Street Magic bl-1

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sofa wasn't conducive to dreaming, and Pete was glad. She awoke at the first rays of the sun and put the kettle on, collecting Patrick and Diana's case files.

  She pushed open the bedroom door with her foot. "Jack?"

  He was curled on his side with the blankets kicked back, shaking and sweating as if he were being held to an invisible flame. He'd gotten worse, inexplicably so. Pete felt frustrated tears building and blinked them away.

  She juggled her two mugs and armload of folders and shook his shoulder. "Jack, wake up."

  His eyes flicked open and then he pressed his fists to his temples. "Jesus, listen to them all…"

  "Brought you some tea," said Pete. "I thought we might go over the case files, see if you can glean anything?" The words hung in the air, fragile, and Pete felt the tension shatter them.

  "There's a woman screaming," Jack muttered. "Over and over, screaming and rocking while she clutches the stillborn to her chest." He ground his teeth together and shouted, "Fucking shut up, the lot of you! You'll drive a man mad!"

  "What do you hear?" Pete asked.

  "Everything," Jack moaned. "Every dead thing that I could shut off with a hit is in my head and it's going to explode."

  Pete sipped at her tea because she didn't know what to say and burned her tongue. "You've always seen things, Jack?"

  "Always," he agreed, panting as his fever fluctuated between arctic and hellfire.

  "How did you shut it out, before?" Pete asked. "I know you weren't using when we knew each other."

  "Wasn't as bad," Jack muttered. "Wasn't as loud. I'd get flashes, see shades, kiddy stuff. Nothing… nothing like this fucking bombardment until… that day we were together."

  "What happened in that tomb, Jack?" Pete asked quietly. "What did we do?" Cloudy memories that she'd written off to trauma threatened to burst through, shadows that stained her real and normal existence crept in from all corners. Pete gritted her teeth and did her best to shut it out.

  Jack stared past her into nothing, eyes floating and empty. Eventually they fluttered and closed, and his breathing smoothed into sleep. "Bollocks," Pete muttered.

  Jack spent the day and most of the night in and out, wandering between worlds, muttering snatches of disembodied conversations. Sometimes he sobbed, or shook, and Pete could never be sure if it was the drugs or what he was seeing.

  The unpleasant realization of If he dies, it's on my head made itself known after the third time Jack had thrown up in as many hours, barely more than bile and a little blood. He hadn't eaten since the curry the first night.

  "Jack," she whispered, touching his arm. It was dry now, smooth and cool, like a dead man's skin that had lain outside under a winter moon. He jerked under her, clawing at his own throat and chest.

  Pete gripped Jack's bicep and bent close to his ear. "If you die on me again, Jack Winter, you'd better believe I'm coming into hell after you."

  She started as Jack wrapped his fingers around her wrist, eyes open in the dark and shining blackly into hers. "That which you do not understand is not yours to offer," he rasped in a voice not his own. Then he fell back onto the mattress, and Pete jerked awake.

  Finally, when dawn rolled over the edge of the window and through the gaps in the shades again, Pete staggered to the sofa, which seemed remarkably welcoming now, and collapsed on her side, weariness permeating down to her bones. She slept a little, hearing the daylight rattles of the flat and the sound of lorries and people in the street, the weak interplay of cloud-shrouded sunlight stroking across her eyelids every so often.

  The springs in the sofa defeated her, finally, and Pete muttered curses as she went to forage for caffeine.

  Jack sat at the kitchen table wearing denim and one of Terry's polos, bulging around his wasted torso, drinking a cup of tea and smoking a fag. Pete blinked once to ensure it wasn't just another dream.

  "You're awake," Jack said helpfully.

  "And you're unpleasant," said Pete. "Of course I'm awake."

  "There's some hot water left," Jack said, exhaling. Pete cast a glance at the packet on the table.

  "Are those my Parliaments?"

  Jack nodded, dragging deeply. "Can't expect me to live a life completely free of vices, luv." His hand was almost steady. A person would have to be looking to catch the tremor or see Jack's graveyard pallor for sickness rather than affectation.

  Pete snatched up the packet and shoved it in the pocket of her bathrobe. "Where did you get these?"

