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Unholy Ghosts
Stacia Kane


If you liked the compelling characters in 50 Shades of Grey, you’ll love the Downside Ghosts series.Murderous spirits and ruthless drug dealers combine to create serious problems for fiercely independent heroine, Chess, in these fast-paced, sexy and addictive novels.The world is not the way it was. The dead have risen and constantly attack the living. The powerful Church of Real Truth, in charge since the government fell, has sworn to reimburse citizens being harassed by the deceased. Consequently, there are many false claims of hauntings from those hoping to profit.Enter Chess Putnam, a fully-tattooed witch and freewheeling Debunker and ghost hunter. She's got a real talent for nailing the human liars or banishing the wicked dead. But she's keeping a dark secret from the Church: a little drug problem that's landed her in hot and dangerous water.Chess owes a murderous drug lord named Bump a lot of money. And Bump wants immediate payback. All Chess has to do is dispatch a very nasty species of undead from an old airport. But the job involves black magic, human sacrifice, a nefarious demonic creature, and crossing swords with enough wicked energy to wipe out a city of souls. Toss in lust with a rival gang leader and a dangerous attraction to Bump's ruthless enforcer, and Chess begins to wonder if the rush is really worth it. Hell, yeah.









Unholy Ghosts

Downside Ghosts

I

Stacia Kane














Copyright (#ulink_1d27771b-a8f9-56da-99f1-6cc5249bea13)


HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

Copyright © Stacia Kane 2010

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007338276

Ebook Edition © MAY 2010 ISBN: 9780007352821

Version: 2016-02-12


To Cori. Not just my best friend, but my best reader. Her enthusiasm for this book in its earliest stages and beyond kept me going; her friendship kept me sane.




Contents


Cover Page (#ue3bddb89-7553-515a-855a-d4ffe29a5624)

Title Page (#ubc83080b-99d0-5ddc-ab65-287d2b97285a)

Copyright (#u98816cf2-7e26-59a6-b888-c1f6b8f9fd0c)

Dedication (#u216ba10d-0968-55d0-bcc5-d330e5a7eee3)

Chapter One (#ue20e7a8c-68ad-56b9-941b-8eded8bb1272)

Chapter Two (#u8b63ef67-e7bb-5ec8-be68-91610a075503)

Chapter Three (#uce0db599-e29d-5321-b134-d855c6fe9c6d)

Chapter Four (#u814a40de-b66e-570c-9a74-5253481b4bd7)

Chapter Five (#u08d9f77d-2bf5-5c06-aae2-858b28633ddb)

Chapter Six (#u39fac404-6a63-5428-a675-a58e7be1a029)

Chapter Seven (#u8c3f01f2-b100-52eb-a1e9-3157b9b8473f)

Chapter Eight (#u210bcd4f-3825-5fce-8dff-4d9191744833)

Chapter Nine (#u7eb7b3de-b0be-5fbe-b87d-b88a88d5927c)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-two (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-three (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirty-eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Preview (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Stacia Kane (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One (#ulink_cc2d5f46-70ac-563d-80f5-1e3a06dbbfb3)


“And the living prayed to their gods and begged for rescue from the armies of the dead, and there was no answer. For there are no gods.”

—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 12

Had the man in front of her not already been dead, Chess probably would have tried to kill him. Damned ghosts. A year and a half she’d gone without having to deal with one—the best Debunking record in the Church.

Now when she needed her bonus more than ever, there he was. Mocking her. Floating a few feet off the parquet floor of the Sanfords’ comfortable suburban split-level in the heart of Cross Town, with his arms folded and a bored look on his face.

“Too good to go where you’re supposed to, Mr. Dunlop?” Mr. Dunlop’s ghost gave her the finger. Asshole. Why couldn’t he just accept the inevitable?

He’d been an ass in life, too, according to her records. Hyram Dunlop, formerly of Westside, banker and father of two, all deceased. Mr. Dunlop should have been resting for the last fifty years, not turning up here to rattle pipes and throw china and generally make a nuisance of himself.

Right. She set the dog’s skull in the center of the room, checking her compass to make sure she faced east, and lit the black candles on either side of it, her body moving automatically as she arranged her altar the way she’d done dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. Next came the tall forked stang in its silver base, garlanded with specially grown blue and black roses. She set the bag of dirt from Mr. Dunlop’s grave in front of the skull for later use.

Her small cauldron in its holder took a few extra minutes to set up. Mr. Dunlop moved behind her, but she ignored him. Showing fear to the dead—or any sort of emotion at all—was asking for trouble. She filled the cauldron with water, lit the burner beneath it, and tossed in some wolfsbane.

With a stub of black chalk she marked the front door and started on the windows, stepping deliberately through Dunlop’s spectral form despite the unpleasant chill. The set of his jaw lost some of its defiance as she pulled out the salt and started sprinkling it. “This is probably going to hurt,” she said.

Her gaze wandered to the grandfather clock in the corner, just outside the sloppy salt ring. Almost eight o’clock. Fuck. She was starting to itch.

Not badly, of course. Nothing she couldn’t handle. But it was there, making her mind wander and her toes wiggle in her shoes, when she needed to be sharp.

She’d just begun closing off the hallway when Mr. Dunlop bolted up the stairs.

The symbols on the doors and windows—she’d already done the bedrooms—would keep him from leaving the actual building, but…shit.

She’d forgotten the master bedroom fireplace. The chimney flue.

Pausing only long enough to snatch up the bag of grave dirt, she raced after him. The grave dirt wasn’t supposed to come until later, when the psychopomp had already shown up to escort him, but it was the only way she could think of to stop him.

Mr. Dunlop’s feet were only just visible when she reached the bedroom, hanging in the fireplace. She grabbed a small handful of dirt and flung it at them.

Dunlop fell. His silent lips formed words that were probably not kind. She ignored him, ducking into the fireplace to mark the flue with chalk before he could try again. “There’s no escaping. You know you shouldn’t be here.”

He shrugged.

From her pocket she pulled her Church-issued Ectoplasmarker—nobody ever said the Church was clever, just that they knew how to protect humanity from spirits—and uncapped it. Dunlop stared up at her, his face rippling in panic. She leaned toward him and he sank through the floor.

Before he managed to disappear completely she ran back downstairs and grabbed her salt, finishing the hallway while Dunlop floated through the ceiling—outside of the circle.

In the short time they’d been upstairs the atmosphere in the room had changed, her energy mingling with that of the herbs to fill the room with power. Chess glanced at her altar. The dog’s skull rattled and clicked like a set of castanets, rising slightly from the floor. The psychopomp was coming.

Dunlop backed away when she started toward him, holding the Ectoplasmarker out in front of her. She’d already memorized his passport symbol. Now she just had to get him back into the circle and get the symbol on him before the dog came.

Only once had she heard of a Debunker who didn’t manage it. He got lucky. The dog took the ghost. But that was luck, nothing else. Without the passport, the minute that dog finished materializing could be the last minute of her life.

Dunlop bumped into the wall and glanced back, surprised. Ghosts could choose to touch inanimate objects or slide through them…until the object was solidified on the metaphysical plane.

“I marked them.” She used her foot to break the line of salt. “You can’t get through them. You can’t escape. This will be a lot easier if you just relax and let me do my job, you know. Why don’t you come here and hold your hand out for me?”

He folded his arms and shook his head. She sighed.

“Okay. Have it your way.” She crushed asafetida between her fingers and sprinkled it over the floor around him. “Hyram Dunlop, I command you to enter this circle to be marked and sent to rest. I command you to leave this plane of existence.”

She jumped when the growl echoed through the room and the skull leapt into the air. The rest of the dog flowed into existence behind it, each bone sharp and clean in the wavering candlelight.

Shit! Shit, shit. She was still the only one in the circle.

Worse, they both smelled of asafetida. She hadn’t rinsed her hands yet. The dog—magically created to sense the herb—wouldn’t know the difference between them.

Chess screamed as the skeletal dog lunged at her, skin and fur growing over its bones. She fell into—fell through—Hyram Dunlop. The cold was worse this time, probably because she wasn’t ready for it, or maybe because she was terrified by the sight of those sharp, shiny canine teeth snapping the air only inches from her arm. If they reached her—

The dog’s mouth closed around her left calf, pulling. Eyes appeared in the formerly hollow sockets, glowing red, brighter as it firmed its grip and tugged.

Behind the dog the air rippled. Shadowy images superimposed themselves over the tasteful taupe walls of the Sanford house, silhouettes gray and black against lit torches.

Something inside Chess started to give. The dog—the psychopomp—was doing its job, tugging its lost soul out of the Sanford house and into the city of the dead.

But her soul wasn’t lost—at least, not in the way required.

Hyram’s eyes widened as she reached for him again, her hand passing through his chest.

“Hyram Dunlop, I command you—”

The words ended in a strangled gurgle. It hurt, fuck, it really fucking hurt. It was peeling, as if someone was tearing away layers of her skin one by one, exposing every tender, raw nerve she possessed, and she possessed so many of them.

Her vision blurred. She could let go, if she wanted to. She could float away—the dog would be gentle once it knew it had her—and vanish, no more problems, no more pain, no more…

Only the boredom of the city, with nothing to take the edge off. And the knowledge that she’d died a stupid death and let this miserable jerk of a spirit beat her. No. No way.

She moved her hand, reaching again for Hyram. This time her fingers connected with something solid, something that felt warm and alive. Hyram. He wasn’t alive. She was dying.

But in death she could grab hold of him and drag him into the broken circle. In death she could use the strength of her will to bring the Ectoplasmarker down on Hyram’s suddenly solid flesh. In death she could mark him with his passport, the symbol to identify him to the psychopomp, and physically hold him in place.

Desperately she scrawled the figure on his arm, while her soul stretched between Hyram and the dog like a taut clothesline. She didn’t dare look away to see what her physical body was doing.

She managed the last line as her vision went entirely black. Pain shot through her as she fell to the floor with a house-rattling thud, but it was physical pain this time, bone pain, not the agony of having her living soul ripped from her body as it had been moments before.

She opened her eyes just in time to see Hyram Dunlop disappear through the rippling patch of air.



Her fingers scrabbled at the clasp on her heavy silver pillbox, lifting the lid. She grabbed two of the large white pills inside and gobbled them up, biting down so the bitterness flooded her taste buds and made her nose wrinkle. It tasted awful. It tasted wonderful. The sweetest things were bitter on the outside, Bump had told her once, and oh, how right he’d been.

Her fingers closed around her water bottle and she twisted off the cap and took a gulp, swishing it around in her mouth so the crushed pills could enter her bloodstream under her tongue, so they could start dissolving before they slid down into her stomach and blossomed from there.

Her eyes closed. The relief wasn’t everything it would be in twenty minutes, in half an hour as the Cepts were digested fully. But it was something. The shaking eased enough for her to control her hands again.

Cleaning up was the worst part of Banishings. Or rather, it was usually. This time the worst part had been feeling her soul pull from her flesh like a particularly sticky Band-Aid.

Carefully she put her altar pieces back in her bag, wrapping the dog skull in hemp paper before setting it on top of everything else. She’d have to buy a new one. This dog had tasted her. She couldn’t use it again.

Her Cepts started to kick in as she swept. Her stomach lifted, that odd, delicious feeling of excitement—of anticipation—making her smile without really realizing it. Things weren’t so terrible, after all. She was alive. Alive, and just high enough to feel good about it.

The Sanfords arrived home just as she knelt outside their front door with a hammer and an iron nail.

“Welcome home,” she said, punctuating her words with sharp taps of the hammer. “You shouldn’t have any more problems.”

“He’s…gone?” Mrs. Sanford’s dark eyes widened. “Really gone?”

“Yep.”

“We can’t thank you enough.” Mr. Sanford had a way of speaking, his voice booming out from his barrel chest, that made his voice echo off the stucco walls of the house.

“Part of my job.” She couldn’t even bring herself to be mad at the Sanfords right now. It wasn’t their fault they were honest and haunted, instead of faking like ninety-nine percent of Debunking cases.

She finished driving in the nail and stood up. “Don’t move that, whatever you do. We’ve found that homes where a genuine haunting occurred are more vulnerable to another one. The nail should prevent it.”

“We won’t.”

Chess put the hammer back in her bag and waited, trying to keep a pleasant smile on her face. Mr. and Mrs. Sanford shuffled their feet and glanced at each other. What were they—

Oh.

“Why don’t we go on inside, and we’ll finish off your paperwork and get you your check, okay?”

The Sanford’s anxious expressions eased. Chess couldn’t really blame them. If she was about to be handed fifty thousand dollars from the Church just because she’d had an escaped ghost in her house, she’d be pretty relaxed, too. Just like she would have felt if she’d gotten her bonus. It would have been ten grand on this job, enough to pay Bump and have something left over until the next one.

Stupid ghosts always ruined everything, like loud babies in a nice restaurant.

They offered her coffee, which she declined, and water, which she accepted, while they signed various forms and affadavits. It was almost nine-thirty by the time she handed over their check, and she still had to stop by the graveyard before she could get to the Market. Damn Mr. Dunlop. She hoped he was being punished justly.




Chapter Two (#ulink_a54e86d4-30c4-534d-b5c2-5e213666eadb)


“Thus the Church made a covenant with humanity, to protect it from the malevolence of the dead; and if the Church fails, it will make amends.”

—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 201

The market was in full swing when she got there just shy of eleven, with her body calm and her mind collected. A quick shower and blow-dry of her black-dyed Bettie Page haircut, a change into her off-work clothes, and the sweet relief of another Cept working its way into her beaten bloodstream were all she’d needed to feel normal again.

Voices colored the air around her as she walked past the crumbling stone plinth that had once been the entryway to a Christian church. The church, of course, had been destroyed. It wasn’t necessary anymore. Who wasted their lives believing in a god when the Church had proof of the afterlife on its side? When the Church knew how to harness magic and energy?

