Black 01 - Street Magic

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "I don't need an escort," said Pete reflexively.

  "I suppose you don't." Mosswood knocked out his pipe against the edge of the table and took his leather tobacco pouch out of his coat. "You wouldn't have been able to find your way here again if you were not touched by the Black."

  A cup of tea appeared on the edge of the table, a tiny hand sliding back below eye level, and Pete started.

  "Thank you, Nora," said Mosswood. "And another of the same for Miss Caldecott. Sugar?"

  "No sugar," Pete said, regarding the small earthy-colored creature with an arched eyebrow.

  "Brownies," said Mosswood when Nora had scuttled away. "Not very intelligent, but love menial tasks. Useful for housework, if you need someone to come in."

  "I'm here about Jack," Pete said, putting her palms flat on the table.

  "Oh, I doubt that." Mosswood blew on his pipe and smoke sprouted as the tobacco lit of its own volition. "You are here about what's happening to you, my dear. Jack is merely a side effect of all this."

  "I don't—" Pete started.

  "How much has Jack told you about this? The Black? The magic that he works?"

  Pete sighed. "Not much, and before tonight I didn't want to know. I'd convinced myself a long time ago that all this"—and here she gestured at the pub, the music, and brownies scuttling under tables—"wasn't real. But tonight…"

  "Tonight was different," Mosswood said, examining her with a penetrating gaze. For all of his well-groomed shab-biness, the patched coat and sleek beard, Mosswood's eyes were inhuman, black and flat like stones. "Tell me."

  "I… Jack and I were trying to get rid of a demon—that's a long story, entirely separate—and I touched him, really touched him because I was scared, and all this power just… appeared."

  Mosswood scratched his beard and sucked on his pipe. "More power than the irredeemable Mr. Winter usually commands. Impressive."

  "What's so impressive about that?" Pete said.

  "Mages, in the great order of the Black, are candle dames," Mosswood said. "Jack Winter is an acetylene torch turned on full. Do you see?"

  "I just want to know what happened when I touched him," said Pete.

  "Afraid of it, are you?" Mosswood nodded. "Bright girl."

  "I'm not afraid of anything," Pete snapped. "If it was just my life, I wouldn't be here. There's an innocent child at stake and I need to know that Jack is telling me the truth, when he decides to tell me anything. Whatever happened could affect my ability to help her. Or anyone."

  "Jack Winter telling the truth," Mosswood mused. "There's something I'd like to see."

  "Listen," Pete said. "I'm not stupid. I know something happened that wasn't meant to the first time Jack and I tried magic together. I don't think mages make a habit of working rituals that leave them on Death's doorstep. And now, the same thing almost blew his flat to smithereens earlier tonight."

  "It is not a thing," said Mosswood. "Magic is not an object."

  Pete dropped her eyes at the rebuke, wishing she'd never come. Being in the Black made her feel as if she were half in and half out of icy water, displaced and distracted.

  Mosswood finally sighed. "I can only venture a guess, you understand…"

  "Anything," said Pete with relief. "Wild speculation, baseless rumor… I've already spent over a decade thinking I'm crazy for believing any of this."

  "Many thousands of years ago," said Mosswood, "there was a class of magicians, used by the old gods to speak for them… druids, priestesses of the Morrigan, a class of the Celt's battle shamans… you see?"

  Pete nodded. The brownie set a cup of strong hot tea at her elbow, and she sipped reflexively. The way Mosswood spoke, it was easy to imagine sitting at the foot of the great standing stones, watching hooded figures dance in the starlight.

  "The term 'magician' is a fallacy, really," said Mosswood. "They were called 'Weirs,' in the old tongues. Shapers of magic."

  "Weir." Pete tasted the word, swallowed it down with her next swig of tea. "And what did the Weirs do, Mr. Mosswood?"

  "Just Mosswood," he said again. "Weirs are odd and frightening, Miss Caldecott, because…" He sighed and sucked his pipe. "I fear I am doing you a disservice by saying this, but… Weirs escape classification. They do not tend toward magic the same way mages and sorcerers do. They are transformers, amplifiers, able to perceive the truth in dreaming, and if they are connected to a mage or sorcerer, terrible, terrible things have happened."

