Demon Bound

told her. “Looking for someone else. Running away to join the circus. Take your pick.”
    “You’re funny,” the bartender said. She flicked her towel over her sculpted shoulder like a proud Fae creature flicking its tail.
    “You’re nosy.” Jack drained his glass. He wasn’t drunk,yet. Just floating a few inches off the ground. “What’s your name?”
    “People around here call me Trixie,” she said.
    “Like Speed Racer’s girl?” Jack snorted into his glass. “Cute.”
    “You probably couldn’t pronounce my given name,” Trixie said. “Or my Thai nickname. Trixie gives the
farang
something to relate to. They think they know me, I get bigger tips. Simple.”
    Jack drained his glass and nudged it back toward her. “You’re not . . .”
    “A dancer?” Trixie shook her head. “You guys like the skinny girls, the My Asian Barbies.” She held up one arm, the full sleeve of her tattoos rippling. “I do not come in a pink box.”
    Jack turned his glass between his fingers. “I was going to say you’re not a prozzie, actually, but now I’m a bit intimidated.”
    Trixie shrugged. “I get asked a dozen times in a night to put tab A into slot B. I’m not going to knock you in the head.”
    “Stranger things have happened.” Jack watched the last trickle of bourbon slide down the side of his glass, like sweat on skin.
    Like a raindrop in the hollow of a throat . . .
    “You know . . .” Trixie cocked her hip. “You look familiar to me.”
    Jack favored her with a incredulous smile. “You say that to all the mysterious good-looking foreigners.”
    “No.” Trixie tapped her full lower lip. Coated with waxy pink gloss, it looked swollen, plastic. “I’ve seen you somewhere. In a photograph.”
    “Never hit Bangkok in me touring days,” Jack said. “Can’t imagine where you’d know me from, luv, unless you’d spent time in the UK.” Even then, Trixie would havebeen no more than eight years old when Jack was playing music and getting his mug slapped on posters up and down Mile End Road.
    “You’re Jack Winter!” Trixie shrieked, slapping her bar towel down. “You sang in the Poor Dead Bastards!” A huge grin lit up her face. “I have your records, man!”
    Jack felt an entirely different kind of buzz grow in his chest. “You’re putting me on.”
    “No shit!” Trixie insisted. “I got your
Suicide Squad
LP off of eBay, signed. Cost me two weeks of tips, and I make fat tips.”
    Jack fished in his wallet to find the last of his English money. “Well, you’re very kind, luv, but that was a long fucking time ago indeed.”
    Trixie waved off his payment. “On the house, for as long as you’re in Patpong. I’ll take my trade in stories.”
    Jack started for the door, but turned back. “There is one thing, luv.” He scratched at his chin. He wanted a shave again. Pete would have reminded him.
    “Anything,” Trixie said. “Except what everyone else is giving up around here.”
    Jack rocked on his heels. Stay casual, stay charming. Don’t act like you care. The liar’s rules to making others tell the truth. “You know music, yeah? The local scene?”
    Trixie nodded. “Most nights off, I’m far from here. There’s a great hardcore club over on Silom if you’re ever in the mood to see the real Bangkok.”
    “Miles Hornby,” Jack said. The name was beginning to sound like an epithet. “He’s apparently a musician. You ever heard of him?”
    “Well, sure,” Trixie said. “His band was the Lost Souls. Played around here a few times before he got a legit gig. Not bad—sort of an early Nick Cave thing going on.”
    Jack’s heart beat faster, cutting through his fatigue andthe pleasant slack warmth of the cheap bourbon. “You’ve seen him.”
    “Sure,” Trixie said. “Lots of people saw him. He was pretty good. Not as good as you and the Bastards on
Nightmares and Strange Days
, of course. But he might have gone on a label with a few years of gigging.”
    “You said his band was the Lost Souls?” Jack was talking faster now, leaning in close enough to smell Trixie’s cherry perfume and a hint of salt beneath, to see the eyes on the curling dragons of her tattoos. It couldn’t be this easy, not after what the demon had told him. “What d’you mean
was
?”
    “Past tense,” said Trixie. “They’re not anymore.”
    Jack gripped her wrist. Her skin was warm and her pulse was fast, and she didn’t try to pull away. “Why not?”
    “Because . . .”