Chapter Twenty-four
Pete took Jack home, put the kettle on, and made two mugs. "Sugar. No cream."
Jack accepted the mug and took a sip, then yelped. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, that"s burning hot!"
"It"s just come off the boil, ninny," Pete said, blowing across the surface of her own tea. Jack pulled a pout.
" "M not a ninny."
Pete stirred her own mug. "I"m sorry, I must have been thinking of another mage." She let herself smile, and felt a jump against her rib cage when Jack returned it, a brief flicker like a kiss of flame.
Jack dropped his eyes and dug in his jacket pocket, finding a sc.r.a.p of vellum paper and a pencil. "Going to need some things for what"s ahead. You"ll have to take me to the Kings Road."
A memory of a bas.e.m.e.nt shop fragrant with spices and spiderwebbed with intermingling magics stirred. Pete swallowed and nodded. Margaret. Bridget, Patrick, and Diana. Forget the rest. "Fine."
"And there"s the matter of getting my hands on a Trifold Focus," Jack said. Pete stopped her tea mid-sip.
"You don"t have one?"
Jack laughed. "No, Pete. No, I don"t happen to have one of those lying about."
"What"s so b.l.o.o.d.y amusing? How do we get one?" said Pete. "Buy it?"
Jack snorted. "Would that it were that simple."
"Mosswood made it sound simple," Pete muttered. Moss-wood was straight ahead and trusting, solid as an oak. Jack shifted his gaze to his list. He was movable as Mosswood was still, the wind through the sacred grove.
"The only Trifold Focus I know of is in the private collection of a bloke called Travis Grinchley," Jack said.
"Grinchley not the lending type?" Pete guessed. Jack smiled, a predatory showing of teeth.
"The last man who stole from him floated up in the Thames two weeks later, with his eyes and his tongue missing."
"Could be worse," said Pete gamely. Jack stuck his pencil behind his ear.
"They cut out his tongue to make room for his heart to be shoved in."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
"So what"s your grand plan?" said Pete. The sitting room had darkened as the fog outside turned from daytime silver to nighttime velvet. She flicked on the nearest lamp and shadows sprang to life on the walls.
"Grinchley will never give it over willingly," said Jack. "And you"d be mad to f.u.c.k with a collector of dark magics. So that leaves outright treachery and low dealings."
"You look awfully happy about that," said Pete.
Jack smiled, dropping her a wink. "As if I"d be anything else, luv."
"Still haven"t told me the great trick to get the Focus away from this Grinchley person." Pete lifted an eyebrow, her motherly gesture, used on teenaged shoplifters and errant schoolchildren. Jack scribed a circle in the air with his finger.
"We"ll just twist him, luv. Give him a bit of street magic and shift the thing right out from under him. A minor ent.i.ty of some sort should do the trick."
"More summoning." Pete felt a ball of something hard and unpleasant grow just under her heart. "Jack&"
"Pete." He closed his hand into a fist. "This is what I did, very well, for quite a time before I met you. Let me do my work. You promised."
"I promised to listen to your rot," Pete shot back. "I didn"t promise b.u.g.g.e.r-all about this idiotic idea you have to steal from a man who slices out people"s hearts."
"Translocation," said Jack. "My idiot idea is transloca-tion. I never have to get within a hundred meters of the man and I"ll be done with the Focus before Grinchley even realizes it"s missing. Devil knows he has enough arcane s.h.i.te in his musty old house."
Think of Margaret, Connor whispered. Think of every night after you find her dead and cold if you don"t listen to Jack Think of every night after you find her dead and cold if you don"t listen to Jack. "I just hope I can," Pete muttered.
"What?" Jack said distractedly. He stood up and sorted through the armload of books Pete had brought to him, paging through the index of the Dictionary of Unfriendly Ent.i.ties Dictionary of Unfriendly Ent.i.ties.
"Nothing." Pete sighed. She set her tea aside. "I"m going to go do paperwork while you do& whatever it is you"re doing."
"Research," said Jack. "Got to figure which sort of ent.i.ty will be willing to trade with me for this favor. Imps might do it. Imps love sneaking about."
"You don"t just& know?" Pete asked. "They don"t make you memorize that stuff, like?"
Jack shook his head. "There was no "they," Pete. I didn"t go to some b.l.o.o.d.y school and get instructed by gits in robes. You either die quickly because your talent overwhelms you, or you learn quickly and stay a step ahead of whatever wants to chew on your a.r.s.e." He thumped the thick black book. "Research is a mage"s best friend. Why would I carry all that dusty knowledge around when I can just rely on the sods who came before me?"
"Fine." Pete held up her hands. "Like I said, I"ll be upstairs in the office closet. Nothing personal, but the very idea turns my stomach."
"You"ll get used to it," said Jack. "You got any chalk in case I need to set a protection hex?"
"In the kitchen drawer with the cling film," said Pete. "And no, I won"t get used to it."
She turned and left Jack in the shadows and went into her tiny officemore of an artist"s garret than anything, up a flight of stairs barely wide enough for two feet side by side. Her desk and her computer were wrapped in a thin film of dust. Pete clicked on her scrollwork lamp with its bright reading bulb, turning the window facing into the street to a sheet of onyx.