But the plinth stayed, a useless remnant—like so many other things. Including, she thought, herself.

Against the far wall, food vendors offered fruit and vegetables, gleaming with wax and water under the orange light of the torches. Carcasses hung from beams, entire cows and chickens and ducks, lambs and pigs, scenting the cramped space with blood. It pooled on the dirt and stained the shoes of those walking through it, past the fire drums where they could cook their purchases.

Then came the clothes, nothing too professional or clean. The salesmen knew their clientele in Downside Market. Tattered black and gray fabric blew in the wind like ghosts. Bright skirts and black vinyl decorated the teetering temporary walls and erupted from dusty boxes on the ground. Jewelry made mostly of razor blades and spikes reflected the flames back at her as she wandered through the narrow aisles, paying little attention to the strangers darting out of her way. Those who knew her lifted their heads in acknowledgment or gave her a quick, distracted smile, but the ones who didn’t…they saw her tattoos, saw witch, and moved. By strictly enforced law, only Church employees were allowed to have magical symbols and runes tattooed on themselves, and Church employees, no matter what branch, weren’t exactly welcome everywhere. Especially not in places where people had reason to resent their government.

It used to bother her. Now she didn’t care. Who wanted a bunch of people poking their noses into her business? Not her.

Chess liked the Market, especially when her vision started to blur a little, just enough that she didn’t have to see the desperate thinness of some of the dealers, the children in their filthy rags darting between the booths, trying to pick up scraps or coins people dropped. She didn’t have to watch them huddle by the fire drums even on a night as unseasonably warm as this one, as though they could store up enough heat to see them through the winter ahead. She didn’t have to think about the contrast between the middle-class suburban neighborhood she’d just left and the heart of Downside. Her home.

Somewhere in the center she found Edsel lurking behind his booth like a corpse on display. The stillness of his body and his heavy-lidded eyes fooled people all the time; they thought he was sleeping, until they reached out to touch something—a ceremonial blade, a set of polished bones, a rat’s-skull rattle—and his hand clamped around their wrist before they could even finish their motion.

Edsel was the closest thing she had to a friend.

“Chess,” he drawled, his black-smoke voice caressing her bare arms. “Oughta get gone, baby. Word is Bump has the hammer down for you.”

“He here tonight?” She glanced around as casually as she could.

“Ain’t seen him. Seen Terrible, though. He’s watching. Could be he’s watching me, knowing you’ll come here and say hiya. You need something?”

“We all have our needs,” she replied, running her fingers over a set of shiny tiger’s claws, marked with runes. Power slid from them up her arm, and she smiled. That was a rush, too; a Church-sanctioned one, even. “Actually, I could use a new Hand. You got any?”

He nodded, bending down so his golden hair slid off his silk-covered shoulders and hid his features. “Workin another case?”

“Hopefully will be soon.”

Edsel held the Hand out to her. Its pale, wrinkled skin and gnarled fingers looked like a dead albino spider. She reached for it, stroking one of its fingertips with her own, and it twitched.

“That’ll do. How much?”

“You probly don’t wanna pay me now. Terrible sees you got money, it won’t make him too happy.”

“Does anything make Terrible happy?”

Edsel shrugged. “Hurting people.”

They chatted for a few more minutes, but the crowds around her didn’t feel as safe as they had when she arrived. All those people, and most of them had two eyes.

Not that it mattered. She had to see him before she left, she didn’t have a choice. He could hunt her down or she could walk through that black door herself. She much preferred the second.

She put the Hand in her bag—its fingers tried to grasp hers as she did—thanked Edsel, and walked on. No point in doing any more shopping if Terrible was watching. Edsel was right. The sight of her spending what little money she had would only piss him off. So she headed straight for the lower office, figuring the element of surprise might swing things in her favor a little bit.

Too bad it was impossible to surprise someone lying in wait. Terrible grabbed her as she rounded the corner, his lips curved in what would have been a grin on a normal person, which he wasn’t. On his scarred, shadowed face, the smile made him look like he was getting ready to bite.

“Bump looking for you, Chess,” he said. His fingers dug into her upper arm. “He been looking awhile.”

“I saw him two days ago.”

“But he want you tonight. Like now. Come on, you gonna see him.”

“I was already on my way to see him.”

“Aye? That’s good luck then.”

She didn’t bother trying to wiggle her arm from his iron grip as he led her, not to the black door, but around the corner to Bump’s pad. A finger of fear slipped under her skin, penetrating the pleasant little fog in her brain. She’d never been to his place before.

Terrible knocked, a syncopated pattern that sounded like a Ramones song. She looked around them; a few people caught her gaze then turned away quickly, as if she could transmit her bad fortune through her hazel eyes. If only. There was an awful lot she’d like to get rid of.

“How’re those big sideburns working for you, Terrible? You managed to find yourself a steady ladyfriend yet?” Hell, why not stick her hand in the cage? He wouldn’t hurt her without Bump’s say-so, and if Bump had already said so she wouldn’t be standing here. She’d be in the filthy, urine-smelling alley behind the Market being beaten and puking up her guts. Sometimes her job had its advantages; roughing up a Church employee could lead to trouble.

“Never you mind.”

“So you have! Is she human?”

To her surprise, Terrible’s cheeks began to color a dull red. It almost made her feel sorry for him. Not quite, but almost. She hadn’t known he had feelings.

The door opened before she could say anything else. One of Bump’s ladies, she guessed, a petite blonde in a see-through gray top and a shiny, red mini skirt. The black makeup ringing her eyes made her look terrified, at least until she yawned as she inspected Chess and Terrible both from top to bottom.

Without looking away, she stepped back enough for them to slide past her and enter Bump’s house.

If Chess hadn’t known he was a drug dealer and pimp—among other things—this place would have told her in an instant. Everything was gilded or covered in fur, as though Bump had visited the Liberace Museum and decided to go it one better. Stylized paintings of guns and vaginas hung on the walls, turning the room from simply tacky to creepily Freudian in an instant.

Not that Bump would have heard of Freud. The Church kept a pretty tight grip on such things. But Chess had been allowed to study in the Archives, had spent months reading late into the night, every night. Gazing at Bump’s ode to the id she wondered if Freud was as full of shit as she’d always thought.

The blonde led them down a glaringly bright red hallway—more id—and into a large red room. Everything was red, the carpet, the furniture, the walls. Different shades of red, like a nightmare. Chess’s eyes dilated as the room shrieked at her. Being in this room straight would be bad enough. Being here while 400mg of narcotic simmered in her blood was like being trapped in the womb of a fiery spirit prison.

“Sit you down,” Terrible said, urging her onto one of the velvet couches. “You wait for him.”

“Don’t think I’d be going anywhere, even if I tried.”

“Naw, I’m guessin you wouldn’t be.” Those heavy sideburns moved as he showed her his teeth. “But we wait, just the same.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes, shutting out the horrible red. It remained imprinted on the back of her eyelids, chasing her even into her own head. Her lips curved. Plenty of demons in there already.

Outside, the Market was slamming, full of bodies and radios and live music. In the office next door, people were fixing, lining up against the walls for their turn, heading downstairs to hit the pipes. She shifted in her seat. Pills were what kept her going, but the pipes were something else entirely. She’d been hoping to get down there herself before the night was over, to fill her lungs with thick honey smoke and float home to bed. That was looking less and less likely by the minute.

How much was she into Bump for? Three grand, four? The Sanford case turning out to be real had seriously hit her finances. Debunkers were paid shit, barely enough to cover her rent and bills. The bonuses were where the real money came from, paid for her supplies and…everything else she needed.

Three or four grand wasn’t that much, though. She’d owed him more than that before and always paid.

Metal clinked and heat brushed her skin as Terrible lit a cigarette from a flame half a foot high. Chess sat up. “Can I have one?”

He made a “why not” face and held out the pack, then spun the wheel on his black lighter for her. She had to tilt her head to avoid burning her nose.

They smoked and waited for another few minutes, until finally a door opened in the red wall and Bump slouched into the room.

He moved like he was riding a platform with oiled wheels, silently and smoothly, faster than he looked. Rings glinted on his fingers and diamond studs sparkled in his ears, but his clothes were surprisingly nondescript. Chess imagined it was his “at home” look, because the few times she’d seen him out on the streets he looked like a bedraggled medieval king. Tonight, though, he wore a plain burgundy silk shirt—another shade of red to add to the off-tune chorus—and black slacks. His feet were bare save a gold toe ring on his right foot.

He pulled a wilted sandwich bag out of his pocket and tossed it casually onto the table in front of her. Pills slept inside, each one whispering a promise. Pink Pandas snuggled against green Hoppers, blue Oozers and red Nips looked patriotic set against the pure, clean white of the Cepts. Every one was a different ride. Up, down, sweet, or sleazy. Two months’ worth of good feelings, right there in front of her. Her mouth filled with saliva; she swallowed it, along with some of her pride for good measure.

“You into me, Chess.” Bump’s voice slurred low through the room, adding to the impression he gave of a man who thought slow, moved slow. It was a lie. Bump hadn’t become lord of the streets west of Forty-third by being slow. “You into me fuckin good, baby.”

With effort she tore her gaze away from the bag and focused on his scraggly beard.

“You know I’m good for it,” she said, hating the faintly whining tone that crept into her voice. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter. “I’ve always paid before, and I’ll pay again.”

“Naw, naw. This ain’t like before. You know what you owe? I give you the number, you see what you fuckin think. Fifteen, baby. Fifteen big ones you owe. How you pay that back?”

“Fift—I do not, there’s no way—”

“You forgetting the interest. You owe Bump money, you pay interest.”

“I never did before.”

He shrugged. “New policy.”

New policy, my ass. What the fuck game was he playing? She’d expected to be threatened, maybe. She hadn’t expected this. “Even if that’s your new policy, my actual debt can’t be more than four grand. What interest rate are you charging, two hundred percent?”

“Don’t matter what the rate is. I fuckin charge the interest I want to charge.” He leaned back against the arm of the other couch and pulled a knife out of his pocket, then started cleaning his fingernails with it. “I says it’s fifteen, so it’s fifteen. When you pay me?”

“I can go somewhere else.”

“Aw, sure, ladybird. You go anywhere you want. You head on over to Slobag on Thirtieth, see how them tattoos get ’preciated by the fuckin scum down there. But you still owe me.”

Again she glanced at the bag. Bump smiled. “You want one? Go ’head. You have one. Whatever you like.” He picked up the bag and held it out to her so it gaped open. “Go ’head.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What are you going to charge me for that?”

His laugh seemed to come from his feet and roll up his body. “I don’t gotta charge you none for it, baby. You owes me enough already, ain’t you?”

He folded his knife and tucked it into his pocket. “Course…now I’m thinking…could be I know a way you pay. A way you work off your owes.”

“Forget it.” She started to stand up. She’d never go that low, no matter what. Even she had a little self-respect, and the thought of letting a grease stain like Bump have his sleazy way with her…ugh.

“Aw, baby, I know what’s in your head. Not that. Though if’n you wanted to I could take you on a real sweet ride. That’s a promise from Bump. The ladies never had it so good as when I give it them.”

He laughed, then shook the bag at her. “Go on. You take one. I know what you need, don’t I? Don’t Bump always know? Bump’s your fuckin friend, yay? So you trust Bump. Take what you want, then we have a chatter. Maybe we help each other.”

Warily she reached for the bag. Her impulse was to grab an Oozer, but she managed to refrain and took another Cept instead. She had a feeling she would need her brain for this one.

“Good, that’s real nice. Now, why don’t Bump tell you what? You hear my plan?”

She nodded, dry-swallowing the Cept.

Bump sat down next to her, close enough for her to smell the pipe room on his clothes. He smiled. “Maybe I got a problem. Maybe you help me with it.”

Uh-oh. She was going to have to turn him down. The only people who ever asked witches for favors were those who wanted either unholy luck or unholy deeds done, and she didn’t much feel like doing either. Especially considering Bump was already a pretty lucky guy, and she wasn’t a killer.

“What’s the favor? I’m not agreeing, I’m just asking.”

“Oh, I think you agree, ladybird. I think when you hear, you say yay. Let me run this down. You know the airport?”

“Muni?” Even if the third Cept had kicked in—which it hadn’t—she wouldn’t have been more mystified. Triumph City Municipal Airport was a major hub, and one of the few areas that was heavily policed. Most Downside residents, especially drug dealers, stayed as far away from Muni and the surrounding factory district as they could.

“Naw, naw, what you fuckin say? Muni. Not Muni. Chester. You know Chester Airport.”

“Chester’s been shut down for years.”

“Yay, it have. But maybe Bump open it back up. Maybe Bump expand his fuckin business, he open it up.”

This was starting to make some kind of sense. “I don’t have enough pull in the Church to lean on the city leaders for something like that, nowhere near enough.”

“Bump got the pull. Bump already got that place wide up, see, wide up. But Bump gotta problem. Bump’s planes—planes carrying them sweet pills you ladybirds like—Bump’s planes crash. Something attacking planes, dig? Make they go all silent. Turns they off.”

“I don’t know anything about planes. I’ve never even been in a—”

“Not planes, ladybird. Ghosts. Say Chester haunted. Don’t guess on that. Somebody sending signals, making planes silent. Electromagnetics and such, yay? You find sender. You find sender, you rid they.”

He leaned back and lit a cigarette, letting smoke wreath around his head. “You catch me them fake ghosts, so my planes they fly. You catch, ladybird, and we even. No more debt to Bump.”




Chapter Three (#ulink_4a60b51d-d0f1-5ef1-aeef-c2fe1a18efb8)


“Above all, to work for the Church is to be entrusted with the protection not only of yourself and your loved ones, but of the human race. You must never forget this responsibility.”

