Street Magic

out by a Mohawked man with a bare chest and studded jacket.
    "Hattie." Pete indicated the glass with her chin. "Give it here."
    "Oi," said the Mohawk. "I paid for that, you tart. Leave 'er be."
    "Excuse me," said Pete, reaching across Hattie's nonexistent chest and taking the tumbler, "but kindly bugger off back to 1985 and leave us the bloody hell alone."
    Jack tilted the whisky down in one swallow, coughed, and then settled on the nearest barstool with a sigh.
    The Mohawk looked at Jack, at Pete and Hattie, and then held up his hands. "Didn't realize she was with you, mate. Apologies."
    "Fuck off," Jack said plainly. The man left.
    "This the sort of impression you were after?" Pete shouted-muttered under the throb of the music. She kept her back to the bar, her hands at her sides, and wished she had something other than wit and fists at her disposal.
    Jack faced the body sea with his elbows on the bar, a serene smile playing between his lips and his eyes. "You ever shill at cards, Pete?"
    "I went into the Met straight out of university so… no," said Pete.
    His fingers twitched and produced a card from his sleeve, a tarot picture of the Hanged Man. "You lose a few rounds at first," said Jack, still roving his gaze across the club. "You chum the waters with your weakness. You stand back and you let them get close, close enough, and you jam the knife in so tight and deep they never stop bleeding." Jack made the card disappear again, witchfire eating it into nothingness.
    Pete eased near enough to speak into Jack's ear. "So who's getting close to us now?"
    A girl in a satin slip adorned with roses, thorny twists of vine when Pete blinked, a dress again when the lights flared, grinned at Jack with needlelike teeth as she slipped past. Jack lit a cigarette and let the smoke trail out through his nostrils. "The wrong kind of people." His magic no longer crackled, it rolled off him in the slow honeyed way that made everyone in the club with the least sensitivity turn to look at him. Pete felt it cling to her and shook it off. If Mosswood was right, she was going to have to find a way to shut off the hum, the ripples, and the cries that seemed to resonate through London.
    "Wrong for what?"
    "Wrong for me to bring around someone like you," said Jack. "But oh, so bloody right for what we're trying to do." The houselights went down, and in the sudden blackness Jack's eyes burned blue.
    "Bloody hell," said someone from over Pete's shoulder, sotto voce, but in order to be heard over the music you practically had to scream. "Jack Winter, isn't it?"
    "You're fucking stoned," said a male voice. "Jack Winter's dead."
    Jack's smile slipped down the scale to predatory. "See?"
    Pete and Jack turned in concert to face a pair of young, pale, serious faces, boy and girl, both staring at Jack sidelong.
    "If so," Jack said to them, "I'd say I managed to make one bloody attractive corpse."
    The girl clutched the boy's arm, tearing a hole in his fishnet sleeve with her dead-blood nails. "By the Black! Arty, it's really him."
    Arty regarded Pete and Jack through hooded eyes, bloodshot with whatever was in his glass. He sneered when Pete returned his stare. "Yeah. Guess he hasn't kicked."
    He swung himself to face Jack, limbs heavy. Pete shifted herself to the balls of her feet, ready to deal Arty a punch to his pointy chin if he moved in on her or Jack.
    "Do you know there's a bounty out on your pretty little Billy Idol head?" Arty slurred.
    "Why, son?" Jack said. He curled his lip slightly, carrying on with the reference. "Are you going to collect?"
    "Oh,
don't
mind him," the girl gushed, dealing Arty a shot to the ribs. "My brother's a bloody idiot when he's in his cups. I'm Absithium, and he's Artem, but you can call us Arty and Abby." She extended her hand palm down, as though she expected Jack to kiss it, and he did. Hattie grunted at the gesture, her blotchy forehead crinkling.
    "Jack Winter," Jack told Abby, ignoring Hattie as if she were a lamp or a hatstand.
    "I
knew
it was you," Abby simpered. "Arty and I… we're twins, but I'm an intuitive and he's got other talents."
    Pete noticed a ripple in the crowd around them. A shifting of heads and eyes, when Jack said his name. "Chumming the bloody waters," she muttered, taking Hattie's fresh glass of whisky and draining it herself.
    Abby jerked her chin at Hattie. "I've seen you before, too. At Millie Child's?"
    "Yeah, whatever," said Hattie. "I spent a few nights there last