Bone Gods

dialed her sister, MG, in Sussex.
    MG and Pete hadn’t been on what she’d call civil terms since Jack had shown up, the first time. MG hadn’t taken kindly to her boyfriend stepping out with her teenage kid sister, and hadn’t taken kindly to Pete for reciprocating the interest. Pete had always thought that considering all the New Age crap MG preached, she’d be able to forgive and forget, but it wasn’t so, and they’d barely spoken after Connor had died. After a few rings, a voice mail box clicked on and continued the tradition.
    “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