—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin

Pleading exhaustion was not the best idea for getting out of doing something for a drug dealer. Or, to put it a different way, it was a very good idea. As Terrible drove them out toward the airport, Chess’s entire body felt sparkly, light, as if someone was about to tell her the punch line of a very good joke at a fabulous party. At least that’s how she imagined it would feel.

He’d even chopped up four more Nips nice and fine for her and bagged them, so she could snort them tomorrow if she wanted to. There had to be some advantage to having him grab her by the balls—figuratively—and squeeze, right? And this job wouldn’t take long, probably only one night, so she should milk it for all it was worth. The kind of equipment that would down a plane couldn’t be easy to conceal. She’d find it, she’d tell Bump, and four thousand dollars worth of debt that had magically grown to fifteen would go bye-bye. Not a bad deal, really.

She felt so damn confident and good in that moment she would have agreed to walk naked into a Church service.

Something cold and wet nudged her arm. “Oughta have you some,” Terrible muttered, pushing the bottle of water up to her face now. “You don’t realize the thirsty until morning. That speed, she make you dry.”

“Got my own.” She pulled hers from her bag and took a long swig. “Thanks for the reminder, though.”

He shrugged.

They were out of Downside now, speeding along the highway. Chess couldn’t see the stars through the city lights but she knew they were there, winking above them, forming patterns and shapes in the sky. She sighed and settled back in her seat, glancing at the speedometer.

“Are you really driving a hundred and twenty?”

Terrible shrugged again.

“Not real verbal, are you, Terrible?”

This time he glared at her, the greenish lights from the dash highlighting the astonishing ugliness of his profile. His crooked nose—it must have been broken several times—the way his brows jutted out like a cliff over the ocean, the set of his jaw. She held her hands up, palms out. “Okay. Just making conversation.”

“Dames always wanna talk.”

“Not like there’s anything else they’d want to do with you.”

Terrible reached forward and turned up the radio. The Misfits blared from the speakers, singing about skulls. It somehow suited the moment. Chess rested her head on the door, trying to see the stars.

She blinked, and they were at the airport. How in the world did Bump think he was going to smuggle drugs into an airport so close to town? Didn’t he know people would hear the planes, see them?

Silly thought. Bump didn’t care. Neither did she. In fact, the easier it was for him to get his drugs, the better for her.

Terrible rolled the car—a black 1969 Chevelle, built in the period known as Before Truth—to a stop just outside the remnants of the old airport building, now just boards impaling the sky. Chess had no trouble seeing with her pupils dilated like they were.

Grass grew on the runways in fitful patches like a rash. Nothing had landed here in decades, she guessed, since the Church made Triumph City its headquarters and the Muni was built. This whole area looked forgotten, felt forgotten. Neglect oozed from the ground into the sky.

Terrible came around and opened the door for her, a courtesy that surprised her so much she almost forgot to get out of the car. She did, though, grabbing her bag from the backseat.

He watched without comment as she pulled out her Church-issued Spectrometer and handed it to him, then grabbed a piece of black chalk and her knife, just in case. Some witches used salt to mark their skins, but Chess had better control over the chalk, found it worked for her and was easier to clean up. It was more efficient, and efficiency was its own reward.

“Come here, please.”

Terrible obeyed, dipping his head as she reached up and marked it with the chalk, pressing her fingers to his jaw to help her balance. A protection sigil, crawling across his forehead like a scorpion. He closed his eyes for a second. Did he feel it? He didn’t seem the type, but maybe she didn’t either.

She was feeling something, too, wasn’t she? Below the cheerful buzz of her body, or rather, inside it. The subtle, familiar creep of power, and the even more subtle slide of arousal.

She shook her head. She was standing in an abandoned, weedy parking lot with Terrible, for fuck’s sake, and she was getting turned on. It was the Nips. Speed always had this effect on her. Too bad fucking on speed was so worthless. If it wasn’t she might have Terrible drop her back at the Market, find a man who wouldn’t ask questions and wouldn’t ask for anything else either.

She shook her head to get her focus back and drew the sigil just above the bridge of her nose. Not necessary—most of her protection was in her tattoos—but something about this place gave her the creeps. It was probably Terrible. The idea that for even one tiny second she’d come remotely close to entertaining the thought of letting him touch her would give any sane woman the creeps.

“Okay,” she said, stepping back from him. “You know this place or what?”

He nodded. His eyes glittered like dirty jewels in the shadows below his brow.

She took back her Spectrometer and turned it on. “Let’s go then. Give me the tour.”

He led her to a hole in the bowed, rusty chain-link fence and watched as she slipped through it, then followed.

Their footsteps crunched faintly in the bits of gravel still remaining by the fence, then went silent again as they crossed the cracked remains of the cement walkway. Weeds grew here, too, sliding over her boots, making her think with some discomfort of hands scrabbling for purchase on the scuffed thick leather.

The airport was larger than it had looked when they pulled up outside, the runways stretching back as far as she could see in the darkness.

A spot of light appeared on the destroyed wall in front of them. Chess jumped back, her heart pounding, and stumbled into Terrible’s chest. He held a flashlight in one large hand.

“You scared the shit out of me! I thought that light was—damn it, please don’t do that again.”

“Sorry.”

She had to be the stupidest woman on the planet. There was no other answer, because it had just occurred to her that she’d agreed to come to an abandoned airport in a slum neighborhood with the most feared drug enforcer in the city. If he left her body here, it would be months before it was found, years, if ever.

“Hey, Terrible. Um, you ever heard what happens to someone who kills a witch?”

He grunted. She decided to take that as a no.

“They’re haunted for the rest of their lives. Especially when you kill a Church witch like me. The Church makes a special dispensation, did you know that? No compensation, no disposal. The killer’s haunted every day and every night, no escape. Pretty awful fate, huh?”

“Nobody plan to kill you, Chess.”

“But if you did you wouldn’t tell me, right? I mean, you wouldn’t just turn around now and say, ‘By the way, Bump told me to kill you, so if you’d be kind enough to come closer I can wrap my hands around your throat,’ right?”

He stared at her, then uttered a sound somewhere between a creaky door and the gurgle of an old furnace. It took her a moment to realize he was laughing.

“You one crazy dame,” he said. “The speed crazy you up, don’t it? Nobody’s gonna kill you here. Bump need you. No other witches he got something on, aye? He needs you right.”

It was probably the longest speech she’d ever heard from him, and she believed him. Not enough to tuck the knife back into her bag, but enough.

“Come now. What that box do, anyways? It supposed to beep or light up or something?”

“Something. Just show me around. We’ll see what happens.”

He took her arm again as he led her through the gaping darkness of the doorway to the building itself. Only part of the roof remained, rusted tin supported by rotten wooden pillars, but it was enough to blot out what little light the moon cast into the interior.

And it stunk, like woodlice and dead things and fuel, a cocktail of disgusting that made her sensitive, empty stomach twist.

They shuffled through layers of bones and garbage, while things scuttled away from them across the floor. The boards that had once been solid walls looked like zebra stripes, like camouflage as they picked their way through the bombed-out interior.

Still the Spectro remained silent. Of course, they hadn’t explored very thoroughly yet. Who knew where the gadgets might be hiding? They could be anywhere, in the building, in the tall grass, under a rock…

She refused to believe the alternative, and more to the point, she didn’t feel the alternative, the distinctive sensation of her tattoos warming, the hairs on the back of her neck moving. Something was off—an unusual energy was starting to wrap itself around her—but not ghosts, unless of course the Spectrometer wasn’t working. Her body’s reactions could be muddled by the speed, much as she hated to admit it, but the Spectro should work no matter what.

“Hand me that flashlight.”

He slapped it into her palm with vigor.

She ran the light over the cracks by the roof. That was usually the place electronics could be found, especially something big enough to mess with airplane computers. Actually, she’d never seen anything big enough to do something like that, but old habits died hard.

People never looked up. They looked down, they looked from side to side, but almost never did they think to tilt their heads back and see what was above them. That little human idiosyncrasy left a lot of room for error, so Chess always checked above first, a task she could tick off her list.

Nothing appeared out of the ordinary up there, so she cast the light down. More difficult here, with all the debris. What she needed was a broom, but she somehow doubted Terrible would be carrying one with him. Instead she headed for the wall and shuffled along it, moving her feet in tiny increments. “Feel for anything solid,” she said. “Anything heavy.”

If they made a silly picture—the tattooed witch in her tank top and jeans and the hulking guard in his bowling shirt and trousers, black pompadour slipping down into his eyes, sliding their feet along the walls like they were trying to ice-skate over garbage—she didn’t care. Nobody was there to see them, anyway.

Except the thing creeping silently along outside. Chess caught a glimpse of it through a gap in the boards, hunched and dark.

“What’s in the eyes?” Terrible’s voice rumbled across the empty space. “What you seeing?”

She smacked her hand down through the empty air, signaling him to be quiet. Blessedly he seemed to understand, and stood stock-still while she waited. They both waited.

She glimpsed it again, hovering just outside where Terrible stood, and pointed.

She knew he was fast, but didn’t know how fast until his arm shot out through the gap and grabbed the apparition by the throat. It let out a distinctly unghostlike squawk as he pulled it through the boards. They crumbled like wet toast.

“Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me! I’s just passing, I swear, I don’t know nothing!”

Terrible didn’t speak, but he didn’t loosen his grip either. The flashlight’s beam passed up and down the figure he held, little more than a child in ragged trousers and a stained poncho. The hood had slipped off when Terrible sucked the boy into the building.

“What business you got here?”

“I’s just passing—”

“Nobody just passing here. You speak, boy, you tell me. What business?”

The boy glanced at Chess, his eyes wide and dark in his dirty face. “Lady, don’t—”

The sound of Terrible’s hard palm striking the boy’s peaky face seemed impossibly loud. Chess stepped forward, her hand out, before she remembered. Lots of gangs used kids to do their dirty work. Just because the boy said he was innocent didn’t mean he was.

“You tell me, or you get worse.”

The boy rolled his eyes at Chess again, then looked down. “I heard there was ghosts. Wanted to see me one.”

“Who told you?”

“Nobody.”

Another slap. Chess refused to watch.

“Okay, okay. I tell you. It were Hunchback, you know him? From Eighty-third. Say he heard from somebody else, who was told by somebody else, that if you comes here some nights, you see them. The ghost planes, right? I came to see, that’s all.”

Terrible considered this for a minute. “What Hunchback look like?”

“Small guy, dig? With a limp. Crazy eyes and no hair. He call me Brain. Said I got one in my head.”

“You don’t, you come playing here,” Terrible replied, but he let go of the boy. The marks made by his meaty palms were fading. “No place for kids here.”

“I come here all—I sorry. I just wanted to see me some ghosts, is all.”

“You here before? You see others here?”

“No, I never did. Just me. My friend Pat. We come, but we ain’t seen planes yet. You gonna see them, you here for them?”

“Here on business.” Terrible glanced up, saw Chess watching. She dug her notebook out of her bag and flipped to a fresh page. Hunchback. If he was spreading rumors about the ghost planes, he was as good a place as any to start asking questions.

Terrible must have thought the same thing. He folded his arms across his chest. “Go now. No ghosts to night.”

Brain had one leg over the edge of the hole Terrible had made in the wall when Chess’s skin blazed with heat, her tattoos practically tearing themselves from her flesh. At the same time the Spectrometer made a long, solid yowling beep, every light on it turning bright red, casting an eerie glow against the damaged walls for a split second before the room lit up like day and the roar of an airplane directly overhead made Chess dive down to the filthy floor.




Chapter Four (#ulink_ce12f213-32f7-50af-8d99-6f3c8876d0ed)


“You will not raise the dead, nor will you seek to commune with them outside the Church. To do so is to court thy own doom.”

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 26

It went on forever, the waiting to die, while her heart beat triple-time in her chest and Brain’s thin, high scream hit her ears, barely audible over the noise. It was coming, it was coming to smash into them all and destroy them in a quick flash of rocket fuel and smoke. She tried to scramble out of the way but there was no way to get out of. The lights didn’t dim or change direction, and she had somehow managed to fall against the only unbroken section of wall in the ramshackle place. She wrapped her arms around her head, knowing it wouldn’t make one damn bit of difference.

Wood exploded next to her, splinters catching her cheek and bare arms. She tried to duck away from it but something grabbed her arm, something hard and hot, ripping her through the wall.

Terrible. He dragged her through the hole he’d punched in the rotted wood and out of the building, to her feet, and as she stood she realized the noise had stopped. There were no lights. There was nothing but Brain’s panting sobs and the terrible rushing emptiness filling her ears.

Her body felt like rubber as she tried to stand but fell again. Terrible’s arm wrapped around her chest, just below her breasts, and pressed her to his side.

“Nothing here, Chess, nothing here.” She didn’t know how many times he said it before it finally sank in, before the queasy vibrating stopped in her legs and she could raise her head and look at him.

“Thought you was good with the spook stuff,” he said. “You look like some dead.”

“And you look like Elvis vomited you up,” she managed. “So?”

Hinges creaked in her ears again as he laughed. “So we both looking bad, guesses. But I do always, and you do never. You right now?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m right. Come on. Show me around outside here.”

“You little machine made the beeps, before the noise started.”

“It’s a Spectrometer. It measures disturbances in the metaphysical plane—ghosts exude metaenergy and leave trails of it behind.”

His jutting brow furrowed. “So—”

“Woo-hoo!” Brain’s cry split the darkness and made Chess jump back against Terrible. The Nips were making her too jumpy, with all the extra adrenaline. She needed to finish this up and take something to come down.

“I seen it! I seen a ghost! Wait’ll I say! They all listen now, they all lis—” The words turned into a queer gurgle when Terrible’s hand closed around his throat again.

