nodding against the wall in the front room, burning cigarette dangling between his lips and a crackling copy of London Calling London Calling on the turntable. Pete pushed the needle off track with a squeal and Jack cracked one eye. on the turntable. Pete pushed the needle off track with a squeal and Jack cracked one eye.

"Hasn't anyone told you it's rude to burst into other people's houses?"

"I need to talk to you," Pete said. She crossed her arms and made sure to appear stern and unyielding. Jack was in the throes of a hit, and d.a.m.n it all, he'd listen to her one way or another.

"I recall we've played this scene before," said Jack. "Only this time you haven't got my stash to threaten me with. So what are you going to do, DI Caldecottbeat me about the head with a great b.l.o.o.d.y stick?"

"Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind," Pete a.s.sured him. Jack exhaled a cloud of blue, the nubby cigarette falling to the floor. He didn't appear to notice, tapping his dirty fingertips to the time of "Clampdown." A stray line of blood painted the path between the cl.u.s.tered punctures on his forearm, and Pete stooped to press the napkin she'd received with her breakfast b.u.t.tie against the spot. The faint smell of eggs and ham rose between them, blending the tobacco and the sour undertone of the squat into something almost home.

"Someone who didn't know would almost think you cared," Jack muttered, but he didn't pull his arm away.

"I care," Pete said. "I care about Diana Leroy and Patrick Dumbershall."

Jack yawned languidly. "Who, now?"

"You know b.l.o.o.d.y well who they are," Pete said, slipping one end of the metal links from her belt around Jack's wrist. He jerked as soon as the handcuffs clicked closed and Pete's wrist bruised with a sharp jab.

"You slag!" Jack spat when he realized what Pete had done. "If you're still trying to get into me knickers, there's better ways."

"Your knickers don't concern me in the least," Pete said crisply.

"Please, Pete," Jack said with a pathetic jangle of the cuffs. "Don't do this to me. I can't do another stretch. Prison's b.l.o.o.d.y murder for me." He was like the roving harlequin at a carnival, trying on masks until he found one that the audience favored, one to draw them into his web of seduction and illusion.

And in that other time, with the other Jack, it would have worked. Pete knew she'd be helpless, she'd go stand in his circle and feel his black magic flow through them both.

But now all she saw was Jack grinning at her as the smoke man came, and she felt the screaming vibrations inside her own head as her mind struggled to contain something that no one was meant to endure. And his pathetic attempts to con her weren't helping.

"Get up," she snarled, hauling Jack to his feet. He was light, far beneath healthy, like a starving vampire or a reanimated sack of bones. Pete turned her head determinedly so Jack wouldn't see the pity on her face. Pity was something neither of them wanted. "You're coming along to the Yard and we're going to talk about the two more missing children."

Jack dug in his heels. "I can't leave me things, some c.u.n.t'll nick them."

Pete stopped, making Jack stumble closer to her by their connected arms. "I am going to get some b.l.o.o.d.y answers out of you, Jack Winter, and I prefer to do it in the comparative clean and comfort of a place that is not a druggie squat, so you are going going out that door and I don't give a f.u.c.k whether it pleases you or not." out that door and I don't give a f.u.c.k whether it pleases you or not."

Jack blinked. Pete had never known she had the ability to leave him at a loss, and it was rather powerful. Well, nights upon rainy nights of dealing with drunken soccer hooligans who decided just because she was small and slight that she was easily intimidated would put steel into any woman's backbone.

"I get some clean clothes, yeah?" Jack said as Pete forcibly led him out the door and down the mossy steps to the Mini. "And a drink. G.o.d, I'd murder a pint."

"You get to sit down in the car and shut your gob," said Pete, thrusting Jack into the pa.s.senger side of the Mini. She clipped her end of the cuffs to the door bar and got in.

By the time they cleared the wharves and drove over the bridge back into the City, Jack was nodding again, in the dream place between the heroin and the barren expanse of needing it. Pete slapped his shoulder with her free hand. "Keep awake. This isn't a minicab."

"Mmph," said Jack. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, you're violent. Got some sort of repressed urge you're takin' out on me?"

"My urges are none of your sodding business," Pete snapped, then pressed her lips together. He still had that current, that disconcerting air that made her blurt out things that should have stayed a secret.

Jack smirked. "So you say, luv."

"Why don't you make this easy on yourself and tell me what you know about the missing kids," Pete suggested as she turned onto a thoroughfare crowded with taxis and the late rush hour.

