Chapter Four

For all he prided himself on quick reflexes and quicker wits, Jack froze. He froze like a man caught out, with his sins on display like scars.

“You thought we wouldn’t meet, on the eve of the deed?” the demon questioned. He took a step toward Jack, his gait gliding as if he moved on a snake’s belly. Jack felt his heartbeat slow, his blood thump through his ears like the bass on stage during one of his sets with the Poor Dead Bastards, back in the bad old days. The edges of the world smoothed out, and he felt a cold, empty well open up behind his eyes.

“It’s been thirteen years for you, Jack Winter,” the demon said. Its tongue flicked its lips, crimson like it had just been dipped in blood. “Or nearly so.”

Jack didn’t allow himself the luxury of more than a few seconds of shock. That was all you got, and then the bastards ripped your spine out because you’d stood there catching flies, insensible with fear.

He dug deep, grabbed a great handful of magic, and flung it outward, toward the demon.

The protection hex came to life in a flare of blue witch-fire, the excess energy curling around Jack’s hands like tongues of flame around a tree branch. The air between the demon and himself rippled as the hex took hold. It wasn’t elegant and it wasn’t solid, but it was strong and rolled over the demon like a wave on rock.

The demon shook its head as if it had been caught up in a nest of cobwebs, and gave Jack a reproachful frown. “Still the same old Jack, jumping at shadows.” It glided forward again, like the snap of a camera lens—one heartbeat, one flicker of movement, and the demon was close enough to embrace him. Jack felt its thick, smoky aura brush up against his hex, heavy and dense. It was a fifty-fifty shot as to whether the hex would hold. Jack was mortal, and the demon was a creature of Hell. A thing made of magic against a bag of flesh with an unusual talent. This was usually the bit where the mage died horribly.

“If I didn’t know you so well, Jackie, I’d feel insulted,” the demon said. It smoothed a hand over its tie. The veins under the flesh stood out black as roads on a map. “But I do know you, boy. Paranoid as a schizophrenic on the corner. Impotent as a rapist with a bird who fights back.”

The demon chuckled to itself, and Jack found his voice. “I have time.”

“Ah, true,” the demon purred. “But how much? Have you counted? Have you marked a thick black X across the remaining days?”

“I have time,” Jack repeated. “And you and I have no business before that day. Threaten me again and you’ll find exactly how unpleasant I can be when some sulfur-scented bastard comes onto me home turf.”

“Your better half appears absent,” said the demon. “You won’t be able to do to me as you did to poor, foolish Talshebeth.” It sucked on its teeth, whistling against the air. “Pity, that is. Rumor has it she’s soft, supple, and willing. That true, Winter?”

Jack knew that the demon was toying with him, down in the hard and rational part of himself that kept him from getting into fights he couldn’t win over exactly this—a girl, an insult, or a petty threat. The demon was only exacting torment for Jack and Pete’s banishment of its mate, Talshebeth. Jack had called the demon of lost things to find a little girl who’d been stolen by the hungry ghost of Algernon Treadwell. Treadwell hadn’t taken kindly to this, and Talshebeth had tried to make Jack into a meal when their arrangement went pear shaped.

Jack knew this, but the witchfire around his hands flared and the hex vibrated like it had been struck. Black rage boiled up, filling the space between the demon and Jack, hot and throbbing on his skin like he’d hit a brick wall at full speed. The rage chased away rationality, and Jack started talking before he fully knew the words. “You don’t fucking speak about her. I’ll peel your skin off, roll it up, and shove it down your fucking throat, you cunt.”

Twin flames in its eyes dancing, the demon laughed again. Jack felt his hex waver as his rage warred with his concentration. His own arse was one thing, but Pete . . . enough of the Black already wanted the both of them on spikes. The demon would not touch Pete while Jack was drawing down air.

“Jack?” She appeared at the end of the alley like he’d summoned her, a plastic Tesco sack dangling from her hand. “Who are you talking to?”

He whipped back toward the demon, and found only empty air wavering beyond his protection hex. Jack let out his breath and massaged the center of his forehead. “No one, luv. Just no one.”

Pete raised one eyebrow in a dainty, disbelieving arch. “So you just decided to hex the alley for the fun of it, then?”

“What sort of tea did you get?” Jack slipped the new subject in like he’d dip into an unwary pocket for a wallet.

Pete favored him with a look that said she wasn’t put off in the least by his bullshit. “Cranberry sandwiches, and I popped by the off-license for some good Belgian lager. Thought we both deserved a treat after that wretched scene at the Pooles’.”

“I’ve half a mind to go back and curse that woman so her ugly teeth fall out,” Jack said, glad she’d let the matter drop where it was. Pete couldn’t know about the demon. Not yet, at least. If Jack failed at great swaths of life, he could at least keep a fucking secret. It was a point of mage pride—the good ones became paranoid bastards in short order, so that no one learned their tricks.

“Mm-hmm,” Pete said. They walked into the stairwell of Jack’s flat. “And wouldn’t that be brilliant for business, what little of it we have.”

“Oi,” Jack said, slinging his arm over her shoulders. “It was your brilliant idea that we become a bloody ITV special made flesh, so don’t give me any of your sass.”

Pete favored him with a half smile. “However much you complain, Jack, us exorcising spirits and raising the same put this tea on the table, and if you’ve got a better solution for both of us being skint broke and nigh unemployable, I’d love to hear it.”

“No dice, Petunia,” he said. “Everyone knows you’re the brains of this little operation.” They mounted the narrow stairs, the tread shifting under Jack’s weight. The lift was unreliable at best and Jack preferred the narrow, dim stairway even with lifelong smoker’s lungs. The lift was closed, gated, trapped. If an entity manifested, he’d have nowhere to go, no recourse to banish it, trapped within four walls of iron.

Living with the sight taught you quickly and with great finality what sorts of places to avoid if you expected to live to next week. At least, to live in the sorts of places that didn’t have bars on the windows and serve Thorazine smoothies.

“Stop calling me Petunia,” Pete said. She shrugged off his arm as they reached the second-floor landing. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten about that display in the alley.”

Jack finished the climb to his flat in silence and waited while Pete unlocked the door. “I told you, it weren’t nothing.” He could shrug off one incident as his own jumpiness now that only tenuous ink, flesh, and a pinch of magic held back his sight. He’d have to be more careful when the demon came back.

Because it was most definitely fucking when, not if.

Pete slammed the doors of the kitchen cabinets as she brought out plates, glasses, and napkins. “You have to talk to me sooner or later, Jack. Are you seeing things again? Have you been lying to me since we did the ink?”

“I’m not bothered by the sight,” Jack said honestly. Just bedeviled by a demon . . .

Pete let out a small humph. “I was a copper. I know when you’re lying to me, Jack Winter.” She ripped the packaging off her sandwich and sat down, gesturing for him to join her.

What Jack really wanted was a smoke, needed it with every jangling nerve at the ends of his body, but he forced himself to sit at the dinette table across from Pete, open his tea, and take a bite. He consumed the sandwich in less time than he could have counted. Casting the hex had left him drained. It was a new sensation to be hungry—before, he just wandered the streets nerve-jangled and sleepless until he found a hit and a bed to take it in. His body was like a wrung sponge, magic soaking up his every reserve. And yet now, when he’d kicked, gained weight, and even had someone feeding him, the magic hurt more.