Demon Bound

now you’ve begun to irritate me.”
    “You can’t refuse,” Jack said quietly. “You and every other demon of Hell are bound by the same laws.”
    The demon rolled its eyes heavenward, a move that Jack would have found infinitely amusing were he not bartering for his life. “Fine. Name the time and place of me thoroughly teaching you the error of your ways.”
    “The Naughton manor,” Jack shot back. “One day from now.”
    “Very well.” The demon grinned at Pete. “Enjoy the day with him, Weir. It’s your last.”
    It was gone when Jack looked back, the Black rippling in its wake. Jack made it to his sofa and slumped. Pete sat next to him, brows drawn together in vast concern.
    “Jack, what just happened?”
    He put a sofa pillow over his eyes. There had never been sofa pillows—or saucers, scatter rugs, or napkins made of cloth—until Pete had come to live with him. A sofa pillowwas good. You could tuck it under your head for a quick kip, or use it to smother yourself when you’d just become the biggest bloody fool you knew.
    “I made the shit choice,” Jack said. “To willingly go to Hell and challenge the demon to learn its name before the three ruling members of the Triumvirate.”
    Pete chewed on her lip. “Can you win?”
    Jack took the pillow away. “Not a chance.”
    Pete let her air out, slumping back to mimic his position. “Oh.”
    She went to her travel bag, found her fags and lighter, lit one. She offered it to him when she’d taken a drag. Jack accepted it and polluted his lungs for a long breath.
    “Cheers.”
    “And the Naughton mansion?” Pete asked. Jack scratched under the edge of his bandage, where the cut from Jao was beginning to itch like a particularly virulent venereal disease.
    “Blank spot in the Black. Energy is so bollocksed up from the necromancer fucking about I thought it might give me an edge.”
    Pete curled against him, surprising him with her weight, and Jack moved to make room for her in the crook of his body. “Thought you said you’d lose,” she whispered.
    “Yeah.” Jack put his lips on the top of her head. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t go down kicking.”
    “Jack.” Pete rotated her head to look at him. “I don’t want you to go.”
    “Not keen on visiting Hell myself,” Jack said. “But unless you’ve got a corker, luv . . . I’m out of ideas.”

Chapter Forty-seven
    Jack fell asleep with Pete’s breath rising and falling against his chest, setting the pace for his heartbeat and his thoughts.
    Everything took on a sharp-edged quality when he woke. Washing up, making tea, having a fag, and restocking his kit to put in the Mini were acts of incredible significance, rife with color and meaning.
    The drive to the Dartmoor was no longer arduous and too long. The colors of the moor, the wild magic that embraced him like a prodigal son, it was all irrefutably alive, sharp and vivid enough to pain his senses.
    Pete set the brake in the Naughton’s circular drive. “Here we are.”
    Jack tried to shake off the hyper awareness, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Death had ripped the veil from his eyes, shown him exactly what he would be seeing no longer, if the demon had his way.
    Death, Jack reflected, was a bit of a cunt that way.
    While Pete put up her overnight bag and laid in a tea in the Naughton kitchen, Jack laid out his kit on the long table in the formal dining room.
    Salt, chalk, herb bags. Black and red and white thread, his scrying mirror, and a butane lighter for starting herbs in his censer.
    It wasn’t much, in the scheme of things, but the battered canvas satchel had kept Jack alive thus far.
    None of it would do a bit of good against the demon. Jack swept his things back into the satchel and left it on the table. His reflection in the polished wood twisted, distorted and ghostly, pale face crowned by pale hair with sunken black pits for eyes, just as a spirit.
    A shape shimmered in the reflection behind him, and Jack snapped his head around. He was prepared for the ghost of June Kemp, or the mansion’s poltergeist, but it was only the owl.
    It sat on the branch of the tree near the drive, staring at Jack with unblinking eyes. The sunlight skipped through the clouds on the moor, dark and light slashes across the ground. The owl should be far away from the light, asleep somewhere, but it watched him and when Jack merely stared, twitched its head and wings in irritation.
    Jack tilted his head in return, and the