City of Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  Two other shapes materialized, grew from what looked like bundles of cloth on the floor into people. Two men, two witches. Two murderers, interrupted before they finished whatever they were planning to do with all that blood and energy in the next room.

  The woman on the floor ripped the tape off her mouth and leapt to her feet in one smooth, too-fast movement. A fetish dangled from her hand; Chess saw it and screamed.

  Terrible spun toward the wall, trying, Chess assumed, to get his back against it. Along the way he grabbed her arm and practically wrenched it out of its socket attempting to force her behind him.

  She wouldn’t go. Couldn’t go. Because the thing that woman held carried death worse than whatever had happened across the hall, and Chess had to stop it.

  Fuck. If she told Terrible what the real worry was it would only make the woman start her spell faster. If she didn’t tell him he wouldn’t know and the spell would go off, anyway.

  Her arm ached where he’d yanked it. She gritted her teeth and lifted it, taking advantage of the split second before the fight started to grab his hand and squeeze.

  His gaze darted to her; she dipped her head toward the fetish, squeezed his hand again. Begged him with her eyes to understand. If he didn’t … Shit, if he didn’t, they would just go ahead and die here. She didn’t doubt for a second that he could beat the two male witches—the two Lamaru, she assumed—standing in lame-ass martial-arts-movie fighting poses in front of them. There was no reason to doubt; even if she didn’t have the confidence she had in him, the look on their faces made it very clear they hadn’t bargained for quite what they were getting, and those looks of worry deepened when he drew his knife and pulled a length of thick dull chain from his pocket.

  But the fetish—the desiccated toad clutched in the woman’s fist, its body stuffed with all manner of—

  She’d bought a bunch of stuff from Edsel, it was in her bag. Get it now, yank the zipper open and find the rustly plastic. Go for the mandrake first, and the mirror … Her hands shook.

  The woman started speaking. Words of power, tinged with seeping, kicking misery, in the kind of voice that made cats scream on fences in the middle of the night. It hammered into Chess’s skull; she fell to her knees, her fingers curling into claws to try to protect her ears from it.

  The fight started in earnest, that second of hesitation over. Terrible’s chain flew through the air and the Lamaru jumped to the side. A hand tangled in her hair and yanked her away from the fight. She scratched at it, wishing she had longer nails, wanting nothing more than to draw blood from that fucker’s sensitive inner arm.

  Blood. All that blood in the room across the hall, the blood of murder victims. All that power, the fear and pain, just waiting to be activated. Don’t forget it, don’t let the fetish taste blood—

  The woman screamed in the middle of her chant. Chess managed to look at her in time to see the chain wrapped around her wrist and Terrible yanking it up, forcing the woman’s arm over her head. The fetish fell at the same time as his fist slammed into the woman’s face. At the same time the other witch thrust a dagger forward: a fake-out while his free hand skimmed the floor.

  Shit, what was she doing? Her attacker’s crotch was just at the right level; Chess clasped her hands together and drove them home. He groaned and collapsed, taking a chunk of her hair with him as he fell. She barely felt it. Get her bag. Get her bag.

  Terrible kicked back the blade-wielding witch and dropped the unconscious woman. Blood ran down his arm. He reached for the fetish, still there at his feet.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t get the word out of her mouth fast enough. His blood would activate it, she didn’t know if the woman had actually finished the chant before he got her, but whether she had or not, if his blood touched that thing—

  He heard her. Stopped. Her own hand closed around the fetish. Violent, raw power tore up her arm and through her body until she couldn’t see, couldn’t feel anything but its unthinking, unfeeling greed. It wanted all of her, her death, her pain, anything it could get; it was pure destruction racing through her body and battering at her skin, looking for escape.

  She would not let it. Her stomach writhed inside her as though it had developed its own mind as she scuttled back to the wall, away from the male witches now back on their feet.

  She couldn’t hold on anymore. Too much, the blood and the misery and the evil pouring through her system. She pressed her head against the pitted wall and threw up, barely conscious, clutching the hideous toad to her chest with every bit of strength she had.

