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Unholy Magic
Stacia Kane


The second book in this edgy urban fantasy trilogy.Trying to catch a spectral serial killer with a fondness for his victims’ eyes is distracting Chess from her day job, and her growing attraction to Terrible is making things worse.If you liked the compelling characters in 50 Shades of Grey, you’ll love the Downside Ghosts series.The second book in this edgy urban fantasy trilogy.Trying to catch a spectral serial killer with a fondness for his victims’ eyes is distracting Chess from her day job, and her growing attraction to Terrible is making things worse.Life is getting too complicated and Chess must break the rules to keep her head above water








Downside Ghosts

2




Unholy Magic

Stacia Kane












To Stephen, and to Caitlin




Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u046d3663-890f-533a-b474-10c4ef4b99f4)

Title Page (#u98f54a6e-2ef5-5b86-a0ba-b4e80ff5729e)

Chapter One (#u888fa2ef-a9e5-5e45-a736-08936d53f463)

Chapter Two (#uab035e39-3851-56cd-b162-6359a951f62c)

Chapter Three (#u48c57548-b809-5c6b-9e5d-a2f1a499a513)

Chapter Four (#u7b91071c-2517-50fa-8dee-3035d942eb75)

Chapter Five (#u42bd4d0e-12f5-55a2-b490-442d4efb6dbb)

Chapter Six (#u4b4913a1-810d-5b21-8592-65ea1e5cb6f7)

Chapter Seven (#ubd5c3a68-2226-5d10-a2ff-78d25da1bb0c)

Chapter Eight (#ue379354f-7606-5143-8380-542524fbe07a)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

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)

Preview (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Stacia Kane (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One (#ulink_bfaaaa96-a417-53b9-9c0b-56a51b19659d)


The penalty for summoning the dead back to earth is death; if the summoned spirit does not kill its summoner, be assured the Church will.

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 3

Ghosts were stronger underground; no witch willingly went below the surface of the earth, not without a Church edict or a death wish. Chess had both to varying degrees, but that didn’t make the doorway looming behind the skinny man holding the cup any more appealing. The doorway, and the stairs. Down into a basement, down into the ground.

Chess’s skin crawled from more than just the squatfaced, wizened appearance of the man, more than the bizarre energy in the dirty shack. Something told her this was not going to end well.

But then, things so rarely did.

She could have busted the bastards simply for having a basement. The Church decreed they were illegal, and the Church was not to be disobeyed. But she needed more than that—a month of investigation demanded a more satisfactory resolution than that—so instead she pasted what she hoped was a smile with the right touch of nervousness on her face and handed the skinny man the picture she’d brought, careful not to touch his grimy fingers.

The picture was of Gary Anderson, a fellow Debunker, but the skinny man didn’t know that. At least Chess hoped he didn’t.

“My brother,” she told him. It would have been better if she’d been able to squeeze out a tear, but the Cepts she’d taken didn’t allow it. It was hard enough to feel emotions when she was high, let alone emotions intense enough to make her weep. Hell, that was one reason why she kept taking the fucking things, wasn’t it?

The skinny man focused his rheumy eyes with effort on the photo, then nodded.

“Aye, seein a lookalike,” he mumbled, scratching his bony chest through a hole in his ragged green sweater. He shoved the cup forward, narrowly avoiding hitting her with it. “You drink, aye?”

“Thanks, but—”

“Nay, nay, lil miss. You drink, or you ain’t get down, aye? All must drink.” His chapped lips stretched and flaked in a gruesome semblance of a smile, like a fat worm crawling across his face, revealing broken, graying teeth. “All must drink, or the energy, she ain’t work.”

Shit. Who the fuck knew what was in that nasty cup? Even if the “tea” was harmless—which she doubted—the thing looked like it hadn’t been washed since before Haunted Week. She could practically see germs crawling along the rim.

The bonus on this job would be a couple of grand, she reminded herself, and snatched the cup from his dry, bony hand.

His gaze locked on hers. She held it while she tilted the cup and poured the contents down her throat.

For a second the room spun around her, whirling on its side like an amusement park ride. The concoction tasted of bitter herbs and glue, of seawater and sewage. It was the most revolting thing she’d ever put in her mouth, and that was saying a lot.

She held it down through sheer force of will, and was rewarded with another flaky smile. Something lurked behind that smile, but she didn’t have time to analyze it. His hand was on her sleeve, urging her into the dark mouth of the stairway, and her feet clumped on the wooden slats as she made her way into the damp cave below.

The others were already there, sitting in a circle beneath flaming torches, around a scarred wooden table. Across one end of it was draped a blue silk scarf, stained with blood or wine—or perhaps someone else’s stomach had lost its battle with the tea.

No time to think about it, even if she’d cared to. Instead she made her way to the table, to the straight-backed wooden chair someone had pushed out for her.

“Someone,” she saw, was a five-foot-tall human parody of indeterminate sex wearing a belted garbage bag and white face paint. Heavy black rims surrounded its beady, pupilless eyes, and its voice was barely more than a dry whisper, like a knife cutting through cardboard.

“Sit ye down, lil miss,” it rasped. “Sit ye down, and the Ladywitch, she’ll be out.”

“The Ladywitch” was Madame Lupita, formerly known as Irene Lowe, and as soon as Chess had the evidence she needed—in the form of her own eyewitness testimony and whatever the minirecorder concealed in her bra picked up—Madame would have a date with a guillotine. The Church did not take a forgiving stance on illegal ghost-raising or séances, even fake ones such as Lupita was rumored to run.

Rumor, hell. What was about to happen here was obvious, was even more so when a black-painted door opened opposite Chess and an enormous woman thrust her bulk into the room.

Her face was white, her eyes black-ringed, a garish parody of Church Elder makeup. Any resemblance stopped there. Madame Lupita wore a shiny silver caftan, on which were painted various runes and magical symbols. Small pieces of iron hung from it, too small to offer any real protection. Chess supposed they were there for effect, as was the heavy iron-and-amber necklace around the woman’s short, fat throat or the matching silver turban covering her head.

Whatever they were for, Lupita’s appearance was obviously what the other people around the table expected. Chess felt rather than heard their sigh of satisfaction, their belief that they’d done the right thing in coming here. For those who couldn’t afford to pay a Church Liaiser to contact the spirits of their dead loved ones, amateur séances like these seemed the answer to the prayers they were prohibited from uttering.

Too bad they were illegal, which was why Chess was there to begin with. Helping the Black Squad make a case against Lupita meant some extra cash for her.

And too bad it was all fake. If Lupita and her ilk were truly powerful enough to raise ghosts, the Church would have found them through the tests every child in the world underwent at the age of fourteen, would have trained them and hired them. Many of them had a glimmer of power, enough to send a shiver through the air and fool their clients, most of whom had no idea what real power, real magic, felt like.

Chess did. Knew the feeling—loved the feeling—almost as much as the cool, smooth peace of her pills, or the foggy bliss of Dream smoke, or the sparkly, fizzing sensation created by the occasional line of speed. She knew them all, loved them all, because anything that distanced her from reality was a blessing in a world where blessing was against the law.

Of course, her drugs were illegal, too. But that hadn’t stopped her from doing them, hadn’t stopped her dealer, Bump—or her whatever-he-was, Lex—from selling them. It just meant they all had to be a lot more careful.

Speaking of careful…Madame Lupita settled herself at the table, clapped her hands. Something clinked behind Chess. She didn’t turn around, but she heard it, soft wings beating the air. A psychopomp. Madame Lupita knew how to put on a show.

“All hold hands,” she commanded, in a deep, liquid voice. “No messin, aye…hold hands, or they don’t come.”

To Chess’s left sat a rake-thin young man. His fingers were sweaty, his face wet with tears as he stared at the picture on the table before him. Chess couldn’t make out the image.

To her right was the female half of a middle-aged couple, clad in a cheap fake silk dress. Her hand shook against Chess’s palm.

Lupita reached across the table and grabbed the picture in front of the woman. “What be this girl’s name?”

“A-Annabeth. Annabeth Whitman.”

Lupita bowed her head. The others did the same, including Chess, who used the opportunity to look around the room from under her lashes.

The psychopomp settled on a perch behind Lupita’s left shoulder. A crow, its black feathers gleaming in the firelight. To Chess’s right, against the wall, row upon row of skulls grinned blankly at her. Most were small animals, cats and rats and the occasional dog. To her left a wall mural; spirits straining for the sky, their long arms and spidery fingers gruesome and sad.

Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled down the side of her face. Had it been that hot in there a few minutes before? No one else seemed to be sweating, why was she?

Of course, no one else was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved sweater, either, despite the cold outside. Chess had no choice; every inch of her arms and chest was decorated with the tattoos marking her as a Church employee, magical symbols that focused her power, warned her, protected her. They tingled now, but whether it was from the heat or her nerves or the tremors in the atmosphere, Chess didn’t know. It was nothing serious. She’d been right. Lupita didn’t have anywhere near the kind of power required to raise a ghost.

Good thing, too, as she hadn’t even bothered to mark her “guests” with basic protective sigils or circle the floor with salt or anything else Church employees learned in their first year of training.

Chess wondered what they might see. Holograms, probably; their technology had advanced to the point where it was difficult or impossible to tell the difference between a real ghost and a fake one—at least if you didn’t have any natural abilities in that direction—and if Lupita brought in this kind of money on a regular basis, she could probably afford the top of the line.

Or it could be some of the old-fashioned tricks, the kind used by charlatans long before Haunted Week. Dim lighting, the bizarre and disgusting tea that was probably mildly hallucinogenic, the power of suggestion. Mirrors and shimmery fabric and the customer’s own desperate need to believe would take care of the rest.

At least it was safe. A real ghost—a real ghost was something to inspire nightmares. A real ghost, outside of Church control, wasn’t going to have a nice little chat with its mommy or beloved friend. A real ghost was going to have one thing on what remained of its mind, and one thing only: to kill. To steal the energy of everyone it came near, to use its life-force to make itself stronger, a parasite that would grow fat on the blood of its victims.

Not one of the people in that room had any fucking idea what it meant to face a real ghost. Lucky for them, they weren’t going to find out, either. As soon as Lupita got her little show on the road they could shut her down, and the closest they’d get to a ghost was that hideous mural.

Orange light flashed off silver. Chess looked up along with everyone else, and her already nervous heartbeat kicked into high gear. Madame Lupita held a knife, high over her own exposed forearm. Blood magic. Oh, that was not good. Blood magic, with no circle, no words of protection. Lupita might be powerless, but this was—

The knife descended. Lupita’s blood spilled out over her tattoos—so like Chess’s, but illegal, another crime to add to the growing list, as if Lupita needed anything more to damn her—onto the silk tablecloth.

“Kadira tam, Annabeth Whitman,” intoned Madame Lupita. “Kadira tam.”

A drop of sweat landed on the table in front of Chess. Her breath rasped in her throat. Shit, she really felt sick. Weak. Exposed, like all her psychic shielding was failing and her power fought to escape.

Escape…as Lupita pushed with her own weak power, as she leeched from all of them, Chess felt it, like she was a battery being drained, and in that second, just as the temperature in the room dropped about twenty degrees, she knew something was very, very wrong.

No, Lupita didn’t have the power to raise a ghost. But Chess did, and Lupita was pulling it from her. Somehow the woman was reaching into her, through her, sucking Chess’s strength and focusing it—focusing it on her spell, fuck—

Chess fought, threw as much energy as she could to her shields, but she felt like a child struggling to play tug-of-war against a giant. She couldn’t think, her energy was draining away and she couldn’t…couldn’t hold on to it…her stomach roiled, her eyelids fluttered.

The crow flapped its wings, danced on the perch for a minute, then took flight. It circled the room, faster and faster. Chess’s skin crawled and stung, her tattoos screaming the warning her mouth couldn’t seem to form…

Lupita’s deep chant turned into a screech. Through a bleary haze Chess saw the woman heave herself from her chair, her black-ringed eyes widening in terror. Staring…staring at the pale haze taking shape in the corner.

The haze of Annabeth Whitman.

Chess gritted her teeth so hard she thought they might crack and yanked her hand away from Annabeth’s mother’s. The microrecorder had an emergency button, in case her fellow Church employees weren’t already on the way. She had to get out of there, had to have help. Whatever was wrong with her was too much, too bad, for her to hope to defeat the ghost, and if someone didn’t do it soon, Annabeth would kill every person in the room.

She found the button, pressed it. And kept pressing it as the pale column grew, as a head appeared. Long tendrils of white formed arms; the shape solidified, growing more detailed with every beat of Chess’s panic-stricken heart. She’d lost count of the number of ghosts she’d seen, but the fear never left, never lessened. A ghost—one like this, free of its underground prison, free from Church safeguards and protocols—was a loaded gun, a sword in the hand of a lunatic.

And Chess and everyone else in this flaming pit of hell were the first who’d feel the weapon’s rage.

The others didn’t seem to understand that something was wrong. Mrs. Whitman was standing, holding her hands out in supplication. “Annabeth…my baby…we miss you, we wanted to—”

Annabeth’s features had formed now, translucent but perfect. She’d been a beautiful girl. Long pale hair hung down over her shoulders; the vague outline of her body beneath her gown was petite and sweetly curved.

Her eyes widened. Chess held her breath for one heart-stopping, hopeful moment. They weren’t always vicious, not always. Only ninety-nine percent of the time…There was a chance Annabeth would—

No chance. Those innocent eyes narrowed, the perfect lips pulled back in a snarl. Chess barely had time to open her mouth before Annabeth dove for the bloody knife on the table.

In her bag Chess had graveyard dirt and herbs. She couldn’t do a full ritual, didn’t think she’d have the power to do one even if she had the equipment, but she could freeze Annabeth, stop her from harming anyone.

Her fingers still worked. She tore at the tab of her zipper, yanked it open. Keeping her eyes on Annabeth, she shoved her hand into the bag, past her pillbox and compass and tissues and cash and wipes and all the other crap to find her supplies at the bottom.

Madame Lupita screamed and tried to run, but her weight and flair for the dramatic caught her. She tripped over something—Chess assumed it was the heavy folds of her ridiculous robe—and fell with a thud.

Sweat ran into Chess’s eyes. Acid bubbled in her stomach, leapt into her throat. Shit, she was going to be sick, her gut felt like somebody had shoved in a knife and twisted. This wasn’t normal. Magic, especially not her own magic, shouldn’t make her feel this way, she was—what was in that tea? What the fuck was in that tea?

