Street Magic

anyone."
    "Jack Winter telling the truth," Mosswood mused. "There's something I'd like to see."
    "Listen," Pete said. "I'm not stupid. I
know
something happened that wasn't meant to the first time Jack and I tried magic together. I don't think mages make a habit of working rituals that leave them on Death's doorstep. And now, the
same thing
almost blew his flat to smithereens earlier tonight."
    "It is not a thing," said Mosswood. "Magic is not an object."
    Pete dropped her eyes at the rebuke, wishing she'd never come. Being in the Black made her feel as if she were half in and half out of icy water, displaced and distracted.
    Mosswood finally sighed. "I can only venture a guess, you understand…"
    "Anything," said Pete with relief. "Wild speculation, baseless rumor… I've already spent over a decade thinking I'm crazy for believing any of this."
    "Many thousands of years ago," said Mosswood, "there was a class of magicians, used by the old gods to speak for them… druids, priestesses of the Morrigan, a class of the Celt's battle shamans… you see?"
    Pete nodded. The brownie set a cup of strong hot tea at her elbow, and she sipped reflexively. The way Mosswood spoke, it was easy to imagine sitting at the foot of the great standing stones, watching hooded figures dance in the starlight.
    "The term 'magician' is a fallacy, really," said Mosswood. "They were called 'Weirs,' in the old tongues. Shapers of magic."
    "Weir." Pete tasted the word, swallowed it down with her next swig of tea. "And what did the Weirs do, Mr. Mosswood?"
    "Just Mosswood," he said again. "Weirs are odd and frightening, Miss Caldecott, because…" He sighed and sucked his pipe. "I fear I am doing you a disservice by saying this, but… Weirs escape classification. They do not tend toward magic the same way mages and sorcerers do. They are transformers, amplifiers, able to perceive the truth in dreaming, and if they are connected to a mage or sorcerer, terrible, terrible things have happened."
    "What sort of things?" Pete drained her mug to the bottom, bitter tea leaves touching her tongue.
    "Well," said Mosswood, "you don't think the
Hinden-burg
explosion was really an accident, do you? Or Three Mile Island? Or the Tunguska meteor?"
    Pete sat back, rubbing her arms. The cozy pub had become freezing cold. "So if I am… a Weir, and I've connected with Jack…"
    Mosswood blew a ring of smoke, his eyes murky. "Then may whatever god you believe in watch over you both. Someone of Jack's abilities, amplified by a Weir, would be like a storm sweeping from the netherworld to flatten everything outside the Black."
    "Weirs amplify mage's talents?" Pete felt her heartbeat slow in numb anticipation.
    "Of course," said Mosswood mildly. "Why do you think virgin girls were so popular with magicians in the old times? It wasn't for their conversation."
    A low shudder started in Pete's stomach and worked its way toward becoming a clear thought. She saw Jack, in his torn T-shirt and black jeans, jackboots and metal bracelets gleaming in the candlelight. Standing across the circle from her, inside the dark still tomb. Reaching out, to take her by the hand.
    Afraid, luv? Don't be. I'm here, after all.
    Pete stood up, knocking her chair away with a clatter. "I—I have to go. I'm sorry, Mosswood. Thank you…" She turned and managed to navigate out of the pub and back down the alley, fingers closing around the cold lumpy metal of the gate and pushing it aside. A black border closed around her vision and finally the street in front of her disappeared completely and all Pete saw as she spiraled down was Jack, Jack and his devil's grin.

PART THREE
The Graveyard
    When they kick at your front door How you gonna come? With your hands on your head Or on the trigger of your gun?
    —The Clash

----
Chapter Thirty-four

    Pete shoved open the door to Jack's flat so that it hit the wall with a crack. She jumped at the same time as he did, startled to actually find him slouched on his sofa. A haze of pungent blue-green smoke drifted around him.
    "Who the fuck is that?" demanded the woman on the other end of the sofa. She was rail skinny, a thatch of grown-out blond hair that still held purple dye in the tips sticking out wildly around her narrow pixie face.
    "Hattie, this is Pete," Jack said. His posture instantly drew tight as he caught Pete's expression.
    " 'S a bloody odd name, ain't it?" Hattie said, taking another draw on her Thai stick.
    For Pete's part, she drew in a