  "From your bag," said Jack. He extinguished the butt on the table, leaving a long coal-colored streak on the vinyl.

  "If this is what you're like off the junk," Pete said, "it's no wonder you did it for all those years."

  "I apologize," said Jack with a bitter twist to the words. "It was bad and rude of me to go through your things. And to use your fine furniture as an ashtray." He held up one palm with fingers splayed. "Next time I'll use me hand."

  White scars, ragged circles, dotted Jack's left palm and wrist. Pete nearly lost her grip on her tea mug. "God, Jack, what did you do that for?"

  "Various things." He shrugged. "Got pissed, did it for a laugh. For a while pain was the best way I could think to keep the talent under control."

  "That's what lets you see dead things?" Pete lit a Parliament of her own. "Talent's a funny word to use."

  "So is 'mage,' but I'm that, too."

  Pete exhaled. "I'm glad you're feeling better."

  "Not really," said Jack. "Usually when I quit I nick some methadone or poppers off one of the other layabouts at the squat, makes things a bit easier. You're a real hellcat, making me go cold turkey like that."

  "It was the only way you were going to help me," said Pete.

  "Yes," agreed Jack. "And for being utterly cold as coffin nails, you get my grudging respect. But don't you make the mistake of thinking I'm fond of you, or we're squared with each other. Not after you tricked me like that."

  "Any trickery I probably learned from you," said Pete. "Now, this isn't a hotel, so what are you going to do to help me find Patrick and Diana? We've got less than a day."

  Jack narrowed his eyes at her, rocking his chair back on its hind legs. Just as Pete was getting ready to scream at his inscrutability he said, "Got a pen?"

  She handed him the one from her message pad silently and he scribbled on the back of a Boots receipt. "Go here and get me the Grimoire de Spiritus, Hatchett's Dictionary of Unfriendly Entities, and the black briefcase that's hidden behind the LP of Dark Side of the Moon. Understand?"

  Pete looked at the Bayswater address. "Why do you need some dodgy books and a briefcase? Can't you do what you did with Bridget?"

  "This is what I did for Bridget… well, most of it at any rate. Look, do you want to find the sodding brats with all their vital parts or not?"

  Pete sighed and ran water over her cigarette to extinguish it. "All right. Back in an hour."

  Chapter Fourteen

  The address belonged to a set of flats thin and sooty as a Victorian chimney sweep. The crinkled moon face of an old woman stared at Pete from the second floor before a sad floral-sprigged curtain twitched shut.

  Pete climbed five flights that smelled of smoke and too many cabbage dinners until she found the door to number 57. She'd expected a shriveled old man, a gnome with a Gandalf hairdo and a sage twinkle in his eye, so the large Rastafarian who opened the door raised her eyebrow. Just a little, though.

  He looked Pete up and down, flashing a gold front tooth. "May I 'elp you?"

  "I…" said Pete. Then, with a thrust of her chin, "Jack Winter sent me."

  "Jack Winter," said the Rasta. It came out soft and heavy with thought. Jahck. Pete desperately hoped that the man wasn't someone Jack had managed to get after him during the time he'd been away.

  "He asked me to get some books for him," Pete elaborated. "And a briefcase."

  A grin split the Rasta's face. "You much more beautiful than the last one who c
ome around on Jack Winter's orders, miss. Come you in."

  Pete stepped over the threshold, feeling inexplicably comfortable when she did so. The flat was spare of furniture and had only one rag rug on the scarred floor. The narrow windows were leaded and let in a weak trickle of light. What the flat did have was a proliferation of oddities that would cause P. T. Barnum to spasm with joy—jars and boxes on the wall-to-wall cases, books piled to Pete's chin in the corner, books on every surface, along with rows and rows of vinyl records and an old '78 turntable. Connor had listened to Elton John's early albums on his. It was in the hospital room when he died, needle ready to drop on "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road."

  "What he send you for? You want tea maybe, and a sausage roll?" asked the Rasta, peering at Pete around the doorjamb leading deeper into the flat.

  "No, no, thank you," she said. "In a bit of a hurry, you know."

  "Have your look, then." He gestured at the bookshelves. "I have business to attend to."