“You say nothing, young one. You say to nobody, dig?”

Brain nodded.

Terrible let go. “Ain’t no haunts here. We find who’s pulling tricks, we kill them. You don’t spread no stories, or I come get you and make sure you don’t. Or worse.” He turned and gestured toward Chess. “You know she, right?”

“I never seen—”

“You seen her skin, young one, you know she is. You want her after you? She help me find you, but maybe I let her take care of your mouth.”

Chess took a step forward, wanting to say something, but nothing came out. This wasn’t her business, this was street business, Bump’s business, and interference would be unhealthy.

Besides, the last thing any of them needed was for her involvement in the affair to become common knowledge. The Church might look the other way about a lot of things, but using their equipment and her abilities to aid drug traffickers probably wouldn’t get her any commendations.

So she just watched while Brain nodded, his wide eyes gleaming white in the darkness, and Terrible dismissed him with a jerk of the head. The boy ran away in a tiny spray of gravel.

“Right,” Terrible said, turning back to her. “Let’s finish this up, go home.”

The rest of the airport consisted mostly of scrub grass and broken cement. They wandered the perimeter, the breeze cool on her fevered body, but she didn’t find anything. No transmitters, no interrupters, no projectors or even electromagnets. Nothing indicated the airport wasn’t genuinely haunted.

And her skin, her own powers, clearly indicated it was, even without the Spectrometer’s sudden violent awakening. But why had it hit her so hard and so suddenly, when the apparition was right on top of them? She should have felt something before that, shivers of warmth, goose-bumps, anything.

Unless that speed was doing more than “crazying her up.” Her Cepts didn’t really interfere with her abilities, at least not in normal doses, but she didn’t do speed very often, especially not while working.

It was odd that her Spectrometer hadn’t so much as beeped before redlining, but that was easier to explain. Someone could have sent a blast of magical energy to it at the same time as they switched on whatever powered the lights and transmitted the sound; there were lots of illegal gadgets that fucked with Spectrometers, which was why they were simply tools for detection used in addition to the Debunkers’s personal powers.

Hell, if the gadget and the sound-and-light set was portable enough and whoever ran it was fast enough, they could have ducked through the fence and been gone before Terrible pulled her out of the building.

Either way, one of the first things she’d learned in her training was never to assume anything, and to keep investigating until an undeniable conclusion had been reached. Which meant, damn it, this was going to take a lot longer than she’d originally thought.

She was still ruminating on it when they reached the far end of the field. The remains of the building were little more than a shadow when viewed from here, and the grass brushed against her thighs.

Terrible plodded along ahead of her. His tall broad frame parting the weeds sounded like death whispers in the still night, like a predator sliding over the plains.

She took another step, and stopped short. Power shot up her leg, curled over her skin. Something had happened here, a ritual…a sacrifice, even. Something that cooled her blood and made her wish desperately that she was back home in bed.

“What’s troubling, Chess? Why you so white?”

She shook her head. It was trying to talk to her, to tell her something…she just didn’t know what. She couldn’t hear it, it was trapped in the whispers, all the voices crowding together in her head.

Her skin crawled as dark energy skimmed over her tattoos. It took everything she had to step back, not to crouch down and listen, to put both feet inside the circle and let the darkness take her where it wanted to go.

“Somebody’s been doing magic here,” she whispered, then, feeling a little foolish, she said it again louder. “Forbidden magic.”

“Like raising ghosts?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

She took a step to the right, placing her foot carefully, trying to feel the edge of the circle as best as she could. She did not want to walk into it again. At least, most of her didn’t.

The breeze picked up, lifting her hair and cooling the back of her sweaty neck. It wasn’t old, the spell. A month, six weeks at the most, but probably more recent. She couldn’t imagine how much power there must have been here while it was being cast. The kind of power that required either a very experienced, very powerful sorcerer, or a very innocent victim. Or both.

Either way, it wasn’t anything she wanted to be around anymore.

Three more careful steps gave her a good idea of how wide the circle was. Nine feet, big enough for several people.

Terrible started toward her, but she put her hand out. “Don’t. You don’t want to chance stepping into it. You still got that flashlight?”

He stopped and held it out to her, waiting patiently like a faithful dog while she examined the ground as much as she could from outside the perimeter. The prior week’s rain, if not the general passage of time, had eliminated pretty much anything she’d have been able to see, but something glittered on the ground, very faintly, right near the center.

She adjusted the light, holding it high to try and get a better look. Small and gold, shiny as the edge of a razor blade and from what she could make out, almost as sharp. It nestled among several blades of grass, not revealing itself to her.

“Get me a stick or something.” If it was part of a spell, she could conceivably break it simply by removing the thing. If it wasn’t…she’d put it in the African Black-wood trunk where she kept any dodgy magical items she happened to come across. The energy of the wood was strong enough to block just about anything.

Terrible headed for the stand of trees just outside the fence. She watched him tear a new hole in the chain links and slip through it. Odd how such a big man managed to move so stealthily, but then in his line of work he’d need it. She wasn’t the only person who’d ever been surprised to find him standing right in front of her, just the only one for whom the experience ended without broken bones.

Meanwhile she kept the light focused on the piece of gold, afraid that if she looked away it would change into something else or disappear. Some people might think such a thing impossible, but she knew better. With magic almost anything was possible; all objects had energy, and energy could be manipulated.

Funny how much cleaner the air tasted out here, only fifteen miles or so from Downside but away from the constant fires, the crowds, and the slaughterhouse. Even with the faint garbage odor wafting under her nose whenever the wind changed, it felt more like country than city, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of the city on her free time. For that matter she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been out of her apartment on her free time, save to buy food or score. What was the point?

The chain links jingled. Terrible headed back through the hole in the fence, his body a shadow that didn’t appear to move but moved just the same.

Better tools existed to do the job, but the stick would have to work. Her body ached from trying to keep still and balanced as she leaned out over the circle, using the tip of the broken branch to ease the medallion closer.

It wasn’t working. Maybe if she put one foot in the circle, kept the other outside, she could get better leverage.

Probably not a good idea. Her heart, already beating rapid time from the speed, gave a sick little lurch at the idea. But she had to have that piece of metal. Had to. It wanted her to have it, and she wanted it.

She lifted her foot and planted it inside the circle, as far forward as she could.

Pain swallowed her leg, sinking in with teeth like thorns. She screamed and dropped to the ground, heedless of where she fell, tumbling headfirst into the remains of the circle.

Black. It was all black in there, and so cold, so cold her bones felt brittle, so cold she could barely remember what heat had felt like. Voices echoed around her like shouts down a wind tunnel, they were saying terrible things, they were laughing about death and horror and something in front of her had giant black eyes like hunks of obsidian set in its bony face and teeth dripping with reddish saliva…

Strength leeched from her body to pour into the dirt. She felt a hole opening beneath her, like the earth was becoming thinner somehow, and as it did the voice grew louder. Not taunting now. Cajoling, promising. For the second time in one night the dead called her, but this was seductive, not violent. If she let go she could have anything she wanted. If she gave up they would take care of her, they would erase all the bad memories and the pain and leave her light and free, filled with air.

She saw Terrible, his lips moving, but no sound reached her. All she heard were the whispers, words she didn’t recognize but understood. She opened her mouth to scream, but instead of her voice what came out was shiny and red, a satin ribbon of air curling into the thick darkness around her. She could give in and it would all be over. All the pain, the misery, all of the memories, gone. What she’d been trying to achieve over the years with pills and powders and hard knobs of Dream, she could have it now, she could cease to exist and find the oblivion she couldn’t find in life.

She reached for it. Her fingers closed around something cold and hard, something that cut into her palm with its sharp fierce edge.

Fire shot up her arm. Her blood had activated the metal, fed it, what ever it had done, but the cold blackness turned to heat, unbearable blue-white heat.

Through the haze of agony she felt hands circle her ankles and tug. She’d started to let go of the coin, but now she grabbed it again, squeezing harder, the pain a blessing that kept her conscious in the seconds before Terrible yanked her out of the circle.

Her vision returned in a rush, going from nothing to a confused series of images that failed to imprint themselves on her brain. Terrible hoisted her up over his shoulder and ran across the field while her hand burned and her stomach protested. A sharp piece of chain link scratched her cheek when he dove through the hole in the fence; she almost fell as he wrenched the car door open and practically threw her into it.

Music blared and gravel spewed behind them as he tore out of the parking lot. Chess looked down into her clenched fist. Blood dripped through her fingers onto her black jeans, soaking through them. In her hand was a copper amulet.




Chapter Five (#ulink_e6483aba-8265-5c4c-b5bd-ae223b6fb925)


“To violate law is to violate yourself, and thus be made unworthy. Facts tell us forgiveness is human, not divine; thus forgiveness must come from humanity; thus it must be earned by debasement and punishment.”

—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 30

Her skin crawled just touching the thing, but she wanted to try and see if she could make out anything of the complex pattern around the edge. Runes, maybe? They weren’t supposed to memorize the runes—part of their power lay in the concentration it took to copy them—but it was impossible not to recall some of them, and a few of these symbols were familiar. The rest could have been invented, placeholders to confuse the curious or those unlucky enough to stumble across the copper piece, but somehow she didn’t think so. The amulet was too powerful for that, and there were many magical alphabets Church employees were forbidden to learn.

Edsel might know, but she couldn’t go to him until Sunday. Tomorrow was Saturday, Holy Day, and she’d need to be at Church for most of it.

She tucked the coin in her black box on the bookcase and said a few words of power, hoping it would be enough. Usually magic’s edge of unpredictability fascinated her, but it didn’t seem so much fun when it came to items like these. Who knew what energies might be manifesting in the amulet, how they might affect her and her home?

“Okay,” she said, turning. “Has it stopped bleeding?”

“Aye, looks like it.” Terrible peeled the thin towel away from the wound on his arm and inspected it. “I be right, Chess. Ain’t you worry.”

“Let me see.” The bleeding had stopped, but the gouge in his skin from where the fence had caught him, too, looked deep and ugly. He’d saved her life. The least she owed him was some antiseptic.

An almost-full bottle of it rested in her bathroom cabinet. The sharp medicinal scent stung her nose as she soaked a clean cloth with it and pressed it against his wound. His arm twitched but did not move as she finished cleaning it and put a fresh pad over it, taping it into place.

“Sorry about the pain.”

He shrugged. “Had much worse.”

Which reminded her. She crossed back into her small, dingy kitchen and grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the fridge, then another for Terrible.

Awkward silence descended as they sat and sipped their water.

But what was she supposed to talk about with him? She barely knew him. Nobody really knew him. Nobody really wanted to. Better to run when they saw him coming.

He cleared his throat, gulped his water, cleared his throat. “Nice place.”

“Thanks.” It wasn’t, really. It was bare, and plain, and dull, except for the enormous stained-glass window taking up one entire wall. But if she’d been forced to spend most of her time in the gynecological horror chamber that was Bump’s place, she probably would have thought it was nice, too.

“So what you think, Chess? You think Chester haunted?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’d like to look at it during the day.”

“On the morrow?”

“I have church. Saturday.”

“Right. You not there they miss you, aye?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded slowly and got up, taking his water with him. “I talk to Bump, give him what happened. Come to his place on the early. He’ll front you.”

“Thanks.”

Sleep was out of the question when he left. Looked like she’d be pulling an all-nighter whether she wanted to or not. She shrugged and started chopping out another line. Might as well enjoy herself, watch some movies, dye her hair—her reddish roots were starting to show under the black—before Church in the morning.



Normally she arrived at church before the Reckonings started, in order to avoid having to watch. This morning she’d been busy organizing her CDs, so citizens with bags of ripe fruit and sticks greeted her when she finally stepped onto Church property at five to nine.

They weren’t looking at her. They barely even noticed her, but she still felt exposed, as if they were all watching her from the corners of their eyes, waiting for her to turn her back so they could curse her and beat her. It was hard to remember sometimes that they wouldn’t, that that part of her life had ended the day she entered the Church training program.

Two Minor Elders led the first Penitent into the square, a large man with a heavy beard. His bare, dusty feet shuffled across the pavement toward the stocks, but the look on his face belied his body’s reluctance. He couldn’t wait to be abused, couldn’t wait to be cleansed by filth. Easy answers made everyone happy. Idly she wondered what he’d done. Broken an oath, told a lie? An information crime, perhaps? He didn’t wear the gloves of a thief, so she guessed his infraction was a moral one; adultery, or lying, perhaps.

Chess didn’t stop, crossing the square past the enormous stone 1997 Haunted Week memorial, remembering as always to dip her head in respect for the millions worldwide whose lives had been stolen.

She didn’t remember Haunted Week herself, she’d been only an infant. She only knew the ghosts hadn’t taken her own parents, whoever they were—or rather, that their death wasn’t the reason she was in the system. They’d given her up already. But the story of Haunted Week she knew, of course she knew, as everyone did. She could only imagine what it must have been like, people huddled together in churches and homes and schools, praying and crying, while silent ghosts, risen from their graves, moved through the walls in search of them. Stealing their lives. Armed with knives and broken glass, armed with ropes and hatchets and razors, their blank faces impassive as they killed.

She wasn’t the only one who saw the Church as her salvation, despite the few grumpy splinter groups who attempted to rebel in their small, largely useless ways. All of humanity—all that remained, a third of what the population had been before that fateful week—owed their lives to the only group, the only religion, that had been able to control and defeat the ghosts. Before Haunted Week—before the Church showed the world what Truth was—they’d been a tiny group, devoted to the theory and study of magic. Now they ran the world.

And she was part of it. It was the one thing in her life of which she was proud.

She pushed her way through the heavy iron doors so she stood in the cool blue entry hall of the Church of Real Truth.

