Caitlin Kittredge - Bone Gods

“This is Morning Glory Caldecott. If you are interested in a tarot reading or having your chart done, please leave your name and details at the tone.”

Pete massaged the point between her eyes. “MG, it’s your sister. I saw Mum last night, and we need to talk about that. I’m at the same number still.” She dove back into the bag for her Parliaments as soon as the call was done, and remembering she was empty, went to her jacket on the stand. She needed a smoke or, fuck it, a stiff drink after the morning she’d had.

As she passed under the flat’s iron chandelier, possessed of only one working bulb to begin with, it blew out in a shower of sparks and glass shards. “Fuck,” Pete muttered, snapping her lighter so she wouldn’t trip over the piles of books and break her neck. Shadows danced away into all corners. Pete raised her lighter to pick her way between Jack’s things to the fuse box, but movement on the ledge outside the tall windows in the sitting room made her pause.

The windows were ran nearly floor to ceiling, fat sills for sitting protruding into the room. In the grand tradition of straight men who’d spent their adult lives living alone, Jack didn’t have any curtains covering the arched, bubbled glass. Pete raised the lighter, the small flame flickering in the draft. She’d met things come in from the cold before— bansidhe that Algernon Treadwell had sent after her and Jack. Cu sith , the hounds of the Underworld, sent to bring lost souls to their final rest.

Pete backed away from the glass. If she could get to the bedroom, she could find something made from cold iron, metal passed through fresh running water that would put a dent in whatever was trying to get in. There was no question that something was trying. Pete’s entire scalp prickled and her skin was both icy and burning. Feeling the encroachment of magic was akin to constantly seeing something from the corner of your eye, with the difference that when you turned to face it, the thing would still be there.

She took another step back, ancient floorboards popping under her foot. If she could get to the bedroom, she’d be all right.

That was big fucking if, wasn’t it? Humans ranked somewhere around three-legged cows in the food chain of the Black. Demons, poltergeists, Fae, creatures of the Underworld—all of them with a burning reason to wipe the slate on Petunia Caldecott. Really, the question wasn’t if she could be faster this time, but when the next time would roll around.

She stopped backing up. Whatever was out there wasn’t going to find her piss-scared and hiding under Jack’s mattress. She shut the lighter and stood in the shadows to let her eyes adjust. The shape outside was small and gray, clinging to the limestone ledge with slender talons. The owl stared at Pete, umoving, wings flexing to keep its balance as the thin gray daylight turned it into a black silhouette.

“Shit.” Pete shut her eyes and felt her pulse pounding in her temples as the claustraphobia of magic retreated. A bird. Just a bloody night bird, disoriented in the daytime. “You scared the Hell out of me, you nasty thing,” she told it.

You should be scared, Weir.

Pete lost her grip on the lighter, and it clattered to the floor, skidding away to glint in the shadow under Jack’s tatty armchair. “What the fuck do you want?” Not a bird. Something in the skin of a bird, a voice passed through the throat of a bird, but not a bird. The speakers came to her most often in her dreams, when she was more susceptible to psychic intrusion, but more and more her talent tuned her in when she was awake, hearing the voices of things that even mages like Jack couldn’t normally discern.

The owl pressed closer to the glass, its pale eyes never blinking. You know where your loyalties must lie, Weir. What binds you by blood. The guardian of the gateways will have her warrior, and when she calls you to the field of battle she wants you prepared.

“I…” Pete shook so she could feel her fingertips fluttering against her jeans. No matter how many times it happened, how many of the old creatures of the Black spoke through her talent, it still made her sick and faint. “Why me? Who is it this time?”

You know, Weir. You’ve seen me, even if you didn’t know me. You’ve been in my charge since the day you found the Black. A child of the crossroads.

Pete stared into the gold eyes of the owl. She’d never found owls unpleasant, quite the opposite. Their faces and their thin handlike claws were comforting. A small owl had lived in their back garden before Juniper had run off, and MG had painted a whole series of mechanical owls, lit by coal and fire, for her art levels.

But the eyes—those she’d seen before. The golden eyes of the cu sith , the girl all in white who’d visited Jack just before he’d lost his last fight against Belial. The owl’s eyes weren’t the eyes of a night bird. They burned like novas in outer space, ancient and only now reaching a spectrum of human understanding. “You were with Jack,” Pete said, almost too quiet for her own ears, never mind the owl outside.

I am the goddess of the gateway , it agreed. The Hecate, the three Fates of your life and every other. And you feel it happening, Weir. How the Black is changing. You feel the poison rising on the tide.

“Yes…” Pete realized she sounded stoned, high and dreamy. “I feel the tide.” She was cold, couldn’t feel her fingers or face any longer, as if she were losing blood from a mortal wound. An insidious presence, the source of the cold, suggested the voice of the owl was right. The Black had always been a dangerous place for those like her, but now it was different. Necromancers were working spells in the open, murdering people without pause. Demons were snatching souls out of the air like a hawk strikes a dove. The dead were restless and awake. Jack was locked in the vaults of Hell. “Yes,” Pete said again, still echoing in her own ears as if she’d chased a handful of Vicodin with a cup of absinthe. “I feel the tide.” She couldn’t move, couldn’t even try to force a scream as the Hecate’s voice and cold, bloodless presence filled the reservoirs of her talent and held her in thrall like the worst of the old silver screen vampires.

You must do what is required, Weir. Before the tide drowns all things, you must do what you were born to. Keep the seasons turning. The dead resting. The gateways impassable. If the gateways fall, the sea rushes in. This, you must never allow.

“What…” Pete swallowed, throat thick and her air slow. “What do you ask of me?” she mumbled at the owl, even though what she really wanted to do was chuck an especially heavy grimoire at the bloody thing and drop it in a heap down into the alley for attacking her with her own talent.

The owl spread its wings for balance, never blinking its gold eyes as it stared through her. What has always been your born task, Weir. Kill the crow-mage. Stop the Hag.

“I don’t understand…” Pete started, but in a flash of silver feathers the owl took flight.

You will.

Pete came back to her own body as if she’d been thrown, going off balance and sitting down hard, her ankle twisting under her. “Ow!” she shouted. “Fuck me!”

The window ledge was empty. The light in the chandelier was buzzing happily on. Her Parliament had gone to ash in the tray, and her ankle throbbed like a small, determined rodent was gnawing it for sustenance. Pete put her hands on her face, still numb as her skull throbbed with residual power. She was chilled and damp, as if she’d just stood in a rain. She let herself be still for a moment, just feel the floor under her and the warmth returning to her skin.