Street Magic

as I used to be. They've been given cause to take me away, by some git who cuts deals with Fae—I'm gaining the feeling rapidly that I'm rather fucked."
    "My lift is holy ground?" Pete tried to arch her eyebrow but was shivering too uncontrollably. Jack cut his hand across the air.
    "No, but it's steel, I'd guess. Not cold iron, but it'll keep them out long enough. Might as well save yourself, Pete."
    The bansidhe rippled and swirled like a phantom wind had stirred her and then appeared inches from Jack's face. Pete lost feeling in her exposed skin, and saw blue veins crawl into being along Jack's cheeks and neck.
    "Do you surrender, crow-mage?" the bansidhe demanded, her voice low and jagged as an old scar. "Or do you choose to die at my hand?"
    "Jack," Pete hissed. "Jack, I may have something."
    Jack looked at Pete, back at the bansidhe, staring the creature eye to eye as if she were another hooligan in the pit at Fiver's, inconsequential. "You sure?" he murmured.
    Pete squeezed his shoulder hard as she could, until the bones creaked. She wasn't. They could die, and the only difference would be what room of her flat was taped off for the crime scene investigators.
    The bansidhe howled and raised her claws to rake Jack's face. Pete jerked him backward. "I'm sure!"
    She dragged Jack away, turned and ran, taking up his hand. Skidding on the ice, her heart thrumming like a faulty motor, she fell into the bathroom. Jack tripped over her legs and landed on top.
    "The tub," Pete rasped. Trying to speak normally, she found her throat raw as if she'd stood on the Channel cliffs in a winter storm and screamed.
    Jack understood and ripped the curtain off its hooks, pulling Pete after him until they landed in a heap in the basin of the old claw-foot.
    And the bansidhe came, raging and screaming as if their newborn children had been ripped away, flying hair cutting like stinging nettles and their icy breath clouding the air in the bath. Pete's door fell off the hinges and the mirror and tiles cracked as they howled. She ducked her head below the lip of the tub and prayed, wordless with fear even inside her own head.
    On top of her, Jack muttered, over and over, in Irish that sounded like last rites, "
Cosain me, cosain si, a fhiach dhubh, cosain si
."
    The bansidhe howled on, and slowly their cries of rage turned into a high keening of pain. Pete raised her eyes over the lip of the basin and saw the leader ripping out her own hair, clawing at her flesh, bits and patches flaking away from decaying black bone.
    "You are a deceiver, crow-mage! May you burn in hell!" the leader cried. Then a whirlwind left a slick of snow that smelled like seawater, and the bansidhe vanished into smoke.
    Pete exhaled. Her hands and throat and skin were tinged with pink frostbite, and her bones hurt. The cold had cut all the way down. She groaned. "Jack, get off me."
    He hauled himself out of the tub and sprawled on the tile. "Old flat. Iron tub. Iron sink and pipes as well?"
    "I—I guess so," Pete muttered shakily. She sat back and then screeched as bright fire lanced between her shoulder blades. Jack was back next to her, peeling back her bloody shirt.
    "Bollocks," he hissed when he saw the claw marks. "They got you, Pete."
    "Cunts," Pete muttered.
    "You don't know half the story." Jack sighed. "Come on, luv. That'll need cleaning, if not stitches." He offered his hand. Pete clasped it, but held on when he tried to lift her.
    "You're being awfully solicitous for a man who hates me."
    "Saved my arse," said Jack. "Least I can do is put yours back together." He pulled Pete to her feet and she felt a wire inside his arms that hadn't been there when she'd found him in Southwark.
    "Those women," she said, sitting on the lid of the toilet while Jack searched for peroxide and gauze.
    "Bansidhe, luv. The only way they resemble women is in their charming personalities. Unseelie bitches."
    "Be that as it may, Jack. They called you 'crow-mage.' What does that mean?"
    Jack poured peroxide on a pad and dabbed it against her back, and Pete yelped. "It means nothing. The Fae are fond of names that should be spelled out in portentous capital letters."
    He dropped his eyes as he smoothed a bandage over Pete's back, not even trying to hide the lie. Pete opened her mouth, then shut it again. She hurt. Her skin, her mind, gristle and bone were all weary. Someday soon, she'd find out what the bansidhe had meant, but not now.
    "Why'd you tell me to run?"
    "No point in