Jack looked at Abby, looked down at his own empty glass. "Oh, fuck me." He dropped the tumbler with a splinter of crystal and dove for a decorative basin in the corner of the room, shoving his finger down his throat.

Pete grabbed Abby, who convulsed as if she were on a string, leaving ragged red streaks along her neck as she tried to claw the obstruction from her windpipe. Pete pushed the girl's hands away from her flesh—Abby's strength was no more than that of a housecat—and laid her back, turning her head to one side and shoving index and middle fingers down her gullet to clear an airway.

In the corner, Jack vomited violently into the basin, skinny shoulders hunched as he retched and shook.

Viscous black closed around Pete's fingers, seemingly gallons of the stuff, flowing from Abby's mouth and filling her throat. An all-over shudder, a death rattle, Pete would think later, and Abby went still, black swimming up to cover her eyes in opaque film.

Hattie spoke from around a fist thrust into her mouth. "That was some bad shit, I think."

"Nothing you could have done, Pete," said Jack weakly, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and spitting into the basin. "Not that you'll ever lose sleep over failing to save a treacherous little bint like her."

Pete sat back on her heels, the black stuff staining her fingertips. She brushed it on her jeans. "What in the hell was all that, Jack?"

Jack took Pete's discolored fingers in his and sniffed. "Morgovina mushrooms," he said finally. "Fae plant. Melts you from the inside out. Nasty little way to die."

"The absinthe disguised the scent," said Pete, noticing the half-dusty, half-rotted stench rising from the pool of liquid under Abby's head.

"Brutal but not clever," said Jack.

"You were bloody stupid to drink anything in this place. Think you'd never heard a folktale in your life," Pete said. Jack raised an eyebrow at her.

"I'll have you know that my near-death experience has left me rather fragile and your attitude is not helping." He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it across a chair, then lit a Parliament and set it in the ashtray on the small table. "And more to the point, find a place to hide, because whoever poisoned the booze will be up to make sure the job is done any minute now."

Hattie heaved what may have been a resigned sigh and disappeared down the hallway to the loo. Pete lit on a wardrobe open to display a collection of antique opium pipes and closed herself in it.

"Lucy in Narnia," she whispered.

Jack leaned against the wall behind the door, hands in his pockets, looking almost bored.

"Not up to your usual standards of excitement?" Pete said through the keyhole.

"This isn't excitement," said Jack. "Never could fathom why sorcerers thought sitting about cutting your forearms and doing Victorian drugs was such a great laugh." He rolled his neck from side to side. "Unless there's magic, blood, or disgustingly attractive women involved, I couldn't care bloody less at this point in me life."

"So the last week has been a complete loss, then," Pete said.

Jack looked at her, and even through the small crack in the wardrobe Pete felt the snowy chill of his eyes on her skin. "Not a complete one," he said after a moment. "Not in a few ways that matter…"

"Still yourself," Pete hissed, though she was rue to interrupt him. "Someone's coming."

Footsteps creaked along the corridor and a hand tried the knob, pausing in surprise when the owner found the door unlocked. Slowly, it swung wide and revealed a sallow-faced man and an olive-skinned woman dressed in plain black, witchfire burning plum-colored in their hands.

The man jerked his chin at Abby's body, and the woman clicked over on precise stiletto heels and felt for a pulse. She shook her head, and the man stepped over the threshold.

Faster than smoke, Jack stepped out from his hiding spot and banged the door shut. "Evening, girls."

"Winter," the man hissed.

Jack gave a wide grin and a nod. "Observant cunt, aren't you?" He picked up the cigarette he'd lit and had a drag on. "Though I have to tell you—and take this as constructive critique, by all means—the poisoned absinthe? Tacky, mate. Look, you killed your own lapdog."

The woman, still crouched with her back to Pete, worked a small curved blade out from the cuff of her jacket.

"Jack!" Pete shouted, banging open the wardrobe and grabbing the closest weapon, an ivory opium pipe. She jabbed the carved and pointed tip in between the woman's shoulder blades and the sorcerer arched back with a cry.

The man brought his hand up, the witchfire changing color into something sulfurous and corrosive, but Jack hit him before the magic could form into anything useful. Blood shot from the sorcerer's split lip, and he dropped after swaying for a moment.

Jack reached over and grabbed Pete's hand. "Now we have to run, luv."

"What about Hattie?"

"Hattie will be happier locked in the loo, trust me."

Pete followed him down the hall, her heart jackhammer-ing like she were back outside the door of her first bust, sweating inside her stab vest. Jack kicked open a thin door leading to stairs upward.

"Stop!" The male sorcerer appeared in the door, a fan of blood and spittle on his chin and down the front of his shirt. He pressed his hands together and muttered a stream of guttural Latin, and black smoke boiled from around his feet to form two small lithe shadows, that in turn gave birth to a twin pair of their own.

"Bollocks," Jack hissed, taking the stairs two at a time.

"Are they ghosts?" Pete shouted as she pounded after him.

"Worse!" Jack shouted. "Thought-forms! Shadowy bloodhounds!"

They crossed the attic, tumbling over trunks and bundles, and Jack used his elbow to smash a window that had been painted shut. "You first," he panted. "Out."

Pete looked at the street fifteen meters below, back at Jack. "Are you quite mad?"

The smoke-shadows flowed under the door, through the cracks in the floor. They had grown steel claws and teeth, and darker hollows for eyes.

Jack opened his mouth to cajole, or yell, but Pete held up a hand. "Never mind. I'm going." She hoisted herself through the broken window and onto the slippery roof, but instead of letting go and plummeting for the street she gripped the gutter so hard she thought the skin on her knuckles would split and climbed toward the ridgeline.

She watched the shadows swipe at Jack, catching the leg he still had inside the window and leaving lines of crimson. "Bugger!" Jack yelped. He spread his ringers wide and exhaled, and a flock of smoke-crows blossomed from his palm. The crows cawed and swooped, catching the sorcerer's hounds with their talons and bills.

The shadows screamed and vanished, the crows with them. Jack grinned. "Couldn't sustain his will when someone co-opted his trick. Probably has a small cock, too."

"Come on," Pete yelled, nearly losing her grip. She pulled herself up onto the flat square top of Mad Chen's turret roof and helped Jack, who flopped over with a wheeze.

His coughing turned to chuckles, then to laughter. "Bloody hell. I'd forgotten how much fun this is."

Pete cocked her head. "Fun? You've got a fucking strange idea of fun."

The wood next to Jack's head exploded, driving splinters into Pete's arm. Another sorcerer appeared out of the shadows, the yellow clouds oozing corrosive fumes from his hands. "How many of these wankers are there?" Pete shouted. The sorcerer stopped just short of her feet and smiled in the manner of a small boy who likes to burn ants.

"Looks like I get your skin and your talent, Winter, and the chance to get over." He grinned.

Jack rolled on his side and stood, ducking the sorcerer's reach. He grabbed the shorter man by the back of the neck. "You'll get over something, that's sure." He rotated his grip and tossed the sorcerer off the edge of the roof. The man screamed until a sound like a breaking tree trunk cut off the cry.