It always felt a little like coming home, and why shouldn’t it? The only constant thing in her entire life had been this building. A different set of parents every couple of months, a different house, different siblings. Take your choice between being beaten or fucked by a series of Rent-a-daddies. But almost every Saturday she’d been brought here to listen to the Grand Elder, to learn the secrets of entering the city of the dead.

And of course, once they’d discovered she had some talent, it had become more than that. School, and the first place she’d ever been somewhat safe.

Her heels clicked across the tile floor. The sound followed her, a half beat behind her actual steps, rising up past the bare walls to the carvings around the ceiling. Skulls and shrieking faces on the west side, the beatific smiles of the rested dead on the east.

“Cesaria. Good morn to you.”

Elder Griffin opened the door to his office and stepped out into the hall. His dark blue velvet suit glowed in the dim light, emphasizing the pure white of his stockings over well-defined calves. The broad brim of his matching hat cast his face into shadow, making his smile float like the Cheshire cat’s.

He bowed over her hand. “You look tired, dear. Are you well?”

“Fine. Only…” She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I need a new case. I finished the Sanfords last night, I’ll turn in the file before I go.”

“But no bonus.”

She shook her head.

“Any trouble at the Sanfords’?”

Um…“Actually, I need a new psychopomp, too. This one appeared early. It’s not a problem, it’s fine,” she amended quickly, seeing the concern in his eyes. She did not want to be questioned on what had happened. “But I think the one I had would work better with a different Debunker from now on.”

“Talk to Elder Richards before you leave. Did you bring the old one with you?”

She nodded. “And then I’m ready for a new case. Please.”

“Is it your turn?”

“I think so. Please, Elder Griffin. I want to get started, I really…feel lucky.”

He thought for a minute, narrowing his black-ringed eyes. “Actually, something came in late last night. Come with me. Elder Murray is doing the service today, I’m just leading the Credo, so I have time.”

Light glinted off the silver buckles on his shoes as they clicked down the hall to the Reports Room, where Chess averted her eyes while he performed the necessary ritual to break the warding spell on the door. “I started the file this morning, haven’t gotten the financial reports yet. The Mortons, out in Trebor Bay. They claim to have been having problems for several weeks, but they’ve only just called.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Same old story.”

“Exactly. Here we go.”

Without the imposing figure of Goody Tremmell sitting behind it, the Reports Desk looked oddly empty, even with the jumble of loose papers and empty coffee cups scattered across it. The files stayed tucked in the long row of cabinets behind the desk; Goody Tremmell never allowed anyone but herself and the occasional Elder to go near them, much less touch them, and Holy Day was her day off. It felt like a violation simply to be in the room.

Griffin used an ornate silver key to open one of the drawers. Chess half-expected an alarm to sound, but the Elder simply selected a file and handed it to her, pushing the drawer closed behind him. “What happened to your hand?”

The wound she’d gotten from the amulet at the airport looked even worse this morning, jagged and red, so she’d wrapped her hand in a gauze bandage before heading in. She shook her head. “I cut myself opening a can of tuna, can you believe it?”

“You should have one of our doctors look at it.”

“It’ll be fine, thanks. It’s not deep, I just want to keep it clean.” Actually she suspected it was getting infected. Her entire hand throbbed.

“Well, if you change your mind let me know. You can probably get out there tonight.”

“Get—oh, the case. On Holy Day?”

“Go after sundown. We’ve made a dispensation to get caught up after the Festival.”

“Oh. Right.” The Church was still trying to get caught up, and so was she. The Festival meant work, work and sleepless nights, and more work. One week a year of penance, mourning, and rituals, long daylight hours in Church and longer dark hours at home with blood and herbs on the doors and windows to protect the citizenry, and her skin crawling with ghostly energy. Six nights, during which the dead again walked the earth, separated from the people they wanted to kill only by the Church’s knowledge and power.

It was scary, and difficult…but it certainly reminded people who was in charge. Not the Quantras with their useless protests, or the PRA with their attempts to use the Church’s own government branch to undermine the Church’s moral authority. Not the Marenzites with their threats or even the more sinister and effective Lamaru with their black magic and their complicated plots. All these groups wanted to be in control.

Only the Church was. And from the twenty-eighth of October to the third of November every year, they reminded the world very forcibly of that fact.

Elder Griffin smiled. “Take it, and see what you can do with it. Luck carry you.”

She tucked the slim manila folder into her bag to examine later and followed him back down to the Temple, where Elder Murray was discussing the importance of respect. She’d heard this one before, but she slipped into a seat in the back, making sure he saw her. Making sure they all saw her. Living away from the church complex put her under scrutiny enough—especially lately—without being seen to miss services.

Which reminded her. She wanted to see if there were any records on Chester Airport before she left.

Elder Griffin stood at the podium and swept off his hat, so the blue light in the room shone off his blond hair and turned it silver. The whites of his eyes floated in the black makeup ringing them. Chess bowed her head.

“I have no need for faith.” Hundreds of voices raised together, intoning the Credo; Chess imagined other Church buildings, other parts of the country, of the world, with everyone speaking in unison. “I do not need faith because I know the Truth. I do not need to believe. Belief is unnecessary when fact is Truth. I do not pray to a god. Prayer implies faith and gods do not exist. Only energy exists, and this is Truth. The Church shows me the Truth and protects me. If I hold to these Truths I will enter the City of Eternity, and there I will stay.”

By the time they reached the last words, voices echoed and crashed off the walls, joyous, emphatic, trusting. The room’s energy snaked over her skin and warmed her all the way through, as she knew it was doing for every Church employee. Sensitivity to such things was the first basic indicator of talent.

“Heard about the Sanfords,” someone whispered. “Bad luck, huh?”

She turned, glaring right into Agnew Doyle’s grinning face. He probably wouldn’t be grinning so cheerily if she slapped him, but this wasn’t the place. Doyle had caused her enough trouble already. She didn’t need to start fighting with him in the middle of the hall.

“Hey, wait. I just wanted to say sorry, Chessie. I heard this morning how it was a real haunting, and I thought—”

“You thought you’d get the full story, some good gossip to pass on?” Bodies brushed hers as people left the hall.

Church services were very short, as a rule. They didn’t need to be long. What mattered most was the swiping of identification cards to prove one had attended, to prove one was faithful; coming to services wasn’t mandatory, but everyone knew those who did had a better chance at getting good jobs, at getting their children into superior schools. What benefits the Church provided always went first to those who did their part.

No donations were solicited, no pleas for funding the way the old religions used to do. The Church protected the People, and the People paid their taxes to the Church. No middleman, no quibbling about how tax money was spent. It was spent the way the Church wanted to spend it, and if the People didn’t like it, there were hordes of malicious ghosts waiting in the City of Eternity, eager to rise again and murder the People should the Church decide to set them free.

Besides, the Reckonings were the real action. Nobody wanted to miss those, and you had to attend services to be admitted.

“That’s not fair. Just because—”

“You know what’s not fair, Doyle? That thanks to you half the people I work with think I’m a whore, that’s what’s not fair. Get out of my way.” Just the thought of being talked about, of having people know things about her, made her squirm. Technically she and Doyle hadn’t violated any rules—they were unmarried and of age—but being looked at, knowing her coworkers were picturing it in their heads…

“I didn’t tell anyone.” He reached for her arm, then pulled his hand back as if her skin burned. “Someone found out, that’s all I know.”

“Right. Sure. All those spies hiding in your bedroom.”

“Why would I tell? You’re not the only one people are looking at, you know. Somebody must have—” He glanced around the empty room, lowered his voice. “Somebody must have heard us.”

“So somebody is probably listening right now, too. I have to go. I have work to do.”

“You can’t have already gotten another case.”

“I did, and unlike some people, I really need this one. We don’t all get handed Gray Towers.”

“That was luck.”

“Luck and a besotted Goody, you mean.”

Gray Towers was a mansion on the outskirts of town with a reputation for being haunted. Unfortunately, the owners had exploited that reputation, offering tours and going to the press with stories of various events—sounds, physical manifestations, even a psychic attack—making the case extremely high profile. Doyle had Debunked it. Rumor had it he’d earned close to a hundred thousand dollars, the biggest bonus ever given to a Debunker—ten times the basic single-ghost claim amount. Several others were fairly pissed about that one, not least Bree Bryan, who had been next in the case queue.

The corners of his lips turned down. “Why am I even discussing this with you? You don’t believe me, fine. Whatever. Have a great day, Chessie. Good luck with your new case.”

Watching him walk away was a mistake. The way his broad shoulders moved, the blue light bringing out highlights in his shoulder-length black hair…that hair was extremely soft, she remembered.

Following him was the fastest way to get to the Archives, but instead she took the longer route, heading out the door to the right past the elevator. This hall always made her skin prickle. She’d taken that elevator once—the long, slow journey below the earth’s surface, and the silent twenty-minute train ride to the city itself—on her first evaluation visit, and she didn’t have any real desire to do it again. That’s why she chose Debunking instead of Liaising. The City of Eternity wasn’t a fun place, at least not to her.

What everyone else saw as peaceful and happy, a long, well-earned rest, seemed cold and impersonal to Chess. Seemed like a lonely hell only slightly worse than the one she lived in every day. And no matter how hard she tried to understand what everyone else found so agreeable, she just…couldn’t. Another missing stitch in the fabric of her soul, another feeling she could not share with everyone else. Another thing that made her different and alone.

Past the elevator on the left were the stairs, rising in a tight circle nestled against the wall. The old iron rattled under her feet. Nobody ever used these stairs, or this hall, for that matter. Only the Liaisers, and they didn’t work on Holy Day.

Chess stopped about two thirds of the way up and dug for her pillbox. The extra Cepts she’d taken for the pain in her hand were making her drowsy, and this was probably the only place in the entire building where she could be certain no one would watch. There weren’t even security cameras here, not after the Liaisers raised a stink about being observed as they prepared for their journeys. Chess didn’t blame them. You had to go naked to the dead.

Her right hand didn’t want to obey, so she was forced to set the pillbox on the stair next to her and use her left hand to open the clasp. It would have to be her right hand she’d injured.

Inside the box was the little bag Bump gave her the night before. She took a long barrette from the inside pocket of her jacket. Its slide was just the right width for doing bumps, and had a convenient dip in the center. She pinched it between her left thumb and forefinger and scooped out a little of the powder. Her right thumb closed her nostril as she lifted the barrette.

“I’m telling you, something isn’t right.”

“Bruce, Bruce. You’re overreacting.”

Chess peered down between the bars of the stairs. What was the Grand Elder doing here with Bruce Wick-man? Bruce was a Liaiser. They never seemed to talk to anyone but one another or the dead. And why talk here, instead of the Grand Elder’s office?

If they looked up they would see her. Good thing nobody ever did.

“I’m not, sir. The dead are…they’re unsettled. I’m not the only one who noticed. If you’d loan me some materials, I could speak to one of the old Debunkers’ spirits and see what they think.”

“What do you mean, unsettled?”

“Restless. Like something’s bothering them, scaring them. We’ve been having a hard time communicating with them.”

“Their Festival just ended two weeks ago. They always get like this when their week of freedom ends. Don’t you remember two years ago, Bruce, when they tried to escape three days after the gates closed? You were here then, weren’t you?”

“Yes, but this isn’t—”

The Grand Elder pressed his palm into the center of Bruce’s back. It looked friendly, but Bruce jerked forward a little. “I’ll look into it, Bruce. You tell the other Liaisers that I’m going to consider your request. But I’m sure things will go back to normal shortly.”

Bruce nodded unhappily while Chess tried to ignore the tiny flecks of ground Nip falling from her hairpin. Her foot itched but she didn’t dare move, not on these loud stairs.

So Bruce thought the City was unsettled? Hmm.

The Grand Elder did have a point. As the anniversary of Haunted Week drew near, the same astrological and atmospheric conditions that had allowed them to come back in the first place prevailed again; the planets aligned, the magical energy of the earth underwent its yearly shift, and in that space the power surged enough to give the ghosts what they needed to break through. The exact moment of alignment didn’t last long, of course, but it took a little time for everything to go back to normal.

Despite her unqualified affection for and respect of the Church, Chess had always wondered if the Festival was more than just a chance to remind people of their debt and celebrate the Church, was in fact unavoidable: the dead had to be released from the City in a controlled way, under Church-and-psychopomp guard, or they would escape on their own—with dangerous results.

Not that it mattered. The Festival happened, end of story.

“Okay, Grand Elder. I’ll tell them. But please…please consider it.”

“I will. Go on, now, Bruce. Facts are Truth.”

“Facts are Truth, sir.”

The itch was starting to sting. The Grand Elder stayed where he was, staring at the elevator doors. Why didn’t he just go already? He had places to be, and she had feet to scratch and uppers to snort.

“What frightens the dead?” he muttered, shaking his head. “What could scare the dead?”




Chapter Six (#ulink_3df51eb3-896a-5c3e-810c-83dbe17d9b71)


“So henceforth it shall be called Triumph City, because it is the seat of the triumph of Truth, and here we shall make our glorious home.”

—The Grand Elder, dedication speech,

December 1, 1997 (After Truth)

The symbols on the amulet weren’t in any of the standard books, which didn’t surprise her. If they’d been there she would have recognized them. But it never hurt to look, so she did, going through every alphabet, finding only one match.

Etosh.

The word was only mentioned because it connected to another symbol in an example, though. No meaning was given. Dead end.

The Restricted Room would probably have more for her, but Goody Glass was manning the desk today, and Goody Glass hated her. The feeling was mutual. Chess didn’t want to ask the nosy old Goody, with her pinched nose and hairy chin, to let her into the room. Too many questions would be asked.

