City of Ghosts

by Stacia Kane

  “Sure. They told me to show it to you, so I can’t imagine they’d have a problem with it.”

  Lining the wall to her right were low, long, dark wooden benches. On Thursdays they’d be full of people, family members of the dead come to consult with the Liaisers. Family members with full pockets; talking to the dead didn’t come cheap.

  Nothing did with the Church. Most people didn’t have to pay more than tithing taxes, but for special services … Liaising, weddings, childhood indoctrinations and blessings … It all had a price.

  Chess didn’t begrudge the price, oh, no. That was what paid her meager salary. More to the point it was where her bonuses came from. That thirty grand in her bank account represented the toil and sweat of a thousand or so taxpayers, and she appreciated it. She’d appreciate it even more later, when she got to take some of it to the pipe room and suck back some forgetfulness.

  But that was later. This was now, and she knelt before the bench and rested her notepad on it to copy the list.

  All of the names, all eleven of them. Best to copy them all. Best not to make Dana suspicious by simply copying ARTHUR MAGUINNESS on her pad, along with the address he’d given at Ninetieth and Mercer. In Downside.

  The address might have been real, but the name wasn’t. She searched every database she could think of in the Church mainframe, where birth and death records were kept since the end of Haunted Week and the Church’s installation as the ruling body. Granted, even with the Church’s control it was possible for people to slip through the cracks, but the lack of any information on Maguinness still disturbed her.

  He was clearly old enough to have been born BT. He would have had a birth certificate, filled out and filed in whatever state he’d been born and entered into the database; an entire full-time staff had done nothing but copy that information in. And if that accent of his indicated he’d been born elsewhere in the world? There still should have been a certificate to be entered.

  So his name couldn’t have actually been Maguinness, because out of the hundred and forty Maguinnesses she found in the system, none of them could possibly have been the one she was interested in. Shit!

  But how had he gotten in to visit Lupita without a real name? Visitors had to produce some kind of identification; their identities were checked. Hell, they were fingerprinted. It wasn’t unusual for blood to be drawn and checked against the DNA database for some prisoners. Lupita probably didn’t qualify for that kind of security, but still …

  She made a note to check with the prison and see if any of the guards remembered Maguinness. Not all the guards were witches; some were people with lesser skill. More than the average person, but not enough to qualify them for employment in any of the upper levels. It was entirely possible that Maguinness could somehow have bespelled one of them.

  But Lupita had been convicted of a magical crime; wouldn’t her guards have been witches?

  She sighed and wrote that down as well. This really wasn’t what she should have been focusing on. Maguinness was a side project, a bit of mild curiosity. She was supposed to be investigating the Lamaru, figuring out who they’d killed and why.

  Speaking of which …

  The file they’d given her the night before still sat in her bag, bound with a rubber band; a quick stop in Elder Griffin’s office had given her a few additional pages. Hard to get used to, that was. Debunkers didn’t keep their files, having to hand everything over to Goody Tremmell to be stored in the enormous cabinets in her little office. But the Squad kept their own reports, and for this case Chess got to do the same.

  She pushed the plastic-covered fetish parts aside and pulled out the manila folder and the new pages, then paused. The Church library wasn’t full, but it wasn’t empty either; a couple of Debunkers-in-training studied at one of the tables at the far end, casting glances at her every few minutes or so; various other Church employees, including two junior Inquisitors, wandered between the shelves.

  Goody Glass let her into the Restricted Room. Much better. There she could be alone, without worrying someone might see the file over her shoulder.

  Hmm. Okay. The new reports confirmed an identity, and what a nice fucking bingo that was. At last, proof of Lamaru involvement beyond a stupid symbol any idiot could have carved; the dead body in the lot by the docks had once been Garret Denby, whose records had a nice big Lamaru stamp on them in red. Ding ding ding.

  Or at least, it would have been a ding ding ding if that hadn’t opened up a whole new can of confusion. She’d been brought into this thing to investigate Lamaru crimes, not Lamaru deaths.

