Street Magic

along the trail of nightmares behind her to actually get here except Perkins and Grinchley himself.
    Pete turned the ancient lock with no small amount of effort and went inside. The vault room was packed with cases and compact shelving, everything arranged in no particular order. Three human skulls of varying size and age grinned at Pete from the nearest cabinet, and a stuffed Feejee mermaid perched in a gilt birdcage. Every inch of the room was crammed with objects of magic and vileness, human and animal body parts, books bound in skin, statues whose eyes followed Pete as she moved among the shelves.
    This is useless
. Connor came into her head unbidden.
Going to stand there like a flytrap with your mouth open all day, girl? Organize. Categorize. Find the piece that don't fit
.
    Pete thought of the dark rooms in Grinchley's house, how everything was arranged to frighten, to misdirect.
    Someone with an ego the size of Grinchley's wouldn't hide his treasures, except in plain sight.
    Her eyes drawn back to the largest shelf, the one with the skulls, Pete discerned a sheen of silver behind the smallest skull's eyes. She picked up the thing, half expecting it to bite her, and saw a flat black box bound in silver bands lying on the shelf.
    Covered in dust and unassuming though it was, Pete knew this was what she was looking for. It shone in the Black, magic raw as a nuclear spill. She reached out carefully with a finger and flicked the latch, laying the box open.
    The Trifold Focus lay wrapped in a black silk cloth, smaller and plainer than Jack had made it out to be, just a silver circlet with three interconnected spirals at the center, flat and more like a drink coaster than anything.
    Pete touched it and a jolt of static raced up her arm. The Focus's metal strands shifted and curled beneath her hand, recoiling, and Pete quickly pulled it away. They settled immediately. "Thank bloody God," Pete muttered. Searching the rest of the vault room would be on her list of preferred activities straight after walking into traffic on the M-25 wearing nothing but her knickers.
    She put the box with the Focus into the pocket of her coat and saw a door with a gleam of light around it at the far end of the room. Anything to not have to walk back through Grinchley's torture chambers.
    The doorway led to a real basement, with a furnace and a collection of musty cricket equipment. Pete paused and turned the dial on the ancient oil furnace to maximum. It began to shudder and clank as she cleared the street.
    Pete pulled out her mobile and dialed 999. "This is Detective Inspector Caldecott reporting a fire at the Grinchley residence, 14 Mornington Crescent."
    She heard the wail of sirens as she walked to the cross street and hailed a taxi. The fire brigade would go where no warrantless police officer could. Considering what Grinchley had put her through, Pete thought she was being extraordinarily kind.

----
Chapter Twenty-nine

    "Jack!" Pete shouted as she opened the door to the flat. "Jack, you need to keep your door locked. This isn't a good neighborhood."
    "Pete!" Jack came rushing from the kitchen, Parliament dangling from the corner of his mouth. Smoke trailed behind him like a cluster of familiars. "Fuck all, Pete, where the bloody hell have you been?"
    "Are you all right?" Pete said, taking him by the chin and examining his eyes. Jack's pupils were large and wide, glimmering like glass.
    "Maybe. Yes. I don't know." Jack rumpled his hair and then slumped. "I thought you'd gone off."
    "I just went to run an errand," said Pete. She grabbed Jack's right forearm, examining the tracks for fresh bruises. He jerked it away.
    "I didn't bloody use. I took some uppers. Couldn't focus."
    "Oh, for the love of sweet infant Christ," Pete shouted. "Jack, first you despise me and then you pop pills the minute I'm gone from sight! What
is
it?" She formed her hands into fists, released them, because hitting Jack wouldn't make him tell her.
    "Jack," she said softly. "I'm not moving from this spot until you answer what it is I did to you to make you this way."
    He pinched the spot between his eyes, creasing a furrow in the skin. "You left me, Pete," he said. "You just fucking left me, that day. The only person I let in a little bit and she leaves me on the floor of a fucking grave and never shows her face again. Felt bloody marvelous when I woke and realized that, thanks."
    Pete looked at her feet. A splash of blood from Grinchley's operating bay sat