"Not as of yet, you great cumstain," Jack replied genially. "I've come for the limb."

Towne crossed his twin hams of forearm. "Threw the sodding thing away."

"You're a liar, Melvin," Jack said easily. "Not only a liar, but a filthy liar, a dog-fucking liar even."

Melvin sniffed, deep and wet like he had a bad cold, or put roughly a gram of coke up his nose on a regular basis. Pete bet firmly on the latter.

"I don't have your bloody limb," he said again. He walked over to the redhead and jerked the sheet away from her. "I don't fucking pay you to sit on your fat arse with your legs crossed." The girl obligingly resumed the pose she'd been in when Pete and Jack interrupted, wrapping a silk noose hanging from the sprinkler pipes above around her neck and posing on a battered metal dinette chair.

"Choke," Melvin directed. "I want to see the eyes popping out of your fat head when you come, bitch."

Pete would have hesitated, alone, but she wasn't alone now.

She walked over to Towne, picked up his high-end digital camera, and dropped it hard on the cement floor. "Jack asked you a question," she said calmly, making herself look Towne in his pockmarked moon face.

"You fucking cunt!" he exclaimed. "I ought to ram that camera up your arse until I've shot three grand worth of video, because that's what it'll cost to replace!"

Pete pulled out the Dead Man's Snare and wrapped it around Towne's neck, less gracefully than Grinchley had managed, but the effect was the same. "You are wasting our time," she snarled. "Give Jack his fucking limb before I use my other hand to tear your bollocks off, cunt."

"She'll do it, mate," Jack said, fishing a packet of Parliaments out of his jacket. He offered one to the plump girl, who silently shook her head.

"Bad for your health."

"Speaking of which." Pete grinned at Towne and dug her nails into his sweaty chin, forcing him to look at her as he wheezed. "Ever shot a brain aneurysm in one of your little faux-death films? I wonder, will you be a twitcher? I think you're too fat. You'll probably just gurgle, shit yourself, and die."

"In the lockbox!" Towne shouted. "For fuck's sake! The key's in my pocket."

Pete tugged at the Snare, and it uncoiled, folding back into her hand. She smiled at her feet, unaccountably pleased. To Towne she said, "Good man." To Jack, "You are getting the key."

Back on the street, Pete snatched the brown-wrapped parcel out of Jack's hands and tore it open. "Oi!" he shouted. "That's me personal property, I'll have you know."

The parcel contained a plastic box, sealed with packing tape. The box was clear and inside… Pete nearly dropped the box on the pavement. "Jack, this is a human hand. A mummified human hand."

"Towne's wife," he agreed. "Caught her cheating about fifteen or twenty years ago and chopped off bits and pieces until she was sorry. Filmed it all. Was his first big hit, as I recall."

Pete stopped walking and thrust the box back into Jack's hands. "Is this your way of telling me you enjoy the company of people like Towne?"

"I'm not that oblique, luv." He grinned. "Saw the video, noticed with my sight Towne had an Egregor, a demon of rage, hanging around him. I bargained the Egregor back into the Black and compelled Towne to give me this as payment."

"But it's a hand," Pete reminded him.

"It's desire," said Jack. "Desire for pain and desire for revenge and desire for love so powerful that it destroyed what it touched. This is a powerful temptation for any demon, Pete. They trade in desire—breathe it. I'm sure every infernal thing in the greater London area has got a hard-on already."

"How reassuring," Pete muttered. Jack turned into the Fulham Broadway tube station.

"We can go home now. We've got everything we need."

At home in the sitting room, Pete watched Jack lay copper wire out in a circle and nail it down at the four corners with the iron nails. He chalked symbols at the four points, punctuating the northernmost with a black candle. He drew another, seemingly random set of symbols inside the wire and then said to Pete, "Be a love and get me the table salt."

Pete handed him the carton they'd bought at Tesco and Jack scattered a liberal handful inside the copper. "Earth," he said, and then took out his flick-knife and cut the tip of his finger. He squeezed a few fat blood droplets into the circle, as well. "And spirit."

Jack opened Grinchley's lacquer box and took out the Trifold Focus, holding it in the palm of his hand as if it were a dead, dried butterfly. "The best thing for you would be to go in the other room, Pete," he said without taking his eyes off it. "This probably isn't going to be pretty."

"If I wanted pretty I would have become a bloody decorator," said Pete, crossing her arms. "I'm staying."

Jack wanted to object, she could tell, but he pressed his lips together and then said, "Fine. But you stand against that wall. No talking. No matter what happens, no flying off the handle and threatening to rip someone's bollocks off. Got that?"

"Towne deserved to have them ripped off," Pete muttered.

"That he did," Jack agreed. "I've never seen you so fiery, Pete. I rather enjoyed it." His grin suggested exactly how much.

"Shut up and get on with this," Pete snapped. "This thing has had Margaret Smythe for nearly three days, and your reputation in the Black isn't getting any better."

"Your wish is my command, or some rot," said Jack. He placed the box containing the late Mrs. Towne's hand near his feet and stood at the bottom edge of the circle. He gripped the Focus and Pete heard the slide of metal on flesh as twin spikes flashed out from the bottom of the flat metal disc and drove into Jack's palms.

He didn't make a sound. Milky pale rolled across his eyes and they slowly went back in his head, exposing tiny crimson veins like spiderwebs inside his skull.

"Jack?" Pete said, alarmed. She started to go toward him but a shriek cut the air and went straight through her, all the way to the bone, and Pete stumbled back, crying out. "Fuck!"

The shriek crested and stabilized into a low whine and then with a strained pop Pete felt a give in the air, the shifting of something from one world to another.

"Jack Winter," said the demon. "Why do you call upon me?"

After a heartbeat Jack's eyes flicked back to blue faster than Pete could see. He shook himself and spoke. "To seek that which is lost." There was ritual behind the words the demon and Jack were speaking, and the demon gave a pleasurable shudder when Jack answered correctly.

"First we will strike an accord, a promise of tasting blood if the oath is broken. Only then do I seek your lost object."

"Fair enough," said Jack with a shrug. "Here." He thrust the box with the erstwhile Mrs. Towne's limb closer for the demon's examination. The demon caressed it in a hand with odd-shaped nails and uneven fingers of every color, patchier even than Grinchley's flesh golems.

"I grant you the product of man's strongest desire," said Jack, yanking the box away from the demon's ministrations. "To honor Talshebeth, the keeper of lost things."

Pete saw that the demon—Talshebeth—had a stitched-together scalp with wildly disparate patches of hair. He was hunchbacked and clothed in castoff rags sewn into a bright coat and had bowed legs swaddled in what appeared to be a thousand pairs of stockings. Wedding bands, dozens of them, rode his thin fingers down to the first knuckle. Across his neck stretched a crude string of baby teeth.

"As all things lost are my domain," said Talshebeth, blinking ragged lashes over a pair of chipped glass eyes. "I accept your payment. Tell me what you seek."

"The wandering spirit of Margaret Smythe," said Jack. "And the name of the one imprisoning her."