Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“I can’t help you if you won’t help me,” she tried.

Morningstar stubbed out his fag-end in a saucer. “I had an idea, yes. Gerard was a deep cover member of the Order. He had a talent. He had to use it occasionally. And necromancy … it’s seductive. So yes. I knew about his usage. What I don’t know is why he was killed, and that’s a concern. For you as well as for the Order.”

“I don’t mess with necromancers,” Pete said. “So really, I think I’m safe and sound.”

“All I want to do is help,” Morningstar said, slamming his hand down on the desk. Pete jumped. He stood, jabbing a fresh fag at her. “You, Gerard, everyone who’s gotten caught in the web. Who got tricked into believing in magic. You must get out before it burns you alive, Petunia. Your mother…”

“Leave my mother out of this,” Pete snarled. “You’ve already brainwashed her—is that not enough? You want the whole set of Caldecotts? I’ll have you ring up my sister, if that’s true. She’d let you sell her the Tower of London if you told her it was constructed by benevolent elves from outer space.”

“Goddamn it, this is not a fucking joke to me!” Morningstar bellowed. “I’m saving the good people of the world. They may not see it, but in the end, they get on their knees and thank me in their prayers.”

“Please,” Pete said. She turned to leave, because being ignored wore on men like Morningstar a thousand times more than defiance. “Preach it to someone who doesn’t know what’s really out there in the dark.”

“You think I don’t know?” Morningstar said. “You think I’m a fanatic who condemns from the outside?” He sank back into his chair, and jabbed out the cigarette viciously. “I’ve seen, Miss Caldecott. I’ve seen…” He ran a hand down his face. “My sister’s name was Charity. Even though we were brought up God fearing, magic denouncing, as all members of the Order should be, Charity fell in with the Black. Through our research, she met them. The mages and the sorcerers, the unclean things that crawl below the skin of this city, and she fell…” Morningstar’s jaw twitched. “She died. Nearly thirty years gone, now. I spent nights down there, looking for her.” He shook his head. “She still slipped away. I knew enough about necromancy to bring her back, Miss Caldecott. But I didn’t. I redoubled my dedication, and I found the lost souls when I could, and led them to the light. And that’s why, when I found Gerard Carver, I knew I had to save him. And when he died, I knew that something terrible was stirring in the Black. Because I know my enemy, Petunia, and I know that we’ve precious little time left to stop him. Can you say the same? About anything?”

Pete hadn’t expected a bastard like Ethan Morningstar, with a view narrower than a chimneysweep’s arse and sermons to match, to ever make her feel like shite. Still, she felt her stomach tie in knots as he stared at her, waiting for her reply. She thought about all of the nights looking for Jack in his various drug squats, the hellish week when he’d been detoxing, and knowledge ever after that he was one bad day or bad vision or Hell, stubbed toe away from using again, and she’d have to do it all over. There was never any question of whether she’d go after him when he slipped back down into the Black. She had to. Jack was the one thing she could never be clean of.

“Gerard Carver didn’t deserve what happened to him,” she said. “But he was into some nasty fucking magic, and it’s going to take some time to unravel it all. Meanwhile, may I suggest you stop following me and stop making these little chats necessary?”

Morningstar scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I assure you, Mr. Dreisden was there for your protection. I meant what I said. The Black is out of balance, and what information Gerard passed me was troubling. Necromantic rituals that haven’t been used since before Christ, cropping up again. Horrible stuff. Feisty as you are, Petunia, it would eat you alive.”

All at once, Pete saw Morningstar with perfect clarity. Perhaps it was the absence of the Black at last, after the oppressive weight of the lost library. With her senses quiet, she saw Morningstar as a man past his prime, exhausted furrows writ into a face that was really too young to hold them, at least so deeply. Back bent from stemming a tide he knew would surely drown him, with the next wave, or the hundredth—it was only time, as his strength ebbed and the Black continued to flow just as it always had.

“I’m not doing this for you,” Pete said. “Let’s just get that straight. I’m doing it so you’ll leave me and mine alone. Permanently.”

Morningstar lit his second fag. “I’m going to be honest with you, Miss Caldecott: We’ve been seeking you out ever since you sought the company of Jack Winter, what is it, two years ago now?”

“It was two years,” Pete agreed softly. “Just about.”

“Like I said,” Ethan sighed. “We are not ignorant to the movements of the Black. You have a prodigious talent, and you could use it to do so much good.”

“All due respect, Ethan,” she said. “I’m doing good. You and your Order are doing precisely shite that I can see but sit around wringing your hands.” She opened the door to the main hall. “I can see myself out.”

“This mystery spell that killed Gerard,” Ethan said, wagon-wheel voice serving to stop Pete in her tracks. “Wouldn’t happen to be Babylonian, would it?”

Pete knew she’d gone stiff, from the pang in her shoulder where she’d landed on it badly years ago, chasing a shoplifter along the Camden locks. “How did you know that?” She had to be careful. She was alone with Morningstar, a big man with a gun who wasn’t afraid of or even adverse to violence. If she accused him of having a bit more of a hard-on for spellcraft than was officially accepted by an upright outfit like the Order, she had no doubt Morningstar would put her through the nearest wall.

“Wipe that look off your face,” Morningstar said. “I told you. It’s a sign.”

Pete stayed still, but she did him the grace of turning around and not saying anything snide. There was a window behind Morningstar, but it only faced the brick of the next house. She probably couldn’t break the glass without a running start. The front door was far away. At least Lawrence would eventually call Ollie if she didn’t come back out.

“A time ago, when I was searching for Charity, I happened across a book.” Morningstar produced a key and used it to open a small compartment in the wall. He pulled out a small volume and opened it with great care. “It was just a scribbling, a transcription of a Babylonian grimoire that some speed-addled mage had set down while he was high and touching the face of Ishtar,” Morningstar murmured. “But I know it’s the truth. Thirty years, Miss Caldecott. I’ve built my life around this page, right here.”

“Brilliant,” Pete said. “Care to share so I can get on with my day?”

“ The serpent winds the world ,” Morningstar read. His voice was so soft that Pete had to step closer to hear it, overshadowed by a ticking clock and someone moving about in another part of the house. “ The serpent devours the world. The bone gods dance in dreaming. The serpent becomes the world. ”

Morningstar shut the book and placed his hand on the cover. “Nearly three thousand years ago, someone in Babylon predicted the end of days, Miss Caldecott. And it’s here. It’s all around us. And you—you’re right here. With us.”

Pete found her mouth was dry when she tried to speak. “That doesn’t mean anything. There’s hundreds of prophecies back in my flat, in Jack’s books. You can set about as much stock by them as by some bloke on a street corner yelling about the lizard men.”