Street Magic

are too late
, Treadwell whispered, already beginning to thin around the edges as Jack began to strengthen, stop choking, and stand upright.
Helpless little thing. How I pity you
.
    The cemetery scene washed out, the ink of nightmares running off the page, and Pete felt the cord, frayed down to a few strands, pull her backward and away. She reached for Jack, tried desperately to stay, but he stood tall now, Treadwell's magic in him.
    "I'm sorry…" Pete called. "I'm sorry…"
    And she woke. The pain from the knife wound was incendiary, blade still lodged in her stomach. She pressed down on the cut and pulled the knife out, wincing as a dribble of dark red-black blood came with it. Pain was good, Pete reminded herself. Pain means you are not in shock, that you have a chance to stand up and walk away. Still, she retched from dizziness as she tried to sit up, and fell again, body shrieking alarm.
    Beside her, Jack stirred and then opened his eyes, sucking in air as if he'd forgotten how. His eyes were gray and ringed, shined like two-pound coins, and the smile that split his face was cruel as a straight razor.
    "Treadwell," Pete said, her voice thickened with shock.
    "My stars," said Treadwell softly, through Jack's lips. The voice was Jack's, but also not Jack's, the accent lilting into something musical and antiquated instead of a Manchester drawl, timbre scaling downward into menace. "If someone had told me what abominable condition the crow-mage had left himself in, I would have attempted this with another candidate entirely."
    He blinked and looked all around, eyes widening. "I say, who are these people?"
    Pete saw no one except the few sorcerers who had remained, al! watching anxiously just out of arm's easy reach. "Master… ?" one said hesitantly. "Master Treadwell, is there anything you need?"
    Treadwell groaned and pressed a hand against Jack's wound, slicking his palm with blood. "A surgeon, you fool. Fetch me a surgeon before I pass through the bleak gates a second time!" He shook his head, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of Jack's hand. "Who
are
these silent, staring imbeciles? Why are they permitted to bear witness?"
    Pete pushed harder against her wound and spoke. "You didn't know? About Jack's sight, I mean."
    Treadwell turned on her with a hiss, his eyes flaring silver. "What do you speak of…" And then he cried out and threw his hands over his eyes, stumbling away from Pete. "Treachery! What are you, woman?"
    "You see me," Pete repeated the words of the child in Jack's nightmare, of Bridget and Patrick and Diana. "You know what I am, Treadwell."
    Treadwell gasped, and pulled himself straight, staring at her with one hand shading his eyes. "A speaker for the old ones. Of course. How else would Winter have bested
me
?"
    "You think about that for a minute, Algy." Pete tossed her head with a carelessness she did not feel, one that sent rolling breakers of nausea all through her. "You can have Jack—you
do
have Jack, and his talents. You can have his sight and his body that's probably going to give out on you in another ten or fifteen years—you didn't know back in the old days what long-term heroin abuse will do to a person." She got to one knee, putting all her weight on a headstone—
steady, Pete
—and even though unconsciousness seemed like a blessed port she stood, and faced Treadwell.
    "His sight almost drove him mad, and that was with a lifetime of practice, of years and years and bloody
decades
to try to control what he sees. With you coming into it all at once, Treadwell…" She managed to shake her head. "It doesn't look sunny for you, mate."
    "I have seen the dead!" Treadwell bellowed. "I know what phantoms may appear! I am not frightened by death!"
    "No, 'course not," Pete said. "That's why you tried so bloody hard to cheat it. You're a terrible liar, Treadwell. You see the shades even now, all around us, and you can't shut them off.
Nothing
shuts them off. Jack used the needle every day for twelve years and even that didn't
completely
take the sight away. So you're welcome to it—sit there in your rotting body and be reminded every
second
of what's waiting for you when it ends."
    Treadwell's eyes narrowed and he stepped toward Pete, obvious from the set of his shoulders that he thought he frightened her. "A woman who talks as much as you is surely bargaining, Weir. What do you propose for me?"
    This was the place she should have come the first time, Pete thought. The last dozen years