by Stacia Kane
The last of her asafetida barely filled her palm. She had more graveyard dirt, she could—No. Hold on.
“When I say go,” she muttered to Lauren, “run for the door. But stay down, okay? Low to the ground.”
Lauren’s skin had a grayish cast to it. Any doubts Chess had about the dangerous, half-assed plan forming in her head were dispelled by the sight. She still didn’t like Lauren, still wouldn’t trust her with anything more important than a piece of lint. But they were in this together, and that little flash of the Grand Elder’s face, of her career being sidetracked into Debunking cases like ghostly mice in an abandoned barn, tipped the scales.
She’d been trying to ignore the heavy illness from the fetish still riding in her gut. Now she reached for it, felt the ravens and their fury, felt their utter ruthlessness. Creatures without soul, whose only purpose on the earth was to constantly seek what they did not possess.
She let them go.
Lamaru energy ripped through her; their revenge, the spell’s backlash, the effects of ten minutes of solid smoke inhalation combined with fear and stress and sadness and Cepts made her retch. Good thing her stomach was empty. There was never a good time to puke, but this moment had to be in the top ten worst moments.
“Go!” she shouted, as the ravens swooped out of the office and around the corner.
They hit the ghosts at the top of the stairs. One raven grabbed one ghost. The other two ravens kept on coming.
Well, shit. So much for that half-assed plan.
The ghost grabbed for her and Lauren as they neared him. Too late, Chess saw what she had not before: He held a jagged shred of steel.
He swiped at them as they ran past. Chess managed to shift to the side, narrowly avoiding a slice in the throat. Lauren wasn’t quite so lucky. The metal missed her throat as well but caught her shoulder.
Lauren screamed. Drops of blood showed purplish against the smoke. The ghost tried to scoop them up and absorb their power.
Whether the ravens saw it too, Chess didn’t know. All she knew was the sensation of talons scraping at her head but failing to find purchase. The tip of a wing slammed into her back and knocked her forward through the doorway of the psychopomp room.
The ravens shrieked their fury. The ghost made no sound but obviously shared their feeling. The remaining two ghosts pushed their way past him, reaching for Lauren, reaching for Chess as she scrambled to her feet and grasped the door so hard rust gritted into her palm. The ravens swooped around in a half-circle and came in for another dive.
They all appeared framed by the doorway: three dead men, their faces studies in frustrated anger and thoughtless greed. Two ravens pitch-black against the rippling red-orange wall behind them, getting closer every second.
Chess slammed the iron door.
Had she thought the psychopomp room felt like an oven earlier? Ha. That had been nothing more than a warm summer day. Her concerns about the iron-cored walls and floor had been absolutely correct. It didn’t seem possible that the room could actually be hotter than the fire outside, and intellectually she knew it wasn’t, but it sure as hell felt like it.
But it didn’t matter. Didn’t matter one bit, because they’d be out of there in a few seconds.
Lauren slumped against the wall while Chess leapt over the fetish to the window. Barred, yes, but her small victory over the ghosts and psychopomps outside gave her another burst of adrenaline; she felt capable of ripping the bars out of the window with her bare hands.
So much for feelings. No. No way could she pull that off. But it did feel like the bars shifted a little.
“Lauren!”
Lauren’s muffled reply sounded vaguely like “Mphgr.” Or maybe “Fuck off.” Or a combination of the two. Who cared? Not Chess.
“Lauren, get over here.”
This time Lauren obeyed, keeping her distance from the fetish still on the floor. Its horrible body had shriveled from the heat. “What?”
Shit, she really looked sick. Maybe this wasn’t the greatest idea. Well, of course it wasn’t. Did she have a choice?
No. “Get on the floor, on your hands and knees. I need to stand on you.”
“Are you kidding?”
Ah, Lauren was back to normal. Sort of.
“No. I need to get these bars off the window, and I need better leverage.”