  "What sort of things?" Pete drained her mug to the bottom, bitter tea leaves touching her tongue.

  "Well," said Mosswood, "you don't think the Hinden-burg explosion was really an accident, do you? Or Three Mile Island? Or the Tunguska meteor?"

  Pete sat back, rubbing her arms. The cozy pub had become freezing cold. "So if I am… a Weir, and I've connected with Jack…"

  Mosswood blew a ring of smoke, his eyes murky. "Then may whatever god you believe in watch over you both. Someone of Jack's abilities, amplified by a Weir, would be like a storm sweeping from the netherworld to flatten everything outside the Black."

  "Weirs amplify mage's talents?" Pete felt her heartbeat slow in numb anticipation.

  "Of course," said Mosswood mildly. "Why do you think virgin girls were so popular with magicians in the old times? It wasn't for their conversation."

  A low shudder started in Pete's stomach and worked its way toward becoming a clear thought. She saw Jack, in his torn T-shirt and black jeans, jackboots and metal bracelets gleaming in the candlelight. Standing across the circle from her, inside the dark still tomb. Reaching out, to take her by the hand.

  Afraid, luv? Don't be. I'm here, after all.

  Pete stood up, knocking her chair away with a clatter. "I—I have to go. I'm sorry, Mosswood. Thank you…" She turned and managed to navigate out of the pub and back down the alley, fingers closing around the cold lumpy metal of the gate and pushing it aside. A black border closed around her vision and finally the street in front of her disappeared completely and all Pete saw as she spiraled down was Jack, Jack and his devil's grin.

  PART THREE

  The Graveyard

  When they kick at your front door How you gonna come? With your hands on your head Or on the trigger of your gun?

  —The Clash

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Pete shoved open the door to Jack's flat so that it hit the wall with a crack. She jumped at the same time as he did, startled to actually find him slouched on his sofa. A haze of pungent blue-green smoke drifted around him.

  "Who the fuck is that?" demanded the woman on the other end of the sofa. She was rail skinny, a thatch of grown-out blond hair that still held purple dye in the tips sticking out wildly around her narrow pixie face.

  "Hattie, this is Pete," Jack said. His posture instantly drew tight as he caught Pete's expression.

  " 'S a bloody odd name, ain't it?" Hattie said, taking another draw on her Thai stick.

  For Pete's part, she drew in a breath, letting the pot-smoke smell wash over her, and then said, very softly, "Jack, I need to speak with you."

  He stood, and Hattie made an unsteady move to follow. "Alone." Pete pinned Hattie with a glare, and the spindly girl sank back down into her seat.

  "What's wrong, luv?" Jack said when Pete pulled him into the hallway and slammed the flat's door.

  "How long have you known?" Pete said. Jack blinked once. His eyes were clear—he wasn't stoned, had just been playing at it. Pete found herself startled again at how quickly Jack could shuck and don different skins.

  "Known what, Pete?" he asked in a credible display of innocence, but Pete knew better.

  "I've been trying to figure it out, the whole walk home—did you know before that day in the tomb, or did you only figure it out when that thing came out at us and went straight for my heart instead of doing what you wanted?"

  Jack's eyes iced over, the deep glacial blue stealing around the iris, but Pete pressed on. "And that convenient tip to the police, and you stic
king around me right up until now. For your reputation." She lowered her voice. "Did you really think I wouldn't realize what you're doing, Jack?"

  Jack spread his hands, and smiled at her. It was a warm smile, charming and guileless. "I don't know what you're talking about, luv—"

  Pete slapped him, hard enough to leave a crack at the corner of his mouth that dribbled blood. "Don't lie to me again, Jack Winter," she hissed. "And don't call me 'luv' any longer. You lost that right the day you decided to use me like a fucking telly antenna, a dozen bloody years ago."

  His fists curled and Pete braced herself to be hit. He probably wouldn't rattle her teeth, he was so skinny.

