"The coffin nail, I know." Jack waved the notion away. "I want you to stay with me, do you understand?"

"Oh, like you stayed with me in the pub?" Pete followed him between the gravestones, Jack marking a straight line, not even attempting to hide his advance. "Answer me!" she demanded. "How could you let them snatch me? I don't like being the damsel in distress, Jack. It's bloody demeaning."

Jack stopped walking, heaving a dramatic sigh. "Treadwell wanted to play with me, and he wanted to make me suffer. I could sit around wringing my hands and waiting for his flunkies to bring back sliced-off bits of Pete, or I could let him think he'd gotten one over and meet him head-on." He grinned. "So relax, Pete. You weren't a damsel. You were bait."

Pete slapped him, so hard he rocked back on his heels. Jack rubbed his jaw. "Are you quite finished?" he asked.

"Now I am." Pete nodded. "Do something like this again and I'll rip your sodding balls off."

"Received loud and clear," Jack agreed. He started walking again. "Hello, you bastards!" he bellowed. "Here I am! The crow-mage, come walking to your doorstep!"

The sorcerers of the Arkanum appeared, some blending out from the shadows, some stepping out from hiding spots. "Winter," one hissed, teeth flashing under the sodium lights.

"Ready, luv?" Jack said to her, barely a rumble in his chest.

"It's Petunia." Pete gripped Jack's hand firmly, a slow spread of warmth passing up her arm.

Jack looked at her in askance as the sorcerers conjured red witchfire, a circle of bloody pinpoints springing to life around them. "What is?"

"My name," Pete told him. "It's Petunia." She could feel Treadwell behind her eyes, pushing and guiding with fingers like living icicles.

"Dreadful," Jack muttered. "Don't blame you for shortening it."

"I wanted you to know," Pete said.

Jack squeezed her hand. "I do, Pete." He breathed in and the magic crackled around him, the Black leaching from the ether to gather and swarm.

Pete shut her eyes. Jack exhaled and said, "Cosain."

The shield hex blossomed, growing and spreading outward, a stone bubble that decimated the circle of sorcerers, breaking bones and bloodying faces. The hex coalesced and held, shimmering against the night light. "In my bag," said Jack, indicating a battered satchel with his chin. "Take out the hammer and the coffin nail while I hold the hex, will you, luv?"

Pete dug in the satchel, which contained any number of unpleasantly slimy and smelly things, and pulled out a wooden mallet and a large square-headed nail. The nail sent a jolt of white-heat magic through her hand when she touched it.

"Here." She nudged them into Jack's hands.

"Cheers," he muttered. "Here goes bloody nothing."

Jack closed his eyes and knelt in front of Treadwell's burial spot, raising the coffin nail and the hemlock hammer. "Algernon Treadwell!" he commanded. "I call you forth to face me. Arise, spirit!" He hit the nail. "Rise!" Again and again the hammer fell, driving the nail into the earth to the hilt.

Outside the shield hex, the sorcerers regained their feet but they simply stood, watching, burning witchfire the only sign of life.

"Jack…" Pete touched his shoulder. The expectancy of the sorcerers, their smiles, sent a chill stronger than any magic through her.

"Treadwell!" Jack shouted again. "Come on, you bastard! Come here and meet me!"

With a tiny sigh, a point of silver light blossomed, like a pinpoint into another world. Petty and theatrical as always, Jack Winter.

"No," Jack replied as Treadwell coalesced. "No, this time I'm just sending you back. Nothing petty about it."

Treadwell's hollow silver eyes fastened on Pete. Your mage should learn to mind his hexes. As I am challenged, so I begin.

The spirit exhaled Latin under his breath, and Jack grabbed his head, teeth grinding. The shield hex wavered and went out, and two sorcerers jumped in to pull Pete away from Jack, who went to his knees.

Treadwell raised Jack's chin, one long-taloned ice finger digging a bead of blood out of Jack's skin. So easy. So very disappointing.

"Jack…" Pete flung herself against her captors. "Jack!"

"Kill me, if you will," Jack growled. His eyes were blue fire, no white or iris left. "But believe that I'll pull you right down into the bleak city with me, you hollowed-out misty wanker."

I believe, but you are so very wrong about me, Jack. Your death is not my desire. Contrary to all presuppositions, you have made yourself useful.

"The fuck are you on about?" Jack demanded.

Your mind is corrupted and your talents are weak and fleeting, ensnared by too many bargains, Treadwell hissed. But your body—your body will do admirably.

For the first time that Pete had seen, Jack faltered and looked utterly displaced.

"What the fuck are you on about?" he managed. "You dead never make any bloody sense."

It was a simple thing, Winter…to draw you out, and to draw you to me. All it took was a stroke to your pride, to give you a chance to best me. And you appeared, you and your form, mine for the taking.

"The bansidhe. The Arkanum," Pete whispered. Treadwell froze the air around him, and her cheeks and fingers were numb.

Lures, Treadwell agreed. The correct ones, it appears. Not enough to stop the crow-mage, but enough wind to change his flight.

"You think I don't have a plan?" Jack snarled at him. "That I'd just rush in any door you opened?"

I think you cannot resist the chance to prove what a wicked sort of man you are, Treadwell said. And I do not think that you have any more plan now than you did when I killed you the first time.

Treadwell laughed, a steam hiss across the surface of Pete's mind, and at his gesture one of the sorcerers stepped in behind Jack and drove a long knife into his kidneys.

Rebirth is painful, of course, Treadwell murmured. Transformation is by definition an agony of the soul. But rest assured, crow-mage, I've only brought you to the brink of death—the thin place of this world.

"Now he gets into the body," said a sorcerer. "And he'll be corporeal." A frission of excitement spread through the circle.

Pete heard someone screaming, a single "No" repeated over and over, the word running together into speechless cries. Her mouth went dry and she realized the voice belonged to her.

"Master Treadwell," the sorcerer holding her called. "What about the woman?"

Kill her, Treadwell told him. She is polluted by the mage.

"Oh, God, Jack, I'm so sorry," Pete moaned. Jack lay perfectly still, his eyes open, plain and staring upward. His fingers twitched ever so slightly, and his chest barely rose.

The sorcerer with the knife came toward Pete and the two holding her jerked her head back, exposing her throat. "Oi," said one. "We could 'ave a go before you cut her."

"Or after," said the other.

The sorcerer with the knife hesitated. "Be quick about it." Behind him, the others rushed to encircle Jack with chalked sigils, light candles at the five points of the star, spread their web around him. Treadwell gazed down at Jack hungrily, stroking spectral fingers over and through Jack's flesh, causing him to moan and convulse each time those terrible talons sank into his skin.

"Hold her arm, Hodges… there's a lad," said the sorcerer who didn't care if Pete was alive or dead for his business.

"I swear," Pete gritted. "If you get close enough, I'll bloody well end you."

"Shut it," said Hodges. "You're just lucky it's us and not Master Treadwell."

They laughed, Hodges loudest of all, and his grip loosened a fraction. Pete twisted down and to the side, ripped her right arm free, and drove her two longest fingers into Hodge's throat. He made a rasp like a saw and dropped to his knees.