Street Magic by Caitlin Kittredge Read Free Book Online Page B

"You got yourself a deal."

----
Chapter Ten

    The children's ward at St. John's Hospital made an effort to paint a cheery face on things with bright furniture and murals on the walls, but it had the same effect as a syphilitic prostitute smearing on expensive rouge.
    Bridget Killigan's father—Dexter, "
Call me Dex, they all do"
—looked up when she swung open the door. "Inspector?"
    "Is she sleeping?" Pete asked. Bridget lay on the hospital bed like a child bride on her funeral pyre.
    "She drifts," said the father. "In and out." He stroked Bridget's hair back from her grave face, like she was a porcelain thing, smashable.
    "Could I have a word?" Pete asked even though a word would get no results. Bridget's mind was gone as the ash on the end of a burning cigarette. But Pete needed groundwork, if she was going to find Patrick and Diana, needed facts to know that Jack wasn't simply wanking off over her discomfiture.
    She needed truth, even if she blended or blurred or broke it, later on.
Start with the truth
, Connor said,
and then you can draw the map, walk anywhere you please. Go to the sodding forbidden forest if you like, but start at true
.
    "Bridget?"
    The girl stirred, the white marble eyes flicking toward Pete as if Bridget could still see, even though the doctor in A&E had assured Pete she was totally blind. "Who is it? Mum?"
    "No, love," said Pete, gripping the rail of Bridget's bed. Cold and straight, inhuman. Strength. "No, this is Detective Inspector Caldecott. You can call me Pete."
    Bridget's forehead creased. "Pete's a funny name for a girl."
    "I know," Pete agreed, breathing deep and keeping her tone steady. "It's bloody—er, very funny. You think that's a burden, my sister's name is Morning Glory."
    Bridget made no reaction.
    Pete chewed her lip. "Bridget, I need to ask you about the person who took you."
    Bridget's father pressed his palms together, lips moving silently. Bridget let out a small sigh, as if she'd repeated her story many times.
    "We went to see the old Cold Man. He lives down the murky path, just around the bend."
    Pete took Bridget's hand. Her skin was cooler than the air, dry like parchment. Bridget was a shadow child, a thin husk with nothing beating beneath the surface.
    "Bridget, where is the murky path? Where does it go?"
    "I think you've done quite enough," Dexter Killigan said abruptly, standing and placing his hand protectively on his daughter's shoulder. "She can't tell you anything."
    "Bridget," Pete said again, squeezing the girl's papery hand. "Bridget, what did you see when you went down the murky path?"
    She rolled her head toward Pete and fixed Pete with those white eyes, dead pearls in her tiny corpse-face. "We saw the bone tombs. The dead places where the dreamers go. He strides in the shadows and he reached out his hand to me."
    The hospital room was warm, nearly stuffy, but Pete felt a cold that cut to her bones. Bridget's calm monotone recalled images just beneath the rippling surface of Pete's own memory, black smoke and skeletal phantoms whispering close to her ear.
    "And what does he do, Bridget?" she finally managed. Her voice came out dry, as if she'd.been smoking for twenty years hence. "What does the old Cold Man do?"
    Bridget was still for a long moment, breath shallow, pulse beating in her translucent throat. Pete leaned in. "Bridget?"
    The little girl's hand latched around Pete's wrist, touch like frost. Pete jumped.
    Bridget whispered sibilantly. "He's touched both of us, Pete Caldecott. Backward and forward, up and down the years, he sees. And he waits."
    Black pools spun in front of Pete's vision as her blood dropped groundward. "What did you say? How do you…"
    But Bridget was gone again, still and silent and asleep. Her father shook himself and then pointed at the door. "Get out," he told Pete shakily. "Get out and don't come back. Leave my daughter alone."
    Pete moved for the door faster than she admitted to herself. She needed to be outside, and needed