The assistant, the little one, cackled in the corner. “Feelin awry, Churchwitch? Feelin sick?”

Oh, no. They knew who she was—knew what she was. Had known when she walked in the door.

Annabeth lunged for her mother. Chess threw a handful of asafetida and graveyard dirt, tried to put some power behind it as she forced words out of her gummy throat. “Annabeth Whitman, I command you to be still. By the power of the earth that binds you I command it.”

Annabeth faltered but kept moving. Not enough power. Shit!

A loud bang, the clattering of footsteps on the stairs. Reinforcements, oh, thank the technology that brought them here, they’d arrived.

Chess spun away from Annabeth. The others would take care of her. Instead Chess dove for the bizarre figure in the garbage bag, straining to focus. The handle of her knife felt cool, solid in her hand, better than almost anything else could.

Up close Chess realized it was a woman behind the makeup. She grabbed the tangle of hair on her head, held the knife at her throat. “What was in the tea?”

The woman giggled. The acrid, silvery odor of speed sweat assaulted Chess’s nose. Just what she needed. A fucking Niphead lunatic holding her life in her filthy hand.

“What was in the fucking tea? You don’t want to die right now, you’ll—”

“You ain’t kill me, Churchwitch. Ain’t got it in you.”

Chess pushed the knife farther up, so it dug into the woman’s throat, and focused. She’d killed before. She hadn’t wanted to do it and she hadn’t liked doing it, but she had. And better yet, she knew people who did it without batting an eye, knew people who’d done worse—hell, if she went back far enough she knew people who’d done worse to her. People who made hate rise, boiling and putrid in her chest. She thought of them, let those memories wash over her and crystallize in her head, become something solid and hard.

Behind her all was chaos. The Church employees shouted. The scent of banishing herbs rose thick and dry. Chess ignored it all and stared at the woman at the point of her knife. She stared, and she believed, deep down, that she would drive the knife up, and she let the woman see that belief.

It worked. “Tasro.” The woman looked down. “Were tasro.”

Poison. Tasro was poison. Chess’s head swam.

“Chessie? You okay?”

Dana Wright, another Debunker. Her eyes were wide with concern, her hands still full of herbs.

“Tasro. They put tasro in my drink, they knew me before I even got down the stairs. Is the kit in the van?”

“I’ll go with you.” Dana reached for her, but Chess ducked away. She didn’t want to be touched. Didn’t think she could stand it.

“No, just—take this one, okay? I’ve—I’ve got to—”

She didn’t bother to finish. It felt like she’d swallowed a razor blade and she didn’t have much time. Not to mention the tiny prick of uncertainty, of worry. The antidote shouldn’t react with her pills, but…better to be alone. Just in case.

“You’re not supposed to self-administer—”

“I’m fine.”

Dana looked like she wanted to say more, but Chess didn’t stick around to listen. She ran up the stairs, out the door, and let the icy wind dry the sweat on her forehead.

The Morton case three months before had forever changed her position in the Church. Not just her job itself—in addition to Debunking she now worked occasionally with other departments, which was how she’d gotten to run point in tonight’s deadly party—but in the eyes of those she worked with. Half of them looked at her like she was the great Betrayer and the other half seemed to think she was some sort of fucking genius for banishing Ereshdiran the Dreamthief—but only after he’d killed Randy Duncan, another Debunker. That Randy had summoned the entity in the first place made a difference only to some.

Chess didn’t give a shit either way. The only thing she minded was that the anonymity she’d once prized had disappeared, and now she felt eyes on her everywhere she went. Which sucked. Who knew what they might see if they paid attention? Church employees were not supposed to be addicts.

Her skeleton key unlocked the van’s back door and she yanked it open with a bit more force than necessary. Somewhere in the back was a first-aid kit with a variety of antidotes along with basic remedies like bandages and antibiotic ointment.

She climbed in, leaving the door open so more cold wind could blast her. It wasn’t just the air of the shack that had made her warm, wasn’t just the poison either. She’d taken an extra Cept before entering the building, not knowing how long the ritual and resulting paperwork would take and not wanting to be caught out if it took too long. If she sat still and focused, she’d be able to feel the high, but there wasn’t time. Not unless she wanted it to be the last high she ever felt, which she didn’t.

The kit was hidden beneath the back bench seat. Chess dug it out and opened it. Fuck. Somewhere in the back of her mind she’d hoped the antidotes weren’t kept in syringes anymore. So much for hope…

The needle was cold, too. Great.

Voices rode the wind into the van. She had no idea how far away the others were, but she preferred to have this done with before they returned. Nobody would think twice about it, not after Dana told them what had happened. But that didn’t make the thought of being found in the back of the van with a spike in her vein any more pleasant. Too close to the truth, perhaps, the undeniable fact that she was only a short jump away from that fucking needle turning into a vital part of her life, that only fear and willpower had kept her from it so far.

The rubber catheter was stiff, not wanting to be tied. Chess could relate. She didn’t want to tie it. Fear curled in her stomach and sat there like a lump of half-rotten Downside meat. She tied off, clenching her fist to pop a vein, slapping the crook of her arm. Something she’d sworn to herself she’d never do. That she was doing it to save her life—doing it with Church sanction, the way they’d been taught to do—didn’t seem to count, not when she’d seen this moment coming, dreaded this moment almost every time she opened her pillbox.

She shook her head. This was ridiculous. Everything was under control, she was under control, now more than ever. She didn’t owe anyone money, she had plenty of pills, she maintained. A happy medium.

One quick stab, that was all it would take. She could do that, it would be easy. She’d barely feel it, right?

Not right. The freezing needle buried itself into her vein and when she shoved the plunger down, cold shot up her arm like a crack in ice. Tears stung the corners of her eyes and she turned her face away while she yanked the catheter off, not wanting to watch the syringe bob in time with her pulse while she fumbled in the kit for a cotton ball.

It only took a few seconds for the antidote to warm up. Another few to find the cotton and press it into place after she withdrew the needle. It was over. She’d done it, and it hadn’t been so bad.

That was the scariest thing of all.




Chapter Two (#ulink_4570da04-b4e0-514b-a365-d60c2cd95f21)


Never fear to call the Church if you have any questions, or stumble upon signs of magic that frighten you. The Church’s job is to protect humanity from such things.

—The Church and You, a pamphlet by Elder Barrett

Madame Lupita’s curses and screams as she was dragged into the Church van still echoed in Chess’s head when she walked into Trickster’s Bar a few hours later. It was early by Downside time, not quite one o’clock. The Rolling Ghosts were playing and she wanted to catch the tail end if she could. At least that would chase the memories and sounds away.

And at least it was warm, in the sweaty, stifling way of bars. Her earlier sensation of being overheated had vanished by the time she finished giving her report at the Church and headed back home to Downside. Even if it hadn’t, the drafts from the stained-glass window that made up one entire wall of her apartment and the lazy water heater that turned showers in winter into a gamble would have finished it.

Thanks to the Dreamthief case, she got most of her drugs for free—not through her regular dealer, Bump, but through Lex, who worked for Bump’s chief rival, Slobag. She didn’t know what exactly Lex did for Slobag. Not only had she never bothered to ask, she doubted he would tell her if she did. Their relationship, such as it was, worked a lot better when they kept their mouths busy elsewhere, but the fact remained that since she didn’t pay for most of her drugs, she could have afforded to move.

Could have, and probably should have. Somehow, despite having more money in theory, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead of more money she ended up with more drugs. Something told her that was probably not healthy. Something else in her didn’t give a shit. And the rest of her was realistic enough to know it didn’t matter.

Lex was fun. She liked him, and he gave her what she wanted in more ways than one. But dependable he was not—maybe she wouldn’t have liked him as much if he had been—and she couldn’t count on free drugs forever. Sooner or later she’d need to supply herself again, and living cheap was the only way to keep up.

Besides, Downside was her home, and there weren’t many better places available. At least her building—a converted Catholic church, one of the few that hadn’t been destroyed when Haunted Week ended twenty-four years before—was quiet. Even the hookers on the corner kept it down most of the time, which was more than could be said for most of the neighborhood.

The bouncer stepped aside for her, admitting her into the dark red interior of the bar. The Rolling Ghosts hadn’t gone on yet. Instead the Clash blared out of the speakers, loud enough to turn the talking heads in the room into ghosts themselves, silent but trying to overcome it.

She didn’t want to think about ghosts. She held up a finger at the bartender and gripped the beer he handed her with fingers that were finally starting to lose their stiffness.

Terrible stood in his usual spot near the back. She headed for him, watching the red lights play off his shiny black hair and illuminate the breathtaking ugliness of his profile. She didn’t notice it anymore, not really; even now her eyes simply slid over it. He was Terrible, that was all. He was her friend…sort of.

But she knew it was what everyone else saw. The heavy, jutting brow; the crooked nose that looked as though the bones were trying to break out through the skin; the scars; the jaw like the prow of a ship. They saw the thick muttonchop sideburns, the impenetrable darkness of his eyes, and backed away. A face like that was a walking advertisement that the man behind it didn’t give a fuck, and a man who didn’t give a fuck was a very scary man indeed, especially considering he made his living as Bump’s chief enforcer, especially considering his size. Someone catching sight of him expected the shoulders to end before they did, expected the chest to be less broad. They didn’t, and they weren’t.

Chess watched him lurking back there for a few more seconds before he caught sight of her. His chin lifted in a greeting, but he made no other move. Something bothering him, then, and no way to ask. They’d tried to have a deep conversation in a crowded bar once before. It hadn’t ended well. Chess tried not to think about it.

“Hey, Chess,” he said. She got the words not so much from his voice, barely a rumbling murmur over “Garageland,” as from watching his lips move. “Figured you ain’t comin after all, gettin so late. You right?”

“Yeah. Right up. The job went on longer than I expected.”

“Lookin pale.”

She shrugged and drank her beer. No point discussing it, not when they could barely hear each other. “When are they going on?”

“Few minutes, maybe. Not long. They—Hold on.” From his pocket he produced a small black phone and flipped it open. The stark white glow of the screen invaded the darkness of the corner and highlighted his furrowed brow. “Fuck.”

“What’s—”

He cut her off with a look, a quick jerk of the head to indicate she should follow. This she did, trying to stay in his wake as he cut back through the crowd to the front of the room, narrowly avoiding razoring her cheek on some guy’s Liberty spikes, and out the front doors.

Desultory clumps of people huddled outside, braving the cold to get a free listen once the band started playing. They shuffled out of the way when Terrible headed for the side of the building. Chess followed. For a second the cold soothed her heated skin before it became too much and she shivered. She should have brought a jacket, but they were such pains in the ass to hold on to in a club.

“Got problems.” He didn’t look at her as he dialed the phone and lifted it to his ear. “You know Red Berta, aye?”

“I know who she is.” Red Berta handled all of Bump’s girls—which meant she handled all of the Downside prostitutes west of Forty-third.

“Well—Hey.” Whoever he’d called must have answered. “Aye, she—When they find it? Shit. Aye, hang on. I’ll be there.”

She knew before he snapped the phone shut that he wanted her to go with him. What she didn’t know was why.

“What’s going on?”

He stood for a moment with his eyes narrowed, sliding the phone back into his pocket without paying attention while he worked out whatever it was he needed to work out. “Feel like ridin with me?”

“What’s going on?”

“Dead body.” His other hand went into his pocket. The movement made his shoulders look even broader, but the threat of his size had never been less evident. “One of Bump’s girls. Third one they find.”

“Somebody’s killing hookers?”

He shrugged. “Lookin like a ghost doin the killin. Wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“What, just in the streets?”

“Ain’t you cold? Whyn’t you come on, Chess. Warmer in the car, aye? Just take a look.” His head turned back toward the huddled crowd. Right. Probably not a good idea to discuss this in public. So she nodded and followed him across the street while the music kept playing inside the bar.

Terrible’s �69 BT Chevelle straddled the curb two doors down, making the streetlight look like it was set up just to display it. New black paint gleamed in the orange glare. Chess was almost afraid to touch it, the way she would be afraid to approach any predator. The car seemed ready to leap forward on its fat black tires at any moment and start swallowing the road.

Sitting on the leather seat was like sitting on a block of ice, but Chess didn’t mention it. Terrible didn’t seem in the mood for jokes. Instead she waited for him to talk, knowing he’d get to it in his own time.

They’d gone about ten blocks through the abandoned streets west of Downside’s red-light district before he did. “First hooker,” he said. “But the third body, dig? Bump ain’t paid much attention before, outside getting pissed. Dealer first. Slick Michigan, know him?”

She shook her head. The heater was starting to work; she could have relaxed if it weren’t for her nerves. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved with a murderous ghost. Another murderous ghost, that is—she still hadn’t fully recovered from the Dreamthief.

Terrible kept talking while she fished out her pillbox and popped a couple of Cepts, washing them down with the beer she still held. “Found him maybe five weeks ago, down by the docks. Nobody think much of it. You know how them docks get. And Slick weren’t exactly the calm type. Figure he gets into a fight, aye? Plays with some boy got a quick knife hand.”

“He was knifed?”

“Aye.”

“But then—”

He glanced at her. “Second one came a couple weeks ago, guessin. Little Tag. He a runner, aye? Ain’t sell, ain’t handle much. Just carryin from one place to another. Found him in an alley off Brewster.”

“I didn’t even know there were alleys off Brewster.” She looked out the window. They’d gone south first, down to Mather. Now Terrible swung the big car left against the light. What was a hooker doing this far off the drag, this close to the end of Bump’s territory?

“Aye. Ain’t much good in them places, neither. Nobody even sure how long he was there. He body…ain’t pretty, if you dig. Hardly any left.” He took a long pull on his own beer and set it back down between his thighs, then took two cigarettes from his pocket and lit them.

Chess took the one he offered her and leaned back in her seat, letting the smoke curl out of her mouth and up toward the roof. “And now a girl,” she said.

“Aye.”

“You still haven’t told me why you think it’s a ghost.”

“Ain’t sure it’s a ghost. Not me, not Bump. Got others thinkin so, though.”

“So you want me to come in and say it isn’t?”

“Be a help, aye.”

“But what if it is?”

He glanced at her as he pulled the car up by a burnedout building. “You think be a ghost, Bump gonna call the Church, ask them take care of it? Or you think he come to you?”

