Bone Gods

possible.”
    “I’d really like to know what he was supposed to be an offering for,” Pete said. Naughton wouldn’t ask for a worthless corpse. He’d have a plan. A backup, a workaround, because he was a clever bastard. Much cleverer, Pete had to admit, than she currently felt.
    “Soul cages are made for nothing nice and cuddly,” Nasiri said. “Take my word on that.”
    Pete took her hand off Carver. She looked at her feet, her plain ordinary boots that had the same plain ordinary scuff on the left toe and the same broken lace she’d knotted at least fifteen times rather than replace it. The tile beneath was still spotted with her blood, and she stooped and wiped it up on her fingers. Jack had taught her not to leave her blood lying around. The less friendly citizens of the Black could have a party with the blood of a Weir, the kind that ended with her naked body in several dozen pieces.
    “I can’t give this to him,” she said, realizing rather sadly and anticlimactically that she couldn’t simply do the quickest, easiest thing to get Ollie out of harm’s way and take Naughton off her back.
    “Pete,” Jack started, and when she turned to him with a hard look he tilted his head at the door. “Can we talk about this?” he murmured.
    Nasiri gave a grunt. “My office is a lot warmer,” she said. “And I’ve got to go find a medic and have this knee looked at before it’s the size of a melon. I won’t rat you out.”
    As soon as the door to Nasiri’s cramped office shut behind them, Jack turned on her. “What the Hell are you playing at?”
    “I can’t,” Pete said quietly. “If half of what Nasiri says is true, I’m sorry, but I can’t let Naughton even have a chance at finishing his ritual. It’d be like handing a vial of anthrax to a disgruntled mail worker and telling him to throw a bloody party.”
    “Oh,” Jack said. “You hear a spooky story and suddenly you’re Joan of fucking Arc? Ready to ride into battle?”
    Pete sank into Nasiri’s chair, unable to keep upright any longer. Her head joined the throbbing chorus of her body, and the dizziness hadn’t abated. “You’re being a cunt.”
    “ I know what men like Naughton are capable of when you try and make them blink,” Jack said. “And so do you. You weren’t half as heroic a few months ago. What’s changed?”
    “I found out you’d sold your soul and then you got your arse hauled off to the pit.” Pete prodded her head, feeling the pulpy spot where she’d grow another bruise. “Kill or be killed. That’s the rule you gave me, Jack, before you fucked off to play with your good friend Belial—”
    Jack’s snatched her by her front, lifting her out of the chair and slamming her backward into Nasiri’s sagging shelves of medical references and bulging files. An avalanche of A4 slithered down on Pete’s head as the wind went out of her. “You know nothing about Hell,” Jack hissed. “And you know fuck-all about what happened to me while I was there. Fucking got it?”
    Pete felt that her eyes were wide and her expression slack, in the liquid moment when she could only stand frozen. She hated that split second, the one that let a crack of pain show through the stone-carved nonexpression she’d cultivated over a hundred dead bodies and a thousand unpleasant encounters with live men. Because this wasn’t simply another drunken hooligan or pompous DI who thought a shaft and balls gave him automatic reign. It was Jack, and he was looking at her as if she were a complete stranger.
    The falling feeling in reality lasted only a heartbeat, and then Pete’s blood sped up, and she wriggled free and hit Jack in the nose with her closed fist, not caring if she broke him or herself. Jack cursed and lost his balance, knocking into Nasiri’s desk and sending her laptop to the floor. “Fuck!” he shouted. Blood dripped down his face, landing on his chin and soaking the faded fabric of his shirt.
    “You bastard,” Pete told him. “You think I had an easy time of it alone? You think I was welcomed into your old circles with open fucking arms?” She grabbed up a handful of papers and flung them at Jack, crippled birds that landed in a snowdrift around his boots. “You fucking abandoned me, you piece of shit, and I’m supposed to put up with your crap now because you’re what? Lazarus with fucking post-traumatic stress?”
    Jack snatched at her hand and Pete yanked it away. If he touched her she was going to