Downside Ghosts

3

City of Ghosts
Stacia Kane

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Stacia Kane

Copyright

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Not all of your duties will be pleasant. But that is the sacrifice you make, for as a Church employee you must always remember that you are privileged above all others.

—The Example Is You, the guidebook for Church employees

The guillotine waited for them, its blackened wood dark and threatening against the naked cement walls of the Execution Room.

Chess limped past it, trying not to look. Trying not to remember that she deserved to kneel before it, to place her neck on the age-smoothed rest and wait for the blade to fall. She’d killed a psychopomp. Hell, she’d killed people.

Only the death of the hawk meant automatic execution.

But nobody knew about that. At least, nobody with the authority to order her death knew about that. She was safe for the moment.

Too bad she didn’t feel safe. Didn’t feel the way she should have felt. The dull ache in her thigh with every step she took in her low-heeled Church pumps reminded her of the almost healed gunshot wound; her limp reminded everyone else, drew attention to her at a time when she wanted it even less than usual.

Elder Griffin’s hand was warm at her elbow. “You may sit while the sentence is read and carried out, Cesaria.”

“Oh, no, really, I’m—”

He shook his head, his eyes serious. What was that about? Granted, an execution wasn’t exactly a party-it-up event; very few Church events were. But Elder Griffin looked even more solemn than usual, more troubled.

He didn’t know, did he? Had Oliver Fletcher told him about the psychopomp, about what she’d done? If that bast—No. No, she was being stupid and paranoid. Oliver wouldn’t have told him. When would he have? As far as she knew, the two men had only shared one conversation since that night, the night she’d killed the psychopomp, the night Terrible had been—

Her breath rasped in her chest. Right. This wasn’t the time, or the place. This was an execution, and she had testimony to give, and she needed to calm the fuck down and give it.

So she sat on the hard, straight-backed wooden chair, breathing the disinfectant stink heavy in the room, and watched the others file in after her. Elder Murray, the rings painted around his eyes as black as his hair, almost disappearing against the rich darkness of his skin. Dana Wright, the other Debunker who’d been at the bust at Madame Lupita’s, her light hair curling around her face.

For Lupita herself, no one came. Any who might have cared about her, who might have wanted to be there for her in the last moments of her physical life, had either already been executed themselves or were locked in their cells in the prison building.

Last—last before the condemned woman herself—came the executioner, his face obscured by a heavy black hood. On his open right palm rested a dog’s skull—his psychopomp, ready to take Madame Lupita down to the spirit prisons. Clenched in his left fist was a chain, and at the end of that chain was Madame Lupita, her legs and wrists shackled together with iron bands.

The door thunked shut behind them, the lock popped; it would not open for half an hour. Time enough for the execution to take place and the spirit to be taken to the City of Eternity. The timelocks had been instituted in the early days of the Church, when a series of mishaps had led to a ghost opening the door and escaping. Like everything the Church did, the timelocks made sense, but Chess couldn’t help the tiny thrill of panic that ran up her spine. Trapped. Something she never wanted to be.

The executioner fastened the chain-end he held to the guillotine and began setting up the skull at the base of the permanent altar in the corner. Smoke poured from his censer and overpowered the scent of bleach and ammonia; the thick, acrid odor of melidia to send Lupita’s soul to the spirit prisons, ajenjible and asafetida, burning yew chips to sting Chess’s nose. The energy in the room changed, power slithering up her legs and lifting the hair on the back of her neck, that little rush that always made her want to smile.

She didn’t, though. Not today. Instead she pressed her teeth together and looked at the condemned woman.

Lupita had changed since Chess saw her last, in that miserable, hot little basement that stank of terror and burned herbs and poison. Her big body seemed to have shrunk. Instead of the ridiculous silver turban Chess remembered, Lupita wore only her own close-shorn hair; instead of the silly sideshow caftan, her bulk was hidden beneath the plain black robe of those sentenced to die.

But her eyes had not changed. They searched the little crowd, found Chess, and glared, hatred burning from their depths so hot that Chess almost felt it sear her skin.

She forced herself not to look away. That woman had almost killed her, slipping poison into her drink; had almost killed a roomful of innocent people, summoning a rampaging, violent ghost. Fuck her. She was going to die, and Chess was going to watch.

Something slithered behind Lupita’s eyes.

Chess’s breath froze in her chest. Had she seen that? That flash of silver? That flash, which meant Lupita was Hosting a spirit in her body?

Her eyes widened; she stared at Lupita now, focusing. Waiting. It shouldn’t be possible. Lupita hadn’t been Hosting when she was arrested—they would have caught that immediately when she was brought in—and there was no way in hell she would have been able to pick up and bond with a spirit in the Church prisons. It simply wasn’t possible.

The flash didn’t reappear. No. She was imagining things. All the stress, the tension of her personal life—what there was of it—and the overbearing sympathy of the Elders and the other Debunkers, crushing her beneath their concern for her leg and their good intentions. Add to that a few extra Cepts and a Panda, and half a Nip to keep her awake…No wonder she was seeing things. What was next, pink elephants?

Elder Griffin stood before the guillotine, cleared his throat.

“Irene Lowe, also known as Madame Lupita, thou hast been found guilty by the Church of the crime of summoning spirits to earth. Further, thou hast been found guilty of the attempted murder of Church Debunker Cesaria Putnam. Cesaria, is this woman responsible for those crimes?”

Chess stood up, despite the protests of her right thigh and Elder Griffin’s slight frown. “Yes, Elder.”

“Thou testifiest this based on what?”

“I saw this woman commit those crimes, Elder.”

“And thou swearest thy word to be Fact, and Truth?”

“Yes, Elder. I do.”

Elder Griffin gave her a curt nod, turned next to Dana Wright while Chess sank back onto her chair. A woman was about to die based on her word. When her word—the word of a junkie and a liar, the word of someone who’d betrayed her only real friend in the world—wasn’t worth shit.

He was never going to speak to her again. She’d given up calling the week before. She’d given up hoping she might see him out at Trickster’s or Chuck’s, given up hanging around the Market in the cold, waiting to see if he turned up. He was still out there, of course. People had seen him.

People who weren’t her. She’d never known anyone could avoid another person so thoroughly. It was like he could sense her coming.

Shifting movement in the standing crowd drew her attention back to the proceedings. The execution itself was about to take place.

The room thrummed with power now, beating like a heart around them, steady and slow and thick. No need for a circle; the room itself was a circle, a fortress with iron sandwiched into the cement walls.

Elder Griffin started pounding the drum, letting his hand stay in the air for so long between beats that Chess felt herself waiting, breathless, unable to move or allow her lungs to fill until the next heavy thump. The room’s magic slid into her, finding those empty spaces and filling them, making her something more than she was. It felt good. So good she wanted to close her eyes and give herself to it completely, to forget everything and everyone and do nothing but exist in the energy.

She couldn’t, of course. She knew she couldn’t. So instead she watched as the executioner’s psychopomp formed, the dog growing out of the skull, flowing like a river from a mountain peak to become legs, a tail, hair sprouting glossy and black over the bare skin and bones.

The drum beat faster. Drums…there had been drums at Lupita’s séance that night, played by a duo of speedfreaks with eyes like ball bearings. Now the drums again, keeping monotonous, dragging time under Elder Murray’s voice.

“Irene Lowe, thou art found guilty and sentenced to die by a tribunal of Church Elders, and this sentence shall now be carried out. If thou hast any last words to speak, speak them now.”

Lupita shook her head, staring at the floor. Chess reached out with her own power, trying to get some sense of something from the woman. Some fear, some anger. Anything. Lupita was too quiet. Too calm. This didn’t feel right.

The executioner helped Lupita to her knees, placed her neck on the divot. The drum beat harder, louder even than Chess’s blood in her veins or the thick sweet magic air rasping in her lungs. Louder than her own thoughts.

She reached out farther, letting her power caress Lupita’s skin, trying to find something—

Oh, fuck!

Her leg gave when she leapt to her feet, almost falling over. “No! No, don’t—”

Too late. The blade fell, its metallic shnik slicing the air as cleanly as it did Irene’s neck, thudding into place like the slamming of a prison door.

Irene’s head tumbled into the basket. Blood erupted from the stump of her neck, poured over her head, over the dull cement floor.

Her spirit rose; her spirit, the spirit that had been Madame Lupita. The dog lunged for it, ready to drag it below the earth, into the prisons outside the City of Eternity.

The other spirit rose as well. The spirit Lupita’d been Hosting. The one there was no psychopomp to take care of, no graveyard dust to subdue. The one an entire roomful of Church employees were helpless against in that room with its iron walls and locked door.

Chess’s scream finally escaped, bursting into the air. It was drowned out by the others, the shouts of surprise and fear.

Elder Griffin dropped the drum. The dog grabbed Lupita’s spirit—she had a passport on her arm, she was the one he’d been summoned to retrieve—and dove into the patch of wavering air behind the wall. The last thing Chess saw of Lupita was her mouth stretched into a horrible grin as she left them all to die.

The ghost hovered in the air before the guillotine. A man, his hair slicked back from his forehead, his eyes blank, his face twisted with savage joy. Elder Murray shouted something, she couldn’t be sure what; her skin tingled and itched and threatened to crawl away from her body entirely. A powerful ghost, too powerful. What the fuck was he, how the fuck had she—

“I command you to be still!” Elder Griffin’s voice rang out, echoed off the walls, speared through Chess’s body. “By my power I command it!”

It wouldn’t work. She knew without even looking that it wouldn’t. But the executioner…did he have another skull? Some graveyard dirt?

Dana screamed. Chess glanced over and saw the ghost fighting with Elder Murray, its mouth open in a ghastly smile, its eyes narrow with effort. The ghost held the ritual blade in its hand, the one the executioner had used to summon his psychopomp.

No time to watch. No time to look at them, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway. The room was filled with noise and energy and heat, a confusing mishmash of images her brain couldn’t process. She focused on the smoking censer, the stang in the corner, the black bag beside it. The executioner dug through it frantically, pulling things out—

Someone fell into her, she tumbled to the hard floor with a thud.

More screams, more shouts. Something clattered to the floor. The energy was unbearable. It wasn’t a rush anymore, wasn’t a high. It was an invasion, shoving her around, distorting her thoughts and her vision and infecting her with everyone else’s panic.

She had to calm down. Her hands refused to obey her. Her tattoos prickled and burned, as they were designed to do. The ghost’s presence set them off, an early warning system she was usually grateful for but would gladly have done without at that moment. Chaos reigned in the execution room, carrying her along on a wild riptide of blood.

Okay. Deep breath. Pause. She closed her eyes, dug down deep to the emptiness in her soul. The place where things like love and happiness and warmth should be, the place that was an almost empty room for her, the place where only two people lived, and one of them hated her.

But it was enough. It was enough to have that moment of silence, to tune out the terror and noise around her and find her own strength.

She opened her eyes. Her limbs obeyed her. She sprang to her feet, ignoring the pain—and almost lost her hard-fought calm.

Elder Murray was dead. His body lay stretched across the floor like a corpse ready for cremation. A gaping bloody wound leered at her from his throat.

Behind him the executioner slumped against the wall, his robe soaked with blood. She barely saw him through the ghost, blazing white, bloated with the energy he’d stolen. Chess groaned. A ghost with that much power was like an ex-con on Cloud-laced speed—unstoppable, without feelings, without logic. A killing machine who wouldn’t stop until he was forced to.

And they were locked in with it.

Oh, shit—they were locked in with them. The iron walls kept the spirits of Elder Murray and the executioner locked in just as surely as the rest of them; Chess saw them out of the corner of her eye, faint shapes struggling to come into being.

There was a chance they wouldn’t be hungry, that they wouldn’t become murderous, but the odds were about as good as the odds that she’d be able to fall asleep that night without a handful of her pills. In other words, not fucking good at all. In a minute or so the ghosts would find their shapes, find their powers, and things would go from worse to totally fucking awful.

Blood spattered the walls, dripped off the shiny blade of the guillotine, and ran in thick streams along the cement. It dripped from the ceiling where it had sprayed from Elder Murray’s neck; it formed a glistening pool around the body, outlined footprints in a dizzying pattern, and smeared around the broken remains of the dog’s skull. Fuck. No psychopomp. Did he have another?

Elder Griffin was covered with blood. Dana too, her eyes wide. But Chess wasn’t the only one who’d rallied. Dana’s eyes were dark and fierce with determination; Elder Griffin fairly glowed with power and strength.

Chess caught Dana’s eye, jerked her head toward the bag. Dana nodded and took a step forward.

“By my power I command you to be still,” she said, each word loud and clear. “I command you to go back to your place of silence.”

The ghost turned to look at her, and Dana edged back, drawing it away. Chess inched to the left, trying not to catch the ghost’s attention. She had to get to that bag. Had to get to the bag or they would all die. Maybe they’d die anyway, but she was damned if she wasn’t at least going to try to save them. Life might be a pool of shit but the City was worse—for her anyway—and she had no intention of going there. Not that day.

Her feet in their stiff shoes slipped in thick blood; the scent of it filled the air, a coppery tang beneath the herbs. How long would those burn, and was there more?

The ghost moved toward Dana, who kept talking, words of power flowing from her mouth. He clutched the knife in one semi-solid hand, blood dripping down the blade and covering his spectral skin. Viewed through him it looked black, like ink.

She glanced at the ghosts of Murray and the executioner again. They were almost fully formed now, slowly squirming into being like maggots erupting from a slab of rotting steak. She—they—didn’t have much time.

Dana screamed. The ghost jumped at her. Elder Griffin leapt to the side, joining the struggle, as the ghost attempted to slice Dana’s throat.

Chess dove for the bag. More herbs first—she grabbed the little baggies, dumped them on the dying fire in the censer. The smoke thickened. Another psychopomp, please let him have a spare. She threw things from his bag, not watching where they landed, the hair on the back of her neck practically pulling itself out of her skin. She couldn’t hear much, what was happening? Were Dana and Elder Griffin dead? Oh, shit—

Her hand found something solid and her body flooded with relief. Another skull. Thank the gods who didn’t exist, he had a spare. She yanked it out, tore at the inert silk wrapping it, barely glanced at it as she set it down.

A roar behind her. The ghost had spotted her. Dana and Elder Griffin tried to hold it, but it made itself transparent and sprang at her through the guillotine. She ducked out of the way. “I call on the escorts of the City of the Dead,” she managed, stumbling, trying to keep within reach of the skull but away from the ghost’s grabbing hand. “By my power I call you!”

The skull rattled. Chess pushed more power out, as much as she could—not an easy task when trying to keep from being turned into an energy snack for a rampaging dead man.

Another problem faced her as well. No passport. The spirit hadn’t been accounted for, didn’t have a marking on his body; there was a chance the dog wouldn’t know which spirit to grab when it came. It had happened to Chess once before, a few months previously, and the dog had gone after her. She would never forget that feeling, the horrible sensation of her soul being pulled from her body like a banana from its peel…

Not to mention the additional spirits forming not five feet away, the executioner and Elder Murray.