Shit.



His jacket practically swallowed her when she slipped it on. She shrugged it off and handed it back. Best not to look like a little girl. Probably best not to show up wearing his clothes, either. Their casual friendship already sparked enough rumors—although those probably wouldn’t have been as fierce if she hadn’t lost her head and let half of Downside see her practically fucking him in a bar three months before. She shrugged the memory off, too, tried to focus on what was in front of her instead of what was behind.

Fires in steel trash cans added a little heat to the air and cast eerie shadows against the blank, broken walls along the street. Forty-fifth was practically no-man’s-land this far down, a street constantly under siege from Slobag’s men as they struggled to gain more territory. Here and there lights flickered in broken windows, indicating human inhabitants, but for the most part only shattered bottles and dirty needles called the street home.

Chess glanced to her left, across the street. A block away Slobag’s buildings started. Ten or eleven blocks farther north and a few east lived Lex. She shivered and had to force herself not to cross her arms over her chest. If she was going to suffer the cold in order to look tough, she needed to do it right.

The cold was abating a bit anyway as those last two Cepts worked their way into her system. Speaking of Lex, she’d need to go see him in the morning.

A tall woman with a mane of red hair so bright it glowed in the light strode away from the ragtag crowd and headed toward them. Her long legs were wrapped in woolly tights almost the same color, finished with thick knee-high orange-striped socks that peeped from the toes of her red high-heeled sandals. She wore no skirt, only a thick green sweater, and over her shoulders hung a sleek black fur coat. On anyone else Chess would have thought it was rat, but this was Red Berta. It could have been sealskin from before Haunted Week, or just about anything else. She looked terrifying, like a doll dressed by a homicidal child.

“Terrible,” she said, and beneath the brashness of her tone Chess heard her fear, felt it tingle. “Took you long enough.”

He didn’t reply, just pushed his way through the ring of people and glanced back at Chess. She followed, her steps slowing against her will. A dead body was not what she’d had in mind when she went out for a drink. A dead body, in fact, was never what she had in mind for anything, and feeling so many eyes on her did not make it easier.

Some watched with curiosity, some with hostility. Those she could ignore. It was the hope that drove a knife into her stomach and twisted it. A few girls in short skirts, their pale legs the ashy pinkish-white that indicated the beginning of hypothermia, huddled together and stared at her as if she could wave a magic wand and bring their friend back to life. Very few people realized she really wasn’t that powerful. Usually it made her life easier. Tonight it didn’t.

Neither did the unmistakable evidence that at least a few of these girls were using some low-level sex magic. Not unusual for those in their profession, but not comfortable for Chess. Their energy licked over her skin, damp and insistent. Molesting her. Heating her blood against her will. The warmth was welcome; the reason for it was not. Neither were the memories it brought back. She never used sex magic.

Terrible caught her eye. His were shadowed, both from the absence of light and from something like sadness. Not good, then. She steeled herself and went to his side.

Empty eye sockets stared at the sky, filled with blood. It was all Chess saw for a long minute, that dark space where life should be. Whoever had killed the girl hadn’t just taken her eyes, he’d cut the flesh around them so bone peeped from the ragged edges. Chess closed her own eyes and set her feet more firmly on the cracked sidewalk. Not just because of the sight before her; that same invasive magic hung in the air around the girl, stronger than from any of the others.

That didn’t make sense. The girl was dead. Her spell should have died with her instead of insinuating itself farther into Chess’s own energy, curling and spinning, tinged with a throbbing darkness Chess didn’t understand. Instead of running hot it felt cold, dank, and oppressive. Like being shoved into a cave. She knelt by the girl’s pale, motionless arm, hoping to steady her trembling legs.

The girl’s age was indeterminate, in the way of most prostitutes. She could have been fifteen or fifty; the slack, ruined skin of her face told Chess nothing.

Neither did her body. Beneath the blood already freezing into a crackled coating, her limbs were slender, but it was rare in Downside to find people who managed to eat more than a few times a week. Almost everyone was thin, even painfully so.

The only thing that stood out about the girl, save the obvious, horrible fact of her death, was the thick sex energy wrapping itself around Chess, sliding up her arm when she touched the girl’s ice-hard flesh. It couldn’t be hers, it couldn’t belong to her. It had to be an aftereffect of her death. Part of the ritual, perhaps? Had they somehow used sex magic to kill her? The darkness hiding in that energy, smooth and secret as an intimate chuckle, indicated that whatever it had been, it was not a regular sex spell.

“It be the Cryin Man,” someone said helpfully. “He tooken she eyes, so she ain’t see him even in the City, aye?”

“Left his mark on her, too,” another voice piped in, younger and higher with fear. “On her, and on yon wall.”

Chess glanced up, finding the speaker’s pointing finger and following it to the symbol scratched into the wall. Not a rune, as she’d originally feared. A glyph of some kind, like a gang sign. A triangle, decorated with upside-down arrows and crosses. It looked more like a bizarre doodle than something to inspire fear, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood up just the same.

Finding the symbol on the girl took a minute. Chess expected it would be carved into that too-pale skin, but it wasn’t. The mark covered her left breast, just below the plunging neckline of the girl’s hot-pink top. Not cut in. Burned. And burned before she died, because blisters had started to rise on the wound.

“Did anybody hear anything?” She had to clear her throat to get the words out, to busy herself with snapping a couple of quick pictures of the mark to keep from seeing the entire body, as if she could filter away the girl’s lost humanity by viewing it through the lens.

“Cryin Man ain’t let she scream,” someone told her. “Nobody hear nothing.”

“Was anyone with her?” Did it matter? Shit, how was she supposed to do this? Yes, Debunkers sometimes investigated witchcraft-related crimes, but only as they related to cases like Madame Lupita’s or ghost abuse. She wasn’t a detective. How the fuck did Terrible or Bump expect her to look at this poor dead girl and know whether or not a ghost had done this?

Of course…shit, she already knew one hadn’t, at least not alone. Ghosts couldn’t do magic. Unless the girl had been trying out an incredibly strong new spell—not likely, as the kind of power Chess felt wasn’t the kind just anyone could project—her murderer had definitely been human.

Red Berta shoved someone forward, one of the hookers standing in the circle. The girl stumbled on her teetery shoes and righted herself, but not before Chess saw how high she was.

“I hadda go get somethin,” the girl mumbled, swaying in place.

“You left Daisy alone to die.” Red Berta fixed her with a glare that would have made a sober person quake. At almost six feet tall, Berta wasn’t someone to mess with. She’d been a showgirl before Haunted Week—Haunted Week and an attack from a razor-wielding ghost. Berta had survived. Her looks had not.

Chess stood and glanced at Terrible’s impassive face, then back at the girl. “Did you see anything? When you got back?”

“Bettin she saw lotsa things,” someone whispered in the back. “Flowers an puppies floatin upward the sky, aye?”

“Saw the spook.” The girl hugged herself. “Saw it disappear when I come back.”

“You saw the ghost?”

“Aye.”

“What did it look like?”

“Wearin a hat.”

Fear rippled through the crowd as everyone took a step back. “She seen the Cryin Man. Cryin Man wear a hat.”

Before Chess could reply, Berta spoke up. “Terrible.” She nodded across the street.

Chess followed the look with the slow sinking feeling of someone whose night had just gone from worse to deadly.

Slobag’s men watched them from the alley.




Chapter Three (#ulink_e99e5176-fa6b-5171-8520-086ef901cd63)


Violence is the worst of humanity’s foibles, and the least necessary. The Church protects you from the need to perform such acts; there is no excuse for violent behavior in modern society.

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 347

It wasn’t a large crowd. Five, perhaps six men stood in the shadows, caught by the firelight. They didn’t move when all faces turned toward them. Somehow that stillness was more threatening than sharpening machetes or playing with guns would have been, as if they knew beyond a doubt there would be no reliable defense against their attack.

Then Terrible stepped forward, lifting the bottom of his bowling shirt so the diamond-patterned handle of his knife showed. Chess tried not to respond. On his opposite hip the brushed steel butt of a gun reflected the watery moonlight. When had he started carrying a gun? Usually he didn’t, at least not so obviously.

Next to Chess, Berta reached up and extracted what looked like a machete from the crimson bird’s nest of her hair. In an instant the mood changed from terrified sadness to hot rage. Excitement. Butterfly knives opened in a blur of metal, zippers gave way so sharpened nail files and pipes could be pulled from cheap nylon purses. One of the girls flicked open an ivory-handled straight razor that had to be a hundred years old. Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.

Slobag’s men didn’t move. Fuck! What was she supposed to do here? Slobag’s men were Lex’s men, and she doubted he’d take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed. On the other hand, Terrible was her friend, and the people around her were—well, they were his friends, or his to protect, anyway.

Not to mention the dead body turning to ice on the pavement at her feet.

“Chess,” Terrible said, his lips barely moving. He held his head like he was sniffing the air for prey. “Whyn’t you head back into yon alley, aye? Get yourself offen the street.”

“I have my knife.”

“Naw, naw. Get on out. Ain’t your fight.”

Wasn’t going to be a fight at all, if she had anything to say about it. She held up her hand, intending to pat him on the back or arm, something to show her thanks, but she dropped it before it reached him. It would only be a distraction.

Instead she pulled her phone out of her bag as she picked her way through the black alley. Things rustled and moved in the garbage piled along the battered walls. Rats, probably. Maybe cats or small dogs. She stepped carefully, hearing the sliding shink of Terrible’s knife being drawn as she opened the phone.

The bright screen hurt her eyes and made her feel like a fucking target, standing there in a pool of light. It hit her then what she’d done. Left the fight, picked up a phone. Target indeed. She didn’t have much time.

Her fingers didn’t shake as she scrolled down to Lex’s code name. He was only one of three numbers she had programmed into the phone.

Her ass hit something hard and sharp-edged when she crouched down. A metal box of some kind. Her mind automatically took note of it—it looked like just the sort of place to hide electronic equipment of the kind used to fake hauntings—but Lex picked up before she had time to really register it.

“Hey, Tulip, what you up to this night?”

“Call them off, Lex,” she whispered, but as the words left her mouth she knew she was too late. Someone shouted. The fight was on. They clashed in the middle of the street opposite the alley, giving her a perfect view of what was happening. Not just five or six of Slobag’s men; at least as many again poured onto the street from somewhere. How many had been waiting, and why? Did they just keep an eye on the street, or what?

“Call who off? Ain’t know what you saying. You right?”

“No, I’m not fucking right. Your men, Lex. Slobag’s men. They’re here, they’re—” A scream cut her off. Red Berta in full battle cry, the voice that used to belt out show tunes, striking fear into the hearts of anyone within a few miles. The machete sliced through the air and grabbed a piece of one of Slobag’s men. He howled and stumbled sideways.

Terrible didn’t miss a beat, grabbing the man’s hair and slamming a heavy fist into his face. The man fell. Terrible turned to the next one.

All around were the hookers, stabbing at the men with their small blades, wielding pipes like pros. Sharp heels dug into soft leather shoes. They were holding their own, but they were outnumbered. Even as Chess watched, one of the girls went flying, her screech ending abruptly when her face hit the street.

“The fuck is that sound? Where you at?”

“I’m on Forty-fifth, dammit, Forty-fifth and Berrie, and there’s a bunch of your guys here and they’ve started a—”

“What you doing there? Ain’t nowhere near your place.”

“Can we talk about this later? Call them off, now.”

Metal scraped the pavement. A long, slim knife skittered on the sidewalk across the mouth of the alley, the blade sticky and dark. One of the men fell. His blood steamed in the cold air.

“Shit. A fight? You safe, Tulip?”

“For about the next two minutes. Lex, I’m not kidding here. There’s a fight, and it’s on Forty-fifth and I’m stuck in the fucking middle of it, please find out who it is and call them off!”

Another scream. Blood spurted from one of the hookers’ arms. Chess couldn’t tell which one she was, and in a moment the girl had disappeared, another wounded fighter in a crowd full of them. Over it all Terrible’s face, oddly peaceful, totally absorbed. As she watched he ducked down, catching a man midleap and shoving him over his shoulder and onto the street. His knife flashed in his fist.

“Stay on, aye? Gimme a minute.” Over the screams and shouts of the brawl she heard Lex speaking Cantonese to someone, heard several different voices answer.

Chess crouched lower in her not-very-good hiding place, her stare focused on the fight. Berta kept swinging her machete, southpaw. Chess expected to see heads start flying at any second. With her free hand she found her knife; her palm was so sweaty it took her three tries to get a grip on it and pull it out. Just in case…

“Tulip? You there?”

It took her a few seconds to find her voice. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Aye, hang on there. All be over soon. You all hidden up? Stay out of sight. Them dudes, they ain’t know you, dig?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

“What you doing on Forty-fifth?”

“Terrible asked me—”

“Terrible’s there? All by hisself, aye?”

“No, not by himself. There’s a fucking army here, okay? And even if he was by himself—which he isn’t—I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Thought you was fun.”

“I’m not.”

“Why he ask you to go there for, anyhow? Ain’t safe there, you know that.”

“There’s a—there’s a dead girl. One of Bump’s girls.” Hell, he was going to find out anyway, if any of his men made it back safely. Which she guessed they would. A voice rose over the shrieks of the girls on the street, Cantonese ratcheting through the empty air. A call to retreat, she hoped.

“Oh? Looks like somebody getting some payback,” Lex said with satisfaction. The empty eye sockets of the dead girl flashed into Chess’s mind. If he’d been standing in front of her, she’d have tried to slap him.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Ain’t talking about nothing. Just saying, is all.”

“What’s that—I gotta go.” She snapped the phone shut as Terrible appeared at the end of the alley, his broad form blocking out what little light there was. Behind him she saw Slobag’s men becoming shadows again, disappearing into the spaces between the buildings.

“Come on out now, Chess.”

Her legs didn’t want to support her as she stood. More bodies appeared—Red Berta, a few of the other girls, Chess couldn’t tell which ones. All were panting like they were being paid extra to get into it, but they were alive.

Most of them, anyway. The hooker Chess had watched fly through the air did not get up. Neither did four of Slobag’s men. Red Berta and her girls emptied the dead men’s pockets with crisp efficiency, like murderous bank tellers.

