Demon Bound

returned, swift and vicious as a Staffordshire terrier latching on to a postman.
    “I can undo the necromancer’s bindings. But to get the ghosts out of the house, I have to find their gravesites and set them to rest and if I can’t find little Creepy June’s remains I can’t bloody do that, can I?”
    Pete sighed. “Let me see if I can call in a favor with Ollie at the Met. They’ve got some toys for sniffing out cadavers that are quite good.”
    “Cadavers that have been under a log for seventy years?” Jack said. Pete sighed.
    “Must you shoot down everything I say?”
    Jack spread his hands. “It’s called being a realist, luv. Worked well for me so far.”
    Pete slammed her mug into the sink. “It also makes you a sod.”
    He went quiet, the elaborate apathy that drove Pete up the wall in full force as he slouched at the table and smoked.
    “Tell me about necromancers,” Pete said instead. “And why one would do something like this.”
    “Not just one,” Jack said. “Even if he ate his veg and gave up smoking, no sorcerer would live to be a hundred and thirty years old on his best day.” Usually, they died well before their time. Sorcerers were like roaches—a vile existence and a short life expectancy. Not that Jack and his ilkhad any better hope. If you were made of flesh, the Black was predisposed to be fatal to your health.
    Seth had said that human beings were never meant to touch magic, but that it was a good joke while it lasted.
    “Who knows why a bone-shaker would do something like this.” Jack sighed. “And more important, who bloody cares? Bound spirits keep everything that was with them at their moment of death—all the fear, all the pain, all the rage. That’s why you need a violent death. Aunt Martha going peacefully in her sleep makes a crap poltergeist.”
    “And the binding?” Pete said. “We need
something
to show Nicholas, otherwise we won’t get a bloody shilling out of him. It’ll be the Pooles on repeat.”
    Jack pushed back from the table. “Need some supplies. Assuming we can keep the ghosties out of our hair long enough, binding’s not a difficult thing to undo.”
    He waved her back when she started to follow him. “We have to wait for sunset. What I need’s best done in the dark, at midnight.”
    Pete snorted indelicately. “Are you quite serious?”
    “Have you ever known me to put one over on you, luv?” Jack held up a hand when Pete started to answer. “Never mind. This time I’m not. We’d do better at a new moon but tonight’ll have to do.”
    “We’ve got a few hours,” Pete said. “No telly, no internet service . . . what do you suggest we do until then?”
    “I’ve got a few ideas,” Jack said, winking at her. He could stop touching her, stop letting his eyes linger on her, but to ask him to stop flirting was akin to asking him to hold his breath for the next ten years. It wasn’t bloody happening. Jack had few joys left, and making Pete blush and smack him in the head was one of them.
    “If that’s all that’s on your mind I’m going for a walk,” she snapped.
    Jack sobered. “I think after that
cu sith
showed its lumpy face we’d be safer together, luv.”
    Pete sighed, fingers twitching up to scratch the back of her neck. “I just feel so . . .
locked up
in here. It’s not a good place to be.”
    “You feel the binding,” Jack said. It niggled him as well, the subtle sting of black magic crawling up and down his back. It was like a cold draft, the scrape of a thorn against his flesh, not painful but not pleasant either. Jack jerked his chin at Pete. “Come on, I’ll teach you something to take your mind off it.”
    She folded her arms. “If this is another excuse to be a pervert . . .”
    “Luv, I never need an excuse. Move your little arse into the parlor and I’ll teach you a trick. With me clothes on.”
    Pete’s lips twitched up. “Promise?”
    Jack made a poor attempt at crossing himself. “Cross my heart, Petunia.”
    She followed him into the parlor, where Jack lit on a music box—a dreadful Rococo concoction of pink enamel and gilt scrollwork. It had a lock, though, and it was the lock that interested him.
    “Here.” He set the thing on the table and gestured Pete into the armchair opposite. An occasional table, his mother had called these things. All spindly legs and round top. She’d kept figurines on the one in their flat. Kev liked to kick it over during their fights.
    “That is hideous,”