“No passport!” she said with a gasp, and Dana’s eyes widened. She glanced at the knife in her hand, raised her eyebrows, and Chess nodded because she had no choice.

Dana tossed the knife. The ghost spun around when it clattered to the floor, leapt for it. Chess grabbed the executioner’s Ectoplasmarker and popped the cap, held it ready in her fist, and shouted.

Just as she’d thought, the ghost wheeled back around and came after her with the knife. Dana and Elder Griffin moved, Chess didn’t see where. She was too busy watching the ghost, seeing his solid hand raise over her head, grabbing his wrist with her left hand and bringing the marker up with her right.

He didn’t have a passport—they hadn’t expected him, hadn’t designed one. Oh fucking well. The blade hovered above her eye, its point tacky with coagulating blood, while she scrawled a series of Xs on the spectral skin. The ghost’s face twisted with rage.

Now for the worst part. With every bit of strength she had left she pushed herself to the side, to the skull, and, dropping the marker, brought her right hand to the blade’s point.

She hadn’t expected it to hurt instantly but it did. Ow, it really fucking did, and her blood poured from the wound onto the skull, and she shoved all of that pain and all of her power into her next words.

“I offer the escorts an appeasement for their aid! Escorts come now! Take this man to the place of silence, by my power and by my blood I command it!”

The dog roared into being, huge and shaggy, its fangs bared. This wasn’t just a dog, it was a wolf, what the fuck was the executioner doing with an unauthorized psychopomp—

The ghost’s eyes widened. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he tried to jump away, all thoughts of killing forgotten. The dog—the wolf—went after him, its body moving low and fast like the predator it was.

The ghosts of the executioner and Elder Murray were fully formed now, huddled in the corner. Chess could see the last vestiges of sanity, of who they were in life, draining away, could see them trying to hold on.

It didn’t matter. The wolf howled. A hole ripped open in the thin veil between her world and the spirit one, the wolf snatched the original ghost in its massive jaw. Ectoplasm burst from the ghost’s body under the wolf’s teeth. The ghost screamed, an act somehow more horrible because of its silence.

The wolf turned toward Elder Murray and the executioner. They huddled together, trying so hard. Tears sprang to Chess’s eyes. She’d never known Elder Murray well, never dealt much with him, but his last act was to struggle to retain some humanity, and she couldn’t help the surge of affectionate sadness, of pride, that threatened to overwhelm her.

Dana and Elder Griffin were beside her, Dana squeezing her hand. The wolf leapt, still clutching their unwelcome visitor in its teeth, and caught Elder Murray and the executioner in a bizarre bear hug; he carried them through the wavering hole and it snapped shut behind them, leaving the three still alive to stare open-mouthed at where it had been.

Chapter Two

The most sacred vows are those given to the Church, and overseen by the Church, for those involve not just the heart and mind but the soul.

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 331

“I don’t understand how it could have happened,” Elder Griffin said again. They’d returned to his office, the welcoming, soothing room full of skulls and books. For once the television mounted by the ceiling was off; usually the Elder kept it on all the time to keep him company.

Apparently he didn’t feel much like companionship at the moment. Neither did Chess, but then, she never did. What was the point? You let people into your life and you ended up getting hurt. Or hurting them. Either way, the road to pain was paved with other people, and she wanted no part of it anymore.

At least that’s what she kept telling herself. Just then it worked. Usually of late it didn’t. Once the decision was made to open up to someone, to welcome them…it wasn’t so easy to accept that the place she’d opened for them was empty. And always would be.

Especially when it was her fault.

“I don’t see how she could have made it past the detectors,” Dana said, echoing something Chess herself had wondered earlier but without providing the answer Chess had come up with.

She gave it now. “She didn’t. She wasn’t Hosting when we busted her.”

“But that isn’t—”

“I was there, Dana.” Chess paused, gave the other woman a small smile in an attempt to make her words less harsh. She’d never had a problem with Dana and wasn’t interested in starting one. “I mean, I know you were there too, but I felt her energy. She stole mine, remember? So I know she wasn’t Hosting. There was nothing inside that woman but Dumpster cag-mag and that awful tea.”

“Cag-mag?” Elder Griffin looked puzzled. Shit. She shouldn’t have said that. He knew she lived in Downside, of course, but didn’t really know what that meant. Nobody did. And that was the way she liked it.

“It’s a—It just means, scraps of whatever meat’s about to go off. Like you get in the butcher’s Dumpster.”

The Elder’s eyebrows rose; his shoulders relaxed. Like she’d said something that pleased him.

Which made no sense at all. Why would that make him happy?

“So you have managed to learn something about the area,” he said. “You’re not so isolated from your neighbors there as I had assumed.”

For the first time in a while, Chess felt almost like laughing. Yeah, she’d found a way to fit in with the rest of Downside. That was one way to look at it.

“Yes,” she said finally, dragging her tired mind back to Elder Griffin. Shit. Only ten at night and she was exhausted. She had more speed in her bag; hopefully they’d be done with this soon and she could go bump up.

Or, fuck that. She could go sleep. Drop an Oozer, drift away…Maybe she’d even get lucky and not dream. Her dreams didn’t tend to be cheerful these days. But then they never really had been.

Elder Griffin smiled, the kind of smile that made Chess wonder even more what exactly he was up to, but he didn’t speak. Muffled voices came through the door, the scuffle of feet on the shiny wide floor of the hall outside the office.

Dana shivered. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Elder Murray…It doesn’t seem real.”

Elder Griffin’s face rearranged itself into more sympathetic lines, but when he spoke, Chess heard the steel beneath his bland tone. It made her own eyes widen. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak to anyone like that—at least, not anyone still living. “Remember, Dana, Elder Murray will still be with us in spirit. There is no reason to mourn.”

“Of course not.” Dana straightened in her seat, pushed her light hair back from her face. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just shocked. I liked Elder Murray.”

“I liked him as well. And for that reason, Dana, and because I know the Truth, I rejoice for Elder Murray. The peace he’s found in the City, the quiet…” Elder Griffin shook his head. “I envy him.”

With difficulty Chess suppressed a shudder. The City—ugh. What Elder Griffin thought was peace, she thought was emptiness. What he thought was quiet, she thought was horrifying loneliness, with no pills or anything to make it bearable.

“We’ll set the ceremony for”—he flipped the pages in the daily calendar sitting on the shiny wide desktop before him—“Saturday. Yes. Five days from now is Saturday—‘tis so late I forgot for a moment what day it was. Saturday, Dana, you shall have your chance to see Elder Murray’s happiness for yourself.”

Dana nodded, her expression cleared. Meanwhile Chess felt as if someone had shoved a blender into her gut. With everything else, the deaths and the wondering where that damned wolf had come from and—okay, and her stupid babyish whining about her personal life, what a fucking joke—she’d forgotten about the Dedication ceremony. About what the death of an Elder would entail.

“Cesaria? Are you well?”

Chess nodded, opened her eyes wide and met Elder Griffin’s blue ones with as much innocence as she could muster. “Fine, sir. Fine. Just a little tired.”

“You do look tired.”

She didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say? Thanks?

“How is your leg, my dear? Do you feel well enough to come back to work officially?”

“Yes!” The word came out a little too loudly, a little too eagerly. She couldn’t help it. Yes, she wanted to get back to work. Wanted to have something to do besides sitting around her apartment being mocked by the empty walls, by the empty spot next to her on the sagging couch. Wanted something to do aside from avoiding having Lex inside, because she knew if she invited him into her apartment he would expect to be allowed into her body as well, and she didn’t think she could face that conversation.

Wasn’t even sure she wanted to have it. Why? Why give up a friend and perfectly serviceable bed partner for one who couldn’t be avoiding her more obviously if he’d hung up signs around her neighborhood telling her to stay the hell away from him?

Elder Griffin didn’t seem to think she was overeager, though. “Excellent. Excellent. Wait here, please.”

Chess and Dana exchanged mystified looks as he unfolded himself from behind his desk and crossed the floor. In the pale yellowish glow from the gentle lamps, his stockinged calves flashed, dried blood spatters from earlier forming lacy patterns the color of dead leaves against the white. He left the room and closed the high dark wooden door behind him with a quiet click.

What was he doing? She would have thought he was going to get a new case file for her, but he wouldn’t assign her a case right in front of Dana, not on a whim like that. She had no idea where she even stood in the case queue; two weeks of hospitalization and another two weeks of enforced rest had taken her pretty far out of the game.

“So, back to work,” Dana said, in the weary, flat tone of someone talking simply because she thought it would be rude not to talk.

Luckily for Chess, she didn’t have the same concerns, or the same discomfort. She just nodded, pressed her palms together, and glanced around the room. Glanced at Dana, taking in the other woman’s blond curls and expensive rings. Well, why not? Most Debunkers spent their money on actual things, rather than just buying anything they could swallow, smoke, or snort.

Unlike Chess.

Speaking of which…Three hours now since she’d taken the Panda and Cepts. She had plenty of time, a few more hours, but it never hurt to be aware.

The door opened, and Elder Griffin came back in, followed by Elder Thompson and a red-haired woman Chess had never seen before.

Not that it mattered, because the woman was clearly a Church employee. Her bare arms were decorated like Chess’s, like Dana’s, with one striking exception: the black snake, coiled up the length of her arm from wrist to shoulder, each scale perfectly delineated in a silvery magical ink that gave off a faint shimmer in the dim light.

A member of the Black Squad. Church law enforcement—Church government, as opposed to Debunkers like Chess and Dana, who were regular Church employees.

Her blood turned to ice. Had the woman come for her—had they found out? She’d been so careful all this time, all these years, never letting anyone get too close, never letting anyone see her take so much as a fucking aspirin, and now—and in front of Dana, of all people? They were busting her in front of—No. No. She was being stupid, acting like some panicky moron, and she needed to stop it.

Preferably right that second, because the red-haired woman was looking at her rather oddly. Examining her, as if she could see the guilt. Not good. Chess tightened her grip on her own fingers to calm herself, and held the redhead’s gaze. The woman wanted to play power games, wanted to have some dumbass little staredown? Fine. Her loss.

The woman smiled; then, very deliberately, she broke the contact and looked down at the floor. Ohhhkay. What did that mean?

“Dana,” Elder Griffin said, breaking into whatever the hell was happening, “perhaps you should go back to your cabin. Get some rest.”

Dana opened her mouth, then stopped. Elder Griffin’s dismissal hadn’t been rude, but it had been a dismissal just the same, and Dana wasn’t stupid. She left in a flurry of muttered goodbyes.

Chess was alone with two Elders and a woman who probably had the power to throw her into prison just for looking at her funny, and the silence in the room pounded into her skull like a speedfreak with a hammer.

Elder Griffin sat down. “Cesaria, may I present Lauren Abrams? She just arrived from New York this morning.”

The woman—Lauren—held out one thin pale hand. Her tattoos went all the way down the back of it, like a fingerless glove; at the end of those bare fingers her nails were short like a man’s, and shiny. “Nice to meet you, Cesaria. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

An electric hum ran up Chess’s arm when she shook Lauren’s hand. She ignored it. Ignored too the way Lauren clearly wanted her to ask what she’d heard, or make some kind of joke. It wasn’t her job to jump through hoops, and she didn’t like this one bit.

She’d done some work with the Black Squad before, a few little side jobs, but this was different. This time she wasn’t being brought into a group and given a quick briefing; she wasn’t meeting a gang of lower Squad members. Lauren’s power, her air of command, told Chess more clearly than anything else could have that this woman was a higher-up. Very high. In fact…

“Abrams,” she said. “Any relation to the Grand Elder?”

Lauren gave a light, soft laugh. “He’s my father.”

If Chess hadn’t already been sitting down she might have stumbled. No fucking way. They were sending her on a case—there had to be a case here, either that or they were busting her, and she somehow suspected that if that’s what was going on they would have done it already—with the fucking Grand Elder’s daughter?

“Oh,” she said finally, since everyone was looking at her as if they expected her to respond. “Okay.”

Lauren sat down in Dana’s empty chair, crossed her legs with a whisper of nylon. “I bet you’re wondering what’s going on.”

Chess shrugged.

“We have…an offer for you. An investigation we think you could really help us with. Interested?”

“What is it?”

Lauren opened her mouth, but before she could speak Elder Thompson cleared his throat and leaned forward, his heavy brows drawn together in a solid line. His eyebrows fascinated Chess; they seemed to grow wilder and thicker every time she saw him, while the hair on his head grew lighter and thinner, like some sort of migration process. Someday she imagined the brows would simply fall over his eyes in a wiry curtain.

Lauren glanced at him, nodded, glanced back at Chess. “It’s a very…sensitive case.”

“All my cases are sensitive.” What the hell was this? Why were they looking at her like they expected her to explode? “I don’t gossip, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s not it. It’s just—I’m not explaining this very well.” Lauren looked helplessly at Elder Griffin, biting her lipstick-coated lower lip.

Great. One of those women: tough and authoritative when it suited her, acting like a simpering poor-me baby when it didn’t. So they wanted to bring her in on a case with the Grand Elder’s pampered little daughter, who would expect Chess to do all the work while she batted her eyelashes and took all the credit? Ugh. No, thank you.

But then…how much money was in it? She fully expected she’d have to start paying for her own supplies again, once the bag she had ran out and she had to tell Lex she wasn’t going to sleep with him anymore. So it wasn’t like extra money wouldn’t come in handy. The payout on her last case would have been huge, but she’d been forced to give it up to save her own skin, so…she was broke. As usual.

“Cesaria, the problem isn’t that we do not trust you,” Elder Griffin said. “It’s that the sensitivity of this case, the subject of it, makes explaining a little difficult.”

Elder Thompson folded his arms. “We can’t tell you what it’s about. Not until you agree to take it.”

“What? I don’t—”

“And it will require a Binding Oath.”

Her mouth fell open. A Binding Oath? They had to be kidding. No. No way. They wanted her to take a case so serious it required an oath of secrecy—a form of magical control over her actions—and they weren’t even going to tell her what it was about first? Not even a hint?

Lex would surely front her. If he was going to stop giving her what she needed for free, she knew he would at least front her until she got a real case, one where she’d get a bonus. It wouldn’t be long, it never—

“The case comes with a bonus before you begin, simply for agreeing and accepting the Bind,” Elder Griffin said. “Thirty thousand dollars. You will be given a thousand dollars a week on top of your salary for the duration of the case—we anticipate a resolution within two weeks, however—and an additional fifty thousand when it ends.”

Her protest died in her throat. Eighty-two thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars minimum. That was a fuck of a lot of money.

That would buy her a fuck of a lot of oblivion. And the way things were going these days, oblivion was even more important than usual.

And she still needed a new car.

“I assume,” she said, pushing the words out through a throat gone gummy, “that it’s a dangerous case?”

Lauren Abrams rearranged her legs with another nylon hiss; Elder Thompson and Elder Griffin both watched her like they thought she might get up and run screaming from the room. None of them replied.

She’d just watched two people die. Her hand throbbed where she’d sliced it. Her thigh ached. She wanted a cigarette, and she wanted her pills. And she wanted eighty thousand dollars.

No matter what the case was.