  Clawed fingers closed around her arm. The woman, her face covered in blood. Chess kicked feebly at her, every movement a struggle through mud and the roaring hate in her body.

  The woman’s voice creaked out of her mouth, crawled over Chess’s skin, searching for the fetish in her arms. Chess kicked again, tried to scream past the horrible taste in her mouth and the horrible power suffocating her.

  The woman’s head jerked back. A quick movement like the flash of a hummingbird’s wings, and blood gushed from her throat. The light in her eyes died, a bulb stuttering out. She fell to the floor in an ungraceful heap.

  Silence fell with her, broken only by Chess’s heart hammering. Through the haze over her vision she saw Terrible bend down, reaching for her. She pushed herself farther into the corner, away from his hands.

  “No. No, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, it’s all over me, you can’t touch me—”

  “Aye, Chess. Aye. No touching, aye? Give me the knowledge what to do. What you need?”

  Fresh tears stung her eyes; she shook her head, both to deny them and to try to clear the lowering clouds in it. The spell’s pressure had lessened when the caster died, but the fetish itself still choked her, still felt as though slippery black tentacles were slithering into her body and hooking into her organs. Into her soul. The image—not to mention the feeling itself—made her stomach lurch again. Fuck, it was awful.

  “Got time, Chess. No problem. You say when ready, aye? ’Sall cool here.”

  What did she need? “My bag. I need my bag.”

  The blood—blood from the three dead witches now littering the floor around her, blood from the victims in the next room—called to her, sung to her so sweetly she had to push her forehead against the wall again, hard, to fight it. The fetish in her arms writhed with power. It wanted the blood. The blood wanted it.

  The bag thunked to the cement beside her, half-open, but her fingers refused to let go of the fetish.

  She tried to speak; swallowed and tried again when the words tangled into a wiry ball in her throat. “Get, um, there should be some gloves in there.”

  It was a little late for gloves at that point, but she had the horrible feeling that every second she touched the fetish was another second it sank its awful teeth into her, another second it sucked out her energy like a mosquito.

  He opened the bag wide, poked his hand in. Even through the haze of power she felt his discomfort.

  After a few seconds the gloves waved before her; she managed to use her knees to hold the toad while she slipped one on, then switched her grip. The power lessened. Still there, still awful, but definitely better. Her lungs actually filled when she took a breath; when she spoke again her voice came clearer than it had.

  “In my pick case there’s an iron blade, a black one. Can you get it out?”

  In the opposite corner an expanse of floor stood bare, as clean as it was possible to be. When Terrible handed her the short knife she stood up on legs that barely felt attached and headed for it.

  Newspaper still covered the window there. She set the fetish down and tugged at it, tearing it away.

  In the bright afternoon sunshine the thing was an abomination. Black stitches ran in a crooked line up its stomach, bulging with whatever lay inside. She held it steady with her gloved left hand, used the iron blade to break the stitches.

  Oh, shit. The stench pouring from it burned her nose and eyes
, made her cough. That wasn’t natural, not all of it. Something chemical lurked in there too, mixed with the odor of dead toad and sour milk and what appeared to be a rotting bird’s heart.

  That was unusual. Really unusual. Bird hearts weren’t typical in hexes; hell, they weren’t typical in any magic she knew of. She used the tip of the blade to wedge the thing out and deposit it on the floor, along with a wad of tight hair and—yuck, an eyeball.

  Not human, thankfully; after what had happened a few weeks before she didn’t think she’d be able to take even the faint suggestion that human eyeballs had anything to do with this particular case. No, not human. Animal. Goat, perhaps? Or dog. Stray cats and dogs were plentiful in Downside. It could have been from a fox or something, she guessed, if they’d gotten a supplier. Another possibility to ask Edsel about.

