Bone Gods

open the door of the entry table, scrabbling for the heavy torch she kept there for emergencies, but one of Naughton’s men saw, threw her to the ground, and stepped hard on her injured hand. Pete felt small bones go and let out a scream.
    “Naughty, naughty,” the necromancer told her, and tilted his thin face toward Jack. “What do you say, Winter? You’ll come quietly for your little slice of heaven here?”
    “She’s not worth it to me,” Jack said, and if Pete could’ve flinched any harder, she would have. Jack had a hard face, always, the kind of mask everyone who’d grown up poor and smacked around in a dirty factory town manufactured. But it had been just that, a mask. Not like it was at that moment. “You’re not going to coerce me, gents,” Jack said, “and you’re not going to scare me by roughing up some poor girl half your size, so why don’t you just toddle on home?”
    The big one raised a hand. “How about instead we hex you and drag you back there boots-first?” He didn’t wait for Jack’s response before he threw the hex. Jack batted it aside and cracks blossomed in the plaster walls of the flat. The necromancer didn’t play about—the next thing he flung wasn’t a simple hex but a curse that turned the air to ozone and filled Pete’s nostrils with the scent of burnt rubber.
    Jack went down hard, and the necromancer’s next effort bounced off a shield hex that rippled into being before his body. The feedback screamed through Pete’s skull, and she knew it would be ten times worse for Jack, letting his talent flow and his sight absorb magic unchecked.
    The necromancer hit again, and again, and the entire flat shook. The high windows exploded, and in the kitchen Pete heard glasses and plates popping like firecrackers. Sharp-edged snow rained down to pepper her bare skin.
    “You want me?” Jack sneered at the necromancers. “You want that sad little excuse for a soul cage for your boss? Come and get me.” He stepped back, slung his leg over the sill of the shatttered window, and dropped from view.
    The trio of necromancers rushed to the window while Pete stared. “Fuck me,” said the one who’d stomped her hand. “Four stories straight down.”
    “Demons juiced him,” said the big one. “ ’Least that’s what I heard.”
    “Nah,” said the rat-faced one. “Heard he bedded down with the crow woman, got his powers the old, bloody way, like fucking Cù Chulainn or some shite.”
    The rat-faced necromancer jerked his thumb at Pete. “What about her?”
    “Pick her up and take her with us,” the big one said. “Let Mr. Naughton decide what to do.”

CHAPTER 31
    Nick Naughton stroked his thumb over Pete’s cheek. She flexed her hands, the broken one knifing up her forearm. Naughton’s thugs had tied her well, with plastic zip ties that bit into her wrists. “I suppose you think you’ve very clever, playing the holdout game, waiting for your mage to save your arse.”
    “Fuck off,” Pete said. She wasn’t in the mood for creativity, and Naughton didn’t deserve it anyway.
    Naughton heaved a sigh. “Sean, get those off and hold her up.”
    Sean, the hulking necromancer, looked at Naughton with wide eyes. “What if she, yanno, sucks all me talent out of me head? She’s a Weir.”
    “She weights a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, you great frilly girl,” Naughton sighed. “And it’s not as if she’s a bloody superhero.”
    Sean cut the plastic with his flick knife and hauled Pete up, pinning her arms behind her back.
    “So, Petunia,” Naughton said. His thumb stroked her lips. Being touched by him was like being touched by something drowned and dead—slimy, with the scent of damp, mossy places that had never seen the light of day. “What are we going to do about you?”
    “You could let Ollie and me go,” she suggested.
    “It’s good to keep your sense of humor.” Naughton’s hand dropped to her clavicle, the tips of his fingers skating under her collar. “But you and I have a mutual goal now—we both want what the crow-mage took from us. Why don’t you stop treating me as an enemy and go convince him to hand it over. Use your winning smile, and tell him nobody else will get hurt.” He grinned. “I mean, that part’s a lie. I rather like hurting people. But it sounds better that way.”
    “I know what you’re doing,” Pete told him. “Carver. The reliquary. Why you tried to sacrifice him.”
    “We succeeded in sacrificing