Demon Bound

Jack had never seen a place so flat, or so devoid of decent drugs.
    “You want the next, then,” he said out loud. “Change to the Circle Line and it’ll take you straight over.”
    “Thanks!” the girl said brightly, tucking her guidebook into her canvas bag. “You take care.”
    Jack watched her long legs and shapely back end exit the car, and felt only the barest interest. Americans were like fish in a barrel, and he wasn’t even going after her to find out why she’d come to the UK, where she was staying, if she had a boyfriend and whether she was open to experimentingwith a bloke who could say
bloody hell, football
and
fancy a shag?
authentically.
    It wasn’t like he was married to Pete.
    Jack swapped for the District Line, pressed up against the window amid a gaggle of be-knapsacked Germans.
    It wasn’t like he’d done
anything
to Pete, except a single kiss, sitting on the edge of a swamp in Blackpool. A fine kiss, to be sure, probably one of the best since he’d still been new enough at it to find them all fine, but still. There was no ribbon around their hands. And Pete had made it crystal clear that she wasn’t keen to pick up her old flirtation with a middle-aged junkie ex-boyfriend, which Jack wouldn’t blame her for even if he could and not be a great bloody hypocrite.
    It wasn’t Pete, he argued. The old days of the chase, the hunt, and the parade of women were just that—old. He wasn’t that Jack Winter any longer. The demon and the smack had made sure of that.
    The tube doors slid shut with a sigh and a breath of coal-scented air, and the train moved on.
    Everything and everyone in the Black knew what happened when a debt to Hell went unpaid, and they knew better what happened when the debtor tried to be clever and weasel out in any of the usual ways. Jack could try to be a clever boy, but it would be a try and nothing else.
    Clever boys’ bodies ended up in gutters. Their souls ended up on trial before the three ruling demons of Hell for breaking a bond as sacred as any church vow. No one who owed a demon a bargain was stupid enough to risk it.
    But Jack still got off the train at Queensway and walked to Lawrence’s flat, taking comfort in the crush of tourists and foreigners working the cheap souvenir shops and chain restaurants, and in the smell of sweat, smoke, diesel fumes, and humans. The feeling of being watched retreated, butonly a little. Jack had to get out of London before someone or -thing decided to speed his bargain along to the main event by putting claws or a bullet in his back.
    Jack guessed that Nancy Naughton had been good for something, after all.

Chapter Eight
    Lawrence folded his arms when he answered Jack’s knock, eyes glittering hard as gems. “Jack Winter, why you always bringin’ trouble to my door?”
    Jack took a step back, out of choking distance. “I’ve only just bloody gotten here, Lawrence. Give me a few minutes to work up a proper trouble for you.”
    Lawrence’s face broke into a grin. “Come you in, Jack. Always did like to take the piss from you, old devil.”
    “No such thing,” Jack said, returning the smile, not meaning it. Lawrence stepped aside and let Jack in. There were no protection hexes in his flat, none of the dove-gray magic Jack trafficked in. Lawrence’s hearth magic enfolded his flat, created a glimmering wall of power that ugly and hungry things in the Black could never claw through. Being a white witch did have its rewards.
    Jack shut the door after himself while Lawrence went to take the needle off his record. Jack stood in the center of Lawrence’s smothered living room, rugs and books and hunched furniture giving the place the air of a fussy old woman, not a six-foot-odd Rastafarian.
    “You be wanting a beer?” Lawrence said, shuffling into his pocket-sized kitchen and rooting in the icebox.
    Jack grinned. “Is the Pope a skin-changing incubus?”
    Lawrence tossed him a bottle of Newcastle. Jack un-screwed the top with the tail of his shirt and sank into Lawrence’s armchair, downing the beer faster than was strictly gentle to his empty stomach.
    “So tell me, Jack Winter, what trouble be vexing you this fine day?” Lawrence opened his own bottle and changed the record. Soft strains of Al Green floated through the thick air of the flat, scented with incense and high-quality marijuana. Jack grimaced around his mouthful of ale.
    “You trying to calm me down, Lawrence? Keep me from doing something foolish?”