  Terrible’s lighter clicked to her left, a lazy curl of smoke drifted toward her. Once he’d always offered, always lit one for her, too. She thrust the thought back into her still-churning stomach and focused on removing the rest of the toad’s stuffing. With every item she pulled out the power lessened.

  More hair. Some blood-soaked cloth. Pretty standard for cursing, really. A … a finger, a small one. Pinky? Not so standard. She shuddered. A dead cockroach with a pin through it, a tiny rodent head, some black cotton wadding and some herbs. Their fragrance was killed by the other items, but she recognized one of them. Her lips turned down.

  “What you finding?”

  “Mistletoe.” She glanced up at him; he was standing at the window, smoking. Not looking at her. “It’s used for a lot of things, but mostly for regulating ghost travel. Summoning and Banishing, but not like what we do. It’s … it’s more like opening the doors to the City, if you know what I mean. A guardian instead of something that actually has power over the ghosts itself.”

  “Figure maybe they giving the City a try-on again?”

  “I guess. Shit.” She was going to have to tell Lauren about this, damn it. Somewhere in the back of her mind had lurked the vague hope that they wouldn’t discover anything of use. No such luck. Instead she was going to have to come up with some kind of lie to explain how she came to possess the fetish.

  Whatever. She’d deal with that when the time came. Her gloved hand poked around inside the now-empty corpse, grateful she could breathe again. The thing was, for all intents and purposes, disarmed. She dumped salt over it all to make sure, almost sighed when the energy dissipated completely.

  Terrible stayed where he was, smoke twisting into the air around him, while she hunted around in her bag. Inside it she kept inert plastic bags; she grabbed a handful—almost her entire supply—and began carefully sealing up the fetish’s ingredients, shaking them clean of salt before dropping them in the bags. Normally something like that would be thrown into running water or, if it was small enough, washed down a sink. But this was part of a Church investigation. She’d need to hand it over to Lauren, let the Black Squad have a look at it and see what if anything they made of it.

  She took a quick glance around the room, more out of nerves than anything else, and noticed what she hadn’t before. Some of those lumps on the floor—dogs. Dead ones, unmarked but unmistakably deceased.

  “Those belong here?”

  He followed her gaze, shrugged. “Dogs everywhere.”

  She stood up, snapped the glove off and dropped it on the floor. Beyond the landing the death room loomed; another thing she’d have to tell Lauren about, she supposed.

  But right now she was looking at the dogs. Two of them, heaped in the corner. When she got closer she saw they were not, in fact, unmarked; one of them had a long slice down its back. She bent over. “What the hell?”

  “Looks like they takin the skin.” He stood close enough to see, but not close to her, she noticed.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Maybe for eating. Or keepin warm, dig.”

  He could be right. Probably was, disgusting as the idea might have been. Most people didn’t eat dogs or cats, but “most” didn’t mean “all,” especially not in Downside. And really, dining on innocent pets seemed like something the Lamaru would take particular pleasure in.

  But then, lots of people took pleasure in destroying innocent things. In that the Lamaru were no different from anyone else.

  Assuming they’d killed the animals. And that they hadn’t done it just to shut the things up, which was just as likely.

  “Who all lived here?”

  “People Bump payin, dig. Watch the place.”

  “He does business in this building?”

  No answer, unless she counted the darting, suspicious glance, the faint disbelief on his face.

  Right. “I just meant—”

  “Bump an me take care of it. Ain’t yon business.”

  “If this is related to the Church invest—ouch!” Shit. She’d actually managed to forget that fucking Binding for a few minutes.

  “Nobody say shit to them Church pilgrims, dig. Nobody here. They find what they find, but this ain’t them business neither.”

  “But—” His glare cut her off. Fine. He was probably right anyway. Ratchet hadn’t been in the files; the Church didn’t even know he existed. And she couldn’t bring them in here without admitting she’d been working on the case with someone who had absolutely no business being involved.

  Ratchet’s death would be avenged, she reminded herself. Ratchet and whoever else was now nothing more than a few parts lying around—including the dogs. Whether the Church caught the murderers or Bump and Terrible did, there was a place warming up for them in the spirit prisons.

