Bone Gods

immaculate navy suit and shined shoes, even at the late hour. Dark curls slicked back from a high forehead, exposing delicate features, but Pete wouldn’t have crossed him. This one walked like the coppers Connor had detested—as if he were the sheriff of all he surveyed, protecting the villagers from the wolves.
    “Who the fuck,” Ollie said, summing up Pete’s feelings, “are you?”
    “DS Patel, from Lambeth,” the tall detective said, extending a hand. “I caught your man’s call-out.”
    Ollie ignore the hand, so Patel turned it to Pete. “You’re Petunia Caldecott,” he said, snapping it back to his side when he recognized her. Pete was so used to the reaction from cops she barely let it rile her. Patel frowned. “Heard you went Section 8.”
    “Do I look like I’m bloody Section 8?” Pete demanded. Patel considered, tilting his head.
    “Felix Patel,” he said finally. “Pleasure’s all mine. I trust you’ll be fine to wait here while I allow DI Heath a look at the scene. Ask one of the plods to bring you a cup of tea.”
    Pete opened her mouth, but she would have been speaking to air. Patel had already measured and dismissed her. His eyes were back on Ollie. “It’s bad, Heath,” he said. “I’m sorry to say it. Very bad.”
    “I’ve worked MIT,” Ollie grumbled. “I can take it.”
    “It’s not a murder,” Patel said, gently as he could. Pete watched Ollie’s face go from bulldoggish to kicked in the space of a breath.
    “You sure you’re ready?” Patel said, putting a hand on Ollie’s shoulder. Ollie tucked his chin down into his collar, a gladiator tucking into armor and preparing to take a bad hit, and glared at the spot where Patel touched him. “Right,” Patel said. “Come along.”
    “I’m coming,” Pete said. She moved to Ollie’s shoulder, so he could feel her there.
    “You’re not a DI any more,” Patel said. “And even if you were, you’ve no jurisdiction on this side of the river. I’m doing DI Heath a courtesy for his partner’s sake.”
    “For fuck’s sake, Patel.” Ollie’s voice was rough, echoing off the concrete entryway of the flat block. “She’s likely a Hell of a lot more well trained than your fresh-faced schoolboys here.”
    Patel locked eyes with Pete for a moment, and she stared back, unblinking. She got it—Patel was a DS, probably looking to make his name. A cop suicide was a dodgy enough matter. If he let the Section 8 former DI wander around his scene, his halo would aquire a little tarnish.
    Patel surprised her, though, by sneering and then nodding. He led them up the steps of the Victorian on the left, up another set on the inside, to the top floor. McCorkle’s flat was the entire attic, the grand house carved up into smaller spaces on the cheap. Fresh plaster hit Pete’s nose when they crested the stairs. McCorkle’s door stood open as the white moonsuited figures of crime scene techs went about their business within his living space.
    Former living space. McCorkle wasn’t living there any longer, at least in his own skin. The moment Pete came within a few feet of his door, though, she could tell that something was still very much present in McCorkle’s flat. It started as vague unease, prickles like she felt before a storm broke over the city, all of the ions in the air cycling against her skin, and the pressure got faster and stronger as Patel lifted the tape for Heath, speaking to the crime scene unit but paying her no mind. Pete scrubbed at her forehead. She was just bruised a bit on her sixth sense, that was all. First the Hecate and then the lost library. She was uneasy being here, in the remains of the life of a man she hadn’t liked much in the first place. That was why she felt fingers on skin, the lightest of touches on her other senses, whispers through the Black just out of her hearing.
    Patel stopped her at the tape and gripped her arm hard with a set of pincer-like fingers. “You touch anything, say anything—you sneeze while you’re inside this room—and you will need a team of specialists flown in from Norway to remove my boot from your arse.”
    Pete looked at his hand on her, back at him, hoping the suggestion he should mind his personal fucking space came across clearly in her withering glare. “Don’t you worry, DS. I leave the brilliant deductions to Batman.”
    “I know all about you,” Patel said, low. “None of that psychic bullshit, gone to a better place, messages from the back