Street Magic

black as muddy reeds. Behind their shoulders, a line of light glowed, the edge of the door. "The mage called Winter!" the bansidhe screamed. They looked like every one of Juniper's stories, down to the black claws that curled from sodden, wrinkled hands.
    The first bansidhe swooped and brought her face close to Pete's. "Give him to us!"
    Fear coiled, sprung, wrapped itself around Pete's heart like a rusty iron chain, but she met the bansidhe's black eyes, and snarled with all the pain and fury she could expel. "Go back to Hell." She rolled, wrenching all the already painful parts of her body, and wrapped her hands around the lamp, swinging it through the bansidhe's drowned corpse face.
    The bansidhe howled, claws raking at its face where Pete hit, the skin melting and running over a skull alive with maggots. Stinking marsh water spattered on the floor.
    Pete broke for the door. "Jack! Jack, there's trouble!"
    Behind her she felt them, as if she were extending invisible fingers. She felt their blackness part the air as they flew, claws and hair lashing, catching Pete's shirt and yanking her backward.
    She fell, twisting, down the last stairs, rolled on her side and got up again. The bansidhe's howling cracked her skull, caused the hall lights to flicker.
    Jack appeared in front of her, eyes flaming, his hands sparking with chalk dust as the mist covered them both. "Jack!" Pete gasped, or screamed. She didn't know, only the vibration in her throat even told her she was speaking. "Jack, they're behind me."
    Jack's irises expanded and he let go of Pete's shoulders. He saw them. "Pete." She saw his lips move. "Pete, get behind me."
    "Winter!" screeched the bansidhe, and Pete heard them perfectly. "Crow-mage! Surrender yourself!"
    Jack drew in a breath and witchfire blossomed on his palms, hot as the bansidhe's skin was icy. "Bugger to that," he said. "You're not welcome here, and this is a very bad time to make me lose my temper."
    The bansidhe drew back their lips from their razor-wire fangs. Their leader raised her right hand and drew her left set of talons across her wrist. Blood oozed from the cuts, and where it hit the walls and the floor smoke rose, black as the coal haze that drifted over London a hundred years ago.
    Pete choked as the smoke roiled and grew. It was too much like her nightmare, and where the smoke touched her skin ice crystals appeared. The entire hallway of her flat was frozen over with ice the color of oil.
    "Surrender, or the companion dies," snarled the bansidhe woman. "We have cause, crow-mage!"
    "State your cause, then!" Jack snapped. "I serve no Unseelie master and you can't compel me with your bloody Fae laws!"
    "A price has been paid and a bargain set." The bansidhe smiled, or what a smile would have been wrought in her hissing rictus of a face. "Your life has a value, crow-mage. For the one who ends it, your talents are the reward."
    Pete choked as she felt the ice work its way down her throat, and caught hold of Jack's hand. His body was humming like a guitar string, but he showed none of it, stock-still, the witchfire melting the ice around him quickly as it grew.
    "Leave now," Jack told the bansidhe with a terrible still anger that Pete had only ever seen from Connor, "and maybe I'll decide not to rip your wretched carcasses out of the ether and turn you to mud as a repayment for this trespass."
    The bansidhe screamed at the insult, and Pete staggered, but the pain slowly lessened inside her head, almost as if she could dial down the volume now that she was growing used to the sound. She dug her other set of fingers into Jack's collarbone and felt him still his shaking in return.
    "This is no warded place or churchyard!" the leader screeched. Pete's small cluster of photographs tumbled to the ground under the noise, their glass shattering. "This is neutral ground, mage, and we demand your surrender! Give yourself over… or live to see your thighbones picked clean." Her shadowed spirit eyes flickered with delight.
    Jack slid his gaze over to Pete, all the rage run out. He was skinny and old too soon again, and Pete saw from the tight lines along his mouth that Jack was afraid. "Run," he said. "Get to the lift."
    "What are you doing?" Pete said. She could hear again, the pain almost entirely dissipated. She would not let go of Jack, not leave him for the sighing and screaming bansidhe.
    "Not sure," said Jack. "Time was I could bolt for holy ground, but I've accepted that I'm not as young