Street Magic

happen to their family. Because in normal cases, the child was snatched by a parent in a custody case or an older schoolmate as a prank, or simply said
Bugger this
and ran off on their own, only to be confounded by the tube system and get stranded in Brixton. Strangers took children in folktales, not Pete Caldecott's London.
    Even so, when the Killigan case came to Pete, she got that sink in her chest that always heralded an unsolvable crime. Bridget had no divorced parents, no creepy uncles. The girl had been taken by a figment with no ties to the world Pete could discover, and she
knew
, in the leaden and otherworldly way she just knew some things, that the only way they'd find Bridget Killigan would be dead.
    The clerk was giving her the eye, so Pete showed her warrant card. "Does the lift work?" she asked.
    The clerk snorted. "What d'you think, Inspector?"
    Pete sighed resignedly and mounted the stairs. She'd been meaning to get more time at the gym, hadn't she? One didn't become a twenty-eight-year-old detective inspector without spending every waking moment plastered to a case. At least, one didn't if one didn't want to endure the whispers about DI Caldecott the elder and how he'd
worked
for his position, he had, wasn't right how some young slip just waltzed right in…
    Room 26 matched all the other doors in the hallway, robin's egg blue, like a door in a dirty London sky. Pete lifted her hand to knock and then dropped it. She'd tried to ignore that
knowing
, of course. You couldn't
know
things you hadn't deduced with fact. The feelings of tight pressure behind her eyes, the whispers of the future echoing down the time stream to her ears—those things were stress, or low blood sugar.
    Not real. Had never
been
real. Maybe she'd had a good hunch a time or two, was all. She was good at her job. Nothing spooky about it.
    Pete lifted her hand again and knocked this time, firmly and thrice. "C'min," someone mumbled from behind the door. "'S open."
    "Not very smart in this city," Pete replied, knowing the best she could hope for on the other side of the door was a shifty-eyed informant who had heard some fifth-hand story about Bridget Killigan and needed a few quid.
    She turned the knob and stepped in, keeping her chin up on the off chance that it was a shifty-eyed axe murderer, instead. "I'm DI Caldecott. You wanted to speak about Bridget Killigan?"
    He was slouched on the sill, a lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip. The sun was low over King's Cross and it lit up the man's platinum-dyed hair, a halo over a dirty hollow-cheeked face.
    "Yes," said Jack Winter, exhaling smoke through his nose. "I did."
    He'd been bloody and still the last time Pete saw him. Eyes staring at the ceiling of another's tomb. Pete could only stare for a moment, and her heart fluttered as the two images of Jack overlaid one another, spattering blood droplets and pain across the living incarnation's face. He'd been so still.
    Younger, too. Bigger. A body gained from nights sleeping on a floor and fights outside the club after his sets. That was gone now. Jack was all sharp corners and creases. He flicked his ash on the sill and unfolded his long arms and legs, gesturing Pete to the bed.
    "Sit, if you like."
    Pete couldn't have, not if God himself commanded it. She was rooted surely as an old oak.
    Bloody and still. Dead.
    "You…" The word came out on a shiver. "You."
    "Yeah, I'm surprised a bit meself," Jack said, dragging on his cigarette like he was underwater and it was oxygen. "I mean, I rang asking for the inspector on the Killigan case and they give me your name. Almost said fuck it, then. You don't deserve the success."
    Pete finally managed to blink, to set the world right side up again and march ahead despite the thousand screaming questions ringing inside her skull. Jack Winter was alive. Right. On with it.
    "What do you mean by that?"
    He threw down the butt of his cigarette and stamped on it with a jackbooted foot. "You know bloody well what I mean, you fickle bitch."
    "I don't—" Pete started, but he cut her off, grabbing up an old leather jacket from the bed and shrugging it onto shoulders that showed their bones.
    "Bridget Killigan will be found tomorrow at the entrance to Highgate Cemetery," Jack cut her off. "I'd prefer five hundred pounds cash reward, but since you're a copper I know your heartfelt thanks will have to do."
    He went around Pete for the door, stamping his feet in a jerky stride like he was cold. Pete