Demon Bound

for magic. She wasn’t a citizen of its bleak, hungry streets and alleys on sufferance, like Jack.
    Pete hadn’t paid the price Jack and his brethren had, and she wasn’t going to if he could still draw a breath into his useless lungs. Jack was skilled at lying to himself as he was to anyone else, but he admitted that Pete being here, being close enough for the demon to use against him, was his fault. Entirely his.
    His stomach clenched again, but nothing came up. He was empty, hollowed out, ready to be filled by the demon’s bargain.
    But not yet. He had time. Enough time to put things right and to keep the one who’d pulled him from the Pit from harm. He owed a second debt, an unspoken one, to Pete. He owed her at least the decency of staying alive to teach her to survive the vagaries of a life with a talent. They’d barely begun. He couldn’t leave yet.
    “Pete,” he called, standing up and slinging the cloth into the basin. No reply echoed from the front of the flat. “Pete!” he said again, padding into the narrow hallway. “Petunia, where’ve you gone to?”
    She turned away from the flat’s front door, beyond which Jack could see, standing, the sort of man who would have told Jack to
Find a job, you miserable cunt
when he was sleeping on the streets, shaking in the dead of winter and thirty pounds underweight. The visitor wore a black sport coat, black sweater, and soft heather trousers. His hair was trimmed over his ears, expensively, and his eyes were soft brown. A trustworthy soft, a grasping, sinking soft. Jack disliked him instantly.
    “What sod’s this, then?” he demanded, letting the fullburr of a Manchester childhood creep into his voice. Nothing like a reminder of factories, dirty hands, and steel boots to warn off a ponce at the door.
    “Mr. Naughton,” Pete said, shooting Jack her customary
Shut up afore I kill you
look, “this is my associate, Jack Winter. Please, come in.”
    Naughton smiled at Pete, and she smiled back. Jack felt his jaw twitch. He didn’t get tetchy or jealous easily, because birds were the cause of nearly all of life’s avoidable ills, but this was Pete, and she was giving the nonce her
real
smile, the one that curled up one side of her mouth more than the other, that spread into her eyes.
    “Thank you, miss,” Naughton said. He looked between Jack and Pete, feigning polite confusion. “It is
Miss
Caldecott?”
    “You can call me Pete,” she said. “Would you like a cuppa? We were just having tea.”
    Naughton nodded his assent and then stuck out his hand to Jack. “Nicholas Naughton, Mr. Winter.”
    Jack watched his eyes follow Pete’s rear end, showcased in black denim as it was, into the kitchen, and shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t shake hands,” he explained. “Might get a look at something both you and me don’t want eyes on.”
    It was a better class of rudeness than Jack’s first impulse, which was to pull the smarmy git close and kick him in the balls.
    But Pete’d rip his tackle off if Jack insinuated her honor needed defending, and so he settled for staring at Naughton until the other man backed up a step. And then another. Sweat worked in a fat drop down his neck, into the collar of his cashmere.
    Staring was a vastly underrated talent to Jack’s mind—fix a bloke with a dead man’s stare, put the full force ofyour magic behind it, and watch him piss his pants for reasons even he can’t entirely explain.
    Naughton had practically climbed up into the crown molding of the front hall by the time Pete returned with tea. “Jack,” she scolded, “at least offer him a place to sit down.” She gestured at Naughton. “In the front room, please, sir. We can discuss your problem there.”
    “Call me Nicholas,” he said, the charm crawling back into play like a rodent curling up in a warm place. He shot a glance back at Jack, who’d brought up the rear. Jack dropped him a wink, and put some power behind it. Nothing fancy, just nightmare fodder for the next few weeks. Eyes, fire, secret black places, perhaps a touch of the old Oedipal complex.
    It was petty, but after the day he’d had, Jack felt he’d behaved with remarkable restraint.

Chapter Six
    Naughton sat on the sofa and Pete took the armchair, leaving Jack to perch on the wide windowsill. He nudged it open and lit a cigarette to cover the taste of vomit in the back of his throat.
    “I’ll get to the point,” Naughton said, fidgeting as he cast an eye at