Talshebeth laughed, the sound of a carefree child with an amusing pastime, tinged in tears for what could never be retrieved. "And for this, crow-mage, you call a named demon? You have indeed fallen prey to human time's passage. You are old. You have lost your prime."

"Don't start up that shite with me," Jack snapped. "Tell me where the girl is or the only way you'll get the hand is when you're wanking off to it with all of the other sodding old-timers, while it lies safe and sound in my loving care."

Talshebeth's eyes turned on Pete. "And you, young and unspoiled," he murmured. "The weight of loss hangs heavy over your tiny bones. Connor Caldecott," he recited suddenly, as if a faded memory had just been washed clean. "Beloved father. Born 2 March 1941, died 12 January 2003. May angels usher you on to paradise."

"Pete," Jack said, "don't listen to it. You," he snarled at Talshebeth, "deal with me."

"But of course," said Talshebeth with a wide smile made entirely of rotted and rusted wood and ivory false teeth. A maggot worked its way into one of the gaps, but Talshebeth did not seem to notice. "I live to serve, crow-mage. However, a search of this magnitude requires some expenditure of power, so if you were to release me from this crude circle…"

"Forget it, you hunchbacked devil," Jack said. "You can work just fine inside the circle, where the nice copper barrier keeps your sodding teeth out of my flesh."

At the street four stories down, the fire escape rattled, and a few chips of plaster floated down around Pete's head. Her senses pricked her, and she was distracted from Talshebeth long enough to feel the encroachment of something black and otherworldly send ripples through her feet and up to the center of fear in her stomach.

"Jack…"

"Quiet, Pete!" he hissed. "My concentration's shot to hell as it is. You're not helping."

Talshebeth chuckled quietly. "She makes you lose things, crow-mage. Your composure, sanity, maybe your life. I fancy her."

"Tell me where Margaret Smythe is," Jack warned, "and do it in the next five seconds or I am going to take out an already extraordinarily shitty day on you."

The fire escape rattled again, and before Pete could grab Jack and force him to pay attention, the dark sensation was there. And then something smashed through one of the arched windows, striking the floor and setting off a flash like a phosphorous grenade. Pete shouted and leaped away from the wall as the rest of the glass exploded inward and five black-clad hooligans in masks and leather coats came through.

One of them went straight for Jack and he dropped the Trifold Focus as the far larger man slammed into his back.

"Get out of here, Pete!" Jack shouted just before the man fetched a punch across his head.

Pete did run—she went straight for the kitchen, one drawer left of the sink, and pulled out Jack's squat cast-iron frying pan. One of the hooligans came chasing behind her, and she swung at him, missing his head and glancing the blow off his shoulder.

He was holding something black and fat-barreled—a tranquilizer gun, Pete thought—and he pointed it at her with the arm she hadn't hit. "Cute trick, bitch. Bad luck for you that after your stunt with the bansidhe they sent humans."

He took aim at Pete. "Cold iron doesn't work on us. Stupid cow." He whispered words of power under his breath and Pete's body tensed of its own accord, anticipating pain.

No dart slammed into Pete, and it wasn't a gun, either—it was magic. Ice-cold and like slamming into a lorry headfirst, it swept Pete up and tumbled her end over end until she hit the far wall of the kitchen and slid down it into a crumpled heap.

The sorcerer came to her, pointing the sleek black wand between her eyes. "Got anything to say, mage-whore?"

Pete grasped the edge of the counter and tensed. She had to make the single second she would receive count. "I say I'd take that wand and shove it up your arse, except you'd probably enjoy that."

The sorcerer snarled and raised his wand again, and Pete sprang, twisting his arm and driving it backward into his stomach. The spell fired a half-second later, and the sorcerer screamed. A pit of flesh exploded at close range, as though the sorcerer had just collided with a car.

Pete left him to bleed and ran to find Jack.

Two of the masked men were holding him down and a third was hitting Jack in the face, cursing at him unintelligibly. "Pete…" he managed between blows. "Pete… get back…"

Pete hit the closest with the frying pan, every ounce of her strength behind the blow. The man didn't shout or scream, he just crumpled with a crease in the side of his skull. The one hitting Jack turned and swiped at her with a skinning knife that appeared from his sleeve. Pete ducked the blade and planted her foot in his gut, and when he doubled, slammed the iron into the back of his head.

"Stop!" The man holding Jack held his wand to Jack's head. His was spindly and brown, like a piece of root. "Leave off or I spread his brains like jelly, you tart."

Pete's eyes flicked to Jack's face. Her heart was slamming into her breastbone and she wanted nothing more than to beat the men who'd beaten Jack until they were pulpy sacks of flesh.

"Listen to him," Jack mumbled through a split lip. "They're sorcerers, they mean it." His hand worked into the pocket of his jeans as the sorcerer glared at Pete. She ignored him and frowned at Jack, ever so slightly. He stared back and then dropped her a wink, so quickly Pete wondered if she'd imagined it.

She dearly hoped she hadn't.

"Are you deaf, missy? Drop the kitchenware and get your arse over here!"

"You'll wish you'd taken your chances with me," Pete said. She dropped the frying pan.

"Move!" the sorcerer snarled. To Jack he said, "I'm going to fuck her before I kill you. She's tasty, Winter, I'll give you credit for that."

Pete sighed. "That was the worst thing you could have said."

Jack's flick-knife sprang open in his pocket, and he pulled his hand free. A little bit of blue fire burst around him, more spark than flame, and when Pete looked again Jack had slipped the sorcerer's grip.

The man stared, slack and confused for a breath too long. Jack's hand whipped out and he drove the thin blade into the sorcerer's throat to the hilt. "Last thing, too," Jack said, and then his legs went out from under him and he sat awkwardly on the floor with a thump.

The sorcerer gurgled and fell back, his wand rolling away and blood pulsing out of the wound in time with his heartbeat. Pete knelt down next to Jack, lifting him up with a hand behind his head. Her fingers met a sticky cut.

"Oh, God," she said. "Jack…"

" 'M all right, luv," he mumbled. He spat blood and sat up, wiggling his jaw experimentally. "Nothing broken, a few sexy bruises… all in all, could've ended much worse."

One of Jack's eyes was blacked and he had a triple set of cuts along his cheekbone overriding his old scar. Blood trickled freely down his chin, but he managed to grin at Pete, even though he gave a soft grunt of pain.

"You look like you just faced off against the entire starting line of Man United," she said. "And the bruises are not sexy."

"That's what your lips say, but your adorable little blush tells me they are," Jack said.

"I was worried you had been killed," Pete said severely. She worried her lip with her teeth. "Something's bothering me…" She couldn't make it come clear with all of the adrenaline from the fight still in her veins, but it roiled her stomach nervously.

"Don't tell me 'It was too easy, Jack,' because there's nothing about five sorcerers busting into my flat and working me over that's bloody easy," Jack said.

Pete's stomach flip-flopped like she'd gone over the edge of the world. "Bollocks. Five of them."