Bone Gods

hold on to the shelf with one hand until his knuckles were white.
    “I’m sorry, Pete.”
    She shrugged. “Let’s just figure out how to get Ollie out of his mess, shall we? We can cry and fling things later.”
    “Or never,” Jack said. He lit a cigarette and dumped out a box he found on a high shelf onto the floor. Odd bits and bobs of crystal and feather landed in a heap, along with what looked like a round game board, painted with an unblinking eye at the center and tiny boxes, barely larger than Pete’s thumbnail, each inscribed with a character that may have been part of a language once, many thousands of years ago.
    “You can scry for lost things,” Jack said. “Never looked for a soul before. What a grand new adventure I’m on.” He grabbed up a handful of the other things in the box, a flat black stone and a ragged gray and silver feather.
    “Thought you needed a map to scry,” Pete said. She didn’t particularly like looking at the board. The lines were too close and many, imbued with a sense that they might simply crawl away at any moment.
    “That is a map,” Jack said, banging it onto the low table by his elbow. “Of Hell.” He went to the kitchen, fishing in drawers until he found a roll of DIY twine.
    Pete traced the lines with her finger. The top of the board was curiously sticky, as if the varnish on it wasn’t quite dry. She decided she didn’t want to know. “Of course it is. Silly of me to wonder.”
    “Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean there’s no rhyme and reason there,” Jack said. “You know how demons love routine and regimenting.” He sat down at the table across from Pete, letting out a sigh as he crossed his legs. “We really need some more chairs in here.”
    “Awfully domestic of you,” Pete said. Jack fixed the stone and the feather to the twine. The stone was perfectly round with a hole drilled in the center. It swung free when Jack let the twine unfurl from his fingers, like an eclipsed moon hovering above the concentric circles that made up the maps of Hell.
    “Fuck domestic,” Jack muttered. “Pushing forty is too old to be sitting like a bloody hippie.”
    Pete had seen Jack scry before, though never with such conventional media. Once, memorably, there had been a severed head involved. He stretched out his arm, letting his eyes fall closed. The string trembled a bit and then fell still. Pete watched him, feet tucked under her. Jack had been skinny the entire time she’d known him, but he’d sprouted wiry muscles since she’d seen him last, blue veins standing out against his pale skin.
    As she watched him, Pete saw something that made the air catch in her throat. Jack’s forearm was pale, pristine, and unmarked. But not just his ink had vanished. The track scars that had stippled his skin like a black constellation were gone. Even his wrists were bereft of the thin white lines that ran up the inside of his arm, neat and precise in the way only a razor could mark your flesh.
    Before she could look and see if he was different in any other way, Jack’s eyes popped open and he let the stone fall with a thunk. “No joy. I can see him a bit but he’s a slippery fuck. That bone magic Naughton threw on him feels like taking a power drill to the skull.”
    Pete put out her hand. “Let me try.”
    Jack blinked at her. “You serious?”
    “Please, Jack.” Pete let her eyes roll. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen it done enough times.”
    He handed over the stone, lips quirking. “Look at you. Necromancy, scrying—soon you’ll be throwing me over and pushing out Naughton at his own game.”
    “That isn’t funny,” Pete said.
    “It is a bit,” Jack said. “Remember when you thought magic was something gits in top hats did on a stage?”
    When Pete took the stone, their fingers touched, and Jack’s were icy cold. The prickle of his talent this time felt like a static shock, not like the usual warm awakening of nerve endings his touch brought to her talent. The owl-eyed woman’s words jumped into Pete’s head. He’s not the Jack you know.
    “You all right, luv?” Jack said. “I really was just taking the piss. I know you’re not a sorcerer.”
    “I’m fucking exhausted and my best friend is being held hostage by necromancer,” Pete told him. “Forgive me if I’m not turning cartwheels.”
    “Pete…” Jack said, but cut himself off, his jaw ticking. “Forget it.”
    Pete let the stone dangle from her fingertips,