by Christine Warren, Marjorie Liu, Caitlin Kittredge, Jenna Maclaine
A pint glass sailed past his head and shattered on the backdrop, a garish neon Jesus with purple blacklit blood spilling from his wounds. Jesus’s eyes rolled up into his head, in a way that made him look like there was a weasel chewing on his privates.
Rich shucked his Fender and hopped down into the pit, retrieving the mike. He covered it with his long, spidery fingers, the calluses on the ends making rough noise against the PA. “Jack, the fuck are you on about?”
Jack wiped sweat off his face with the back of his arm, the salt blurring his eyes, making the shapes and shadows of the Crucifixion Club into a fever dream, just for a moment. “Come on, Rich. Let’s get a drink and end the evening with our dignity intact. No one in this piss-miserable city wants to hear us play.”
Gavin stopped drumming, the heartbeat bleeding away to flatline as he sensed the ugly black knot between guitarist and vocalist. Dix thumped his thumb on his bass in a discordant rhythm, his tattooed knuckles fluttering under the stage lights.
“Right or not, we have a contract,” Rich said, gesturing with his head at the owner of the Crucifixion Club, an intractable Scot with a thatch of white hair and a face like a lorry wreck during rush hour. “Somehow, I don’t think the old goat over there is going to be overjoyed if we cut out before finishing two hours.” Rich shifted his weight, hid his next words with his back to the pit.
Jack scanned the crowd, more with his magic than his eyes, to make sure no skinhead was taking the golden opportunity to shank his guitar player in the kidney. Rich might be a pain in the arse, but he could make six strings sound like wailing bansidhe or angel tears, you just had to tell him which.
“We need the money, mate,” Rich said. “I’m skint, and you know Ella is counting on me to make rent on the flat this month.”
“Fine,” Jack said. “Do ‘Falling Down,’ and I swear if another one of these kilt-lifters chucks a bottle at me fucking head, it’s curtains.”
Dix beat out the baseline, Rich hit the first chord, and Jack sang. He felt the smoke, raw in his throat. Most of all, he felt tired.
The night ended without a bang, without even a whimper. Jack helped Rich pack up his amps while Dix carried equipment back to the van, an arthritic Peugeot that oozed smoke and rust like a pustule on wheels.
“Hey, you. Boyo, with the Billy Idol up top.” The Scot jabbed his cigar stub at Jack.
“Yeah?” Jack crossed his arms. He was half the Scot’s breadth, but he had a good head on him. The old bastard would be trying to dick around with their payment, and it fell to Jack to deal with him, since they hadn’t a manager, not even a proper roadie since Lefty Nottingham got pinched for passing bad checks.
“You got a girl out front.” The Scot leered. “Nice gear, too. Real top of the pops.”
“Jack.” Rich glared warningly. “We have to start the drive back.”
Jack went to the rat-eaten curtain and gestured to the Scot. “Point her out to me.” Rich was engaged to Ella. He’d never dipped his pen in even when he hadn’t been. Dix would go for anything that breathed, and Jack had a fair notion that Gavin was a poof, although it made no difference. Good drummers were worth their weight.
The girl sat alone at a table dead-center in the empty club. She was all black—black bob, black sweater, black pencil skirt that showed of a bit of Snow White leg in black fishnet stockings.
“Yeah?” said the Scot.
Jack stepped out from the curtain. “Yeah.”
“Oh, fuck off!” Gavin shouted. “I want to be driving out of bloody Scotland, not sticking around to sample the locals.”
Jack flipped him the bird and walked over to the table. Pulled a chair and sat on it backwards. “You wanted to perform sexual favors for me, luv?”
She exhaled from a black cigarette with a gold band, blue smoke. Her face was heart-shaped, like a black-and-white film starlet’s. Her severe bob and straight fringe made Jack feel as if he were looking at someone who might have conjured herself off celluloid, too refined for the likes of the Crucifixion Club.
Or Jack Winter himself, if Jack were being honest.
“Meet,” she corrected coolly, the low throaty American voice sending gooseflesh over not-unpleasant parts of Jack’s skin. “I wanted to meet you, Mr. Winter.”
