Street Magic bl-1

by Caitlin Kittredge

  Pete pointed to the trolley basket. "In."

  "They're fifteen quid!" Jack protested. "For a box of ruddy nails!"

  "I'm sure all the girls at Fiver's would swoon over your criminal behavior," said Pete. "But if we get pinched we're never going to track down this ghostie or beastie or whatever in time, so put the bloody nails in the trolley and grow the bloody hell up."

  Jack glared at her, but he dropped the box in the basket and stalked off, leaving Pete to pay for everything.

  "Where are we going now?" Pete demanded. She was trailing Jack through the Kings Road, passing between tourists with cameras and pimply children in tight black jeans and Mohawks trying to grasp on to the heyday of punk outside what used to be Sex.

  "Picking up a few last odds and ends," said Jack, turning down a narrow flight of steps to a nameless shop with a black door.

  Pete stopped just short of the entrance. "Jack, this is a dodgy porn shop."

  "Among other things," he agreed, opening the door, causing an obscenely pleasant bell to jingle.

  "Bloody hell," Pete muttered, following him inside.

  "I got what I needed from the spellcrafter's supply when I bought your talisman," said Jack. "Just need to see a friend about one last thing."

  The shop was gray—gray carpet, walls that had once been white but lay coated with a decade's worth of grime, grim fluorescent tubes overhead like a morgue. Even the covers of the magazines and videos looked deflated and drained of color, posters on the walls curling up at the edges and exposing mildew.

  Jack went straight to the counter and slapped his hand on it, waking the snoring clerk so abruptly he slid off his stool. "Oi!"

  "Mmph?" said the clerk. "Wotcha want?" He had a ponytail, sad and greasy like a rat's and, if it were possible, was even skinnier than Jack.

  "Where's Mr. Towne?" Jack said. "I know he still owns the place so don't bother to lie."

  "T-Towne?" said the clerk nervously.

  "Towne, Melvin," Jack snapped. "Manky Mel, the sultan of snuff, wizard of wanking, whatever bloody silly thing he calls himself."

  "L-look," said the clerk. "I don't want any trouble with the coppers…"

  Jack grabbed the clerk by the ponytail and jerked him down to eye level. "I'm not a copper."

  "She is," the clerk squeaked, pointing at Pete. "And you're probably just here for the money Mr. Towne owes to Left-handed Dick."

  Pete cocked her head at Jack. "This friend of yours got in with a gangster who calls himself Left-handed Dick?"

  "Trust me," said Jack, tightening his hold on the clerk's ponytail. "If you knew him you wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Now where is he, you sodding little piece of wormshit?"

  The clerk sighed in an almost resigned manner. "He's on the set, in the back."

  Jack released him with a little push. "Obliged."

  "What's gotten into you?" Pete muttered as she followed Jack through the musty rows of dirty books and bins of toys. "Is your sight channeling Guy Ritchie?"

  "You'll see," Jack murmured. His eyes glinted like winter sun on a glacier. "Now if you value your dignity, keep your mouth shut and stay close to me in here. And for the sake of whatever god you believe in, don't try to be Miss Detective Inspector Caldecott of the Metropolitan Police. It'll just get us both beat to shit and dumped in some gutter."

  Pete started to ask what, exactly, the history between Jack and Towne entailed, but Jack banged through a fire door and shouted, "Melvin! Look who's back from the dead!"

  A heavyset redhead in ill-fitting PVC squealed and covered herself with a sheet, and a voice from Pete's left shouted, "Fuck! Cut!"

  Melvin Towne was nearing Pete's height, which put his eyes roughly even with Jack's chin. He had run to fat but his hands were large and soft, arms straining the pristine white T-shirt he wore. At one time, Pete would have hesitated to attempt an arrest on him by herself—Towne was powerful still and the creases on his brow and at the edge of his expressive hazel eyes leaked violence like a ruptured chemical drum. "Jack Winter," he rasped. "Don't you ever stay dead?"

  "Not as of yet, you great cumstain," Jack replied genially. "I've come for the limb."

  Towne crossed his twin hams of forearm. "Threw the sodding thing away."

  "You're a liar, Melvin," Jack said easily. "Not only a liar, but a filthy liar, a dog-fucking liar even."

  Melvin sniffed, deep and wet like he had a bad cold, or put roughly a gram of coke up his nose on a regular basis. Pete bet firmly on the latter.