  "You put me in danger. You knew exactly what would happen and you used me," she kept on. "And when you found me again, you used me again. And now that little girl is probably dead and I've spent the last twelve years trying to outrun nightmares of something that wasn't even my fault in the first place. Do you know how many nights I've wished I could make up for hurting you, for letting that thing loose? Too bloody many, Jack!" Shaking, she clenched her teeth to keep her voice steady and said, "I'm going home. You can't help me, or Margaret Smythe. You can't help anyone."

  He let her get almost to the lift before he said, "You thought it was entirely your fault?"

  "Isn't it?" Pete said. "When a Weir and a mage meet, terrible things happen. Mosswood said it."

  "Mosswood doesn't know bloody everything." She heard a rustle and a sizzle as Jack conjured a fag, and then his breath drawing on it. "Listen, Caldecott, whatever happened between us before, right now all that matters is we've come to the attention of the wrong sort of people."

  He lifted away from the wall and walked over to Pete, placing the tips of his fingers on her right shoulder. Pete shuddered as his presence crackled around her. "Don't touch me," she whispered.

  Jack slid his grip to her arm and turned her to face him. The magic that rolled over Pete sucked her air away, just as it had the first time she'd stood close enough to touch him. "We're in danger, Pete," he said. "And if you don't stay with me, you're going to die. Later on, we can scream and throw crockery and shed tears over what I knew and how I used your talent and when, but right now, if you want any chance of saving Margaret Smythe from the clutches of certain death, then luv—you're with me."

  Pete glared at his hand until he removed it from her arm. "Is the Hattie trollop strictly necessary?"

  "Hattie's an old friend," Jack said. "She's not bad."

  "She's a fucking junkie," Pete pointed out. Jack smiled, lips thin.

  "So am I, Pete." He stamped out his cigarette and walked back down the dim hallway to the flat. "Hattie's got someone for us to meet, might have a line on those demon-wanking sorcerers who are after me."

  "And then we find Margaret," Pete told him. She let him know, with the thrust of her chin, that she'd break Jack's shins and drag him with her if it came to that.

  He flashed her the devil-grin, not worried in the least. "Yes. If we find them—then we find Margaret. Can't do fuck-all for the kid if we're dead, can we?"

  Pete conceded that he had a point. Whatever Jack was, wrong wasn't usually it. She gestured for him to lead the way back into the flat. "Don't make the mistake of thinking this is good and settled between us."

  "Wouldn't dream," Jack said, turning the knob. "You'd wake me up right quick."

  Hattie jumped up when Pete came back into the flat. "Jack, what's up? Can we get out of here, already? You know being out the Black always gives me fucking hives."

  "Pete is going to be joining us," Jack said, shrugging into his jacket. The screaming skull on the back leered at Pete. Hattie worried her lower lip, fingers picking idly at the hair on her opposite arm.

  "Why?"

  "Because I said so, Hattie." Jack stuck a Parliament between his lips but didn't light it.

  Pete watched Jack, and Hattie, and the look that passed between them. Jack had shifted again, this time into an edgy, aggressive mode that made him square his shoulders and jut his jaw. Hattie folded in on herself even more.

  "She don't blend in," she finally muttered. "Like a new penny in the collection box. She'll pox up the whole thing."

  "Either you two leave off talking about me like I'm deaf or I can take your skinny arse to rot the night in jail," Pete told Hattie. She turned on Jack. "That goes for you, too."

  "Except my skinny arse is cute." Jack winked at her. Hattie glared at Pete from under bruise-colored lids.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  "This might take some time," Jack said to Pete as they walked along the narrow high street outside Jack's flat. "We're going to have to go into the Black." He looked down at her. "Not that you seem to have a problem with that any longer."

  "I do what I have to," said Pete shortly. "You wouldn't tell me the truth."

  Jack laughed once. "I have to remember you're not sixteen any longer."

  "Not for some time," Pete said. She felt a breath of wind and then suddenly it was full night and they were walking past grated and boarded-up storefronts, hunched shapes sleeping on the grates that vented the underground. A prehensile tail twitched out from under a ratty red blanket.

  "It's just up here," Hattie called from ahead of them.

  "That was easy," Pete remarked.

  "In-between places," said Jack. "Those alleys that no one ever looks down. All of Whitechapel is thin, makes it easy to pass back and forth."