“Fuck,” he choked out, losing himself in laughter. “Mr. Winter would be me dad, if I had one. Never met the bastard, so you can just call me Jack. What name will I be panting out for you, darlin’?”
“Ava,” she said, and killed the ember of her fag in a Jesus-shaped ashtray. Even her name was posh and fantasy. Jack put his chin on his forearms and smiled at her.
“Pleasure’s all mine, Ava. Or will be.”
“Mr. Winter—Jack—if you’d stop for one moment, you’d discern I’m not interested in you. At all.”
Jack felt his hard-on die a quick death underneath his ripped denim. “Ah,” he said. “Then why’re you wasting me time, exactly, luv?”
“Like I said”—Ava produced a pack of Turkish cigarettes and a silver lighter engraved with the initials DVB—“I wanted to meet you.”
“And why’s that, if not for a quick roll?” Jack demanded. “Any bloke can see you’re not here for the music. If the outfit weren’t a tipoff, the fact you’ve had a bath is. Bloody Scotland.”
Ava’s lips twitched. Jack consoled his loss of a fine, taut piece of groupie with the fact that she was at least pretty, and he’d at least made her smile.
“My friends in the city told me you were a mage. One who’s good at what he does,” said Ava. “And when I found out you were playing a gig here in Edinburgh, well …” She lit the fag with a hiss and pursed her full lips, full like fruit bursting with juice. “I figured you were just the man for the job.”
“Someone’s been speaking out of school,” Jack said. It was probably Lawrence, that chatty bastard. He was only too happy to brag of his association with Jack fucking Winter to his little sewing circle of white witch mates, who in turn spread hideous rumors all over the fucking isle like they were some magic edition of Hello!
“Don’t be angry with your friends,” Ava said.
He snorted. “You’re assuming I have any.”
Ava narrowed her eyes. Jack saw when she turned the lighter that her nails matched her lips, both kissed with false blood. She blew smoke out through her nose. “I can be very persuasive.”
Jack looked her up and down obviously, taking in the breasts pushing at the sweater, the rear bumper that some would consider generous, but he considered fully serviceable. “I’ll just bet you can, sweetheart.”
“Do you ever pull yourself out of the gutter?” she demanded. Her brown gaze flashed daggers at him.
“No,” Jack said, helping himself to one of the fags. When he reached for the lighter, Ava’s hand shot out like an arrow off a longbow and closed on his wrist before he could touch it. “I rather like my gutter,” Jack said softly, meeting those melting eyes. “I know all of the rats that live in it.”
“I can give you money,” Ava said. “I can give you anything you want. I need someone who won’t fuck up, someone who’ll do a sensitive task for me.”
Jack got up at that. “Sorry, luv. I’m not a hire car.”
“Wait,” Ava said. “Don’t you even want to hear my terms?” She leaned forward, a move that told Jack he very much wanted to hear her terms.
“I’m not an idiot, Ava,” he said. “It’s going to take more than a smile and a flash of the goods. I’m nobody’s rent boy.”
Rich came to the curtain and jerked his head, Aren’t we going yet?
Ava trailed her finger down Jack’s arm, past the line of razor cuts, road map to the twin cigarette burns on his wrist. “Been meaning to get a new tattoo,” Jack said. He pulled his arm away.
“I’ll make you a very good deal,” Ava said. “For a very easy job. I promise.”
“Demons deal in promises,” Jack told her. “I don’t like deals. In my experience, somebody always ends up fucked.�
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Ava stood. She was taller than Jack had imagined, tall enough to look him in the eye. “Funny you should mention demons.” Her mouth curled, a little more blue smoke escaping.
“Not much about those buggers that calls forth a laugh,” Jack said. Ava grinned at him—sly, and full of secrets, like an old fortune teller.
“Despite that, demons are exactly why I need your help.”
Ava took them to a pub, a hole in the ground in a basement suite where water dripped from exposed pipes and you could smell the bog no matter where you sat.
Dix grunted as a droplet of condensation splashed into his pint. “You take us to the nicest places.”
Gavin was sitting ramrod-straight, trying to avoid touching anything in the pub, including his glass. Rich was in the van, sulking.