Chess dug into her bag and pulled out some tissues, which she used to dab at the deep, swelling cut under Terrible’s eye. She had to brace her free hand against his chest and stand on tiptoe to do it, putting her face only inches from his when he looked down at her.

Their eyes met, and heat flooded her skin. Her heels slammed back onto the sidewalk. “Sorry, maybe, um, maybe you should—here.”

She shoved the wad of tissues at him, felt him take them from her. Too bad he couldn’t take away the confusion—and something like panic—making her stomach feel like someone was tickling it from the inside. Stupid sex magic.

She cleared her throat. “Another half-inch to the left and you’d need a hospital.”

Orange light caught the wet spots on his shirt and illuminated a long rip in one sleeve. Beneath it the flesh was almost as raw as his knuckles.

“Naw, I’m right.” He took the tissues away, sniffled, and pressed them back against his face.

“It’ll scar.”

A deep rumble of laughter. “Guess another scar make a difference?”

He had her there.

“What’s your thinkin on Daisy?”

“Wh—oh.” The dead girl still lay on the pavement. Whitish frost on her skin turned her into an eerie sculpture, like the statues of the original Church leaders outside the Government Headquarters up Northside. Those were carved from white limestone, coated with diamond dust to make them gleam. The rime on Daisy’s dead body created the same illusion, making her mutilated form beautiful.

“I don’t—I don’t know. If it was a ghost, I mean. It’s really too soon for me to tell, it’s so dark and…” Chess shivered. She’d have to tell him about the sex spell, but not now. Not when her blood still simmered a little too fast for comfort.

“Aye. Don’t worry on it, Chess. Maybe you free tomorrow, come back for another look? In the daylight, dig at the walls an all. Bring yon Church stuff, them little machines and all you use.”

“I thought you didn’t think it was a ghost.”

His eyelids flickered and he nodded toward the huddle of girls, counting their money and lighting the dead men’s smokes. “They do. Bump an me, we ain’t so sure. You ain’t think it’s fair chances, them showing up here this night, aye?”

“You think—”

“I pick you up tomorrow round midday, cool?”

She didn’t want to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him; it was that Lex’s words about payback wouldn’t stop echoing in her head. If this was a gang thing, some sort of territory struggle, she did not need to be involved. Her life worked, as much as it could. Getting in between the people to whom she owed her loyalty—the one person to whom she owed loyalty, anyway, all Bump did was sell her pills and run the closest pipe room to her apartment—and the one with whom she swapped bodily fluids probably wasn’t the best way to make sure it kept working.

But there really was no good way to refuse. It wouldn’t just look suspicious, it would be…it would be wrong.

She glanced again at Daisy’s body, abandoned like a busted Dream pipe on the cracked and pitted sidewalk. If it weren’t for the Church, that could have been her. Probably would have been her. Certainly it was what she’d grown up expecting.

So she nodded. “They told me not to worry about coming in tomorrow, not after what happened tonight. No new cases anyway.”

“They give you the day off? How bad your night go?”

“Oh…it was nothing. I got poisoned a little bit. They had an antidote, no big deal.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m here, right? No problem. Where’s the girl who saw the ghost?”

He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Laria. She name is Laria.”

“Yeah, her.” Chess scanned the little crowd of women, picking out the frizzy brown head. Laria stood near the back, a confused look on her face. Chess tried to catch the girl’s eye, but she wasn’t sure if it was possible for anyone to catch the girl’s eye at this stage; she looked like she was ready to keel over backward.

“I get her.”

Laria looked younger close up than Chess had thought. Sixteen, perhaps, or seventeen at the oldest. Her pale blue jacket had stains on the sleeves and a tear in one elbow. When she squeezed her arms tighter around her chest her pinkish-white skin poked through the hole like a turtle peeping from its shell.

“Laria, I’m Chess. Could you tell me what you saw earlier? The man who killed Daisy?”

Laria shook her head. Her clouded brown eyes filled with tears. “Ain’t seen nothin.”

“You said earlier you saw—”

Laria shook her head again. Her hair moved with it like a clump of dirty steel wool.

Chess glanced at Terrible, not bothering to hide her irritation. She had sympathy, sure, but it was late and freezing cold and she just wanted to go home, and Laria’s reticence wasn’t helping anyone.

He gripped Laria’s arm. “You tell she, girl. Only way for us to catch him, dig?”

“I ain’t—”

“Ain’t nothin. You the one left she alone so’s you could go stab up, aye? Least you owe she some knowledge.”

Laria gasped; Terrible’s fist was so tight around her arm that his thumb pressed the second knuckle of his middle finger. “Terrible, you hurtin—”

“Be hurtin worse, you don’t talk up.”

Chess held out her hand. “We can do this tomorrow, can’t we?”

“Come the morrow she won’t get any recall,” he said. “Gotta get what we can now.”

Laria’s cheeks were wet. “He had a hat on. All’s I remember, he had a hat on.”

“He big? Small? You see through him?” Terrible’s grip relaxed, his voice softened. “Come on, Laria. You recall it, aye? You just gotta think on it.”

“He weren’t big. Ain’t much bigger’n me. He were bendin over her when I come close enough to see—he stood up and he was…” Laria swallowed once, then again. “I seed through him.”

“He was transparent?”

“Could see through him,” Laria whispered. “�Ceptin he looked up at me, under the brim o’ his hat, aye…funny hat, with a point in the center and them flaps on the side, on the ears? All of him clear, his clothes and all, �ceptin…” She raised a hand to her face, patted trembling fingers beneath one eye.

“His eyes?” The chill creeping up Chess’s spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.

“Not his eyes,” Laria said, and it came out like the low moan of a wounded animal. “Hers.”

“What?”

Laria started to cry. “Him were wearin she eyes.”




Chapter Four (#ulink_bb9dfcb5-7588-5325-94d0-396c81765713)


You must always be vigilant in guarding against the desires of the flesh. Even those acts not deemed illegal can stain the soul in some situations.

—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 278

The knock on the door came just when she’d started to think it wouldn’t. Typical Lex. She opened it, determined not to let her tiredness loosen her lips.

Of course there were other things to do with those. Despite the way she’d hung up on him earlier, he seemed to be in a good mood—at least his kiss indicated he was. She was almost dizzy by the time he pulled away and set a plastic baggie in her hand. More pills.

“Plan on giving me the clapperclaw, Tulip?” His dark eyes gleamed with amusement—or desire. She didn’t bother to analyze.

“It’s no more than you deserve, being so flippant. I thought I was going to get killed in that damn alley.”

“But you ain’t killed.” He opened her fridge and grabbed a couple of beers. “Look, you still here. So whyn’t you tell me what was on the happening?”

She stiffened. “Why do you want to know?”

“Ain’t I allowed some curiosity? You get stuck in the middle of some road brawl, I can’t ask why you was there in the start? Why you always so mean to me?”

“I’m not mean.”

“Aye, you sure is mean.” He kissed her forehead and handed her an opened beer. She watched him slump gracefully onto the couch and lean back, his Buzzcocks T-shirt riding up to expose a thin line of flat stomach. “Especially after I called them men off. But no matter. Come on in here and sit down.”

She drank off half her beer in one nervous swig. She did not want to sit down. If she put herself within easy reach of him, they’d never get around to discussing anything, even if she wasn’t still jacked from the sex magic around that poor dead girl. “Tell me what you meant first.”

“Meant by what?”

“You know what. You said it was about time Bump got some payback. What did that mean?”

“You ain’t really wanna talk about dead folks and that Bump, do you? I ain’t seen you in a week.”

“Just tell me what you meant, and then we can talk about anything you want.”

She didn’t want to ask him if Slobag’s men were responsible for the dead girl. Didn’t want to ask, because fear coiled in her stomach when she thought about what his answer might be. Payback could mean a lot of things, yes, and she honestly couldn’t believe he would have anything to do with men who would cut the eyeballs out of a human head, living or not. But still…

Finally he shrugged. “Lot goes on here, you know that. Sometimes people turn up dead, and no way of knowing who did the killing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You ain’t asked a question.”

“Do you know anything about the dead girl? Do you—do you know who killed her?”

He didn’t act offended, or as though he didn’t understand the question. That, more than the way his gaze grabbed hers and held, made her believe him. “Nay, Tulip. Ain’t had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Don’t know who does—order ain’t come down from us, dig?”

The breath she hadn’t realized she was saving left her in a quiet rush, only to catch again when he said, “Coursen, Bump ain’t say the same thing.”

“What?”

“You hearing right. Can’t say as that girl ain’t payback from somebody decided to take matters into they own hands.”

Without thinking Chess reached into the baggie he’d given her, still dangling from her clenched fist, and extracted a couple of pills, swallowing them with more beer. Hey, she didn’t have to get up early in the morning. Good thing, too, as it was after three.

“’Specially with she so close to us, hanging the border like that. Why she up there? You ask Terrible that one?”

“No.”

“Maybe you oughta.”

Talking to Lex about Terrible made her twitchy, as it always did. It felt like they were talking around something rather than through it. She crossed the open space between the wall and the kitchen and leaned on the countertop, hiding her lower body. “I wish you would stop hinting around and say whatever it is you’re trying to say.”

“I’m saying, you gots a dead hooker. Only it ain’t the first dead hooker I seen about.”

“What? Wait. You mean somebody’s been killing hookers on your side? Slobag’s girls?”

He nodded. “See? I keep thinking you smart, you keep proving me right.”

“And you think Bump’s behind them.”

“Who else?”

She blinked. “No offense, Lex, but they’re hookers. I can think of a lot of who elses.” Like the Cryin Man, she thought, but did not say. Life had taught her ghosts were real, but the Church had taught her to be skeptical when faced with rumors of one, even if the magical evidence of human involvement wasn’t making fine sweat break out on her skin.

“Aye? Like who. They ain’t with a trick, dig, when it happen. Just picked right off’n the street. You think—hey.” Chess watched the nimble movements of his hands as he lit a cigarette and exhaled thick bluish smoke, more fragrant than the cheaper smokes everyone else she knew bought. “You figure it for a spook, aye? Bump bringing you in to catch a ghost.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ain’t gotta say it. You ain’t got such a stiff face as you suppose, least not with me. I got some practice with you, aye? So Bump bringing you in to see if you gotta kicker doing the killing. Lemme say, Tulip, you sure do get yourself in demand.”

She raised an eyebrow. He grinned. “Oh, you in demand with me, and you know it. How Bump trick you into checking this one out?”

She blinked. There hadn’t actually been a trick, had there? Only the vague, implied threat that if she didn’t do it, Bump might make trouble for her. Maybe invent another debt—she still bought from him, despite getting most of her drugs free from Lex, simply because to stop buying from him would raise suspicion. And she wouldn’t dare visit Slobag’s pipe rooms. Not everyone in Downside stayed with Bump or Slobag. Some switched back and forth. The last thing she needed was to be recognized, even if most of the Chinese gangs—like Slobag’s gang—didn’t hate Church employees on principle.

Not that she didn’t understand. When so much of your culture was based on ancestor worship, to be suddenly told you had to pay to commune with their spirits in a Church-approved fashion had to be a bite. Understanding didn’t make life easier, though.

“No trick,” she said finally, realizing he was watching her decide what to say.

“Just doing it outta the kindness of your heart, aye?”

She nodded. The trap was there, she knew it and she knew what it would be. What she didn’t know was how to get out of it.

“So you gonna help me too, aye?” He stood up and came toward her, his footsteps silent on the floor. She watched him advance, again seeing the trap and this time not caring. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was ready to fling herself into its steel-sharp teeth by the time he stood behind her.

His hand slid over her hips and forward, palm flat on her stomach, fingertips working their way under the waistband of her jeans.

“Maybe ghosts on my side of town, what do you guess?” Smoke from his cigarette touched her skin when he pushed her hair back from her shoulder. His teeth scraped her earlobe and nibbled a line down so he could suck gently on her neck the way he knew she liked. “Think you come over there, help me out?”

“I think I help you out enough already,” she managed. He popped the button on her jeans, slid the zipper down to give himself room to get his hand into her panties. She gasped.

“Think we help each other here, ain’t you? Got anything I can help you with, Tulip?”

“Maybe.” She reached back, finding him hard and ready beneath his jeans and opening them.

He made a low, satisfied sound in the back of his throat, one she’d come to associate with him and the time they spent in his bed. The cigarette flew into the sink and landed with a tiny sizzle. His palms slid up her ribcage under her shirt, under her bra, then back down to shove her jeans and panties off her hips.

“What you say? Gonna help me? Come round my neighborhood, check the sights?” His hand on the back of her neck forced her gently down, bending her over the counter, while one knee pressed the inside of her thigh and urged her legs apart as far as they could go with her jeans pooled around her ankles. His erection butted up against her, hovering, waiting. “Sure could use you, Tulip.”

“Yes,” she managed.

“What’s that? Ain’t sure I caught it.”

She drew as deep a breath as her tight throat would let her. “Yes.”

One hard thrust told her how much he appreciated her answer.



Eight hours later she crossed the empty square in front of the Church with her sunglasses on and a few lines of speed making her heart beat fast enough to get her moving. Lex had hung around until almost five, and she’d woken up to the sound of the phone ringing just after ten. Elder Griffin calling. A new case had arrived unexpectedly, could she come down and start it up?

She pushed the sunglasses up on top of her head once she was inside the dim, blue-lit interior of the hall. It was warmer here, enough that she could take off the coat she was wearing for appearances. All that speed was like carrying a radiator inside her chest anyway.

The hall buzzed with people around her. Other Debunkers, Elders coming from their weekly meeting, Goodys carrying files. Thursday was the busiest day for the Liaisers, those who communicated directly with the dead. The benches along one pale wall were thick with people waiting their turn to be escorted down to the Liaising Rooms, to wait while their assigned Liaiser rode the long train deep into the ground to visit with the pale, emotionless shades of their loved ones or distant ancestors.

Chess suppressed a shudder. That train, and the City itself, were the reasons why she’d chosen Debunking rather than Liaising; she’d shown talent for the latter but couldn’t stomach it. Some days the only thing that kept her alive was fear of the City, and she still hadn’t quite gotten over the night she’d been trapped in the dark on the train platform.

Elder Griffin wasn’t in his office yet. Chess settled herself on the dark, shiny wooden chair next to his door and tried to still her jiggling feet. Maybe that third line had been too much.

“Good morrow, Cesaria. Thank you for coming in. Are you well? No ill effects, I trust?”

