Jack smelled like whisky and rain, like lightning had just struck earth. Pete breathed in him and the tobacco, closing her eyes.
A pressure on her shoulder, as Jack closed his free hand around it. "Thank you, for going along. Probably would be bleeding internally in some dank alley if you hadn"t smacked that b.l.o.o.d.y Arty." He half grinned at her. "Where did a sweet little girl like you learn to throw a punch, anyhow?"
"I was never particularly sweet, Jack," Pete said. "You would have found that out, if you"d stuck around."
He smiled humorlessly, around the cigarette. "Regrets get you nothing except a b.l.o.o.d.y face and a broken heart if you"re lucky, Pete." He cracked the door of the closet and peered out. "Should be enough time for Abby to tip off whoever her master is and end this idiot idea they have of chasing me all over the b.l.o.o.d.y city. Let"s get back."
He brushed past Pete, their full length touching, and then in a flutter of her heartbeat, he was gone again.
Pete pushed back against the pressure under her mind, the pressure that Jack said never really got better, and she followed him.
Chapter Thirty-seven
"Mad Chen"s got some s.h.i.t in from the Golden Triangle," said Abby when Pete and Jack came back. She reappraised Pete when they entered the room together. "Your friend friend going to take part?" going to take part?"
A wavy gla.s.s bottle full of slightly luminous green liquid had appeared on the table, and Jack took a tumbler, filled, and downed it.
"She won"t." He coughed. "Then who would there be to knock about anyone who irritates me?" won"t." He coughed. "Then who would there be to knock about anyone who irritates me?"
"Why do you keep mundanes around if you"re not f.u.c.king them?" Abby asked with genuine curiosity.
"This absinthe tastes like a b.l.o.o.d.y tramp p.i.s.sed in a gutter and had it bottled," Jack said. "And has anyone ever told you that for such a pretty slip of a thing you ask a lot of silly sodding questions?"
Pete went to the window and watched the street, but nothing except shadows and the crooked skeletons of bare trees stared back. She drew the velvet curtains. Dust shook out of their folds, old dust that smelled like vellum and bone, and she sneezed.
Hattie watched her mournfully. "You like, a bodyguard then?"
Only one door in and out of the room, and no closet she could seejust overstuffed furniture and an old peeling sleigh bed with a ragged coverlet. Pete nodded absently at Hattie. "Something like that."
"Ever met David Beckham?" Hattie said. She looked like a sad leather-clad raggedy doll, with her featureless skinny limbs and chopped-off eggplant hair.
"I only ever looked out for Jack," Pete told her. "I"m a detective inspector with the Met."
Abby"s head snaked around. "You"re a what?"
"Trust me, darling, if I was going to take you in I would have done it long before you opened your mouth," Pete said. "Drink your mixer and behave yourself."
"Jack&" Abby started, but he glared at her over his second green tumbler.
"Pete"s with me. Shut it." He gave her a cool smile when she pouted. "Besides, I need your help now, Abby. Need to pick that black little head of yours."
"Is that so?" Abby glared at Pete in vindication as she downed her second drink in one go.
"Yeah," said Jack easily. "Ran into some blokes a few days ago, sorcerers like you, but nowhere near as lovely."
Abby snorted, poured herself another gla.s.s, sipped it. "So?"
"So, what"s a smart little sorcerer up to these days?" said Jack. "I know something big"s gearing up, so don"t bother to lie. You lot have been twitchy as jackrabbits ever since I dove back into the scene." He went to Abby and brushed the stark black hair out of her eyes, cupping her chin between his thin fingers. Pete felt her stomach give an uncomfortable cramp.
"Come on," Jack murmured. "You can tell old Jack Winter. Whisper it in my ear. Always had more of an affinity for your kind of magic, anyway. It wouldn"t even be a betrayal, luv."
Abby swallowed, a petal flush creeping into her porcelain cheeks. "They say& well& they say that something big is right on the other side of the veil. A spirit, or some such thing& and, well, some of us are offering service. Letting it gather power, and helping it, because when he comes through, he"ll reward us."
"He," said Jack. "You have anything more specific for me, darling?"
Abby gulped the rest of her third helping of absinthe. The dry scent of licorice permeated through the smoky air. "I could have my throat cut for telling you that much, mage." She hiked her black hobble skirt over her knees and cast a languid look in Jack"s direction. "If the questions are over, do you want to"
Then Abby choked, her pale slender fingers scrabbling at the hollow of her throat, her eyes going wide and the irises expanding with effort.
Hattie moved away from her, with surprising speed. "What"s her problem, then?"
Abby gagged, her pale pink tongue protruding between lips that were bordered in blue. She really did look like an animated corpse, jerky and lifeless as black spittle dribbled from the corner of her mouth.
