Street Magic

long since vacated.
    Behind Pete, in the reflection of the glass, something on the far wall shimmered and twisted under her eyes, and made the center point of her forehead twinge like the symbol Jack had drawn in blood when the shade appeared.
    Pete touched the spot on the wall and found it slightly warm, and took out her penknife and scraped a little bit of the paint away. Oily black stuff flaked onto her shoes, roofing tar or old. motor oil. "Ms. Smythe!" Pete shouted in a tone that brooked no argument. "I need to speak with you for a moment longer!"
    She took her pocketlight and shone it at an oblique angle to the wall, and the shape under the paint jumped into sharp relief. It didn't hurt, like the things Jack painted in blood… it was solid, like pressing your forehead against a cool iron bar on a warm day.
    Ms. Smythe appeared with a snuffling and a cloud of smoke. "What is it now?"
    "You painted over something here," said Pete, pointing to the spot she'd scraped off. "Who did this?" She'd take a rag of paint thinner to the wall herself, if it would lead to whatever was taking children. She'd go wrestle Jack out of whatever gutter he was napping in and shove it in his face until he'd be forced to give her help.
    "Margaret did it."
    Pete froze, felt the prickles over the backs of her hands and the underside of the instincts that she tried to ignore, the electric fence that sparked to life when she got too close to things that were malignant. "Why on earth?"
    "She were a silly child, Inspector. You have to understand that. Always seeing things where there weren't any. She said it was to keep them out."
    Pete looked at the wall. The lumpy sign didn't feel
wrong
, it was just overwhelmingly present, on a plane that wasn't the three dimensions Pete's mind was accustomed to. She followed the line of sight, to the narrow leaded window overlooking the garden, replete with cobwebs and dead oak leaves. "Keep who out, Ms. Smythe? Margaret thought someone was trying to hurt her?"
    "Something," Ms. Smythe muttered. "But you have to understand, she were just given to fancies… too many books, or not enough friends, and I fully blame myself for that part of it; if she were a normal little girl she wouldn't do those things."
    "Ms. Smythe…" Pete rubbed at her forehead. It was starting to throb dully, and it had nothing to do with the magic-thick air of the bedroom. "Who? Who or what was your daughter afraid of?"
    "She said…" Ms. Smythe took a large breath and let it out in a rush. "She said it were to keep the fairies out. The garden folk that lived down below. She said they whispered to her and kept her awake because she was bright and they were twilight—her words, not mine, Inspector—and they wanted to take her away." Margaret's mother's eyes glimmered and Pete saw that she'd been wrong, that real grief and desperation were hovering underneath the booze and the television interviews. Things had been wrong in the Smythes' world long before Margaret was taken. "If only she'd been a normal little girl…"
    "It's all right, Ms. Smythe," said Pete, patting the taller woman on the shoulder. "Margaret has time yet, if we're dealing with the same individual."
    "She always read books—thick grown-up books, with more of those symbols in them," said Ms. Smythe. "She'll be terrible bored if they're not treating her well and giving her a bit of telly and something to read."
    "I'll find your daughter," said Pete with a conviction she neither felt nor believed. Ms. Smythe just shook her head and slumped slowly downstairs, and Pete followed after she shutter eyes to block the feedback from the sign on the wall out of her mind.

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Chapter Twenty-three

    After she finished in Bromley, Pete once again drove through the rain-grayed streets of Southwark, searching every bowed face for Jack's familiar planar cheekbones and burning glacial eyes.
    She ended up in front of the rotting row house where she'd found him and realized he wasn't a phantom, a remnant of nightmare given flesh. Something tapped on her window and Pete's heart leaped along with her body. "Bloody hell," she muttered, rotating the handle to roll the glass down. The youth in the jacket leaned into her face, breathing out sausages and sour mash whisky.
    "You on a bust?"
    "You think I'd tell you?" Pete arched an eyebrow. He grinned wider.
    "Jack's your mate. He told me, you came around, that he was in the Four Horsemen 'round the corner."
    "Thank you," said Pete, more