Street Magic by Caitlin Kittredge Read Free Book Online Page A

thing."
    "I've just… got to go," Jack said. "Open the door, please?"
    He was begging. Fuck all, the heroin must have its jaws around him tight to make Jack Winter resort to that.
    Pete drew in a breath through her nose. She met Jack's eyes and said, "No."
    They narrowed and hardened to ice chips, and his pleasant visage peeled back to show the beast under the skin. "What d'you mean, 'no'?"
    "Just what I said," Pete replied with a sigh. "It's late. Whatever-it-is can wait till morning."
    Jack grabbed the picture of Pete and Terry and hurled it at the opposite wall. Glass shattered into snow fragments, blanketing the wood floor.
    He rounded on Pete, and she tensed. The blue light flamed up in his eyes and he gripped her by the upper arms, face inches away. She could see that he hadn't shaved, that he had a faint scar vertically along his right cheek—
he didn't have that before
—and that if she didn't yield to his drive to get a fix, he would have no trouble at all killing her.
    "Let. Me. Out," Jack said slowly.
    "Won't do it, Jack," Pete whispered. "We can stand here until the sun comes up."
    He squeezed and Pete bit the inside of her cheek. His misery made him bloody strong. "If you don't get me my fix," Jack said, "you can forget about our little bargain to save poor innocent Patrick and Diana. You'll have killed them over me. Now me, I could live with that on my head, but I doubt you can, Pete. You're far too good and pure."
    "You don't know me so well any longer," Pete said. Jack sighed, looking at the floor between them, shaking finitely all over his body.
    "Don't know what you're doing to me, do you? Probably the closest you've ever come to it is renting the
Trainspotting
video." He leaned in, their mouths and skin millimeters apart. "Pete, you don't know. You have no idea what it is to need this. Please. I'm
asking
you now. Let me out to get my fix, so it doesn't all go horribly wrong."
    "I've been with the Met long enough to know what it is to be an addict," said Pete, pulling her chin back, because proximity to Jack did strange things to a person. "And I know when a bloke's trying to manipulate me. No, Jack. Nothing will go wrong and the answer is no."
    One fist went up. "Open the fucking door before I bash your
fucking face
."
    Pete felt her jaw tighten and her lips compress. All her patience for this new Jack ran out like water. A dozen years of regret and feeling the hole in her heart, and this was what she got?
    Pete used the rage of her wasted nightmares to fuel the snarl in her voice. "You won't do any such thing, Jack, because you're a fucking coward. And sod your deal, by the way. I said I'd get you washed and fed. I didn't agree to anything about your smack."
    His upper lip twisted but under the surface of his sneer the fire flickered and burned out of his eyes.
    Pete gripped the hand bruising her arm and twisted just enough to throw the joints out of prime. "Bollocks!" Jack yelped. Pete gripped his wrist and elbow in a control hold, propelling Jack toward the bathroom.
    "Now we're going to get one thing straight," she said, shoving Jack into her old claw-footed bathtub and spinning the cold tap open all the way.
    "
Fuck
!" he shouted, collapsing in a heap. "You fleabit-ten whore! That freezes!"
    "I don't care what sort of a problem you've developed in regard to me," Pete said, ticking off on her fingers. "I care about Patrick and Diana and finding them alive and well. And you are going to help me, and you're going to do it without the assistance of your sodding heroin, or so help me, Jack, I will personally beat you senseless and deliver you to the lockup at the Yard."
    He glared up at her, his bleached hair dribbling into his eyes like sodden straw. Pete glared back, watching him shiver and trying to ignore the pity shredding her intentions to be hard.
    After a long rotation of the clock hands, Jack wiped a hand over his face and reached up to turn off the tap. "All right, Caldecott," he said finally.