Jack shifted something in the sitting room, and Pete smelled the chalk dust clear as if she were next to him. That dark stirring of deep, old things pushed against the front of her skull. She searched her desk for aspirin to deal with the persistent headache, but found none.
Pete pressed her forehead against the chilled windowpane. Fog thickened and everything past the gla.s.s was invisible and gold-tinged, until the streetlight at the end of the block winked out.
She drew back and saw ice crawl across the gla.s.s where her breath met it.
Beyond the pane, the fog swirled and parted, as if Avalon were about to reveal itself. Pete felt her body and mind become entranced, the cold seeping down from her bones into her blood and her skin, ice crystals weighing her eyelashes.
Noise and sensation faded, and the fog outside swirled and twisted back on itself and coalesced into a woman"s face.
Something whispered, from that dark wellspring that rippled and chattered when Pete touched things not entirely made of earth. A tiny tug on her mind, beyond the cold and the pale, pale face with eyes closed, body clothed in robes of purest silver mist that floated in the night outside.
The whispers rose to the pitch of a scream in the back of Pete"s mind, a flock of tiny mouths crying out in concert. Peril Peril.
Pete gasped, taking in air so cold it burned her chest like a gout of flame. The pale face outside opened in a soundless scream, fangs the color of old bone snowing beneath lips stained with blood, warm and steaming against the thing"s frozen skin.
Pete let out a scream of her own. "f.u.c.k me!"
The garret window shattered, throwing a snowstorm of gla.s.s inward, and Pete fell, tangling her legs in her chair"s and going down hard on her left shoulder. Pain, disorientation, a sensation of fullness of fullness in her head, like she"d caught the feedback of an amplifier turned on full. in her head, like she"d caught the feedback of an amplifier turned on full.
Frozen obsidian claws raked her back and the silver mist poured into the room, forming three of the female shapes. The one who broke the window hissed, staring down at Pete with empty black eyes that seemed to stretch to the bottom of the world.
Pete opened her mouth to yell for Jack, but was deafened by a scream that went straight through her, rending flesh and piercing bone.
The mist-woman closed her mouth, blood bubbling down her chin, and hissed, "Where is the crow-mage? The man called Winter?" Her voice was sibilant and split Pete"s ears until she was sure she was deaf, hearing the mist-woman"s voice through the echo inside her skull.
"I don"t&" she said, or thought she did. She couldn"t hear, not even her own heartbeat.
The mist-woman"s robe smelled of marsh water and the blood of ancient battlefields. It slithered over Pete"s face as she lay at their feet, body stiff and chilled, head ringing. Jack Jack. She had to get Jack. Warn Jack.
"Where is the mage called Winter?" they demanded again, a concert of moans and sighs. Their hair floated as if they were submerged, black as muddy reeds. Behind their shoulders, a line of light glowed, the edge of the door. "The mage called Winter!" the bansidhe screamed. They looked like every one of Juniper"s stories, down to the black claws that curled from sodden, wrinkled hands.
The first bansidhe swooped and brought her face close to Pete"s. "Give him to us!"
Fear coiled, sprung, wrapped itself around Pete"s heart like a rusty iron chain, but she met the bansidhe"s black eyes, and snarled with all the pain and fury she could expel. "Go back to h.e.l.l." She rolled, wrenching all the already painful parts of her body, and wrapped her hands around the lamp, swinging it through the bansidhe"s drowned corpse face.
The bansidhe howled, claws raking at its face where Pete hit, the skin melting and running over a skull alive with maggots. Stinking marsh water spattered on the floor.
Pete broke for the door. "Jack! Jack, there"s trouble!"
Behind her she felt them, as if she were extending invisible fingers. She felt their blackness part the air as they flew, claws and hair lashing, catching Pete"s shirt and yanking her backward.
She fell, twisting, down the last stairs, rolled on her side and got up again. The bansidhe"s howling cracked her skull, caused the hall lights to flicker.
Jack appeared in front of her, eyes flaming, his hands sparking with chalk dust as the mist covered them both. "Jack!" Pete gasped, or screamed. She didn"t know, only the vibration in her throat even told her she was speaking. "Jack, they"re behind me."
Jack"s irises expanded and he let go of Pete"s shoulders. He saw them. "Pete." She saw his lips move. "Pete, get behind me."
"Winter!" screeched the bansidhe, and Pete heard them perfectly. "Crow-mage! Surrender yourself!"
Jack drew in a breath and witchfire blossomed on his palms, hot as the bansidhe"s skin was icy. "b.u.g.g.e.r to that," he said. "You"re not welcome here, and this is a very bad time to make me lose my temper."
The bansidhe drew back their lips from their razor-wire fangs. Their leader raised her right hand and drew her left set of talons across her wrist. Blood oozed from the cuts, and where it hit the walls and the floor smoke rose, black as the coal haze that drifted over London a hundred years ago.
Pete choked as the smoke roiled and grew. It was too much like her nightmare, and where the smoke touched her skin ice crystals appeared. The entire hallway of her flat was frozen over with ice the color of oil.