For the first time since the ordeal had started she let herself really think about Terrible. He could have pulled those bars out of the window with one sharp tug. A wave of longing, of misery, washed over her so intensely that for a moment she was actually grateful for the heat and dryness. If even a few molecules of water still existed in her body she probably would have started to cry. And she definitely didn’t want to do that.
But she kept him in her head. Before she’d betrayed him—okay, before he’d found out she was betraying him—he would have reassured her. Would have reminded her that she could do anything. He’d believed that once.
So she could believe it now.
She grabbed the bars and stepped onto Lauren’s back, planting her right foot at the base of the other woman’s spine. Her left settled between Lauren’s shoulder blades.
The fire escape still existed. Thank the gods who didn’t exist, the fire escape hadn’t been destroyed.
Not for lack of trying, though—at least so she assumed. The Lamaru simply hadn’t had the chance to do it, caught up as they were in their fistfight below. Not so many as there had been—she checked her watch—just under ten minutes before, when she’d looked out the window in the office. Had that little time really passed?
Yeah. Less than ten minutes, and the Lamaru were still fighting whoever it was they were fighting.
Wait a minute. Vanhelm and the woman he’d been with, the blonde. She’d said if Vanhelm entered Downside, Maguinness would find him, hadn’t she?
Looked like she’d been right. Now that she knew what she was looking for she saw, at the very edge of the circle of illumination from the single streetlight in the center of the slaughterhouse parking lot, the fluorescent glow of Maguinness’s assistant’s tall purple hairdo.
Maguinness’s men were there. Not only were they there, she realized as one of them lit something and tossed it into the blazing building that they’d set the fire. She and Lauren had walked right into an ambush intended for someone else.
“Cesaria, are you done?”
Oh, right. “Almost.”
But she wasn’t. The bars moved a little, and left welts and bits of rust in her palms, but they refused to give. Exhaustion dragged at her limbs and clouded her mind. Too hot in that room. She was being cooked.
One last try. Her palms burned, it took every bit of will she had not to let go. Her feet lifted off Lauren’s back and braced against the wall. She leaned back, putting all of her weight behind it, all the strength she had.
The bars shifted, so fast Chess lost her balance and let go, landing on her side on the hot floor. Pain jolted through her upper arm, her shoulder and hip, but it didn’t matter. The bars had come loose. They would get out.
And would walk right into a Lamaru/whatever-he-was battle at the bottom of the fire escape. Shit. She didn’t see any possible way they could get through that unharmed or unnoticed; the Lamaru would be looking to kill them because they’d caught on to the Lamaru plot, if not just on general principles, and the Maguinness crowd—well, they’d probably want to kill her just for fun. They needed help.
So, while Lauren finished pulling the bars off the window and smashed the glass, Chess grabbed her phone and dialed the one person whose help she really wanted—the one person she thought could actually help—and the one person she knew wanted to talk to her less than anyone else.
But he would come. He wouldn’t let her die, no matter how angry he was. Right? He wouldn’t just let her die.
“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again. Facts are Truth.”
What? That couldn’t be
right. Okay. Don’t panic.
She scrolled though old texts until she found one from him, hit reply, and quickly tapped out a help-I’m-in-the-slaughterhouse-and-need-you-here-it’s-on-fire message. He probably knew about the fire—well, no “probably” about it, of course he knew—and she’d be willing to bet he was in the area. Bump had a pipe room not far away, and they wouldn’t chance the fire spreading to it.
“Your message could not be delivered.”
“Cesaria! Come on, we need to get out!”
Chess barely heard. The bright screen of the phone hurt her eyes, mocked her. He’d changed his number. He hated her so much that he didn’t even want her to have his number anymore. Even with them working on this together.
Fingers like the raven’s talons earlier gripped her arm and yanked her off the floor. “Cesaria, come on!”
