Demon Bound

Jack followed his glance. “What?”

“I’m waiting for Stephen Fry and the talking monkey to come in,” Seth said. “That’s the next bit.”

“Fuck off.” Jack prodded his cheek again. It was roughly twice its normal size and would bear the impression of Seth’s knuckles when the bruise solidified. “I mean it, Seth.”

“So do I, Jack,” Seth snarled. “I don’t want a thing to do with missing bastards, your dodgy troubles, or you. I’d take the talking monkey any fucking day.”

He retreated into the shadow of his flat, and Jack felt the swell of desperation in his chest like Seth had hit him all over again.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Jack had admitted the same truth to Seth close to twenty years ago, when Seth had found him turning conjure tricks on the streets of Dublin, sat him down, gave him a fag, and asked him where he’d come from. The crow spread her wings over Jack that night, folded him into her purview, but he felt no such darkling comfort now.

Seth grumbled out a string of curses, but he moved to the side, jerking his head at Jack. “Fuck it. Come in, then.”

Jack shouldered his bag and stepped cautiously over the threshold. Half expecting to feel the teeth of Seth’s warding hex lock into his skin and his sight, he only relaxed when McBride snorted at his tension. “I wanted you face down, Jackie, you’d be swallowing your teeth now and you know it.”

Jack itched at the back of his neck as his talent prickled at another’s encroachment. “Suppose that’s true.”

“Fucking right, it’s true. I am sorry about that belt, though,” Seth said. He stubbed out his fag into an over-flowing ashtray that lived in the belly of the ubiquitous Buddhas that grinned out at Jack from every corner of Patpong.

“No you’re not,” Jack said. He went in Seth’s minuscule freezer and found a packet of frozen mixed veg that was dated three years past. Sticking it against his face helped with the dull ache, but not the sting. “You haven’t been sorry for a thing since the doctor slapped you on the arse and made you cry.”

“All right, probably not so very much,” Seth admitted. He settled himself in a cracked vinyl armchair in front of a telly crowned in rabbit ears, lines of color wavering up and down the pocket- sized screen over a Thai cricket match.

Jack looked out the back window, down into an alley. Grinning white tourists led along a pair of underage Thai girls, their smiles as pasted on as their plastic dresses. Laughter bounced off the concrete and the air thickened with curls of wayward power as the girls fell behind the pair of men, heads bent together like painted, predatory sharks. Jack caught their extra arms as they passed from street lamp to shadow, the scales that painted themselves onto skin like emerald and onyx tattoo ink, the forked tongues. Served the two wankers right.

“Now,” Seth said, leaning his bulk forward and turning down the volume of the telly. “What the fuck are you babbling about, you owe a demon a bargain?”

Jack talked, keeping the packet against his face. The telly burbled underneath his voice, discordant counterpoint to the story of the demon, the cu sith, the fetch, and Miles Hornby. Seth stayed quiet for a time after Jack finished the whole sordid mess. He changed among four equally distorted channels on the telly, scratched the back of his neck, and finally said, “So what you’re telling me is, you’re buggered and you want old uncle Seth to kiss it and make it go away. Is that it?”

“I just need your help finding the bloke,” Jack said. He wanted to keep his tone even, truly, but he felt restless and itchy inside the cramped little flat that had to be over a hundred degrees even with the arthritic fan in Seth’s window bringing in cooking smells and the low-pitched roar of the city outside.

“Always a just with you, boy.” Seth sighed. “Just needed a little training. Just needed to translate the sorcery grimoire. Just needed to make deals with fucking cocksucking Hellspawn demons . . . ”

“Oi!” Jack dropped the frozen packet on the counter and slammed his hand down with it. “You’re no paragon of virtue, Seth. I saw you do things in the bad old days that would have curled the hair of any respectable sorcerer, so cut out this Catholic schoolboy act and either throw me out on my arse, or get off of yours and sodding help me.”