So instead she headed for the cabinets on the far wall, doing a double take when the back of a familiar-looking head appeared. Not Doyle after all but Randall Duncan, another Debunker. If she’d been paying better attention she wouldn’t have confused them; Doyle’s hair was soft, shiny, and well taken care of, whereas Randy’s straggled down his back, a sign that he simply couldn’t be bothered to have it cut.

He stopped as if he felt her eyes on him, his face breaking into a sunny smile.

“Hey, Chess! I looked for you earlier, but I didn’t see you.”

With anyone else she might have asked why, but with Randy she didn’t need to. He’d tell her. Subtlety was not his strong suit.

“Everything good, Randy?”

He nodded. “Heard about the Sanfords. Tough luck.”

“Yeah. Just got a new case, though. Looks like a good one. I could sure use it.”

He nodded. “Couldn’t we all? Or at least, most of us. Guess Doyle doesn’t anymore.”

She rolled her eyes to indicate agreement, and wished he’d go away. Paying attention to him was a waste of time. She wanted to check those files and couldn’t with him standing there.

“Speaking of Doyle…I—I have to tell you something. Something I don’t think you’re going to like, about him. There’s been a rumor about you two. You should know about that, what people are saying.”

“Yeah, Randy, I know. Where’d you hear that?”

He shrugged. “I overheard one of the Goodys asking Doyle about it. He denied it, but, well, I just don’t want to see you get hurt, you know? Doyle’s kind of a user.”

“Yeah. I know. I’m okay, Randy, don’t worry.”

He peered at her from under his thick eyebrows, then nodded. “Okay. Well, if you ever need anything, you know, even just to talk, you can always call me. Really.”

She nodded, just as if that was something she would ever do. “Thanks, I might.”

He patted her arm and left, throwing a little wave over his shoulder before disappearing into the stacks. So one of the Goodys—she bet it was freaking Goody Tremmell, thinking just because she handled case assignments she got to judge the Debunkers, too—thought she’d poke her sharp nose in, huh? No wonder everyone in the complex knew about it. Great.

She shook her head and slid the file drawer out.

C…Ce…Ch. Chester Airport did indeed have a file, a fairly thick one. She grabbed it and took it back to her table.

The airport had opened in 1941, and stayed open for fifty years, never expanding or becoming more than just a small local airfield. There were pictures in the file, surprising ones considering the wreckage she’d seen the night before. It had been a clean little building, sitting tidily in front of the runways like a kid on a church pew.

Old newspaper clippings crinkled against her fingers. Chester had had its share of accidents and fatalities, too. Twenty-three she could see, just in the last ten years it had been open. Of course, more of the small, private planes tended to crash than large commercial ones, but that still seemed excessive to Chess.

Had Bump’s ghosts—if there were ghosts—been around for that long? If she operated on the Church-approved theory that ghosts caused death to feed on the living or out of jealousy, and no planes had flown into or out of Chester in almost thirty years…those would be some damned angry, hungry ghosts right about now. No wonder they went for Bump’s planes like Downside children falling on scraps of meat.

But if someone was doing rituals on the grounds—not if, she knew they were—what might happen there? Had someone tried to Banish Chester’s ghosts on their own, using some cheap piece of copper they’d picked up from one of the many magic charlatans the Church was always trying to prosecute?

She flipped open her notebook. Ask Bump if he’s made any attempts to Banish. Ask Edsel if he recognizes amulet.

The thought of touching it again made her twitch. Magic was legal, of course; how could it not be? How did you make energy, the forces inherent in the earth and the air, illegal?

But not all magic was equal. The Church decided what was and was not permissible, and Chess was pretty sure that what ever was happening at Chester would not have been approved by any Elder in his right mind. She felt guilty just having it—but then, this whole situation made her feel guilty anyway.

Sniffling occasionally, she went through the rest of the file. No complaints of hauntings since it had closed, and nothing noted for the surrounding areas, either, which didn’t mean much. Debunkers were supposed to mark files on all buildings in surrounding areas when a haunting was confirmed, but they almost never did. Chess herself forgot at least half the time.

So aside from the “neglected ghosts” theory, nothing indicated Chester was genuinely haunted.

Of course, nothing had initially indicated the Sanfords’ was genuine, either, and it certainly was.

So much for initial indications.



The Mortons looked like any nice, normal semi-suburban family, struggling to make it all the way to that big cookie-cutter house with thirty feet of grass in every direction around it, but that meant nothing. In fact, it meant Chess needed to be more careful, more on her guard, because the Mortons clearly wanted that nice suburban home. It was all over their smooth, round little faces.

People who wanted things were dangerous. People who wanted things would lie and cheat and steal to get them.

She of all people should know that.

So she stretched her lips into a fake smile and dug out her notebook. “When did you say the manifestations started?”

Mrs. Morton paused for a minute, placing one dainty pink-tipped finger to one dainty pink-slicked lip. “I believe it was about five weeks ago, wasn’t it, Bill, dear? While you were at the convention.” Her gaze returned to Chess. “Bill’s an optometrist.”

“That’s great.”

What was she supposed to say? Bill could examine every eye in the District and she wouldn’t give a shit.

But Mrs. Morton was obviously very proud of the fact that her husband had looked at enough eyeballs to become an expert on them, and the last thing Chess wanted to do at this point was alienate the family.

“I was in the laundry room,” Mrs. Morton continued, “putting a load in the dryer, when I heard Albert here start yelling. It was odd, because Albert is such a brave, quiet boy. Just like his daddy.”

If Mrs. Morton would stop verbally jacking off her husband and son, this would all be done so much more quickly, but then Chess figured it was just about the only sex the woman got. Mr. Morton, silent and pale in his sweater-vest, looked like the kind of man who ate ribs with a knife and fork. Not exactly a wild beast in the bedroom, she guessed, but then what did she know?

“Did you actually see the specter, Mrs. Morton? Or was it just Albert?”

“Well, I didn’t see it that time, no. But he described it so well I felt like I did. Then later I did see it. In the bedroom. Just as I was drifting off to sleep.”

“And what did it look like?”

“It was just horrible. Like a…a ghoul, or something. It made the room so cold, it felt so…evil.”

She gave a delicate shudder. “Gray, and sort of wrinkly. Moldy, if you know what I mean. It wore just rags, might have been a dress once but I couldn’t tell. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman, but it had been dead a long time. Did it escape from the City of Eternity? I thought they couldn’t escape from there, but then if they really couldn’t we wouldn’t be haunted, right?”

“Some spirits never made it to the City. We’re still cleaning up the old religions’ messes.”

Chess made another note on her pad. Intensely interested in placing blame on the Church. Cannot describe entity with any degree of detail. Then, below that, she added: Vodka. Laundry soap. Toothpaste.

Mrs. Morton must have seen something in Chess’s blank expression, because she added, “Not that we blame the Church! Of course we don’t. But this…this is pretty scary. Poor Albert is afraid to sleep in his own bedroom, and none of us are too comfortable being here by ourselves, and, well, this is our home. And we can’t even sell it, not with some unnie hanging around!” Her hand flew to her mouth.

Chess ignored both the epithet and the exaggerated look of shock on Mrs. Morton’s carefully painted face. When it came down to it, “unnie”—short for “undead”—was one of the less offensive terms she’d heard for them. Sure, it was worse than the Church-sanctioned “ghost,” “spirit,” “specter,” or “entity.” But as slang went it was pretty harmless.

“We hope you can help us.” Mr. Morton spoke up for the first time, his voice surprisingly deep and pleasant for such a slight man.

“I’m sure I can. Perhaps you could show me all the places where the entity has appeared? I’d also like to see any locations where its presence was felt in some other way. Sounds, any symbols etched on the walls or maybe in the mist on the shower doors or mirror? They often try to communicate like that.”

The Mortons stared at her, their eyes so wide they looked artificial.

“Has anything appeared on any other walls or windows? Any feelings of being watched? Movement seen out of the corner of your eye? Odd smells? Touches? Anything of that nature, now’s the time to show me where it happened.”

She pulled her tape recorder and Spectrometer out of her bag and switched them on.

The Mortons didn’t move. Chess fought the urge to look down and see if something had spilled on her blouse when she wasn’t paying attention.

“Is there a problem?”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Morton said. “I just…you scared me. We haven’t had anything as bad as some of that. Is that going to happen?”

“It might.” Chess watched them carefully. Sometimes she could see the little wheels spinning in their heads as they planned how to stage a more potent manifestation. She’d caught someone out that way in her second year of work, when she’d finished her list and the client had blurted out “Messages in frost? I never even thought of doing that!”

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Morton clutched at her sweater. Her blue eyes examined the room, sweeping back and forth as though something was going to materialize and jump out at her any second. Either she was a great actress, or she was genuinely frightened. Was it possible the son—Albert—was doing it without his parents’ knowledge? Or that Mr. Morton was behind it? That had happened once, too, a husband faking a spooking so his wife would be too afraid to ask for the house when he left her for another woman.

She scribbled on her pad: Girlfriend Mr. M?

“I’m sure we can take care of it before things start going really badly,” Chess said. “Now, if you could please show me around the house…?”

All three of the Mortons came along on the tour, much to Chess’s chagrin. Extra bodies crowding around her in small spaces like the Morton’s cramped hallway were not what she needed in the slightly nervous state the Nips had left her in. And if little Albert accidentally-on-purpose brushed against her breast again she was going to hit him. The quality and quantity of porn she imagined she’d find under his bed, when she got around to searching, would probably be staggering.

Mrs. Morton’s pale fingers trailed over the picture frames in the hall. “We trace our family back over three hundred years,” she said. “Roots are so important, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” She wondered what Mrs. Morton would say if Chess told her she had no idea who her parents had been, much less anyone further back.

Her tattoos didn’t so much as tingle, nor did the Spectrometer beep, when they entered a small bedroom on the right, which looked as though some bizarrely pretentious child lived in it. Batman wallpaper warred with posters of mallard ducks and prints from the Tate gallery. A teddy bear slumped on the dresser next to a rack of silver cuff links. Books tilted on the scarred pine bookcase like crooked teeth, but when Chess stepped closer there were dust lines on the shelves. Someone had recently—probably very recently—removed quite a few titles.

Little Albert was into sci-fi and technology. All the big fantasy names were there—Tolkien, Card, Anthony, Weis—along with Sagan, Heinlein, Sturgeon, Straub…but no how-to tech books, not even a single Idiot’s Guide, which was unusual because the more she looked around the room the more she noticed the bundle of cables peeking out from under the bed, the empty shelf under the flat-screen TV in the corner. Albert looked like an A/V Club boy, and A/V Club boys read books about hacking and splicing and F/X. They read about digital imagery and home theaters and how to rewire speakers so they went up to eleven.

When she came back later, or the next night, she’d have a more thorough look around.

She let the Mortons lead her through the spare bedroom and the bathroom, into the master bedroom. The signs of desperate upward mobility were strewn all over the house as if an L.L.Bean catalog had exploded; a beautiful dresser in a bedroom with mismatched bedside tables, expensive lotions on a cracked bathroom countertop. The copy of The Book of Truth next to the bed had been arranged so the light shone off the gold lettering and reflected back at her when she stepped through the doorway.

“This is where it was.” Mrs. Morton waved a nervous hand at a spot on the floor to her left, about a foot from where she was standing. There was something vaguely familiar about the movement, about Mrs. Morton herself. Maybe the family really did attend Church sometimes and Chess had seen her there. “I was in bed, there, like I said, and it just…hovered here, and stared at me. It looked so angry, I just didn’t know what to do…”

This was ridiculous, a waste of her time. She switched off the Spectrometer and tape recorder, shoved them both back into her bag.

“Well, I’ve seen enough for now. If we could go back to the living room and you could sign the complaint, we’ll get started processing it.”

“But…you didn’t see the ghost, does that matter?”

Chess pulled the zipper on her purse shut, realizing as she did that her hand was shaking slightly. She glanced at the clock by the bed. Five to nine. This was taking forever, she needed to go.

“We’re not done yet,” she replied, trying to sound cheerful. “It’ll take at least a week or two to really investigate. This was just to get the papers filled out, and so I could get a feel for what we’re dealing with. You’ll be seeing quite a bit of me, Mrs. Morton, don’t you worry.”

Mrs. Morton smiled weakly. The cheaters always hated it when she said she’d be around a lot. And the Mortons were faking it, she knew it. Not even a beep, not even a blip on the Spectro. Very unusual in an enclosed space with ghosts.

And the Mortons would certainly be learning about enclosed spaces if she was right, and they were faking. The Church didn’t take kindly to attempts to steal from it; Mr. Morton would have a hard time examining eyeballs from a little blue cell.

“So let’s just go sign those papers and I can leave you to your eveni—”

Something darted through the air behind Mr. Morton, so fast it took Chess a second to realize it wasn’t just a hallucination. A black shape, man-size but crouched over. She had the impression of a hood hiding its face, of the light by the bed catching the sharp edge of a blade, before it disappeared into the closet.

It looked almost like a cartoon, like an image projected on the wall instead of moving in front of it, but it had been so long since she’d seen an actual cartoon, she could have been wrong about that.

She wasn’t wrong about the sense of unease, though, more than simply the unease of her body starting to get serious with her about its needs—at least she thought it was. Fuck, she shouldn’t have waited to take her pills, it was throwing her off. For the first time a ribbon of doubt slipped through her mind. Withdrawal, or ghost? No way to be sure.

The Mortons stood watching her, faintly perplexed, waiting for her to finish her sentence. They hadn’t noticed anything—or perhaps they had, and they were watching her to see if she said anything.

Of course. The image had looked like a cartoon, like something being broadcast, because it was. When she came back later she’d look for the projector. It was probably behind the mirror over the dresser. The thought was comforting, but not enough to ease the cool sweat on her forehead and body. She felt sticky with it.

“To your evening,” she finished. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you so late, my last interview ran long. And I’ll be in touch.”