  "I… well, thanks," Pete called as she heard a door close deeper in the flat. After a moment a luxurious scent, dark and secret-tinged as a lover's trysting place under ancient trees, drifted into the main room.

  Pete found the books easily enough, and after digging through a pile of LPs on the bookcase found a scratched copy of Dark Side of the Moon. Behind it, sitting dusty and patient as a faithful retainer on the shelf, was a plain black briefcase. Something rattled like knucklebones when Pete picked it up, and she decided not to get unduly curious until she had her privacy.

  She straightened up and found herself face-to-face with a head in a jar. It looked like it had been in the jar for at least a hundred years. The skin was sallow and pickled, and the eyes gazed at nothing through their cataract film. "You bloody owe me, Jack," Pete muttered. She shouted, "Got everything, thanks!" to the silent flat. No one answered before she took her leave, but she could swear the head was grinning at her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  She called, "I'm back," to the silence of the flat when she opened her door again. Jack was sacked out on the sofa, his blond head dipped to his chest, light tremors running through his shoulders all the way down to the tips of his fingers.

  Pete dumped the books and the briefcase on the floor by her front door and hurried over, kneeling down. "Jack? Jack, what's wrong?"

  "Her wrists are bleeding and bleeding," Jack muttered. "It's sliding down her arms in little red rivers, swirling away down the pipes, and we're all drinking it, we're all watching and waiting for her to raise the blade and cut again."

  Pete grasped his shoulders, giving a shake. "It's not real, Jack." She would have to hunt down the estate agent who sold her and Terry this flat and bloody strangle the man. First the shade and now this, some bird who had slashed herself in Pete's bathtub.

  "I can hear her crying," Jack whispered.

  "I got your briefcase," said Pete desperately. "Jack, please just talk to me."

  He rubbed his hands over his face and with great effort met Pete's eyes. "Lawrence didn't give you any trouble?"

  "His manners far exceed yours," Pete said, handing Jack the books and the briefcase.

  One side of Jack's mouth curved. It was a far cry from the devil-grin, but Pete took what she could get.

  "Right," said Jack, running his fingertips along the scarred leather of the briefcase. His caress revealed the case was locked and bore no combination knobs, just an engraved plate that depicted a snake, eating its own tail.

  "What's in there?" said Pete.

  "Something of mine," said Jack.

  "Seems like you don't want anyone inside," Pete observed.

  "Oh, them that know, know better than to go into anything I own," said Jack. "This bloody lock was from Marius Cross, the previous owner."

  Pete had a good idea of what had happened to Marius Cross, locked briefcase or no. "Did you take it from him?"

  "From his cold body," said Jack. "Believe me, luv, he had no need of it."

  "Let's just get on with this," said Pete, ignoring the gnawing in her gut, the same as when she'd stood in the circle on the tomb floor.

  "Be a luv and get me a needle, or a sharp paring knife… something to prick meself with," said Jack. Pete spread her hands out, already shaking her head.

  "No, Jack. No more blood." Did he think she was stone stupid, after the last time?

  "Every second you spend arguing with me is another one that the precious hope of our nation's future has lost," said Jack sensibly.

  "You're not supposed to make even a little sense," Pete muttered. She rummaged inside her ottoman's storage for the sewing kit and handed Jack a needle. "It's disconcerting."

  "Seamstressing is never a hobby I pegged as one of yours," said Jack. He pricked himself without a wince or a sigh and rubbed his bloody finger pad along the lock. The snake uncoiled and the case gave three clicks.

  "It was Terry's kit," said Pete. "His shirts were hand tailored, so he mended them if they got damaged."

  "Ponce." Jack snorted. The briefcase lid popped up, ominous as a crocodile's mouth.

  "Just because someone can put things back together instead of breaking them down to shambles doesn't make that someone a ponce," Pete snapped. "You're a real sod, Jack."

  "That's hardly news, luv." He looked at her over the battered leather of the case. "You're doing a deal to defend some bugger that you dumped out on his arse."

  Pete rubbed her thumbs against her temples. Jack took a flat mirror and a velvet sack out from the case. The sack rattled again, like a snake.

