Demon Bound by Caitlin Kittredge Page B

beyond the beaded curtains and head-high stacks of magazines. Her shawl and layers of skirtflapped behind her and enveloped him as she threw her arms around his neck. It was rather like being embraced by an enthusiastic parrot. “Jack fucking Winter! Always knew you weren’t dead, you sly skinny bastard!”
    “Elsie Dinsmore,” Jack said with a grin. “You still look beautiful as when you wore your hair three feet high and wrapped yourself in DIY tape.”
    She laughed from deep in smoke-scraped lungs. “You’re a flatterer, you are, but it’s Elsie Boote now. Haven’t used that shite stage name in ages.”
    Elsie took Jack’s face between her hands, turned his head from side to side. “But you’re still Jack Winter, aren’t you?”
    “Some of us are rubbish at moving on,” Jack said.
    “Well don’t just stand there like a knob!” Elsie cried, grabbing his arm. “Come have yourself seat.
SIMON!
” she bellowed at earsplitting volume. “Put on the kettle for our guest and get some of them chocolate biscuits I bought on a plate.”
    Jack let himself be gently dragged into a sitting room smothered in tapestries and furniture made entirely out of pillows braced on wooden frames. Herbs hung in dusty clusters, so thick the ceiling beams looked like furrows of earth. Dozens of birdcages blocked the light from the window, full of dead birds with glass eyes that stared balefully at Jack.
    The only bare surface in the entire space was a round table covered in purple velvet. A box made of carved bone sat at the center, scenes of nymphs and harvest orgies parading around the edge of its lid.
    Elsie settled herself with a groan into an armchair opposite the table. Jack perched on the edge of the pillows and tried not to lose his balance or sneeze at the overwhelming cinnamon incense that blanketed the room in a sticky amber miasma.
    “Jack, Jack, Jack.” Elsie grinned at him. “Tell me everything about you. Last time we were together . . .”
    “Leeds, 1997,” Jack said.
    Elsie nodded. “You were down the rabbit hole, lovie.” Her gravel-pit voice and avalanche of platinum hair, the two assets that made her the post-apocalyptic stunner vocalist for the Razor Babies a dozen years before, were both present now but greatly diminished. Her hair was long, knotted, going gray at the roots, and she’d covered herself in the same garish gypsy getup as her snug house.
    She was a far cry from the girl who wrapped herself in tape and cut it off with razor blades throughout the set, for certain. The shine was still in her eyes, though, and the smirk still on her lips. Elsie hadn’t lost her fire and Jack was relieved, because he needed something burned.
    “Only climbed out recently,” he admitted. “Spent too many years in Wonderland, I suppose.”
    Elsie shifted her bulk, which had grown considerably in the intervening years. Jack supposed that was fair—he’d diminished nearly as much.
    “I don’t think you’d be here at the family sprawl on a social call, once I’ve considered.” Her mouth turned down. “You’d never come by just to see old Elsie getting on.” She snorted. “Then again, neither would I.”
    Simon skulked in and set down a tray of tea and biscuits.
    “Your mum and dad gone away, then?” Jack asked. Simon simply stood, in his overcoat and fingerless gloves, staring dumbly at Jack.
    “Far away,” Elsie said. “Mum passed nearly five years ago now. Dad followed her.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “No, you ain’t.” Elsie hooted. “You weren’t sorry when Death crossed your path, Jack. Not once.”
    “Things change,” he said shortly, and turned his worst glare on Simon. “You need something, my son, or are you just holding up that bit of wall?”
    “He’s harmless,” Elsie assured Jack. “Got a snip of talent and not much of a brain. Simon, go feed the cats and take in the wash. There’s a fog brewing up.”
    Simon shuffled away like an enormous carrion bird, and Jack turned his