Bone Gods

he?”
    “Outside,” Pete said. “For some reason he got the notion he wouldn’t be welcomed with open fucking arms.”
    “Idiot,” Mosswood snarled, not clarifying whether he was referring to her or Jack. He made for the door, still holding her. Pete was forced to follow him or have her arm dislocated.
    “Oi!” Pete shouted, digging her heels in. “You’re hurting me, Ian.”
    Mosswood stopped walking and let go of her, causing Pete to slam into him. “You stupid bint!” he shouted. “How dare you come in here as if everything were up in roses!” Lower he muttered, “Keep walking if you want to get out of here alive. You have no idea what that fool Winter has let you in for.”
    Pete gaped, but she forced herself to keep going, throwing a few more token curses for show as Mosswood hustled her outside and then distanced himself, fixing his cuffs and collar and shaking himself like a cat with its fur going the wrong way.
    “I’ve seen some displays of rampant stupidity in my time,” he told Pete. “But that one nears the top of my list.”
    “I’m still not seeing why walking into my local was so offensive,” Pete told him.
    “You walked in knowing full well you were with him .” Mosswood jerked his chin at Jack. “And that, my dear, is not a tenable place to be at the moment.”
    “Ignoring my popularity contest,” Jack said. “I need to speak with you, Ian.”
    “I should hope so.” Mosswood sniffed. “Though it did take you long enough. Jack Winter, the man not content to cheat death once, but a matched pair of miracles. Can’t even be bothered to drop in on his old mates. I see how it is.”
    “Need your help,” Jack said. Mosswood rolled his eyes heavenward.
    “Of course you do. Why else would you turn up, unless you wanted something, Jack?” He pressed his palms together and pointed them at Pete. “I implore you, whatever he’s tangled you in this time, back away. You’ve enough trouble on your own head as it is, getting into that spat with Nicholas Naughton.”
    “Nicholas Naughton can fuck himself with his gran’s tea service for all I care,” Pete snapped. “I need your help, Ian. We need your help. I know you’ve seen what’s happening in the Black, and if you think a bunch of necromancers coming out in the lead will help things, well. Maybe you’ve been sitting in that pub for too many centuries.”
    Mosswood drew himself up, his presence all at once outgrowing his sad tweed jacket and raggedy trousers, dark eyes flaring with power. “I will not be cajoled to throw down my gauntlet on any side. I don’t concern myself with a rumpus between a few humans slinging magic they don’t understand.”
    Jack let out a laugh, short and gravelly as a smoker’s cough. “You and I both know that’s utter shit, Ian. Before you went soft and poncey and started dressing like Harry Potter’s creepy uncle, they used to sing songs about your … involvement … in mortal affairs.”
    “Even if I were inclined to help you, Jack,” Mosswood said, “I can’t. This isn’t my fight. When the dust clears, and the smoke’s gone, and the blood has soaked back into the earth, I expect I’ll continue on much as I have.” He made a motion to go back to the pub. “You, on the other hand … you’ve never been one of the survivors, Jack.”
    Jack muttered a string of curses and then kicked the side of the Lament, hard. “Forget it,” he told Pete. “He’s just another Fae fuck cowering behind his mystique. See how he likes a world made of cinders, with all his bloody trees—and followers, for that matter—a pile of ashes.”
    “Lovely imagery,” said Mosswood. “If you’re quite through with your speech, I was in the middle of a pleasant evening.”
    “You really think you can just sit in your pub while this storm passes you by?” Pete asked Mosswood. Her voice bounced off the alley, rolled back and forth through the ripples of the Black. “You think that you’re going to walk back out of that bloody pub after Naughton finishes what he started and the world will be exactly the same?” She took Mosswood by the shoulder and turned him to face her. “It won’t be. I’ve seen it in the daylight world, you know. Not magic, but drugs and guns and gangs. Naughton’s the tip of the iceberg. Under the water, there are other things. Dark days are coming, Ian, and you won’t be immune. Not you or any of your kind. Not Jack and certainly not fucking me. I’m not the