“I’ll do it,” she said, and hoped it would be worth it.

Chapter Three

And we honor those first Elders above all others, for they were the Founders of our Church and thus the saviors of mankind.

—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1256

Elder Griffin stood up. Light from the candles on the floor spilled across his face, cast jutting shadows over one eye. For a moment he looked alien, almost scary; then he turned farther to his left and was himself again.

Chess’s heart pounded in her chest. It’s just a bit of magic, she told herself. Just an oath, no different from the ones she’d taken when she started her training, certainly no different from the ones she’d taken when she completed that training and became a full Church employee at the age of twenty-one.

It didn’t work, though. This was different, and she knew it. And she didn’t like it. Nor did she like the energy rising in the room, sly and intrusive, or the peculiar smile on Lauren Abrams’s face as she watched the Elders set up the altar.

Chess stood in the center of the room with her hands clasped behind her. Dried blood had settled into the fabric of her plain ceremonial dress, making her stomach protest a little when she thought about it. She didn’t worry about the executioner and Elder Murray; what few blood- or fluid-borne diseases had survived the Church’s strict quarantine and eradication policies, Church employees had been vaccinated against.

But Madame Lupita…disease aside, who the hell knew what sort of bacterial stew had simmered in her plaque-clotted veins? Realistically, Chess knew the risk was gone now that the blood had dried, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to get the damned dress off as fast as she possibly could.

But of course she didn’t have much choice. And the sooner she took the damned Oath, the sooner she’d get a nice fat check. She could slip it in the night deposit on her way home.

Movement to her left brought her back into the room, back into the ceremony. The Elders had started laying out a salt line, murmuring words of power as they moved solemnly clockwise. Lauren stood against the wall, outside the circle, watching them with her arms folded and her ankles crossed. Irritation prickled Chess’s skin.

It wasn’t that it was so unusual for her to dislike people right off the bat. That was pretty much the way she felt about everyone. But she wasn’t usually forced to work with people she disliked right off the bat. She felt…intruded upon.

But then, nobody was forcing her to take the case. No, not forcing. Bribing. And she was taking the bribe, because she needed the money.

Behind the Elders the salt line erupted into shining deep purple, hissing faintly as it rose in thick lines and cast colored light across everything. Their white stockings glowed, their faces glowed; Elder Griffin’s pale hair surrounded his head in a corona of blazing violet that made Chess’s eyes sting.

Not just her eyes, either. The energy buzzed and twirled around her, battered her skin. She was caught in it, a vortex of power swirling around her, catching her in it and twisting her inside out. She didn’t know where to look, what to focus on; she couldn’t bear to close her eyes.

So she looked down, focused on the dusty, bloodspecked toes of her once-shiny black heels. It wasn’t a good compromise. Her head swam; her feet looked vertiginously far away. But it was better than watching the Elders move—setting up their bowls and setting fire to their herbs—inside the sparkling, viciously bright dome.

The only good thing was that Lauren Abrams could no longer see her. The circle would block her view. It was some relief.

Smoke filled the circle, thick, choking smoke the same purple as the circle, the same color as the fire burning in a large firedish opposite her. She didn’t want to breathe it in. Breathing it in was part of the Oath, part of the Binding. Even she didn’t know what some of those herbs were, but when they entered her lungs they would enter her bloodstream, locking every cell of her body into the magical oath she was about to take.

Powerful binding herbs, too. The calamus herbs, vetiver, and sweet flag, combined with the deep, throbbing energy of licorice root. She could feel them spreading through her, finding every empty place, drawing her own magic and mixing with it. She was naked, open to them; they swept through her without caring, without feeling, winding from her feet to her head and forcing her to bend to their power.

This wasn’t like the oaths she’d taken when she was initiated, not like the ones when she began her training. This was…this was heavy, dark magic, trapping her, squeezing her with so much pressure that she thought she might implode. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before. This wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right…

Dimly she heard the Elders speaking, saw vague movement as they added more herbs to the glowing purple fire in the north end of the circle. Myrrh and cedar, bergamot and dragon’s blood. Her vision blurred. Shapes formed in the smoke, open mouths, staring eyes. Someone moaned. She wasn’t sure if it was her.

Elder Thompson started chanting, low and slow, his voice thick with smoke and power and the spine-tingling thrust of command. She moved without intending to, bound by him. Bound by his commands. Somewhere deep down she fought against it.

She didn’t want to do this anymore. She’d changed her mind. Her heart slammed around in her chest like a pinball caught between the paddles, trying frantically to escape. Her mind fought against the Elder, against what he wanted her to do, but she was caught. Trapped. Her hands rose at his words, turned so her pale wrists, veins blue-purple beneath the thin skin, faced the top of the dome.

Elder Griffin’s hand on her arm. Desperately she swam through the smoke before her eyes, fought to see him. Fought the spell that slid hard hands up her legs, curled over her shoulders, caressed her stomach and breasts and stroked her neck. Everywhere.

Phantom hands, unfamiliar hands, all over her body. No. No, she’d sworn she wouldn’t ever—wouldn’t lie there, she wasn’t a child anymore, she didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to let them do this, she could fight, she was powerful. She was a witch, a fucking Church witch; she was grown up and she had the power now. She did not have to let them—not anymore—she didn’t want this anymore, no…

“Stop.” Her voice didn’t work; her dry lips ached around the word. She couldn’t do this, didn’t want to be controlled anymore, couldn’t give up her power. Couldn’t give up her autonomy. Her independence. The strength she’d fought so fucking hard for, the right to keep her own thoughts and her own body, not to be forced to let other people use her like a fucking toy, to ignore her until they took her out of her box to play with her some more and cast her aside when they’d had their fun.

“Stop!” she tried again, but all that came out was a gurgle. Panic overtook her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel her hands or feet. Elder Thompson’s voice grew louder, thundering in her ears; his power forced itself into her, over her. Fighting with her to keep her still.

Her feet moved, like wading through half-dried cement. She had to get out. Had to. Fuck the money. It wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth this, wasn’t worth being trapped by heavy black hands and forced to give up everything she’d fought all her life to gain.

Elder Thompson was shouting now. His words slammed into her, beat her like fists. She pushed harder, aiming for the thick purple wall. Get out, she had to get out, had to—

Another hand on her, squeezing her arm. She tried to swing, to bat him away, but he caught her. “Cesaria. Cesaria. Cesaria.”

Elder Griffin. Elder Griffin speaking to her, his voice quiet but still somehow audible over Elder Thompson’s roar. He repeated her name again and again, and the tiny piece of her able to focus grabbed him, grabbed the sound of her name in his voice, and clung to it.

“Cesaria. I am here with you, Cesaria. Give in. Let go and have trust in me. You know me, Cesaria. I know you. You will not be hurt here, no one will hurt you. I promise it will end when you relax, and you will come to no harm. I promise you—let go and it will end, stop fighting it, no one will hurt you. No one will hurt you, Cesaria, I promise…”

She didn’t want to. Her head flew back and forth, denying it, refusing.

He kept speaking, the same soft litany over and over. Tears ran down her cheeks. She could feel them, taste them, salty and flavored with calamus and cayenne from the herbs invading her body.

Somewhere—she had no idea how long it took, how many times he repeated her name or urged her to give in and let Elder Thompson take control of her—she relaxed. Elder Griffin would not let anything happen to her. She knew he wouldn’t. She trusted him as much as she trusted anyone, trusted him more than anyone except—She trusted him, and he wouldn’t let her get hurt, and gradually she felt the energy around her change, heard Elder Thompson’s voice quiet. With a sigh she reached into herself; with a sigh she gave in to her trust.

The energy changed. Instantly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Not scary anymore, not dangerous. She was in this. She was resigned to it. She’d agreed to it and she was doing it, and suddenly she didn’t care. In fact…

It filled her, sent her floating. Better than her pills. Better than a knob of Dream. Every cell in her body was pure power, pure thick sweetness, light and full of joy. She had no choices to make, no battles to fight. No memories to deal with, no shame, no misery. She wasn’t herself anymore. She was someone else, someone who belonged to someone, and that someone would make all the decisions and let her float…

It switched again, and she slammed back into herself. Her eyes opened.

The light had changed. Still purple, still glowing, but colored with shooting stars of black and red, streaking across the bright screen of energy. Her blood raced through her veins, through her brain, faster and faster, her tattoos screamed and tingled and writhed on her skin, searing through muscle and bone, setting off alarms in her soul.

Around the perimeter of the circle stood the ghosts, their clothing so familiar, their faces ones she’d seen before in paintings. The First Elders. The founders of the Church.

Controlled by herbs, neutered by magic, they stared at her with eyes that were nothing but blank white spaces. Their hands were clasped before them, their feet planted on the floor. They would witness her oath. They would bind her.

They would punish her if she broke the Oath.

Holy shit.

Elder Thompson’s voice boomed through the silence, an edge of hoarseness ruining the thick slide of it.

“Cesaria Putnam, this night we Bind you. Bind you in loyalty to your Church, to Truth and Fact, to the power of the Church and the power of the earth. Do you accept this Binding?”

Elder Griffin whispered something in her ear. She repeated it with a mouth that felt alien and strange, a voice rusty with nerves. “I request the parameters of the Binding.”

“The parameters of the Binding are these: That you will not speak of your purpose to anyone but those authorized to know it. That you will not act with disloyalty against the Church. That what you hear of your purpose after the words of Binding are spoken, and until they are retracted, will not be repeated by you to anyone but those authorized. That you will repeat them to those authorized when told to do so. Do you accept those parameters?”

Another whisper from Elder Griffin. “Who are those authorized?”

“Those authorized are Elder Thompson. Elder Griffin. The Grand Elder. Lauren Abrams, Third Inquisitor of the Black Squad. Those authorized will also be those names given to you by the aforementioned. Do you accept those parameters?”

“What are the penalties of breaking the Binding?”

“The Binding is unbreakable.”

“No Binding is unbreakable.”

“If this Binding is broken the penalty is thus: That the spirits of the First Elders will punish you. That the First Elders will remove you from your body and discard it. That you will be taken to the spirit prisons and left there until the First Elders shall determine you have been punished enough.”

She shivered. They weren’t fucking around. But then she hadn’t imagined they would be.

“Cesaria Putnam, do you accept these parameters?”

Purple swirled before her eyes; purple flames, purple energy. The First Elders, standing in silent disapproval around her, were translucent, purple glowing through them. Elder Thompson was simply a hulking black shape, barely visible in the vibrant light.

“Cesaria Putnam, do you accept these parameters?”

She licked her lips. “I do accept them.”

Elder Thompson muttered something; her arms lifted again. Her breath rattled in her chest, she knew what was coming and she didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but she couldn’t help it that her eyes wouldn’t close—

Bright violet shrieked off the edge of the blade, just before Elder Griffin brought it down over her wrists in a quick, decisive slice.

Her nerves vibrated. Dimly she felt the pain, a cold prickle beneath the skin, but the magical control holding her kept the worst of it at bay.

She saw it though. Saw her blood burble up from the wounds like purple-black ink, like oil bubbling from a fault in the surface of the earth, and fall on the smoking pile of herbs at her feet. She hadn’t seen either of the Elders move it but there it was, the purple flames flashing red when her blood hit it.

“Cesaria Putnam, you are Bound. Bound to obey the strictures of this agreement. From this moment forward you will not speak of what you are told. Say you are Bound.”

“I am Bound.” The words felt sick and slimy in her mouth.

The First Elders came forward. One of them carried a blade, a real one not a spectral one, shining purple. Her tattoos screamed; her soul screamed.

The blade rose. The ghost—how did that work; she didn’t know—he’d sliced their wrists. Each of the ghosts had a wound, a gaping mouth dribbling whitish ectoplasm. Dripping it into her similar wounds. It stung and burned, it raced into her bloodstream, ran through her body, a blast of power and fear and icy death that chilled her even as it set her afire.

“Cesaria Putnam, you are Bound. Bound to obey the commands of those aforementioned in speaking of what you are about to hear. Say you are Bound.”

“I am Bound.”

Dizziness swam up through her stomach, to her chest, to her head. The First Elders continued to invade her. Her blood continued to flow from her wounds, sizzling onto the fire below them like fat drippings onto firecans in the Market. She smelled it, blood mixed with the herbs, changing the scent into something like cinnamon and copper.

The fire rose, blinding purple. Rose at her feet and rose inside her. Sweat poured down her forehead and neck, between her breasts. Her bangs clung to her forehead.

“Cesaria Putnam, kneel.”

Her knees gave way. She didn’t feel them hit the floor but knew they had.

“Richtaru bessiden amacha.” Elder Thompson’s voice rose, thick and strong above the roaring in her ears, the rasping desperation of her breath in her lungs. Smoke curled around her, pressed against her power, twined with it, wrapped around her like a hot, heavy wet blanket.

“By my power you are Bound. By your power you are Bound. By your blood and bones you are Bound. By the power of the Church, by the power of the Truth, by the power of the First Elders and the earth you are Bound.”

Flames danced before her eyes, blurred with tears and stinging sweat. Too hot, it was too hot in there, she was losing too much blood…

“Let the Binding be sealed!”

The flames leapt, scorching her face. Something poured over her wrists, it seared her skin, stank of herbs. She looked at her arms, watched the thick reddish water pour over her, felt it enter her bloodstream and burn its way up her arms, to her chest, to her brain.

Her throat ached. She was screaming. Screaming so loud and so long she barely felt the Binding lock into place when her wounds healed over. Barely felt something snap in her skull, in her body.

Barely. But she still felt it.

The fire died. Elder Thompson said something else, too quietly for her to hear. The energy lifted; the First Elders disappeared, leaving only the purple circle glowing around them.

Elder Griffin’s hands on her shoulder urged her to lean back, to rest against his chest. Her breath hitched; she didn’t want to cry, didn’t mean to, but she couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. Thirty thousand dollars didn’t seem like enough for what she’d just given up. Even her faith in the Church, her trust in it, seemed to fade in light of what she’d lost.

The circle disappeared; fresh air flowed into where it had been, dispersing the smoke. Through the last purplish tendrils of it she saw Lauren Abrams reappear, smiling slightly, looking down at Chess on the floor like that was just the right place for her.

That was enough for Chess. She shrugged Elder Griffin’s hands away, pushed herself to a stand on legs that threatened to give out on her. She couldn’t do anything about the tears she’d already shed, about her sweatsoaked dress clinging to her body or wet hair clinging to her skull. But she could damn well face Lauren on her feet.

Lauren smiled slightly, looked her up and down. “You did well.”

“She fought me.” Elder Thompson sank into a chair, pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his heavy brow. “She almost broke out of the circle.”

Lauren’s eyebrows lifted; she looked at Chess with new interest. “Really.”

“Cesaria is very strong,” Elder Griffin said, and Chess had to fight not to look at him. Not to go to him and let him hold her again. She’d never—never had someone do that, not like that. Had never heard anyone talk about her with such pride in his voice.

That wasn’t exactly true. One other person had done both of those things. But he never would again.

“Well.” Lauren dusted her hands together, as though she needed to wash them of Elder Griffin’s kind words. “Now that it’s done, we have some things to discuss, don’t we?”

