Bone Gods

caught her dressed in short skirts and smelling of lager and smoke.
    “ You, ” Irina said, catching sight of Jack. “You’re no better, are you? Just the crow hag’s rent boy, bringing bad black trouble like rot wherever you go.”
    “To be fair,” Jack said. “ ’M more like a high-priced escort. Talent like mine’s too good for streetcorners.”
    “Go away,” said Irina. “The lot of you.”
    Pete, seeing she was about to slam the door, said the phrase beloved of pushers the world over. “We can pay you.”
    Irina hesitated, peering up at her. Her face was framed by a red scarf, as if she were merely an overgrown doll. Her eyes, surrounded by crow’s feet, were nearly clouded over. Irina was blind as a bat, but she moved with the alacrity of a school-aged athlete and snatched Pete’s wrist.
    “Ohhh,” she cooed. “So we’ve brought a proper good and true vestal virgin with us to sweeten the pot, have we?”
    “I’m not very good,” Pete said. “And I’m hardly a virgin. Sorry to disappoint.”
    Irina carried on stroking as if Pete hadn’t spoken. “Her,” she said. “You two wait out here.”
    “Like Hell we will,” Jack said.
    Pete put a hand on Jack’s chest, feeling angry breath under the scarred leather. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not like this is my first time on a buy.”
    Jack’s jaw ticked, but he only favored Irina with a glare. “Anything happens, you won’t have a corner black and secret enough to hide from me.”
    Irina muttered something that sounded as if it were Russian and defintely derogatory before dragging Pete inside. “Your man seems to think he’s in charge.” She chuckled.
    “He often does,” Pete said, and yanked her hand free of Irina’s grasp. “No offense,” she said, when the old woman’s face crinkled. “You’re a bit clammy.”
    Irina began pulling sacks and boxes from one of the overflowing shelves on the shop wall. “What you need? Love potion? Fae nectar? We got some hydroponic hash my son Mikel grows. Mellow and sweet. Keeps you dreaming even when you’re awake.”
    “If I wanted pot,” Pete said, “don’t you think I’d find an easier way to get it?”
    Irina stopped throwing her merchandise around. “Let’s see your money, then.”
    “Let’s see if you have what I’m after,” Pete countered. The first rule of illicit transactions was not to appear eager. Don’t flash your cash. Don’t look vulnerable, or strung out, or more trouble than you’re worth. Above all, don’t act like a cop.
    “All right, all right,” Irina said, flapping her skirt and settling into an armchair at least as old as she was, and twice as decrepit. Her accent went from being raspy East End to a carefully educated diction, her syllables a bit too round to be native to British soil. “Obviously, you’re not here to waste my time. I’ll bring the usual dance to a halt, and you tell me what’s so important you bring the Green Man and that to my door.”
    “Fair enough,” Pete said. “I’m after nightsong orchid.”
    Irina sat forward, painted eyebrows wiggling. “That’s hardly a gateway drug.”
    “I’m not a gateways kind of girl,” Pete told her. “Can you get it or are you wasting my time?”
    “Of course I can.” Irina sniffed. “But I’d dearly love to know why you want it.”
    “I’d love to know why you pretend to be a crusty old Romany with a Cheapside accent,” Pete told her. “But I’m polite enough to figure out it’s not my fucking business.”
    Irina started to laugh. “A little thing like you can’t afford to be acting like she’s tougher than a coffin nail,” she said. “Somebody’s going to cut that smile right off your pretty face.”
    She rose and went to the beaded curtain that hid the back room from Pete’s view. “Harvesting what you want is specialized. Wait here.”
    Pete did as she said, and when the curtain clacked closed, she took the opportunity to look around the room. Aside from the tarot spread—in no particular order, just all of the most terrifying of the Major Arcana arranged to scare customers—there was the usual jumble Pete would expect from a second-rate magic shop. But it seemed like so much clutter carefully obscuring the face of something else, like a stage set. Irina’s outrageous costume alone would tip off any respectable mage that the place wasn’t worth their time.
    She went to the shelves, moving things aside until she could see the wall. The plaster