Sooner than they knew.




Chapter Seven (#ulink_a50bd012-eb1c-5094-9dc2-774108f9f97d)


“Debunking often looks like the most appealing of Church positions, but very few possess the skill, intelligence, and above all, integrity required.”

—Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin

All buzzed up and no place to go. At least, not until three, when she investigated the Morton house again.

The Market was closed. Bump’s place would be open—Bump’s place never closed—but she didn’t particularly want to go there either. She had everything she needed.

But the walls of her small apartment were closing in, the faint colors from the stained-glass window sliding over surfaces like they were chasing her.

She could go get cigarettes. The Stop Shop on the corner had special dispensation to be open twenty-four hours. That might be nice. A little walk in the cool night air would clear some of the anxious cobwebs in her head.

What the hell had that thing been? She’d never seen anything like it. Projected image or not, it was menacing. She’d had the feeling that if it had turned and saw her, looked at her, she might have screamed.

Maybe she should eat. It wasn’t like her to get so paranoid. Take a little of the edge off, fix the sourness in her stomach. The Stop Shop sold snacks, too.

She fished a twenty from her bag, then grabbed her knife and tucked it into her pocket. Walking alone and unarmed in Downside was never a good idea. She locked all three of the bolts on her door as she left.

Her building had once been a Catholic church, before the Church of Truth made every other religion redundant.

Many of the old places of worship had fallen into disrepair, but buildings with some sort of historical value or level of attractiveness were permitted to remain. Chess’s was both, and she was glad, even if the extra floors built in ruined the effect a little bit.

It was still one of the prettiest buildings in Downside. And the air outside her apartment did seem clean, despite the odors of garbage and exhaust that never went away.

The heavy double doors at the end of the hall stood wide open, framing the empty street beyond. That was odd. The doors were normally closed and locked. Could be old Mrs. Radcliffe on the second floor left them open. They were difficult for her to move, and she always forgot what kind of neighborhood she lived in.

Or it could have been the four members of Slobag’s gang from Thirtieth, lying in wait in the protective darkness between the huge slabs of wood and the walls. Chess reached for her knife but she knew it was useless. A hand closed over her mouth before she could open it to scream, and the sharp pinch of a needle was the last thing she felt before the world went black.



The itching woke her up. That, or the intense discomfort of lying on a cold cement floor. But she was pretty sure it was the itching. It burned a path from the palms of her hands and soles of her feet, up her arms and legs, and spread across her chest and throat as if she wore a cheap, terrible necklace she couldn’t take off.

She had no idea what time it was, but if she was this bad off it had to be late Sunday morning, at least. Shit. She’d missed the Mortons’ place. Not that they knew she’d missed, but still.

Her head pounded as she pushed herself to a sit. The worst possible thing she could do would be to scratch. Scratching would only make the itching worse. Experience had taught her that. Once she started scratching those invisible itch-bugs wandering beneath the skin she might as well give up. It was like issuing them a challenge. Itch-bugs didn’t like to lose.

Of course, her stomach was giving them a run for their money in the torture-and-discomfort department. It felt like she’d swallowed a big gulp of acid. The palm of her right hand screamed in pain.

Faint light entered the room through a window high up on the opposite wall. If she leaned her head back she could see a slice of gray sky. So it could be early morning, or simply a cloudy day. She bet on the latter. No way she’d be withdrawing like this if only a few hours had passed.

Slobag’s minions had lain a quilt on the floor, but it hadn’t made a difference. Now it did. She wrapped it around her shoulders to try and ease her shivering, and leaned back.

No point even trying the door. The heavy iron lock looked shiny new and very strong. There were no other doors. There wasn’t even a convenient ring connected to a secret trapdoor in the floor.

There was a toilet, though. She wasn’t about to use it, not when they could be watching, but at least it was there. Nothing like a considerate kidnapper.

Oh shit. What the hell did they want with her? It wasn’t as though they could mistake her for someone else, or rather, something else. Not with her tattoos, not unless they were stupid, which Slobag’s people weren’t.

She didn’t know much about Slobag—not her neighborhood, not her dealer. She didn’t need to. Like Bump, Slobag ruled his part of town. Like Bump, he would be utterly ruthless. And unlike Bump, he would bear a grudge against her simply because of who she worked for, which was not good news for her. The Church’s ascendance had been welcomed far more suspiciously in the Asian countries than it had in the West, and Slobag and his men were Cantonese.

She caught herself trying to scratch and folded her arms tightly around her chest under the quilt. Her body thrummed with need. She needed to get out of here. She needed her pills. Just the thought made her groan.

Metal scraped against metal as the lock unbolted and the door opened.

“So she’s awake.”

Chess didn’t recognize the man standing in the doorway, his hair standing up in short black spikes. Everything about him was black except his skin, the silver chains he wore, and the chunky silver skull ring on his right hand. The black Chinese character tattooed on the back of his left hand would have identified him as one of Slobag’s even if his features already hadn’t. His people all carried the mark, something like the tattoos that granted her some protection against spirits and gave her additional power to fight them. She suspected there was some power in that ink, as well. Maybe not the kind of power hers carried, but who knew?

Through the gaps around his body in the doorway she saw a few others, their arms folded neatly in front of them. No chance at overpowering him and escaping, then. Of course, even if he’d been alone she probably couldn’t have accomplished it, not in her state. Not in any state, if the rumors about this crew could be believed.

“Why the face, tulip girl? You look moanworthy indeed.” His voice was deeper than she would have expected, and not accented like street no matter what the words were.

She bit her lip and turned her face away, hanging it forward so her dark hair could cover it. Not much choice except to look and act as docile as possible so they’d let her go. At least until she knew what they wanted.

From outside the doorway he produced a chair and sat down in it a few feet away from her, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “I’m Lex.”

She glared at him.

“Don’t feel like making the speech? Okay by me. Only maybe I got something might loosen your tongue.” He reached into his jacket. Chess tensed. She didn’t have her knife, didn’t have any weapons at all, but if she had to, she could probably at least get him with her fingernails or a good solid kick in the balls.

He didn’t pull out a weapon. Or rather, not a weapon that could hurt her. But nothing could have controlled her as effectively. Just as Bump had done, Lex produced a Baggie full of pills. Unlike Bump, he held it in his fingers, dangling it in front of his face. Her mouth watered.

“What you think, tulip girl? Maybe you want to talk, I let you have one?” He reached into the bag and pulled out a Cept, gleaming white between his burnished fingers. “Maybe two?”

The pill loomed in front of her, shining like a diamond. Her stomach was starting to cramp, her legs to feel weak. If she didn’t manage to get something soon…

“I got all night. My guess is you don’t.” He leaned forward a little more, his voice dropping to a caressing whisper, an insinuating one. His black eyes never left her. “You feeling that pinch, hmm? Them itches? They get right in, don’t they? Like you’ll never stop itching. And the belly gets all fratchy there, those long legs turn rubber…”

She wanted to sink into the wall and disappear. She should have let the psychopomp take her. She knew it was a mistake to stay alive.

“Ain’t gonna get better with time, tulip.” He tossed the Cept into the air, caught it. Tossed it again, missed. It hit the stone floor with a small ticking noise.

Chess dove forward, but she was too late. His boot snapped down over the pill and ground it into powder. That was okay. If he would just leave…It wouldn’t be pretty, but the floor seemed reasonably clean, right? She didn’t know if they’d taken her cash as well as her knife. She could roll that bill up just fine, even with her stiff and aching hand. If he would leave, if he would please just leave.

No such luck. He produced a bottle of water. “Jarkman.”

The door opened, admitting another, smaller man. “Aye?”

“Fetch us some towels. I made a spill.”

Lex uncapped the water bottle, lifted his foot, and slowly, deliberately, poured liquid over the crushed pill. Chess bit her lip so hard she drew blood.

Jarkman was back in a moment with a roll of paper towels. He wiped up the mess in silence and left.

“Want to try that one again? I got a whole bag here, it don’t mind me if I crush them all. Jarkman needs the exercise.”

He plucked another pill from the bag. “You know the worst part, aye? You been there? When the belly gets mad. Starts turning upside out. Methinks nothing in this world so bad as—”

“Stop.” The word came out before she realized it. “Just stop, okay?”

He blinked. “And that’s four words, ain’t they nice. Here you go, tulip. You have that.”

He tossed the pill to her like a bread crust to a duck. Not picking it up was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

“Aw, you think we give you poison?” She might have appreciated the smile he gave her if she hadn’t been about to burst into tears. He wrapped his fingers around the top of the bag, shook it up, and plucked a pill out of it. She watched it disappear into his mouth, watched him wash it down. “No poison. True thing, tulip. Take it.”

She wanted to be cool, but coolness was impossible in the face of her screaming, throbbing body. The words were barely out of his mouth before she snatched the pill up from the folds of the quilt and gobbled it, grinding it between her teeth, turning it into a slick, bitter paste on her tongue.

Without a word he passed her the water, and she gulped it down. Some of the tightness in her chest eased.

“Ready to talk now?” He held out his hand, flat and open. Another Cept rested in the middle of his palm.

She took it, crunched it, washed it down. “Depends on what you want to talk about.”

“What you suppose I want to talk about?”

“You think you have a ghost?”

His thin lips stretched into a smile. “Not bad, tulip, not bad. Tougher than you look.”

“Why do you keep calling me tulip?”

“Ain’t that the tattoo?”

“No, these are—you asshole.”

She did have a tulip tattoo. Low on her stomach, just above the juncture of thigh and groin. Which her pants covered.

He shrugged. “Some dames hide weapons, aye?”

“So you had to strip-search me to make sure I wasn’t?”

“I don’t strip you, nay. Not me. Not the men. My sister Blue, she done the job.”

Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to thank him.

The knock at the door startled her. Lex turned. “Aye?”

“Seven.”

“Right.” He looked back at her. “Hungry?”

“What?” The shakes were only just starting to fade, how could she be hungry?

“I gotta be somewhere, have a talk to someone. Jarkman show you the bathroom, got a good strong waterfall. Then we talk.”

“What the hell is going on? Those goons kidnapped me and threw me in here, then you show up and taunt me, now you want me to have a nice hot shower and some food? Are you insane? Seriously.”

He shrugged. “Don’t suppose so, nay. You stay here if you like it. But you don’t leave this house until we talk. Your choice.”




Chapter Eight (#ulink_fd45acdf-c4ba-54f9-a1e2-a65334c9c75e)


“Crimes of morality are a betrayal of yourself, your family, and the Church. And because of this, betrayal itself is the most serious of moral crimes.”

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 75

The shower was good, she had to admit. By the time she got out she felt almost normal again.

Obviously they hadn’t brought her here to kill her, unless this was part of some ritual she didn’t understand. But why they would want to talk to her—what possible reason Slobag or any of his men would have for bringing her here—she had no idea.

The Asians hated the Church and anything or anyone who worked for it, as a rule. Since so much of their old religions were based on venerating the spirits of their ancestors—despite the fact that those same ancestors rose from the grave and killed them, just as they had everywhere else in the world—she couldn’t really blame them, but it did mean that when she emerged from the bathroom and put her clothes back on, her hands shook a little. The clothes weren’t clean, but it was better than not having showered at all.

The room adjoining the bathroom was undecorated, almost warehouse-like in its barrenness. A small, hard bed hugged one wall, covered with a plain blue blanket. A cold TV sat on the floor opposite. Its blank screen watched her like an unblinking eye as she crossed to the window and looked out at the city. She’d never spent much time down here, so close to where Downside gave way to the Metro District. Farther beyond that the suburbs glinted like fool’s gold as the hills rose to the misty darkening sky.

She assumed it was Sunday evening—Jarkman had said “Seven” through the door, and it clearly wasn’t getting any lighter. Which meant she’d missed going out to Chester with Terrible that afternoon, which was not good. He’d be looking for her. All of Bump’s men would be looking for her. Being found here would probably be the last thing she ever did.

Chess didn’t have any specific loyalty to Bump aside from his dominance in her neighborhood, at least not when it came to buying her drugs. But given the investigations she’d just been extorted into doing for him, the inside information she now had about his plans—no, being found with Slobag’s men could definitely be hazardous to her health.

Something clicked behind her. She turned to see Lex framed by the doorway.

“C’mon. I got food.”

Not the most delightful invitation she’d ever received, but her stomach didn’t care. Had she eaten the day before? Probably not, with all that speed. No wonder she’d slept for so long.

She followed him down a blank gray hallway, their feet echoing on the dark wood floor planks. As they moved farther down the hall the doors they passed grew more ornate, heavy red wood carved with dragons and pagodas. The contrast between them and the bare walls made Chess wonder what was hiding in those rooms.

Finally the hall ended in a large, wide room. Gold dragons and tigers fought in murals along the entire length of the walls, and the furniture was carved the same as the doors had been. It was like stepping into an elaborate set for a martial arts film, but at least it wasn’t in quite as bad taste as Bump’s place had been. Whatever genitalia the illustrated beasts possessed was mercifully hidden.

Lex gestured to a long polished table. “Sit you down, tulip. Got food for you. No poison there, neither.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He shrugged. “I’m hungry. Not polite to eat in fronts of people, aye?”

“So why not just say what you need to say and then eat when I leave?”

“You gonna sit? Only I’m tired of standing here.”

She sat. Up close she could see the fine grains in the table. It looked like real wood, a solid slab of it. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a piece of wood so large.

They sat in silence while an elderly man brought in a tray and placed two white china bowls in front of them, along with accompanying silverware. Beggar soup—that favorite dish of the Downside—but an especially elegant version loaded with meatballs and chicken and herbs. She could never afford to have both meats. Of course, she spent most of her money on other things. Most Debunkers lived much better than Chess did. Life was all about trade-offs.