Chapter Four

Be proud of the wrinkles and lines that life has given you! They’re a symbol of the promises you’ve made to your family and of your achievements. All important events leave scars.

—Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies by Mrs. Increase

The picture slid across the polished wooden table, the image’s horror barely contained by the thin white edges of the paper. Chess looked at it, swallowed hard. Looked again.

“He was found three days ago. Well…that much of him was. We expect an ID any moment.” Lauren’s crisp, cool tones cut through Chess’s anger, the overwhelming pity she felt, looking at the ruined body in the photograph. It was an effort not to leap across the table and smack her. How could she do that? How could she look at that—that thing, that lump of flesh and goo that had once been a human being, and just move on with her pat little speech?

“Down by the docks. I believe you’re familiar with the area?”

Chess nodded without thinking of it and reached out a tentative hand for the picture. Her dress was still wet; it clung coldly to her body. But that was not why she shivered.

Another picture slid over, knocked into the first one before Chess could touch it. “Yesterday this turned up, farther south. Fifty-fifth and Brand. Several different victims this time, but not their whole bodies. Just what you see.”

The slick photographic paper threatened to slice her fingers when she picked it up, angled it so she could get a better look. Not that she wanted to. But Lauren and the Elders watched her too closely, sat too silently and stiffly in their chairs. There had to be something they wanted her to see—to notice—and she wanted to know what it was.

Her gaze skittered over the picture, trying to take it in pieces, quadrants, to shield herself from the full horror of it. Across the top first, then down, the lower right corner, the—

Raised black scars interrupted her wrists. Thick and straight, like railroad ties crossing her forearms. Sprouting from them were curving veins of dark purple in a lacy pattern up to her elbows, down over her palms.

Elder Griffin caught her look. “They’ll disappear when the Binding Oath is lifted,” he said. “They remain simply as a reminder.”

Yeah. Like she could fucking forget.

But she just nodded and continued, steeling herself for the full image, until finally she saw what they wanted her to see. It was barely visible, only a linear shadow in the darkness of the black-and-white gore. But it was there, and Chess’s blood ran even colder than it had.

Fuck, she needed her pills. “The Lamaru.”

When no one responded she looked up. “Right? The Lamaru are back. That’s what this is. Who did this.”

Lauren nodded. “We believe so, yes.”

She reached down, lifted a thick file from her lap and plunked it onto the table. “We’ve received information that they’ve re-formed themselves and are operating somewhere in the area known as Downside. Where you live, is that correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Excellent. So you’ll be an even bigger help than we thought. When shall I come down? Tonight? Are you free?”

“What?” What the fuck? She was sticky with sweat, she’d practically had a fucking breakdown, she’d watched two Church employees die—and now Lauren Abrams, who hadn’t been through any of that, thought Chess was going to invite her out to wander the streets of Downside? At night? And not even her own neighborhood, where she was relatively safe?

“I asked if you’re free tonight, Cesaria. Every minute we sit here is another minute the Lamaru could be working against us, you know. I think it’s best we start right away.” Her eyelashes fluttered. “Unless you’re tired, of course.”

Yeah, Chess was tired. Tired of being poked at by this irritating woman.

Tired physically? Another question entirely. She was exhausted. She was also holding. A couple of Nips, a nice fat line…She had enough pharmaceuticals and botanicals in her pillbox and back at her apartment to keep her wide awake for a week. Ha. The glories of modern living.

“I’m not tired at all,” she said.

“Good.” Lauren spun the file; it skittered across the table and slammed into Chess’s arms. The impact sent the tendrils of purple shifting and sliding, rearranging themselves. Her stomach gave a little twist. Quickly she flipped the file open, shoved the photos inside. She didn’t want to feel them looking at her anymore, and she sure as fuck didn’t want to watch the physical manifestation of the heavy magic in her system wiggle around below her skin like ringworms. Or worse.

The entire file buzzed with energy. Chess couldn’t imagine what kind of shit lurked between those innocuous manila covers. Didn’t want to imagine it.

And lucky her, she didn’t have to, because she was going to become intimately familiar with every page, every word, every smear of darkness, every foul deed.

Just what she needed. More filth in her soul. Someday, maybe, she would explode from it; someday, maybe, every rotten thing that had ever been done to her and every rotten thing she’d ever done would erupt from her in a fountain of sewage and sorrow, all those secrets she kept even from herself spilling out and adding to the muck she could never wash off no matter how hard she tried.

She’d never been bound by magic to keep those secrets. Just by her own shame.

“Okay.” Lauren rose from her seat, her right hand smoothing her skirt behind her. “Shall we take my car, or—”

“No.” Oops, that came out a little too fast; Lauren’s eyebrows rose. Chess could practically see her nose pinch in, her mouth opening—probably to remind Chess that as a Third Inquisitor she was Chess’s superior in rank, though not directly in department. “I mean, I need my car, and I need to change out of this and take a shower. I have blood all over me.” And some pills to take in private, but she didn’t mention that. Her palms were starting to tingle, and she seriously needed some breathing room.

“I’ll follow you.”

Oh, shit. Lauren in her apartment, Lauren poking around in her stuff? No way.

“Actually, Lauren, you should probably change, too. The area we’re looking at isn’t really the safest part of town—”

“I’m a member of the Black Squad, Cesaria. I think I can handle a few catcalls.”

Oh, shit, again. Is that all the woman thought they were in for? A couple of street toughs grabbing their crotches and making kissy noises?

Seeing those pictures, finding out they were dealing with the Lamaru—scary enough in and of itself, without the vendetta she had no doubt they were carrying against her personally for extra fun—was bad. Realizing, as she looked into Lauren’s determined, arrogant face, that she was also dealing with a woman who had no concept of what they were about to get into—that was another thing entirely.

And there wasn’t much Chess could say about it, because if she gave them too much information about Downside, they might rescind her permission to live there. And that didn’t even bear thinking about.

“I think it’s probably best if you wear better shoes for walking,” she said finally. “And jeans. Something more casual, you know? We don’t want to attract attention if we can help it.”

Lauren considered it for a minute. “Fine. I’ll go home and change. You do the same, and I’ll meet you at your house in forty-five minutes.”

It wasn’t great, but it was better than nothing. “Do you need my address?”

“It’s in your file.”

“Oh. Right.”

Lauren smirked and swung herself up from her seat. “Be outside, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not have to waste time coming up to get you.”

That remark, and several others, were still stewing in Chess’s head when Lauren pulled her sports car—cherry red, the perfect little princess vehicle for the Grand Elder’s perfect little daughter—up onto the curb at the corner of Fifty-fifth and Brand. “That lot, there,” she said. “That’s where they took the second picture.”

Chess nodded and got out, taking a deep breath. The air stank, a vile, rotting scent from the slaughterhouse four blocks or so away. When the wind hit the deathhouse right all of Downside smelled like a burned-out plague pit in the summertime. And lucky her, this was one of those times.

She had to admit, though, it did have a few advantages over the cloying fragrance of perfume and bitch that filled Lauren’s tricked-out coupe. Like not having to sit right next to Lauren. Or not having to listen to Lauren talk. Or especially not having to listen to Lauren’s music.

Decaying carcasses were infinitely preferable to that, she thought, then regretted it—a little—when she remembered why they were there. Her stomach, already a touch uneasy under its load of four Cepts and a couple of Nips, gave a slight protest; she popped the top of the Coke can she’d grabbed for just that reason and poured some down her throat.

“You know, caffeine can mess with your energy,” Lauren said. “It’s best to stay away from artificial stimulants.”

It was probably the funniest thing anyone had said to her in weeks. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I’m just saying, if you want to advance in the Church you should use every advantage, and one of them is keeping your power as sharp as possible. You don’t want to—”

“Yeah, thanks. So where did they find—them?”

Lauren’s raised eyebrows told Chess exactly what she thought of the change of subject, but she accepted it. “There. Come on.”

Together they crossed the street, the heels of Chess’s boots as silent as she could make them on the broken slabs of cement. The road itself looked like a patchwork quilt: squares of dirt, sections filled with dirty gravel, here and there a foot or two of blacktop.

It looked empty, and every alarm bell in Chess’s head started ringing faintly. Downside streets were never empty, especially not at night. Like tall grass concealing a predator, it was when they were still and silent that they were at their most dangerous. Ready to strike. She knew there had to be at least a dozen pairs of eyes on her back at that very moment, at least a dozen hands reaching into pockets and belts and hairdos in search of weapons.

Lauren’s car was probably loaded with wards, safe as it would be inside the Church itself, but the women’s tattoos were designed to protect them from ghosts and magic, not from Downsiders out to make their illegal livings.

She hadn’t worried about that stuff in a while. Usually if she was out at night she was with Terrible, and nobody dared fuck with Terrible; hell, nobody dared even look at Terrible for more than a few respectful seconds. Even if she wasn’t with him physically, everybody knew who she was, or rather, they knew who she was with; everyone knew Downside’s Churchwitch worked for Bump.

But Terrible hated her, and she had no idea if Bump knew what she’d done. What she’d been doing. “Stupid” was one word for people who thought they could get away with betraying Bump. The other word was “dead.”

She had a funny feeling both those words would end up being accurate if they didn’t get out of there quickly. The whole area felt off, even with the speed turning her blood into river rapids in her veins. Speed tended to mask her reactions to ghosts, but not usually to magic in general, and this corner vibed like a just-struck bell.

“You feeling anything?” she asked softly as they hit the patchy grass at the edge of the lot.

“Hmm. A little.” Lauren didn’t bother to lower her own voice; it sounded like the first bird chirping at dawn. Chess cringed, tried to glance around without being too obvious about it. Still nothing, no movement. This was not good.

Dead grass whispered warnings against their shoes as they trod across it, heading for the inside corner. Rickety buildings leaned over it, ready to topple; they formed a ramshackle archway, a frame of sorts. Chess knew without being told that this was where the body—the body parts—had been found.

Still the presence of magic set her head buzzing, a little high that she would have enjoyed if she hadn’t been halfnumb with fear. This wasn’t her neighborhood. She didn’t know it. Inside those buildings could live a few families scratching out livings working the pipe rooms or at the slaughterhouse or crematorium, or picking pockets in better parts of town. People who kept themselves to themselves.

Or they could be half-mad hallucinating Nipheads with dead nerves and deader eyes. Or worse. No way to tell until they were right on top of her, and then it would be too late.

She shook her head, watched Lauren trot into the shadows in the corner with barely a pause. Either the Black Squad were a bunch of crazy-tough motherfuckers, or Lauren Abrams was dumb as dirt. Chess knew which theory she preferred.

“It was here.” Lauren made a circle with her hand, waving it over an area about a foot square. Well, that was all the space that had been needed. It hadn’t been laid-out corpses in those photos. More of a…pile, really.

Lauren pulled a heavy silver flashlight out of the backpack slung over her shoulder and switched it on. The patch of ground flew into colorless focus, cast spiky shadows against the crooked boards of the wall behind.

Shit. Chess had two choices. Go stick her hand in what was certain to be a raging pool of nasty energy floating above the lit-up spot, or look like a total pussy. And given those options, touching horrible death energy sounded positively appealing.

Tingles ran up her hands, slipping over the new scars on her wrists. In the stark light from the flash the patterns beneath her skin were black; they shifted and curled with the spot’s energy, and she felt it like fingernails tickling her.

Darkness lurked there too, a slow chuckle beneath the surface. But not like she would have expected, not at all. This didn’t feel like death magic, or even really like serious black magic. It felt like the kind of curse Church students tried out on one another: forgetfulness or clumsiness spells, charms to temporarily confuse the tongue so the bespelled victim couldn’t speak clearly. Spells that wore off in ten or fifteen minutes. Harmless shit.

But piles of bloody body parts, carved with Lamaru symbols…That was not harmless. Nothing the Lamaru did was harmless.

So what the fuck was going on?

Lauren seemed to feel it too, the wrongness of it. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Even if they committed the murder elsewhere and just left the parts here, the energy would be darker.”

“Are you sure it was here that they found it?”

“This is where they told me. It’s in the pictures too, so it’s got to—”

Every hair on Chess’s body jumped to attention. She’d just started to spin around when red light splashed across them, across the walls, turning Lauren’s hair into a river of blood around her face.

The circle stood in the middle of the intersection, deep red fire, swirled with icy-hot black energy. Chess’s stomach jerked. It was darkness in that circle, darkness and misery and despair, and whatever was inside would deliver more of it the second it was unleashed. She knew it. Knew it even before the squealing started.

A pig. Not from the slaughterhouse, but closer, right on top of them, right across the street.

The Lamaru had been waiting for them. How the fuck had they known?

Lauren’s eyes widened; the whites gleamed red around black pupils the size of BBs. Chess only caught a glimpse of them, of the other woman’s terrified face, before she dropped to her knees and ripped her bag open. Running to the car and getting the fuck out of there was tempting, but she couldn’t consider it. Didn’t consider it. There were people in those empty building shells, people hiding and watching, and if she was right about what was going on behind that wall of evil, she’d be condemning every one of them to a messy death, and she had more than enough on her miserable conscience as it was without adding that.

She also had graveyard dirt. Good. Wolfsbane, she always had that, and for the last few months she’d carried melidia as well. Iron filings she’d picked up to replenish her supply—excellent. She glanced at Lauren and unwilling respect tickled in her chest. The other woman was in motion, setting up a small firedish, lighting a long wooden match off a striking strip on her shoe. Clever, that.

“Lauren! Lauren, what have you got?” She had to yell; the squealing had intensified. Not just one pig—one sow, if she was right, oh shit please let her not be right. More than one.

Lauren opened her right hand; three brownish leaves rested in her palm, next to a sprig of mistletoe. Spiritweed. Excellent. They’d need all the help they could get.

Chanting male voices rolled across the lot, slithered along Chess’s skin and set her tattoos tingling and itching. She grabbed her chalk, sketched a couple of protection sigils on her forehead; they burned the second she finished them.

Her skull she grabbed last, then hesitated. They couldn’t cast a circle, not unless they wanted to close the blaze inside it, and that would take too long and bring them too close. But without one, the psychopomps could escape, and that would be almost as bad as whatever was about to burst out of that fire ring; a psychopomp without control would snatch the first soul it found, and that was murder.

Lauren’s eyes met hers. Clearly she’d had the same thought. “I guess we’ll just have to wing it.”

Chess started to reply, but a wave of energy tore the words from her mouth, tore the ground from beneath her feet. Her elbow slammed into the dirt; her shout was lost in the wild crescendo of squeals, the final triumphant shout of the men. Thick, pulsing darkness throbbed around her, so heavy her ears popped from the pressure.

Silence fell. Dead silence, a vacuum. She flipped over, started to push herself to her feet, her eyes full of the circle before her. Wind pushed her hair off her shoulders and face; her entire body waited, like standing on the edge of a cliff and taking the first step off. The relentless beat of her heart thundered in her ears; her body throbbed, a drumbeat in her soul against the reverberating emptiness around her.

Wraiths exploded from the ring of fire.

Chapter Five

The soul should not leave the body until the moment of death. To do otherwise is to court disaster.

