Street Magic

the inside, turning his shadow to ash. "You are dead, and you belong with the dead. Go back, Algernon Treadwell, and trouble the living no more."
    Treadwell screamed defiance, but even as he howled he was pulled backward, away from Pete. The raven woman seized him, raked her talons through Treadwell, stared him in the face.
    "Your circle has closed, Algernon. So it must be for us all."
    He tried to scream, but the ravens fell on Treadwell, lifted him up and took away his eyes and his tongue and carried him through the bleak gates of iron and sorrow, the signpost to Purgatory atop their spires.
    I will find another
. Treadwell sighed, the last tremor of his existence in the Black.
I will find another who lives for power and cares not, and then I will come to claim you, Weir
.
    "Piss off, wanker," Pete told him. "I'm not afraid of you."
    Treadwell's mouth gaped wide in wordless agony and then the raven woman cawed and the gates slammed shut with a clang that sent blackness into Pete's bones. The magic faded, the vision along with it, and she felt damp grass under her knees and palms, night dew soaking her trousers and cuffs.
    Jack grabbed her, held her, looked into her eyes. "Pete. Oh, bloody hell, Pete, you're all right?"
    "Yes." Pete tested her voice, found it raspy, as though she'd been out in a cold day for too long. "I mean, no. Bloody hell, Jack, I'm stabbed." She hacked out a cough and saw a few droplets of blood fly forth to land on the wilted grass. "Oh… that's not very good…"
    "Come on." Jack helped her up as if she weighed no more than a sack of flour. "Got to get you to a hospital. And me, too—sodding sorcerers jabbed me well and good. Probably get lockjaw."
    "He's gone," Pete murmured. "Treadwell. Back… back into the bleak gates. I sent him away… to the raven woman, and she took him…"
    Jack looked down at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Un-bound exorcism is a nice trick, Petunia. Only met a handful that could manage it without a circle."
    "Treadwell made me mad," Pete said. "And don't sodding call me 'Petunia.' Just because… I shared a confidence… doesn't make it a bloody invitation."
    "Glad to see near death hasn't softened you," Jack said. "I'd be disappointed if nearly losing your soul to a hungry ghost was all it took."
    The neat visitor's hut came into view a few hundred meters down the path.
    "Jack…" Pete ground her feet to a stop, causing them both to stumble. "I touched magic. I… I used it. What does that mean? What's going to happen?"
    Jack wrapped his arm more tightly around her shoulders and didn't answer for too long, time enough to choose what not to say, but Pete didn't care any longer, just cared that he was
there
, next to her, solid and corporeal and
Jack
.
    "It means just what I thought all along, luv—you're strong. No matter what any toerag psychiatrist says, you've got a talent. And a temper."
    "I tried so hard not to…" Pete started to cry, and choked it back with a breath that made her hack more blood, in turn.
    "Pete." Jack held her, rocked her. "It doesn't mean the end of your life, luv. May seem that way, but you'll still pay your electric and go to work and eat greasy takeaway when you're too tired to cook supper. You're not cursed. You've got magic, and people will try to abuse it, but
you're
in control of it. You're holding it in your hands."
    Pete swallowed and managed to nod. "I suppose I am."
    Jack lifted her chin and looked in her eyes. "Oi. You believe me, don't you?"
    Pete started walking again, arm around Jack's waist. She let herself lean on him, and he stumbled a bit so she let him lean on her.
    "Of course I do."

EPILOGUE
The Streets
    "The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not?"
    —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Hound of the Baskervilles

----
Chapter Forty-six

    The sky spat rain as winter took hold, and Pete crouched inside her slicker, trying to hoist her umbrella over Jack's much higher head while still gaining the benefit of coverage.
    "Give it up, luv," he said, taking it from her and handing it to a hobo nodding near a tube vent.
    "I'm cold," Pete protested, her teeth chattering. "If I catch pneumonia and die I'll rattle around your flat for the rest of your life, throwing vases across the room and making the telly explode."
    "First of all," Jack said, pushing his wet hair out of his eyes, "that's a poltergeist. You'd be a shade. Second of all, I don't own a telly."
    "That bit about me dying didn't faze