Street Magic

muttered. "When it comes to you, Jack, that almost makes sense."
    "Hang about with me a bit longer, Pete, and you'll learn the value of having a place no one knows you go to," he said. "Close the shutters. You're letting all the warmth out."
    Pete stepped inside, feeling a pull against her skin as if she'd brushed cobwebs. Jack watched her circumspectly for a moment and then nodded, lighting more candles off the one he held. A mantel, fireplace, and bare wood floors flickered into view along with burial mounds of furniture that smelled like dust and rot.
    "What did I just touch?" Pete rubbed her arms, hugging herself.
    "The flat's protection hex," Jack said. "If you'd been unfriendly you'd experience pain unlike anything I can describe, if you were human. If you were demon, or Fae, well…" He held up his hands and made a
poof
motion. "When it comes to home security, it does not pay to fuck about."
    "You would have just watched me fry." Pete turned her back on him. Tired, sore. Nearly killed inside her own home, and now on Jack's turf completely.
Wonderful way to keep in control of your situation
, she could almost hear Connor scolding.
    "If you'd been out to do the same to me? Absolutely," said Jack. Candles lit one after the other now, sympathetic flames springing to life of their own accord, and they threw a glow of ancient bonfires against the walls of the flat. Pete shivered. They did little to warm.
    The only furniture to speak of was a plaid sofa with springs popping out of the armrests, but there were books everywhere, on the built-in shelves to either side of the fireplace and stacked high as Pete's waist under the windows. Boxes and crates were clustered in a corner, and she squinted to see glass jars, grimoires bound in leather and iron, and the white of bone. She looked away before she caught sight of something that she didn't need to see.
    A little over a week with Jack now. She was learning what to do when he put her into these situations.
    "I'm going to sleep, if I can," she said. "Any beds, or is that reaching for the stars?"
    "I think I've got a blanket or two and a mattress that doesn't have anything living in it," said Jack. "Bedroom's down the hall. Good night."
    Pete took a fat black candle off the mantel and guided herself to the door, watching Jack for a moment over her shoulder. He went to the window and looked out at the street, silent and pale as a saint's statue waiting in vigilance.
    The shrouded man, and Pete felt sure this time that the figure had been a man once, held out his hand, squeezing so tightly to contain the beating thing within that bone showed through his knuckles. Blood, thickened and hot, seeped through his grasp and into the graveyard dirt below. "Take it," said the shrouded man. "Take it before it dies and goes to dust."
    "I…" Pete started to tell him
I can't
, because she knew that no matter how natural it might seem to stretch out her hand, she could never contain the beating thing in the man's fist. In her grasp, it would gasp and shatter into a thousand pieces because she was weak.
    Before she could speak, though, the smoke came out of the shadows and swallowed everything. This time it was in her throat, siphoning off her air and replacing everything with the hot, desert blackness of oblivion.
    Pete knew she was dying, that only taking the shrouded man's offering could repel the smoke, and that she could do neither thing. She could just stand and let herself be replaced by the shadow-figure, filled and consumed body and mind by the malignance living in the smoke. It was pain, a slipping away of something that Pete tried to hold, until it tore the skin from her.
    The blankets wrapped around Pete when she clawed to the surface of the waking world, smelling of pot smoke and cinnamon, mellowed and musty with age, were damp with her sweat. Her heart thrummed for the seconds it took her to realize she was awake, sun cutting across her face from unshaded windows.
    "Christ on a motorbike!" She sighed, falling back and forgetting she had no pillow. "Ow! Bugger all!"
    Jack stuck his head through the door, hair distinctly more spiky on the left side than the right. "Everything five by five, luv?"
    "Bad dream," said Pete, rubbing her palms over her face. She had broken into a fresh fever sweat, despite seeing her breath on the air and her skin prickling.
    "I've got breakfast on," said Jack. "Come into the kitchen."
    Pete followed him, padding on bare feet that quickly went