Bone Gods

or the world does.”
    “No…,” Pete told him. “No, Jack, we have to bring him back. Ollie will die …”
    “I’m sorry,” Jack said. He looked at her and then his gaze darted out to the water. “But this is my price, Pete. This is my task. Deliver the necromancer’s offering to the Morrigan, to use as she sees fit. Or she’ll give me back to Belial and we can never…” Jack drew a breath. “I can never go home again.” He reached out and put his hand on her cheek. “I had to betray you this time, Pete, so that I can be beside you the next. When the storm breaks. Please, just say you understand me.”
    “I don’t understand any of this!” Pete shouted. “How could you, Jack? How could you?”
    Jack moved his hand from her, and shook his head. “At least now I’ll have a little time to try and explain it to you.”
    Pete heard the shriek of scavengers, and Carver snapped his head up. “If your Hag wants me, crow-mage, you better take me now. Otherwise you and I will be standing on this bridge until the Black burns down around us.”
    Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pete. I hope you can forgive me.”
    He put his hand on Carver, and the spirit flickered. The power rose around Pete like the ions in the air before a lightning storm.
    “No,” Pete said. “No, Jack…” Before she could say anything else, there was a sharp tug in her chest, as if she’d been slapped with the business end of a cricket bat. Her head went light, and her vision screwed. “I’m not ready!” she shouted at Mosswood. “Damn it, Ian, not yet!”
    Things went black, the slow swirling black of suffocation, and then Pete’s eyes snapped open and air rushed into her lungs. She saw the ceiling of her flat and smelled tobacco and incense. The honks and rattles and shouts of living London reached her ears. She lurched sideways and vomited, gasping until there was nothing left. Sticky black bile crept across the floorboards.
    “All right.” Mosswood shoved her hair out of the way. “You’re all right, Pete.”
    His hand on her skin started a feverish fire and Pete retched again, feeling the battered sensation of pulled muscles in her abdomen.
    “You hang on,” Mosswood said. “I haven’t finished with Jack yet.”
    Jack … Jack watching her with those icy eyes that were not his own, Jack stealing Gerard Carver’s soul.
    Mosswood moved away from her and crouched by Jack’s head, touching a finger to his brow and murmuring a few words. When he was finished, he blew out the black candle at the head of the circle.
    Pete forced herself up, hands and knees, then only knees, and then, using the sofa as a pulley system, to her feet. The flat swayed and pulsed around her as the remnants of the psychotropic danced through her system like ice water and hot coals at once.
    “You shouldn’t be up,” Mosswood said sharply. “I haven’t opened the circle yet. Anything could have come back.”
    Now that she was awake, it seemed so utterly simple to Pete. Jack hadn’t come back for her. He’d come back at the behest of the Morrigan. He’d never intended to help her stop Naughton’s murdering. He’d just used her to get to Carver, from the moment he’d pulled her out of the pit at the club.
    She’d been a fool.
    Jack came awake when Mosswood removed his hand, choking and letting some of the black stuff dribble down his chin. “Feel as if I’ve been hit by a fucking lorry,” he gasped.
    Mosswood said something to him, but Pete couldn’t make out the words. She felt like kicked shit, her cracked rib still throbbed, and her head was muzzy from the orchid, but she couldn’t be in the same room with Jack any longer.
    “Pete?” She felt his shadow drop over her, and she smacked Jack’s hands from her.
    “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
    “Can I explain, Pete?” he said, swaying when she shoved him back. “Can you at least give me that?”
    “You’ve explained enough, I think,” Pete said. She pointed to the door. “I’d like to leave now.”
    “Petunia,” Jack said, low. “She would have sent me back. She would have given me back to Belial and this was all she asked. As long as it’s not Naughton doing the ritual…”
    “No,” Pete said. “It’s not. It’s the Morrigan, Jack. I’d ask you who exactly that ritual is supposed to call, but it doesn’t even matter. All she wants is death. And you’re helping her do it.”
    “Helping to keep you safe,” Jack mumbled. “If I’m in Hell, I