Ava tilted her head. “Not to your liking, Gavin?”
“I’m going to get a disease, I know it,” he muttered, and sunk into his army jacket up to the chin.
“Give us some privacy, lads,” said Jack. “Won’t be a moment to straighten this out.”
Dix hit Gavin in the shoulder. “Come on, you great pair of girl’s knickers. I fancy a smoke.”
They left, and Ava let the door shut against the cool past-midnight air before she spoke. “You haven’t tried to exorcise me, so you must have dealt with demon problems before.”
“No,” Jack said. “Haven’t tried because it wouldn’t do any bloody good. You’re as human as they come, luv. The flesh is weak, through and through.”
“You don’t know that.” Ava didn’t have a drink, just a smug grin. Jack was reminded of a fat and well-groomed black moggy.
“You stay around the Black long enough, you learn to tell,” Jack said. “Not knowing for sure can mean your skin. Your soul.”
It was a pat excuse, a weak one at that, but Jack rubbed his forehead and gave Ava a wan smile. It was better than admitting to possessing the sight. Psychics were freaks, deranged and babbling at you in the entrance to the tube station. Mages, by comparison, were pillars of society.
By comparison.
Ava’s aura furled back from her, red shot through with jet, like a solar storm or a sunrise that sailors would abjure. There was something dark riding with her, something curled on her shoulder to be sure, but she didn’t make Jack dizzy as a two-day bender just to look at her. Definitely human.
“Fine, maybe I am,” she said. “But my … problem isn’t. I guarantee you she’s as demon as they come.”
“Name,” Jack said, draining his pint to the dregs. He knew what Lawrence would say—Fuck off you crazy bird. But Lawrence wasn’t around, and Ava was pretty.
Demons aside, the night could be going in worse directions.
“You think I know the true name of a demon?” Ava snorted. “We flesh-puppets aren’t privy to that sort of information.”
“You’d be surprised what people cough up when they’re dying. Desperate. Pick your D-word.” Jack pushed his glass at Ava. “Another, luv, and get me a plate of food, if this place has any that won’t land me with botulism. If we’re going to talk about demons, I’m going to need something to eat.”
Her face glowed. “So you’ll do it.”
“Did I say I would?” Jack said. “Americans. So quick to jump their little six-guns. Get me another pint and order me a fry-up and we’ll discuss it.”
Ava narrowed her eyes. “Why? You were going to say no before.”
She could read him well. Jack remembered that for the future, when he had the sneaking suspicion it would bite him in the arse. “You interest me.” There, frank and open. “Not many humans deal with demons. Fewer call them a ‘problem.’ Must have a pisser of a story behind that.”
Ava pushed back her chair and went up to the bar, passing the bartender a wad of notes. He grumbled, but went in back and turned on the grill.
Jack watched her, pulling a fag out of the air and touching his finger to the end. A moment before sweet, blessed tar filled his lungs. He should say no to Ava. Say no and walk away before he heard anything that would get a demonic boot in his arse, or outright killed in the street. Mages already had a short enough lifespan in the scheme of the Black, the harsh and gleaming world of magic they and a host of nastier creatures inhabited. Mages were forever damned to playing both sides, standing in the Black and the mundane, belonging to neither.
Just say no. Jack snickered at himself. Here he was, as if he were fourteen again, seeing ghosts and scared of the dark, and not a man who survived, who walked in and out of light and shadow like passing under a bridge.
The good: Ava meant money, a change from hours on the road, nights in clubs that smelled like piss and lager, kips in places that smelled worse.
The bad: he could end up in a backstreet with his heart torn out. Death in bloody Scotland.
Jack liked music, liked the life. He liked fronting the Bastards and having time with people who weren’t aware of the Black any more than your average housewife.
But he admitted he liked the prospect of meeting Ava’s demon even more.
“It’s simple, really,” Ava said. “I just need you to get me into the demon’s city.”
They were walking through narrow streets watched over by silent shops and terrace flats. Jack had convinced Rich, Dix, and Gavin to get bunks in a hostel. Rich complained, but Jack paid. Tomorrow they’d go back to England and he’d be here. But if it went sour tonight, Jack liked the idea that he wasn’t alone.