She bounced up from her seat and bobbed a quick curtsy. “Very well, sir. Good morrow.”

He turned the ornate iron key in the lock of his office door and ushered her in, closing the door behind them. “Sit down, my dear.”

She did, waiting in the cushioned armchair across from his massive stone desk. She’d always loved this room, loved how peaceful it felt. But then, she’d always liked Elder Griffin as well, and knew the feeling was mutual, so perhaps it wasn’t just the décor that made the room feel like a sanctuary.

He sat down at his desk, the tall window framing him. Pale sheers turned the harsh winter sunlight into a hazy glow that illuminated his hair like a halo and touched every inch of the room. Ivory walls, soft gray stone, leather, dark wood. An antique globe in one corner had always fascinated her; she could have spent hours studying all those lines and shapes where the old country boundaries used to be.

And books everywhere, lining the walls, stacked under glass-topped tables with their spines out. The shelves bowed beneath their weight, and where there were not books there were bowls of herbs, rows of consecrated skulls and bones to be used for spells. On the wall behind her was a flat television tuned to the news service with the volume down and the captioning on; when she left, she knew, he would put the sound back up to keep him company while he worked. It was touches like those that made her comfortable with him, made so many others comfortable with him as well.

Today, though, he didn’t look comfortable himself. Without the makeup that made his face a pure mask on Holy Days, she could see shadows under his eyes, and his brow furrowed as he used another key to unlock his desk and extract a file.

“This came in two days ago,” he said, placing the file on the desk with exaggerated care, as if by placing it in the exact center he could emphasize its importance. “The Grand Elder and I have had several discussions about it. Yea, we have found ourselves concerned about it, and decided in this case to circumvent the normal process and give the case to you.”

“I thank you, sir,” she said, leaning forward in the chair, “but I’m a little confused. Why me?”

“Your…your handling of the Morton case, my dear. You proved to all of us then that you were capable of discretion, as well as being a fine investigator. This is a sensitive case. Are you familiar with Roger Pyle?”

Had there been a drop of moisture in Chess’s mouth, she would have spat it out. As it was, she tried to swallow and managed only to produce a dry clicking sound. “The actor?”

Elder Griffin nodded. “I believe he is, of some sort.”

“He’s haunted?”

“He is reporting a haunting, yes. Apparently he has just moved into a new house and has been having some problems.” He pushed the file forward so Chess could take it. “It’s all here.”

Papers and photos slid out from between the pale covers of the file when she opened it. “He took pictures?”

“He has a lot of documentation.”

She didn’t respond. They both knew how easily documentation could be faked, especially documentation like this. Pictures of hazy gray shapes, of walls covered with shiny streaks that looked like ectoplasm but could have been anything. The deed and blueprints to the house, and a clipping from an old BT newspaper. Chess scanned it.

She looked up. “The previous dwelling was a murder scene?”

“That seems to be the case, yes.”

What was it with murder this week? Hearing about murders, seeing dead bodies, now the possibility of tangling with the ghosts of murder victims—hardly her ideal way to spend a few days.

Elder Griffin shifted in his seat. “It was the decision of the Elders that given your…experience with malevolent entities, your handling of Ereshdiran…”

“I’m the go-to girl for murderous ghosts?”

His eyebrows rose. She couldn’t tell whether he was amused or displeased. “We felt you were the logical one for the case, yes. If you find yourself uncomfortable, we can assign another Debunker, of course, but I don’t have to tell you what a case like this could do for you.”

She waited for him to continue. She’d take the case, she already knew that. When the Elders made a decision it was best to abide by it.

And she couldn’t help it. The thought of handling something like this, a career-making case, appealed. Agnew Doyle was still coasting along on the success of his Gray Towers Debunking, and probably would for years.

Doyle. There was a name she thought of as little as possible. He stayed well out of her way these days. As well he might—after Terrible beat the hell out of him for hitting her, Lex had taken his shot, too.

Time was the only concern. Helping both Bump and Lex would put enough on her plate as it was. She didn’t have a choice there, and she was beginning to feel certain she didn’t have a choice here, either.

“The bonus offering on this case is a tidy one,” he said finally. “Forty thousand dollars.”

Her car was on its last legs. Her couch sagged. Her jeans were developing holes in the knees. Even with the money she saved getting her pills free from Lex it was hard to make ends meet, hard to afford the pipes and the pills she bought from Bump to keep up appearances and the beer and cigarettes and CDs and…Forty grand bought a lot of time in dreamland.

She nodded. “I’ll take it.”




Chapter Five (#ulink_3a958140-e34a-5f56-b613-f60c6233b56c)


The dead do not offer forgiveness. They do not feel. They do not advance or grow. They remain frozen as they were, save for the replacement of love with hate.

—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 329

Normally she would have gone up to the library to research Pyle’s address and put in a request for his financial records and employment history, but in this case there was no need. The newspaper clipping and blueprints gave her what she needed to figure out the address, and the financials were already there.

Besides, Roger Pyle was famous. So famous even Chess knew who he was. He’d parlayed a clever stand-up act into a TV series, and rumor had it he was about to make the move to the big screen. She’d never watched his show, a spoof of a BT religious order, but she didn’t need the pictures in the file to know what he looked like, that was for sure.

Nor did she need the financial records to know how wealthy he was. Pyle couldn’t be faking a haunting for the money. Even if there were numerous entities in his new house, the most he could hope for would be, what, maybe a couple of hundred thousand? A drop in the bucket for someone like him.

Still, there were other reasons to fake a haunting, and forty grand was a lot of money for her. She needed it, and she needed to prove he was lying.

But first…The image of those empty eye sockets haunted her, the image and the knowledge that this would happen again if she didn’t do something about it. Whether it was a ghost or something else, she didn’t know, but the Church’s extensive library was as good a place as any to start finding out.

Goody Glass squatted behind the desk like a troll on a heath, right down to the malevolent facial expression. With an effort, Chess kept from returning the disdain. Goody Glass had never liked her, not from the first week of training when she’d caught Chess eating crackers—crackers stolen from the kitchens—in the stacks.

A minor crime, but it wasn’t the crime itself for which the Goody held a grudge. It was the way that discovery had led to a deeper, uglier one: that Chess had stolen the food because she wasn’t used to being fed on a regular schedule, that she had no ancestry, no family. A fairly common situation since Haunted Week, but not for Church employees.

The Goody’s thick eyebrows rose over her beady eyes. “Art thou working on a case, Miss Putnam?”

“I am, Goody.” Chess waved the file.

She got no reply, but she didn’t expect one. Instead, the door to her left clicked and she entered the Restricted Room, charmed as always by the displays of religious artifacts from the past, all sitting beneath the bright lights as if waiting, hoping, that one day they might be useful again, be something more than relics.

She knew it shouldn’t, but the benevolent smile of the fat golden Buddha in the corner made her feel safer. She smiled in return and set her file and her bag on one of the long, empty wooden tables.

Beneath the glittering gold cross on the far wall—another symbol of religions past—the Church kept shelves full of magical reference books. Chess knelt in front of them, scanning the titles. Eyes…eyes.

She’d used eyes before in magic, of course, but only as ingredients in other spells. Salamander eyes were sometimes used in poultices to heal energy deficiencies. Raven eyes could be dried and powdered and used in protection spells. But she’d never heard of human eyes being used for anything of the sort, much less being used in sex magic, and she had a feeling the eyes were more than simply spell ingredients anyway.

Finally she grabbed a couple of books and sat down with them. The first was a slim volume on sight magic; she had hopes for it, but it related more to psychic visions and spells for out-of-body investigating. That sort of thing was done by the Black Squad, Church government employees, as opposed to regular Church employees like Chess. They handled crimes mundane and magical, the breaking of legal codes as well as moral, whereas Chess dealt pretty much exclusively with the crime of fake hauntings—“conspiracy to commit spectral fraud,” was the official term—and with banishing the ghosts if they did exist.

The second book offered a little more information. It opened with a quote she’d heard before, about eyes as windows to the soul, and studied that idea from the perspective of magic.

Perhaps that was what the glyph meant, the sigil branded into Daisy’s skin and marked on the wall behind her? Chess pulled out her camera to examine the image from the night before, her mouth instinctively tightening at the sight of that horrible fallen face. She scrolled through the images until she found the one she wanted.

It didn’t look like a face at all, not really. Faces weren’t shaped like triangles. But the symmetry of it suggested it could be a face, or perhaps another body part. Terrible had said that Daisy’s was the first female body found, that not much had been left of the second victim—Little Tag, if she remembered. Was it possible someone was building a new body, a vessel for a lost soul?

Such things were rare, of course. She’d only heard of it happening, had never been faced with such a crime or even the faintest evidence of one. But eyes deteriorated quickly when not frozen; if they were indeed being used to give sight to an earthbound spirit, that spirit’s companion or Bindmate or whatever would need a fresh supply.

More deaths.

She pulled the sleeves of her red sweater over her hands and hugged herself, but the chill slithering up her body had nothing to do with the air in the room. Ghosts didn’t care who they killed; last night’s experience with Annabeth Whitman would have been a sharp reminder of that if she’d needed one. But the ghost’s summoner, the one who kept it earthbound, who fed it energy…

It shouldn’t have surprised her. Didn’t she know better than almost anyone what sort of filth humans were capable of? But it did, every time, a sort of weary, miserable surprise that someone out there had found a new way to create pain.

She flipped through the rest of the book but didn’t find much else, barely enough to fill a page in her notebook. She’d talk to Terrible about it later, he might have some ideas, might know more that would help. Probably would, in fact.

With a sigh she reshelved the books and checked the clock at the far end of the room. Almost noon. She’d have to look through the Church’s rune and sigil libraries another time—she already knew she’d never seen the glyph before.

One more place to check. Goody Glass frowned at her as she left the Restricted Room and headed for the long wall of files in the regular library. Chess ignored her.

The files contained—or were supposed to contain, as almost everyone forgot to update them half the time—all the information about every haunting or suspected haunting in Triumph City, about every building, every vacant lot.

And the files at the end…those were full of worse things than hauntings. Here lived the executed criminals and those who’d died of natural causes, both before and after Haunted Week. As she’d just discussed with Elder Griffin, murder scenes carried their own resonance; victims often hung around, trapped in the moment of their death, just as murderers often attempted to recreate their crimes.

Whoever the Cryin Man was, he’d be here, if they had any information at all.

The picture she found when she opened the file nearly made her drop the whole thing. As it was, she gasped loud enough for Goody Glass to give her a disapproving frown.

The Cryin Man—aka Charles Remington—had murdered ten prostitutes, all in the area that now covered Downside, back in the early nineteenth century.

And he’d taken their eyes. The photograph on the top of the stack of yellowed documents could have been the one on the memory chip in Chess’s camera, from the ragged, sawing cuts to the ice crystals forming in the coagulated blood. The poor woman.

Fuck. Just what she needed. A murderous ghost, come back for another round. So much for not getting too deeply involved in this one.



Her first glimpse of Pyle’s house—or rather, of the white stone wall surrounding it—did nothing to dispel her concerns or take her mind off the uneasy waiting sensation she’d had ever since she photocopied that file. The wall, broken by a wooden gate, hid the building itself but allowed a glimpse of treetops and the crest of a gray slate roof. Chess pulled up before the gate and rolled down her window, shoving Charles Remington, his victims, and Daisy out of her head. Time to work.

A mechanical voice emanated from a small steel box. “Name and business, please?”

“Cesaria Putnam, from the Church. I’ve come about your haunting.”

The gate glided out of the way and she drove through.

No, money was probably not a concern for Pyle. White walls, interrupted by shining windows, stretched wide across the winter-dead lawn. The house stood between naked trees, branches jutting aggressively like arms trying to hold it back. It might have been graceful, even beautiful, in summer, when the grass was green and the leaves softened the sharp edges. Now it simply stared at her with dozens of blank eyes, daring her to discover its secrets.

Chess followed the curving drive along the front—it seemed to have been designed so those approaching were forced to watch the building for as long as possible, or vice versa—until she reached a gleaming guard shack.

A second guard stepped out, clad in bulky dark-green trousers and a jacket of the same color that turned his shoulders into mountains. Not as big as Terrible, but not far off. A hat turned his features into a generic authoritarian blank, and he carried a clipboard like a weapon.

“Miss Putnam?”

“Yes, that’s me.”

His blue eyes ran over every detail of her face, impersonally, as though she were a sculpture he was going to have to draw from memory later. Finally he gave her a short nod. “Pull your car around there.” His pen stabbed at the air to his left. “Someone will escort you inside.”

“Where—,” she started, but he’d already turned away and encased himself back in his little booth. Warmer in there, she imagined, although for winter it was actually rather balmy outside.

She rolled her window back up and followed the drive farther until it cut back behind a copse of pine trees. There a garage sprawled, large enough for six cars, with a wide blacktop in front of it. Several more guards stood at the edge waiting for her. Was this a private home or a fucking prison? They looked like they were expecting a riot any minute.

For a moment she sat there in her car, feeling a little like she was in a standoff, before turning the key. The engine coughed into death and she opened her door, feeling their eyes on her. She should have bumped up before she arrived; comedowns made her edgy.

“Chessie?”

Her bag fell from her hand as she spun around, into the face of one of the guards. He looked familiar, yes, even under that damned hat, but she couldn’t quite place him…

“Merritt Hale, remember me?” He took off his hat, and the memory snapped into place.

“Merritt? Wow, how are you?”

They shared an awkward moment, unsure if they should hug or kiss or shake hands, and finally settled into a clumsy half-embrace.

“Been a long time, huh?” he asked, his face splitting into the wide, crooked grin she remembered. “Ten years? Nine?”

“About that, yeah.”

“Since you left to study with the Church.” He nodded at her bag. “Guess you made it, huh? I finally got out when I hit seventeen. Well, you remember, they’ll only keep you until then.”

“I remember.” She didn’t want to, but she did. Corey Youth Home, they’d called it, but it wasn’t anything like a home. More like a zoo, but instead of standing and watching the animals they locked you in with them.

Merritt seemed to be thinking the same thing. His blue eyes clouded for a moment, and he put the hat back on to cover his sandy-blond hair. “Anyway, I guess you’re here about the ghosts.”

She nodded. “Have you seen any?”

“I haven’t, but I’m day shift. I know a couple of guys did, or thought they did, anyway. Come on. I’ll escort you in.”