Jack looked at Abby, looked down at his own empty gla.s.s. "Oh, f.u.c.k me." He dropped the tumbler with a splinter of crystal and dove for a decorative basin in the corner of the room, shoving his finger down his throat.
Pete grabbed Abby, who convulsed as if she were on a string, leaving ragged red streaks along her neck as she tried to claw the obstruction from her windpipe. Pete pushed the girl"s hands away from her fleshAbby"s strength was no more than that of a housecatand laid her back, turning her head to one side and shoving index and middle fingers down her gullet to clear an airway.
In the corner, Jack vomited violently into the basin, skinny shoulders hunched as he retched and shook.
Viscous black closed around Pete"s fingers, seemingly gallons of the stuff, flowing from Abby"s mouth and filling her throat. An all-over shudder, a death rattle, Pete would think later, and Abby went still, black swimming up to cover her eyes in opaque film.
Hattie spoke from around a fist thrust into her mouth. "That was some bad s.h.i.t, I think."
"Nothing you could have done, Pete," said Jack weakly, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and spitting into the basin. "Not that you"ll ever lose sleep over failing to save a treacherous little bint like her."
Pete sat back on her heels, the black stuff staining her fingertips. She brushed it on her jeans. "What in the h.e.l.l was all that, Jack?"
Jack took Pete"s discolored fingers in his and sniffed. "Morgovina mushrooms," he said finally. "Fae plant. Melts you from the inside out. Nasty little way to die."
"The absinthe disguised the scent," said Pete, noticing the half-dusty, half-rotted stench rising from the pool of liquid under Abby"s head.
"Brutal but not clever," said Jack.
"You were b.l.o.o.d.y stupid to drink anything in this place. Think you"d never heard a folktale in your life," Pete said. Jack raised an eyebrow at her.
"I"ll have you know that my near-death experience has left me rather fragile and your att.i.tude is not helping." He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it across a chair, then lit a Parliament and set it in the ashtray on the small table. "And more to the point, find a place to hide, because whoever poisoned the booze will be up to make sure the job is done any minute now."
Hattie heaved what may have been a resigned sigh and disappeared down the hallway to the loo. Pete lit on a wardrobe open to display a collection of antique opium pipes and closed herself in it.
"Lucy in Narnia," she whispered.
Jack leaned against the wall behind the door, hands in his pockets, looking almost bored.
"Not up to your usual standards of excitement?" Pete said through the keyhole.
"This isn"t excitement," said Jack. "Never could fathom why sorcerers thought sitting about cutting your forearms and doing Victorian drugs was such a great laugh." He rolled his neck from side to side. "Unless there"s magic, blood, or disgustingly attractive women involved, I couldn"t care b.l.o.o.d.y less at this point in me life."
"So the last week has been a complete loss, then," Pete said.
Jack looked at her, and even through the small crack in the wardrobe Pete felt the snowy chill of his eyes on her skin. "Not a complete one," he said after a moment. "Not in a few ways that matter&"
"Still yourself," Pete hissed, though she was rue to interrupt him. "Someone"s coming."
Footsteps creaked along the corridor and a hand tried the k.n.o.b, pausing in surprise when the owner found the door unlocked. Slowly, it swung wide and revealed a sallow-faced man and an olive-skinned woman dressed in plain black, witchfire burning plum-colored in their hands.
The man jerked his chin at Abby"s body, and the woman clicked over on precise stiletto heels and felt for a pulse. She shook her head, and the man stepped over the threshold.
Faster than smoke, Jack stepped out from his hiding spot and banged the door shut. "Evening, girls."
"Winter," the man hissed.
Jack gave a wide grin and a nod. "Observant c.u.n.t, aren"t you?" He picked up the cigarette he"d lit and had a drag on. "Though I have to tell youand take this as constructive critique, by all meansthe poisoned absinthe? Tacky, mate. Look, you killed your own lapdog."
The woman, still crouched with her back to Pete, worked a small curved blade out from the cuff of her jacket.
"Jack!" Pete shouted, banging open the wardrobe and grabbing the closest weapon, an ivory opium pipe. She jabbed the carved and pointed tip in between the woman"s shoulder blades and the sorcerer arched back with a cry.
The man brought his hand up, the witchfire changing color into something sulfurous and corrosive, but Jack hit him before the magic could form into anything useful. Blood shot from the sorcerer"s split lip, and he dropped after swaying for a moment.
Jack reached over and grabbed Pete"s hand. "Now we have to run, luv."
"What about Hattie?"
"Hattie will be happier locked in the loo, trust me."
Pete followed him down the hall, her heart jackhammer-ing like she were back outside the door of her first bust, sweating inside her stab vest. Jack kicked open a thin door leading to stairs upward.
