Bone Gods

“Then you know,” he breathed, and Pete had to lean forward to hear, “that I know so, so many ways to make you hurt that won’t leave a single mark.”
    Morningstar paled at that, blood startling crimson against his sallow skin. “If you kill me,” he said, tone measured, “there will be no corner of the earth safe enough. My brothers in the order will track you and crush you.”
    Jack stepped back, spreading his arms. “Then come find me, darling. You seem to know right where I am. I’d delight in leaving a few of you bastards twitching and pissing themselves in my wake.”
    Ethan straightened his coat, and produced a handkerchief to dab at the blood on his face. He put his pistol back in holster with a smooth motion and then looked at Pete. “I’m sorry you’ve chosen this, Miss Caldecott. Your mother will be, as well. We’ll pray for you.”
    “Do me a favor and save them for yourself, Ethan,” Pete said, making a shooing motion. “My soul’s no concern of yours.”
    Morningstar sniffed, as if the pair of Pete and Jack were unreasonable children, then turned on his heel and left, holstering his pistol.
    Jack took Pete’s chin his hand, turning her face from side to side. “You all right, luv? Did he hurt you?”
    “Him? Fuck, no,” Pete said. “He might eventually bore me to death, but he’s never put a hand on me.”
    Jack nodded, nostrils flaring as he watched Ethan retreat, coat flapping like an ill omen as he cut a swath through the crush of Mile End. “Good,” he said. “That’s good.”
    “You…” Pete chewed on her lip for a moment. “You seemed to fancy Morningstar about as much as I do.”
    “Eh, necromancers and Jesus freaks aren’t so bloody different,” Jack said. “Fucking fanatics, whatever colors they fly. Frothy-lipped, glaze-eyed tossers, the lot of them.”
    Pete let herself in and held the door for Jack. “Thank you,” she said, after she’d shut it and heard the lock click. At least Ethan hadn’t also violated her home. If she’d come back to find his Puritanical silhouette darkening her threshold, she simply would’ve had to move.
    “Nobody touches you,” Jack said simply, and mounted the steps to the fourth floor.
    Upstairs, Jack surveyed the flat slowly, while Pete took off her coat. “Hadn’t really looked around yet. You didn’t change anything,” he said with surprise. Pete threw up her hands.
    “Where to begin? It’s the fucking Mount Kilimanjaro of paper in here.”
    Jack wagged his head. “You couldn’t bear the thought of it nice and tidy in here, could you? It’s unnatural.”
    Pete dropped her eyes. “That’s it,” she said, the words more acid than she meant. Now that he was here, flesh and blood and warm and smelling how he always had, she felt pathetic. Keeping his things. Not even changing the furniture around. His clothes still in their drawers and closets, even the vintage dirty magazines he didn’t think she knew about in their box on the high shelf in the bedroom.
    She was worse than any of the victims’ families she’d seen. She’d turned the place into a fucking tomb, simply because losing one more bit of Jack would have pushed her past the point of no return.
    Jack dropped onto the sofa, and put his foot on the ottoman. A little stuffing oozed out. “I’d murder a drink.”
    Pete picked up the bottle from the side table, where she’d left it, and Jack took a pull. “Carver,” she reminded him.
    “Yeah, like I said, pulling a soul from the in-between isn’t an apprentice-level trick.” Jack wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
    “Counting on your brilliance,” Pete reminded him. “I’m just the magical spittoon, remember? There for the filling.”
    A line drew between Jack’s dark brows. “Don’t say that,” he told her. “You’re not just some dumpster for whoever wants you, Pete. You know that.”
    “Yeah? You being gone certainly seems to have raised the notion in some of the finer denizens of the Black. I’m becoming downright paranoid every time I leave the flat.”
    “Paranoia’s good at keeping you alive,” Jack said. “Take the insomnia and the facial tics as bonuses.”
    Pete smacked him on the arm. “I do not have facial tics, you wanker.”
    Jack got up and went to his books, running his fingers reverently over their battered spines. “Thought I’d never be back here again. Truly.”
    “Me, either,” Pete told him. She hadn’t meant to, but it made Jack stop moving,