Street Magic

both of us getting our blood spilled and drunk up, was there?" he grunted. Pete began to say that she knew something else had moved Jack to try and save her, but that would be disastrous—
he'd
run and she'd never see him again. So she sat in compliant silence as Jack taped down the gauze, his hands free of tremors for the first time.
    "Thank you," she said, when Jack pulled her torn shirt back over her shoulder blades.
    "Yeah." He dismissed it with a shrug, and left the room. Pete sighed and tried standing on her left hip. It shot tongues of fire up and down her leg when she put weight on it, but she hobbled into the hallway, hissing as she stepped on a piece of crushed glass. "Jack, do me a favor and get my shoes from the entry?"
    "Don't have time to clean up." Jack reappeared with one of Pete's duffels in hand and a fistful of Terry's hand-me-down clothing in the other. "We've got to get moving before more creatures of the night try to tear our flesh off the bones."
    Pete swallowed, looking at the wreck the bansidhe had made of her flat. "Why did they come? What did you do to them, Jack?"
    "Quick to blame me, aren't you?" he snapped, shoving his clothes into the duffel. "And I don't know
why
, Pete." He sighed and shoved a hand into his hair, spiking it downward over his eyes. "Fuck. I should have realized something would bollocks this up. Sounded so simple—find the kids, get clear of you, go on with me life. Should have
known
."
    "Your personal angst aside, for a moment," said Pete. "The bansidhe were
after
you, Jack. Knew you by name."
    "Which is precisely why we need to go!" he said. He turned and strode into the front entry, bringing Pete's workday shoes back to her. "I wasn't strong enough to ward your flat when I came here, Pete—and the bansidhe broke whatever barriers may have naturally occured.
Anything
can come inside, and trust me, there are things out there that make the bansidhe nothing more than a dream-shadow on the wall."
    Pete stepped into her shoes. She
knew
Jack was right, in that solid and unexplainable way of magic that she was beginning to recognize when it dropped into her mind like a single raindrop into a deep well. "I promised to believe you," she said, "but I'm stretching, Jack. Close to breaking. Where can we possibly go?"
    "Let's just get to the car and drive," Jack said. "I'll tell you when we're there."

----
Chapter Twenty-five

    "Whitechapel," said Jack as Pete guided the Mini through the midnight streets. "No place like it."
    "No," Pete agreed as they slid past a human dealer, slouched on a corner with a windcheater turned up against the damp. Furtive eyeshine glinted at her from farther back in the shadows. "No, there isn't."
    "Up here," said Jack, and she saw his body loosen from the wire tension for the first time since the attack. "Park on the street. We'll take the fire stairs."
    A four-story brick structure with arched windows, slightly Gothic, a bit of rusted ironwork added at some point when the facade became shabby, stared back at Pete with darkened windows. Jack egressed the Mini fast as she'd ever seen him move and started for a rusted set of iron stairs bolted to the bricks, leading up and up into the dark.
    "What is this place?" Pete asked as they climbed, the treads under their feet shuddering and groaning like the ghost of Marley. Rust flakes rained onto Pete's head.
    Jack stopped at the fourth-floor landing and produced a key from the chain around his neck. He unlocked the French windows in front of them, not without resistance from the rusted latch. "This is my flat."
    Pete paused on the sill, startled. "Flat? You let it?"
    "Own it. Bought and paid for ages ago," said Jack, flicking a light switch. Nothing reacted. "Ah, tits," he said. "Well, can't blame the power company, really. I don't think I ever paid a bill."
    "Jack," said Pete, righting the urge to bang her forehead against the nearest hard flat surface, "if you own a flat, why the bloody hell were you crashing in a squat miles from here?"
    Jack fumbled in the darkness, broken only by the skeletal arches of his flat's windows. His lighter snapped and a moment later his face was illuminated with candle flame, hollow as a death mask. "Nobody knows about this place," he said. "I bought it from a hearth witch named Jerrold. Mad as a hatter, last stages of dementia. I think he thought I was paying him to take a boil off me arse."
    "You con a helpless old man out of a flat and then don't use it," Pete