Street Magic

like a teardrop on the toe of her shoe. "I thought you were dead, Jack. You were just
lying
there… you were
gone
."
    "And you never bothered to find out differently, did you?"
    "I never did
anything
," Pete said desperately. "I ran out of the cemetery and all the way home and I locked myself in my room for two days and cried until I couldn't breathe. But I never told a soul, because there was never a soul I could tell. Da eventually figured out we'd been seeing each other—didn't tell MG, thank all that's holy—and he lit into me right proper.
    "Da told me…" Pete chewed on her lip for a moment. She'd long since forgiven Connor for the lie, but she couldn't be sure Jack would. "Da told me you died, Jack. And that it would be best to forget you."
    "Cunt," Jack muttered.
    "Well, he never did like you," Pete said. "You shagged his oldest and put his youngest into a blind fit."
    Jack dragged on his Parliament and refused to look at her. "I waited around London for a fair time after I got out of the hospital. I guess I was hoping you'd show up looking for me."
    "I did," said Pete. "Every face on the street. Every day. For all the time until I went away to university. Eventually, though, I listened to Da. I tried to believe what I saw wasn't what happened, and that you
were
dead and I should put you out of mind, and I am
sorry
for that, Jack, but it was what I had to do to go on."
    "And then you were able to sweep me neatly into the 'Mistakes of My Youth' category with
Terry
's help," Jack snarled.
    "
Terry
has nothing to do with this," Pete snapped. "So leave it out." She took a breath. Imagining saying these things, speaking them to Jack's dream-ghost was easy. This—this was like scaling the White Tower barefoot.
    "I got it, finally," Jack muttered. "When you didn't come. You were a sweet kid but you were slumming. No future. Nothing with me."
    "Jack," Pete said. She took his hands in hers, trying not to flinch at how close to skeletal they still were. "I was a child, and I made a child's choice. I dreamed about you, up until the day I saw you again in that terrible hotel. Knowing that you were alive was probably the best day of my life." She took out the box from her pocket and opened it and folded the Trifold Focus into Jack's palm. "I went to get this for you. I'm back now. I don't leave anymore, and I won't try and forget any longer."
    She stepped past Jack and went into the loo, locking the door and sitting on the tub's edge, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes. Only a few tears came, because she was too battered to really cry.
    After a long while, as Pete sat and watched the shadows move across the floor from the wavy-glass window, Jack knocked on the door. "Pete. I went to the Costa."
    He pushed open the door, cradling a cardboard cup and a fresh fag in his free hand. Pete's nose crinkled. "Jack, you hate coffee. You told me so the night we met."
    "Need to sober up," he muttered, taking a sip and wincing as if he were having his toenails pulled off. "We've got work to do."
    "The summoning," said Pete.
    "The summoning," Jack agreed. "But first, you're going to tell me how you got the Focus out of Grinchley's house. He's not going to burst in here and bash me kneecaps in, is he?"
    Pete stood, wiping away the last hints of moisture from her face. "I went, I tangled with his pet reanimator and I got the Focus and got the bloody hell out of his freaky basement."
    Jack frowned. "Reanimator?"
    "You wouldn't sodding believe the scene in that place, Jack." Pete thought about the cages, the hands, the golem on the surgery table and shivered again. "I still feel as if I need a hot shower."
    "Don't let me stop you, luv."
    Pete reached out to slap at him, but her heart wasn't in it and Jack sidestepped. "In all seriousness, now—Grinchley is animating corpses?"
    "His butler is," said Pete.
    Jack blew out a breath. "A necromancer? Really? Haven't run across one of them since the Stone Age."
    "Perkins looked as if he were
from
the Stone Age," Pete said.
    "That's odd, to be certain," said Jack. "Necromancy and flesh-crafting are dying arts. No one apprentices to them any longer. No need, with infernal servants being as easy to compel as they are in this day and age."
    "Grinchley set this on me, as well," Pete said, drawing out the desiccated Dead Man's Snare from her hip. "Thought maybe you'd have some use for it."
    Jack whistled. "Nicely done, Pete. Powerful little bit of conjuring on this one." He pushed it