Street Magic

flick of his fingers, and she had just kicked away his remaining support. Was she bloody insane?
    No
, she firmly reminded herself. No, Jack had survived suffering before, and he would again, because the alternative ended with Pete in a bloody mess on the floor of her flat while Jack roamed the streets of London with his sanity in long tatters and heroin burning a path through his blood.
    "I'm on now," Jack said, his high dudgeon restored. "I'm not resting until I kick this cock-smear back into beyond the beyond." He raised an eyebrow. "If you're up for it, Pete, I could use the assist."
    Pete laughed, and to her surprise carried on laughing for several moments. "You? You want
my
help?"
    Jack swirled the dregs of his drink, shoulders hunching. "Don't see what's so bloody amusing."
    Pete rubbed her forehead. No one in Scotland Yard would ever believe this was the real reason behind the blinded children. But it was what it was, and it also wasn't like she could let Jack go gallivanting off on his own. Who knew what kind of dark territory he'd go toward, on the warpath as he was?
    "Thought you hated me," Pete said to him. "Thought the very sight of me made you sick, or some rot. That's what's funny, and also begs a question: Why should I put up with your shite a moment longer than I have to?"
    The corners of his mouth twitched. The lager and the whisky had made him more expansive. "Not every woman will fetch a sorcerer a punch across the gob when it gets thick. You could tell me to fuck off if you like. I'd probably deserve it."
    "Make that
definitely
." Pete tapped her fingers on the knotty wood of the bar, knowing that she should leave Jack to his path and go back to her life.
    But if she left him now, it would never be finished. She'd have her nightmares until the day she died. "But you helped me," she continued. "And I still have a case to close. So yes, I'll stay with you for now."
    Just like time had flickered on a faulty circuit, the devil-grin spread over Jack's face and he was young again. "Brilliant. Knew you would."

----
Chapter Eighteen

    Just as before, Pete stood in front of the bleeding shrouded figure and he extended his hand, the waxy flesh dripping red as the thing in his fist beat desperately to be free.
    "Take what belongs to you, Pete Caldecott," he hissed. "Take it before it destroys your tattered heart."
    "I don't know what you want!" Pete cried desperately. She was very cold and looked down to find herself in her nightdress. So much for convenient dreaming.
    "Take it," said the shroud-man. "It belongs to you. It has always belonged."
    "She won't listen," purred a second voice, and from over the shrouded figure's shoulder the smoke rolled, gathering around Pete's ankles and forming into a human figure. "She won't see or hear. She's taken out her own eye with a hot poker made of memory. She's blind and dumb to us forever."
    Pete knew it was impossible for a column of smoke to grin, but this one did, and its voice grated against her brain, like a thousand tiny screams echoed beneath it. "Run while you can, little girl," the figure hissed. "Run far and fast and don't ever sleep."
    Then he reached for Pete—she knew instinctively that slit-throat voice and long grasping hands made it a
he—and
she screamed and fell backward, the ridiculous Victorian nightdress tangling her feet, sending her down into the graveyard earth. It was soft and dozens of rotting hands wrapped around her arms and legs and
everywhere
. The shrouded figure drew a sword from the belt of his bloody armor and tried to save her, but she was pulled inward, into the grave, and the last thing she heard as she woke was the wicker man, the smoke, laughing and laughing and laughing.
    "Pete!" Jack was shaking her, hard enough to snap teeth together.
    She blinked, saw her flat, saw her sitting room, which really needed a good scrubbing. Cobwebs hung in all the corners.
    Jack let go of her. "You were screaming in your sleep."
    Pete pressed her fingers against her eyes. "I was dreaming about something worth screaming at."
    Jack pressed a businesslike hand against her forehead. "You're burning up, luv," he said. "Sure it was a frightening dream and not a hot one?"
    Pete swatted him on the arm when the mischief showed in his smile. "You're a great bloody help, you are."
    "Can't have you keeling over in the middle of a dustup, can I?" said Jack. "However I may feel about you personally. Not worth seeing you get your time card punched when my