"I know f.u.c.k-all," said Jack promptly. "May I please be let go now, Inspector? I'll be ever so good and won't cause a fuss again."

Pete gripped the wheel. She wanted to throw her two hands around Jack's neck, but the Mini's steering wheel would have to do. "You told me exactly where to find Bridget Killigan and when, and you expect me to believe that you know nothing about two other children abducted by the same b.l.o.o.d.y person in the same b.l.o.o.d.y way?"

"I do, and I don't." Jack nodded. "Let me out of the f.u.c.king car, Pete. I'll crash us into an abutment if that's what it takes."

Pete crossed two lanes of traffic and screeched into the bus dropoff zone, laying on the Mini's brakes in a way the manufacturer never intended. "Sod you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she yelled. "You think just because you're some poor wounded addict I'm supposed to believe your line of innocent bulls.h.i.+t?"

"What I think think," Jack yelled back, "is that you've turned from a sweet girl into a harpy from h.e.l.l, and that I b.l.o.o.d.y hate the sight of you and if you don't unlock these b.l.o.o.d.y handcuffs right now, I'll hurt you, Pete. I swear to whatever G.o.ds you pray to."

It flamed up in his eyes first, the bluer light of witchfire. Pete gasped as it spilled from his fingers, his lipspure raw magic seeping out and forming a tangible golem of Jack's rage. Of his magic.

Pete wanted more than anything to turn her eyes and pretend that she was just tired, or just crazy, or just& But the weight of knowing knowing laid itself upon her, laid itself upon her, knowing knowing in the pit of her stomach, the thing that wouldn't go away no matter how many years spanned between Jack holding her hands as the flames wreathed them and Jack glaring at her now, melting her skin with his stare to reach the truth underneath. And she could ignore it, but she'd never stop the in the pit of her stomach, the thing that wouldn't go away no matter how many years spanned between Jack holding her hands as the flames wreathed them and Jack glaring at her now, melting her skin with his stare to reach the truth underneath. And she could ignore it, but she'd never stop the knowing knowing, stop seeing things she shouldn't know for truth or fiction, or be able to deny what the witchfire wreathing Jack meant.

It spilled off him in waves now as he jerked against the cuffs, touching the spiked tips of his hair and gathering at the corners of his mouth, racing over the dials in the Mini's dash. Where it kissed Pete's rigid body, it stung.

A shudder pa.s.sed through her, like she'd just been doused with ice water. Jack's breathing was the loudest thing inside the car, ragged and enraged. Everything was bathed in blue.

"b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," Pete whispered. "You weren't lying."

"Magic," Jack agreed with a hiss, his lips parting. The witchfire retreated and coiled about his head like a blazing ice crown, angry and chained.

Pete swallowed as a lorry whooshed by her window, horn blaring. "I know you can tell me what happened to those children." She didn't add, And now I have to believe that what happened to you really And now I have to believe that what happened to you really happened, happened, and G.o.d, Jack and G.o.d, Jack, you just made every nightmare I've had for twelve years real again. Her stomach and her vision both lurched but she kept herself steady, from the outside anyway. The outside mattered.

"Very probable," Jack agreed, settling back into his seat. The witchfire abated until there was only the slightest glow to his eyes.

"Then tell me," Pete said. She heard a begging tone creep in, and hated herself for it.

Jack eyed her for a moment and Pete tried unsuccessfully not to feel naked. The drugs had muted Jack's vitality but they did nothing for his gaze, which burned hotter than she'd ever remembered, fired with rock-bottom desperation.

"I might might tell you," he considered. "But I've got a couple of conditions if I should decide to divulge my specific arcane knowledge." tell you," he considered. "But I've got a couple of conditions if I should decide to divulge my specific arcane knowledge."

"Name them," said Pete instantly. She'd clear whatever-it-was with Chief Inspector Newell laterright now Diana and Patrick's timetable was winding inexorably down.

"Condition one: I get a shower, clean clothes, a place to stayand not some dodgy hostel you shove witnesses into either, a real real place," Jack said. "Whether or not I decide to tell you anything, you take me there right now." place," Jack said. "Whether or not I decide to tell you anything, you take me there right now."

He'd never tell her anything useful, of course. Pete wasn't stupid and she could see from the way Jack talked and held himself that he was hating her for something, that her need for what he had was getting him off.

But she wasn't wasn't stupid, so she said, "Done." stupid, so she said, "Done."

"Condition two," said Jack. "If I tell you something, Pete, no matter how b.l.o.o.d.y outlandish it sounds to your cotton-packed copper earsyou listen. And you believe me."