Demon Bound

right, man. Here I am. What’s got you so twisted you drag me away from a payin’ client?”
    Jack stood up, casting an eye around the crowd out of habit. No one immediately averted their gaze, but that didn’t mean nothing was watching. “Not here,” Jack murmured. “Loo.”
    “Fuck off,” Lawrence said. “You want them train cops to think we a pair of rent boys?”
    “They can think I hail from Suffragette bloody City for all I care,” Jack said, snatching his friend by the arm. “Now come along.”
    The men’s loo in Paddington smelled like bleach and was only half lit, fluorescent tubes spitting when Jackpassed under them. He locked the door to the outside and faced Lawrence. “I need to talk to you, and I need you to listen and not give me any of your usually granny nonsense, all right?”
    Lawrence blinked at him. “What happened since I saw you last, Jack? This shifty business ain’t like you.”
    Jack ignored the question, casting about in his leather for a key to his flat. He pressed it into Lawrence’s hand. “My grimoire is on the mantle in the sitting room. Everything I bothered to write down, every spell, every spirit, it’s there.” His pulse pounded, feverish against his temples, and the lights flickered again, casting Lawrence into shadow for a split second. “I have about fifty pounds in a sock in the top drawer of the bedroom dresser. You should give that to Pete. Haven’t anything else, except the flat, and I suppose you and she can decide what to do with that.”
    Lawrence held up his hands. “Jack. I know you think the devil’s bargain be pulling you down into the Pit, but it ain’t sure yet. You’re scarin’ me, true.”
    “It could be. You know that, too.” Jack fixed Lawrence with a stare that he hoped was penetrating enough to prick his friend’s denial that Jack Winter was fucked, indeed. “Lawrence, if I don’t see you again, I trust you to do what needs to be done. It’s that bloody simple.”
    When mages kicked off, there were rules. Rituals, and incantations. A thousand small assurances that your dearly departed friend would not become a plaything of the creatures in the thin spaces, things that were neither Fae or ghost. The mourners of a mage ushered the spirit through the Bleak Gates, locked it up tight where it could never trouble the living.
    So if Jack didn’t return, and he admitted it was wholly possible, Lawrence would burn his grimoire, dispose of his assets, and take his body—if there was one—to its final rest, in the tradition of the crow.
    Lawrence started shaking his head immediately when Jack stopped speaking, his eyes panicked. “Won’t do it, Jack. You ain’t going through with whatever foolishness you think you up to . . .”
    “It’s not foolishness,” Jack snarled, perhaps more harshly than he needed to. His voice echoed off the tile of the loo. “And you’re the only person I fucking trust to do right by me if it is, so shut your gob, take the key, and say you’ll look after Pete if I don’t come back.”
    Lawrence screwed up his face, but he tucked the key into his coat pocket. “I don’t like this, Jack. You still thinking you can beat that demon, aren’t you? Still thinking you the wickedest man in the world.”
    Jack faced his gaze to Lawrence, staring a hole in the other man until Lawrence squirmed. “I’m fucking rubbish at a lot of it,” Jack said quietly, “but I am the crow-mage and it wouldn’t kill you to have a little fucking faith, Lawrence.”
    Lawrence dropped his eyes, giving the small victory to Jack. “I save me faith for the devils and the saints, man.”
    Jack felt his fists curl. An ego was something a man of his age and situation could ill afford, but there was still a bit of the flame left in his chest, enough to burn small holes in other people’s good intentions. “You want to say different? Want us to have a little mage’s duel right here in the loo?” Jack set his feet. Lawrence had height and weight on him, but he was a white witch with white witch charms and spells in his arsenal, and Jack wagered he could knock Lawrence on his arse before the magic ever started flying.
    “I don’t want to fight wit’ you, Jack,” Lawrence sighed. “I want me best friend in the world not to be dragged into Hell. But me a day late and a pound short on that score.”
    “Too right,” Jack said. He left off his planted feet and solid fists, and went to unlock the door and leave. Lawrence