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 449

With their filmy black bodies came the return of sound. The moment of hesitation was gone. Chess had a sick feeling it was the last semi-peaceful moment she’d be experiencing for some time.

Wraiths. A witch’s freed living soul, joined with one of the restless undead. A ghost cranked on living energy, strengthened by magic, its living partner giving it the ability to do what astrally projected spirits could do: fly.

She’d never even seen one, much less fought one. The secret of their creation was closely guarded, the rituals needed—like the sacrifice of black sows—extremely difficult to perform. It was worse than she’d imagined. They swooped and dove above her, absorbing the red light, their slim bodies fluttering in the breeze their flight created.

Beside her Lauren moved. Chess glanced over and saw her on her knees, pulling a wad of silk from her bag. Inert silk, the type used to hold psychopomp skulls. But why? Unlike regular ghosts—unlike psychopomps—wraiths weren’t earthbound; they’d have to touch the ground for a psychopomp dog to be useful, and Chess wasn’t entirely sure what good it would do anyway. What would happen to the living souls when the dead ones were taken to the City? Would they die?

Not that she gave a shit. She just didn’t know.

The wraiths circled closer now, their eyes glowing red in their shadowy faces. Snakelike arms waved and flowed from their ragged bodies. The air temperature dropped. Such cold, such awful cold…

And what the fuck was she doing standing there? Quickly she knelt, opened her bags of herbs. Lauren already had the fire going, so Chess dumped wolfsbane on it, grabbed the melidia. As far as she was concerned the spirit prisons were too good for these fuckers, but it was better than nothing—

Her fingers brushed the bag of iron filings, and she stopped. Glanced at the wraiths again, then back. The filings were quite small, more like dust. If there was a way to get them into the air…Astrally projected spirits weren’t harmed by iron the way the dead were. Could she separate them somehow? Turn the wraiths into regular ghosts that she and Lauren could dispatch?

Only one way to find out, and she was about to get her chance. Her fingers scrabbled in her bag, found her Ectoplasmarker and shoved it into her pocket just as the wraiths dove.

Lauren screamed and ducked, her gun in one hand. It went off. The bullet shattered the dusty wood behind them and shot splinters at Chess’s head.

She didn’t have time to think about it or to rub the stinging places on her cheek. A wraith was there in front of her, black lips curling back from the even darker blackness, the emptiness, of its mouth. Its wide-open mouth, stretching, jaw falling farther and farther, her skin screaming at her—

She threw herself to the side, rolled. Shoved her hand into the bag of filings and grabbed some, whipped her hand back around and flung them at the shadowy form. “Arkrandia bellarum dishager!”

The wraith twisted out of the way of the full load, but wavered. Beside her Lauren screamed.

That wasn’t enough. Wasn’t good enough. It would take forever at that rate—time they didn’t have.

Smoke billowed around them from the firedish and stung her eyes, filled her lungs. An explosion was what she needed, something to fill the air around them with iron. To create a barrier.

“Lauren! Give me your gun. Give me your gun!”

It flew at her; she caught it one-handed, pulled it sideways. Gunpowder? There would be some in the bullets, right, enough to make a small explosion? Shit, she didn’t know. Had no idea, really, but it was the best chance she had.

Lauren was covered in wraiths, all but one of them dancing around her, clinging to her while she writhed on the ground. Chess opened the clip with shaking fingers, pushed bullets out with her thumb. No time to try and open them. Throw them on the firedish, that’s what she would do.

Six bullets, small and cold in her hand. Hopefully that would be enough. She tucked the gun into the waistband of her jeans—not the safest place for it, but she couldn’t chance one of the wraiths grabbing hold of it. It would all be over if they did that. Without weapons they couldn’t do more than steal a little energy. With weapons they could steal lives.

With her left hand she grabbed more filings, then held both hands over the firedish. No time to count, no time to think about how this probably wouldn’t work. The horrible, cold, sucking energy of the wraiths surrounded her, muddled her thoughts, made her stomach heave and lurch and her brain buzz.

She emptied her hands onto the fire and threw herself to the ground.

Nothing.

Lauren screamed again and flipped onto her stomach, raised herself on all fours. One of the wraiths reached for the firedish, probably to use it as a weapon—

The firedish exploded. The force of it knocked Chess down. She sucked in a burning lungful of smoke and iron. Flipped over onto her back, pushed herself up in time to see the wraiths separate, the ghosts fall to the ground.

It had worked. She had no fucking idea how and she didn’t give a damn. It had worked.

Tires squealed. The red light disappeared. Men shouted. The commotion drew her eyes; she looked away from the wraiths, away from Lauren as her lips started moving, and saw the black sow corpses in a pool of blood in the street, visible now the circle had disappeared. Saw a black muscle car thrust itself into the vacant lot in a cloud of dust, and before her mind even registered it her heart lurched into her throat.

Her legs shook beneath her but there was no time to think of that, no time to stop. The ghosts were stunned. This was the time to get them, now, while Lauren’s voice rose, calling her psychopomp.

For the second time that night Chess found herself inventing passports for ghosts with no time to think or plan. She scrawled circles on each of them and finished just as Lauren’s psychopomp came into being.

Psychopomps, plural. Ravens, sleek and black. What the hell…? Birds weren’t used in Church ritual. They were too unpredictable. So why was a Church employee—a Black Squad member, no less, Church law enforcement—using them?

Soft wings brushed against her face. The air behind Lauren wavered, giving Chess a glimpse of lit torches, of black shapes shifting and turning on their journeys to the City. The birds fluttered around, silent death for the dead, picking at the ghosts who fought them.

A car door slammed. Her head snapped to the side.

Terrible strode toward them. Even in the darkness she could see the set of his jaw, the narrow slits of his eyes. Could feel the fury pouring off him in waves.

Fury aimed at her. For a split second she started to wonder what he was doing there, but she knew. Of course she knew. Bump must own one of the nearby buildings, must have people there. If something went down around Bump’s property, they knew who to call.

She took an involuntary step back, ghosts, psychopomps, and Lauren forgotten. Dimly she felt the opening between the worlds snap shut, but she didn’t pay attention. Couldn’t look away, because her eyes simply refused no matter how hard she might have wanted to. They traveled up the enormous length of him, all the way to the scarred, harsh-boned face. Once she’d thought he was ugly; he still was ugly, she supposed. She just didn’t give a shit. He was who he was, and her heart fluttered in her chest and wouldn’t stop.

So much for hoping she’d started to get over him. Or that she’d only imagined what she was feeling, only wanted him because she couldn’t have him. No. She had to squeeze the board behind her, let splinters drive themselves into her skin, to keep from running up and throwing her arms around him. Begging him to forgive her. To kiss her. Shit, what a pussy she was.

“What the fuck you doin here?”

Not the greeting she’d been hoping for, especially not shouted like that.

“I—”

“Church business,” Lauren interrupted, stepping forward. She shoved her sleeve up, exposing the curling black snake. Oh, fuck. Oh, no.

Oh, yes. Terrible’s eyes narrowed; he gave Chess the kind of look most people reserved for ax murderers. Ax murderers who killed children. And kittens. She shivered.

“What is your name?” Lauren continued, leaning down and snatching a pad and pen from her backpack. “And your address? What are you doing here?”

Terrible stared at her. His big arms moved, folding across his chest and straining the long sleeves of his workshirt. The pose made him look even bigger; the iciness of his expression made him look even deadlier. Chess wondered how he was feeling, whether his wounds had healed. If he was glad to be alive, glad she’d saved him. Wondered if he even knew she’d saved him. Or cared.

“I asked for your name.”

He spun around without another word and headed back toward his black ’69 Chevelle, still growling at an idle in the middle of the lot.

“Excuse me! You need to—” Lauren reached for Chess, started scrabbling at Chess’s shirt. What the—oh. The gun. Oh, shit, the gun. “Stop right there, buddy, or I will shoot you.”

“Lauren, you can’t—” She tried to twist away but Lauren found the gun butt and yanked it from her waistband, spun toward the car with the weapon lifted.

The trigger clicked. Empty. The clip still lay on the ground by Chess’s feet.

Lauren bent down, grabbed it, but she was too late. Terrible stabbed the gas and spun the wheel, sending the Chevelle roaring in an arc and spraying them with dirt. Its fat tires squealed on the pavement; he swerved around the pig corpses in the middle of the street and disappeared, leaving bloody tracks in his wake.

Chess hit the ground, hard. Her legs simply refused to support her. Without thinking she reached for her bag, shoved her hand in. She wanted her pills. Wanted to throw whatever she had into her mouth and swallow it, wanted—needed—to float away from this whole bloody scene and dull the pain in her heart. How he’d looked at her—worse than before. So much worse.

“Who was that?”

Oh, right. The pillbox fell back into her bag. Lauren was there. Probably not a good idea to pill herself into oblivion with a fellow Church employee—one who outranked her and was the Grand Elder’s daughter to boot—standing right there watching. Damn it.

“I don’t know.”

Lauren’s eyes narrowed. She still held the gun; for a second Chess thought the woman was actually going to raise it again.

Then it passed. “It looked like he knew you.”

Chess shrugged. The less said the better. Deny everything—the first rule of survival.

“So that’s it. You don’t know who he is or why he was here.”

“No.”

Movement in the intersection drew both their eyes; Chess silently thanked whatever luck had finally decided to pat her on the head. One of the witches, still alive after Terrible had bolted through the circle and apparently run them down. Must have been interesting, being forced from wraith form back into one’s body and then plowed into by several tons of BT steel. Well, good. She hoped the bastard suffered.

Her legs felt rubbery beneath her as she followed Lauren to the fallen body. What a mess. Blood ran everywhere from the sacrificed sows. Black ones, illegal to breed or own. The blood of a black sow—that was some heavy dark magic indeed. As they’d just witnessed.

Charmarks outlined where the circle had been. The inside was full of blood, tacky under their feet. Menace vibrated up her legs. She stepped over the bodies of two other witches, barely glancing at them. This could be a trick. With her right hand she touched the handle of her knife, tucked into her pocket. Lauren would probably freak if she realized Chess was armed, but better that than dead.

The witch moaned again, writhing in his blood-soaked robe. His robe with the Lamaru symbol on the front.

“They must have been watching,” Lauren said. She tugged a bright pink cell phone out of her backpack. “Waiting for us to show up.”

Gee, you think so? Chess thought, but said nothing. Lauren had handled herself pretty well during the attack; even if she hadn’t, and if she didn’t outrank Chess, there was the little matter of pretending she didn’t know Terrible or why he was there. Best not to bring Lauren’s thoughts back onto her, not when there was a convenient injured Lamaru witch right there to take the weight.

Lauren nudged him with her toe, pressed a button on the phone. “We need a wagon. Yes. Yes. Corner of Fifty-fifth and Brand. Yes, Downside. Yes, you will. What do you want me to do, put him in my car? Get your ass down here.”

She snapped the phone shut. “They’ll be here soon. Meanwhile…” She nudged him with her toe again. “Hey. Hey, you. What did you think you were doing down here?”

The Lamaru witch moaned again. Lauren’s mouth twisted. “I asked you a question.”

“Lauren, maybe he’s not—”

Lauren glared at her. “He’ll talk.”

“Why don’t we see if he has ID or something first? You know, what we can find out on our own?”

Chess didn’t want to touch him. Didn’t want to dig her hands into his bloody pockets, to make contact with the evil hovering over him like a cloud of locusts.

But she did. The sigil on her forehead blazed on her skin, the wards in her tattoos ringing like fire alarms. She jerked away. “He’s Hosting.”

“What?”

“Look.” She forced herself to touch him again, ignoring the stinging sensation, and tilted his head so Lauren could see the silvery cast of his one open eye. Blood clung to her hands, made it hard to breathe.

Lauren loomed over her, leaning to peer down at him. “How the hell did his Bindmate escape my psychopomps? Shit. Let me call them back and let them know.”

“Sure, I can Bind him down on my own,” Chess muttered. Luckily the supplies she’d grabbed earlier were still within easy reach in her bag; she dusted the broken Lamaru with asafetida and graveyard dirt, added a little salt and power to keep whatever he had inside him until it could be Banished at the Church. Squatting in pig blood next to an evil piece of shit—and Lauren, too—was bad enough without having to summon her psychopomp and take care of it herself.

Lazy, sure, but then given the type of investigation this was, the Church would probably want to get a look at the thing themselves anyway.

She had to move him to get into his pockets; he shrieked when she did. His right arm flailed, narrowly missed her face.

Lauren grabbed it and slammed it to the ground, eliciting another shriek, while Chess opened the slimy wallet.

ERIK VANHELM said the driver’s license. Below that was an address in Cross Town. Erik was awfully far from home—if he actually lived at that address—but then he would be. Nobody would try to pull shit like this in one of the decent parts of town, where the Black Squad actually patrolled and the neighbors actually cared.

She pulled out her notebook and scribbled the information down. Never hurt to keep your own notes, especially not when working with the Squad. Or with anyone, for that matter. One of the reasons Chess chose Debunking was so she could work alone.

Lauren held her hand out for the wallet; Chess slapped it into her palm, aware again that they were being watched. Aware too that she had to get home. He was going to show up, she knew it. If she was right about Bump owning something near here, which she had to be…yeah. Arriving with a member of the Black Squad and poking around was not going to win her any points in the Bump’s-best-pal contest.

Would he talk to her when he came to get her?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. She was sure she wouldn’t have a choice.

Chapter Six

Be aware that when you work for the Church you belong to the Church, body and soul. You cannot serve two masters.

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

Pace, pace, pace. Her body still buzzed, woozy from speed; she desperately wanted to take something to come down but didn’t dare. Couldn’t fall asleep. Needed to be sharp when he got there.

Lit another cigarette. It made her queasy on top of everything else, but what was she supposed to do? She’d rushed through her second shower of the night, dried her hair, put on makeup and a red top she knew he liked, even as the little voice in her head told her there was no point. She took another couple of Cepts to drown it out and kept pacing.

Tried to read; the words swam on the page. Tried to watch TV; the people wandered around, saying and doing insipid things—well, that wasn’t just nerves and drugs, that was TV no matter what—until she wanted to throw her knife through the screen. She’d snapped it off and the silence blasted her from her chair. None of her CDs sounded right, were what she wanted to hear. She finally shoved in Radio Birdman just to fill the apartment with sound. Just so her misery had some company.

Where was he? It was after three. Surely he hadn’t just…forgotten about her? Did he hate her so much he didn’t even care what she’d been doing there?

Maybe he didn’t need to know. Maybe he was just going to kill her. She glanced at the stained-glass window that made up one wall of her apartment. Her building had been a Catholic church once, back before Haunted Week and the rise of the Church of Truth. Most churches had been razed during that week when the dead walked the earth and took millions of souls with them—and in its aftermath—but the Church had decided her building had some historical significance and was aesthetically pleasing, so it had been allowed to stand.

There were buildings across the street. Their windows looked into hers. Was he over there with a gun? Just waiting to—

From the street came the low rumble of a car. Of one particular car. Her heart stopped; she ran to the window, looked down in time to see Terrible walk up the steps.

