Bone Gods

CHAPTER 36

Nearly three weeks later, Pete met Felix Patel at the Dogstar on Coldharbour Lane. She watched him check the bar from the door, eyes scanning the entire room before he made his way to the two-top where she sat beneathed the arched window. The sun hit the blue paint on the bar’s exterior walls and reflected harsh silver light across Patel’s face.

“What is it?” He didn’t even take his coat off, just sat and folded his hands as if he were in the interrogation room rather than a bar.

Patel had deep grooves under his eyes, and Pete detected stubble on his formerly pristine jawline. London to the north had settled down, the isolated riots, murder, car accidents, and random acts of mayhem wrapped up, but London to the south was still evacuated in wide swaths, the British army running backup to the Met. Ollie had gone back to work the week before and declared the entire city, “A fuckin’ mess from top to fuckin’ bottom.”

Pete didn’t bother even trying to explain. The cataclysm that had rolled outward from the Black was gone, but the twilight world was even worse off than the daylight one. Lawrence had become a virtual hermit. Pete hadn’t even tried to go to the Lament and check in with Mosswood—she figured if the Green Knight was ever going to speak to her again, it would be on his own terms. She wasn’t going to force the issue.

“You look tired, Felix,” she said. “Can I buy you a pint?”

“I’m on duty,” Patel said. “And I haven’t ruled you out in the McCorkle matter, Ms. Caldecott. If that’s what you brought me here to ask.”

“McCorkle and Gerard Carver were schoolmates,” Pete said. “Ask Ollie for the details from his case file, but Carver was caging artifacts from his job and selling them on the black market. He sold McCorkle a reliquary, Babylonian. Carver’d promised that particular item gratis to a bloke named Nicholas Naughton.”

Patel narrowed his eyes. “This means what to me?”

“Naughton is wanted in Devon for the murder of his brother Danny,” Pete said. “He killed McCorkle, and Carver, and I wager if you wander down the lane to Southwark, you’ll find some talkative mates of his in a club called Motor.”

Patel stood up, chair shoving back with a screech of wood on wood. “Caldecott, I don’t like you. I don’t trust you, and I don’t believe a word of that shit you spout to Heath. Until I say otherwise, you’re still a suspect.”

“But you’ll look into it?” Pete said. “You’ll talk to Heath about Carver?”

“ ’Course I bloody will,” Patel snapped. “Unlike you, I’m a good fucking police detective.”

Pete stood as well and put a tenner on the table for her drink. “That’s all that matters, then.”

Patel pointed a finger at her. “Don’t cross paths with me again, Petunia. Unless you want me to get a lot more interested in your business than is comfortable.”

“When you find Naughton, Sergeant, do me a favor,” Pete said. Patel held the door for her as they left the Dogstar.

“And what’s that?”

“Tell him to enjoy it while it lasts.”

She watched until she was sure Patel was in his unmarked and driving back down the lane toward the Lambeth station before she walked back to McCorkle’s flat.

Naughton wouldn’t last in prison. He’d been unseated as the baddest man on the block. He might skate on McCorkle’s murder, but not on Carver’s. And if the other inmates of Pentonville didn’t get him, sooner or later an angry ghost he’d had a hand in creating would. Without his protection hexes and thugs in their matched suits, Naughton was just another sad bastard grasping at magic. He’d get sent on soon enough. What was waiting for him in the thin spaces was worse than anything Pete could wish on him while he was alive.

She waited on McCorkle’s steps until one of his neighbors came out, and slipped through the door. The third floor was still taped off, but Pete ducked under it and stood in McCorkle’s living room. No one had bothered to clear away the blood, and the room was musty and stank faintly of rotted things. Flies buzzed around the bin in the kitchen, and the taps dripped out of sync.

Pete found it behind the kitchen wall—a patch of plaster half-covered by a cheap generic poster of Tower Bridge, curling at the edges. The plaster had been painted, but the patching was rough. She searched McCorkle’s drawers until she found a tenderizing hammer, and smashed the plaster in three short blows.

Nergal’s reliquary was smaller than she’d imagined. A stone jar, rough and round, chipped into a circle by hand, covered in incantations and covered over with a bronze seal that had oxidized from the thousands of years it had lain untouched.

The magic crawled around it, faint but there, holding a tiny snip of the essence she’d felt from the thing that had followed the dragon out of the pit.

Pete rolled it in a tea towel, put the tea towel in her bag, and left, not bothering to lock the door behind her. While she rode to Regent’s Park, she went over all the reasons this was a terrible idea. And all the reasons she had to do it no matter what.