  Not that they weren’t fully capable of killing their own. Even if their reputation hadn’t preceded them, Chess would never forget the fear in Randy Duncan’s voice when she’d realized he was the Church employee working with the Lamaru several months back. Couldn’t forget the sheer terror on his face at the prospect of failing the Lamaru and what they would do to him.

  So had Garret been killed because he was trying to leave the Lamaru, or because he’d failed them? Either was entirely possible. They were in that respect like any terrorist organization; there was no retiring, and failure meant death.

  Which meant checking out his place would be well worth it, at least after Lauren finally got tired of playing Precious Daughter and decided to do some actual work.

  But didn’t it seem odd that he’d been left in a pile of useless parts in one lot, while another pile of parts was left in another lot with Lamaru marks on them?

  Speaking of those other parts … No ID on the bodies Ratchet had reported to Bump; those were the reports she’d glanced at earlier in Terrible’s car. Whoever had been killed, they hadn’t been in any of the DNA databases, and there were no fingerprints … no fingers to print. Ugh. She made a note to double-check the lack of DNA results; not all the parts had been tested before she was brought into the case, so ID might still be possible. Only a few of the parts were DNA matches with one another, which meant she was looking at images of three dead bodies, or rather, various parts from three bodies.

  No organs. No heads. No fingers. Hell, not even feet. In other words, the parts found in the lot were leftovers, items of no or very little magical value. She supposed that could account for the lack of malevolent energy around them, at least in part.

  She skipped the chart of each DNA string—the Black Squad might be able to understand it, but she couldn’t—and headed for the summaries.

  “… genetic anomaly in parts two, six, and seven does not match anomaly in three and four. Three and four do not match one, five, eight, and nine. All contain communal genetic markers.”

  Okay, so … what? She looked again, checked the pictures. That was no help so she read the second summary, wondering if perhaps she was either a little too high or just stupid.

  Or maybe the case was simply more fucked-up than she’d thought. If she understood correctly—she’d have to double-check with Lauren but she thought she was right—each of the three dead people had possessed genetic anomalies; had been chromosomally imperfect. Not in a recorded and common way, but in ways that at least the two Seekers who’d done the analysis had never heard of or seen before. And the people whose parts they were had been related to each other in some way.

  Were the Lamaru doing experiments with people? Altering their—No, she didn’t think it was possible to alter the DNA of living people. But in utero, before fertilization … That in itself was a major crime.

  But not one she’d put past the Lamaru. She wouldn’t put anything past the Lamaru.

  Shit, though. How long had they been planning this? Those body parts did not belong to infants or small children; their size alone indicated that couldn’t be the case.

  The entire report was full of thick scientific analytical language she didn’t really understand; Debunkers didn’t generally get involved in investigations of that sort. Why hadn’t Lauren told her about this the night before? Sure, she’d probably imagined Chess would read it for herself, bu
t wouldn’t this be the sort of thing she might mention upfront? “By the way, it seems the Lamaru are breeding genetically imperfect humans and killing them?” Wouldn’t that have made sense to mention?

  Probably a test of some kind. What a pain in the ass. If Lauren was going to play games with her, this whole thing was going to be—Well, hell, it could take as long as it wanted, right? Chess was getting a grand a week. She could use the money.

  Still, she’d ask about it. Being kept in the dark didn’t make her happy; having her work double-checked by means of some sneaky let’s-see-if-she-mentions-this made her even less so.

  One last thing to check, as long as she was in the Restricted Room anyway. Most of the books concerned advanced spells and research materials, things the Church didn’t want just any training witches to be able to get their hands on. Among them were a few volumes on human-ghost spells, Hostings, and Bindings. Might be some information in there about how Maguinness—if it had been Maguinness—had smuggled a ghost in to Lupita, how she’d managed to keep it hidden while in custody. She thought she’d seen something in one of them a few years before, in one of her first solo Debunking cases when the family had been trying to claim that a ghost had possessed their daughter.