One last pat of her dyed-black Bettie Page hair; one last slick of lipstick over her too-dry mouth. She couldn’t do anything about the rest of it. She was pale and shaky, her entire body clammy with nerves.

When his heavy knuckles hit her door she was ready, standing beside it. Her hand flew to the knob, but she caught herself before she turned it. Bad enough that she’d made an ass out of herself the last time she’d seen him. He didn’t need to know she’d been hovering here by the door, waiting.

The makeup was a mistake. So was the top, and the high-heeled boots. It was all a mistake. What did she think this was, a fucking date? How much more obvious did she want to make it? Maybe when she opened the door she could fall to her knees and start crying, too, just to complete the pitiful picture.

Another heavy knock. Okay. Deep breath time. She twisted the knob, stepped back, and pulled.

Nobody filled a doorway like Terrible.

Her mouth opened. What should she say here? Hi? How are you? Come to bed with me? Yeah, that would work. Fuck! What was she—

His eyes met hers. For one second she saw something in them. Something like what she used to see, a ghost of what had been.

Then it was gone. He jerked his head to the side in a short “Come on” gesture, turned, and walked back down the hall. No need to say anything; they both knew why he was there, where he was taking her.

Her heart fell into her shoes. It was no more than she expected. No more than she deserved. But it still hurt; fissures inside her she’d thought were starting to heal cracked back open and pumped deep-blue misery through her veins.

Breathing past the lump in her throat, she grabbed her bag and followed him, pausing only to lock and set the wards on her front door. Her arms felt awkward, her hands too big; she shoved them into her pockets, took them back out, folded and unfolded her arms as she tried to keep up with his long stride. Down the stairs, across the wide lobby and through the huge double doors, out into the cold early spring wind.

Out of habit she paused by the passenger door, waiting for him to open it, but he didn’t. Right. She grabbed the icy handle herself, felt it bite her palm as she lifted it and let herself into the dark, smoke-and-leather-scented interior. Other scents lurked there as well: bourbon and beer. He’d been drinking. She didn’t blame him. She could have used a drink herself just then. Would have been smart to grab a beer from the fridge.

The driver’s side sank when he lowered himself onto the seat. Keys jangled.

They didn’t move.

Her water bottle was in her bag. She fumbled for it, concentrating on it so she wouldn’t have to feel him next to her. To smell his skin. To look at his bumpy, craggy profile, black DA haircut swooped up and back and glistening with Murray’s pomade. It didn’t work. She was acutely aware of all those things, and of her sadness spilling over all of it. She…she missed him. He was her friend. No matter how much she wanted him to be more, no matter how much she’d blown her chance at it…all that shit aside, he’d been her friend, and she missed that so much it hurt.

“What’d you do to me?”

The bottle slipped from her fingers; she managed to catch it before it spilled. “What?”

His right hand circled over his chest. Oh, right.

“Oh. It’s a sigil, it…binds your soul to your body.”

Images of that night swirled from her memory, played in front of her again. The way they had so many times since. His body, motionless…the hawk swooping down to claim his soul…her knife handle cold and hard in her hand, carving the sigil into his chest, the blood seeping from the design like it was responding to her summons.

He gave a short nod, barely more than a dip of his chin. Still refused to look at her. “Why?”

“You don’t remember? Didn’t anyone tell you?”

“Ain’t nobody gave me the rundown. Nobody there, you recall, ceptin yon boyfriend, he people.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. I’m not…I’m not seeing him anymore.”

If she thought that would get a response—and she had—she was wrong. His face didn’t move. Nothing.

She tried again. “The hospital Goodys must have told you, though. That you almost died. You would have died if I hadn’t—”

He turned the key and jumped the Chevelle off the curb. Warm air blasted from the vents; Johnny Thunders blasted from the speakers. Born to lose, no shit. One of her favorite albums, but not the message she needed at that moment.

Words kept coming to her tongue and disappearing before she could give them form. He wouldn’t look at her; she couldn’t look away. Through the windows the streets slid past, hookers and customers, Bump’s people selling little bags of cheer on the corners, their forms black smudges around blazing firecans. Some kids in a ragged group, dancing jerkily; they zipped by too fast for her to figure out what they were doing, and it didn’t matter anyway.

“How’s—” She snapped her mouth shut. Asking about Katie would be a mistake, one that could very possibly cost her her life. He would not want to be reminded that she was one of the few people who knew the child existed, that he had a little girl out there with his smile and another man’s name.

“How are you feeling?” she asked finally. “I mean, are you okay?”

Now he did glance at her, his eyes glittering in the dashboard light. Cold. Dead like a shark’s. Apparently chat time was over.

The words tumbled from her mouth before she had time to think. “Terrible, if you would just let me explain—”

He turned up the volume. All the way. So loud her ears rang and her seat vibrated. So loud she couldn’t hear herself screaming in her head. She considered turning it down, but managed to stop herself. No point making him even angrier. If that were possible. She didn’t think her insides would ever thaw from that last look.

The Market had slowed down, save the lines waiting to get into the pipe room. Chess looked longingly at them as Terrible got out of the car; it took her a minute to realize he was just standing by the hood. Waiting for her to get out. No open-the-door service for her at either end anymore, it seemed.

Which was just what she deserved. But damn if it didn’t hurt, almost more than his silence or his dirty look or the fact that he acted like every word he said to her had to be dragged from his mouth.

But anger was one thing. Anger she expected. The door thing…like she wasn’t even human anymore. Didn’t even deserve to be treated like one. She couldn’t even blame that on the fact that he thought she was a junkie whore. Bump ran a lot of junkie whores, and Terrible dealt with them, knew them. She’d never seen him treat any of them like that.

But then, she didn’t guess any of them had made out with him and pretended they didn’t remember it, then made out with him again, listened to him bare his soul, told him they wanted to be with him, then got caught—ahem—red-handed with his enemy on the ground in a graveyard. So she was pretty fucking unique in that respect. And didn’t she feel special because of it.

Shit. She wouldn’t have opened the door for herself either. But then again, she never would have. So Terrible had finally found out she wasn’t worth a second of his time or thought? If she were honest, she’d admit her only real surprise was that it had taken him that long.

She looked down at her hand; she’d grabbed an Oozer. Fine. Why not. Bump wouldn’t have a job for her, she imagined; nothing she’d need to remember later, and she had her notebook anyway if she needed it. All he was going to want was an explanation of what she’d been doing there—oh, fuck.

She couldn’t explain. She couldn’t tell him what she was investigating, not if she wanted to stay alive. Her fingers went numb. She was about to step into the lion’s awful clashing red den, and she had no idea what she could safely say without activating the Binding.

She tossed the pill into her mouth and got out of the car in one movement. Maybe if she was lucky she’d pass out.

Why she expected Bump’s place to be different from before she had no idea, but part of her did. So much had changed since the last time she was there. It somehow didn’t make sense for everything else to remain the same, for the horrible cacophony of reds to assault her and make her already tight nerves jangle as though she’d wandered into a hell dimension, for the naked women on the walls to eye her seductively.

But they were all the same. And so was Bump, leaning against the shiny black bar, toe ring, gold-topped cane, and all.

Terrible sat down; she turned and started to sit beside him the way she would have done before, but his look stopped her. Right. She scooted down, leaned against the opposite arm.

Still Bump did not move. Both his hands rested on the top of the cane. His head was bowed. Sky-blue silk covered his skinny chest and arms; gaudy bright gold covered his wrists and fingers.

“Ladybird,” he drawled. She could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Hear tell you wanderin round Bump’s places, yay? Bringin you fuckin Churchcops along. Bump hear true?”

“Yes.” Okay. No First Elders showed up; the room was still clean—figuratively speaking. But then, that wasn’t the difficult part, right? Where she’d been wasn’t part of the Binding.

“Got a fuckin tell for me?”

Okay. Deep breath time. “It’s nothing to do with you, okay? Church business.”

The cane switched hands, angled to the side, like Fred Astaire performing some graceful move. But this wasn’t a Technicolor musical. And it sure as fuck wasn’t a beautiful dance hall. “All business Bump’s business down here, Ladybird. All business. You want to keep doing Bump’s business, yay? Keep getting yon fuckin needs? You chatter it out now.”

“I—it’s an investigation we’re doing. That’s all.”

Bump’s brows turned into an arrow; he spun on her with the kind of speed she knew he possessed but had never seen. “Think we playin a fuckin game here? Ain’t fuckin playin, yay? You tell now. Or Terrible get he fuckin fight up. Thinkin you ain’t like that one, yay?”

“It’s nothing to do with you, Bump, okay? I can’t talk about it.”

Bump shook his head, his expression sorrowful. Chess didn’t buy it for a second.

Then she didn’t have a chance to buy it, because her face hit the dusty red carpet and something hard and heavy dug into the small of her back. Terrible’s knee.

He’d taken her down. He’d really, genuinely taken her down. Like he’d never talked to her, touched her. Like he’d never bought her dinner or sat next to her on her broken couch. Like she was nothing to him. Just another junkie who owed Bump money, just like all the rest of them.

Her right shoulder rang an alarm; he’d twisted it back, pinned her wrist between her shoulderblades. It didn’t hurt, but whether that was because she was so loaded with painkillers she wouldn’t have felt it had he amputated her foot or because he was being gentle with her, she didn’t know. She suspected the former, hoped for the latter.

“Ain’t can believe we here,” Bump drawled. “Thought we had us some fuckin trust, yay? You an Bump. Thought we had us some fuckin understanding. Hurts Bump, this do. An Terrible…Dig me, Ladybird, think you putting the fuckin hurt on he, hard. Why ain’t you just give me the fuckin tell, yay? An end this, so’s we can be fuckin friends again. Ain’t you like bein Bump’s friend?”

“Black magic,” she managed. “The Lama—”

The words turned into a scream, one so loud and long it scared even her, as her wrists caught fire. Agony like she’d never felt before, agony like the worst withdrawals multiplied by a dozen, shot up her arms and into her chest, into her brain, until nothing else existed. Bright red flared behind her squeezed-shut eyelids, searing her retinas; patterns like the ones on her wrist swirled in her brain.

Dimly she felt Terrible leap off her as she writhed on the floor, her body curling and twisting like a salt-covered slug, and felt his big hands lift her. Felt one of them on the side of her face, turning it, patting it. Heard his voice calling her name.

It only lasted a few seconds, maybe ten. They were the longest of her entire life. When she came out of it her cheeks tingled and burned from tears; her entire body shook when she tried to sit up. Terrible’s arm was behind her back, trying to help her, but she couldn’t do it. Her vision spun and popped in front of her, like she was seeing the room through some crazy funhouse lens. She squeezed her eyes back shut and tried to hold on to the water in her stomach.

His free hand moved, lifting her wrist and exposing the underside of it. The skin there still stung, as if she’d been smacked with a wet towel; an itchy, twitchy sort of sting too tender to scratch. Like a healing sunburn, or the first indications she’d gone too long between pills.

“Fuck, Chess,” he said, and she realized she hadn’t heard him say her name in weeks. “The fuck you do?”

His heart pounded against her cheek. Against her cheek…She was in his lap, her legs draped over one of his brawny arms while her ass rested on his thigh and the warm scent of his skin sent a fresh stab of pain—pain that had nothing to do with the fucking Binding—through her chest.

She opened her eyes and caught his, wide with fear, dark with concern. In that one second it was as if nothing had changed—

And it was over. His face hardened; he looked away. Rather than sit there like an idiot staring at him, so did she.

That’s when she saw the blood.

It wasn’t much. Just a few trickles, winding their spidery way down her arm, seeping from the horizontal black scars below her wrists. Oh…shit. Not just pain, then. Blood. A graphic reminder of her oath seeping into the ends of her sleeves.

Was that how the First Elders would kill her if she talked? Open those magically sealed wounds and let her bleed out?

She did not want to find that out for herself. Didn’t even want to think about it, but couldn’t stop. The blood—her blood—transfixed her; now that the pain had faded, all she could do was stare as one lone drop fell from her arm to Bump’s red shag pile.

Terrible lifted her enough to set her on the couch and got up. She heard drawers opening, paper rustling; he came and sat down next to her with some alcohol pads and a couple of Band-Aids.

She started to fold her arms, then thought better of it. “No.”

“Ain’t can leave that shit open,” he mumbled.

“No, it’s not—It won’t help.” She dared to look at him; he was totally absorbed in playing with the little alcohol wipe packet, and pale around the eyes. She could only imagine what he must have been thinking. Having her freak out like that couldn’t have been pleasant. Even Bump looked shaken, at least as shaken as it was possible for Bump to look. The knuckles he wrapped around the tip of his cane were whiter than usual.

“They’re Binding marks.” She waited for the shocking pain to come again, braced herself for it. When it didn’t come she continued. “They’re why I can’t talk about what I was doing. I’m Bound from it.”

Bump’s head tilted back. “You ain’t give Bump the tell then, causen them Church ain’t give you the fuckin yay.”

“Right. I can’t. It’ll—well, you saw. And that’s just a warning.”

Silence. Okay, well, they both knew she couldn’t talk, and knew why, but she had the distinct feeling the matter wasn’t going to drop there. Maybe if she tried something else? A little different wording?

“It’s not about you.” Another shot of pain raced through her bloodstream, but not so bad this time. Certainly not like what it had been a few minutes before. Okay. She was starting to get a feel for this thing now, and that was good.

“But where you at this night…Bump got fuckin business there, yay? Ain’t wanting no Churchcops havin a wander-round there.”

“They found some—” This time she didn’t need the pain. No way was she going to be allowed to let that particular piece of information fly.

Terrible spoke up, glancing at her as he did so with quick little eye-darts, like he was looking at the sun and couldn’t do it for too long. Only in her case she doubted he was seeing anything bright. “Figure on it bein them body parts, aye, Bump? Ratchet find em, you recall, two days past. That it?”

“You know about them?”

His eyebrows cranked up. Right. Of course he did. What went on in Downside that Bump and Terrible didn’t know about?

“You know who found them?”

Another dead look.

“No, seriously. I need to talk to him—her. Whoever. I don’t know if their name’s in the fi—”

Okay, this was starting to piss her off. On the one hand it was good to get some kind of calibration going, to find out exactly how far she could go. Pushing boundaries had always been one of her hobbies. But she could have done with an easier way to figure out where those boundaries were.

Plastic rustled: Bump’s pillbag. Probably the same one he’d offered her months ago, when she first got involved with him—well, involved more than the usual buyingselling game they’d been playing for a few years. She’d taken an Oozer before they came in but it wasn’t kicking in. And even if it had been, why the hell not?

She grabbed two more and chased them with water. The little hand on the clock had sneaked past four; she was crashing hard from the Nips and thought of her bed with the kind of yearning she normally felt for…well, for the pills she’d just swallowed.

Bump tapped his cane against the floor, setting the gold band around the bottom flashing.

“So…Sound like Bump got some fuckin knowledge you need right, yay? Like I do some fuckin help for you. Ain’t have they Churchcops all down Bump’s fuckin business, dig, ain’t have it noways. Think we make us a deal, Ladybird, yay? Fine deal Bump got for you.”

