Part 31 (2/2)

Pete was, at the first look, nothing to write your mum about, but Jack knew better. Shorter than he by a head, big green eyes straight from the Emerald Isle, Snow White in torn denim and an army-green jacket. Lips plump like rubyfruit, a body that a bloke could spend hours on and still feel like he was starving for it.

But right now, she was glaring at him, tapping her foot on the dead gra.s.s over the Pooles' final rest. Jack picked up the black canvas tote they'd brought along and crouched between the headstones. Out of a host of attributes, the one Pete used with greatest efficiency was her temper, and besides, she was rightthey did have a job.

”Stupid b.l.o.o.d.y job, just like I said when you took it,” Jack told her. Pete folded her arms.

”I spent near a decade of my life pus.h.i.+ng paper around a desk at New Scotland Yard, so once you've dealt with expense reports and a DCI who thinks that equipment that works is a luxury, not a necessity, you can jabber on about stupid jobs.”

Jack grimaced. ”This is my my talent, Pete, and I'm not a party trick. This is& well& frankly, luv, it's demeaning.” talent, Pete, and I'm not a party trick. This is& well& frankly, luv, it's demeaning.”

Pete pointed down at the grave. ”Get to work, Winter. Before I lay you a smack in the head.”

Jack heaved a sigh and unzipped the satchel, pulling out his spirit heart. The clockwork contraption, about the size of a melon, round, and made of bra.s.s, hung from a chain with a small chamber in the bottom hollowed out. Jack dug the plastic Baggie of galangal root out of the bottom of the satchel and breathed on a pinch of the stuff.

Just a touch of sorcery, just enough to wake up the strands of magic that lived in the galangal. Jack rubbed the pinch between his fingers and tamped it into the chamber of the spirit heart. A stab of pressure hit him in the temple, and he rubbed his forehead before standing.

Pete reached out and touched him on the arm, the lightest of touches, on his leathers no less, but he still felt it, dancing down through his blood and nerves to his bones. Her power felt like goose flesh, like being touched by a girl you fancied for the first time, every time. ”You all right, Jack?”

He gave her a smile. His head throbbed harder. ”Close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, luv. Let's have this over with.”

Pete wasn't fooled by the lie, but she had the grace to step back and pretend that Jack was as skillful a liar as he claimed. Worry only showed in the s.p.a.ce between her eyes, a small black line of a frown, as she got a small digital camcorder from the bag and readied it.

Jack supposed if he had any sense, he'd be worried, loo. Using magic wasn't supposed to hurt, not him, not a mage of the Fiach Dubh Fiach Dubh. No one had ever accused Jack Winter of having sense, though. Of being a w.a.n.ker, yes. A thief, a sinner, heartless sc.u.m, and a murderer, certainly. But sense, no. Jack thought that when someone did did accuse him of sense, it would likely be time to hang up his spurs. accuse him of sense, it would likely be time to hang up his spurs.

”All right, you dusty lot,” he murmured, so low only the dead could hear. ”Time to come give me a haunt.”

Jack shut his eyes, holding the spirit heart directly out, arm straight as a divining rod. The clockwork pendulum swung gently, aimlessly. Jack inhaled and held the air. Panic chewed on the ends of his guts, scratched at his neck, and wormed into his brain. His body knew what he was about to do, and it was screaming.

It was times like this that Jack felt the longing for a fix like the grasp of a familiar lovertight, hot, gathered behind his eyes, knotting him up, making him cold, telling him / have what you need. Take it and make yourself warm, make yourself safe, taste the golden delights of the floating world.

But Jack tightened his grip on the spirit heart, the cold bra.s.s warming to the same degree as his palm, and the murmuring of the fix was drowned in a tide of other whispers, crying and shouting, faint and fierce, buried and so old no one knew they were buried any longer.

The dead came to Jack, and he let himself see.

In his hands, the spirit heart gave a tick tick.

Jack opened his eyes, the ghosts his second sight found thick here as a crowd in Trafalgar Square. They stood, for the most part, silent and staring at the living intruder on their pale, witch-lit world. A few hissed at him, the black-eyed revenants with their flesh hanging off their bones, the malice of their lives following them in death like a shroud cloth.

Pete stepped closer to him. She couldn't see what he saw, but she knew. She knew the chill of having the dead always just out of view. ”Should I say it?”

The spirit heart gave another tick, louder, stronger, and Jack nodded. ”Wake them up, luv.”

”Mary and Stuart Poole,” Pete raised her voice and pitched it sharp. Jack flinched as a ghost drifted closer to Pete, a girl with dark wet hair still tangled with the garbage she'd drowned in. The salt-sour stink of the Thames at low tide tickled his nostrils.

The girl ran her hand longingly across Pete's cheek. Jack narrowed his eyes. ”Oi. Not yours, missy. Shove off.”

Pete s.h.i.+vered, and continued, ”Mary and Stuart Poole, we call you to this place. Come back to your bones. Answer to us.”

The ghost drifted away, her torn dress and lank hair trailing behind her in a remembered river current. Jack felt a pull at his arm, and the spirit heart began to tick faster and faster, clockwork innards spinning like the earth was revolving too fast.

”Mary and Stuart Poole,” Pete said again. ”Come back to your bones.”

There was power in triplets. Jack had taught her that. Pete never forgot something when you told her once. She was sharp, the fine edge of a knife.

A tug on his arm warned Jack that his dwelling on Pete's skill at this, only her second spirit-raising, might have cost him his a.r.s.e. The spirit heart was twirling now, like someone had spun a globe and walked away. The bra.s.s caught the low afternoon sun and threw off light, the whirring of the clockwork like a bird's heartbeat.

Jack pushed against the swirl of power generated by the beating clockwork, forced it into a shape. A focus like the heart, or salt, or stone, was importantraw magic pulled from something like a spirit could blow your insides out surely as a shotgun blast.

A halo, black, gathered around the spirit heart, touched it experimentally, the lightest of caresses, while the spirit heart shot blue sparks through the realm of the dead. Pete couldn't see them, but she stepped back all the same. ”They coming?”

”If I have any say,” Jack answered, and tugged at the curiosity, the suggestion of a mind and a body that floated from the graves and guided it to the spirit heart.

The heart stopped.

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