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time they cleared the wharves and drove over the bridge back into the City, Jack was nodding again, in the dream place between the heroin and the barren expanse of needing it. Pete slapped his shoulder with her free hand. "Keep awake. This isn't a minicab."
    "Mmph," said Jack. "Bloody hell, you're violent. Got some sort of repressed urge you're takin' out on me?"
    "My urges are none of your sodding business," Pete snapped, then pressed her lips together. He still had that current, that disconcerting air that made her blurt out things that should have stayed a secret.
    Jack smirked. "So you say, luv."
    "Why don't you make this easy on yourself and tell me what you know about the missing kids," Pete suggested as she turned onto a thoroughfare crowded with taxis and the late rush hour.
    "I know fuck-all," said Jack promptly. "May I please be let go now, Inspector? I'll be ever so good and won't cause a fuss again."
    Pete gripped the wheel. She wanted to throw her two hands around Jack's neck, but the Mini's steering wheel would have to do. "You told me exactly where to find Bridget Killigan and when, and you expect me to believe that you know nothing about two other children abducted by the same bloody person in the same bloody way?"
    "I do, and I don't." Jack nodded. "Let me out of the fucking car, Pete. I'll crash us into an abutment if that's what it takes."
    Pete crossed two lanes of traffic and screeched into the bus dropoff zone, laying on the Mini's brakes in a way the manufacturer never intended. "Sod you, you bastard!" she yelled. "You think just because you're some poor wounded addict I'm supposed to believe your line of innocent bullshit?"
    "What I
think
," Jack yelled back, "is that you've turned from a sweet girl into a harpy from hell, and that I bloody hate the sight of you and if you don't unlock these bloody handcuffs right now, I'll hurt you, Pete. I swear to whatever gods you pray to."
    It flamed up in his eyes first, the bluer light of witchfire. Pete gasped as it spilled from his fingers, his lips—pure raw magic seeping out and forming a tangible golem of Jack's rage. Of his magic.
    Pete wanted more than anything to turn her eyes and pretend that she was just tired, or just crazy, or just… But the weight of
knowing
laid itself upon her,
knowing
in the pit of her stomach, the thing that wouldn't go away no matter how many years spanned between Jack holding her hands as the flames wreathed them and Jack glaring at her now, melting her skin with his stare to reach the truth underneath. And she could ignore it, but she'd never stop the
knowing
, stop seeing things she shouldn't know for truth or fiction, or be able to deny what the witchfire wreathing Jack meant.
    It spilled off him in waves now as he jerked against the cuffs, touching the spiked tips of his hair and gathering at the corners of his mouth, racing over the dials in the Mini's dash. Where it kissed Pete's rigid body, it stung.
    A shudder passed through her, like she'd just been doused with ice water. Jack's breathing was the loudest thing inside the car, ragged and enraged. Everything was bathed in blue.
    "Bloody hell," Pete whispered. "You weren't lying."
    "Magic," Jack agreed with a hiss, his lips parting. The witchfire retreated and coiled about his head like a blazing ice crown, angry and chained.
    Pete swallowed as a lorry whooshed by her window, horn blaring. "I know you can tell me what happened to those children." She didn't add,
And now I have to believe that what happened to you really
happened,
and God, Jack
,
    you just made every nightmare I've had for twelve years real again
. Her stomach and her vision both lurched but she kept herself steady, from the outside anyway. The outside mattered.
    "Very probable," Jack agreed, settling back into his seat. The witchfire abated until there was only the slightest glow to his eyes.
    "Then tell me," Pete said. She heard a begging tone creep in, and hated herself for it.
    Jack eyed her for a