Free Demon Bound by Caitlin Kittredge

a sensitive who didn’t know his own power, such a place would be unbearable. That feeling, of your head too full and your heart pumping too hard, Jack knew firsthand. It whispered, C
ome to me
like a siren on the rocks, searing the compulsion into a psychic’s mind until the psychic would do anything to make it stop. Booze. Smack. Chisel to the forehead. Jack knew this firsthand, too.
    He just hoped Pete wouldn’t pry into it overmuch. Jack’s head and his heart that still beat out of sequence after the shock in the drive weren’t putting him in a confessional mood.
    The kitchen was no better than the rest of the place—Jack wagered it was even worse than his own pre-war one burner/one kettle setup in Whitechapel. At least nothing furry was alive in his sink drain.
    Pete wrinkled her nose at the mice scuttling around the baseboards and the mold blossoming everywhere else. “He might have had it cleaned before he sent us here. Jesus.”
    “Somehow I think Naughton is more the flashy type than the one to grab a mop, luv.” Jack dropped the tatteredkit he’d packed in a rush back at the flat on the kitchen table. He’d leave the discovery of every casting implement and important bit and bob he’d forgotten in his hurry until tomorrow. “I’m off to find a bed without anything residing in it.”
    “Best of luck,” Pete said, hiding a yawn with the back of her hand.
    “Tomorrow we’ll take a proper look around,” Jack said. “See if this wasn’t all a laugh cooked up by Nancy Lad to make Danny Boy hang himself.”
    “Why would Naughton want his brother dead?” Pete sighed.
    “That’s your department, luv,” he said. “I just exorcise the ghosts. Assuming there are actual spirits and not just bloody great rats in this place.”
    “I’ll go pay respects to the local constabulary tomorrow,” Pete said. “I saw a sign for Princetown back at the last fork. They’ll have proper police to check on the Naughton’s history and see if Nick lied to me.”
    “As if that’d be a bloody surprise,” Jack said, more to himself than Pete. She rolled her eyes at the kitchen ceiling, stained with browned and mellowed continents of unknown origin.
    “This possessive streak is becoming less and less attractive, Jack.”
    “Just looking out for you,” he protested. Pete held up a hand.
    “You made it clear after Blackpool we’re not anything, Jack. So don’t pretend this is for my benefit and not to make yourself feel bigger.”
    The silence ran long and thin, and Jack contemplated whether he should put his fist through the wall or merely break Naughton’s tacky family china against it. He didn’t have much pride, but he had enough to dislike it when attractive women called him on his shite. Jack discarded allof his arguments while his blood beat in his ears. Pete had heard them all at least once. Finally he decided it was simpler to change the subject entirely. Blackpool was months past, and seemed like an eternity. There was no point in standing under the storm it had stirred in him when he could be indoors.
    “Princetown, you say?” Jack rubbed his chin. Had to do something about the beard before he started looking like a fucking hippie.
    “That’s what the sign read,” Pete said, dropping her own luggage. She found and mounted the servants’ stairs, which lead them to a back hall and a warren of rooms filled with boxes, naked dressmaker’s dummies, and camp cots for the eponymous servants.
    The bedrooms for the gentry were numerous and nearly as cluttered.
    “Danny was a bit of a pack rat,” Pete said.
    “Crazier than a bowl of bar nuts, you mean,” Jack said, as they encountered one room filled entirely with back issues of
Penthouse
, stacked neatly by year, and jar upon jar of kosher pickles, also arranged by year.
    “That as well,” Pete agreed. She found the master suite, a great oppressive four-poster dominating the scene like the set of a particularly dull vintage porno film. “This