Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“One,” Pete told him, “stop calling me Petunia like you bloody know me. Two, I’m not brick stupid. Jack’s told me all about the Order.”

“Oh.” Morningstar’s mouth twitched. “Has he, now? And what does the great Jack Winter have to say?”

“He says you’re no better than sadists,” Pete returned. “Witchfinders, torturers, and frustrated Puritans who should’ve gotten snuffed out with King James. If Carver was your mole, then he got what was coming to him, and I’ll thank you lot to leave me the fuck alone from this moment forth.” The stories she’d heard from some of Jack’s mates about the order were toe-curling. Cotton Mather would have been best mates with every one of them, and probably nip round to the pub after a rigorous day of ducking, skinning, and raping mages and sorcerers and anyone else who found themselves even vaguely involved with the occult.

“Funny,” Morningstar said. “I wouldn’t think Jack Winter would have anything to say about the Order at all. Being as he’s dead, you know.” He grinned to himself at that, and he kept grinning until Pete slammed her fist into his teeth.

She felt skin give on her knuckles and her bones go out of place, but the crunch of Morningstar’s perfect shark smile was satisfaction that overwrote pain.

“Petunia!” her mother cried, leaning down to help Ethan. “What is the matter with you!”

Morningstar spat out a tooth, but waved off Juniper grasping at his arm. “I’d hoped we could be civilized,” he said, getting back to his feet. “But I see you’re determined to find malice in any comment I might make.”

“Is that what I did?” Pete feigned shock. “Because from here it looks as if I’ve told off a stupid cunt babbling about someone who’s name he’s not even fit to say aloud.”

“The Order wants Carver’s killer,” Morningstar said. He hadn’t even raised his voice, and Pete found that a bit worrying. Usually people were a bit more upset when you’d hit them. “It’ll have them and you,” he continued. “You can resist all you want, but the Order is the hammer of God. And God has chosen you to bring Carver’s killer to us. Bad Catholic that you are, I wouldn’t expect you to recall, but God has a way of dealing with those who ignore His summons, Petunia.”

“Oh, sod off,” Pete sighed. “Take your little sorcerous intervention and shove it straight up your arse.”

“Oh, Petunia,” Juniper hissed. “Honestly.”

“You don’t matter to me one drop,” Morningstar told her. “I respect and care for your mother, and I’d prefer not to harm you, but you have knowledge and contacts that we don’t, and you can either use them to deliver us Carver’s murderer, or we will use further measures to show you the error of your ways in choosing to sin against God with your witchery.”

Pete folded her arms, partly to hide her freely bleeding hand and partly to show Morningstar he didn’t frighten her. “I would love to see you try, Ethan. ”

“You live at Number forty-six in the Mile End Road,” Morningstar said with maddening calm. “Fourth floor, front corner flat. Your laundry is sent out once a week and you shop for essentials on Saturday morning at the Tesco Express several blocks away. Your associate Oliver Heath could probably tell me even more, if I asked the right questions.” He tilted his head, hat brim shadowing his stony eyes. “Need I continue, Petunia?”

“No,” Pete said, throat tight and heart jumping. “You’ve made your point.” Do as we say or we’ll hurt you and then move on to your nearest and dearest. Not a particularly original threat, as threats went, but a damned effective one. Pete wished she’d hit Morningstar much harder when she’d had the chance.

“Good. I’ll wish you a pleasant evening, then, and look forward to your findings on the death of the unfortunate Mr. Carver,” Morningstar said, turning and going to his car.

“Mum,” Pete said, grabbing at her sleeve when Juniper made to follow him. “What the Hell are you doing with those people? Do you know what they do to people like me? They’ve killed friends of Jack’s, Mum. And done things so much worse it’d turn your guts inside out. They’re the fucking BNP of the Black and you’re in their fan club?”

“They saved me,” Juniper sighed sadly. “They could save you too, Petunia. If you’d only let them in.” She pressed a card into Pete’s hand. “That’s where I’m staying. I know you’re as stubborn as your father, but if you ever want to have a real chat, I’d love it.”

“I’ll pencil it in!” Pete shouted as Juniper walked away. “Set a date for it in that alternate reality where Pete has a mother who’s both sane and a gives a rat’s arse!”

The BMW revved up its engine and screeched away in response, and Pete slumped against the alley wall, finding a Parliament and lighting it with shaking hands. She exhaled three times before she was able to bring her heart rate down to Regular from I’ll Bloody Kill You.

Dead men in museums, dead men made that way by black magic, and now her mother, demanding she bring the Order’s brand of justice.

“Bloody wonderful,” Pete said, stomping on her cigarette butt hard enough to kill it, had it been alive.

After she’d lit, dragged, and killed another Parliament, the door swung open. Mosswood stuck his head out. “There you are. I was beginning to wonder if it was time to drag the river.”

“I’d be better off, probably,” Pete muttered, watching the blue halo of smoke drift into the gaslamp light, dissolving like a ghost.

Mosswood cocked his eyebrow as he looked her over. “Your hand is bleeding.”

Pete examined her knuckles. They were skinned, bruised from Ethan Morningstar’s teeth, but not swollen, and she could move her hand with little enough effort that likely nothing was broken. “I’ll muddle through,” she said.

Mosswood took his pipe and a box of matches from his jacket, striking one on the brick wall. He sucked on the pipe, coaxing fragrant greenish smoke from it. “Care to talk about it?”

“No,” Pete said, rubbing her second smoke out on the brick next to the scratch from Mosswood’s match.

“Very well. As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” Mosswood said. “That photograph you showed me is disturbing.”

“Yeah?” Pete felt a renewed interest in the idiot Gerard Carver. If Morningstar and the Order were searching for the killer of one of their own, she’d only be their first stop. Someone with more talent and less ability to defend themselves would be next, on and on like dominoes until Morningstar got what he wanted. Fanatics, be they dressed in street rags or thousand-pound suits, operated in much the same way.

Besides, she’d promised Ollie, and now she’d also put the Order of Malleus onto him, unknowingly. She couldn’t very well back away now, even if she wanted nothing more.

“I haven’t seen anything like those marks on your dead man for a long time,” Mosswood said, quieter than his usual acerbic, professorial tones. “And for a Green Man, a long time is a very long time indeed.”

Pete went for a third fag but found herself empty. “Shit. Spit it out, Ian. You immortal types never just spit it out.”

“You’re very impatient, even for a human,” Mosswood said. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’ve got a piss-poor temper, too,” Pete said. “Get on with it.”

Mosswood looked up at the sky, hazy and dark gold from the lamps of London, starless as the inside of a coffin lid. “They’re very old, very powerful necromantic symbols, Pete. The magic they represent is the vilest the human mind can conceive, and I would not wish to meet the person attempting to use it face to face, if I were you.”