Street Magic

the hollow part of her palm. "You want to be surprised, don't you?"
    "Not sure," Pete said honestly. It was cold inside the tomb, and unnaturally dark when contrasted with the strong sun outside. Jack held his free hand out, palm down over the circle, and Pete's stomach did a nervous flip-flop.
    The blood they had both spilled began to move across each line of the circle, turning the crooked chalk marks crimson. Jack twisted his fingers, cat's-cradle, until the blood spread and pooled at the very center of the mark.
    "It's working," he whispered, a boyish grin breaking out. "Bloody hell, it's working."
    The crimson began to fade, and Jack cursed. "Fuck it. Not enough…"
    Pete watched him, and she didn't know why she spoke up again, because never in a million days would she, Connor Caldecott's sensible daughter through and through, believe so outlandish a thing, but the words flew out. "This is real."
    Twin points of witchfire sprang to life in Jack's eyes. Harmless, beautiful witchfire that she'd seen him conjure before, only now it burned Pete hot enough to melt her under the force of Jack's gaze. "No bloody kidding," was all he said, before he pulled his flick-knife with his free hand and cut his thumb again. Three drops of his blood landed in the center of the chalk lines.
    They disappeared, sucked inward through the stone floor. A sensation of wrongness crept up Pete's spine, as if the floor had tilted underneath her feet just slightly.
    "Don't move," Jack ordered, licking the remaining blood off his palm. He repeated the cut on her hand as well, dropping her blood onto the stones next to his and Pete coiled in on herself, knowing that if she moved now things would go even worse than they already had.
    Jack held on to her, their blood mingling and slicking her skin. "Look at you, still holding strong. Don't let go, yeah?"
    "Never," Pete whispered.
    Jack shut his eyes, face tilted upward into the dark. Pete could picture him in a gold circlet and a white robe just then, at the head of a coven in a circle of stones.
    "
Eitil dom, a spiorad
," Jack muttered. "
Eitil dom, a spiorad. Tar do mo fhuil beo
." He opened his eyes and spoke aloud. "Algernon Treadwell. Hound-sorcerer. I command you into my circle, spirit and soul.
Tar do mo fhuil beo
."
    For a long minute, the only sounds to Pete were her own breathing and the faraway rush of traffic through the afternoon. "Come on…" Jack whispered. "You ruddy bastard. Come to me."
    The skin on the back of Pete's neck twinged as though someone had dropped ice cubes down her collar. With a shivering sigh of magic black smoke began to issue forth from all the walls and flagstones of the tomb, creeping through the crevices and forming in the air, the shape beginning to breathe.
    Transfixed, Pete watched as smoke grew hands, and fingers, and a soundless mouth. When it spoke, no real sound slipped into the small echoing space, but Pete heard it just the same and it made the space behind her eyes hurt.
    Who might this be, who has so rudely called?
    Jack's shoulders dropped, the tension wire cut when the thing spoke. "Jack Winter." He grinned broadly. "Jack Winter compels you, hound-sorcerer."
    The smoke drifted around to face Pete as if on a spindle.
Not entirely, it seems
.
    "Oi," Jack ordered. "Leave her out of it."
    But why? She is deliciously vulnerable, an Uncorrupted conduit. Open and willing
. The smoke was smoke, but Pete swore that its hollow mouth smiled.
I believe I see why you protect this one, Jack Winter
.
    Jack's jaw knotted but his voice remained steady and low as ever. Maybe, Pete thought, the smoke-man couldn't see the twin flames in his eyes because the smoke-man appeared to have none. "Get off it. My circle
compels
you to obey me."
    It would
, the smoke agreed,
it would if properly drawn. Your filthy marsh-mouthed language betrays you as a trainee of the
Fiach Duhb.
Your hag's blood holds no sway. Stand aside if you value your scrabbling misery of a life, mage
.
    And the smoke-man walked. It came straight for Pete, one hand with trailing wisp-claws reaching for her. Jack went to his knee, chalked a hasty symbol on the floor with his unencumbered hand, and the smoke-man slowed, but Pete was rooted and stilled even though she
wanted
to run, far and fast as her legs would take her. She could not move, not against the assault of cries and the raw, heavy power, like iron buried deep within frozen earth that the smoke pressed down around her.
    Jack said, "Fuck,"