Semi-clean Downside air swirled through the now open window to caress her face. She almost fell down again, it felt so fucking good. Not good enough to heal the ache in her chest—nothing could feel good enough to heal that, she didn’t think—but good. Her lungs practically danced with relief when she sucked it in. She grabbed the rough edge of the window frame and hoisted herself up.
Leaning too far out gave her vertigo; in her mind she saw ghostly hands poised right behind her—hell, she saw Lauren right behind her—ready to give her that one solid shove that would end all her problems. In her mind she saw herself stepping over the edge of the window. He’d changed his number, it didn’t make a difference, all her stupid hopes about getting him to forgive her, to talk to her again … She could just let go. Just fall, and make the pain in her chest stop.
Then she saw the City, and gripped the window frame harder. Nope. Not today. The fire escape waited for her, just barely out of reach.
One more deep breath, cool and sweet despite still being tinged with smoke. Her muscles tensed, her eyes narrowed, and she jumped.
Landing on the rickety steel made a horrible clattering sound. Fuck! They had to have heard that. No matter. Keep going. She was out, she’d gotten out, and if she’d done that she could do almost anything.
The steep steps shook and groaned beneath her, rusted railings bit her palms slick with sweat.
Carefully she started down. From this vantage point on the side of the building she saw how close the place was to complete destruction. Smoke and fire poured out of every window, climbed the outside walls. They didn’t have much time.
Lauren came down after her. The ladder gave a mighty creak, the balcony above broke free of the wall and hung crazily over them. Shit. Go faster. Faster.
Her hands slipped on the rails, her fingers stiff and aching. With every step down it got harder to let go; her legs ached, her head went light.
The ladder boiled and shifted beneath them. Down, and down; she’d been doing this forever, all her life had been spent on this fire escape, with orange light taunting them and the sky a hazy dull gray above them.
Flames danced along the wall and found her right leg; her jeans caught fire. Without meaning to, without thinking, she screamed. Her right hand left the rail, batted at the fire, and she fell.
Chapter Nineteen
Don’t forget the Church. They’re always willing to help, and should be the first place you turn when there’s trouble, whether it’s ghosts or fights with your beloved husband.
—Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase
Death waited at the bottom, she knew it. She’d been up too high, there was no way she could survive the fall—
Her back slammed into the pavement. She was dead. She must be dead. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt that bad, her leg screamed but she was—
She wasn’t breathing.
For one long, agonizing moment she stared at the sky while her lungs refused to inflate. Flames poured from the window above her, bits of ash dancing on the wind. She saw it in slow motion, the fire escape black, Lauren’s body a denim spider inching down the ladder at the end. She could not breathe. She could not breathe, this was it … Her psychopomp would come for her, she waited for it, watched the nightbirds circling overhead and wondered which one it was, hoped the horrible ravens hadn’t escaped from the building but knew they might, if they didn’t burn up …
Something gave in her chest, a gear finally snapped into place. Her lungs inflated. Her eyes stung, her mouth opened.
She rolled over, thinking she was going to be sick, but nothing happened. Nothing but the world coming back into focus, the feel of her blood racing through her body and the agony of her burned and cut leg and sore hands and her throat raw from smoke and screams.
Lauren hit the pavement beside her—on her feet, a much more graceful landing than Chess had managed.
Oh, shit. She was lying there ruminating while beside her a burning building was about to collapse and the parking lot was full of Lamaru.
She didn’t need Lauren’s rough hand to get her up. She did need it to hold her steady; for a moment the world veered crazily around her.
She was moving before it righted itself, a hesitant, stumbling run that jarred her knees. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the crowd breaking up, turning toward her and Lauren.
Her ears were ringing. At first she thought it was from her fall, but as hands brushed her arms she realized it wasn’t ringing, it was sirens, and her body flooded with relief as red lights swirled against the surrounding buildings and caught Lauren in their strobe effect.
The fire trucks had arrived.