Dreisden answered the door at the Order, and looked her up and down before he stepped aside without a word. Juniper was in the sitting room, reading with her feet tucked under her. Pete tried to sneak by, but Juniper saw her and jumped up.

“Oh, Petunia. I was so worried. So many awful things have been happening.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Couldn’t agree more.” She moved toward Morningstar’s study again, but Juniper stopped her.

“Pete.” She chewed on her lip, a mirror of Pete’s own nervous gesture. “I know you hate me,” Juniper said.

“I don’t hate you, Mum.” Pete held up her hands. “I don’t want to reminisce and forgive. I just want to talk to Ethan and then leave and never see any of you ever again.”

“I made a mistake,” Juniper said. “When I left. I had to leave your father, but I thought that meant leaving you girls, too, and I was wrong. And I wouldn’t have seen that without the Order, because the people I was with before didn’t give a toss about family or any of it. So hate me if you want, Pete, but please stop thinking the Order is the reason for it.”

“Mum,” Pete said. “You and I never got along. We are never going to get along. And that is truly the least of my worries right now.” She knocked on Ethan’s door. “Don’t give it another thought on my account, please.”

“Pete…” Juniper started, then stopped. “It’s all right. I hope you’ll believe me. In your own time.”

“Give me sixteen years or so, and I just might,” Pete said.

Morningstar opened the door to his study, and looked at her for a moment, eyebrow cocked. “Do you have something for me?”

“We talk in private?” Pete said. Morningstar stood aside, and shut and latched the door after her.

“I don’t see anyone with you. Anyone responsible. Why is that, Petunia?”

“Because I gave him to the cops,” Pete said. Morningstar’s face went red, and he started for her, hands balling into fists.

“I warned you. I warned you and I wasn’t fucking playing games, you stupid little girl.”

Pete pulled the reliquary from her bag. “I did bring someone, though. Maybe not the hand holding the knife, but the responsible party nonetheless.”

Morningstar stared at the thing, not moving, not blinking. A tremor passed through him. Pete knew instinctively that this was the closest she’d ever see Ethan Morningstar to fear. “Fuck me,” he said softly.

Pete dropped the thing into his hand. “Can’t think of a better bunch of nannies for the reliquary of Nergal.”

Morningstar turned it in his hands. His face was pale and his fingers were quivering. “I didn’t want this,” he whispered.

“Well, it wants you,” Pete said. She shouldered her bag. “And I’ll assume that makes us fucking square.”

Morningstar still clutched the reliquary, as if he couldn’t decide between throwing it or embracing it. “The Order considers this a service,” he said. “If you need anything in the future, you can call on me.”

“Yeah.” Pete stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “You can do me a favor, Ethan.”

“Anything,” he said.

“Never bloody come near me or anyone I know again,” Pete said. “And this isn’t a request, just advice—stop wearing that stupid fucking hat.”

CHAPTER 37

Jack was still in hospital. Lawrence had moved him closer to their flat, but the stab wound had been deep and he’d been in and out of the ICU with complications. Pete felt rude checking her watch while Dr. Abouhd was drawing her blood, but all he did was raise an eyebrow.

“Visiting hours,” she explained.

“I see,” he said. “Anyone special?”

“Nobody you know,” Pete said. Abouhd filled the vial and handed it off to a nurse. She’d had as many visits in three weeks, and repeated this process before. The third try didn’t fill her with much hope that Abouhd would actually find anything.

“Still dizzy?” he asked her. “Still feeling sick?”

“Ever since a couple of days before I came in,” she said. Abouhd looked inside her file, shut it, and faced her, rolling his stool back and forth a bit with one foot.

“Let me ask you, Pete—when was the last time you had a period?”

Pete held up her hands, fighting the urge to leap up, since she was in a backless paper gown, panties, and not a great deal else. “No,” she said. “No, that’s not … I mean, that can’t have anything to do with this. I think I may be anemic.”

Abouhd gave her a regretful half-smile. “Your results were positive. I’ll do another test, of course, to double-check, but I wanted to tell you in person.” He took out his pen and scratched on his prescription pad. “If I can ask—you’re not married, are you?”

“No.” Pete could hear her heart beating, but nothing else. A baby. Jack’s baby. But not Jack’s fault. That one was on her.

Abouhd said something, and then rolled closer and tapped her on the knee when she didn’t answer.

“Eh?” Pete said. She should have known. Should have been careful, cautious Petunia. Especially since she knew Jack, and knew his typical MO when it came to women. Should have at least glanced at a bloody calendar.

