Street Magic

rolled his eyes and popped the door open. "A eighteenth-century collective of sorcerers wiped out by witchfinders and who never got the bloody hint." He leaned back in. "How many in there, Roddy?"
    "None," Roddy said miserably. "There's not many of us these days and you've killed near half. The rest are out looking for you."
    Jack checked the street and then motioned Pete out. "We take him with us."
    In the lift, Roddy's pungent sweat made Pete's nose crinkle. "So you people just hang around thinking of ways to kill Jack? Seems silly. Completely."
    "Thought he
was
dead," Roddy muttered. "Only in the last couple of weeks, the Black started to talk about seeing him again."
    "But why?" said Pete. "He didn't do anything to you."
    "Right here," said Jack as the digital numbers ticked by. "Not bloody deaf, either."
    "Do you have any idea what it would mean to be the sorcerer who killed the crow-mage?" Roddy demanded, and his face sparked back to life. "You would be legend in your own time, with more power than any before. Feared, hated, and respected—the tenets of the Arkanum."
    "
Why
do you people call him 'crow-mage'?" Pete asked. The lift came to a stop.
    "Don't answer that, Roddy, 'less you want it to be the last coherent thing you ever say," Jack said, throwing a glare over his shoulder as he stepped into a narrow hallway, lit with brass sconces. One door stood at the far end.
    Roddy limped after him at Pete's prodding. "Just through there," he said, slouching against the wall opposite the lift. "Everything you want is in there."
    "Good man," said Jack. He shoved Roddy aside and put his hand on the door, jiggling it. "It's locked."
    "I haven't a key," said Roddy with a thrust of his chin, before Jack could turn on him. "The High Sorcerers control the access."
    "No matter," said Jack. "Pete, you got a hairpin or a bra wire or something?"
    "Do I look like I have a hairpin, Jack?"
    "Never mind," he said, digging a skeleton key out of his pocket and working it into the lock. He leaned against the keyhole and breathed, "
Go n-iompai an iarann agus go ligfeadh lean ar aghaidh
," in a whisper meant for a lover. Pete heard ancient tumblers groaning.
    "Racking up felonies by the minute, I see," she said. Jack gave her a wide grin.
    "Not breaking in if you have a key."
    "You think you can enter our sanctum with such a crude tool?" Roddy muttered.
    The lock clicked and the door popped open. Jack rolled his eyes. "Apparently I can, sonny boy. What about it?"
    "Don't be waiting, then," Roddy said sullenly. "Burst in and save the day, Winter."
    "All right, keep your shorts on," said Jack. He put his hand on the knob, but before it turned, pain like she'd just smacked into a ledge hit Pete. The Black rushed up at her, magic that was barren and unforgiving, nothing like the dancing fire of Jack's talent or the icy slickness of her dream. She gasped as she touched it, and Jack stopped and turned to look at her.
    "What's wrong, luv?"
    "I…" The pain intensified, the magic crouching, leaping, digging teeth into her brain. "I…" She couldn't speak, just felt the magic pressing down on her. Her Black-fueled intution rocketed through the pain and she grabbed for Jack's hand on the door, trying to make him stop, turn back, before he became broken and bloody and still again.
    "Sweet Lilith…" Roddy cursed. "They know! They—" He was cut off as Jack spun around and grabbed him by the neck.
    "What have you done, you slimy little cunt?"
    Roddy began to smile, and then to laugh. "It was so easy," he said. "I'd heard so many stories about how good you were, Winter, how quicksilver and clever. And look, a broken leg and a sob story was all it took for you to swallow it."
    "Jack," Pete ground out. She tried pushing against the feedback from the Black, and the pain lessened, though not by much.
    Roddy grinned at both of them unpleasantly. "You came in here obedient as dogs."
    Demonstrating far more strength than Pete would have guessed a man of Jack's size to have, Jack lifted Roddy onto his tiptoes. "What did you and your shit-sucking Arkanum mates do? Tell me before I break you in half and jam you together backward."
    Roddy laughed, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter now, Winter. I did my job. I'll be seeing you on the other side… and her… and all the rest." And Roddy fell forward against Jack, and shoved them back together, through the door into the Arkanum's sanctum.
    The spell hovering over the flat snapped into place and Pete could