Street Magic

Idon'twantJacktodieagain
…
    In the hand holding Jack's, it started, a vibration as if she'd sat on her hand for a few hours and then abruptly released it. The numbness spread up her arm and where Jack's skin met hers heat like red iron burned.
    Light exploded in front of her eyes, and she heard Jack
yell, felt
his magic gather and rush outward, and when she opened her eyes Talshebeth was consumed by something gray-black and dense, a flight of magic that reduced him to ashes until his screams blew away on a conjured wind.
    Jack slumped, sitting down hard and taking Pete with him.
    "What the bloody hell just happened?" she demanded. Jack turned on her.
    "You tell me, darling! One moment I'm barely holding off a demon from gnawing flesh off my bones and the next he's a little pile of matchsticks on my floor!"
    "I may not know bugger-all about magic," said Pete slowly. "But I know that was not normal." She unclenched her hand from Jack's. The bones creaked in protest and a vivid red imprint of his fingers remained on her palm. "It happened when we touched, then and when you called your witchfire," she told Jack. "Whatever it was."
    "Nothing," said Jack. "Nothing, is what that was."
    "It was not
nothing
." Pete sounded more outraged than she meant to, or even knew she was, underneath the crushing relief to still be breathing. "You kept your promise—this was different from the last time, because last time you didn't incinerate a demon. Jack—"
    "Pete,
it was nothing
!" Jack shouted. "Let it bloody well go!" He got up with difficulty and paced away from her, rubbing his left forearm.
    "Why won't you just tell me what happened?" Pete said quietly.
    "Because sometimes, Pete, you don't need to know everything," Jack snapped. He grabbed his jacket off the hook and unlocked the door of the flat.
    "That's no kind of answer! Where are you going?" Pete demanded. "You can't leave—I need your help still to find Margaret! We're out of time!"
    "In case you missed the five armed psychopaths who just burst into my flat, and the sidhe bitches before them, someone is trying to kill me," said Jack. "And I can't find out who's passed down the order dragging a square copper along with me."
    "Jack—"
    "Let it go, Pete!" he shouted.
    "Fine." Pete threw up her hands. "You want to keep playing your little secrecy game, that's fine. But before you go storming out of here, might I point out the matter of the five bodies on your sitting-room floor?"
    Jack grinned crookedly. "Bodies? All I see are some bundles of rags." He went to one of the crates stacked against the wall, rooted, tossing out a stack of vintage dirty magazines, a pair of tattered leopard-print pants, which Pete picked up and examined in horror, and finally yanked out a tightly wrapped cloth bundle. "Stand back. It's about to get hot."
    He unfurled the canvas and held up a bundle of smoky-smelling herbs, whispering "
Aithinne
." The herbs swirled up and out from his palm, catching the bodies alight and burning them from the inside, like the spent end of a cigarette. Soon there was nothing but rags, just as Jack had said.
    "See? No fuss," he said. "Although that was my last batch of inferno weed. Practically extinct now. Very dear."
    Pete watched ash drift up from where the bodies had lain, wordlessly. "It's so very simple in your world, isn't it, Jack?"
    "You'd think that," he said, grabbing his jacket from the hook. "But little things like staying alive? Not simple in the least. Now I'm going out to find out who wants to stop me from doing that. Got any more objections?"
    "Jack…" Pete started.
    "Good," he said, walking out and slamming the door in her face.
    Pete slumped down against the wall again. "Bugger."

----
Chapter Thirty-two

    After Pete swept up the ashes of Talshebeth and the sorcerers and binned them, and put the kettle on, and made a cup of tea, she finally realized that Jack wasn't coming back.
    Her mobile rang as she was struggling with the bin bag and she grabbed it up. "Hullo."
    "Pete, I'm very patiently waiting for you to sign the revised offer papers. I faxed them to your desk at the Yard
days
ago. Have you quite taken leave of the last vestiges of your so-called responsibility?"
    "It's just hit where I am, Terry. I don't have time for this—" Pete started.
    "You know something, Pete, you are going to
make
time for me," Terry fussed. "You're the one who couldn't let the disposition of our assets go on in a civilized manner, and now you can't be bothered