“I said, do you have any idea what you’re going to do?” Abouhd said. “There’s several lovely people you can speak to if you need help with the decision…”

“No,” Pete said. “I know who I need to speak to.”

“All right.” Abouhd handed her the scrip. “I wrote you up for vitamins and a few other prenatal goodies, but Pete…” He sighed and then stood. “I’m telling you this as someone who’s known you a while, not as your doctor. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do here. I know you’ll be fine.”

“That makes one of us,” Pete told him. Abouhd put a hand on her shoulder.

“Good luck, Petunia. You can get dressed.”

Pete took her time, now hoping she’d miss visiting hours. But when she’d made a follow-up appointment and waited through two full lifts, there were still ten minutes on the clock.

All right, Caldecott. Stop being a fucking coward. Go upstairs, tell him, and take care of your business.

The traitorous part of her whispered that Jack never needed to know. She was barely a month along. Nobody would ever need to know. She couldn’t deal with being pregnant, never mind having a baby. What sort of mother would she make? She’d be shit, even more shit than Juniper.

But then she’d have to look at Jack and wonder what he or she would have looked like. The Hecate had given her a chance.

She was at the door to Jack’s room, and his eyes fluttered open. They’d taken him off the heavy opiates as soon as possible. Former junkies didn’t get morphine drips. Jack winced as he tried to sit up, but he grinned at her.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, luv.”

Pete sat in the hard plastic chair next to the bed, and gently pushed him back to his pillows. “None of that,” she said. “You pop your incision, you’re going to be in here another month.”

“Incision,” Jack said. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

“Why?” Pete said. “You can do better?”

“I’m calling it the great bloody hole in my guts where my girlfriend stabbed me with a fucking knife,” Jack said. “I think it’s catching on.”

Pete didn’t smile, and Jack’s mouth turned down. “What?” he said. “I didn’t bloody do it, whatever it is. I can’t get out of bed without taking a header, so I swear, I’m innocent.”

“I want to tell you,” Pete said. “But I’m … well.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m scared, Jack.”

“Luv.” Jack sat up, then grabbed at his abdomen. “Fuck. Come over here before they have to operate on me again, will you?”

Pete stood, and sat on the very edge of his mattress. Jack tugged her closer, and even though she knew it wasn’t the time, Pete put her head down on his chest. She could hear his heart beating, steady and strong despite the weight he’d lost and the paleness in his face.

“I know we haven’t talked about it,” Jack said quietly. “But I don’t ever want to fucking talk about it, and I don’t have the fortitude to make myself do it right now, so please don’t look at me like that.” He passed his fingers through her hair before wrapping them around her shoulder. “I’m fucked. I went down the rabbit hole and I know it. I can’t believe you’re even here.” He sighed, chest jumping. “You have every right to bloody hate me.”

“Jack.” Pete sat up, and looked at him. “Stop it. Right now.”

His eyebrows drew in. “What?”

“The fucking pity party,” Pete said. “We’ve all been desperate, Jack. Yes, you fucked up. But that doesn’t give you the right to decide whether I hate you or not. That’s for me. And I don’t. So change the fucking record.”

Jack stared at her for a moment, then pulled her into a kiss, harder and longer than she would have thought him capable of in this state. “What the fuck did I ever do to deserve you?” he mumbled against her lips.

“Shit,” Pete said, and did smile then. “You’re just fucking lucky.” Jack let her go, stroked her face.

“Tell me what’s wrong then, luv. I’m here. I’m not going. I want to talk, about you at least.”

Pete put her hand over his, curled their fingers, held them in her lap. She allowed herself to contemplate for one moment if this turned out all right. She could have a baby, and have Jack. Have him accept what had happened and stay, rather than pulling his usual act of vanishing when things got the slightest whiff of a commitment about them. They might not be in love, or even on firm ground with one another, but they could work this one thing out. The third time could be the fucking charm.

Or he could run off as usual, leave her alone and pregnant with the Black growing around London by the day, and her bargain with Belial hanging above her head like a crushing weight. He could call her a slag or a whore, he could shout, and tell her it was all her fault.

She could have the baby and be no better than Juniper and Connor, one disappeared and the other so present he nearly suffocated her.

Jack could relapse and use, and be the same junkie father she’d seen a dozen times over on the Met: sad-eyed kids, no money, no sort of life.

She and Jack could be a lot of things, Pete realized. But she wasn’t psychic, and she couldn’t see the future, and she didn’t bloody want to. It would be her stupid choice, and Connor had at least given her that much. She could step up, and she could make it when it counted.

Pete squeezed Jack’s hand and moved closer to him on the bed. “Good,” she told him. “Because we’ve got lots to talk about.”