Free Street Magic by Caitlin Kittredge Page B

it's the thunder of the oncoming storm." His eyes were bright as he talked, and his body vibrated like a string, the frantic energy of a street preacher.
    "What d'you mean 'when we find them'?" she asked Jack. "You're bloody well not coming along on an open investigation."
    Jack smirked, lacing his hands behind his head. A little sweat gleamed on his forehead, and he coughed, but he'd stopped shaking for the time. "Planning to be cavalry all by yourself?"
    "I very well could be," Pete said. "I'm not an incompetent."
    "Yeah, but you won't go on your own," said Jack. He stood up, swaying but walking, and pulled his jackboots on. "You know that I'm right, and there's bad magic running through this entire thing. You'll take me along because you don't want to be staring into the night alone."
    Pete started to protest, but Jack stopped lacing his boots and gave her a pained half-smile. "It's not a weakness, Pete—nobody wants that."
    If it were anyone else, she would swear he was trying to be a comfort.
    It would be far less disconcerting if Jack weren't so often right about her thoughts and secrets, but she
didn't
very well want to go bursting in on kidnappers alone, in a graveyard, at night. Newell would have her arse for going at this off the book. "Why do you care about these kids?" she demanded. "You didn't even want to help me. Just listening in to ghosts, isn't that right? Nothing selfless about you, not an ounce."
    Jack shook his head. "We're not on about me, now." He lifted one bone-sharp shoulder. "If sorcerers are in the mix I might have a laugh, at least. Tick-tock, Inspector. You're the one banging on about time running out."
    "I hate you," Pete mumbled, grabbing her coat from the hook and a torch from her hall table. After a moment's debate she also plucked her handcuffs out and hooked them to her belt. Feeble protection against what she thought might be waiting for them even in her own mind.
    Jack shrugged into his leather, chains rattling on pyramid spikes, and followed Pete out of the flat. "I'll live with you hating me. At least that way, we're even."

----
Chapter Sixteen

    The section of Brompton Jack led her to was small and personal, fallen out of use as London marched ever forward, forgetting its left-behind dead. Back gardens and leaning brick flats crowded in against the mossy walls.
    "Some Goth freak has his dream view, eh?" said Jack as he rattled the padlock on a rusty crypt gate. "You got a wrench in the Mini? I know a few blokes who'd pay cold hard sterling for ground bones and graveyard dust."
    Pete pinched between her eyes. "I'm not even going to dignify that."
    Jack flashed her a closemouthed smile. "Good girl. Guess that's why you're the copper, eh?"
    "I have moments," Pete agreed. She walked again, pushing aside waist-high weeds as the path narrowed and the tombs leaned in, crumbling from their foundations. Jack caught her wrist.
    "Oi. What do you think you're doing? I'll go first."
    "Sod off, it's not the bloody Victorian era," said Pete, swatting away tiny branches clawing for her face and hair. Muttering, Jack followed her through a trampled gap.
    Before them, headstones tilted crazily from dead grass, a path to the two crypts at the back of the plot overgrown with stinging nettles. Pete felt the breath of ghosts brushing her cheeks, the sighs of the long-forgotten dead disturbing this silent patch of earth. She shivered. It had been much better not knowing.
    Jack winced and rubbed his hands over his eyes. "You should've let me have the heroin, Pete."
    "Be quiet," Pete hissed. Though it was almost invisible under the misty glow from the streetlamps, she was sure candlelight flickered from the mausoleum on the left. She touched Jack's arm. "Someone else is here."
    An itchy feeling started between her shoulder blades, that of a convenient setup.
Anything
could be waiting in the sagging brick structure, none of the possibilities pleasant or inclined to let her go alive.
    Jack squinted at the