by Stacia Kane
Or … wait. Three ghosts had been Summoned from the City, and no, the Liaisers hadn’t noticed any specific connection between them, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still something that could be learned about them.
Not to mention that Mark’s parents had died in a fire when he was ten. Chess was very interested in learning more about that. The files on him she’d managed to look at earlier hadn’t contained details, and details were what she wanted, some indication of what had actually happened.
What had Jillian said about the file cabinets? Green was for buildings that had confirmed hauntings, red for people who’d died before Haunted Week, right?
Yes. There were several files under “Pollert,” but it wasn’t hard to find the ones she wanted. Not only because the dates were on them, but because when she flipped them open she saw pictures of charred rubble, charred bodies.
And a big stamp that said ARSON.
Holy shit. Not just a tragic house fire. A deliberate house fire. What exactly had—Okay. Hmm. According to the reports from the BT—pre-Church—police force and some laminated newspaper clippings, Mark’s father had been involved in some kind of shady business. Organized crime. Everyone had suspected the arson was revenge, and that was that.
She set the file on top of the cabinets so she could start flipping over the pages. There. A picture of Mark, looking … well, shit, looking like a smug little psycho. Tears had cut whitish tracks through the soot on his face, and the skin around his eyes looked shadowed, his brow furrowed. But something in the eyes themselves, something about the set of his jaw … Chess looked at that picture and didn’t see what she thought she should have seen, didn’t see someone horrified and upset over losing his parents.
She saw emptiness. The kind of emptiness she’d seen so many times in her life that she couldn’t help but recognize it, the kind that still made her wake up sweating in the middle of the night.
She wasn’t the only one who’d seen it, either. The original detective had made a few notes about Mark’s attitude, his lack of affect, his coldness.
But they hadn’t been able to prove anything, or at least so she assumed, given that he’d gone into foster care and not a hospital or mental facility or whatever it was they’d had back then.
Okay, then. Next she’d have to—
“Hi, Chessie. What are you doing?”
She spun around, her hands already scrambling to shut the file before anyone saw. It wasn’t necessary, really, since any Church employee or student was allowed access to those files—they weren’t confidential—but still. It was none of anybody’s business.
It was none of Agnew Doyle’s business.
He stood a little too close, the way he always did. And just the way it always did, her body reacted; not a lot, but enough that she noticed it. Enough that she knew he probably noticed it, because she noticed the way his did, too, the way his blue eyes widened when he looked at her.
Not that it mattered. They were in the same year, in the same classes; they’d work together after they graduated, and that meant he was off-limits. The last thing she wanted was to be forced to see one of her—Well, she didn’t want to see them again after, so she definitely didn’t want to have to work with one of them and deal with him on a regular basis.
She reminded herself of that as she pressed herself against the filing cabinet in a mostly vain attempt to put a little more space between Doyle and herself. “Oh, hey. Um, I’m doing some research—”
“Elder Martin said you’re on your training week. I didn’t know you wanted to work with the Squad.”
No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, but she lowered her voice anyway. “It’s just a training week. To see what it’s like.”
“And how is it?”
She shrugged.
He reached past her to lift the file and read the tab. “What are you investigating? That’s kind of an old file, isn’t it?”
“Quit being nosy. You know I can’t tell you.” She tugged the file away and tucked it under her arm.
“Oh, come on. Murders? Conspiracies? What? I haven’t done my week yet, I want to know what they have us do. How involved we get to be.”
“Are you doing yours with the Squad?”
“Nope.” He grinned at her and leaned against the cabinet, tucking his shaggy black hair behind his ear as he did so. “Debunking. I’ve already talked to Elder Griffin, you know, about how that’s what I want to do. He said he’d get me scheduled.”
“How—” No. No, she wasn’t going to ask how he’d managed to do that, because it would make her look stupid. Naive. She changed it to “How do you like Elder Griffin? He seems okay.”
“Yeah, he is. He’s pretty straitlaced, but they all are, huh? And you know he started with the Church before Haunted Week and everything, he fought during it. They put him into Elder training right after that, apparently, so I guess he did some serious shit.”
Chess thought about that for a second. “He doesn’t really seem like the type.”
“You never know.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice so it felt like a caress on her skin. “Some of us have hidden depths.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Some of us are full of shit.”
“Now, was that really necessary? You wound me.”
“Oh, did I hurt your widdle feelings?”
“You can make it up to me.” He was closer now, not close enough to be entirely inappropriate but close enough that she started both panicking and wishing he’d get closer; close enough that she wanted him to touch her and was afraid he would. “How about having dinner with me on Friday? And Randy’s having a party in his room, we can—”
“I can’t.” She slid away. “Too much studying to catch up on.”
“Come on, Chessie, everyone will be there. One night won’t—”
“Sorry.”
His head tilted. “Another time?”
“Maybe.” She shifted the file in her arms. Ordinarily she wouldn’t mind talking to Doyle, but Jillian could call her any minute and she wanted to try to at least learn something before that happened. So it wouldn’t look like she’d been wasting her time. So it wouldn’t look like she didn’t deserve to be there.