  A little shiver ran up her spine when she thought again about her last Debunking case, about the sigil on Terrible’s chest. The sigil had turned a promising Church student named Kemp into a sick, ghost-possessed toy for any clever spirit who had a use for him. And one certainly had; Kemp had played battery and human slave to a murdered prostitute who wanted to stay in business forever. And Kemp had liked it enough to attempt to kill those who wanted to stop him.

  Later. She’d worry about that later; it wasn’t like there was anything she could do about it anyway, when Terrible wouldn’t talk to her. What was she supposed to do, wrestle his enormous frame to the ground and make him? Take him down to the City and let him loose to see if any ghosts invaded his body? Sure. He’d be eager to do either of those things with her, to do anything at all with her.

  She scanned the index of the oldest of the books she’d grabbed. Yes, this was the one. Okay. She grabbed her pen and copied:

  It is possible in some cases to bond with a spirit so completely that it becomes part of the living body itself. This is achieved through the use of black magics so dark I hesitate to describe them here. See Baldarel.

  Baldarel? What was … ah. Another book. Uses of Spirits, by August Baldarel. She pulled the slim volume—little more than a pamphlet, really—off the shelf and started to open it.

  “Cesaria! There you are, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Lauren stood in the doorway, with her arms folded and a frown twisting her mouth.

  Chess ignored it. “I’ve been doing some research about the case, the—”

  “Never mind that. They’re about to separate Vanhelm’s Bindmate and Banish it. Let’s go.”

  She turned and stalked away without looking back. Gee, working with her was almost as fun as working with Terrible these days. Didn’t they both make Chess feel all warm inside.

  But she reshelved the book, grabbed her bag, and followed. Lauren had already reached the top of the main staircase; Chess refused to run, but did manage to catch up halfway down the steps.

  “Why didn’t you—”

  The shrieking of the alarm cut into her words, into her thoughts, like a white-hot iron blade. What the fuck? The alarm—the prison.

  Lauren’s wide eyes told her she was thinking the same thing: The Banishment was taking place there.

  They both started running.

  Few prisoners were kept in the Church building prison itself; only those awaiting trial or execution, or those who were particularly magically dangerous. On Friday nights the small Reckoning cells filled up, citizens who’d confessed their crimes and wanted to be punished, or those who’d had complaints filed against them. Minor crimes or moral crimes only, though; petty theft, adultery, information crimes like insider trading or hacking below a certain damage level.

  But a situation that required the alarms to sound was serious. All-hands-on-deck serious, and as Lauren and Chess reached the back hall they met more Church employees, all with the same white faces and steely eyes.

  They were too late, though. Too late to save the guards lying on the cold tile with crimson pools of blood forming around them. Too late to save Gary Anderson, a fellow Debunker, slumped against the wall behind a still-smoking firedish, his unmarked face and bloody lips and the odd bluish cast of his skin giving mute testimony as to how he’d died: His soul had been torn from his living body. Murder by psychopomp.

  Chapter Eleven

  We all know there’s safety in numbers. But what about fun? An apartment in Cuesta Verde guarantees you a lovely modern home, friendly neighbors who share your interests, and proximity to the Church!

  —Advertising pamphlet for Cuesta Verde Apartment Homes

  For the first time Chess could remember, the Grand Elder looked shaken. He stood at the head of the table, almost as pale as the ice-blue walls around him, sniffling nervously and flipping with one long-fingered hand through a thin sheaf of notes on the table.

  Lauren sat to his left, watching him as though he’d just turned lead into gold through sheer force of will. The rest of the Church staff didn’t seem quite as cheerful; most of her fellow Debunkers, in fact, looked positively terrified. Dana Wright sat beside Agnew Doyle with one hand frankly clinging to his sleeve. Interesting. How long had that been going on? Not that Chess gave a shit. She just hoped Dana didn’t either.

