Pete knew she was dying, that only taking the shrouded man's offering could repel the smoke, and that she could do neither thing. She could just stand and let herself be replaced by the shadow-figure, filled and consumed body and mind by the malignance living in the smoke. It was pain, a slipping away of something that Pete tried to hold, until it tore the skin from her.

The blankets wrapped around Pete when she clawed to the surface of the waking world, smelling of pot smoke and cinnamon, mellowed and musty with age, were damp with her sweat. Her heart thrummed for the seconds it took her to realize she was awake, sun cutting across her face from unshaded windows.

"Christ on a motorbike!" She sighed, falling back and forgetting she had no pillow. "Ow! Bugger all!"

Jack stuck his head through the door, hair distinctly more spiky on the left side than the right. "Everything five by five, luv?"

"Bad dream," said Pete, rubbing her palms over her face. She had broken into a fresh fever sweat, despite seeing her breath on the air and her skin prickling.

"I've got breakfast on," said Jack. "Come into the kitchen."

Pete followed him, padding on bare feet that quickly went numb. "Thought the electric was off."

Jack snorted. "Think I need electric for a simple fry-up?"

Pete conceded he had a point. The kitchen's pink-sprigged wallpaper and clean white countertops reminded Pete of summer visits to her grandmother Caldecott's trim house in Galway. A kettle on the old-fashioned enamel stove radiated heat, steam roiling out of the spout. A frying pan sizzled with eggs and sausages.

"You're awfully chipper," Pete noticed as Jack fussed with mugs and tea that came from a plastic convenience-mart bag. "Your sight quiet? I find it hard to believe nobody died in a building this decrepit."

"Not that," said Jack. "It's this place. Whitechapel." He set a mug with a cartoon purple cow in front of Pete, and shoveled some eggs onto a plate for himself. Jack looked her over, like she was keeping a secret. "Can you feel it?"

Pete didn't like the way Jack was looking at her. It was that cold look, the one that calculated exactly how much your flesh and spirit were worth in his currency. "Feel what?" she said neutrally, sipping at her tea. It burned over her tongue.

"Whitechapel has a dark heartbeat," said Jack. "It breathes out malevolence and draws in them that need blackness to survive. Dampens the sight, like living under a bridge."

"But there are shadows under a bridge," Pete said.

Jack grinned, without humor. "Just so."

"I'll still need to call an imp for the task at hand," said Jack later, his back turned as he did the washing-up. Pete was smoking a slow Parliament, mostly watching it burn in a saucer, taking a puff every few minutes as a token effort.

"You found out which one, then," Pete stated.

"Managed before the bloody bansidhe interrupted me," Jack said. "The Dictionary is shredded, though. Lawrence will kick my teeth in for that. Man treats his books like ruddy babies." He shut off the water and dropped the mugs and plastic plates into the rack to dry. Pete saw him shake once, and grip the counter edge, but the heroin tremors were barely visible any longer, like moth's wings fluttering.

"Look," Jack said. "Go get a Times and find a little cafe to read it in. I'll be done by the time you get back. I know how you feel about it, all that—"

"I want to watch," said Pete. The bansidhe's cuts stung her skin as she squirmed at the thought.

Jack blinked. "Pardon me?"

"I'm staying," Pete repeated. "Do what you have to do, Jack. I'll be here."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. I'll be in the sitting room."

Pete followed after a moment. Jack was on his knees scratching an uneven chalk circle into the wood floor. In the daytime the flat was shabby in the way of an old woman on pension—faded and stained but not without a grace. The ceilings were twice as high as her own flat, the windows arched like a church with sills a fat cat could curl on. Crown molding, rotted away in places, marched around the ceiling and the lamps were Moorish iron, glass globes sooty from their previous life as gaslights. The building might have been even older than the Blitz, judging by the cracks in the plaster and the leaded panes.

"Bugger!" Jack shouted as his chalk snapped in half. He spat on the marking and erased it with his thumb. The circle encased a five-pointed star and scribbles that looked like chickens had run through a bakery. The whole affair was hopelessly lopsided and scrawled, and Pete put a hand to her mouth to hide a small smile. Jack snarled at her before he went back to drawing.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just… I imagined the whole thing would be much more sinister."

"It's been a long time since I've done this, so you can bugger yourself," said Jack. "I could go find some black cats and chicken's blood, if that would improve your experience, milady."

Pete sat on the sill, pressing her back up against the glass and letting the sunlight warm it. "Quit being childish and get the bloody imp up here. We're wasting time we could be using to help Margaret. Three days, Jack."

"All right, all right," Jack muttered. "Hold your bloody horses." He got up, dusting off his hands, and went to root around in the kitchen. He returned with a few white packets in his fist and emptied them into a red puddle at the center of the circle.

"What… ?" Pete started.

"Catsup," said Jack. "They're mad for it. I think it's the acidity. Imps eat sulfur, in the pit. Wager this tastes a deal better."

"And now I know more than I ever wanted about the preferred snack food for denizens of the underworld," said Pete, tilting her head back and shutting her eyes. "I feel so broadened."

"Hell," said Jack. "Not the underworld. You're talking about the land of the dead. Hell is another prospect entirely. It's a rather terrible insult to suggest that they're the same."

"Because God knows, the biggest concern I have right now is insulting a demon," Pete muttered. She was being snarky mostly because she could feel the pull against her skin and her mind, that same prickle that had overtaken her in the tomb long ago. Nervous twitches sprang to life in her gut.

"Jack," she said. He flicked his fingernail against a twist of paper and a slow ember started, curling a little smoke into the air. He dropped it inside the circle and the smoke curled and spread but never crossed the boundaries.

"Jack," Pete said again, louder. Jack glanced up at her.

"Yeah?"

Pete fidgeted. The circle vibrated a little at the edge of her vision, caused a ringing in her ears. "This will be different, won't it?"

Jack's irritation sluiced away and he gave her a regretful smile.

"Yeah, Pete. This time will be different. You have to trust me, right?"

To believe you, Pete thought. Trust is another thing. But she didn't say it out loud. Jack hadn't earned that, in spite of her dependence on him now that her flat was destroyed. It was just her feeling, the same one that let her know she was walking down a bad alley and would do well to turn around.

"Hrathetoth!" Jack said, not shouting but definitely commanding something. "Hrathetoth, the offering has been placed upon the consecrated ring and I command thee, at my will, appear." Jack sounded as if he were reading off a tube schedule between High Barnet and King's Cross, but the lack of ceremony did nothing to put Pete at ease. That was how it had started, before.

Something sparked and popped in the center of the circle, over the pool of catsup. "Come off it, Hrathetoth!" Jack snapped. "I compelled you; now show your weasely little face. It's not as if you have a choice."