  "For your information," she said quietly, "Terry left me."

  "Not surprising, that," said Jack. "I just guessed you'd be the one to do the leaving, since you seemed to be a hand at it when I knew you last."

  "Oh, bugger you," Pete snapped. "You and your little bag of marbles." Just when Jack seemed to be letting his rage go, it burst forth again, like an infection of bad spirit.

  "It's not marbles," said Jack. He set the mirror on the ottoman and shook the bag once, giving Pete a grin that made her feel cold rather than comforted.

  "What is it, then?"

  "Bones, luv," said Jack. He dumped out the sack. The white chips hit mirror glass with a death rattle. "It's a bag of bones."

  Pete flinched away from them instinctively, feeling a frisson of cold crackling intensity from the bones, each one round with a black center where the marrow had been picked out. They had been polished to a high shine and made a sound like beads as Jack gathered them up and rattled them between his fists. "Always feel so bloody silly doing this. Marius was an old vaudun, and they do like their theatrics and their headless chickens."

  "Please tell me we don't have to kill birds to get a result," Pete muttered. She was starting to feel foolish rather than bothered by Jack and his shaking of the bones. This was a scene she'd watched in too many silly films for it to carry the least hint of sincerity.

  "Don't be stupid," Jack said. "Just get the brats' pictures and put them on the mirror so I have something to focus on, and stand bloody well back."

  Pete extracted the wallet-sized snapshots of Patrick and Diana from their case files, and placed them carefully on the mirror, which was rimmed with a black wooden frame and was as cold as mercury in arctic air. The spine of fear, from the deep place in her mind where her nightmares lived, pricked Pete again and she drew back, as far as she could without making it outwardly obvious she was having doubts.

  Jack started to shake the bones faster, the clacking blending into a low whir, and Pete thought his eyes had rolled back in his head until she realized he was still looking dead ahead, and white was rubbing out the blue of his irises, stealing out from the center of his eyes like frost.

  "Jack?" Pete said hesitantly. She felt as if the air were pushing in on her, something inexplicable rising in the room as Jack's head tilted back and his hands rattled like he was seizing.

  "Jack!" Pete cried as he stiffened and then with a spasmodic gasp flung the bones down onto the mirror an
d the pictures of the children.

  The bones stayed where they fell, as if they were magnets. Pete thought she caught a glimpse of a dark reflection in the mirror before Jack sighed and rotated his head from side to side. "Fucking trances. Always give me neck a cramp."

  The reflection flapped its wings and disappeared. It would have been less than a single frame of film. Pete allowed herself to be sure she'd imagined it. Jack's witchfire and his visions were his things. She did not see them, and she did not want to.

  "That's it, then?" she said. Her voice came out weak and soft and she swallowed to make it hard again. "That seemed awfully simple."

  Jack gave her a skewering glance before he hunched to examine the bones. He'd started to shiver again. "Well, it wasn't, so sod off."

  "You can use that blanket on the back of the sofa if you like," said Pete. Jack sneezed, and used a corner of the blanket to blow his nose.

  "Cheers." He passed his hand over the bones, fingers splayed, once, twice, three times. "Ah," he said at last, the syllable acres from pleased.

  "No good?" Pete deflated inwardly, space containing the wild hope that Jack could repeat his magic with Bridget on the new missing children, that his pithy pronouncement would roll forth and everything would be real and simple again, collapsing.

  "It's bloody good," said Jack. "But you're not going to like it. Got a city map?"

  Pete fetched the battered one from her desk, marked in several places with notes from old cases. Jack tried to unfold it with his shivery fingers, managed it on the second try, and jabbed his finger at a spot near the heart of the city. "The kids are there."

  Pete squinted to read "Brompton Cemetery."

  "I know the area," she said. "Not too far from where I grew up, that." She looked at Jack. "You're sure?"

  " 'Course I'm bloody sure," Jack muttered. He sniffled and rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. His eyes were red-rimmed and every few seconds he shivered as though a winter wind were cutting his flesh, but his cheeks weren't as yellow and sick as they'd been half a day before, and his movements had more life—less a listless marionette, more of the Jack she remembered.