  "I'm just telling you now, we don't have much time," said Pete. "Less than twelve hours if it's keeping to the same line as with the other three children."

  "Time goes differently in the Black," Jack said. "Slows down, goes backward or forward."

  "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Pete asked.

  Jack reached the metal security door that Hattie was standing in front of, her hands and shoulders twitching.

  "No," Jack said. "Once I came in for a pint and walked out at breakfast time three days hence." He slid the door back on its rollers and gestured Pete inside. "After you, luv."

  They walked down, on a set of slippery metal stairs through air that smelled like piss and sweat, droplets of moisture shaken from pipes overhead by throbbing bass.

  "What exactly are we hoping to accomplish by coming here?" Pete asked Jack, raising her voice to be heard over the muffled music.

  Hattie threw open the door and a profundo remix of "Don't Like the Drugs" smacked into Pete like a brick.

  "An impression!" Jack shouted, and then they were inside.

  The basement room could have been Fiver's, with the walls painted black and the tiny raised stage space replaced by an emaciated DJ and blocky turntables. And the people, close together in sticky knots, sliding up and down to the clotted beat of the music—they were different.

  A hand closed around her wrist and she looked over to see Jack grimacing. "Are you all right?" she mouthed at him. A ring of white had appeared around his lips and his eyes were almost colorless.

  "Too many bodies," he muttered in her ear. "Too many spirits. Wasn't ready for the sight."

  Pete glanced around and perceived nothing but a mass of sweating and mostly pasty humans clothed in shades of black and black.

  A strobe flickered across her vision and for a moment she caught flashes of horn and bone, long teeth arching over cloven lower lips as a tongue snaked toward her. Flash again, back to skin and cloth. "Come on," she said, tugging against Jack to pull him away from the dancers and their swirling auras.

  Jack swayed just a little, sweat beading in the hollow of his neck and stippling the collar of his shirt. Pete reached up and brushed it away. Jack started at her touch, and the white in his eyes deepened back to the usual blue.

  "I'm here," Pete mouthed. Jack squeezed her wrist.

  "Ta."

  Hattie was already bent over a tall glass of whisky, sucking on a borrowed cigarette held out by a Mohawked man with a bare chest and studded jacket.

  "Hattie." Pete indicated the glass with her chin. "Giv
e it here."

  "Oi," said the Mohawk. "I paid for that, you tart. Leave 'er be."

  "Excuse me," said Pete, reaching across Hattie's nonexistent chest and taking the tumbler, "but kindly bugger off back to 1985 and leave us the bloody hell alone."

  Jack tilted the whisky down in one swallow, coughed, and then settled on the nearest barstool with a sigh.

  The Mohawk looked at Jack, at Pete and Hattie, and then held up his hands. "Didn't realize she was with you, mate. Apologies."

  "Fuck off," Jack said plainly. The man left.

  "This the sort of impression you were after?" Pete shouted-muttered under the throb of the music. She kept her back to the bar, her hands at her sides, and wished she had something other than wit and fists at her disposal.

  Jack faced the body sea with his elbows on the bar, a serene smile playing between his lips and his eyes. "You ever shill at cards, Pete?"

  "I went into the Met straight out of university so… no," said Pete.

  His fingers twitched and produced a card from his sleeve, a tarot picture of the Hanged Man. "You lose a few rounds at first," said Jack, still roving his gaze across the club. "You chum the waters with your weakness. You stand back and you let them get close, close enough, and you jam the knife in so tight and deep they never stop bleeding." Jack made the card disappear again, witchfire eating it into nothingness.

  Pete eased near enough to speak into Jack's ear. "So who's getting close to us now?"

  A girl in a satin slip adorned with roses, thorny twists of vine when Pete blinked, a dress again when the lights flared, grinned at Jack with needlelike teeth as she slipped past. Jack lit a cigarette and let the smoke trail out through his nostrils. "The wrong kind of people." His magic no longer crackled, it rolled off him in the slow honeyed way that made everyone in the club with the least sensitivity turn to look at him. Pete felt it cling to her and shook it off. If Mosswood was right, she was going to have to find a way to shut off the hum, the ripples, and the cries that seemed to resonate through London.