  "I don't have your bloody limb," he said again. He walked over to the redhead and jerked the sheet away from her. "I don't fucking pay you to sit on your fat arse with your legs crossed." The girl obligingly resumed the pose she'd been in when Pete and Jack interrupted, wrapping a silk noose hanging from the sprinkler pipes above around her neck and posing on a battered metal dinette chair.

  "Choke," Melvin directed. "I want to see the eyes popping out of your fat head when you come, bitch."

  Pete would have hesitated, alone, but she wasn't alone now.

  She walked over to Towne, picked up his high-end digital camera, and dropped it hard on the cement floor. "Jack asked you a question," she said calmly, making herself look Towne in his pockmarked moon face.

  "You fucking cunt!" he exclaimed. "I ought to ram that camera up your arse until I've shot three grand worth of video, because that's what it'll cost to replace!"

  Pete pulled out the Dead Man's Snare and wrapped it around Towne's neck, less gracefully than Grinchley had managed, but the effect was the same. "You are wasting our time," she snarled. "Give Jack his fucking limb before I use my other hand to tear your bollocks off, cunt."

  "She'll do it, mate," Jack said, fishing a packet of Parliaments out of his jacket. He offered one to the plump girl, who silently shook her head.

  "Bad for your health."

  "Speaking of which." Pete grinned at Towne and dug her nails into his sweaty chin, forcing him to look at her as he wheezed. "Ever shot a brain aneurysm in one of your little faux-death films? I wonder, will you be a twitcher? I think you're too fat. You'll probably just gurgle, shit yourself, and die."

  "In the lockbox!" Towne shouted. "For fuck's sake! The key's in my pocket."

  Pete tugged at the Snare, and it uncoiled, folding back into her hand. She smiled at her feet, unaccountably pleased. To Towne she said, "Good man." To Jack, "You are getting the key."

  Back on the street, Pete snatched the brown-wrapped parcel out of Jack's hands and tore it open. "Oi!" he shouted. "That's me personal property, I'll have you know."

  The parcel contained a plastic box, sealed with packing tape. The box was clear and inside… Pete nearly dropped the box on the pavement. "Jack, this is a human hand. A mummified human hand."

  "Towne's wife," he agreed. "Caught her cheating about fifteen or twenty years ago and chopped off bits and pieces until she was sorry. Filmed it all. Was his first big hit, as I recall."

  Pete stopped walking and thrust the box back into Jack's hands. "Is this your way of telling me you enjoy the company of people like Towne?"

  "I'm not that oblique, luv." He grinned. "Saw the video, noticed with my sight Towne had an Egregor, a demon of rage, hanging around him. I bargained the Egregor back into the Black and compelled Towne to give me this as payment."

  "But it's a hand," Pete reminded him.

  "It's desire," said Jack. "Desire for pain and desire for revenge and desire for love so powerful that it destroyed what it touched. This is a powerful temptation for any demon, Pete. They trade in desire—breathe it. I'm sure every infernal thing in the greater London area has got a hard-on already."

  "How reassuring," Pete muttered. Jack turned into the Fulham Broadway tube station.

  "We can go home now. We've got everything we need."

  Chapter Thirty-one

  At home in the sitting room, Pete watched Jack lay copper wire out in a circle and nail it down at the four corners with the iron nails. He chalked symbols at
the four points, punctuating the northernmost with a black candle. He drew another, seemingly random set of symbols inside the wire and then said to Pete, "Be a love and get me the table salt."

  Pete handed him the carton they'd bought at Tesco and Jack scattered a liberal handful inside the copper. "Earth," he said, and then took out his flick-knife and cut the tip of his finger. He squeezed a few fat blood droplets into the circle, as well. "And spirit."

  Jack opened Grinchley's lacquer box and took out the Trifold Focus, holding it in the palm of his hand as if it were a dead, dried butterfly. "The best thing for you would be to go in the other room, Pete," he said without taking his eyes off it. "This probably isn't going to be pretty."

  "If I wanted pretty I would have become a bloody decorator," said Pete, crossing her arms. "I'm staying."

  Jack wanted to object, she could tell, but he pressed his lips together and then said, "Fine. But you stand against that wall. No talking. No matter what happens, no flying off the handle and threatening to rip someone's bollocks off. Got that?"

