Bone Gods

drawing the photo away from her and folding it into quarters. “Now, shall we take a look through the archive and see if we can’t find a match to your dead bloke?”
    “Get on with it,” Pete agreed. Tyrell came from behind the counter and wound through the stacks toward a narrow back hallway. Lawrence began to follow him, but he shook his head.
    “You’re too pure and bright to deal with the likes of me. The lady and I are in a bargain, not you.”
    Lawrence flicked him off. “Where she goes, I’m goin’.”
    Tyrell bared his teeth. “Then you’re not going far, are you, boyo?”
    “It’s all right,” Pete said, to head off Tyrell getting a boot through his teeth. Lawrence growled in the back of his throat.
    “You don’t know how far from all right this is.”
    “Lawrence.” Pete felt a headache spring to life behind her eyes and tried to massage it away. “I know this isn’t what you’d do, but you do trust me, yeah?”
    His jaw ticked, but he nodded. Pete leaned in, so Tyrell wouldn’t be privy. “Then trust I know what I’m doing. This isn’t my first shady old man in a dingy shop.”
    “Jack ever heard about this, he’d wring my fuckin’ neck.” Lawrence sighed. “Anything happens, I’m in there.”
    “At the very least, avenge my death,” Pete told him. She joined Tyrell and let him lead her into the back room. It wasn’t much, just a slant-roofed space that had once been a coal shed, filled to the rafters with paper mountains even more vertiginous than Jack’s. Pete’s boot clanked on something, and she saw a metal door, more of a hatch really, set into the floor.
    “Tea?” Tyrell cleared papers away from a kettle encrusted with green minerals sitting on a burner that gave off a blue spark when he flicked the switch.
    “No,” Pete said. Tyrell grunted as he rooted in the drawers of a narrow apothecary.
    “Suit yourself. Tea makes it go down easier.”
    “What?” Pete said, drawing back as far as she could without starting an avalanche of ancient books and papers onto her head. Smothered in circulars from before Churchill was in office was not the way she’d imagined kicking off.
    Tyrell held up a small brown bottle. “You’re not a sensitive, am I right? You want a look at the archives, you take this.”
    “Like Hell I’m drinking something out of a bottle some skeevy old man brandishes at me,” Pete said.
    Tyrell coughed, or perhaps he was trying to laugh and not making much of a go. “My dear, you’re so generous.” He showed his teeth again. “Calling me a man.”
    He busied himself finding a pair of cups and an ancient tin half-eaten by rust, measuring the tea into the strainer by hand. Pete felt her gaze slipping to the front of the shop. She’d lost sight of Lawrence, even though she could hear him rustling around and the sounds of the street outside. Not far at all, but she had the distinct feeling that if she made a break for the door, Tyrell would spring like a great insect and wrap his skinny limbs around her.
    He wore his human skin poorly, as far as things disguising themselves as men went. It sagged around his face, and his hair was matted and greasy, as if he’d climbed inside a homeless man and hadn’t bothered to clean up. His eyes burned too bright, and whatever his real shape looked like hadn’t quite mastered blinking. Tyrell displaced just a little too much air for his size, the thing living under his skin larger than his concentration camp limbs and cavernous face.
    “What should I call you instead?” Pete said.
    “Whatever’s your pleasure.” Tyrell brushed his fingers against hers when he handed her the teacup and added a drop from his bottle.
    “Don’t do that,” Pete warned. She sniffed the tea. It was gave off musty steam and smelled rather like the inside of a pensioner’s purse, but not like poison.
    “I’ll do what I like,” Tyrell said, downing his own cup, sans potion. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t need me, desperately, and I don’t think you’re really in a position to boss me about.” He clinked his empty porcelain against Pete’s. “So drink up, Alice, and quit pretending you’re not quivering with anticipation.”
    “Fuck off,” Pete said, and tossed the tea back in one long swallow. Tyrell banged his cup down.
    “That’s the spirit. Give me a hand with this.” He wrenched at the wheel of the hatch in the floor and hauled the rusted, creaking thing free. Pete peered over the edge and