His hand on the small of her back guided her across the blacktop and past the other guards watching with narrowed eyes. Merritt held up a hand. “I know her.”

“Why are they watching like that?”

“Normally they’d search you, make sure you don’t have weapons or anything, you know.”

Chess thought of her knife, tucked into the side pocket of her bag, and of her full pillbox. If she was going to get searched every time she came here…she’d have to be careful.

“What, just my bag, or my person?”

His glance flicked over her entire body, from feet to top of head, while he grinned again. He always had been a hound. And she should know, having given him a try once or twice. There wasn’t much else to do in the Corey Home, and sex was the most valuable currency she’d had.

Still was, if she thought about it, but she didn’t really want to. She wasn’t with Lex for drugs. Technically.

“Everything. Mr. Pyle doesn’t take chances, and neither do we.”

She filed that away for future use. She wouldn’t be spending long hours here, that was for sure, not if she couldn’t bring her Cepts. The last thing she needed was to start itching and getting sick while with a subject.

Merritt led her to what looked like another room attached to the far wall of the garage, with an outside door. It turned out to be a hallway. Fluorescent bulbs cast a garish, shadowless light along its length; it felt like walking through an operating room. She pulled her sunglasses back down.

Merritt smiled. “Mr. Pyle likes bright lights. And with everything going on…”

That was a point in Pyle’s favor, certainly. It was something those who faked hauntings never seemed to think of, people’s almost instinctual desire for light when scared. Odd, but true.

Of course a point in Pyle’s favor was a point against her, but no way was she giving up this early.

Merritt opened the door at the end of the hall and ushered her through to a small, plain room, still blindingly light but empty. He gripped the bright gold doorknob. “Ready?”

“I don’t know, what do you think?”

“I know I am,” he muttered, but before she could respond he stepped through the doorway, tilting his head to the side to indicate she should follow.

The ceiling rose above her, cresting so far up it was hard to see the ridge. Pale wood beams crisscrossed below it, giving an illusion of intimacy Chess wouldn’t have thought possible.

That bleached wood was echoed in the huge mantel over the fireplace, big enough Chess figured she could almost stand in it, and the chairs and couches with their ivory cushions and pale orange throw pillows. The carpet was the same pale orange. It was a beautiful room, ostentatiously cozy.

In the center of it stood Roger Pyle. He exuded charisma the way Bump oozed sleaze; it felt like he’d physically hit her in the chest with charm, and she fought the reaction. Wouldn’t do to start liking the subjects.

But she couldn’t help liking him a little when he crossed the room with his hand outstretched and an eager, uncertain smile on his face.

“Miss Putnam, is it? Thank you so much for coming. We’re really…we’re really at loose ends here, don’t know what else to do.” He raised a hand to scratch his stubbled chin, and she noticed the bags under his eyes she hadn’t seen when he was smiling.

“I’m here to help any way I can, Mr. Pyle.” They always thanked her for coming at first. Very few of them thanked her later.

“Please, please, call me Roger. And, oh, sit down. Where are my manners—Merritt could you ask one of the maids to get Miss Putnam a drink? Drink, Miss Putnam? What would you like? We have everything, you only have to ask. Snack? There’s plenty of food, all kinds of things, cold meats and chips and shrimp cocktail, it’s all in the kitchen, we can get you anything you like…” He looked around, shoved his hands in his pockets like a guilty child who’d just been caught talking during class and was being made an example of.

Chess took pity on him and pulled her water bottle from her bag. “I’m fine, thanks.”

“Oh, you have a drink. Excellent, excellent. Well, let’s see, where do I start? What do you need to know? Did you look at the file I gave you? I mean, not you, but the Church? I put everything in there, everything I know, and the pictures and everything.”

“I’ve looked at it, Mr.—Roger. It’s very detailed. Before we discuss it, though, we really should get your family in here as well. Are they available? It saves time to talk to all of you together.”

It also made it easier to gauge their reactions and see if they tried to help one another out, but she didn’t mention that.

“Oh, of course, of course. Merritt can you please get Kymmi and Arden? I think Kym’s upstairs trying to get some sleep, and Arden—I don’t know. Maybe the rec room, or something? Her room? She could be watching TV, that’s possible.”

Merritt nodded and left the room, giving Chess a reassuring glance as if he thought she’d be nervous at being alone with Roger.

Nervous wasn’t the word for it, though. A suspicion, one that didn’t surprise her but piqued her curiosity, had already started worming its way into her head. Perhaps most celebrities talked this much. She didn’t much care about them or their lives, but it was difficult to escape the occasional headline or news story or bit of gossip, and she knew most people assumed famous people had incredible egos and talked just for the sake of it.

She didn’t think that was the cause of Roger Pyle’s unexpected loquacity, though. Or nerves. And when he sat down on the polished wood coffee table to face her, she saw she was correct.

Roger Pyle was high as a kite.

His pupils were just black spots the size of dust specks in the famously golden brown of his irises, and they veered around, never quite settling on anything. He rubbed the tips of his thumbs against the balls of his index fingers, back and forth, back and forth, as if he was playing a tiny violin, and she could see his pulse practically jumping out of his neck. He certainly wasn’t lying about having a hard time sleeping. Looking at him, she doubted if he’d be able to sleep in a vat of liquid Dream.

“I’m so glad you came,” he said again, looking up at the ceiling, out the windows, down at his tapping feet. “We’ve only been here three months, you know? Had the place built, moved in…It was our dream house, Kymmi and me. My wife, Kym, I mean, and our daughter, Arden. Well, you’ll meet them when Merritt gets back with them.”

“What made you move here?”

“I do a television show, The Monastery? It’s a comedy.”

“Of course.”

“And there’s been talk of a film. For me, I mean, not for the show, so I wouldn’t need to work so much, so I don’t have to stay in Hollywood. We thought, for Arden…not living there might allow her a more normal upbringing. We wanted to be somewhere less crazy, more wholesome. I told my producer I wanted to set up a studio here, film the show from here.”

She hid her amusement by picking up her bag and getting out her notepad and pen. Was he serious? Triumph City was a cesspit. She’d spent the night before examining a murdered prostitute and watching a fatal gang fight.

Then she caught herself. For men like him, Triumph City was more wholesome. He didn’t live in Downside, he didn’t even live in Cross Town or Northside. The white brick monstrosity he and his wife had built sat outside the city limits, out where the streets and houses grew wider and the range of experience grew narrower. What used to be a bustling suburbia and was just now starting to be rebuilt after Haunted Week had decimated the population and driven everyone into the perceived comfort of semi-communal living.

Just the thought of all that empty land outside the walls of the house made her feel she was being watched, not to mention that sitting in the presence of someone speeding into the next dimension was enough to set her twitching. She gripped her pen more tightly and looked up, hoping to ground herself somehow.

She was being watched. A blond woman whose pert nose was as artificial as the deep lavender of her eyes studied Chess from the doorway. The woman’s hair hung in loose porn-star curls around her shoulders, and the snug ivory dress displayed her swelling bosom and an abdomen Chess imagined she could bounce a quarter off of, but there was nothing sexy about her—no spark of warmth or intimacy, no sense that anything of interest hid behind those startling eyes.

“Kymmi, darling,” Roger began, jumping to his feet, “this is Cesaria Putnam, from the Church, she’s come to take care of—”

“I know who she is.” Kym Pyle gave her husband a look that could cut glass. “And don’t sit on the coffee table, please. I’ve asked you before.”

So much for the loving family. Maybe it wasn’t muscle and silicone beneath that soft jersey dress. Maybe it was steel and microchips.

“Sorry, sorry, sweetness. I forgot.”

Kym ignored him, turning the weight of her disapproval onto Chess. For a second Chess saw herself as this woman must: her dyed-black hair with its Bettie Page bangs, her faded red sweater and black jeans, her dusty down-at-heel boots. Nothing. No one of importance, an urchin, someone with no ancestry to speak of. Never mind that Chess deliberately sought to give that impression when she went on a case. It still stung a little.

Then the moment passed. She wasn’t here for a social visit. She was here to bust someone’s ass for defrauding the Church, and she was damned good at her job.

So she met that bitch-queen stare with one of her own and plastered a smile across her face. “It’s lovely to meet you, Mrs. Pyle. Why don’t you sit down too? I have a lot of questions.”

Kym raised a sculpted eyebrow but said nothing as she placed herself in one of the armchairs, her legs crossed tidily at the ankles.

They sat for a few minutes listening to Roger grind his teeth before Arden Pyle entered. Chess put her at about fourteen, pretty, with grayish eyes and a sullen air. A shapeless blue sweater covered her from neck to midthigh, with blue jeans below, and her bare toenails were painted black. For some reason the sight made Chess smile.

“Okay,” she said, “so why don’t you all tell me when this started. When did you first see the spirit, or the first spirit? Dates, places, whatever you can remember.”

“There’s no point to any of this,” Arden said, her tone belying the sweetness of her round little face.

“Arden dear, now you let Miss Putnam—”

“There’s no point”—Arden glared at her father—“because I know you’re faking it.”




Chapter Six (#ulink_992bc29d-1052-5a0b-bb6a-466abd1aba5c)


Not every family situation will be pleasant; not every home is happy. Your job will be to determine whether that displeasure has drifted into dishonesty.

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

“Arden!” Kym Pyle’s skin reddened beneath the perfect mask of her makeup. “How dare you say such a thing!”

Roger cast an anxious look in Chess’s general direction—she doubted he would actually be able to focus on anything—and said, “Arden, honey, you know that isn’t true. You’re being very unfair, Mommy and Daddy would never do something like that.”

Arden’s pretty little face scrunched itself into a glower. “Give me a break.”

“Miss Putnam, I assure you we’re not doing anything of the kind. Our daughter has a very active imagination.”

Maybe, maybe not, Chess thought. She’d have to make sure she got a chance to talk to Arden Pyle alone at some point. Not today—they’d be watching her too closely—but at some point. “That’s okay, Roger. Let’s just get back to the question, shall we? When did you first see the entity?”

“This is bullshit,” Arden said. Chess steeled herself for more delaying on the part of her parents, but neither reacted.

Instead, Kym spoke up. “I was in my work room. Embroidery. I’m putting our family tree on a tapestry for that wall.” She nodded to indicate the wall behind Chess, who didn’t turn around.

“I was just finishing my great-grandmother’s name when I realized it was quite cold, despite my sweater. So I got up, planning to call one of the staff members to turn up the heat, and…” Her hands clenched in her lap. “It was a woman. She looked terrified, and I spun around to see if something was behind me, but nothing was. When I turned back around to ask her what she was looking at—I thought maybe she was one of the staff—she was gone.”

“I saw a man,” Roger said. “In one of the guest rooms. I’d gone in there to check and see if we needed anything—we were having some friends stay that weekend—”

Arden snorted.

He ignored her. “—and I thought I’d check the bathroom of the room they’d be staying in, make sure we had shampoo and toothpaste, you know, the things people need. I didn’t see him so much as glimpse him, standing in front of the window—I think it was a man, anyway, taller and broader than a woman—but by the time I realized it wasn’t one of the staff, he’d disappeared.”

“Did you feel anything? Cold, nerves, fear, anything unusual?” Not everyone did, but then not everyone knew that.

“No. Like I said, I assumed he was staff, waiting for me, or taking a few minutes for himself. I don’t mind if they do that, as long as everything is done…” He caught Kym’s disapproving eye. “Well, I don’t. I thought it was odd he didn’t respond when I said hello, and then he just…poof, gone.”

“This happened during the day?”

“Technically, I guess. It was about five in the afternoon. But it gets dark so early now.” He shuddered. “The nights are so long.”

“And the sightings have grown more threatening since?”

Both Pyles nodded. Arden stayed as she was, with her arms folded and a bored look on her face.

“We were attacked in our sleep two weeks ago,” Roger said. “Kymmi was injured. It’s gotten worse since. We don’t shower alone. We don’t go anywhere alone at night, anywhere in the house.”

Chess shuffled through the stack of photographs balanced in her lap until she found the one she wanted. She assumed it was Kym; the image was of a woman’s toned back, covered in long shallow scratches. She held it up. “This was your injury, Mrs. Pyle?”

“Yes. The marks are still there.”

“Show her, Mom.” Arden turned to Chess. “My mom likes to show people her body, don’t you, Mom?”

Kym looked as if she wanted to slap the girl, but she kept her composure. “Do you need to see them, Miss Putnam?”

“If you don’t mind, that would be helpful.”

Kym rose from her seat and turned around, crossing her arms in front of her to grip the hem of her dress. Chess opened her mouth to speak—she hadn’t meant for the woman to do this in front of her child—but it was too late. The dress slipped up, displaying Kym’s silky thong and the lean expanse of her back, interrupted by a bra strap in matching pink.

Trying to behave as if this weren’t creepily inappropriate, Chess stood up to look closer. The scratches had faded. No longer the angry, puffy wounds in the picture, they were thin and scabbed over. “This happened two weeks ago?”

“They didn’t want to heal,” Roger said. “We tried everything. They’ve only just started to get better.”

“Actibac?” Chess asked, unable to resist.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“We get injured a lot, so we keep up on stuff like that.” She resumed her seat, hoping Kym would get the hint and lower her dress, but it took a good thirty seconds before the woman finally let the thin fabric slide back down over her body.

“See, I wish I’d known that, we could have just called the Church and asked them, wouldn’t that have been good, Kymmi?”

Kym gave him a tight smile, but her gaze stayed focused on Chess.

If that bitch thought she could make Chess uncomfortable, she was wrong. Chess allowed herself a tiny eye roll as she looked away and grabbed her Spectrometer. “Okay, why don’t you give me a tour of the house? Show me where the sightings and attacks have taken place? We’ll see what we can find.”



The Church operated a few living museums for the benefit of its employees; Chess especially liked the synagogue one, with instructors wearing those little hats they used to call yarmulkes. The Pyle home reminded her of one of those museums, as intensely and carefully decorated as the living room she’d already been in, and as impersonal.

They trooped up the graceful, winding staircase into a long hall. Windows at each end were blank white holes covered with blinds. Any light they might have let in was rendered useless by the bright electric bulbs at short intervals down the hall’s length. It must have cost a fortune to keep all those bulbs burning.