"Surrender, or the companion dies," snarled the bansidhe woman. "We have cause, crow-mage!"
"State your cause, then!" Jack snapped. "I serve no Un-seelie master and you can"t compel me with your b.l.o.o.d.y Fae laws!"
"A price has been paid and a bargain set." The bansidhe smiled, or what a smile would have been wrought in her hissing rictus of a face. "Your life has a value, crow-mage. For the one who ends it, your talents are the reward."
Pete choked as she felt the ice work its way down her throat, and caught hold of Jack"s hand. His body was humming like a guitar string, but he showed none of it, stock-still, the witchfire melting the ice around him quickly as it grew.
"Leave now," Jack told the bansidhe with a terrible still anger that Pete had only ever seen from Connor, "and maybe I"ll decide not to rip your wretched carca.s.ses out of the ether and turn you to mud as a repayment for this trespa.s.s."
The bansidhe screamed at the insult, and Pete staggered, but the pain slowly lessened inside her head, almost as if she could dial down the volume now that she was growing used to the sound. She dug her other set of fingers into Jack"s collarbone and felt him still his shaking in return.
"This is no warded place or churchyard!" the leader screeched. Pete"s small cl.u.s.ter of photographs tumbled to the ground under the noise, their gla.s.s shattering. "This is neutral ground, mage, and we demand your surrender! Give yourself over& or live to see your thighbones picked clean." Her shadowed spirit eyes flickered with delight.
Jack slid his gaze over to Pete, all the rage run out. He was skinny and old too soon again, and Pete saw from the tight lines along his mouth that Jack was afraid. "Run," he said. "Get to the lift."
"What are you doing?" Pete said. She could hear again, the pain almost entirely dissipated. She would not let go of Jack, not leave him for the sighing and screaming bansidhe.
"Not sure," said Jack. "Time was I could bolt for holy ground, but I"ve accepted that I"m not as young as I used to be. They"ve been given cause to take me away, by some git who cuts deals with FaeI"m gaining the feeling rapidly that I"m rather f.u.c.ked."
"My lift is holy ground?" Pete tried to arch her eyebrow but was shivering too uncontrollably. Jack cut his hand across the air.
"No, but it"s steel, I"d guess. Not cold iron, but it"ll keep them out long enough. Might as well save yourself, Pete."
The bansidhe rippled and swirled like a phantom wind had stirred her and then appeared inches from Jack"s face. Pete lost feeling in her exposed skin, and saw blue veins crawl into being along Jack"s cheeks and neck.
"Do you surrender, crow-mage?" the bansidhe demanded, her voice low and jagged as an old scar. "Or do you choose to die at my hand?"
"Jack," Pete hissed. "Jack, I may have something."
Jack looked at Pete, back at the bansidhe, staring the creature eye to eye as if she were another hooligan in the pit at Fiver"s, inconsequential. "You sure?" he murmured.
Pete squeezed his shoulder hard as she could, until the bones creaked. She wasn"t. They could die, and the only difference would be what room of her flat was taped off for the crime scene investigators.
The bansidhe howled and raised her claws to rake Jack"s face. Pete jerked him backward. "I"m sure!"
She dragged Jack away, turned and ran, taking up his hand. Skidding on the ice, her heart thrumming like a faulty motor, she fell into the bathroom. Jack tripped over her legs and landed on top.
"The tub," Pete rasped. Trying to speak normally, she found her throat raw as if she"d stood on the Channel cliffs in a winter storm and screamed.
Jack understood and ripped the curtain off its hooks, pulling Pete after him until they landed in a heap in the basin of the old claw-foot.
And the bansidhe came, raging and screaming as if their newborn children had been ripped away, flying hair cutting like stinging nettles and their icy breath clouding the air in the bath. Pete"s door fell off the hinges and the mirror and tiles cracked as they howled. She ducked her head below the lip of the tub and prayed, wordless with fear even inside her own head.
On top of her, Jack muttered, over and over, in Irish that sounded like last rites, "Cosain me, cosain si, a fhiach dhubh, cosain si."
The bansidhe howled on, and slowly their cries of rage turned into a high keening of pain. Pete raised her eyes over the lip of the basin and saw the leader ripping out her own hair, clawing at her flesh, bits and patches flaking away from decaying black bone.
"You are a deceiver, crow-mage! May you burn in h.e.l.l!" the leader cried. Then a whirlwind left a slick of snow that smelled like seawater, and the bansidhe vanished into smoke.
Pete exhaled. Her hands and throat and skin were tinged with pink frostbite, and her bones hurt. The cold had cut all the way down. She groaned. "Jack, get off me."
He hauled himself out of the tub and sprawled on the tile. "Old flat. Iron tub. Iron sink and pipes as well?"
"II guess so," Pete muttered shakily. She sat back and then screeched as bright fire lanced between her shoulder blades. Jack was back next to her, peeling back her b.l.o.o.d.y shirt.
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," he hissed when he saw the claw marks. "They got you, Pete."
"c.u.n.ts," Pete muttered.