Jack opened his eyes, resolved to have one more fag and then bed, when a pair of hands grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him down the stairs.

He landed on his back, on the stone, and saw stars as all of his air escaped in a last, mocking puff of blue smoke.

Jack choked, unable to do anything except flop like a hooked mackerel while his mind screamed at him from the primal place of blood and birth to Run, run you stupid cunt, get free before it kills you.

He pushed the panic away, focused on his various bits, the quick mental check one developed after one had taken a few beatings. No lancing pain in his sides, his hands, or his legs, no bone scraping muscle anywhere, but he’d had the wind knocked out of him, properly.

“Jack?” Pete appeared at the top of the stairs, barefooted and barelegged, wearing a stretched Siouxsie shirt as a nightie. “Jack!” She took the steps two at a time, landing next to him on the cold floor, able fingers feeling his pulse and checking his pupils. “What happened? Did you black out? It’s a miracle you’re not gushing blood all across the floor.” Her words blended together, skipped and flowed over one another like water over rocks and mingled with the current ringing in his skull.

Jack shut his eyes because it seemed a remarkably good plan. Enough beatings also taught that sometimes, you didn’t want to get up. You just lay there and bled until the hurt passed and whoever had put you down in the first place lost interest.

The plan worked well, until Pete slapped him hard across the face. “The nearest hospital is thirty-five kilometers away and if you think I’m driving you there in my night things, you’re bloody stoned.”

Jack forced himself back to the surface of waking. Everything was quiet again. No shapes fluttered in the mirrors and no great howling morass cried to him across the Black. The Naughton mansion was, to his senses, dead as a doornail once more.

Pete laid the back of her hand on his forehead, cradling his skull on her knees. Her nightshirt was cut out in the collar and from his vantage Jack could see the top curves of her breasts, Snow White skin dusted with a helping of Black Irish freckles. He gave what he hoped was a sickly but courageous smile.

“That feels good, luv.”

Pete followed his eyes and huffed. “Sit up, you wanker.”

Jack did as he was told, with great reluctance on the part of his swimming vision and screaming muscles. Pete went and fetched her penlight from her kit, shining it in his eyes.

“Your pupils are the same size,” Pete said. “Your head isn’t bleeding badly. Just don’t go to sleep for a few hours.” She held out her hand and Jack let her pull him up. The Naughton’s foyer swayed agreeably, like he’d chased the fag with some high-grade opium.

He held on to Pete. “I’m spent, luv.” He brushed his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Though you could always keep me awake.”

“Fuck off.” Pete gave him a gentle shove with her free hand.

Jack swapped his grip for her waist under the nightshirt, fingers slotting between Pete’s ribs, pulling her flush against him. They were a good fit.

“’M not joking, Pete.” The terrible thing was, he wasn’t. If Pete had, in that moment, put her hands on him in return, Jack wouldn’t have stopped himself.

Not for the demon, not because Pete was an innocent in matters of the Black. Jack knew one thing surely about himself and that was, he was rubbish against temptation. Pete was flame and he was paper, and if he touched her he’d burn. No question about the matter.

“Get some rest,” Pete said softly. “I’m sure the ghosts will keep until morning.”

Jack rubbed the back of his skull, where a lump roughly the size of the Isle of Man was rising. His back would be a mass of bruises by morning, if the ache along his shoulder blades was anything to go by. “Not this one,” he said. “Pushy bastard. Quite literally.”

Pete’s brow wrinkled. “Will you be all right?”

Jack flashed her a grin. It was a cold comfort as she stepped away and adjusted the shirt to cover the flash and curve of skin on her exposed shoulder. “’Course. Go back to bed, darling. I’ll sit up for a bit to make sure me brain stays inside its house.”

Pete started up the stairs, and then turned back and went on tiptoe, planting a kiss on his bruised cheek.

Jack watched her go and then shut off the arthritic light and sat on the stairs in the dark, watching the ember of his last fag glow like a dying, faraway sun.

In a way, the poltergeist shoving him arse over teakettle had been a gift. It meant there was something in Naughton’s house, something dead and full of screaming, clawing rage. The dead silence lied to him, just as he was lying to Pete. It hid the thing that crept and crawled in the Black, exposed itself and vanished again like a movie-screen phantom. The intermittent magic of the Naughton house was a puzzle, but it wasn’t one that could distract him from exorcising a poltergeist. Poltergeists were solid, a good fight and good practice for exorcism. Plus, he could ratchet the charge into the stratosphere for that cunt Naughton, if only to make up for nearly turning his brain into pudding in the man’s grand entry.

Jack exhaled and watched the smoke rise and curl its fingers around the air until it disappeared, his own small spirit that was soon vanquished.

The ghost meant he was needed, for at least a little longer. It meant the company of the dead, the only presence Jack had relied on since he was fourteen years old. He had its scent, and even though his sight was changeable and treacherous in this curious vortex of Black and nothing, Jack was going to run it to ground.

If nothing else, the ghost meant he wasn’t alone.

Pete moved under him, her body arched against the iron shackles that held her wrists above her head, flush against the stone. The air tingled, chill, drops of dew collecting in the hollows of her clavicle, the planes of her stomach, crowning her nipples in crystal tears.

A ring of torches and a ring of watchers closed Jack and Pete inside surely as a lover’s embrace. On the stone within a circle of stones, Jack touched her, put his mouth on her skin, tasted sweat and bitterness from the blue woad the women had painted on her, before she was brought to him, in the circle, on the stone, with the scent of rowan in the air.

Pete met his eyes, her slim pale thighs bruising under the pressure of his hands. Jack knew this place, in the primal sense memory of his magic, and from the same memory the ritual power curled around him, whispered what it wanted, begged him to close the circle.

Pete struggled as Jack moved her legs akimbo, gasped as he placed himself against her, warm wet burning him against the cold contrast of the stone.

Pete held his gaze, her own eyes wide and pooling. “Please. Please, Jack . . .”

The chanting crested, the power of the place with it, and Jack fell over the edge, into the swirling vortex of the Black . . .

The Mini’s car horn cut through the fog of sleep, and Jack winced as light and sound hooked their claws in his consciousness and dragged him into the waking world.

He felt wrung out and stiff, hungover without the fuzzy memory or naked bird in his bed to make it at all worthwhile.

“Jack!” Pete shouted at him from mansion drive. “It’s not a bloody hotel, so rouse yourself before noon, if it pleases you, and let’s get this done!”

He stumbled to the window and saw Pete standing with her hand in the car window. She hit the horn again. Jack slid up the sash and stuck his head out.