Bone Gods

tracks. “Wouldn’t happen to be Babylonian, would it?”
    Pete knew she’d gone stiff, from the pang in her shoulder where she’d landed on it badly years ago, chasing a shoplifter along the Camden locks. “How did you know that?” She had to be careful. She was alone with Morningstar, a big man with a gun who wasn’t afraid of or even adverse to violence. If she accused him of having a bit more of a hard-on for spellcraft than was officially accepted by an upright outfit like the Order, she had no doubt Morningstar would put her through the nearest wall.
    “Wipe that look off your face,” Morningstar said. “I told you. It’s a sign.”
    Pete stayed still, but she did him the grace of turning around and not saying anything snide. There was a window behind Morningstar, but it only faced the brick of the next house. She probably couldn’t break the glass without a running start. The front door was far away. At least Lawrence would eventually call Ollie if she didn’t come back out.
    “A time ago, when I was searching for Charity, I happened across a book.” Morningstar produced a key and used it to open a small compartment in the wall. He pulled out a small volume and opened it with great care. “It was just a scribbling, a transcription of a Babylonian grimoire that some speed-addled mage had set down while he was high and touching the face of Ishtar,” Morningstar murmured. “But I know it’s the truth. Thirty years, Miss Caldecott. I’ve built my life around this page, right here.”
    “Brilliant,” Pete said. “Care to share so I can get on with my day?”
    “ The serpent winds the world ,” Morningstar read. His voice was so soft that Pete had to step closer to hear it, overshadowed by a ticking clock and someone moving about in another part of the house. “ The serpent devours the world. The bone gods dance in dreaming. The serpent becomes the world. ”
    Morningstar shut the book and placed his hand on the cover. “Nearly three thousand years ago, someone in Babylon predicted the end of days, Miss Caldecott. And it’s here. It’s all around us. And you—you’re right here. With us.”
    Pete found her mouth was dry when she tried to speak. “That doesn’t mean anything. There’s hundreds of prophecies back in my flat, in Jack’s books. You can set about as much stock by them as by some bloke on a street corner yelling about the lizard men.”
    “It’s true,” Morningstar said, “and some part of you believes it, or you wouldn’t have come straight here.”
    “I came here because you’re irritating me,” Pete said. “And I’m working the Carver thing because I have to. You or any of your trenchcoat brigade come at me again, and I will take it personally. You read me?”
    “You’re going to get in over your head unless you let me help you,” Morningstar insisted. “And for that, you need to accept the truth of those words.”
    Pete jabbed a finger into Ethan’s chest when he got inside her personal bubble and tried to do the soothing hand-on-the-shoulder move favored by teachers wanting too badly to be liked and perverted older men playing on daddy issues.
    “I don’t need protection,” she said. “I’m not a shy baby bird left helpless because I don’t have the great Jack Winter watching me. I don’t need another set of minders. And if I did, your psychotic mouth-breather brigade would be the very last I’d ask.”
    Deciding she’d probably said enough to cause Morningstar to want her dead, even if he hadn’t before, Pete turned around and left.
    “Petunia, I’m serious…” Morningstar started, but she held two fingers over her head.
    “Sod off, Ethan!” She slammed the front door on him, cutting off the oppressive silence of the Order’s headquarters for the buzz and hum of the street.

CHAPTER 12
    Ollie rang just as Pete was running a bath, and she shut off the water, sitting on the edge of the tub. “Yeah, Ollie?”
    She unlaced her boots, cradling the phone and letting the steel toes thump to the tile.
    “Tell me you have something for me,” Ollie muttered. He sounded as if he were muffling the phone. The gentle hum of the incident room was missing, and Pete heard water trickling.
    “Ollie, are you in the loo?”
    “Newell found out,” Ollie said. “Tore me up one side and down the other. Pete, just tell me you found something before I’m out on my arse and back in Yorkshire, writing traffic citations to combine