Pete took her penlight from her pocket and flashed it into the corners of the room, illuminating a gaunt sleeping face. Not Jack's.

A kitchen filled with more dripping rust and cockroaches than any one room had a right to contain sped Pete up a set of rickety stairs and into a narrow hallway with bedrooms to each side. The first still held vestiges of wallpaper and an iron bed, like something one would find in an orphanage of Dickensian origin. A mother, who couldn't have been more than the age Pete was when she first met with Jack, looked up with wide black eyes. Her skinny baby let out a wail.

"Sorry," Pete muttered. "Just looking for… I'm looking for a friend."

The mother watched her silently, not breathing. "Jack Winter," Pete said desperately. "He's not here, is he?" He hadn't been at the last half-dozen squats she'd visited. No reason to think he'd turn up here. He'd vanish as surely as he had after… well. Pete didn't think about that.

"He's next door," the mother whispered. The baby grasped at the air around her face, cries weakening, and she dropped her head to soothe it without taking her eyes off Pete.

"Ah," said Pete. "Thank you." She stepped backward into the hall and went into the next room with a low thrumming in her blood, excitement and fear she had no right to feel because you didn't trust the ramblings of addicts and crazy people, Connor Caldecott's first rule in his long list.

The front bedroom looked out onto the street and the Thames, a view that would have been worth something once, just like the house and the men sleeping or murmuring on the floor.

Pete shone her light on each face in turn. They were mostly white, all thin and bones, stubble and dirt, and sometimes blood or vomit caking. Eyes glared at her dully in the thin beam of light.

Until she hit on the platinum shock topping Jack's drawn face. He threw an arm over his eyes and swore. "Who's that?"

Pete swallowed. She couldn't speak. It was the hotel room all over again, and she was dumb from the sight of him. Jack groaned and sat up. "You've got a hell of a lot of nerve, whoever you are. Got a mind to put my fist in your teeth, cunt."

"It's me," Pete managed finally.

Jack squinted for a moment, and then flopped back on his mattress with a sigh. "And just what do you want?"

The wavering blade of the penlight illuminated the dull flash of a disposable needle at his hand. "We found Bridget Killigan."

"Of course you did," said Jack. "I said it, didn't I?"

Pete crouched and touched his shoulder. Jack jerked away from her and then hissed, rubbing his arms as a shiver racked him. "Get out of here," he said.

"How did you do it?" Pete said. "How did you know where to find her? Jack, I'm not leaving without an answer."

Jack sat up and rooted through a plastic Sainsbury's tote. Disposable sharps, a battered shaving case containing a shooting kit, and empty bags coated with crystalline dust slid through his fingers as he shook.

Pete clamped her hands around his wrists. "Jack. Answer me."

His face was wreathed in droplets of sweat and she fought the urge to brush them away.

"Leave me alone, Pete," he rasped. "I don't want to see you again. Not ever." He pulled loose, picked up an empty twist of plastic and held it to the light. "Shit." His slow-burn gaze shot back to Pete. "You're still here? I said get the bloody hell out!"

There was a time, Pete knew, that those words from him would have devastated her. Words from Jack were like the tears of angels. Wounding words stabbed directly to the heart of her.

But this was the real and painful present, not a memory of the fragile girl who'd loved Jack the moment she saw him sing. "No," Pete said, jerking the bag out of Jack's hands. "No, Jack, we're going to have a word."

He snatched for it. "Give that back," he warned.

"You want this?" Pete told him, holding his sharps and drugs just out of reach. "Then you talk with me."

Jack swiped at her once more and then sat down hard, glaring. "Fuckin' hell. When did you become a raging bitch?"

Pete straightened and crumpled the bag between her fists. "I don't know, Jack, but I think it was right around the time I watched you die."

Jack threw an arm back across his face. "Did you come here merely to grasp at my balls, or was there something you wanted?"

"Tell me how you knew about Bridget Killigan," said Pete. "Right now, I'm trying to believe you had nothing to do with snatching and blinding the poor girl, but it's becoming very hard, Jack."

Jack grunted and Pete thumped him on the arm with her closed fist. "Tell me."

He opened his eyes and met hers, and Pete was swept away again as quickly as she'd been at sixteen. Damn you, Jack Winter. She bit her lower lip to keep her face expressionless.

"It's a simple thing, luv," said Jack. "Magic."

And God, she wanted to believe him. Would have, before. Even pale and scraped as his face was now, he was still Jack. And he was still feeding her lies because he thought her stupid.

"You're a bastard," she whispered, jerking her hand away. Didn't matter that she wanted him not to be taking the piss, to be telling what he at least thought was the truth.

"Takes one to know one," said Jack shortly, rolling over on his side and facing away. Pete cocked her arm and flung the plastic bag. It burst, scattering the contents across the filmy floor.

"Oi!" Jack shouted, scrambling after the needles as they clattered away.

"The person who blinded that little girl is going to get away with it because you're a git. Go to hell," Pete hissed.

Jack stood, crossing the space between them, his expression going hard quickly as a flick-knife appears. "Look around you, Pete," he grated, gripping her arm. "We're in hell."

A human-sized lump on the mattress next to Jack's stirred. "Shaddup. 'M trying to sleep."

Pete bored into Jack, hoping her gaze scorched him. "Let go of me."

His mouth twisted. "Did that a dozen years ago." He left her and went back to his mattress.

Pete backed out of the room and half fell down the shadowed stairs to the front door, sucking in cold, clean outside air as she leaned against the Mini. She didn't know why Jack was angry, but it didn't matter, did it? He was still the same charlatan, still using smoke and tricks up his sleeves to avoid the realities of the world. Pete dug her knuckles into her eyes until her tears retreated.

I will not think of him. I will not gift him my tears. I will not let Jack Winter touch me.

Chapter Seven

Scotland Yard flowed around Pete, shuffling papers and ringing phones, inspectors each wrapped in a cocoon of worry and mystery, weighted by their unsolved cases.

Pete sat at the double desk she shared with Ollie, hands pressed over her eyes. They felt of sandpaper, as if tiny grains made up the inside of her eyeballs.

Fuck, she wanted a cigarette.

"DCI Newell wants to see you." Ollie touched her shoulder, and Pete jerked. Every time she got close to Jack she came away jumpy and displaced.

She wanted to believe him, that was the problem. He'd let the word roll so indolently out. Magic.

The hiss of knowing pressed on Pete's mind, begging her to admit that it was as likely an explanation as any, but she wouldn't allow herself to think of it. Connor's voice, his strong hands gripping her shoulders. You listen and you listen good, girl. There ain't no such thing as what you say Winter did.

There ain't no such thing as magic.

"Thanks, Ollie." Pete sighed.

"You look like shite, still," said Ollie bluntly, settling his comfortable bulk into his chair and rattling a used copy of the Times.