“Well.” He raised his hand like he was about to touch her, but stopped. “If you change your mind …”
“Sure.”
“Have fun with your week, anyway.”
She watched his back as he strolled down the row of cabinets and turned, disappearing past the next aisle of books. How much of that interest was in her, and how much was just curiosity about her training?
They were probably about equal, really. Yeah, he’d asked her out before, but yeah, he was also ambitious and arrogant, which meant he’d do anything to get some kind of inside or advance information.
Whatever. She had far more important things to focus on just then. Like Mark pollert. Like the names of the ghosts Summoned from the City, and who they might be to him. All but one of them had also died before Haunted Week, so she grabbed their files and carried them and the pollerts’ to a table by the wall, where no one could come up behind her.
Jason McBride’s was the first file she opened. Jason had been forty-three when he died, a sudden heart attack while at his job as … oh. Oh. Well, damn. Jason McBride had been a social worker for Child Protective Services, the BT version of the Church’s Department of Minor Care. Chess could only imagine how lousy things must have been for kids BT, given that they had to have improved under the Church and they hadn’t exactly been great for her.
But then, as she kept reminding herself, she must be an anomaly or something. Because contrary to what she’d grown up believing, the Church actually did care about her; they’d found her, they’d rescued her, and look at her now. Actually working for them, working with the Black Squad, getting ready to have an actual life beyond anything she’d ever dreamed of. They deserved her loyalty for that, her gratitude, and she’d give it to them.
But whoeve
r had done the job of “protecting” children before the Church … they deserved nothing, and she scanned the photo of Jason McBride with little curiosity. He had that wispy, ineffectual look she’d seen so many times, the kind of guy born to be stepped all over.
Not that it mattered what he’d been in life. In death he was a killing machine like 99.9 percent of all ghosts, an ethereal shark endlessly searching for human chum.
Just like Marie and Ryan Wagner, the other two ghosts. Aw, a married couple, how sweet. Ryan had been a salesman, Marie a teacher—and Chess could just bet she knew who one of Marie’s students had been.
Too bad she couldn’t confirm it. If the name of Mark’s school had been in his file—and Chess imagined it had been, because everything like that would be—it either hadn’t been in the part she could access or she just hadn’t written it down, which was more likely.
But Jillian could access the files. So could Elder Griffin, couldn’t he? And since Doyle had actually talked to him and requested his training week be in Debunking—and why had no one told her she could do that? Or maybe Doyle had just created his own opportunity, which seemed more likely—and since Elder Griffin had actually seemed pretty decent to her when she’d met him, maybe she could ask him about it. Let him know she was taking the assignment seriously, that she was using her head.
Files weren’t supposed to leave the library, at least that’s what she thought she remembered being told. But taking them to Elder Griffin’s office wasn’t—No, they weren’t supposed to leave, and she didn’t want to take a chance. So instead she quickly scribbled down the names and their places of employment, shoved the files back into their approximate places in the cabinets, and headed for the wide staircase and Elder Griffin’s office.
The hall was empty. Well, sure—it was getting close to six, and the offices technically closed at five-thirty. Most employees stayed later than that, but no regular people sat on the benches waiting for appointments. A Goody Chess wasn’t familiar with passed her on the steps, but that was it.
Which was why she was able to hear the voices inside Elder Griffin’s office so clearly when she raised her hand to knock.
Actually, that was a lie. She heard murmurs beyond the door, and one of those murmurs sounded exactly like Elder Griffin saying her name. Her hand froze just before hitting the wood—good thing, too, because it turned out the door hadn’t latched, and that’s why she could hear.
Shit. What should she do?
Listening wasn’t the right thing. She knew that.
But doing the right thing wasn’t exactly her strong suit. Not really possible for her, even; she was a walking wrong thing, wasn’t she?
So she listened. She inched her head forward, careful to keep from view and very careful to keep from accidentally touching the door and opening it, and heard Jillian say, “She’s very standoffish, actually. She’s already made an enemy of Trent.”
“Oh?”
“Trent’s not the easiest guy to get along with, but it’s like she’s gone out of her way to be disrespectful to him.”
Pause. A pause, while Chess’s stomach twisted and her eyes started to burn. She’d gone out of her way to be disrespectful to Trent? When she’d taken every bit of shit he’d flung at her until just a few hours ago and finally made one single comment in response?
What the fuck, Jillian? She’d thought … well, she hadn’t thought she and Jillian were becoming friends, because she didn’t want friends, and she especially didn’t want friends who seemed to be only interested in simpering and obsessing over men. But she’d thought there was some kind of respect there, that Jillian had at least liked her okay, had valued what she’d contributed so far.
Apparently not. Good to know. She felt sick.
Elder Griffin spoke; Chess put Jillian’s betrayal aside—for the moment—to listen. “But you’ve had no problems, aside from her … standoffishness?”
“I don’t know. I kind of think she resents me, resents having to clear her actions with me. She keeps wanting to go off on her own.”
“She does not follow directions?”
“She follows them, she’s just really caught up in her own ideas. I don’t think she sees this as a team effort.”
“Does not work well with others,” Elder Griffin said.
