"Fine," Jack agreed.
"One light, one dark," Pete reminded Hal. "For Thoth and Horus." Jack muttered something rude under his breath and she kicked him in the ankle.
"Right you are," said Hal, giving the pair of them a skeptical look. Jack sighed impatiently.
"I've got some heavy drinking waiting on me down at the pub, mate. Could we get on with it?"
Hal Nutter made quick work of the basic tattoos, one a black eye and one a pale outline. Pete touched them both after the last of the excess ink had been wiped away. "One for the land of the living. One for the land of the dead. You're in between. A door, like you said, but now it has a lock and key."
Jack took her hands and placed the full palms, gently, against his chest. "Only way this idiot plan of yours has a chance of working, luv."
"Er, I should really put some cream on those…" Hal Nutter started, and Pete glared at him.
"Give us one bloody minute, will you?"
Nutter held up his hands and backed off a pace.
Pete put her attention back on Jack. Now that she was here, so close to him, the plan seemed utterly ridiculous. Jack exuded power, like a transformer throwing off sparks. How could she hope to push against that?
"It's all right, luv," Jack whispered in her ear. "I'm here."
Pete thought about the first time she'd seen him, on stage at Fiver's, and later, again, on the floor of the squatter's house by the river. She remembered the shade in her bathroom and Jack's wide-eyed journeying into the land beyond.
Come back to me.
Again, a feeling of standing on the edge of a vast and windy chasm. Her hands began to burn and Jack said, "Fuck me!"
Stay with me, Jack. See what walks as a living thing and what floats on spare sorrow as shade.
Stay.
Because, Pete thought, that was what she wanted more than anything else. To know that she could knock on his door and he'd answer, or be rung up on the telephone if she felt like talking to him. To know that if he walked out the door, he'd walk back in again someday, however far later it might be.
Stay.
"Pete," said Jack after a long moment. "That's done it." He stretched and examined the tattoos in a hand mirror. "Not half bad, Nutter."
"Er," said Hal Nutter, who was on the far side of the shop, looking as if he wished he could fade into the walls. "Yes. Yes, quite right. That'll be one hundred twenty pounds fifty with VAT."
"Are you crying?" Jack asked Pete, examining her face as he put his shirt on.
"Not a bit," Pete said, truthfully. She felt almost a gleam on her, the vibrations of power still feeding back through the Black, through her bones.
"Good," Jack said. "Nothing to be upset over. Ink is charged. Doubt they'll hold anything back except maybe a bad hangover, but you did bloody well for someone with no training." He pulled his jacket on while Pete wrote Hal Nutter a check.
"Fancy a pint?" he asked. Pete took his hand, and he started to pull away but then slung his arm around her. "You all right, then?"
"Yes," said Pete, deciding she was as they walked outside and she felt the rain on her face. Jack had stayed. She'd done it, this time. "And yes. A pint would be gorgeous."
Jack hailed a taxi, and Pete let it whisk her away through the rain-washed streets, secure just for a moment that she was with Jack, rather than chasing after him, trying to catch a half-glimpsed phantom between her fingers.
Chapter Forty-eight
Two and a half weeks to the day later the cabbie—a human, Pete was quite sure—let her off in front of Jack's building reluctantly, staring out the windscreen with plain suspicion. "You sure the young man's expecting you, miss?"
Pete hauled her two suitcases and trunk out of the cab's boot, panting. "No."
"I don't think much of this neighborhood," the cabbie warned her as Pete paid him the extra for transporting herself and an inordinate amount of luggage from her old, now-sold flat to Whitechapel.
"It has its charms," Pete told him. She hoisted a duffel over each shoulder and gripped her wheeled trunk, making the four-flight journey to Jack's front door in only slightly less than a decade.
This was patently insane, she reminded herself once more. She should just find a hotel, or take up Ollie Heath's offer of a spare bedroom until she could rent a new flat, in her price range and her name only, until her half of the sale proceeds came through and she could afford to eat something other than cheap takeaway and noodles.
I'm just checking on Jack, she compromised. With all of my things that I could stuff into Terry's old luggage.
Perfectly reasonable. She knocked. A sensation of power, a whisper against the part of her mind that dwelled in the Black, answered. That hadn't been there before.
"Got a new warding hex on," said Jack, opening the door. He was wearing torn denim and a black button-down shirt stained with some kind of white phosphorescent powder, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. "Lot cheaper than an alarm, and I think that ruddy son of Mrs. Ramamurthy's has begun cooking speed in his dear departed mum's kitchen. Fucking criminal element's everywhere these days."
He took in her suitcases, and the sheepish expression Pete knew she was wearing. "Going on holiday? Need me to water your plants and feed the cat?"
"You know I don't have a cat." Pete couldn't look anywhere except the toes of her shoes.
"I do," said Jack, "but I'm at a loss as to why you're on my doorstep, so I figured small talk would be the route to take."
"How are you holding up?" Pete blurted. Jack shrugged.
"Can't complain. Those tattoos are bloody effective, except for the one incident with the cursed monkey doll. Who would have thought it?" He smiled at her, the full force of the devil-grin. "We both know you didn't come here to check on me, Pete, so why don't you just spit out the real reason."
Pete started to turn around, to leave without another word, but Jack caught her arm. "Pete. Tell me."
"The flat's been sold, and with everything going on—work, being back to field duty, this idiotic dedication ceremony I had to go to so they could open my da's memorial auxiliary parking structure—I haven't been able to let another place," Pete rushed out. "It's not that I don't have a little savings—I do, but it can't be just anyplace and I know this is terrible and last-minute and that the worst thing for you would be to have some pushy woman intruding and me especially, seeing as how I can't really hold any kind of control over my talents, and well, I guess I just thought I'd ask you if I could stay. Just for a few weeks."
Jack blinked, and then took the cigarette from behind his ear and stuck it in his mouth. The ember glowed. "I keep odd hours," he said.
"Police inspector," Pete reminded him. "Not a nine-to-five job, either."
"I've been on a kick for the Anti-Nowhere League and I play them loudly."
"Love them," Pete shot back. Jack grimaced.
"You're bloody mad to pick me out of all the possible sofas you could sleep on, Caldecott. I mean—"
"I've accepted that, Jack. Nowhere I'd rather be."
He sighed and stepped away from the door, pulling it wide. "Then you're welcome, is what I was going to say if you'd let me finish."
Pete grinned at him, and he finally grinned back, shaking his head. "You mean it?" she asked. Jack nodded once.
"I mean it. Come in."
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Street Magic bl-1 Page 27