Street Magic

sorcerer. "And he'll be corporeal." A frission of excitement spread through the circle.
    Pete heard someone screaming, a single "No" repeated over and over, the word running together into speechless cries. Her mouth went dry and she realized the voice belonged to her.
    "Master Treadwell," the sorcerer holding her called. "What about the woman?"
    Kill her
, Treadwell told him.
She is polluted by the mage
.
    "Oh, God, Jack, I'm so sorry," Pete moaned. Jack lay perfectly still, his eyes open, plain and staring upward. His fingers twitched ever so slightly, and his chest barely rose.
    The sorcerer with the knife came toward Pete and the two holding her jerked her head back, exposing her throat. "Oi," said one. "We could 'ave a go before you cut her."
    "Or after," said the other.
    The sorcerer with the knife hesitated. "Be quick about it." Behind him, the others rushed to encircle Jack with chalked sigils, light candles at the five points of the star, spread their web around him. Treadwell gazed down at Jack hungrily, stroking spectral fingers over and
through
Jack's flesh, causing him to moan and convulse each time those terrible talons sank into his skin.
    "Hold her arm, Hodges… there's a lad," said the sorcerer who didn't care if Pete was alive or dead for his business.
    "I swear," Pete gritted. "If you get close enough, I'll bloody well end you."
    "Shut it," said Hodges. "You're just lucky it's us and not Master Treadwell."
    They laughed, Hodges loudest of all, and his grip loosened a fraction. Pete twisted down and to the side, ripped her right arm free, and drove her two longest fingers into Hodge's throat. He made a rasp like a saw and dropped to his knees.
    "Bloody hell…" started the first.
    "Forget it," said the second. "Treadwell's starting the spell. Finish her and be quick about it, 'less you want to explain to him why we weren't standing in the circle."
    The circle of magicians began chanting in Latin, forming around Jack. The sorcerer with the knife made a swipe for her, but Pete grabbed the knife above the blade, fighting the sorcerer for it, gaining a hold and breaking the man's wrist.
    He screamed, and Pete looked at the last, her blood racing in time with the swelling gusts of the Black swirling around them. She had to do something, with no magic and no power of her own.
    Pete turned the knife in her hand, placing the tip against her own abdomen.
    You can hurt and bleed and die in the thin spaces.
    She might not come back from this decision, but there was nothing else. Jack had come for her, faced Treadwell, and now he was dying again. Dying not because of his pride but because he'd stayed to help her in the first place.
    Pete felt the blade of the knife break her skin, just, a bead of hot blood sliding down her stomach.
    "Treadwell!" she screamed, her voice coming out raw. Treadwell turned his dreadful eyes on her.
    What is the meaning of this?
    "If you want Jack Winter so badly," Pete said, her hands shaking well and truly now, "then you can bloody well come and take him from me." She raised the knife and drove it into her stomach, deep and with enough force to lodge it there. The pain spread immediately, a rush of vertigo that spiraled her down and down into the icy, bottomless reaches of the Black.

----
Chapter Forty-four

    She opened her eyes in a small neat room, painted blue. The sitting room, from her family's old flat. Pete was standing in the center of the braided rug their mother had bought in a jumble sale in the high street, when Pete was a baby.
    "Quite the view, isn't it?"
    Jack spoke, his back to her as he leaned against the window, his forehead pressed to the leaded glass. Pete followed his gaze and gasped.
    London was on fire, as far as the eye could see—blue flames, consuming everything down to char. Steam rose off the Thames and the city was filled with the wail of air raid sirens. The sky, what Pete could see through the smoke that burned the fine skin inside her nostrils, was streaked with bloody red as a sun wreathed in flames set to the west.
    "Jack," Pete rasped, trying not to choke on the poisoned air, "where are we?"
    "Inside my dying moments. The last flicker of my nightmares," Jack said. He exhaled smoke with each breath. "The dark place of the soul, in between."
    "In between life and death?" Pete said.
    "Of course." Jack breathed more smoke. "The world, and what comes after. I'm not really here."
    "No?" Pete edged backward a step.
    "No," said Jack with a sigh. "No,