  It comforted her, as much as that was possible.

  She tossed the deconstructed fetish into her bag and followed him down the stairs and back out into the sunshine, grabbing her pillbox as she did. Might as well try to relax. She had a feeling Lauren wasn’t going to let her do much of that.

  Chapter Ten

  They performed all manner of experiments on both living and dead flesh, for they did not know the Truth.

  —A History of the Old Government, Volume VI: 1975–1997

  She was right about that one, at least mostly. Lauren called her cell phone just as Terrible dumped her off on the steps of her building and peeled away: Chess should meet her at Church instead because she had too much to do to drive in to Downside. They were apparently going to check out Erik Vanhelm’s place anyway, and the Church lay between Chess’s apartment and Cross Town. Great. So instead of having time to relax a little, she had just enough time for a quick salt-scrub shower to wash off the remnants of sick magic clinging to her.

  Too bad salt scrub couldn’t do anything about the other stuff. The memory of his hand on the back of her neck, of the moment when he’d spoken to her as she huddled in the corner with twisting evil eating her insides, so gently. How it had felt safe. The way he always used to make her feel. And how fucking stupid she’d been. Fresh pain throbbed through her veins; it dulled a little when she sent four Cepts in after it, but did not disappear.

  Her stomach still felt heavy and too warm when she parked outside the Church and plodded up to the tall front doors. For once they gave her no peace. Nor did the inside, the soaring entryway with high carvings on the walls and tender blue light glowing from the ceiling.

  The building bustled and hummed with people; Church employees, Debunkers like her who nodded or said hello as they passed her on their way to the enormous library upstairs, or Liaisers, quiet with the secrets of the dead, on their way to the elevator and from there to the City below the earth.

  Where she would have to go, she remembered with a shudder. In four days they would all go, to perform the Dedication ceremony for the executioner and Elder Murray.

  In four days she would have to stand with her fellow employees, all of whom would smile and talk about how peaceful it was, how beautiful, and how pleased they were that the Elder and the executioner had found their eternal bliss, and she would have to smile and pretend she felt the
same way. Pretend the City didn’t terrify her, didn’t look to her like the literal interpretation of the emptiness and misery she carried with her every day. Pretend she didn’t want to scream and tear the skin off her body with her fingers for just being there.

  Pretend she was just like the rest of them. The way she did every day. Normal. Happy. Clean.

  “Hey, Chessie. Are you okay?” Dana Wright came down the stairs, her slim arms loaded with books. “You look kind of upset about something.”

  “Huh? Oh, I’m fine, I just … I was just thinking about Elder Murray.”

  “Oh.” Dana bit her lip. “I know, it’s so sad, isn’t it?”

  “I—”

  “I mean, I know it isn’t, I know he’s going to be so happy now.” Dana glanced around them, eyeing the little crowd of Goodys at the far end of the hall. Her next words were spoken in their direction. “I’m just being selfish. I know this is a good thing for him.”

  The Goodys didn’t seem to be paying attention, but you never could tell. The acoustics in the hall were funny sometimes. Chess figured a total change of subject was the best idea. “What are you working on?”

  “Trying to determine who Madame Lupita was Hosting and how it got into her. It’s really something the Squad is handling, but since I was in the room … Here. I have the list of people who came to visit her before her execution.” Dana shuffled the load in her arms, came up with a thin sheet of paper clasped between two of her fingers, draping over her hand. “Do you recognize any of the names? Just because you were the one who actually went in, we thought you might.”

  Chess plucked the paper off Dana’s hand and scanned it. “I didn’t really get any names, I mean, not the kind they’d sign officially. But …”

  “But what? Chessie?”

  Her voice dragged Chess back to reality, away from the name glaring up at her in spiky copperplate. “What? Oh, sorry. I kind of drifted for a second. Hey, can I make a copy of this? Some of the names might come back to me, you know?”