Her sigh felt dragged from the depths of her soul. Great. Working for Bump again.

Chapter Seven

Don’t be afraid to admit to yourself what results you’re looking for, or to ask your friends for help.

—You Can Do This! A Guide for Beginners, by Molly Brooks-Cahill

“I can’t do that,” she said again, and just as he had before, Bump waved an imperious hand as if her objections were lowly servants to be dismissed.

“Ain’t sayin take Terrible when she fuckin Churchcop along, dig. But after. You ain’t can say you knowledge, yay, but he fuckin can. Bump gots what he needs, so you gets you fuckin needs. Real simple, Ladybird. Ain’t it clean?”

“I’ll die, Bump. This isn’t something to fuck around with, I took a blood oath—”

“An you ain’t breakin it, dig. Just doin you some side work, yay? Takin you some protection where you go. Give Bump the listen-down, here, Ladybird. All business Bump’s business, you recall. They black magic shit goes down, Bump’s business. They ain’t got a sweet spot for Bump, guessing, after Bump’s men done give them the crack-up out Chester. Danger for Bump, danger for all, if you dig. Bump gotta get he Churchwitch in it, yay? Ain’t gotta run it up again, do I?”

No. He didn’t. They’d been through this before; only a few weeks before, no matter that it felt as if a lifetime had passed. Bump ran Downside, and without Bump in control things could get even worse than they were already, hard as that was to believe. Nor was he wrong in assuming the Lamaru’s return put Terrible and Bump in at least as much danger as it put her.

And there was more to it, much as she hated to admit it. If Bump wanted to bring her in on this, it meant Terrible hadn’t told him about her and Lex. And if Terrible hadn’t told him—despite the reason he’d given her for keeping his mouth shut, about not wanting Bump to know how he’d failed, how he’d convinced Bump she was trustworthy and had been wrong—maybe there was a chance.

And working with him? Would give her an opening to find out. Maybe to prove herself again.

Just thinking of it all made her want to dive under a blanket of Dream and stay there until her bones dissolved, to suck that thick yellowish smoke deep into her lungs until she forgot him. Forgot everything and became nothing more than another loose-limbed body draped on a velvet couch, another tiny spark of consciousness fluttering in the ecstatic drugged-out breeze.

Bump seemed to take her silence as the need for more convincing, instead of simply a few minutes’ wallow in her own pitiful bog. “Terrible know them streets, dig. Be a fuckin help, he do. You take he ‘long, Ladybird, see if Bump ain’t right. Bet we get you all in the good lights with you bossmen, yay? They Elders. Like you right, them will, you catch they black magic witches.”

The words were out of her mouth before she could stop herself with something ridiculous like common sense or dignity. “Okay. I’ll try.”

The leering grin split his face like a knife through a half-rotted peach. “That’s good, yay, real fuckin good. You get you started on the morrow, yay. Bump takin he off to he fuckin bed now, ain’t keep Bump’s ladies on the wait longer, dig.” He reached into the bag, took out a handful and held them out to her. “You take them. For friendship.”

The room spun a little around her when she reached out, let the pills fill her hand. Not too many of them; he was being generous, sure, but generous for Bump was awfully stingy, especially considering all the work she’d done for him. But hey, what was she going to do, turn them down? Free drugs were free drugs, and she wasn’t stupid.

At least not about that.

About other things…yeah, totally stupid. As she followed Terrible back out into the predawn chill she had plenty of time to think about how stupid. Despite that second or two of connection he still hated her, wasn’t likely to forgive her. All she was doing was signing herself up for more heartbreak.

Not to mention the great chance of being killed by the First Elders if she stuck a toe—or said a word—out of place.

Cold seeped through her jeans from the leather seats. Wings of exhaustion fluttered behind her eyes; she could barely keep them open. Even “One Track Mind” wasn’t helping. The Nips were well and truly gone. She felt like someone had filled her skin with chilly sawdust, too burned out for the Oozers to do much good.

The drive back to her place seemed to take no time at all. Before she knew it he’d pulled up in front of the steps; she had a sneaking suspicion that she’d fallen asleep.

“So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said to Terrible’s profile. “Do you want me to meet you, or what?”

He shrugged. “Whatany you want.”

A million thoughts ran through her mind, none of which would do any good to verbalize. So she said, “Okay, why don’t you pick me up at noon? I have to meet Lauren—she’s the girl from earlier—I have to meet her at five.”

Pause. “Meet me. Up Edsel’s booth, aye? You wanna say midday, no problem.”

“I thought you said—Never mind. Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll meet you there.”

Nod.

Whatever. She still got to shove the heavy door open all by herself, and she’d trudged halfway up the stairs before she realized he was right behind her, his boots silent on the cement. One of his talents, that was, the ability to move so soundlessly. But then it was part of his job. Most people didn’t line up to get beaten down. They had to be found, snuck up on, snatched off the street, and broken before they knew what hit them. And nobody broke people better than Terrible did.

She should know.

“What are you doing?”

He shrugged. “Ain’t can say.”

Okay, so not tired anymore. Was he…Shit! She hated this. Hated this.

Her jumbled thoughts must have been clear on her face; his dark eyes narrowed. “Bump say me come up. Ain’t my choosing.”

“Oh.”

“Shit. Don’t you get no ideas, dig. Ain’t wanting this. An ain’t givin you shit to play pass-on with.”

They’d reached the inside staircase now; her voice echoed in the cavernous lobby. “I’m not playing pass-on with anything. I told you, I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“Ain’t give a fuck who you see.”

“Then why are you so fucking mad about it?”

Redness crept up his neck; he glared at her, then shoved past her to continue up the stairs. She’d gotten him with that one. A hollow victory, but she’d take just about anything she could get at this point.

Her turn to push past him, opening her front door, stepping into the dingy little apartment. She made a beeline for the freezer and yanked out the half-full bottle of vodka she’d bought a couple of days before.

The cabinet beside it contained her pitiful collection of mismatched plastic cups and plates. She pulled down two cups and unscrewed the cap on the vodka. “Want a drink?”

He moved behind her; she heard a faint rustle, and the closing of the door. She turned around.

He was gone.

So was the Lamaru file she’d been given earlier.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a sky that blue, and despite everything, it lifted her spirits. So she was about to meet someone who hated her; so she was betraying the Church and walking a razor-thin tightrope over a pit of messy death; so later on she was going to have to meet a woman she already disliked and investigate an illegal black magic group who wanted her dead.

So the sky was blue, and three Cepts calmed her down and insulated her just enough from the buzzing crowds at the Market and the still-cold breeze to make her feel like she could handle all the shit. So that was good. The sun felt great on her face and hands, raised blue lights in her dyed hair. A month before it had been snowing. Now it was almost spring.

Edsel’s booth must have been particularly busy that morning; when Chess stopped walking in front of the shabby-velvet-covered counter he was restocking runebones and little hand-sewn bags. Made sense, though. News of his wife’s pregnancy had spread.

“How’s Galena?” she asked, reaching out to finger one of the runes. A little shiver ran up her arm. “Good, I guess. I can feel it.”

Edsel smiled. His teeth were the same color as his skin and ice-white hair; his black sunglasses didn’t hide the kind of happiness she’d rarely seen from him. “She right, baby. Still tired, aye, but she doctor say oughta pass up soon and she be bouncin again. She—Damn, what you got there?”

He picked up her hand; when she’d reached for the magical items, infused with the extra energy of pregnancy, he’d caught sight of her Binding scars.

“It’s nothing.” She tried to pull it back.

“Ain’t nothing, baby. Know them marks when I see em, aye. Been Bound, you have.” He dropped her hand; his deep smoke voice lowered. “Bet you lookin for them Lamaru again, aye?”

“How—” Ouch. Shit. “You know—you’ve heard—damn it!”

Edsel nodded. “Been hearin them rumors, if you dig. Know some people, them know people. Say big trouble on the way down, them gearin up right.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ain’t seen you much, aye? And you ain’t look like you up for it, baby. Lookin tired. Lookin mighty down. Guessing maybe got aught doing with why Terrible been rippin it up like him dog dead. Aye?”

Fuck. She did not want to discuss that. Not with him. Not with anyone. Edsel may have been the closest thing she had to a friend—at least, he used to be, and she guessed he was again—but some things were just…private. Most things were private.

Of course, she couldn’t deny being a little interested in that last line anyway. So Terrible looked upset, did he?

Then again, why wouldn’t he?

“Who do you know? I mean, you said you knew people who knew people. Do any of them have any information?”

He hesitated. “I ain’t got names, you dig. Need to make some calls.”

“No problem. Just, anything you could find out would be a help. Really. Bump’s got his fingers in it too, so it’s not just me you’re helping, you know?”

Edsel looked down, dug his cell phone out of his pocket. The sun glowed off his pigmentless hair. “Gotta hang me a couple days on this one, baby. They folk ain’t the kind always answer them phones.”

“Sure. Thanks, really. Oh, and here—” She dug her notebook and pen out of her bag, leaned forward to scribble a list. “This is a long shot, I know, but if anybody buys any of this stuff—anybody you don’t know—could you let me know? Try to find out who they are, if you can.”

Her list wasn’t long; the Lamaru would have their own suppliers anyway. But things like corpse water or tormentil were pretty strictly regulated by the Church, and had a big enough customer base outside of it that they might chance buying it off someone. So why not Edsel?

He took the torn-off sheet of paper, nodded. “Hold out, now. Lemme try, while you here.”

He punched a couple of buttons on the phone, took a step back into the shadows at the back of the booth. He usually lurked there, out of the sun, looking more like a wax statue or a corpse than a man. Caught a lot of thieves that way, too.

She took a discreet step away, distracting herself by gathering up a few things to buy. Thirty K in her bank account felt really fucking good, and she could use some things, right?

In the center of the counter she made a little pile: one of the bags Galena made, a couple of hare bones, a little vial of goat’s blood. That might come in handy if she was dealing with black witches. Oh, and some protective items, too, she’d need those.

In a wicker basket fairly vibrating with power, plasticwrapped snake segments rested in among lodestones and black cat paws. She grabbed a paw and two bags of snake to add to the pile, too, and tossed a chunk of black mirror on top. She could make a hell of a hex with those, and she might need it later.

What else…mandrake might be useful, grab a piece of that…She opened her mouth to ask how much spiderweb he had, when he held up a hand.

“Got me a message left. Ain’t no guarantees, baby, you know, but we see what we got. You keep touchin me, aye? An I touch back iffen I hear, or sell that list somebody I ain’t know.”

“Thanks.”

“Aye, well. Bump getting involved this one, maybe he willin to kick in some lashers, aye? Babies got needs, you dig.”

“Yeah, I’ll ask him, okay? I…”

He definitely looked paler, she thought, seeing Terrible push through the crowd. Last night she hadn’t noticed it, not even at Bump’s place; all that red gave everything a low-key sort of glow. But in the sunshine she saw it. He looked a little tired, a little pale. She wondered if his wounds still hurt. She wished she could turn her greedy eyes away.

“Might wanta get yon mouth closed, baby,” Edsel murmured.

Chess did, snapping her teeth together so hard it hurt and wishing desperately she’d paid better attention to casting glamours in training. She could have wiped the stupid blush off her face.

Instead she focused on the grinning skulls dancing down the wide stripes on the front of his bowling shirt. It was easy to do so, considering he stood about a foot taller than her own five feet six.

“Edsel,” he said. “You right?”

“Right up. Been telling Chessie here, maybe I got some knowledge be useful. You thinkin Bump might kick in, be the case?”

“Aye, he lash you back. No problem.”

“Cool. Chessie gonna keep touchin me, I keep her up, aye? She pass it on.”

Terrible’s gaze fell on her. His chin jerked; it could have been a nod, she guessed.

“Hey.” She fumbled in her bag for some money and thrust it at Edsel. “Do you have the file—”

“Aye.”

“Where is it? I really need it back, you shouldn’t have just—”

“Car.”

Deep breath. “Um, I wanted to grab something to eat first, okay?”

Shrug.

Okay, this was bullshit.

The food booths were at the far end; Edsel had set up in the middle, where he usually tried to find a spot. The center was the best, away from the hot smoke of the firecans and the meats cooked over them, far from the clucking chickens and the occasional goat, where the sawdust spread over the cement wasn’t soaked with blood.

But she wanted food, anything she could find, despite knowing it would deaden her high. Like he wasn’t doing a fine job of that all on his own.

She took her purchases from Edsel and shoved them into her bag, her scuffed boots shuffling on the cement as she headed for the food. The noodle lady was there, but she didn’t…yes. One of the vendors had a set of bamboo skewers turning over a fire; on the skewers were chunks of what appeared to be chicken. That’s what she was going to assume, anyway. They looked good and they smelled good, and if the meat was something unnamable she didn’t want to know about it.

Terrible loomed behind her while she made her purchase, barely concealing his impatience, until finally she swung around on him with her stick in hand.

“Look. You want to be mad at me, that’s fine. You want to not give me a chance to explain, I can’t do anything about that either. But we have to work together. So the least you can do is not treat me like I’m carrying some kind of fucking communicable disease, okay? Be pissed at me on your own time, because I can’t work like this.”

“Depends the kinda work you doin, aye?”

Oh, man, that hurt. Not showing it, though? Now that was easy. She’d had a lifetime of practice at pretending not to be hurt.

So she pegged him with her eyes, folded her arms across her chest. “Fuck. You.”

“Ain’t thinkin I got the price.”

“No? Then—”

The horn cut her off, loud and rough in the bright clear day. A vinyl record, she realized; the telltale pops and crackles came through the speakers. What the…

She turned, along with most of the crowd around her. Street performers weren’t entirely unusual in the Market; not common, because most Downsiders mistrusted outsiders almost as much as they liked to stab them and steal their money. But every once in a while some singers would set up, or a couple of acrobats.

This was different.

At the far end, by the crumbled remains of what had once been a wall, a stage had been set up; it appeared to be a layer of wooden crates with wide boards laid across them. Pillars rose at the four corners, draped in orange fabric, and across the top of those stretched more orange strips, the color glowing against that aquamarine sky.

A sign hung down from the top: ARTHUR MAGUINNESS’S POTENT POTIONS.

Okay, this should be interesting.

Chapter Eight

Only through penitence and pain is forgiveness possible.

—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 72

The trumpet record continued playing, a musical backdrop for the gathering crowd. Chess didn’t particularly want to go see—what was the point, really?—but she wasn’t eager to get into Terrible’s car and fight with him some more either, and she wanted to finish her food.

Plus he appeared to want to check it out, which made sense. Bump didn’t generally allow such shows on his front porch. If “Arthur Maguinness” hadn’t gotten the okay first, or if his potent potions contained something that might affect Bump’s business…Terrible would need to know about it.

So she followed his broad shoulders through the crowd, tearing bits of what she was almost certain was indeed chicken off her skewer. It was good, too; when had she last had hot food? She couldn’t remember. The hospital, she guessed. They’d brought the stuff to her whether she wanted it or not, and made her take at least a few bites so they could write it on their little charts. It had been made clear that she wasn’t getting out of there unless she ate, so she had.