He took a forkful of eggs from the takeaway container in his hand and chewed before he answered. “Never simple. Not with demons. Especially the type that have their own cities.”
“What’s your problem with demons?” Ava’s heels made a sharp heartbeat on the pavement.
“What’s your romance with them?” Jack said. The fry-up tasted of year-old grease and stale ingredients, but he was starving and Ava’d paid.
“Demons and I go back a long way, and I don’t have any illusions about them,” Ava said. “They took away someone I cared very much about. Let’s leave it at that.”
“What sort of deal did you make to get ’em back, then?” Jack glanced at her as he licked bacon grease off his fingers.
Ava rounded on him. “I didn’t make a deal. My soul is my own.”
“Ain’t that a fucking bit of poetry,” Jack snorted.
Ava took his container away and tossed it into a passing bin, then looped her arm through his.
“Aren’t you curious? To know what type of girl I am?”
“I already know,” Jack said. “Dangerous. Dangerous to a bloke like me.”
“Look. I need to speak with a particular demon at a particular time, and I’m not welcome. I need a guide who knows the Black and has neutral associations with the demon contingent. That’s where you begin and end. Sound dangerous? In the least?”
“I didn’t say the job was dangerous, luv,” Jack said. “Said you were dangerous.”
Ava stopped him, with a hand on his chest, and pressed two fingers against his lips. “Take the job and you’ll see I’m a pussycat.”
She was warm, much warmer than the air around them. Jack curled his fingers around hers. “As long as this demon of yours will keep until morning.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Morning will be fine.”
Her skin was warm, and she smelled like heat and smoke. She tasted like magic burning.
Ava pushed him against the brick wall, the rough mortar scraping Jack’s neck. Her fingers closed over the spot and her other hand tugged his belt, heavy with nail heads, free.
Jack pushed under her sweater, the cold of the night and the heat of her skin combustible. He let her pull his head down, bruise her mouth against his and smiled around them at her gasp as his cold fingers trailed up her back.
Ava jerked his fly free, her hand freeing his cock from the confines of his jeans.
Jack tugged back against the hand on his neck. “You know I would have done the job without the favors, luv.”
Ava kissed him again, biting his bottom lip before she let go and slid down his chest to waist level. “Shut up, Jack. That’s not why.”
Jack decided arguing any further would be pure idiocy. Her lips pressed down on him, and Jack’s head snapped back against the brick, fingers knotting in the dark corn silk of her hair.
Her tongue, rough and insistent, stroked and curled around him, and Jack’s throat caught, the only sound that escaped a groan as Ava moved.
He watched her head bob fore and back, hair gleaming under the streetlamps, each stroke of her mouth hotter and firmer and harder to resist than the last. Jack rolled his eyes upwards, to the rusted terraces and swaybacked rooflines of the mews.
Ava’s tongue trailed along his underside, curled and sucked like she was savoring something sweet, and Jack shut his eyes, breath scraped from his throat. He put a hand on Ava’s head, fingers tangling in her hair, trying to beg her to slow down, though he doubted he could actually speak. Ava didn’t take his message, more insistent with every stroke, and Jack swore he could feel her grinning.
Her free hand hooked fingers over the waistband of his jeans, pads stroking against his hipbone, and it was that small, oddly intimate gesture that pushed Jack over the edge. He pushed his hips forward, and Ava let out a mewl as she allowed it, sticky lip gloss and spit and her frantic, hungry movement combining so that Jack let out a shout. “Fuck!”
Ava raised her eyes, alight with mischief. She sat back on her heels, tucked her hair behind her ear, and stood. She traced the crescent of her lower lip with her thumb. “Serviceable, I take it?”
Jack started to laugh as he buttoned himself up. “You know exactly what that was, you wicked tease.”
Her mouth quirked up. “I do indeed.” She slid a hand into his. “Come on, Winter. Let’s get you to bed.”
When he woke up, in the hostel bed on a mattress that barely deserved the title, the sun was just a possibility, a little ghost-light and shadow beyond the broken window shade.