Ten rooms, including the master suite, Arden’s room, a computer room, library, and separate spa. The rest were guest bedrooms, unique only in their nondescript colors.

Chess’s Spectrometer gave off the occasional blip as she followed the Pyles through each guest room and bathroom, but not frequent or strong enough to give her any information. She took careful note of the layout. If the Pyles weren’t sleeping at night, it would be next to impossible to sneak in after dark and use her Hand of Glory to deepen their sleep so she could investigate. Of course, with all that security, paying an afterdark visit would be difficult whether the Pyles slept or not. She had a feeling their security didn’t. Maybe Merritt…?

No. Even if it were the sort of thing she could ask, she couldn’t ask. Trusting him would be foolish. A year or so of shared history didn’t make them friends.

“Roger,” she asked, interrupting him in the middle of showing her where he’d seen the ghost of a young man coming out of one of the bathrooms, “do you know where the boundaries of the original house stood? The one where the murders took place?”

“As far as we can tell—the foundation had been filled in and the walls demolished before we bought the land—the north walls aligned where our bedroom is. But from the measurement estimates we got from the surveyor, that house ended just after this room.” He indicated the doorway. “We haven’t seen any ghosts in that part of the house, not yet, anyway.”

“Have you been sleeping there?”

The Pyles exchanged glances—even Arden, who hadn’t spoken a word throughout the tour.

“We just haven’t been sleeping at night,” Kym said. “In any of the rooms.”

“Arden stays with a friend some nights,” Roger added. “And Kym and I stay in the living room.”

Chess nodded. She could probably use a warding spell to keep them off the top floor while she investigated up there, but it would make things more difficult. If she could even figure out a way in.

They headed back up the hall toward the master suite, the last room on the right. Chess had expected grandeur. She hadn’t expected the bed to be quite so bargelike, a slab of mattress covered with silk sheets. She definitely hadn’t expected to see hanging over it an enormous painting of a naked Kym. Was this what Arden meant when she said her mother liked to show off her body?

She certainly seemed to be enjoying it. Lying on her side on what looked like a fur rug—how original—with one hand demurely not quite covering the pale curls between her legs and the other thrown back behind her head. A lovely piece of work, Chess had to admit, but still…No wonder Arden was so grumpy, having to compare her own developing figure to the best body money could buy.

That was one problem she herself hadn’t had to deal with. Of course, in her case it would have been an improvement to be worried about how she measured up to the naked women she saw, rather than worrying about what they planned to do to her or make her do to them that time, but…

“The night you were attacked in here,” she said, “what exactly happened?”

“It was dark.” Roger looked as though he might have been coming down a bit; his eyes weren’t quite so glassy. “I don’t remember falling asleep or even waking up. Just…just hearing it, movements in the room, and Kymmi screaming, and I couldn’t seem to feel my hands…and it laughed and screamed.” His eyelids fluttered, blinking back tears. Chess reminded herself the man was a professional actor. “It was terrible.”

Kym herself was silent. Chess made a mental note to search for her private financial records. The file contained statements from several accounts, but they were all joint accounts. If Kym was looking for a good way to end the marriage and get as much money as she could, faking a haunting could be an effective, if roundabout and chancy, way to do it.

It was also a very public way, one that could end Roger Pyle’s career.

She studied the rest of the room in a slow, careful sweep while the Spectrometer beeped quietly from its new holster around her waist. Two dressers, two bedside tables with ornate handles on the bottom doors. Everything in the room had a twin, a mirror image of itself. How imaginative of Kym. If she hadn’t married whom she married, Chess thought, she probably would have been one of those women who hung plaster ducks on the walls and collected painted plates.

The Spectrometer found a steady beat while Chess paced the floor, speeding up by the bed, slowing down by the window, finally beeping faster outside a closed door on the right-hand wall. She glanced up.

“Bathroom,” Roger said.

Chess went inside.

No, Kym Pyle was not a woman with a lot of inhibitions. The window in the bathroom had no blinds or shades; cold white light spilled over the marble tub and floor and filled the mirror to Chess’s right. In summer it might have been pretty. Now it felt sterile, and hushed like a cemetery.

Something of life was in the room, though. The Spectrometer continued beeping, the high-pitched sound bouncing off the marble until it sounded more like one long continuous whine and Chess’s heart started pounding. Whatever noise her boots made on the shiny floor was lost while she walked this way and that, trying to determine the source of the beeps. Trying to find the ghost. Her shoulders tensed. She was not alone in this room, she knew it. Dead eyes watched her from a place she could not see. Her skin crawled and tingled, her tattoos warming, waiting for it. Whatever it was.

But nothing happened. After a few minutes she started to relax. The Spectrometer’s beeps didn’t have to mean a ghost was present, just that one had been—and there were ways, illegal ways, to fool even the Spectro. She didn’t see how any of those could be used here—there wasn’t much room to hide them—but still…

She shook her head. It was not time to start thinking of this as a real haunting yet. She was spooking herself. A bad move. Time to get going.

It wasn’t until she turned around to leave that she became aware of the smell. It had been there almost from the moment she stepped into the room, but subtle, almost undetectable. The minute she caught it, recognized it, it grew stronger still. Death. Decay. Rotting things, squirming things buried in the earth. Everything foul and wrong hid inside that smell, was caught by it and transmitted to her through it.

She still felt safe enough; even her tattoos had stopped tingling. But the odor remained, wafting through the air like a whisper. She checked the tub drain, wondering if perhaps the scent came from inside, but it was no stronger there than anywhere else.

That left the double sinks below the mirror. Her feet moved as if through mud. The smell was all she could think of, all she could focus on; it blurred her vision, made her ears ring and her head hurt.

The sinks were white, gleaming and pure in the dark green countertop. Chess thought the smell might be stronger there but couldn’t be sure. She was beginning to doubt she would ever breathe fresh air again. The thought of all the bacteria that must be carried in that smell, the thought of plagues and epidemics, made it almost impossible to check the other sink.

She didn’t have to. Movement caught her eye. She turned automatically and saw a cockroach crawling over the lip of the sink, its horrible black body an abomination against the spotless marble. Another appeared, and another. Chess forced herself to take a step closer, being careful to keep her body away from the counter itself, and saw movement in the drain, heard the dry rustle of scabrous exoskeletons rubbing together.

Her fists clenched. A spot of red liquid flew from the drain and landed on the mirror. Her insides twisted as one drop became two, became three, and blood burbled up from the drain, viscous bright blood filled with squirming bodies, rising in the sink.

She didn’t realize she’d been moving until the back of her thigh hit the high, cold side of the tub. For a second she teetered, trying not to fall, unable to take her eyes from the groaning, bubbling sink.

Her hand hit the edge of the tub to brace herself. She would not throw up, would not, could not. This too could be faked. It wasn’t a difficult trick to do. Even the smell of the blood, a coppery tang beneath the stronger odor of decay, could be faked. She’d never seen anything this elaborate on a case before, but she’d never investigated millionaires, either.

“Okay. Okay.” Her own voice soothed her, brought her back into herself. It was time to leave this room. Every cell in her body screamed at her to get out. She’d come back later, examine, investigate. She had the layout of the house down, she had an idea of how the family worked and what their relationships were, it was all she needed.

Her composure thus regained, she strode out of the bathroom with a smile that made her cheeks ache. Church policy for Debunkers: Never, ever indicate you’ve seen anything out of the ordinary or been scared by anything you’ve seen. If they’d staged it, they’d wonder why she hadn’t mentioned it and it would unbalance them. If they hadn’t, mentioning it might sound like an admission.

“Okay,” she said. “I think I have basically everything I need, so I’ll get back to the Church and start writing everything up, and I’ll be in touch soon.”

“Soon? How soon?” Kym did not look pleased.

“Oh, um, tomorrow, maybe, after sunset. We don’t really work on Holy Day, of course.”

Kym frowned. “We’re having a party tomorrow night. Arden won’t be here.”

Yes! Finally, something going right. Her chances of getting into the house would be much easier if there were a lot of people around anyway. And if Arden wasn’t home…

“I haven’t seen Arden’s room yet.” She turned to the girl. “Would you mind showing me before I go? That way you can be there while I look at it, it’s less like an invasion of privacy.”

Arden didn’t look convinced, but led Chess down the hall to the second door on the left—odd, wasn’t it, that her room wasn’t directly opposite her parents’?—and opened it.

Dark curtains on the windows turned the room into a cave. Chess picked her way across the floor, through the colorless, limp shapes of discarded clothing, and pulled the curtains. It only took a second to pop the wire out of the security alarm to disable it, and to unlock the window itself. It might be detected, sure, but it at least increased her odds of getting in easily when she came back later. She palmed the wire as she turned around.

The room was…just a room. Posters of pop stars covered the walls—apparently Arden was not into movie stars, which wasn’t much of a surprise considering what her father did for a living—and clothes and schoolbooks covered every available surface. A sparkly pink cell phone and matching laptop sat on an ornate white desk, which was itself almost hidden by stickers and pictures and scribbled phone numbers.

The rest of the room was dark blue and yellow, a surprising choice, but one Chess imagined Arden hadn’t made herself.

More clothes exploded from the closet, and Chess suspected from the anxious sidelong glances the girl kept giving the half-closed door that she had something hidden in there as well, but there was no point in trying to find out what. Not when she could look the next night with a lot more ease.

She gave Arden’s yellow bathroom a cursory glance—staying well away from the sinks—and made her goodbyes, taking with her Roger Pyle’s business card and a burning desire never to return.

Merritt was nowhere to be seen as she climbed into her car and pulled away from the garage. They’d searched the vehicle—expertly, but she knew they’d done it. She could smell them, sense them, hard hands rifling through her belongings, feeling around beneath her seats.

The wooden gate crept open for her once again and she was gone, speeding down the road, managing to get out of sight of the walls before she had to pull over and take her pills.




Chapter Seven (#ulink_86cda330-3051-588b-8960-ee11b2631b65)


Worse still are those who commit the ultimate evil, who bind themselves unto the dead. No good can come of such an act; at the end of it lies only misery.

—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 37

“He could have made the brand, yeah,” she said, as Terrible slid the car up on the curb. The Johnny Cash CD cut off with the ignition, leaving too-loud silence in its wake. “It’s not something ghosts normally do, but it’s possible. Or he could have found it, or—I don’t know. It had to have happened right before she died, but I have no idea why.”

“He brand them dames before?”

“No. At least it wasn’t in the file, and there were—there were pictures.” More dead faces to add to the gallery that already followed her: Randy Duncan, Brain—the teenager she’d failed to protect a few months back…Brain’s pale little face refused to leave her. She’d had to put her new bed in a different location, against the opposite wall. Every time she walked into her bedroom she’d seen the shade of that still, wideeyed figure, silent and cold on her old bed.

“So he pick up new tricks, aye, in the City?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

He accepted this without comment and left the car, the removal of his weight lifting his side by several inches. Chess waited in the still-warm interior until he came around and opened her door for her, a habit of his she’d gotten used to.

Without the dead body on the ground, the street somehow managed to feel even more threatening than it had the night before. More empty. Daisy was gone, and already forgotten, as if by dying she’d erased herself from memory as well as the world itself.

Chess looked away from the spot where the girl had lain and nodded at the alley. “In there first, I guess. While there’s still a little light.”

Beneath her clothes her skin felt raw from the vigorous shower she’d practically thrown herself into when she got home. Raw, and a little tingly. The energy wasn’t anywhere near as strong as it had been the night before, but it lingered.

“Brought one along,” Terrible replied, pulling a long steel flashlight from the trunk of his car. When he leaned over, the butt of his gun and the thin round handle of some other weapon poked at the fabric of his shirt. The sight reassured her—not that she’d doubted. Terrible didn’t take chances.

Neither did she. In her bag was everything she thought she might need if the ghost of Charles Remington showed up again, and a few things she thought she might not but grabbed anyway.

“After, you wanna see Red Berta? Maybe she got more for you. Them dead ones, they ain’t forgotten, if you dig.”

“What, you mean the hookers still remember them?”

“Aye. Ain’t somethin they allow me into, but they got—they got secrets, aye? Knowledge they don’t share, least not with me or Bump. Not with men.”

“Yeah, okay. Is she going to be free tonight?”

“I give her a ring up, you want. After.”

“Okay.” A glance around told her the street was empty, but trusting your eyes was folly here, where shadows multiplied with every passing second. She squared her shoulders and stepped into the mouth of the alley. Another rush of sex magic swirled around her, then settled. “Think we’re going to be alone this time?”

“Slobag always tryin to make a grab,” Terrible said. Not really an answer, but an answer just the same. “Back round Festival time he tried makin some deal up on Fifty-first, get his hands on a buildin. Figured he planned to set up there, Bump and me did.”

“What’d you do? Burn it down?”

“Aye.”

Chess’s fingers brushed Terrible’s as she took the flashlight from him. Normally she would start looking up the walls, at the ceiling had there been one, but that was going to be difficult in this instance, so the ground would be first. She scanned back and forth, slowly, studying every inch revealed by the circle of light.

She didn’t bother asking him if anyone had been inside the building when the fire was started, figuring the odds on it were probably about fifty-fifty. Not her business, anyway.

“He knows it was you?”

She didn’t see him shrug, but knew he did. “Guessin he do. No matter though.”

“Because you’re safe here?”

“Because he always after us. Reason ain’t important.”

A spark of light shot off the flashlight’s beam, but when Chess bent down she saw it was only a bit of broken glass. She shone the light on the base of the wall to her left, listening as the creatures who’d eavesdropped on her phone conversation the night before once again skittered out of her way. Skittered, like roaches…ugh.

“Some things are—” She stopped. “Hey, come look at this.”

He crouched beside her, his arm bumping against her shoulder. “Aye?”

“There. The feather.” Inside her bag was a small box of surgical gloves. She handed the flashlight back and slipped one on, then picked up the feather between her thumb and index finger. Even with the gloves on, a slight tingle ran up her arm. Definitely connected.

Terrible shone the light directly on it, and she could see the buff tinge on the hairs, the stripes and mottling. “Shit.”

“What?”

“It’s an owl feather,” she said.

“Aye?”

“Yeah.” She turned it in the light. “I’m not sure what kind. I think it’s a Great Horned Owl, but I didn’t do as well in ornithology as I should have.”

“Ain’t know the Church teach you birds.”

“Birds are psychopomps. Especially birds of prey. Especially owls.”