Seth heaved himself out of his easy chair. “You don’t want help, Jack. You want a fuckin’ miracle.”

“Is that so wrong? Your people pioneered that sort of thing, least that’s what you were always bending my ear on.” Jack touched his cheek again and winced. “You know, for an old man, you’re quite violent. Better watch that. Might break a hip.”

Seth pointed a stubby finger in Jack’s face. “Don’t tempt me to make your other cheek match, you Limey arse-jockey.”

“Like you could land a hit on me again, you cabbage-swilling altar boy–fancier.” Jack sighed. “Does this mean we’re all right?”

“You will never, ever be ‘all right,’ Jack Winter,” Seth growled. “But you and me—that’s for another day.” He grabbed a bottle of cheap scotch with a Thai label from his cabinet and two cloudy glasses. “You take water?”

“’S like asking if I take piss,” Jack said. “Has it really been that long?”

Seth poured Jack two fingers and himself four. Some things never changed. “I heard you’ve bypassed the bottle entirely of late,” he said, tossing back most of the whiskey and wiping a hand across his lips. “Moved on to a more direct method of getting yourself pissed.”

“No,” Jack said, cold crawling over his skin in spite of the damp, close heat. His sweat turned to ice at the thought of the pinch of a syringe, the cool presence of the needle and the hot, sweet rush into his blood when he pushed down the plunger. Can’t ignore me forever, the whisper came. You’ll come home, one day.

“No,” Jack repeated. “I’m clean.” Even true, it sounded like a lie.

“Good.” Seth dropped his glass into the sink, causing a scattering of something alive and gifted with an excess of legs. “You were never that stupid when I knew you, Jackie.”

“That’s because I could still tell what was real and what was a phantom,” Jack muttered. “Those were the fucking golden years, for sure.”

“I don’t know this Miles Hornby, but I’ll make some calls,” Seth said. “Meantime, I suggest you take what time you have and enjoy our fair city.”

Jack took a seat in the only other chair in the room, a suspicious wicker contraption that creaked under his weight. “No offense, mate, but I think the nightlife here might be a bit carnivorous, even for me.”

Seth cocked his eyebrow. “Got someone back home? That’s a new one.”

“No one special.” Jack finished off his whiskey. It burned like drain cleaner going down and no doubt tasted like it coming back up.

Pete would be awake, would have weathered an entire day and night with him gone. Or started a torch brigade to find and burn him. Pete wasn’t sentimental, but she was vindictive. She wouldn’t simply slap him across the face and be done with it.

“If you’re not going to find something to fuck or get pissed, you should sleep,” Seth’s voice broke in. “You look like seven kinds of shite dragged across Dublin, boy.”

Jack looked around the single room and dinette that made up Seth’s mildewed, sweaty flat and felt his skin crawl up the back of his neck. Magic had nothing to do with it—the years of sleeping rough voluntarily were behind him in his twenties and the place reminded him of nothing so much as a squat. Add in a dozen or so junkies and a bucket in the corner and the experience would be authentic.

“On second thought,” he said quietly, “I could use some company.”

“That’s my Jack,” Seth hooted. “An eye for the ladies and a taste for the underbelly.” He slapped Jack on the shoulder. “Enjoy yourself, mate. I’ll send someone for you when I find something out about this Hornby.”

Chapter Twenty-three

Jack walked back through the tourists to the bar with the music. The band was packing up, and a deejay had taken their place. A pair of drunk Scots were howling a karaoke version of “My Heart Will Go On” in front of a fuzzy monitor scrolling lyrics.

Jack knocked on the bar. “Drink.”

“Anything special?” The bartender was tattooed, and to Jack’s surprise, female.

“Something that will convince me I don’t want to stick a fondue fork in me ear,” he said, giving the Scots a baleful glare.

She laughed, and set him up with a bourbon with a neat flick of her wrist. “You’re not a tourist. Why you in a tourist bar?”

“Waiting on someone,” Jack 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 have been 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?”