Bone Gods

would be easier to hear coming from someone who cares for you deeply.”
    “ We ?” Pete asked. “What we is under discussion, exactly? The Beatles? The Queen? The twats-in-coats collective?” She left the part about Juniper caring deeply for her alone. Morningstar was clearly delusional.
    “ We meaning the Order of the Malleus, Miss Caldecott,” Morningstar said. “At this point, our interests converge, which brings you an opportunity to cease throwing your life away on sorcery.”
    Pete tried not to gawp stupidly for the second time that night. Along with her mother, the Order of the Malleus was a thing she’d thought purely theoretical, and probably gone for good, up until the moment. Non-magicians in the Black, crusaders for a set of ideals that had gone out of fashion with shoe buckles, the Order was something mages used to spook one another, any time somebody with a talent disappeared or died in a way that wasn’t immediately explained. The Order got ’im was the Black’s ’S true, my mum’s cousin’s boyfriend’s seen Bigfoot and shaken his hand.
    In other words, utter shit.
    “You’re pulling my fucking leg,” she told Morningstar. His brows drew together.
    “I assure you, Petunia, I am taking this matter with grave seriousness, even if you are not.” He straightened his coat and hat, the shoulder holster and pistol disappearing like a stage trick. “Murder may be an everyday concern to the scum that populates the Black, but we who are righteous still value human life, and I expect that you, as a copper, haven’t lost your capacity for it just yet.”
    “What are you on about?” Pete demanded, though she had the sour feeling in her stomach that she already knew.
    “Gerard Carver,” Morningstar said, and confirmed it. “He was one of ours. Poor boy. He and we need your help, Petunia.” He sighed and made a small sign in the air, not a cross but an older one that Pete recognized from her time with Grandmother Caldecott as a child, warding off the evil eye. With his shoulders slumped and his cannon hidden, Morningstar would look like any other old man stuck slightly behind the times, strolling down the street. Pete pitied the chav who tried to put the strongarm on Ethan Morningstar. Though not as much as she pitied herself, having to listen to him bang on.
    “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