Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“I didn’t mess with anyone,” Pete said. “They killed a bloke and left him in broad view in the center of the fucking British Museum, so they rather brought this on themselves.” She dug out her mobile and called up the photo. Lawrence’s hand-tended and magically coaxed pot at least blunted the edges enough that the damn thing didn’t give her a migraine, but she still held the mobile gingerly as she passed it to Lawrence.

He whistled, and smoothed his free hand over his forehead. Lawrence was generally unflappable, but his pupils flexed as he examined the photo. He handed it back and took a quick, nervous drag. “This ain’t somethin’ you want, Petunia.”

“I just need to know what they mean,” Pete said, snatching the fag back. “What kind of spellcraft they’re designed for. Who’d know enough about necromancy to carve them into a bloke’s torso in the first place.”

“You think I know?” Lawrence barked a laugh. “I’m flattered you think I run with that kind of crowd, but truth? I’m a white witch. I stay clear of the bone-shaker’s business and gods willin’ they stay outta mine.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re strictly ballroom,” Pete said. “But you did spend twenty years being Jack’s best mate, Lawrence. Don’t take me for an idiot. You at least know who can tell me, if you’re concerned for your virtue.”

Lawrence tipped his head back against the sofa. “Maybe I don’t wanna tell you because I know you’ll get yourself a whole lot more than trouble if you keep pushin’ this.”

Pete set the remains of the fag in Lawrence’s ashtray and mimicked his pose, pulling her legs under her. “Maybe I’ll sit here, smoke all of your good shit, and generally make myself a nuisance until you change your mind.”

“Fuck me!” Lawrence put his hands over his face and groaned. “You gonna get yourself killed just as dead as that dead bastard on your screen, you keep this up, Pete.”

“Duly noted,” Pete said. “Who, Lawrence? You know I can tell.” She pointed to his jittering knee and giggled once. She wasn’t immune to the effects of a good garden witch’s product. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“Normal people be thinkin’ that’s a good thing,” Lawrence muttered.

“Yeah.” Pete stretched, lying out on the length of Lawrence’s decadently squashy armchair. “But you’re not fucking normal, Lawrence. Neither of us. So you gonna tell me, or am I going to park in your sitting room for the evening?”

He lifted his head and glared at her before he sat up and rooted around in the occasional table that held the box. “Might know a bloke has the cipher to your nasty little drawings. Might. I ain’t promisin’.”

“Wasn’t so hard, was it?” Pete asked him. She lit a Parliament to chase the sweet, sticky resin from her lungs and blew a blue halo. “More necromancers, then? When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, sort of thing?”

“No,” Lawrence said, looking at the scrap of vellum in his hand before passing it over. “They worse.”

“Now I’m intrigued,” Pete said. “Worse than blokes who skulk about in the night buggering corpses for a thrill. How disappointed their mums must be.”

“Listen,” Lawrence said. “When Jack and I were much younger an’ less bright, he met this bloke who was … an antiquarian, I guess. Kind of a collector. Except not of anything you’d want business with. Things from the Black, books and worse. Makes Jack’s little cabinet up in his flat look like a set of fuckin’ dollies.” Lawrence rose and went into the kitchen again, but this time poured a dark rum from an umarked bottle into a jam jar and sat back down, swallowing the drink in one go. “Jack traded him for a medieval grimoire, I think, nothin’ special. It was the collector. He were a spook show. Wanted to write down the things Jack saw when he went off into the never-never, when the sight took its hold.” Lawrence looked into his glass as if he wished it would fill of its own accord. “Wanted his … visions, he called ’em, even though you ask me, were just Jack talkin’ his usual brand of bullshit.” He put the glass aside and rubbed his palms, resting his head against his hands and not looking at Pete, or indeed anything in the actual, visible dimensions of his flat. “Found out later he was an Antiquarian, capital A. They beings of—they’re made up of memories, you understand, eat ’em and use ’em to maintain. Collect memories and visions and grimoires and nasty bits in a place called the lost library. Not many souls, even on the black side, think it’s a real place, see? Supposed to be a collection like you ain’t never seen. Holding every manner of dark evil thing that any dark evil man has lost through history, includin’ their minds.” He extended the square of paper toward Pete, and she saw it wasn’t a scrap but a piece of stock, worn round at the endges. “Antiquarian gave Jack this,” Lawrence said. “ In your time of dying , he told him. Wanted his memories and his spells. You call on him with that.”

“And the Antiquarian,” Pete said, taking the card and turning it. “He’ll help me?”

Lawrence folded his shaking fingers into a tent. “If you call what those things do help. Yeah. He do that, and gladly for you, I’m sure.”

“Good.” Pete looked at the card. The lettering was faded to a mellow brown, nearly unreadable, and the words weren’t in a language she understood. “How do we get in touch?”

Lawrence took the card back. “If you’re really serious about this nonsense, I do a bit of divination with the cantrip on this here card and we meet when they say we meet.” He tossed the card on the table and got up, opening the door. Pete took the hint, stopping on the threshold to touch his arm. “Thank you,” she said. “I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t have to.”

“One thing in return for all this, I ask,” Lawrence told her, folding his opposite hand over hers. “I’ll be with you when you talk to these bastards.”

“Oh no,” Pete said immediately. “Lawrence, I couldn’t ask you…”

“Listen.” Lawrence shrugged her off. “I made Jack a promise. I promised him that I always look out for you, and I take that serious. A promise to a mage on his deathbed about as serious as they come.” Lawrence’s mouth quirked. “ ’Course in Jack’s case, I made it in the loo at Paddington Station…”

“Lawrence, that’s sweet and all,” Pete said. “But this is my problem. The last thing you want is necromancers calling at your door.”

“I made Jack a promise,” Lawrence insisted. “You either go with me, or I’ll burn that divination up right now and you won’t be goin’ at all.”

“You’re a stubborn git, you know that?” Pete said. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have backup when she went chasing after a clutch of necromancers who’d already proven they were willing to slit one throat, and Lawrence was large, imposing, and motivated backup to boot. “You can come,” she allowed. “But you don’t flip your lid if you hear something you don’t like, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Lawrence said. “Doubt you gonna show me anything Jack hasn’t already.”

“Very well,” Pete said. “You call me when you’ve got something.” She descended Lawrence’s untrustworthy stairs, boards groaning under her boots.

“You tell trouble,” he called after her, “he comes around, just keep his ass right on movin’.”

“Right,” Pete muttered, shouldering through the front door and back into the rush and hum of the world. “I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

The city mortuary at Wapping was plain and practical, with nothing haunted or ethereal in its makeup, and Pete appreciated that fact. Ghosts were easier to deal with if they appeared among steel refrigerators, faded by fluorescent bulbs.