Demon Bound

Jack fingered the coin, but he kept the chain around his neck. The weight felt right, solid and warm against his chest, and precious little was solid in this tilting city where the Black screamed rather than hissed. “Cheers, Robbie.”

“This man you’re after,” Robbie said, as he flashed a smile at a passing tourist couple. “What’s his name?”

“Miles Hornby,” Jack said. “You heard of him?”

“Can’t say I have.” Robbie rearranged his fake watch display with the speed and efficiency of a card sharp. “But then again, aren’t you farang all supposed to look alike?”

Jack gave a snort. “Good one. The cranky Irishman, what’s his building?”

“The kathoey bar with the pink flamingo sign down on Patpong 2,” Robbie said. “Got apartments upstairs. Mostly for the ladyboys and their . . . friends, you understand? But he moved in there. Said he liked it. Had a good . . . it’s Chinese.”

“Feng shui?” Jack supplied. Robbie nodded, and Jack shook his head, feeling a true smile grow for the first time since he’d climbed onto the airplane. That was Seth—he took the piss by the bottle, and setting up shop above a transvestite sex club would be his idea of a right long laugh. “Got any idea which apartment? So I don’t interrupt any of the gentlewoman’s business, you understand.”

Robbie returned Jack’s crooked grin. “He’s . . . number three, I think. Don’t blame me if you bust down the wrong door and get an eyeful, though.”

“Furthest thing from me mind.” Jack tipped Robbie a salute and found his way through the night market, past a set of enthusiastic barkers outside a sex show featuring a dancer billed as “Around-the-World Sue,” past a knot of smoking fans and drunks outside a music bar. The band inside wasn’t half bad—a fusion of rockabilly and electronica that’d do well in London. The quintet played with the sort of easy harmonies the Bastards aspired to and never quite found.

If he’d been less wrapped up in trying to be the largest, wickedest mage in London and paid more attention to his music, he might be in that club now, Jack thought. Or he might still be on the floor of a rotting squat in Southwark, with the cold kiss of a needle against the crook of his arm. In his lighter moments, Jack thought that seeing the future would be even worse than seeing the dead. At least the dead couldn’t shake their heads at you and tsk with disappointment for ambition and dream crushed beneath boots and heroin.

Club Hot Miami sat halfway down Patpong 2, nestled like a gaudy tropical bird among swampy trees. Pink flamingos and palm trees described in neon danced across the facade, and a barker gri

“No, thanks,” Jack said. “Just looking for the farang who lives upstairs.” Even though he’d taken pains to remember nothing of Seth McBride, the description rolled out with no pause. “Irritable sod, a little shorter than me. Black hair, blue eyes, got a mouth on him that’d strip the gears on a lorry.”

“Oh yeah, we know him.” The barker looked as if he wished emphatically that he didn’t know anything of the sort.

“He at home?” Jack said. “If not, I could be convinced to come in. Murder a drink of anything, honestly. It could have an umbrella and a goldfish swimming in it after the day I’ve had.”

“He’s always home,” said the barker glumly. “Never goes out. No friends.”

“That sounds right.” Jack mounted the outside stairs of the flat block. The stairs were even more precarious than his fire escape at home, if such a thing were possible. They groaned under his weight, the bolts grinding against cement.

The landing on the second floor was little better, close and closed in by mosquito netting, bug lights fizzing as Jack passed. The doors were unmarked, and moans and pants from behind the thin wood confirmed Jack’s theory that nearly everyone in Bangkok was having a better night than he was.

At the third door, he detected no sound. Jack’s eyes traveled up out of habit—you never crossed a mage’s threshold without looking—and found an iron nail, bound in hair and tied to a crow feather soaked in blood.

Not taking his eyes from the hex, Jack reached out and rapped thrice on the bubbly painted wood with his knuckles. They came away sticky. The city itself was alive in Bangkok, breathing and sweating.

A voice rattled the thin door from within. “Fuck off!”

Jack knocked again. “Open the door, Seth.”

He heard scuffling, as if not Seth but a herd of enormous rats resided behind the door, and half a dozen locks clicking.

An eye, watery blue like a cloud-covered sky, peered through the crack. “How’d you know that name?”

Jack spread his arms. “Like I could forget, you Irish bastard.”

Seth’s eye widened, and his broad flat face went slack. “Jack Winter. Fuck me sideways.”

“I’ll pass, thanks,” Jack said. “You never were my type.”

“And you always were a mouthy little cunt, weren’t ya?” Seth demanded. Jack lifted one shoulder.

“No denying it. You miss me, Seth?”

Seth’s hair still stuck up wildly and a pack of Silk Cut still rode shotgun in his front shirt pocket, but he was tan and carrying more weight than the last time Jack had clapped eyes on him. “Yeah, I missed you,” he growled. “Like a case of the clap the peni didn’t chase away.”

“Going to invite me in?” Jack said. “I’m not keen on that hex chewing me up.”

“Right. Worried about the hex.” Seth dropped his shoulder and moved, and pain exploded across Jack’s right cheek. He stumbled, felt himself lose balance and go down in a tangle of mosquito netting.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, boy,” Seth rasped, sticking a cigarette in his mouth. “Remind me why I shouldn’t just kill you now.” He touched his finger to the end of the cigarette, and smoke curled up.

“Fuck.” Jack sat up, shook the cobwebs from his head, and touched the spot where Seth had hit him. It was pulpy and tender, and blood trickled down into the hollow next to his mouth. It left the taste of iron and salt on the tip of Jack’s tongue. “Got it out of your system?” he asked Seth.

The Irishman shook out his fist. His knuckles were pink and pulpy, like a bunch of grapes. “Not hardly. You never did know when you weren’t wanted, Jackie.”

Jack grabbed the rusty rail and pulled himself to his feet. “And you never could throw a punch worth fuck-all, McBride.”

Seth bared his teeth around the Silk Cut. “Why’re you here, Winter?”

Jack pointed up at the hex. “Let me in and I’ll tell you.”

“Shit.” Seth threw his butt down on the cement and stamped on it with one sandal-clad foot. “I wouldn’t invite a fucking demon into my home, so explain to me why I should invite you.”

“I’m looking for a bloke called Miles Hornby to void a bargain with a Named demon of Hell and I’ve got precisely shit to go on, so I’ve come to you, oh wise and generous mentor, for your help.” Jack folded his arms and concentrated on keeping on his feet. His head didn’t ring from the blow, it tolled—slow and rolling, over and over, waves of pain like waves on a shore, threatening to drown him.

“Well.” Seth tipped his head to the side. “Jack Winter asking for my help. I’ve had this dream before.” He looked up and down the walkway.

Jack followed his glance. “What?”

“I’m waiting for Stephen Fry and the talking monkey to come in,” Seth said. “That’s the next bit.”

“Fuck off.” Jack prodded his cheek again. It was roughly twice its normal size and would bear the impression of Seth’s knuckles when the bruise solidified. “I mean it, Seth.”

“So do I, Jack,” Seth snarled. “I don’t want a thing to do with missing bastards, your dodgy troubles, or you. I’d take the talking monkey any fucking day.”

He retreated into the shadow of his flat, and Jack felt the swell of desperation in his chest like Seth had hit him all over again.