Part 11 (2/2)
”It's kidney pie every lunch hour. Specialty of the house,” Jack said. ”The girl. How old?”
”Ten,” said Pete. ”Her name is Margaret”
Jack cut the air with a finger. ”I don't care what her name is.” The publican slammed down a dingy cup of coffee in a saucer with sugar and cream packets tottering at his elbow. Jack swigged it and made a face. ”b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l. Could strip paint off your motor, that. What's really important is the significant.”
”What's a significant?” Pete said.
”Novices usually have something around them, an animal or a piece of the earth, a physical piece of the magic that they can cling to. Anything in the room, feathers or odd rocks or a pet poisonous spider?”
Pete closed her eyes and rotated slowly through Margaret's room, the pink bedspread worn thin, the secondhand desk. The little girl's mobile over the bed, gently drifting make-believe constellations that repeated in paint on the ceiling.
”Stars,” she said. ”A star. They were on everything. Pink, mostly, if that makes a difference.”
Jack swore into his coffee. ”What kind of star?”
”Five-pointed,” said Pete. ”Just a usual star.”
”Not usual,” said Jack. ”The star is the witch, a white pract.i.tioner and a channel for pure energy. A b.l.o.o.d.y open line to the white side of the next world.”
”I'm not going to like where this is going,” Pete stated. Already she felt it, the dark undertow of magic against her skin. The thing that blinded children, that ate their memories and their life force, laughed at her quietly from the corner of her dream crypt. ”The girl was drawing symbols on her walls. She said Fae were after her.”
Jack lifted a shoulder. ”Probably are, but this thing isn't a Fae. They have their rules and their ceremonies and their love of s.h.i.+ne and innocence, but what's taken the girl isn't Fae, and we've got bigger problems now than those little b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. If whatever is out there starts feeding on Megan”
”Margaret.”
”b.l.o.o.d.y whatever. It will gain energy like there's no next minute. It will infuse itself with pure magic until it's bright as a dwarf star and then I won't be able to do f.u.c.k-all with an exorcism, and we're all b.u.g.g.e.red.”
”Mosswood told you how to find this thing,” said Pete. She raised her index finger when Jack opened his mouth to object. ”I know know that you can find it, so why aren't we looking right that you can find it, so why aren't we looking right now now? Before Margaret ends up blind and spiritless?”
”It's not that simple,” Jack grumbled.
”Oh, no,” said Pete, jerking the whisky bottle away as Jack went for it again. ”What happened to 'Poor me, the Robert Smith Fan Club doesn't respect me, now I've to prove what a big strong mage I am?'”
Jack glared at her, pursing his lips when she set the whisky bottle out of reach. Finally he said, ”Anyone ever tell you you're a stubborn little bit?”
”You,” said Pete. ”And I knew it already. Come on, then.” She took Jack by the elbow and helped him out of his chair. He stumbled against her and Pete snaked an arm under his. ”Don't you dare try to get a feel.”
”I don't even like you, remember?” said Jack. Pete grumbled under her breath as they came out of the tavern into dim silver sunlight.
”Let's walk for a bit,” said Jack when she pointed them toward the Mini. ”Clear me head.”
Pete nodded. Jack turned them to the river, the salty, laden air seeming to soothe him. He still leaned heavily on Pete and she let the silence stretch, allowing herself to think for a few footsteps rung on brick that there were no missing children, no ghosts. Just her, and Jack, together in a day full of mist.
”This isn't going to be easy, you know,” Jack said. His hand on Pete's shoulder tightened for a pulse beat, and she looked up at him. Jack caught her eye and curled his mouth in a not-quite smile. He looked to Pete as if he were smiling at a story of a grimly ironic death.
”Mosswood said all we needed was the Trifold Focus thing,” said Pete. She didn't like the smile. It shot straight to the same black place where the daylight echoes of her nightmares resided. Her skin chilled where it touched Jack, like she'd brushed the hide of something swampy and old.
”Mosswood says a lot of things, but in all the years I've known him, I've never heard the whole truth,” said Jack. ”The Trifold Focus is a scrying tool, not a magic wand.”
”You use magic wands?”
”Don't be a smarta.r.s.e,” Jack said. ”The fastest way to find a ghost is to ask something that traffics in them.”
”Something?” Pete demanded.
”A mage on his own could spend years sorting through all the pathetic bits of spirit left behind from suicide and traffic accidents and b.u.g.g.e.r knows what else,” said Jack. He stopped at the rust-bubbled iron railing at the edge of the Thames, the slimy bricks breathing sea smell over the boiling brown water. ”Mosswood's given me a direct line.”
”Will you stop being cryptic?” said Pete. She put her hands on Jack's shoulders and said, ”Tell me what I have to do to save Margaret Smythe. Whatever it is. I'll do it.”
Jack shook his head, staring at the water. ”You call in a favor, Pete. You ask what's already on the other side, the things that crawl in the tunnels between the veils. You call up a demon and cut a deal.”
Pete's carefully practiced expressionlessness, the mask she wore just like Jack wore his devilish smiles, slipped then. She felt her lips part and knew the disbelief had started in her eyes. ”You did say demon. We're talking Faust Faust. 'The Devil and Daniel Webster,' Dorian b.l.o.o.d.y Gray&”
”The Devil,” said Jack. ”The Devil doesn't exist, Pete. He's the fear in our reptile brains. Demons Demons exist. The Tri-fold Focus is used to call them and compel them into your will.” exist. The Tri-fold Focus is used to call them and compel them into your will.”
Pete pressed a hand to her forehead and turned her back on Jack. The Thames stirred gently, black ripples s.h.i.+vering like raven feathers.
”I can't let you do this,” she said finally. ”There's got to be another way.”
”No,” said Jack. ”And if you really believed there was, you'd be able to look me in the eye.” He walked over to her, swaying just a little. The air around Pete crackled. ”Was a time I did this sort of thing often,” said Jack quietly.
”Was there a time when you asked me to help you?” Pete whispered. Jack sucked in a breath, then sighed and sat down on the curb. Pete watched him light a Parliament and draw deep. Blue smoke drifted out of his nose to mingle with the haze above the river.
”Not that time,” said Jack. ”Or any other. Not demons. Never you.”
Pete watched him sit, hunched, smoking, his platinum spikes flattened on one side from where he'd slept. She stood the same distance from Jack now that she'd stood from him across the circle in the tomb. Nothing flowed over her skin now. The ripples underneath her thoughts were quiet. Jack hadn't lied to her.
Pete went and sat down next to him, pulling out her own pack of f.a.gs. ”All right, then,” she said, lighting hers off the end of Jack's. ”How does one call a demon?”
PART TWO
The Black
”It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?”
Bram Stoker, Dracula Dracula
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