Bone Gods

said. “Summoning something inhuman and horrible, likely. Sacrificial rites toward same. Cryptic prophecies. That sort of thing.” She could keep herself together for Ollie, but being shut up in the freezer was already making her twitch. Especially since she knew neither Felix Patel nor Jack would find them in time. That Jack would not come at all, until he’d done what the Morrigan demanded of him.
    Pete wasn’t angry with him any longer. She simply felt like the greatest idiot in all of England for trusting Jack in the first place. He’d nearly gotten her killed when she was sixteen. He’d let her think he was dead once before. He’d lied about his deal with Belial, until the demon snatched him from under her nose. Jack Winter had never given her a single reason to trust him. And yet, her chest was still tight when she thought about the casual way he’d turned on her this time. The last time , Pete vowed.
    “Necromancers,” Ollie said at last. “You know, Caldecott, eighteen months ago I would have put you in for a psychiatrist and a few weeks in the country. Now, I really don’t have a better explanation for all this crap.” Boxes rustled in the dark as he fidgeted. “Things are bad all over. Murders are up. The schizophrenics are screaming even stranger shite than usual when we get called out. You don’t have to be bloody magic to see that something’s slid out of tilt in this city.”
    Pete nodded. “Way out. Out past coming back, I think.”
    Ollie grunted. “How bad is it going to be?”
    “Bad,” Pete said softly. “Worse than the bombs. Worse than the fires, maybe. It’s a fundamental shifting, if we all just sit back and let it happen. If we do, I don’t think we’re going to crawl out of our safe little holes to the same world.”
    “Full-tilt zombie robot apocalypse.” Ollie snorted. “And me without my freeze-dried rations, machete, and girl in a leather bikini.”
    “Do you think I’m an idiot?” Pete asked him. “For not just riding the tide and waiting to see where everything comes down once the storm’s gone?”
    “Somebody’s got to be on the side of the angels,” Ollie said. “And I think you’re a good pick, Caldecott. More than you credit yourself with.”
    Pete let herself slide down until she was on her back on the floor, staring at the sliver of light through the exhaust port in the freezer’s ceiling. “That makes one of us thinking that, I suppose.”
    A shadow flicked across the port, and she sat up. The owl landed, its passage causing the vent fan to spin, casting slices of light and shadow across Pete and Ollie.
    I warned you , the Hecate whispered, as the owl tilted its head and stared down at her with glowing yellow eyes, perfectly round and fathomless as the sun.
    “Just what I bloody needed,” Pete muttered. Ollie shifted in the dark, and Pete knew he was probably looking at her with suspicion.
    “What are you on about?”
    Kill the crow-mage , the owl whispered. I told you what you must do and you steadfastly ignored me. Now you’ve reaped the fruits of the poisoned tree. You should have cut it down and salted the earth.
    “Sod you,” Pete told it. “I don’t run about stabbing people in the back.” She massaged her throbbing forehead, the proximity of the thing sending bright stabs of pain through the Black. “There’s got to be another way now.”
    You don’t believe that , said the Hecate. But it doesn’t matter. You failed, Weir. You allowed the Hag an opening to release her army, not just into the Black, but into the daylight world. Death is walking because of you, Petunia Caldecott. Are you pleased?
    “ ’Course I’m not fucking pleased!” Pete shouted at it. Ollie started, but she could explain her seemingly abrupt descent into chattering at birds later.
    And neither am I , the Hecate said. The owl spread its wings. This is the end of all things, Weir. Now all that is left to me is punishment. Not recourse. Not bargaining. Not mercy. The Hag has banished those things as she encroaches. All I can look forward to is blood.
    The air crackled around Pete, and every inch of her skin prickled. She heard Ollie say, “What in the—” before blackness dropped across Pete’s eyes and the worst pain she’d ever felt gripped her. It felt as if her consciousness and body were being yanked in opposite directions at roughly the speed of a bullet train, and that iron hooks had pinned themselves into her brain, spiking deep down into