“You’re treading on thin fucking ice, mage,” the demon hissed. “Be mindful of the next step.”

Jack watched his fag ash for a moment. He could smart off all day long but it didn’t change the fact that he would have to give the demon an answer. A yes would bring him that much closer to the bosom of Hell. A no would only start his clock unwinding again, the number growing alarmingly low as the days passed.

“Maybe you should abandon this cryptic shite and tell me what you want,” he said finally. “Because I’m bored, mate. Dead bored, of your mysterious appearing and your riddles and your fucking Saturday Night Fever wardrobe.”

“What an apt choice of words,” said the demon. “You always had a facility, didn’t you?” It scratched its chin and then said, “Go to the pagan city and bring this man home. That’s all you have to do, Jack. He’s a mage, like you. He even plays a bit of music. You two lads should get on famously.”

Jack shifted his posture, only a little. Shoulders forward, arms folded. Every smallish boy turned skinny bloke learns how-to-make themselves look bigger, if they don’t want an arse-pounding or worse. Jack had the advantage of height on the demon, but he still felt its magic like a boot on his chest. Made him defensive, like the demon had come in and pissed all over his belongings. “And if I bring your little lost lamb to the fold? What then?”

“I suppose I’ll owe you a favor, won’t I?” The demon showed its teeth.

Jack returned the gesture. “Not good enough. I want your word. I want something tangible.”

“Oh?” The demon raised its eyebrows. “Conditions. And specifics. The little Weir’s taught you well, my son.”

“I’m not your fucking anything,” Jack snarled. “Let’s get that straight, at the outset. I’m not your rent boy, I’m your hired gun. Condition the first.”

The demon’s eyes barely flickered. “Accepted.”

“Condition the second,” Jack said. “I agree to fetch this arse-monkey for you, I get something for it. Something I choose.”

The demon’s posture stiffened and it licked its lips. It liked Jack setting the pace far less than simply invading his head with visions of Pete. Jack watched its face carefully, even though looking the thing in the eye hurt at the bottom of his forehead, the space where hippie gits said your third eye rode.

This was the litmus test. If the demon agreed, it needed him badly. And it wasn’t telling him the whole truth. If demons even understood the concept.

Finally, the demon exhaled, a sharp irritated huff of air. “All right. Agreed.” It sneered. “State your grand terms.”

Jack felt a cold snatch of excitement in his belly. The bloke who’d slagged off the demon must really be on to something, and the thing guarding his hideout must have sharp fucking teeth indeed. Two things in his favor. It might as well have been fucking Yuletide.

“If I find him and bring him back,” Jack said, stubbing out his fag on the edge of the sink. “I get your name.”

The demon hissed, sucking the breath back through its razory teeth. “Impossible.”

“Suits me,” Jack said, making for the door. “Have a fine time getting your naughty boy back home, and while you’re at it, go stick a cactus in your bum, you great tight-arsed poof.”

“Stop.” The demon’s voice rattled the mirror and the windowpanes, although it didn’t raise it.

Jack put his hand on the doorknob. Small acts of defiance let them know they weren’t in control, not fully. It sent them off, made them stupid and grasping. “Those are my terms,” he told the demon softly. “Take them or leave them.”

During the long moment of silence that followed the words, Jack watched a fat crow land on the windowsill and peer inside, at him, at the demon.

The crow preened and then stared at Jack, head cocked as if to ask him what exactly Jack thought he was on about.

“It seems I have no choice,” the demon said, at last. “And how you’ll chew over that bit of victory, Winter, I’m sure. Savor it. You won’t have another.”

“I don’t care about you,” Jack said, and had never meant anything more. “If there’s a chance for me to get your name, I’m taking that chance, mate.”

The demon felt inside its coat pocket and Jack felt the rotten snap of its magic. It produced a small blue folder, stamped with red.

“This will get you where you need to go,” it said. Jack took the ticket, inspected the destination. BANGKOK stared back at him, the ink blurred and off center on the line.

“I haven’t a passport,” he said.

“Explain to me how, exactly, that’s my problem?” the demon said mildly.

Jack spread his hands. “You want me to go fetch, you give me the ball, mate.”

The demon sighed and produced the square red wallet from another pocket. Jack found his likeness inside, and his vitals. The passport photo was even hideous and badly lit.

“Think of everything, do you?” he grumbled.

“You have a week, Winter,” the demon warned him. “The time of your bargain. After that . . . we go back to spinning the same old records until the lights go down.”

Jack turned his back, yanked open the door. “Yeah, don’t twist your knickers. I’ll find him.”

“His name is Miles Hornby,” said the demon. “He’s white, American, he’s twenty-seven years old, and he disappeared into Bangkok after he got the notion he could fuck me about.” The demon pressed its finger into Jack’s bare chest, over one of his eye tattoos. The ink lit up like a house fire under the demon’s touch. “He can’t. And neither can you, so be the good boy and bring our Miles home to me.”

With a puff of displaced air, the demon blinked out, leaving Jack alone, with his flesh crawling.

The crow took flight, cawing, and disappeared as well, swallowed by the mist.

Jack crammed his few clothes, his lighter and fags, and an ancient Bastards master tape that he carried for luck into his bag, and slipped out of the Naughton house before the sun roused itself.

He’d left plenty of women abed, women with whom he was on varying terms of civility, but he’d never felt quite so much like a fucking cunt about it as he did walking down the muddy lane to the B road.

Leaving Pete a note had nearly been his undoing—he could have sat for hours at the sticky kitchen table holding the pen, trying to find just the right way to say, Sorry I’m a fuckwit in language that wouldn’t make his darling Petunia borrow a pistol from her good friend Inspector Heath and blow Jack’s balls off.

In the end, he’d settled for simplicity—Don’t worry. I’ll be back. He wasn’t sure yet if it was a lie or not.

The road was deserted in the early morning, and Jack walked, listening to the peculiar stillness of a winter dawn, water flowing in some hidden culvert, things rustling in the hedgerow but not seen, the slow sleepy twine of magic around his senses as the sun came up and the moor retreated into itself in the face of the witch’s domain, the sun and the hare and the deer, the psychopomps of what little was pure and good about the Black.

A lorry rumbled in the distance, silver grille flashing intermittently as it dipped behind the curves of the road and found the sun again.

Jack waved the driver down, had to jump aside as the lorry rumbled to a stop with a swish-hiss of air brakes.

“You fancy giving me a ride, mate?” he called.

The youth behind the wheel eyed him with an air of great distaste. “Sure, man. I pick up riders all the time in the arse-end of nowhere in my company truck.”