“So. Why don’t we start talking now, aye?” he said, after she’d inhaled about half her bowlful. Hungrier than she’d thought, and free food was free food.

She stiffened in her seat. “Talk about what?”

“I guess you know what.”

“Um…no.”

“Hmm.” He leaned back, lit a cigarette, handed it to her and lit another one for himself. “I been thinking we talk about airports, tulip. How you like that topic?”

“My name isn’t tulip, you know.”

“I know.”

“So is there some reason you keep calling me that?”

“Maybe them tats interest me. Maybe one day you show me.” He cocked an eyebrow while smoke wreathed his spiky head.

“Maybe one day the Grand Elder will walk naked down the street.”

“Maybe he will, no telling. Or maybe one day Bump gonna reopen Chester Airport, what you say?”

She sucked in a long drag of fragrant smoke. Not her usual brand, but nice. “I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Not what I hear.”

“Maybe you heard wrong.”

“Or maybe you lie to me, Cesaria. Only thing is, I can’t figure out why anyone lie for a strut-speech like Bump. You got any ideas on that?”

“I don’t lie for anybody.” The filtered tip of the cigarette was tan, with little flecks of gold. They sparkled faintly when she turned it in her fingers.

“Seems to me you lie every day. Less you been telling them at your church what you do on your off-hours, right. They know you into Bump fifteen grand? They know why?”

When she didn’t answer, he continued. “I know you lying to me now, and I know you was out at Chester Friday night. I even know why you lie, causin you don’t want Terrible down on you like a load of steel. But you ain’t hiding anything from me I don’t know. And that’s just fine. Got a deal for you, tulip. A deal you like right.”

If Bump found out she’d discussed his airport plans with one of Slobag’s men, he’d…he might even have her killed. Even the spiritual dispensation offered by the Church wouldn’t protect her.

Then again, if she didn’t hear Lex out and agree to his deal, he’d probably tell Bump she’d come here offering information. What did he care? One dead Debunker wouldn’t exactly bother him.

“I’ll listen,” she said. “I’m not confirming anything about the airport, but I’ll listen.”

“Good. That’s real good.” He leaned forward and lit another cigarette. “So check the tale, tulip. Bump’s got you down there, disproving them ghosts, aye? Only maybe we don’t want them ghosts disproved. We sure don’t want them banished or exiled or whatever it is you people do. I gotta tell you why?”

She shook her head. Bump being able to fly his drugs into his own private airport wouldn’t be very good for Slobag.

“So that’s where you come in. You tell Bump there’s ghosts in that airport, real vicious ghosts ain’t gonna go anywhere.”

“He’ll expect me to Banish—”

“But maybe you can’t.”

“But I can. I mean, it’s what I do for a living.”

He shrugged. “You figure something out. I got belief, me. But Bump don’t open Chester. Big trouble for you if he does.”

The smell of the stew started to cloy. She pushed the bowl away. “And if he doesn’t?”

“Ah, good girl. If he don’t, we got specials for you. How much you pay Bump? Them pills don’t come cheap, aye? You visit the pipes, ain’t cheap. You do what we wants, you pay less. Like, nothing. Bump wants his money, we pays it. Then you come to us for what you need. All taken care of, tulip. Just for you. Brought to your door.”

Free drugs.

She could actually hold on to money for the first time in three years. Get a new car, maybe, with her next bonus, instead of using them to pay Bump her arrears. New clothes. Real hot food more than once or twice a week instead of snacks and junk.

Of course, Bump would notice if she stopped buying from him. Maybe she wouldn’t stop, not entirely. Bump’s pipes were a hell of a lot more convenient to her apartment. But making him think she was cutting back…Maybe that wasn’t a bad idea at all.

She must be insane, to be even contemplating this. The thing to do was go to Bump, tell him what just happened here, and let him handle it.

How? By taking out Slobag’s entire tribe? That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. And if she told, and Lex or any of Slobag’s men found out about it…Her life would be even more worthless than it was now.

Shit.

Lex watched her expectantly, his rangy body splayed back in his chair. A ragged hole in his Stiff Little Fingers T-shirt exposed a slice of tawny skin on his chest.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

“Aye, you do that, tulip. You think hard. And when you decide, you let me know.” He dug a scrap of paper from his back pocket and produced a pen from his boot. “This my number. Private number, dig? Call me when you know what you wanna do. Or if you decide you wanna let me see that ink, aye?”

“That’s not going to happen.” She took the number, folded it, tucked it in her pocket.

“You’d be surprised, tulip, what happens when you not expecting it. Surprised, indeed.”



“I’m not sure I want to go in there.”

“Safest way home, tulip. Lessin you want me to walk you down the middle of the streets. Only it’s hard to keep secrets, aye, when everybody seeing you.”

“But it’s a tunnel.”

“I do know what it is.”

Her skin crawled just looking at the narrow opening. Pale greenish light glowed from farther down the path, but whether it was safety bulbs or phosphorescent mold she didn’t know, and didn’t particularly care to find out.

“Didn’t figure a Churchwitch to be a claustrophobe.”

“I’m not!” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat. “I mean, I’m not. But being underground…It’s, um, a respect thing. The City is underground.” Wasn’t the entire truth, but close enough.

He nodded. “Right. I get you. Still don’t have no choice, but I see the origin.” His warm hand circled her upper arm. “Them walls got iron bands, no worries. Let’s us go.”

She let him lead her through the slender mouth and down a long flight of cement stairs that gritted and scuffed under their feet. The temperature dropped as they got farther down, the air thickening with rot and smoke and something else, the pungent scent of cooking Dream.

They’d gone only half a block or so when the source of the odor presented itself. The needle lay on the dank pavement, its owner draped against the wall with his eyes half closed. By his bent leg rested the rubber catheter, the dented and oxidized spoon.

Lex nudged the crumpled form with the toe of his boot. “Ain’t supposed to be down here, Big Shog. You know these tunnels ain’t for shooting.”

Big Shog mumbled something and shifted position. His mouth hung open, dried spittle caked white in the corners. Chess looked away.

“What are these tunnels, anyway? I’ve never heard about them.”

Lex gave Big Shog one last glance, then started walking again. “They been here years. Since BT. The Church blocked them off, don’t want nobody sneaking around. You know.”

“When did you open them back up?”

He thought for a moment. They were farther down now, the ground sloping gently. Every thirty feet or so a weak fluorescent bulb in a metal frame fizzed at them from the ceiling. It made the whole experience even more unreal to Chess. She was actually walking underground on purpose, in a cold, dank cement tube that stunk of mold and offered no protection against anything. It was hard to remember the walls were banded with iron when it felt as if they were closing in on her, as if they could swallow her and turn her into another rust stain on their gritty faces.

“Three years past, four? Convenient. Nobody see where you heading, nobody know where you are.”

“Do they go all the way under the city? I mean, everywhere?”

“Now you asking for secrets. Secrets you don’t need.”

Unless she wanted to find out how someone could have disappeared from Chester Airport so quickly the other night. “I just wondered. Curiosity. Maybe I’d need to come talk to you, sometime.”

“You need to talk, you call.” He paused. “Lessin you want to give me a secret, I tell you what I know.” The gleam in his eye was definitely not related to the airport; in spite of herself, a little trickle of excitement worked its way up her spine. He was, after all, just her type: handsome, arrogant, and totally self-centered, as bad for her as her Cepts and just as appealing.

“Forget it.”

“Your choice, tulip.” He kept walking, forcing her to catch up. He may not have been the safest company in the world, but their footsteps echoed in the small space and she was overly conscious of how far underground they were.

The tunnel split into three separate shafts. Lex took the right-hand one, not breaking stride as he turned.

“How do you know where you’re going?”

He started to whistle. Right.

They made another turn, a left this time. It was like a rabbit warren, but spookier. Her neck started to ache with tension. “How long are we going to be down here?”

“Until we get where we’re going.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“I ain’t a helpful guy.”

She rolled her eyes. At least he’d stopped whistling.

Maybe that wasn’t such a good thing. As the sound of their feet grew muffled by moss and slime covering the ground, Chess became aware of another noise. A low humming sound, burbling like distant laughter.

“What’s that noise?”

He stopped. “You want to chat, or you want to get you home?”

“I want to go home. But…hold on.” Her fingers closed around the hard muscle of his left arm as he started to turn away. “Is that a normal sound down here?”

“I don’t hear nothing.”

“That gurgling noise, like somebody talking.”

It was louder now, as though whoever was making it was getting closer. Her skin prickled.

“Sorry. Not hearing it.” He turned again, took a couple of steps. The next bulb they would pass under was burned out, casting that section into blackness.

“Damn it, will you stop a minute? Just listen. How do you not hear that?”

He shifted on his feet, his gaze in the dim light shifting up and down the tunnel.

“Well?”

“You said be quiet, so I’m being quiet.”

“But do you hear anything?”

“I hear you.”

“No, that’s not—”

The rattle broke into her speech, the spine-crackling sound of dead vocal chords trying to live again.

Chess turned, her heart pounding an alarm in her chest, and saw the ghost staring right at her.




Chapter Nine (#ulink_5b7054f8-47d8-5b08-b0a1-5614f6ac5423)


“And the sun set so nothing but darkness existed, and the dead rose with a violent hunger.”

—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 2

At first all she could see were his eyes, burning black holes in the pallor of his hard face. More details slid into view as she stood, frozen, unable to think of anything but the fact that her workbag was still in her apartment. She had no salt or bones, no herbs, no Ectoplasmarker, no way to protect herself or summon a psychopomp.

And the farther underground one went, the more powerful the ghosts became.

On top of his head sat a peaked cap of some kind, sepia tinged as though it had been brown in life. It matched his jacket and the suggestion of baggy trousers below his belt before his feet faded into nothing.

Lex, to his credit, stood rock still next to her. He barely seemed to be breathing.

“I thought you said the walls here were banded with iron,” she muttered.

“I lied.”

Great. Chess turned to the ghost, holding her hands palm up, hoping he would read innocence and helplessness from the gesture.

“We’re just passing through,” she said carefully. “We’re not trying to disturb you.”

It didn’t work. The ghost shrunk, his features twisting into a furious grimace, like a lion preparing to pounce. Chess spun away, grabbing Lex’s arm.

“Get us out of here! Get us out of here now!”

The filth on the floor sucked at her feet as they ran into the darkness. Behind them she felt the ghost, felt the freezing cold of its spectral body almost touching her back. They couldn’t get away, there was no way to escape it. Ghosts didn’t get tired. They didn’t give up.

The bulb ahead of them flashed, blinding her, before exploding in a shower of powdery glass. Chess ducked her head and yanked up the bottom of her T-shirt to cover her face.

Her left foot slipped sideways. She kept running, taking long, awkward steps in an attempt to keep her balance. Lex’s fingers bit into her skin as he grabbed her, dragging her along like a reluctant toddler.

She didn’t know what made her fall, if it was simply that she could not regain her stride or if the ghost somehow managed to hit her with something. Aboveground they couldn’t attack humans without using a weapon. Below, all the rules changed.

Filthy water filled her nose and stung her eyes. It tasted like sewage and iron. She gagged, trying to raise herself back up, but something forced her head back down.

Her fingers curled into sludge as she tried to grab hold of something, anything, to help her. Filth oozed through the bandage on her palm and soaked her wound. In the chaos of the tunnel her heartbeat seemed unnaturally loud, only drowned out when the roar of a gunshot made the floor beneath her vibrate.

She thought her ear drums were going to explode. The sound didn’t stop, reverberating through the confined steel-and-concrete space for what felt like hours, while she struggled beneath the weight on her back.

Gathering all of her remaining strength, she managed to shift her body sideways, lifting her face out of the foul wet slime. Air rasped into her throat to fill her lungs. A very dim light still shone, enough for her to see Lex backed against the wall, aiming for another shot.

“No! Put it away!” It was meant to be a scream. It came out more as a gurgle.

Metal glinted above her head as the ghost raised his hands. In them he clutched the end of a piece of pipe from the ceiling. If he touched her with it, she was dead. Even from her position on the floor she could see the wires sparking inside it.

Time froze. Chess watched the pipe start its descent, watched a single glint of light erupt from the end of it and die. Her fingers found a seam in the wall and gripped it, so hard she felt each individual piece of grit in the cement as she struggled to pull herself out from beneath the ghost’s legs.

Lex stepped forward, his heavy industrial boot catching the pipe and trapping it between the wall and the rubber sole. The ghost turned to him, its face contorted in fury.

Chess scrambled out of the way as Lex fell backward. The ghost lifted the pipe again, aiming for him. He ducked. Metal rang against cement.

“Break the pipe!” she shouted, hoping Lex would understand as the ghost turned on her.

Lex did. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him leap up and hook the length still attached to the ceiling with his bent arm, using his leather jacket as insulation. For a moment he hung in the air, his legs spread like a professional basketball player making a slam dunk, before the brackets holding the pipe creaked and snapped and they were plunged into blackness.

“Get out the water,” he gasped. Something scraped behind her as she braced her feet against the very edges of the floor.

It only took a second, but it felt like forever that she stayed there, shivering and covered in filth, listening to Lex’s heavy breathing in the dark.

Then light exploded through the tunnel as the live wires hit the sludgy mess covering the walkway.

Like a photo negative Chess saw Lex’s tall, slim form outlined in blinding blue-white, saw the ghost contort and disappear. She squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could but still she saw it, still she heard the shrieking hiss as thousands of volts poured through the tunnel.

A final explosion, somewhere in the distance, and it was over. She didn’t realize she was crying until she tasted salt on her lips.

“You right, tulip?”

He could have been anywhere. Right beside her, or fifteen feet away. She started to nod before she realized he couldn’t see her, either.

“I’m fine.”

His hand brushed her arm. “Didn’t know electricals killed the kickers.”




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