  "Towne deserved to have them ripped off," Pete muttered.

  "That he did," Jack agreed. "I've never seen you so fiery, Pete. I rather enjoyed it." His grin suggested exactly how much.

  "Shut up and get on with this," Pete snapped. "This thing has had Margaret Smythe for nearly three days, and your reputation in the Black isn't getting any better."

  "Your wish is my command, or some rot," said Jack. He placed the box containing the late Mrs. Towne's hand near his feet and stood at the bottom edge of the circle. He gripped the Focus and Pete heard the slide of metal on flesh as twin spikes flashed out from the bottom of the flat metal disc and drove into Jack's palms.

  He didn't make a sound. Milky pale rolled across his eyes and they slowly went back in his head, exposing tiny crimson veins like spiderwebs inside his skull.

  "Jack?" Pete said, alarmed. She started to go toward him but a shriek cut the air and went straight through her, all the way to the bone, and Pete stumbled back, crying out. "Fuck!"

  The shriek crested and stabilized into a low whine and then with a strained pop Pete felt a give in the air, the shifting of something from one world to another.

  "Jack Winter," said the demon. "Why do you call upon me?"

  After a heartbeat Jack's eyes flicked back to blue faster than Pete could see. He shook himself and spoke. "To seek that which is lost." There was ritual behind the words the demon and Jack were speaking, and the demon gave a pleasurable shudder when Jack answered correctly.

  "First we will strike an accord, a promise of tasting blood if the oath is broken. Only then do I seek your lost object."

  "Fair enough," said Jack with a shrug. "Here." He thrust the box with the erstwhile Mrs. Towne's limb closer for the demon's examination. The demon caressed it in a hand with odd-shaped nails and uneven fingers of every color, patchier even than Grinchley's flesh golems.

  "I grant you the product of man's strongest desire," said Jack, yanking the box away from the demon's ministrations. "To honor Talshebeth, the keeper of lost things."

  Pete saw that the demon—Talshebeth—had a stitched-together scalp with wildly disparate patches of hair. He was hunchbacked and clothed in castoff rags sewn into a bright coat and had bowed legs swaddled in what appeared to be a thousand pairs of stockings. Wedding bands, dozens of them, rode his thin fingers down to the first knuckle. Across his neck stretched a crude string of baby teeth.

  "As all things lost are my domain," said Talshebeth, blinking ragged lashes over a pair of chipped glass eyes. "I accept your payment. Tell me what you seek."

  "The wandering spirit of Margaret Smythe," said Jack. "And the name of the one imprisoning her."

  Talshebeth laughed, the sound of a carefree child with an amusing pastime, tinged in tears for what could never be retrieved. "And for this, crow-mage, you call a named demon? You have indeed fallen prey to human time's passage. You are old. You have lost your prime."

  "Don't start up that shite with me," Jack snapped. "Tell me where the girl is or the only way you'll get the hand is when you're wanking off to it with all of the other sodding old-timers, while it lies safe and sound in my loving care."

  Talshebeth's eyes turned on Pete. "And you, young and unspoiled," he murmured. "The weight of loss hangs heavy over your tiny bones. Connor Caldecott," he recited suddenly, as if a faded memory had just been washed clean. "Beloved father. Born 2 March 1941, died 12 January 2003. May angels usher you on to paradise."

  "Pete," Jack said, "don't listen to it. You," he snarled at Talshebeth, "deal with me."

  "But of course," said Talshebeth with a wide smile made entirely of rotted and rusted wood and ivory false teeth. A maggot worked its way into one of the gaps, but Talshebeth did not seem to notice. "I live to serve, crow-mage. However, a search of this magnitude requires some expenditure of power, so if you were to release me from this crude circle…"

  "Forget it, you hunchbacked devil," Jack said. "You can work just fine inside the circle, where the nice copper barrier keeps your sodding teeth out of my flesh."

  At the street four stories down, the fire escape rattled, and a few chips of plaster floated down around Pete's head. Her senses pricked her, and she was distracted from Talshebeth long enough to feel the encroachment of something black and otherworldly send ripples through her feet and up to the center of fear in her stomach.

  "Jack…"

  "Quiet, Pete!" he hissed. "My concentration's shot to hell as it is. You're not helping."

  Talshebeth chuckled quietly. "She makes you lose things, crow-mage. Your composure, sanity, maybe your life. I fancy her."