The Lamaru—and Maguinness’s people—shouted and ran around her, ignoring her now in their haste to escape. Firemen were Church employees, and they never traveled into Downside alone—well, they hardly ever traveled into Downside, period, but when they did they brought with them a full Squad. Clearly the Lamaru didn’t want to stick around to tell the Squad how someone had interrupted their illegal psychopomp party.
Behind her, steel groaned, the sound tearing the air and shooting straight up her spine. Every step was agony. Everything hurt. Her chest felt ready to explode, her smoke-choked lungs wanted to die. But if she didn’t haul her ass out of there immediately it was going to burn right off, and she hadn’t escaped from that fucking building just to be crushed by it when it collapsed.
They hit the bushes and turned, heading for the main gates. No need for stealth now, and they needed to wave down the arriving Squad members and inform them of the ghosts and the three psychopomps still in the building.
On the other side of the fence—the street side—Chess caught a glimpse of a tall, shaggy form that could only be Maguinness, strolling along with his hands in his pockets like an innocent freak just out for a casual jaunt. She’d been right, then. It had been him; was him.
Bastard. She didn’t give a fuck about him trying to kill the Lamaru; hell, she’d give him a hand if she could—and if he wasn’t such a bizarre ball of criminal awful.
But he’d bombed that building with her inside it, just as she was about to catch the Lamaru and earn herself fifty grand. Fifty grand and the chance to be done with Lauren for good. So fuck him.
As if he felt her eyes on him, read her thoughts, Maguinness stopped and turned around. Even at that distance she could see him smiling.
“I just don’t get it,” Lauren said again. Her sports car, dusty but none the worse for wear, idled on the street outside Chess’s building. Dirty baby wipes filled the interior; between them they’d used almost a whole pack trying to tidy themselves up.
Chess shook her water bottle over her open mouth, desperate for the last drops. Her throat felt like she’d been sucking tailpipes and she did not want to talk. Not now. Not tonight. She wanted to go upstairs and swallow her entire pillbox, wanted to trudge to the corner store and buy a tub of ice cream and eat it on her couch while watching mindless television. Oliver Fletcher, the bastard, had sent her an entire box of his intellectually vacant TV shows on disk; she hadn’t done more than glance at it, but tonight she couldn’t imagine an
ything better.
Well, no. That wasn’t entirely true. She could imagine a few things better, but only one of them was feasible, and even she didn’t think the pipe room was a good idea with her throat the way it was. Damn it, she’d been looking forward to that all day.
“I don’t either,” she managed. Her voice creaked. “But what difference does it make? Either they somehow got into your bag—when they slashed your tires, maybe—or they’ve managed to cast some kind of spell over—No, wait. They had some kind of fetish, in the psychopomp room. Maybe it infected your ravens.”
“I can’t see how they’d be able to make anything that powerful. But then I guess they are pretty … pretty strong …” Lauren sighed. Sighed again.
And again. Chess glanced at her, her thoughts running fairly solidly along what-the-fuck lines, and then she saw with horror that Lauren was crying.
Oh, shit. What was she supposed to do?
She reached a hesitant hand over, rested it lightly on Lauren’s shoulder. “Hey … um, are you …”
Stupid question. People didn’t cry because they were okay. Even Chess knew that. Hell, she knew that better than anyone, didn’t she?
“How did you get over it?”
“What?”
Lauren looked at her, her eyes gleaming in her sooty face. “How did you get over it? Having them—having them do things to you?”
Oh, fuck. Sore throat or not, she was getting her ass to the pipe room the second she managed to extricate herself from the car. She knew what Lauren was talking about. Knew she’d been right when she wondered if Lauren had managed to fight off her own attackers. Knew she hadn’t.
And apparently—obviously—Lauren knew things, too. Things about her. The bitch, the total fucking—She’d read Chess’s file. Not just her regular file, her confidential file. The one with the results of her medical tests, the ones that showed how she didn’t need the birth control implant given to female Church employees in active jobs because her body was as barren and inhospitable as the world around her.