  “Good morrow,” the Grand Elder said finally, in a creaky, insecure voice Chess had never heard him use before. He didn’t wait for the chorus of replies to die down before continuing. “You are all aware of the incident that occurred earlier in the prison. The Elders and I are here to offer our reassurance. There is nothing to fear.”

  Nothing to fear? For the second time in two days a psychopomp had not been what it was supposed to be. At least so Chess assumed; no one knew for sure whether the psychopomp that killed Gary had been rogue or if Gary had made a mistake.

  Mistakes happened. One had happened to Chess; almost every one of her coworkers had a story to share about the Time the Psychopomp Almost Got Them.

  Somehow Chess had a hard time believing that that was the case here. But what did she know? Only that by the time she got there the carnage had ended; only that Vanhelm had escaped and she’d wanted to question him, and that time was getting on and she was certain he was out there, disappearing into Triumph City. Laughing at her, at all of them. Her fingernails dug into her palms.

  “To begin with,” the Grand Elder continued, “we believe the executioner involved in yesterday’s contretemps was performing experiments on his own. Several of our Inquisitors”—he nodded at Lauren—“have examined his home, and that is their conclusion.”

  The sigh rolling around the table stopped at Chess. Despite the reassuring words, something in the Grand Elder’s demeanor didn’t sit right with her. She’d seen him blow off the concerns or problems brought to him by others before; just a few months before, in fact, when she’d hidden on a staircase and watched him treat Bruce Wickman—a Liaiser who spent most of his days in the City among the dead—like a wedding-night virgin because Bruce noticed the dead’s unease and asked the Elders to investigate. It hadn’t exactly inspired confidence.

  Neither did watching Lauren preen herself in her chair. The Grand Elder had raised that. Despite the respect and affection Chess had for the Church, she couldn’t help wondering what the mere fact of Lauren and her utter and complete pain-in-the-assiness meant about what sort of man the Grand Elder really was.

  Which wasn’t entirely fair. The Church had internal politics, just like everything else. Charles Abrams had had the power and the connections to rise to his position, to sit at the head of the continent’s Church branch. That didn’t make him a genius, and it certainly didn’t make him some kind of god; there were no gods.
Being Grand Elder didn’t mean he had no weaknesses, and it wasn’t fair for Chess to expect him not to. Especially not for her, of all people.

  “We are likewise convinced this is an isolated incident. The security tapes are currently being prepared for Inquisitor review. The moment this task has been completed notification will be sent to you. Remember,” he said, and fixed them all with a much more familiar steely gaze, “only Facts are Truth. Conjecture is just that. Coincidences do happen.”

  Sure they did. But what were the odds of psychopomp trouble happening while a Lamaru member was around, and that being a coincidence?

  Given that the Lamaru had learned some Church tricks from Randy Duncan, Chess supposed there was a chance Vanhelm had somehow figured out how to set the psychopomp against Anderson. There were ways to do it, to steal control.

  But how would Vanhelm have been able to do it tied up in a prison cell without any equipment?

  The Grand Elder nodded at the end of the table. “Elder Shepherd, thou mayst speak.”

  Elder Shepherd stood up, his skin dark around the eyes. Chess could certainly imagine why. As head of the Psychopomp Division of the Materials Department, he must have been imagining his head on the chopping block should the error turn out to have been his. Literally on the chopping block, too; if malice could be proven, he’d be convicted of treason.

  “Every one of your psychopomps has been created and trained by myself, or my staff under my supervision. Be calm. There is no cause for alarm.”

  This seemed to reassure the others. But for perhaps the first time since she’d entered training, it was not enough to reassure Chess. If there was no cause for alarm, why were they having this meeting? Something kept tapping inside her brain, some snippet of memory she couldn’t quite pin down.

  What she did know, though, was that she’d been placed under a Binding Oath which forbade her from discussing her case. Which forbade her from telling anyone else that the Lamaru had resumed their fun little murder games in the city.