  "Tell me where Margaret Smythe is," Jack warned, "and do it in the next five seconds or I am going to take out an already extraordinarily shitty day on you."

  The fire escape rattled again, and before Pete could grab Jack and force him to pay attention, the dark sensation was there. And then something smashed through one of the arched windows, striking the floor and setting off a flash like a phosphorous grenade. Pete shouted and leaped away from the wall as the rest of the glass exploded inward and five black-clad hooligans in masks and leather coats came through.

  One of them went straight for Jack and he dropped the Trifold Focus as the far larger man slammed into his back.

  "Get out of here, Pete!" Jack shouted just before the man fetched a punch across his head.

  Pete did run—she went straight for the kitchen, one drawer left of the sink, and pulled out Jack's squat cast-iron frying pan. One of the hooligans came chasing behind her, and she swung at him, missing his head and glancing the blow off his shoulder.

  He was holding something black and fat-barreled—a tranquilizer gun, Pete thought—and he pointed it at her with the arm she hadn't hit. "Cute trick, bitch. Bad luck for you that after your stunt with the bansidhe they sent humans."

  He took aim at Pete. "Cold iron doesn't work on us. Stupid cow." He whispered words of power under his breath and Pete's body tensed of its own accord, anticipating pain.

  No dart slammed into Pete, and it wasn't a gun, either—it was magic. Ice-cold and like slamming into a lorry headfirst, it swept Pete up and tumbled her end over end until she hit the far wall of the kitchen and slid down it into a crumpled heap.

  The sorcerer came to her, pointing the sleek black wand between her eyes. "Got anything to say, mage-whore?"

  Pete grasped the edge of the counter and tensed. She had to make the single second she would receive count. "I say I'd take that wand and shove it up your arse, except you'd probably enjoy that."

  The sorcerer snarled and raised his wand again, and Pete sprang, twisting his arm and driving it backward into his stomach. The spell fired a half-second later, and the sorcerer screamed. A pit of flesh exploded at close range, as though the sorcerer had just collided with a car.

  Pete left him to bleed and ran to find Jack.

  Two of the masked men were holding him down and a third was hitting Jack in the f
ace, cursing at him unintelligibly. "Pete…" he managed between blows. "Pete… get back…"

  Pete hit the closest with the frying pan, every ounce of her strength behind the blow. The man didn't shout or scream, he just crumpled with a crease in the side of his skull. The one hitting Jack turned and swiped at her with a skinning knife that appeared from his sleeve. Pete ducked the blade and planted her foot in his gut, and when he doubled, slammed the iron into the back of his head.

  "Stop!" The man holding Jack held his wand to Jack's head. His was spindly and brown, like a piece of root. "Leave off or I spread his brains like jelly, you tart."

  Pete's eyes flicked to Jack's face. Her heart was slamming into her breastbone and she wanted nothing more than to beat the men who'd beaten Jack until they were pulpy sacks of flesh.

  "Listen to him," Jack mumbled through a split lip. "They're sorcerers, they mean it." His hand worked into the pocket of his jeans as the sorcerer glared at Pete. She ignored him and frowned at Jack, ever so slightly. He stared back and then dropped her a wink, so quickly Pete wondered if she'd imagined it.

  She dearly hoped she hadn't.

  "Are you deaf, missy? Drop the kitchenware and get your arse over here!"

  "You'll wish you'd taken your chances with me," Pete said. She dropped the frying pan.

  "Move!" the sorcerer snarled. To Jack he said, "I'm going to fuck her before I kill you. She's tasty, Winter, I'll give you credit for that."

  Pete sighed. "That was the worst thing you could have said."

  Jack's flick-knife sprang open in his pocket, and he pulled his hand free. A little bit of blue fire burst around him, more spark than flame, and when Pete looked again Jack had slipped the sorcerer's grip.

  The man stared, slack and confused for a breath too long. Jack's hand whipped out and he drove the thin blade into the sorcerer's throat to the hilt. "Last thing, too," Jack said, and then his legs went out from under him and he sat awkwardly on the floor with a thump.

  The sorcerer gurgled and fell back, his wand rolling away and blood pulsing out of the wound in time with his heartbeat. Pete knelt down next to Jack, lifting him up with a hand behind his head. Her fingers met a sticky cut.