"Stop!" The male sorcerer appeared in the door, a fan of blood and spittle on his chin and down the front of his shirt. He pressed his hands together and muttered a stream of guttural Latin, and black smoke boiled from around his feet to form two small lithe shadows, that in turn gave birth to a twin pair of their own.
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," Jack hissed, taking the stairs two at a time.
"Are they ghosts?" Pete shouted as she pounded after him.
"Worse!" Jack shouted. "Thought-forms! Shadowy bloodhounds!"
They crossed the attic, tumbling over trunks and bundles, and Jack used his elbow to smash a window that had been painted shut. "You first," he panted. "Out."
Pete looked at the street fifteen meters below, back at Jack. "Are you quite mad quite mad?"
The smoke-shadows flowed under the door, through the cracks in the floor. They had grown steel claws and teeth, and darker hollows for eyes.
Jack opened his mouth to cajole, or yell, but Pete held up a hand. "Never mind. I"m going." She hoisted herself through the broken window and onto the slippery roof, but instead of letting go and plummeting for the street she gripped the gutter so hard she thought the skin on her knuckles would split and climbed toward the ridgeline.
She watched the shadows swipe at Jack, catching the leg he still had inside the window and leaving lines of crimson. "b.u.g.g.e.r!" Jack yelped. He spread his ringers wide and exhaled, and a flock of smoke-crows blossomed from his palm. The crows cawed and swooped, catching the sorcerer"s hounds with their talons and bills.
The shadows screamed and vanished, the crows with them. Jack grinned. "Couldn"t sustain his will when someone co-opted his trick. Probably has a small c.o.c.k, too."
"Come on on," Pete yelled, nearly losing her grip. She pulled herself up onto the flat square top of Mad Chen"s turret roof and helped Jack, who flopped over with a wheeze.
His coughing turned to chuckles, then to laughter. "b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. I"d forgotten how much fun this is."
Pete c.o.c.ked her head. "Fun? You"ve got a f.u.c.king strange idea of fun."
The wood next to Jack"s head exploded, driving splinters into Pete"s arm. Another sorcerer appeared out of the shadows, the yellow clouds oozing corrosive fumes from his hands. "How many of these w.a.n.kers are there?" Pete shouted. The sorcerer stopped just short of her feet and smiled in the manner of a small boy who likes to burn ants.
"Looks like I get your skin and your talent, Winter, and the chance to get over." He grinned.
Jack rolled on his side and stood, ducking the sorcerer"s reach. He grabbed the shorter man by the back of the neck. "You"ll get over something, that"s sure." He rotated his grip and tossed the sorcerer off the edge of the roof. The man screamed until a sound like a breaking tree trunk cut off the cry.
Pete peered over the edge, saw the broken doll shape and a dark stain spreading. "Think he"s dead?"
Jack lit a Parliament, drew once, and flicked the rest after the sorcerer. "About to wish he was."
The man was conscious, groaning, when Pete and Jack climbed down to the street. "If more are coming after us," said Pete, "we"re a bit exposed."
Jack gripped the sorcerer under the arms, struggling against the stocky weight. " "S why we"re getting the f.u.c.k out of here." He attempted to pull the moaning sorcerer along the pavement. The man"s leg was twisted, a lump of displaced bone under his skin, and he yelled. Jack wheezed and dropped him. "You need to get on a diet, boyo."
Pete rolled her eyes and banded her arm across the sorcerer"s chest, a lifesaving carry on dry land. The door of Mad Chen"s banged open and the male sorcerer appeared, trailed by his renewed thought-forms, which seemed to have grown a few dozen more steel teeth since Pete saw them last.
"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks," she said, dragging the sorcerer along the pavement. "What the h.e.l.l happens now, Jack? I don"t think your little trick with the birds will be quite as scary out in the open."
"Never fear, Pete. Our chariot awaits." Jack stepped into the street and let out a piercing whistle. "Taxi!"
One moment the street was empty and the next a gleaming black cab, smooth lines and lantern headlights, something from the black-and-white era, sat idling at the curb, stopped in a swirl of leaves and winter wind. The rear door swung open of its own accord.
Jack grabbed the sorcerer"s legs. "Get him in."
Pete folded the quietly sobbing man into the back of the cab and scrambled inside, sliding on b.u.t.ter-colored leather seats. Jack knocked on the part.i.tion and told the shadowed driver, "Sodding floor it!"
The cab lit out with a squeal of tires, taking the corner with a lurch that threw Pete against the door, the handle thudding into her gut.
"One thing about the Black," Jack said as they roared through empty nighttime streets. "You can always find a cab when you really need one."