Bone Gods

”
    The door to the back room of the shop rattled, and a figure wrapped in tweed that had to be as old as some of the books in the shop appeared. He blinked at Pete through round spectacles, greasy silver hair falling in his face. “Ah. Here you are.”
    “Here we are,” Pete agreed. “Waiting.”
    The man extended a hand, silver rings to the knuckle on each finger, but Pete didn’t bite. The Black wasn’t the place for friendly handshakes. You never knew what you might be touching in addition to skin. “Tyrell,” he said, dropping the hand back. His eyes flicked over Lawrence. “You’re the man?”
    “Hell no, I ain’t your man,” Lawrence snorted. “She’s the one who wanted this. Far as I’m concerned, you can crawl right back into that hole you oozed out of.”
    Tyrell blinked, and then smiled at Pete, slow and crooked as if a rock had rolled back from the entrance to a cave. “How lovely,” he said. “A damsel in need of rescue.”
    “Let’s keep the bullshit down to a dull roar, shall we?” Pete suggested. Tyrell’s tongue flicked out and back in, and he grimaced as if the air tasted bad.
    “Whatever you say, my dear,” he said at last. Lawrence was staring a hole in her over Tyrell’s head, but Pete kept herself reserved and stony. She was willing to be polite, but she wasn’t willing to play the courting games so many creatures of the Black demanded. She’d always been crap at being obsequious, and she wasn’t going to lick Tyrell’s boots just so he could maybe, possibly but probably not give her a scrap or two of new insight into Gerard Carver’s death markings.
    “That is what I say,” she agreed. Drawing out the folder Nasiri had given her, she fanned the photographs on the counter, dislodging dust that was likely older than she was. “You know anything about this?”
    Tyrell coughed and waved at the air in front of his face. “Not here ,” he said. “Are you stupid as well as unpleasant?”
    “Oh, I assure you,” Pete said, shoving the photos a bit closer, “we haven’t even scratched the surface of just how unpleasant I can be.”
    “Pete,” Lawrence said, and gave her a hard squeeze on the arm. “We know how it works,” he assured Tyrell. “But we wanna be sure you ain’t wastin’ our time.”
    “I dare say there isn’t much you could do to me if I was,” Tyrell said, with the peculiar glee of small children who enjoy stamping on fluffy things. “You, after all, are the ones who need something and I am the one who has it.”
    “I don’t need it that badly,” Pete assured him. “I’m not a prissy white witch you can run in circles. If you can’t help me, then piss off and let me find someone who can.”
    “Oh, my dear,” Tyrell said. “You think you frighten me, with your rough edges and your empty threats? I am an Antiquarian. To collect for the lost library, I’ve bargained with things far worse than a kitchen witch and the whore of a dead mage.”
    Pete felt all the joints in her hands and arms tense, and she forced them to relax one at a time. She wasn’t going to give Tyrell the reaction he was fishing for. Wasn’t going to shout and cry simply because he’d called her a name. That was the game, and she wasn’t playing any more. Jack might have risen to every invitation to smack someone in the gob, but she was better than that. And if not entirely, at least better than some cackling creature who looked like a goblin had mated with a Jim Henson puppet.
    Tyrell wilted a bit under her glare. “Far be it from me to judge,” he said, clapping his hands together. “The terms are blood, spellcraft, or trade. Judging by your general air of poverty and the fact that you aren’t a sorcerer, I suppose it’ll be trade.” He traced the marks across Carver’s torso, finger leaving an oily streak on the photograph. “I’ll search the archives and you’ll give me a little something to store in them in return, yes?”
    “Pete,” Lawrence said at once. “Don’t do it. Don’t give anything you got to an Antiquarian.”
    “Witch, kindly shut the fuck up before I disengage your jaw from your skull,” Tyrell said, eyes gleaming. “The young lady and I are engaged in bartering.”
    “All right, all right,” Pete said. “No need to open your trousers, boys.” She tapped the photo with her fingertip. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Tyrell. You better be worth it.”
    “I think you’ll find I’m worth my weight in gold,” he said,