Bone Gods

type to lie down and die. With or without your help, I’m still going to try and stop this from happening.”
    Mosswood gave her a withering glance. “Take your hands off me, Miss Caldecott.”
    “I think you’re afraid that what I’m saying is absolutely true,” Pete told him, “and that when the blood and the dust settles, you’ll be just as dead as the rest of us.”
    Mosswood stared at her for a long time. His eyes were dark and green, the color of a deep forest where no light could penetrate and ancient things without eyes slithered beneath the roots of trees. “By staying with Winter, you’ve signed your own death note,” he said at last. “He’s not the man you think he is, Petunia. He never has been.”
    “You’ll either help us or you won’t,” Pete said. “You can bang on all day, but I don’t have to listen.”
    Mosswood dropped his chin to his chest. “Dare I ask what it is you even want from me?”
    “Nightsong orchid,” Jack said. “I’d get it from my usual supplier, but my lines have dried up. Me being dead and all.”
    Mosswood pointed at Pete. “You know what nightsong orchid is used for, I take it?”
    “She does,” Jack said. “This whole fucking circus is her idea. And that’s the other half. You bringing me back when I’ve gotten what I went under for.”
    “Oh, is that all,” Mosswood said. “I’m going back inside.”
    “Please, Ian!” Pete said. She didn’t dare grab him again, but she went after him to the pub door. “It is my idea,” she said. “It’s the only one I’ve got. I’d make excuses as to why, but know you don’t care, so will you help us or not?”
    The green man took his hands off the door. “I suppose I’ll never be able to live with myself if I don’t at least see how badly this turns out.” He gestured to the alley, pulling his sport coat around him. “Lead the way, Miss Caldecott, to our damnation.”

CHAPTER 25
    The shop Mosswood led them to was the only lit window in a deserted close, golden lamplight spilling in a slow burn on the dark cobbles outside. The buildings around it were ramshackle, window glass destroyed, in one case merely a pile of rubble. Far off, Pete thought she caught the wail of a siren before it faded into nothing.
    Time and memory were fluid in the Black, and she thought she’d never really get used to walking from a nineteenth-century pub to Blitz-era London in the space of a few blocks.
    Mosswood knocked, and they waited. Several heartbeats went by, Pete’s breath misting the chill air. Now that she had a moment, in the stillness, with Jack standing silent beside her, all of the doubts she’d shrugged off in the heat of Jack reappearing came crawling back, like rats and roaches after the lights went out.
    She didn’t stand a hope against Naughton. He was a necromancer and a psychopath to boot. She didn’t stand a hope of hiding from the Hecate, even if she was never going to carry out their bloody orders. And even if she somehow got one over on Naughton and managed to evade the owl-eyed woman, Ethan Morningstar would be waiting for her with open arms and a pair of pliers.
    But there was still Ollie. Still Jack. And because of them, she had to at least try. If she went down kicking, it at least wouldn’t be a bad death. Better than her father’s, pale and wretched in a hospital oncology ward. Better than Jack’s, being led into the fold of a demon while it whispered in his willing ear.
    She straightened her spine as the door opened, though she realized she needn’t have bothered, because the woman before them was so stooped Pete had a good six inches on her. Pete wasn’t tall by anyone’s standards, including her own, so the crone was verging into comical territory.
    “What?” she demanded crossly. “Can’t you read?”
    Pete noticed there was a small notecard jammed crookedly in one of the door’s panes: HRS 11–7 DAILY. SHUT HOLIDAYS.
    “Now, Irina,” Mosswood said. “Is that any way to talk to your dear friend?”
    “Friend?” The woman peered up at him, lip curling back to reveal an impressively white and sharp set of dentures jammed into her wrinkled red lips. “You’re no friend of mine, Green Knight, any more than the Inland Revenue or the bloody clap.”
    Jack let out a snort over Pete’s shoulder. “I think I like this one, Ian. Ex-girlfriend?”
    Ian shot Jack the sort of glare Pete had seen often as a teenager, when she’d tried to sneak in late and Connor had