“Takin souls to the City, meanin? They what you use?”

“No. I mean, yes, they do in normal circumstances, but no, we use specially trained dogs. Birds are too unpredictable, they can be hard to work with in ritual.”

“Why a ghost use a—a bird? Ain’t need it get up here, aye?”

“I’m not sure. No, he wouldn’t necessarily use it to get up here, but—” With her free hand she found some plastic pouches in her bag and dug them out. “Open one of those, will you?”

He did, holding it out for her to slip the feather into. She felt better once it was sealed away, but not much. “Ghosts don’t use psychopomps, no,” she said slowly, trying to force her recalcitrant brain into thought. “They’re not capable of magic—I mean, they can only feed off energy, not create it.”

“The psychopomp give them it?”

“No. They have energy of a sort, but it’s not the kind a ghost can use.”

Terrible caught the implication, as she knew he would. “So somebody working alongside yon ghost, aye?”

She nodded. The walls of the alley loomed over her, stretching into the dim sky like broad hands trying to cup over her and squash her. She hadn’t mentioned the energy from the night before, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. “Last night…,” she said, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Last night I noticed, I felt the energy from the magic they’d been doing. Sex magic. They were doing sex magic.”

Pause. “Them who killed her?”

“Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure. It was really strong, on her body and everything.”

“Lots of whores use magic. Makes them work go faster, if you dig. Maybe were them other dames you felt?”

“No. I wondered that too but this was…blacker, if you know what I mean. It didn’t feel right. And it didn’t feel like any of those girls could have made it. Too powerful, for one thing. And it felt male.”

Funny, she hadn’t really thought of that the night before, but it was true. It had felt male; too strident and aggressive to be a woman’s magic, even a woman like Red Berta.

“Ain’t know you could tell.”

“Yeah. Everyone’s magic feels a little different, it’s kind of like fingerprints. Or how everyone smells like themselves, it’s all chemical, you know what I mean? The energy from one of my spells wouldn’t feel like the energy from yours, or anyone else’s. It’s unique.”

“So you can say who done it from the feel?”

She nodded. “Usually, if I have something to compare it with. Like with the Lamaru, since it was a lot of people doing the spell, the energy was mixed and I couldn’t identify it. But if it’s a single practitioner, yeah, I could.”

“Damn. �Sfucking cool, Chess. You like—cool, is all.”

To hide her blush she focused on tucking the plasticencased feather into one of the pockets in her bag. “Thanks.”

“Ain’t think birds lose feathers in winter,” he said, standing up. She did the same, the movement making her legs ache.

“Some do, it all depends on—no. No, you’re right. Great Horned Owls don’t molt in winter. It’s their mating season.”

“Ain’t just fall out, aye? Got pulled out.”

“Well…I guess it could have caught on something, but yeah, chances are it got pulled out.”

She took the light back and shone it around, looking for something the bird could have landed on. The alley was full of sharp edges, but nothing looked like it could have snagged a feather.

“That’s some serious, aye? Takin a feather? You figure maybe it’s part of it?”

“I don’t know, really. It’s not as serious a crime to hurt a psychopomp as it is to kill one, but it was probably an accident anyway. You can use the feathers in ritual, but I can’t think of any where you leave it behind after, or where the ritual doesn’t destroy it. You know, like burning it or something.”

“Hey, look here.” Terrible shuffled a few boxes, bent down. The light sparked off the piece of mirror he held. His hand engulfed it, but she could see the leather wrapped around its lower half, turning it into a crude knife. “Were Daisy’s.”

“How do you—oh. You knew her, I keep forgetting.”

“Know em all.” He turned the makeshift blade in his hand, studying it with perhaps more intensity than was necessary. “She not a bad one, Daisy. Pretty little thing.”

“I’m…I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

He shrugged; getting too attached to people in Downside was foolishness. “Ain’t know her close. But she ain’t stupid, Daisy. Looks like somebody here with the ghost right up, aye? Don’t grab no weapon against somethin ain’t there.”

Chess took the little mirror knife from him. “Unless it just fell out of her purse.”

He snorted. “Nothin just fall out a whore’s purse, Chess.”

“Oh. Right. But—where was her purse? I didn’t see it, did you? Did one of the other girls have it?”

“Ain’t think so. One of em would say, she had it.” His brow furrowed. “They keep all sorts in there, dig. Like everythin they got.”

“Money?”

“Aye, what they ain’t pay off to Red Berta for Bump, but…whore’s real catchy about her purse. Don’t like nobody touch it up, don’t let nobody look in. Keep she magic in too, if she use it. Like superstition, dig? Bad luck touchin another whore’s purse, lettin any else touch yours.” He shrugged. “Them bodies ain’t just theirs, dig? So they keep the purse private. Ain’t for nobody but them.”

She cleared her throat. “Makes sense. Come on, let’s keep looking.”

The sun had sunk almost completely below the horizon, too far to cast shadows; when she looked at the empty buildings across the street they were black shapes against a blazing red-orange background. She shoved her hands into her pockets for a second to warm them, then headed farther into the alley.

Terrible’s phone rang, startling her. She didn’t stick around to hear his half of the conversation. Somewhere near the back was the metal box she’d sat on the night before, and she wanted to find it.

Her feet scuffed through old newspaper that disintegrated when her shoes hit it, through layers of dust and grime. The flashlight’s beam bounced off the walls, off the piles of garbage and furniture so broken and filthy even Downside residents found no more use for it. Two red orbs glowed at her briefly. A rat, watching her invade its territory.

The box was still there. That alone made her think it was probably unrelated. The killers might have missed the owl feather and Daisy’s weapon hidden beneath the rubbish, but they wouldn’t have left this and not come back for it. Still, she might as well search everything.

“Aye. Aye, when I can.” Terrible snapped the phone shut behind her. She glanced around.

“Everything okay?”

“Dame I know. I forgot callin her.”

“Amy?”

“Ain’t seen Amy in weeks.”

She knelt in front of the box and slid her gloved hand along the edge, looking for the catch. “Oh? Why, what happened?”

“Nothin happen. Just ain’t seen her.”

“And now you’re seeing someone else and you’re not even calling her when you say you will. Shame on you.”

She flipped up the hook and pulled the lid back faster than she should have. Her hands didn’t seem quite under her control. Made sense, with that damned magic still hovering around her like cloying perfume, making her ache a little bit right where she did not need to be aching.

It was empty. Too empty, its spotless, shiny-clean interior a stark contrast to the thick layer of grunge on the outside.

“She get over it,” he said. She felt him lean over, inspecting the inside of the box. “Look awful clean in there for some box sittin in an alley, aye?”

“That’s what I thought.” She tipped the box toward her so she could shine the light into all the corners. A faint fragrance hit her nose. Familiar, musty. Not at all like the odor from the Pyles’ place earlier. This smell made her think of Church, of bluish light and warm afternoons in wortcunning classes. The smell of ritual.

All she could do was make a note, inhale deeply, and try to memorize it. Whatever it was, they hadn’t used it often or she would have recognized it more quickly, so she could rule out the major banishing herbs. She hadn’t smelled it in a while, either, so it wasn’t one of the conjuring herbs Madame Lupita had used the night before.

Terrible sniffed. “Smells like that dude Tyson,” he said. “He skin were kinda like that.”

“Really? I don’t remember.”

“You ain’t got as close as me.”

That was certainly true, and she was glad, too. Tyson was a Host, someone who’d made a deal with a spirit to share his body in exchange for power—as opposed to a Bindmate, where the energy was shared but the body kept separate. Not an ordinary spirit in Tyson’s case, she didn’t think, but she hadn’t wanted to stick around to find out, especially not after Terrible attacked him and his guest decided to make an appearance. It felt like it had happened years before. It had only been months.

“Thinkin maybe they use the box, then leave it here? Ain’t straight, aye?”

“No, it isn’t.” She closed the box. “But who knows why people do things. Maybe it just didn’t work as well for them as they’d hoped, or maybe it was already here and they used it and didn’t take it with them.”

“It feel off to you?”

“Vibes like everything else. The same energy, I mean.”

He nodded. “What else need a checkout back here?”

“Shit. As much of it as we can, really. There’s probably not much point using the Spectrometer, not if it isn’t an active haunting—the ghost involved is a traveler, you know?—but we should see if there’s anything more about the human Bindmate or witch who summoned the ghost, in case that’s what the psychopomp was for.”

Together they moved around the walls as best they could, Terrible behind her with the light. The bricks hummed with energy when she ran her bare palm over them. Something had definitely happened in here. She just had no way of knowing when.

“Can you move that chair? I want to get behind it.”

He was only a deeper shadow in the now dark alley, picking up the broken skeleton of the chair and hauling it out of the way.

Her foot landed on something squishy. A rat. It squeaked at her, shrill in the night, and she gasped and leapt back. Terrible caught her shoulders, but she didn’t need it. She had her balance.

Still, she stood for a few seconds longer and let him touch her, fighting the rising tide of desire caused by that damn spell but unable to fight the simple need to be touched, in the cold darkness where a girl had been murdered. How his hands stayed so warm, even in the winter cold, she didn’t know, but the heat seeping through her sweater and coat felt fantastic.

It probably would have felt even better if she weren’t afraid the ghost would reappear at any moment—the ghost or, worse, Slobag’s men again. With just Terrible and herself here there was no way she could call Lex and put a stop to it. The thought made her shudder. At least that’s what she thought it was.

“You right, Chess?”

She cleared her throat, pulled away from the weight of his hands. “Yeah. Yeah, right up. I just want to get this done with. It makes me nervous.”

“Naw, no need. Nothin show up we ain’t handle, aye? You an me.” The light started moving again.

She turned away, not sure how to respond but pleased anyway. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“You want me ring up Red Berta, see if she free for a chatter? Be good to get the knowledge sooner.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Where was her speed? This day was taking much longer to end than she’d hoped. The image of her couch, her semi-warm apartment, the cold beer in the fridge, hovered before her. She sighed.

Normally she didn’t take speed when she was trying to work; experience had taught her it interfered with her body’s reactions to ghosts, masked them. But she wasn’t trying to detect a ghost at the moment. That a ghost existed was Fact and Truth; she didn’t need her abilities to tell her that. All she needed at the moment was whatever clues she could see or find, and she was fucking tired, too, running on less than five hours’ sleep and an empty stomach in the wintry air.

Terrible handed the light back to her, picked up his phone. She wondered how many numbers he had programmed in his. More than three, she guessed, choking down a couple of Nips.

The light picked up a few smears of ectoplasm on the bricks while Terrible’s voice rumbled behind her. No surprise there, but further confirmation. A ghost and its Bindmate. Just your average cozy, unholy, psychotic couple.

“Berta ain’t free.”

She glanced back and saw him standing there, a rueful look on his face. “Say she house too full to think. Got all the girls there, dig, keepin off the street. Try again on the later.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Hungry?”

Not with that much speed in her system, she wasn’t, or rather she wouldn’t be once it kicked in. But she could have a Coke, nibble at a few fries or something. “You buying?”

“Aye.”

“Then yeah, I guess so.” What the hell. At least the restaurant would be warm—she knew where he’d take her, where he always took her, the diner a few blocks from her place. He liked their shakes, and the burgers they gave him—and by extension her, when she was with him—had a much higher beef content than what everyone else got, so they were actually decent. She also knew it would be loud and crowded and bright, and at that particular moment nothing sounded better.

She could use some life around her just then.




Chapter Eight (#ulink_a0063e4b-1562-5e9c-b347-9e61d775140c)


Punishment of both crime and sin is the exclusive dominion of the Church. That punishment begins before death. Be assured it continues after it.

—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 220

There were lots of better ways to spend the free hours after Holy Day services, but Chess wasn’t in a position to enjoy any of them. A pity, that. She had a few keshes freshly rolled at home, a blanket without too many holes in it, and a disc copy of ten episodes of Roger Pyle’s television show—not her usual thing, but she figured it could be a decent afternoon. And a decent afternoon was worth a lot these days.

Instead she was walking down the long corridor connecting the main Church building to the outbuildings, ready to go farther still into the spirit prisons. According to the Log Books, Charles Remington resided in Prison Ten; Chess intended to see if he was still there.

She wasn’t sure if she preferred him to be or not.

Her footsteps echoed around her in the tunnel-like hallway, making it sound as if she wasn’t alone. As if there was an army following her into the sterile misery of Prison Ten. She resisted the urge to turn around and check. This hall was for Church employees only. She’d had to press her index finger to the ID pad and use her key to get in; the door locked automatically behind her and she hadn’t heard the buzz of it opening again. Pale gray light filtered through the smoked glass skylights, pale blue joined it from the special bulbs lining the jointure of wall and ceiling. Of all the places in Triumph City she could possibly be at that moment, this was undoubtedly the safest.

The hair on the back of her neck didn’t quite believe it, but her brain did, and that was all that mattered. And bad as the spirit prisons were—and they were bad—at least they weren’t quite as awful as the City itself.

Most people wouldn’t take that view, but then, most of them didn’t see the eternal silent peace of the City as a terrifying, isolating vacuum, either.

She pressed her finger into the pad by the door, used her right hand to turn the key. The door buzzed and opened, and Chess entered the prison anteroom.

Goody Chambers, the prison Goody, sat behind her desk, her black bonnet neatly tied beneath her pointed, whiskery chin. Sometimes Chess wondered exactly how old the woman was; she hadn’t visibly aged a day in the nine years Chess had been with the Church, as if she’d become a septuagenarian in early middle age and stayed there.

“Good morrow.” The Goody reached for her pen, poised it over her log. “Have you a message, or are you here to see a prisoner?”

“A prisoner.”

“Name and date of death?”

Chess told her.

“Sign here, please.”

While Chess scrawled her name the Goody took a pale blue velvet robe from a hook. “You’ll need to put this on. You visited the prison during training? Very well. You may leave your clothing and effects in the dressing room there. I’ll call the elevator for you.”

Chess’s fingers shook as she unlaced her boots. She did not want to do this. She glanced over her shoulder, checked the closed door for holes and saw none. Good. A chance to shove a couple of pills down her throat, hope they calmed her nerves a little before she got on the elevator. Showing any sort of emotion—especially fear—to the dead was a huge mistake. To show it to imprisoned spirits, trapped in iron cages, subjected to punishments, was like slicing open a vein and waving it around in front of a starving tiger. Not a good idea.




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