"I suppose I do," she said. "I would like to know the hours of my life that I've spent in nightmares since you did this, Jack. I would know how long I waited for you to come back, and tell me it was all a terrible mistake. I would like to know, because then I could quantify exactly how much of my suffering whatever you were hoping to accomplish was worth to you."

Jack's jaw knotted. "I was a stupid kid, Pete, the same as you. I didn't know what would happen."

"The hell you didn't," Pete hissed, stepping in and jabbing a finger into his chest. Jack took a hasty step back.

"When things went wrong you bolted without a glance backward. All that rot… 'Oh, Pete, I waited for you for so very long…' Pure rubbish. You didn't bloody care what happened to me! I should bash your bloody face in, you fucking bastard!" The high ceiling rattled echoes back and Pete realized she was shouting.

"Fine. I didn't, when I started," Jack said. "And when Treadwell came after us, you ran away and left me for dead."

"I thought you were dead—"

"And then you were able to shut out the Black, and I hated you for it. But I know now, Pete, so do you want to hear it or not?"

Pete nodded tightly, knotting and unknotting her fists to keep from hitting a wall, or Jack.

"This is how it was," Jack said softly. "Back then the two most reputable mages in the Black were me and Jasper Gorson. Gorson had been bragging for weeks that he'd raised a black spirit, flashing this grimoire it had supposedly transcribed for him." He produced a Parliament and chewed on the end before an ember flared. "So me back got up, and I went looking for a spirit to raise and tap into, as well."

"Jack, did it ever occur to you that Gorson may have been a fucking liar?" Pete asked.

"Of course he was a liar," Jack snapped, "but try telling that to the stupid sods who hang around the Lament pub."

Pete thought of Arty and Abby, and Hattie Page. "Go on."

"I got the books and I looked and I found him," Jack said. "Algernon Treadwell." He shivered and sat down, resting his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands. "He was a sorcerer, the worst of his time. Feared. Tried, tortured, and killed by witchfinders in the winter of 1836. I paid off a groundskeeper to show me Treadwell's tomb, and then…" He looked up at Pete, smoke drifting from his nose and mouth. "Then your bloody sister brought you to see me play at Fiver's."

"Did you know what I was?" Pete asked quietly. "Was it that from the first minute?"

"No," Jack said. "No, it took me a few days to realize why I always felt like I was grasping at power lines when you were in the room."

"And then you wasted no time at all." Pete clapped her hands together. "Bravo."

"Pete, you have to believe I didn't mean—"

"I believe you," she said. "I believe that you didn't want to get killed." She went to the hooks in the entry and took her coat and bag.

"You can't leave!" Jack exclaimed. "Treadwell is still about!"

"What's he going to do?" Pete snapped. "Rattle chains and write redrum on the mirrors?"

Jack crossed the room in a blur of bleached head and angry burning gaze and grabbed Pete's arm. "Bugger all, Pete, stop being so fucking righteous. I'm sorry you got involved again, but you are, until Treadwell's back where he belongs."

"And you are a bloody fucking expert on that, aren't you," Pete said. Jack winced, and finally went silent. "I'll be at home," said Pete. "Don't come find me. Don't call. In point of fact, Jack, I don't want to bloody know of your existence ever again."

He didn't try to stop her when she walked out, and slammed the door hard enough to rattle every ghost in the building.

Chapter Forty-one

Pete didn't go home. She walked through the fog, into the City, listening to her footsteps ring and eventually came to St. James's Park. She followed a gravel path until hedgerows and mist hid her from all human eyes, and then stopped, her face tilted back, feeling the cold sprinkle of rain on her cheeks.

In a day as damply vibrant as this one, it was difficult to believe a sorcerer's spirit bent on mayhem had an eye out for her.

It was even difficult to believe that Jack had used her.

Afraid, luv? Don't be.

She'd trusted him, that was the thing that finally made Pete shiver, not with cold, and blink twin tears down her cheeks that were not rain. Things that she'd rather forget were swimming near the surface, about Jack. About the day. About everything.

And finally, for the first time since she'd run screaming from the tomb, Pete let them come.

She had trusted him to be with her and keep her safe and she'd gone with it when he'd lit the candles and guided her to the foot of the circle, natural, like it was an everyday thing.

"So what dark pagan gods are we invoking?" she joked, standing on her tiptoes to keep Jack's hand tight against hers across the circle. Jack chuckled when his invocation finished, and snapped his lighter closed, snuffing the brighter flame and leaving just the flickering faerie light of the candles on the floor. The carvings on the tomb's wall threw long shadows, scraping fingers and grasping mouths.

"No gods. That's next week's exercise. Today we're just testing an academic theory."

"Share with the class?" Pete's feet hurt from the long uphill walk from the tube in her school shoes and she fidgeted.

"It wouldn't be a surprise then, luv." Jack smiled, thin and white, his thumb circling the hollow part of her palm. "You want to be surprised, don't you?"

"Not sure," Pete said honestly. It was cold inside the tomb, and unnaturally dark when contrasted with the strong sun outside. Jack held his free hand out, palm down over the circle, and Pete's stomach did a nervous flip-flop.

The blood they had both spilled began to move across each line of the circle, turning the crooked chalk marks crimson. Jack twisted his fingers, cat's-cradle, until the blood spread and pooled at the very center of the mark.

"It's working," he whispered, a boyish grin breaking out. "Bloody hell, it's working."

The crimson began to fade, and Jack cursed. "Fuck it. Not enough…"

Pete watched him, and she didn't know why she spoke up again, because never in a million days would she, Connor Caldecott's sensible daughter through and through, believe so outlandish a thing, but the words flew out. "This is real."

Twin points of witchfire sprang to life in Jack's eyes. Harmless, beautiful witchfire that she'd seen him conjure before, only now it burned Pete hot enough to melt her under the force of Jack's gaze. "No bloody kidding," was all he said, before he pulled his flick-knife with his free hand and cut his thumb again. Three drops of his blood landed in the center of the chalk lines.

They disappeared, sucked inward through the stone floor. A sensation of wrongness crept up Pete's spine, as if the floor had tilted underneath her feet just slightly.

"Don't move," Jack ordered, licking the remaining blood off his palm. He repeated the cut on her hand as well, dropping her blood onto the stones next to his and Pete coiled in on herself, knowing that if she moved now things would go even worse than they already had.

Jack held on to her, their blood mingling and slicking her skin. "Look at you, still holding strong. Don't let go, yeah?"

"Never," Pete whispered.

Jack shut his eyes, face tilted upward into the dark. Pete could picture him in a gold circlet and a white robe just then, at the head of a coven in a circle of stones.

"Eitil dom, a spiorad," Jack muttered. "Eitil dom, a spi-orad. Tar do mo fhuil beo." He opened his eyes and spoke aloud. "Algernon Treadwell. Hound-sorcerer. I command you into my circle, spirit and soul. Tar do mo fhuil beo."