Demon Bound

You, mage—you’re a wrong thing.”
    “So for your silence, you get to know my business?” Jack knew when he’d been manipulated—usually it was by flexible and willing girls getting back at their ex-boyfriends after a Bastards gig, but the feeling of vague unbalance was the same.
    “That I do,” Robbie said. His English wasn’t accented with American, and Jack turned the coin over his fingers, made it disappear, reappear.
    “Fine. I’ll tell you my business here if you tell me why in the hell you’re called Robbie.”
    “I did some time in the UK,” Robbie said. “For robbery, get it? As for the chain, Irish bloke lives up on Patpong 2 pawned it to me for some crematory ash and a bootleg of the Stiff Little Fingers.”
    “I’m in Bangkok looking for someone,” Jack returned, because a bargain was a bargain whether you were speaking with a demon or a street hustler. “And I have a feeling your Irish friend and I will be meeting over that someone soon enough. That slake your burning curiosity for you, Robbie with the posh boarding school accent?”
    Robbie snorted. “What poor bastard got them after you? I saw you coming, I’d turn the other way so fast I’d whiplash meself.”
    “A clever boy,” Jack said, echoing the demon’s words even though thinking of those blank black eyes and crimson mouth made him nauseous. Or it could be the comedown from the pills. Treacherous bitch. If he found out who had set these specters of ill fortune on him, they were going to be short their balls.
    “Can’t be very clever after all, if you found him,” Robbie said. He jerked his chin at the coin. “Take that. For safe passage wherever you need to go.”
    Jack fingered the coin, but he kept the chain around his neck. The weight felt right, solid and warm against his chest, and precious little was solid in this tilting city where the Black screamed rather than hissed. “Cheers, Robbie.”
    “This man you’re after,” Robbie said, as he flashed a smile at a passing tourist couple. “What’s his name?”
    “Miles Hornby,” Jack said. “You heard of him?”
    “Can’t say I have.” Robbie rearranged his fake watch display with the speed and efficiency of a card sharp. “But then again, aren’t you
farang
all supposed to look alike?”
    Jack gave a snort. “Good one. The cranky Irishman, what’s his building?”
    “The
kathoey
bar with the pink flamingo sign down on Patpong 2,” Robbie said. “Got apartments upstairs. Mostly for the ladyboys and their . . . friends, you understand? But he moved in there. Said he liked it. Had a good . . . it’s Chinese.”
    “
Feng shui?
” Jack supplied. Robbie nodded, and Jack shook his head, feeling a true smile grow for the first time since he’d climbed onto the airplane. That was Seth—he took the piss by the bottle, and setting up shop above a transvestite sex club would be his idea of a right long laugh. “Got any idea which apartment? So I don’t interrupt any of the gentlewoman’s business, you understand.”
    Robbie returned Jack’s crooked grin. “He’s . . . number three, I think. Don’t blame me if you bust down the wrong door and get an eyeful, though.”
    “Furthest thing from me mind.” Jack tipped Robbie a salute and found his way through the night market, past a set of enthusiastic barkers outside a sex show featuring a dancer billed as “Around-the-World Sue,” past a knot of smoking fans and drunks outside a music bar. The band inside wasn’t half bad—a fusion of rockabilly and electronica that’d do well in London. The quintet played with the sort of easy harmonies the Bastards aspired to and never quite found.
    If he’d been less wrapped up in trying to be the largest, wickedest mage in London and paid more attention to his music, he might be in that club now, Jack thought. Or he might still be on the floor of a rotting squat in Southwark, with the cold kiss of a needle against the crook of his arm. In his lighter moments, Jack thought that seeing the future would be even worse than seeing the dead. At least the dead couldn’t shake their heads at you and tsk withdisappointment for ambition and dream crushed beneath boots and heroin.
    Club Hot Miami sat halfway down Patpong 2, nestled like a gaudy tropical bird among swampy trees. Pink flamingos and palm trees described in neon danced across the facade, and a barker grinned at Jack, waving a happy-hour flier under his nose.
    “No, thanks,” Jack said. “Just