Street Magic

mean it, Jack!" Pete cried. "What gives you the right to be executioner?"
    Jack opened his eyes and sat up. "Pull over."
    "You all right?" asked Pete. The Mini's headlights illuminated windowless flat blocks and closed-down shops. She wasn't stopping unless there was a dire emergency.
    "Just pull over and don't argue!" Jack snapped. Pete jerked the Mini to the curb and set the brake with a squeal.
    "What?"
    Jack pointed to a tumbledown doorway with an unassuming lit sign over the frame: royal oaks public house. "If you insist on moralizing at me about the dead toerag, I need a drink." He unfolded his skeleton from the Mini's passenger seat and stepped into the street, crossing in front of the car. Pete felt the passing urge to press on the gas and run him over, but instead she shut off the engine and dogged his heels into the pub.
    It was low and smoky inside, but older than Pete realized—the long bartop was carved from the trunk of a single tree, all the knots and scars, and mellowed paneling held in ancient cigarette smoke. Concentric rings stained the plaster ceiling and a jukebox that looked like it had weathered the Blitz burbled out Elvis Costello. The basso bounce of "Watching the Detectives" blanketed conversation in secrecy.
    Jack landed on the nearest stool with a clatter of feet and bony elbows. "Pint of bitters," he told the publican, "and a whisky."
    "Just the whisky," Pete said, digging for her wallet. The publican was big and shave-headed, Latin phrases in ink cascading up both of his arms under his cutoff shirt. He grunted when he caught sight of Pete's warrant card as she paid the bill.
    "Mother's milk." Jack sighed as he downed the whisky.
    "Don't think you can get pissed enough to avoid talking to me," Pete warned.
    "Fucking hell!" Jack said, slamming his glass on the bar. "What d'you want me to do, Pete, rush up to midnight mass and confess my sins? Would it help if I sent a tin of biscuits to the wake? What?"
    "I'm not saying he didn't deserve it." Pete sighed. "He kidnapped those two children, and he was going to give us a bad time. Jack, I can't tell you how often I've wanted to do just what you did, to some wankstick or other I find on the job. But you can't—"
    Jack's hand snaked out and wrapped around Pete's wrist, drawing her in until she could smell the old Parliaments and the new whisky that drifted off his skin. He squeezed until her bones grated and Pete cried out, attempting to pull free. But for that second, Jack was strong again, his eyes burning with the fire that consumed whatever it touched.
    "Can't what, Pete?" he whispered with a snarl. "Can't go around killing people? Can't because that's what's good and right and proper? Well, Pete, I'll tell you a secret." And his eyes went from flaming to the deepest dark, inky and wicked. "We're not dealing with everyday thieves and killers any longer. This is the world of magic. People murder in this world, and people die, and it's the bloody way of things. I'm not sorry for putting a cold fist around that git's heart and he wouldn't be sorry if it were the reverse. Magic kills, Pete.
Get used to it
."
    After a long moment when all she heard was her heartbeat, Pete said, "You're hurting me."
    Jack made a disgusted noise and released her. '"Sides, was I supposed to let those tossers laugh at me and do nothing? My name used to
mean
something to those demon-buggering gits. Bloody kids should learn some bloody respect."
    Pete's hands still shook from the memory of the boy's face. She wrapped them around the whisky glass and downed her drink in a swallow. "Bit late for that, seeing as how one is on his way to the morgue."
    "I mean," Jack continued, speaking more to his pint than to Pete, "in a way they were doing me a favor—I didn't realize until tonight how bad of a state things were in. I've been sodding
forgotten
, Pete! Do you have any idea what that means?"
    "No fans accosting you in lifts?" Pete ventured. The whisky spread warm fingers through her and she was able to tamp down the tangle of fear and incomprehension that Jack's actions of the night had birthed.
    Jack's mouth twisted upward on the left side. "You really had no idea, did you? About what I did before."
    "No," said Pete honestly. Vaguely, she'd been aware that a lot of Jack's friends were older and more serious than one would typically suspect fans of the Poor Dead Bastards to be. And that Jack's tattoos never seemed exactly the same twice, and that when he was around the