Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“Cheers.” Pete walked slowly leaving the mortuary, keeping her face calm and trying not to let the throb of her heart vibrate her. She hadn’t imagined the thing in the doorway—her skin was still prickling with the fever of close proximity to the dead, and not just the dissected skinhead on the table. Whatever had tried to push through had been of the Underworld, and it had wanted her badly enough to manifest in broad daylight, inside a building full of steel and computers, anathema to ghosts. Wanted her , not just whatever member of the living it happened on first. Pete wagered that whoever they were, Gerard Carver’s killers knew she was in the mix. It took her until the tube station to shake off the cold.

Lawrence didn’t call the next day, or the next, and Pete had begun to think he never would. She was set on going into the city for a few hours and trying to finish off some more of Jack’s unfinished business—bills, council taxes. The transfer of the dubious deed to his flat would have to wait until he was declared legally dead rather than simply missing. And for that, Pete would have to file a report. Have to explain why she’d waited six months. Have to have a reason and for that reason, make up a lie her brain simply didn’t have the capacity for at the moment. English property law was nearly as complex as the symbols that marked Gerard Carver’s corpse, and Pete could wait until she, too, had shuffled loose the mortal coil to deal with Jack’s estate.

Her mobile trilled at last while she was at the DIY shop finally buying new bulbs for the sodding chandelier. Pete shoved the mobile between her ear and shoulder as she handed over a tenner to the store clerk. “It’s about bloody time, Lawrence.”

“Who the fuck is Lawrence? And what the fuck do you mean, “you’ve seen Mum?” Pete’s sister MG screeched.

“And hello to you too, Miss Morning Glory,” Pete said. “Been into the ceremonial gin, have we? You sound a bit pissed.”

“Nobody has seen Mum for years ,” MG shouted. “And why you, out of everyone we know? Why London? She hates London.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Pete sighed. She stopped on a corner of the pavement, letting the Whitechapel Road crowd flow around her, coming and going from the pubs and money-changers and newsagents next to the Whitechapel tube. “Don’t have to tell me you two were the fast friends, MG. You think I didn’t notice Mum didn’t bother with me if she could help it, even before she took flight on her broomstick?”

“She called me a few months ago,” MG said. “Babbling shit about reconciliation and Jesus bloody Christ and probably John fucking Lennon for all the sense she made, but actually dropping in on you? What the Hell is going on, Petunia? I’m so upset by all this I haven’t even been able to do my normal readings, never mind communicate with my spirit guides.”

“What happened to Cthulhu, or whatever tentacled horror that commune of yours worshipped?” Pete asked. “Thought they frowned on strapping on a scarf and reading tarot for the locals.”

“Oh, fuck off,” MG sighed. “The commune was rubbish. I’ve been living in Sussex for five years. My boyfriend Gil owns an esoteric shop, and I do readings. I’ll have you know it’s very lucrative.”

“I’ll be sure to send Gil a congratulatory bouquet,” Pete said. “Did Mum say anything specific to you? About the reconciliation?”

“Who could make sense of that closeminded Jesus ’n’ friends shit?” MG said. “And you—are you still a bloody fascist copper, goose-stepping in good order like Da?”

Pete lifted her eyes for a moment, asking whoever might offer it for patience, and then tried to sound happy. “Lovely talking, MG, but I’m afraid I’ve got more pressing matters, like dropping a frying pan on my foot. If I see Mum again, is there a message I should pass on?”

“Why you ?” MG said again. “You said it yourself. She didn’t even like you.”

Pete made her free hand into a fist. “Goodbye, MG. Blessed fucking be.”

She leaned against the outside of the DIY shop and took some theoretically relaxing breaths. So her mother was serious about the Order, serious enough to call up her sister and try to engulf her in the fold. Pete didn’t know why she was surprised—MG had been Juniper’s favorite from the get-go. Which wasn’t hard, since she was older, and interested in all the things Juniper thought girls should be interested in, namely boys and looking pretty to catch one. Pete, in that respect, had been a grave disappointment.

Her mobile trilled again and she nearly pitched it into the path of an oncoming bus, except that Lawrence’s name came up on the screen. “Please tell me this is good news, because otherwise I’m going to start kicking small, fluffy things,” Pete said.

“I got a place,” Lawrence said. “You close?”

“I can be,” Pete said. “I’m near the tube.”

“Okay,” Lawrence said. “Meet me at Kensington High Street, but make it quick. These types, they don’t linger for long. They do the damage and move on.”

“I’ll be there,” Pete insisted, shoving her way down the steps of the tube station. Once, she thought she’d been followed by another man in a black coat, but he got off in the city and Pete rode the rest of the way to Kensington alone.

She met Lawrence on the high street, a place Pete had always considered London as the outside world thought of it. Narrow streets, uneven pavement, quaint shops full of posh artifacts, begging for Hugh Grant or Colin Firth to pop out from amongst the antique books and obscure oil paintings and sweep you off your feet, into a charming adventure full of eccentric side characters with amusing accents. As far from the real city as one could get and still be in it. Lawrence waited in front of one of the few closed-down shops in view, jiggling his left foot and habitually checking his watch. Pete figured from the stares of the well-heeled passersby that she looked out of place as he felt. Neither of them belonged to storybook London, and unless they were rock stars looking to snap up a row house, nobody in Kensington wore army boots, black canvas pants, and a Penetration shirt with the neck cut out. Pete returned the stares of a pair of helmet-haired biddies with a snarl before she reached Lawrence.

“This is not where I’d expect some kind of shadowy memory-eater to hang his hat. Its hat. Whatever.”

Lawrence shrugged, a bit jerkily. He was nervous as a scalded cat, and Pete wished he’d listened to her and just stayed home. “This is where they say to go, this is where we go. Or we could just forget the whole thing. Like I been sayin’ we should.”

“We’ve come this far,” Pete said. “What’s a little divination between friends?”

Lawrence mumbled something that could have been either a prayer or an impressive string of curses, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “In there, then.”

The closed shop’s window held a globe painted with drawings of constellations, a dead and mummified fern, and an impressive amount of dust. The fading gold script across the glass read simply CURIOSITIES.

“Remember what we discussed, and keep your trap shut,” Pete said. “You’re jumpy enough without chatting up a storm.”

“Fine by me. We go in there, I blind, deaf, and mute. Don’t want none of what he’s selling.” Lawrence hunched inside his army coat, managing to look small even though he had a good half a foot on Pete.

A bell chimed, musical and out of place when they entered. The interior of the shop was as musty and cluttered as the window was bare. It wasn’t a comfortable sort of clutter, to support the cultivated air of the mysterious that so many antique shops in Kensington worked to maintain, but the books cramming the cases and cascading across the dust-covered counter were the genuine article. “Fuck me,” Pete murmured. “Are they all grimoires, then?”