Since getting out, though? Sure, she’d eaten, but nothing more than a couple of sandwiches or something. Hot food wasn’t much of a priority for her. Not when there were so many better things she could put in her stomach, and she needed them so much more.

Which reminded her. Thanks to Bump’s little gift the night before she wouldn’t need to call Lex yet, but she probably should. She hadn’t seen him since she left the hospital.

That wasn’t a conversation to look forward to, not at all. No, she wasn’t seeing him anymore—well, what they’d been doing together wasn’t really “seeing,” not unless the sentence finished with “each other naked. A lot.”

The problem was, he didn’t know that.

Sure, he probably had some idea. Seeing her go hysterical—which was a bit of an understatement, really—when Terrible almost died, and commit a capital offense to save him, probably gave Lex some indication that their days together were numbered. Luckily he’d missed most of the horrible scene in the graveyard; well, luckily for her, anyway, as it spared her some embarrassment. Not so luckily for Lex, who’d been out cold on the frozen ground with a broken jaw after Terrible caught them together and expressed his feelings on the subject.

Anyway. She wasn’t going to be able to put it off much longer. Thanks to the wired-shut jaw, he hadn’t hit on her much while she was still in the hospital, but now she was out…he’d be expecting to see her, and he’d be expecting to see her the way he usually did, which was in his bed. After he’d given her drugs.

Technically the drugs and the bed didn’t have anything to do with each other. The drugs were payment for the destruction of Chester Airport; it had been haunted, and Bump had wanted her to banish the ghosts so he could run drugs into it. She hadn’t been able to, and the airport was no more, and that was good for Lex.

The bed…that was just a bit of fun. Had been a bit of fun, until she’d realized two things: One, that accepting free drugs from someone with whom she was sleeping felt and looked way too much like whoring for drugs; and two…Two was standing at her side with the air of a man who’d prefer inserting knives into his own throat to being anywhere near her.

The sudden cut-off of the music drew her back to the ramshackle stage before her, silence hovering for a second over the crowd before they started murmuring.

A man walked onto the stage.

At least she thought it was a man. He was tall, even taller than Terrible, she thought, but that could have been just the stage adding height.

Any resemblance to Terrible stopped there, though. Where Terrible was broad and packed with muscle, this man was a rake, his striped waistcoat and drainpipe trousers hanging off his bones. The sleeves of his dingy, inexpertly mended white shirt ended a couple of inches above his knobby wrists; the ragged hems of his trousers exposed ashy-pale ankles over mismatched shoes. And black hair, torrents of it, sprouted from his head and fell in a tangled curtain down his back, over his face, meeting up with a scraggly beard that reached his stomach.

“Good morrow, kind ladies and sirs!” His heavily accented voice rang deep and clear over the waiting crowd. “May the Truth keep you all safe in its arms! For today you are about to see Truth the likes of which you have never seen before!”

Another figure walked onto the stage; this one tiny, in a flowered all-in-one suit with feet. Not a child, though. A little person like Goody Vanderpeet, one of the kitchen Goodys.

But nothing at all like Goody Vanderpeet, aside from stature. This person had bright purple hair, standing straight up in a stiff, elaborate curlicue unaffected by the wind. His face was painted green, as were the palms of his hands.

“My assistant LeRue will open the case, and I will show you wonders the likes of which you have never seen. I come in Truth, good people, and in Truth you shall discover today the miracles of my potions, for I am Arthur Maguinness and my name is known far and wide!”

Chess rolled her eyes and glanced around the crowd. Most of them wore the same yeah-right expression as herself, but not all; she caught a few open mouths and wide eyes.

With a flourish LeRue opened a green-and-purplestriped trunk squatting on the far end of the stage. The lid stood almost as tall as he did; that was one big-ass trunk. As the lid rose, shelves did as well, covered with oddly shaped bottles and flagons. The potent potions, she assumed.

“One touch, one taste, of my potions will change your life, and I guarantee it! In those bottles lives the result of centuries of knowledge, passed down from generation to generation, by the finest masters in history! Men to whom even the Church bowed, begging for the information they possessed!”

Chess jerked at that, a little. Bullshit. Standard bullshit, yes, but still irritating. Legitimate businesses weren’t allowed to make such claims, but Maguinness up there looked so far removed from the word “legitimate” she was amazed his name shared a few of the same letters.

Unaware that he was being given the narrow-eye by a Churchwitch, Maguinness bent his long frame like a folding ruler and held up one of the bottles, a fancy cut-glass item of the type usually found on the sideboards of social climbers. This one was dusty and smudged; the liquid inside was a noxious shade of orange.

Her arms itched. She scratched them absently while Maguinness began describing, in florid detail, the benefits of that particular concoction, but it didn’t seem to help. The itch remained just below the surface of her skin.

That wasn’t right. She’d dosed up just before she left the house, so she wasn’t withdrawing. Something was wrong. It was magic, yes, and given that there were potions not far away that undoubtedly had magical ingredients, it wasn’t so strange for her to feel it. But this didn’t feel…normal. Like the magic she used, or was used to.

Instinctively she looked at Terrible fidgeting beside her, with his arms folded and his weight shifted away from her. That wasn’t right, either. Well, leaning away from her was, at least these days. But the way his fingers twiddled with the fabric of his sleeve, the way he kept swallowing…not right at all.

“Terrible,” she whispered, leaning closer. “Are you okay?”

He didn’t hear her. Or maybe he was just ignoring her. She tried again, reaching out to touch his arm. “Terrible, are—”

He jerked away with a violence that made her heart stop and glared at her before turning and starting to push through the crowd. “Right. ‘Sgo.”

She’d thought a few times in the past—more than a few times, really—that he had some magic skill of his own. Not enough to work for the Church; only slightly more than the average person. But more nonetheless. Had he felt it too, the odd tingle given off by Maguinness?

Nobody else seemed to, or if they did they were hiding it well.

So it was affecting her, and it was affecting him…The thought finished itself before she could stop it.

Had she done something to him, when she’d carved that sigil into his chest?

The sigil itself was illegal. It had been used in the early days of the Church as protection for their employees in case of ghost attacks, Binding their souls to their bodies until medical help could arrive. A student had modified it with horrifying results, though, turned the person he marked with it into a wide-open receptacle for spirit possession.

She hadn’t used the modified version. It should have been safe.

But then, she should have grown up being well taken care of by loving foster families, and that sure as hell hadn’t been the case. Not unless you considered “well taken care of” to mean “fucked and beaten” and “loving foster families” to mean “child-raping, drug-running, money-grubbing pieces of shit.”

So much for “should have.”

Once inside the car he thrust the file into her hands and shot the car off the curb in a maelstrom of squealing rubber. She looked at him sharply, her back tensing in anticipation of an argument.

She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she’d led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she’d hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he’d felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he’d eventually decide she’d been punished enough and they could maybe move on.

But at that moment they were on their way to interview the man—Ratchet—who’d found the body parts in the vacant lot. She needed to have her wits about her, not to be waiting for the next verbal barb or dirty look. He could slash at her with knife-sharp words later; maybe if he did it enough her blood would finally flow clean.

Somehow she doubted it ever would.

But he didn’t speak at all. He’d flipped on his sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his heavy jaw and lowering brow, the tension in his arms and the way his lips pressed together…

“Are you okay? I mean,” she added quickly, “do you feel okay. That guy back there, I don’t know about you, but he made me feel kind of twitchy. He had some power and I felt it. So I just wondered if maybe you did, too.”

“Ain’t no witch.”

“Yeah, I know, but you look like—He was creepy and I just wondered if you’d felt it, too, is all.”

When he didn’t respond, she tried again. “That sigil in your chest, have you been feeling—”

“I’m right.”

“I’d really want to help—”

“Said I’m right, dig?”

She bit her lip and turned to the file. Thanks to his sneaky thief act the night before she hadn’t even had a chance to look through it, only to skim it before trotting outside like a good little doggie to wait for Lauren.

And she hadn’t missed much. At least she hoped she hadn’t; but no, they wouldn’t have stolen anything. Copied it, sure, she had no doubt. But not stolen.

Sun glinted off the heavy chain around Terrible’s right wrist and stung her eyes, and for once she had her sunglasses. She was digging around for them when he pulled the car up in front of an empty-eyed building with dead weeds poking out of the ground floor windows, its walls dark with remembered flames. A squat.

She grabbed her notebook and pen, secured the edges of the file with a rubber band, and stuffed it into the depths of her bag.

He didn’t ask if she was okay, but opened his trunk while she climbed out of the car and stood on the patch of crumbled cement that had once been a small parking lot. Ahead of her, dried blood crusted the street; she could still see the tire tracks he’d left when he’d peeled away the night before.

The pig carcasses were gone, of course. And now that she thought about it—Yes, the air carried the faint fragrance of roasting pork. She couldn’t imagine the glee that little bit of magic must have left in the hearts and stomachs of the neighborhood, most of whom had probably never seen that much meat in their lives. Didn’t want to imagine if any of those lives had been lost in the battle over who got to eat it, either. None of her concern.

She tried to shrug off the heavy stares she knew the two of them were getting, and headed for the empty doorway when she heard the trunk slam shut.

The entire bottom floor was choked with weeds as high as her chest, long spiky stalks of ivory-colored grass gone to seed, spindly bushes. A thin trail had been worn through them into a darker space in the corner. The stairs. Terrible slid in front of her without touching her and pushed his way along the path; the dead plants tried in vain to grab his arms as he passed.

Soft sounds drifted down the stairs when they hit the bottom. Chess paused, took a deep breath. Something rang in the building, so faint it was more of an implication than an actual fact, but there nonetheless. Magic. The slow, deep slither of magic, inching up her legs and along her arms, curling into her stomach.

Not just average magic, either. Almost everyone did some; there was an entire successful industry in spellbooks and items designed for the average person who had little or no skill or natural ability. Most of them didn’t really work. They relied more on the practitioner’s belief that it would be effective than any actual results.

She was familiar enough with how those spells and charms felt. She’d encountered enough of them in the homes of her subjects: dream safes designed to ward away nightmares, charm bags for wealth or safety, or occasionally sex spells planted in bedrooms. Those tended to be the most effective—and thus the most irritating for Chess, who did not like sex magic—simply because sex was the most accessible type of energy for most people. Any idiot could get turned on.

But this didn’t have the blunt edge of amateur magic, not at all. Too subtle; too well hidden.

She didn’t realize she was staring at the landing above them until Terrible’s low voice broke her reverie. “Any wrong?”

“Feels like magic in here,” she said, echoing his quiet tone.

“Some do, aye? Them with them luck spells or aught.”

“Not like this, though. Spells like that—spells done by people who really aren’t talented—they don’t feel…finished, if you know what I mean. They’re not well formed, they’re just like little blobs of weak energy. This isn’t—” She stopped, suddenly aware that they were having a conversation. A normal conversation.

One that wouldn’t last if she even considered pointing that out. Oops. “This isn’t like that. Whoever’s been casting in here knows what they’re doing. And they’ve tried to hide it. The magic, I mean. They’re trying to hide what they’re doing.”

“All Bump’s here, dig. Them to keep the eye out. Ain’t should be doin up that shit here.”

“All of them? They’re all Bump’s people?”

He shrugged. “What they ought, aye.”

“I guess we should go see, huh?”

Another small shrug, like he couldn’t really be bothered to complete the movement, and he preceded her up the cement staircase. The floor had once been covered in linoleum; curled edges of it remained like bookends where the stairs joined the walls.

The smell hit her nose at the same moment her feet hit the landing. Terrible stopped short; she would have run right into him if she hadn’t done the same. He turned to her, and in that moment she wasn’t thinking about what she’d done or what he’d done or what she wished they could do. She was thinking about the scent of death and how it raised the hairs on her arms, and she was thinking things had just gotten a fuck of a lot worse. For everyone.

Chapter Nine

Remember the power inherent in blood. I recommend burning anything it touches. This may seem like an extreme measure, but better safe than sorry!

—Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase

They both ran. Up the stairs, through the open doorway to the left of the empty landing, where Chess’s stomach gave a great heave and barely managed to hold its contents.

It wasn’t a murder. Wasn’t a multiple murder. It was a slaughter; there was no other word for it, no other way it could be described.

Blood covered everything so thickly and thoroughly she thought for a moment she was seeing through a lens. Only the dirty plaster peeking through the spatter on the upper walls convinced her it was blood and not red paint coating them, still dripping slowly down. The scrap of threadbare carpet on the floor was soaked with it; the heaped garbage bags in a corner were slick with it; a couple of ragged blankets slumped sodden against the wall.

It took her a second to find the bodies in that sea of blood, but they were there. At least…the parts were. They were scattered across the floor as if some careless child had been playing with them and grew tired of the amusement; a leg here, an arm there, a torso, a head…

Her stomach lurched again. Desperately she swallowed, hard, forcing down the saliva that suddenly filled her mouth. Too much, this was too much, everywhere she looked she saw an empty staring eye or a horrible sharp piece of white bone protruding from shriveling flesh—

Terrible’s hand, hard and warm on the back of her neck, wrestled her out onto the landing. An open window there, a blank hole in the smoke-colored wall; he thrust her head through it, forced her into the cool fresh air. She filled her lungs, heard them like bellows in her chest. Blinked furiously, trying to clear her vision of the spots obscuring it.

Slowly she came back to herself. At least enough to realize they weren’t alone on the landing. Muffled sounds, like someone speaking in another room, floated through the stillness and became audible as her breathing slowed.

She spun around. No one there. But Terrible had evidently heard it too; his cautious gaze scanned every inch of the landing while she checked the ceiling. He barely looked better than she felt, and she wondered if he’d hustled her to the window purely for her benefit or because it provided him with a good excuse to get some air himself.

To the right of the stairs, across from the blood-filled deathchamber, another entrance loomed. There, sheets of newspaper covered the windows and blocked the light, rattled ominously in the breeze.

Still the voice. Wordless. Muffled. She realized what it was and jumped forward, only to be caught by his hard arm across her chest. He shook his head. So he realized it too, then. Knew what was in that room. Knew they’d found either a survivor or a murderer.

She watched him poke his head cautiously into the gloom and look both ways. He motioned her forward with a quick twitch of his fingers.

No blood in that room. Graffiti covered the walls instead; fuzzy shapes dotted the floor.

One of them moved.

Chess jerked back. Kind of a stupid thing to do, really; she could see what it was—who it was—even as her feet moved without her. But the tension in the air crawled all over her body, the memory of that blood-filled room refused to leave her head, and she could still feel the weight of Terrible’s hand on the back of her neck.

“Right, now, little one.” Terrible held his left hand up by his shoulder, palm facing the huddled figure on the floor. His right sneaked behind his back; Chess watched it wrap around the handle of his knife. Just in case. “Ain’t nobody hurt you, aye? Whyn’t you get on up, we—”

The person—the woman—raised her eyes. Chess looked into them and saw what Terrible couldn’t possibly see: the dark glee of black magic. Felt its aura slam into her like a freight train, felt her skin grow hot and her brain expand in her head.

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 fakeout 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.

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