“I don’t think so, no. She’s just kind of cold. I tried to engage her, let her know she could talk to me, but she didn’t.”
“And you feel the connection she discovered between your victims was merely luck.”
“Well …” Jillian hesitated. “Not entirely. She wanted to look into the New Hope Mission from the beginning, and of course I gave her permission to investigate Mark Pollert. I thought it would placate her, get her to open up a little. So she had some okay instincts there, except I think maybe her fixation on Pollert came from feeling the energy of a sex spell he’d made. She seemed really, well, fixated on that. But—”
Elder Griffin must have made a sound, or a face, or something. Or maybe the roaring in Chess’s ears simply overwhelmed anything she would have heard, the noise like waves of rage and pain washing over her and drowning out everything else.
That was it, then. All the hope she’d had, all the hope she’d been building, collapsed into a sodden pile of wasted dreams at her feet. She wasn’t going to create a life for herself, wasn’t going to make something of herself. She couldn’t escape, would never escape. Everyone knew who she really was, what she really was, that she was sick and shriveled and twisted inside, and they could all see it. Even when she thought she was hiding it, they could see it.
And Jillian actually thought she’d liked that sex spell. That she’d liked feeling what it made her feel, liked having it forced on her.
Just like the rest of them had. She would never escape.
Jillian went on, too, digging Chess’s grave deeper with every word. “But Trent and Vaughn would have found the connection once they started really processing the evidence. She saved them some time, yes, but it isn’t like she cracked the case or anything. She’s not stupid, she’s not a terrible investigator, but working with her just isn’t, well, enjoyable. Like I said, she’s not a team player.”
Elder Griffin’s voice was sharp. “You doubt her loyalty to the Church? To the Truth?”
“Oh, no. No, I can’t say that.” Well, that was something, at least. Jillian would throw her to the wolves but not to the angry crowds at the stocks on Holy Day, or to the executioner. Wow, that was something to be grateful for. Actually it was, but at the moment Chess felt too ill to have room for much gratitude. “She seems very loyal. I just doubt her ability to handle working with other people, or to work effectively under a regular chain of command. There’s no room for disobedience in the Squad, sir, as I’m sure you know.”
“I do.” Paper shuffled. “Well, thank you, Jillian. I appreciate your coming to answer my questions.”
“No problem, sir. I’m happy to help. I was wondering if, while I’m here, we could …”
But Chess wasn’t listening anymore. She was walking away as silently as she could, heading for the bathroom at the end of the hall. No, she shouldn’t do it, and it was yet another sign of how fucking weak she was, how little she deserved the chance she’d just lost, but her eyes stung and her chest hurt and their voices echoed in her head, all of those voices, and now Jillian’s and Elder Griffin’s, too, beating into her mind, and if she didn’t manage to dull them somehow she was going to scream. It was too much, and that embarrassed her and made shame pound through her body just as hard and fast as her blood in her veins.
Into the bathroom, into the stall, her hand already in her bag, finding the cool steel of her flask and yanking it out at the same time as she slid the door bolt home. Her fingers shook as she unscrewed the cap; her arm did not shake as she raised it to her lips and drank, one long swallow, then another, the burning heat of the vodka chasing away the icy lump that had formed in her gut. It was wrong but it didn’t matter, it was wrong but w
ho cared, because her career at the Church was over, anyway.
She’d never worked before, not a real job, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d already realized how big a part politics could play in success at the Church; hell, she’d been trying so hard to be—to be friendly, to not let on that she couldn’t stand to have anyone touch her, that they freaked her out when they wanted to talk to her or ask questions about her life, that sometimes when she was in a group of her classmates she had to clench her fists to keep from panicking because there were so many of them and she felt so exposed.
And she’d thought she was doing a good job. Apparently not.
Warmth spread through her body, warmth and that familiar dull muscle ache she sometimes got from alcohol. Not that it mattered. It was better than the pain of her feelings; it was better than nothing, and she’d take it. Willingly. Gratefully. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to want it or need it, but what the fuck ever. She might as well.
For a few seconds, maybe a minute, she just stood there, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. So much better. Jillian’s voice, all of the voices, retreated enough for her to breathe, enough to let her focus again.
The cinnamon candies tingled in her mouth, elevating her mood a little further. Was it possible to build up some sort of Pavlovian conditioning with those? And eventually they’d do for her what the shots did?
She shouldn’t need either, she reminded herself as she flushed the toilet and headed for the sinks. She shouldn’t need something to get her through the day. She shouldn’t need any help.
But she was quickly coming to realize that “shouldn’t” might as well be “fat chance.” A second or two of honesty—all she could bear—reminded her that she hadn’t managed to go a day without the flask for over a month, and that wasn’t good. That was, in fact, Bad, capital “B” and all. The kind of Bad that would get her caught; booze wasn’t that easy to hide, and sooner or later the candies would stop working or they’d catch on some other way.
But wasn’t it ironic that she couldn’t make herself feel too guilty about it, couldn’t make herself worry too much about it just then, because her body was warm and the sharp edges in her brain were softened ever so slightly, and Jillian’s disregard had faded in her mind just enough for her to handle it?
