Street Magic

brass, hung from a chain with a small chamber in the bottom hollowed out. Jack dug the plastic Baggie of galangal root out of the bottom of the satchel and breathed on a pinch of the stuff.
    Just a touch of sorcery, just enough to wake up the strands of magic that lived in the galangal. Jack rubbed the pinch between his fingers and tamped it into the chamber of the spirit heart. A stab of pressure hit him in the temple, and he rubbed his forehead before standing.
    Pete reached out and touched him on the arm, the lightest of touches, on his leathers no less, but he still felt it, dancing down through his blood and nerves to his bones. Her power felt like goose flesh, like being touched by a girl you fancied for the first time, every time. "You all right, Jack?"
    He gave her a smile. His head throbbed harder. "Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, luv. Let's have this over with."
    Pete wasn't fooled by the lie, but she had the grace to step back and pretend that Jack was as skillful a liar as he claimed. Worry only showed in the space between her eyes, a small black line of a frown, as she got a small digital camcorder from the bag and readied it.
    Jack supposed if he had any sense, he'd be worried, loo. Using magic wasn't supposed to hurt, not him, not a mage of the
Fiach Dubh
. No one had ever accused Jack Winter of having sense, though. Of being a wanker, yes. A thief, a sinner, heartless scum, and a murderer, certainly. But sense, no. Jack thought that when someone
did
accuse him of sense, it would likely be time to hang up his spurs.
    "All right, you dusty lot," he murmured, so low only the dead could hear. "Time to come give me a haunt."
    Jack shut his eyes, holding the spirit heart directly out, arm straight as a divining rod. The clockwork pendulum swung gently, aimlessly. Jack inhaled and held the air. Panic chewed on the ends of his guts, scratched at his neck, and wormed into his brain. His body knew what he was about to do, and it was screaming.
    It was times like this that Jack felt the longing for a fix like the grasp of a familiar lover—tight, hot, gathered behind his eyes, knotting him up, making him cold, telling him /
    have what you need. Take it and make yourself warm, make yourself safe, taste the golden delights of the floating world.
    But Jack tightened his grip on the spirit heart, the cold brass warming to the same degree as his palm, and the murmuring of the fix was drowned in a tide of other whispers, crying and shouting, faint and fierce, buried and so old no one knew they were buried any longer.
    The dead came to Jack, and he let himself see.
    In his hands, the spirit heart gave a
tick
.
    Jack opened his eyes, the ghosts his second sight found thick here as a crowd in Trafalgar Square. They stood, for the most part, silent and staring at the living intruder on their pale, witch-lit world. A few hissed at him, the black-eyed revenants with their flesh hanging off their bones, the malice of their lives following them in death like a shroud cloth.
    Pete stepped closer to him. She couldn't see what he saw, but she knew. She knew the chill of having the dead always just out of view. "Should I say it?"
    The spirit heart gave another tick, louder, stronger, and Jack nodded. "Wake them up, luv."
    "Mary and Stuart Poole," Pete raised her voice and pitched it sharp. Jack flinched as a ghost drifted closer to Pete, a girl with dark wet hair still tangled with the garbage she'd drowned in. The salt-sour stink of the Thames at low tide tickled his nostrils.
    The girl ran her hand longingly across Pete's cheek. Jack narrowed his eyes. "Oi. Not yours, missy. Shove off."
    Pete shivered, and continued, "Mary and Stuart Poole, we call you to this place. Come back to your bones. Answer to us."
    The ghost drifted away, her torn dress and lank hair trailing behind her in a remembered river current. Jack felt a pull at his arm, and the spirit heart began to tick faster and faster, clockwork innards spinning like the earth was revolving too fast.
    "Mary and Stuart Poole," Pete said again. "Come back to your bones."
    There was power in triplets. Jack had taught her that. Pete never forgot something when you told her once. She was sharp, the fine edge of a knife.
    A tug on his arm warned Jack that his dwelling on Pete's skill at this, only her second spirit-raising, might have cost him his arse. The spirit heart was twirling now, like someone had spun a globe and walked away. The brass caught the low