Read Online Street Magic by Caitlin Kittredge - Free Book Online

when she knew she'd go mad if she spent another second pacing the floor, back and forth past the bedroom door, she made up the sofa and lay in the twilight, watching the hands of the clock tick toward midnight.

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Chapter Thirteen

    The sofa wasn't conducive to dreaming, and Pete was glad. She awoke at the first rays of the sun and put the kettle on, collecting Patrick and Diana's case files.
    She pushed open the bedroom door with her foot. "Jack?"
    He was curled on his side with the blankets kicked back, shaking and sweating as if he were being held to an invisible flame. He'd gotten worse, inexplicably so. Pete felt frustrated tears building and blinked them away.
    She juggled her two mugs and armload of folders and shook his shoulder. "Jack, wake up."
    His eyes flicked open and then he pressed his fists to his temples. "Jesus,
listen
to them all…"
    "Brought you some tea," said Pete. "I thought we might go over the case files, see if you can glean anything?" The words hung in the air, fragile, and Pete felt the tension shatter them.
    "There's a woman screaming," Jack muttered. "Over and over, screaming and rocking while she clutches the stillborn to her chest." He ground his teeth together and shouted, "Fucking
shut up
, the lot of you! You'll drive a man mad!"
    "What do you hear?" Pete asked.
    "Everything," Jack moaned. "Every dead thing that I could shut off with a hit is in my head and it's going to
explode
."
    Pete sipped at her tea because she didn't know what to say and burned her tongue. "You've always seen things, Jack?"
    "Always," he agreed, panting as his fever fluctuated between arctic and hellfire.
    "How did you shut it out, before?" Pete asked. "I know you weren't using when we knew each other."
    "Wasn't as bad," Jack muttered. "Wasn't as
loud
. I'd get flashes, see shades, kiddy stuff. Nothing… nothing like this fucking
bombardment
until… that day we were together."
    "What happened in that tomb, Jack?" Pete asked quietly. "What did we do?" Cloudy memories that she'd written off to trauma threatened to burst through, shadows that stained her real and normal existence crept in from all corners. Pete gritted her teeth and did her best to shut it out.
    Jack stared past her into nothing, eyes floating and empty. Eventually they fluttered and closed, and his breathing smoothed into sleep. "Bollocks," Pete muttered.
    Jack spent the day and most of the night in and out, wandering between worlds, muttering snatches of disembodied conversations. Sometimes he sobbed, or shook, and Pete could never be sure if it was the drugs or what he was seeing.
    The unpleasant realization
of If he dies, it's on my head
made itself known after the third time Jack had thrown up in as many hours, barely more than bile and a little blood. He hadn't eaten since the curry the first night.
    "Jack," she whispered, touching his arm. It was dry now, smooth and cool, like a dead man's skin that had lain outside under a winter moon. He jerked under her, clawing at his own throat and chest.
    Pete gripped Jack's bicep and bent close to his ear. "If you die on me again, Jack Winter, you'd better believe I'm coming into hell after you."
    She started as Jack wrapped his fingers around her wrist, eyes open in the dark and shining blackly into hers. "That which you do not understand is not yours to offer," he rasped in a voice not his own. Then he fell back onto the mattress, and Pete jerked awake.
    Finally, when dawn rolled over the edge of the window and through the gaps in the shades again, Pete staggered to the sofa, which seemed remarkably welcoming now, and collapsed on her side, weariness permeating down to her bones. She slept a little, hearing the daylight rattles of the flat and the sound of lorries and people in the street, the weak interplay of cloud-shrouded sunlight stroking across her eyelids every so often.
    The springs in the sofa defeated her, finally, and Pete muttered curses as she went to forage for caffeine.
    Jack sat at