Street Magic

around, swirling it faster and faster until Pete could feel herself being swept away, body replaced by the smoke-man and voice by the horrid screech of the black bird.
    "Take it," said the shrouded man, thrusting his fist toward Pete. But she couldn't breathe, couldn't speak, and watched as her own hand dissolved into smoke.
    Pete screamed and jerked awake into Jack, who toppled over backward. "Fucking hell! You scared the shit out of me, Caldecott!"
    Panting, feeling droplets on her skin like she'd been scalded by freezing rain, Pete wrapped her arms around herself. "What… what the
hell
was that?
That
was your parlor trick?"
    Jack crouched on his heels, ignoring her sputtering, and took Pete's chin between his thumb and forefinger. "You've got a ghost on you," he breathed. "It's right there, in your eyes."
    "I'm… possessed?" Pete pulled away. She was freezing, and Jack's words caused gooseflesh to break out on her arms. "Shouldn't I be screaming, or levitating, or spewing obscene Latin phrases backward?"
    "Not a possession," said Jack. "A spirit rider. Like… you've been touched, by someone with blood on then-hand, and they've left fingerprints on you. They follow and watch and whisper in your dreams."
    Her breath misted when she exhaled, and Pete shivered. "It's the spirit. The one that's feeding on Margaret?"
    "It's a good guess," said Jack. He rubbed a hand over his face. "Bollocks. I should have guessed, with your nightmares… should have bloody known."
    "Don't blame yourself," said Pete. "/ didn't know they were anything but bad dreams." And she didn't volunteer the other part of the dream—the shrouded man, and the beating heart, and the advent of the black bird. That was hers, and not Jack's, to know. "Nothing good ever comes from the Black," she murmured.
    "This one, this isn't from the Black," Jack said. He patted down his pockets and then conjured a fag. "Coming to you in your dreams, sinking claws into your soul, it's living in the in-between."
    Pete rubbed her palms over her arms and felt the heat of friction. "Wherever it's bloody from, I wish it hadn't picked me."
    "The in-between, the thin space. The realm between life and death." Jack exhaled a halo. "There's not many living that touch the cold space, Pete. Be glad it didn't try to pull you in."
    "I'm still alive," Pete said. She felt the small sharp-toothed gnawing of the craving for a smoke of her own. "Can't snatch my soul out from under me."
    "Soul's a tricky thing." Jack grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. "And you can hurt, bleed, and die in the thin spaces, Pete, be you flesh, phantom, or something other."
    "Just make the dream stop," Pete sighed. "I haven't slept in weeks and I'm becoming distinctly peevish from it."
    "FU get something for it," Jack promised. "You'll be all right by yourself for a few hours?"
    Pete stood when he did, although the walls of the room pulsed ominously and she was dizzy. "Will
you
, Jack? You're not exactly equipped to be running around the city."
    He drew back, closing off as if she'd hit him in the mouth. "After everything that's happened in the past days and you still think I'm running off to bloody score."
    "Jack, it's what you've been doing for a dozen years," said Pete. "I need you to be clean and sharp when we find Margaret, and whatever has her."
    "You're a cynical and mistrustful bitch," Jack said, crossing his arms.
    "Yeah, and people like you made me that way," Pete snapped. She rubbed her forehead. Staying upright was a task.
    "Now I remember why I walked away from you, Caldecott," Jack said. "This kind of treatment would convince a bloke to stay dead."
    "Well, I bloody danced a jig on your grave!" Pete shouted, but Jack slamming the door drowned her out.

----
Chapter Twenty-seven

    The flat was silent after Jack left, suffocatingly so. Pete poked in the wardrobe in the bedroom, the kitchen cabinets, and found nothing except dust and damp. "Sod you, Jack," she muttered. He was running off, wasting time, and she was supposed to sit home. Not bloody likely.
    Leaving the flat unlocked, Pete left via the front door and found herself in a narrow hallway that could have easily hosted gaslight trysts a hundred years ago. A rickety lift with a folding gate lowered her to the street and she walked until she found a bus shelter where she could talk unobtrusively. One lesson from Jack's reappearance that tickled her spine: Things didn't need to be near you to be watching you.
    Pete dialed her mobile,