The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
one of the drawers. Chess half-expected an alarm to sound, but the Elder simply selected a file and handed it to her, pushing the drawer closed behind him. “What happened to your hand?”
The wound she’d gotten from the amulet at the airport looked even worse this morning, jagged and red, so she’d wrapped her hand in a gauze bandage before heading in. She shook her head. “I cut myself opening a can of tuna, can you believe it?”
“You should have one of our doctors look at it.”
“It’ll be fine, thanks. It’s not deep, I just want to keep it clean.” Actually she suspected it was getting infected. Her entire hand throbbed.
“Well, if you change your mind let me know. You can probably get out there tonight.”
“Get—oh, the case. On Holy Day?”
“Go after sundown. We’ve made a dispensation to get caught up after the Festival.”
“Oh. Right.” The Church was still trying to get caught up, and so was she. The Festival meant work, work and sleepless nights, and more work. One week a year of penance, mourning, and rituals, long daylight hours in Church and longer dark hours at home with blood and herbs on the doors and windows to protect the citizenry, and her skin crawling with ghostly energy. Six nights, during which the dead again walked the earth, separated from the people they wanted to kill only by the Church’s knowledge and power.
It was scary, and difficult … but it certainly reminded people who was in charge. Not the Quantras with their useless protests, or the PRA with their attempts to use the Church’s own government branch to undermine the Church’s moral authority. Not the Marenzites with their threats or even the more sinister and effective Lamaru with their black magic and their complicated plots. All these groups wanted to be in control.
Only the Church was. And from the twenty-eighth of October to the third of November every year, they reminded the world very forcibly of that fact.
Elder Griffin smiled. “Take it, and see what you can do with it. Luck carry you.”
She tucked the slim manila folder into her bag to examine later and followed him back down to the Temple, where Elder Murray was discussing the importance of respect. She’d heard this one before, but she slipped into a seat in the back, making sure he saw her. Making sure they all saw her. Living away from the church complex put her under scrutiny enough—especially lately—without being seen to miss services.
Which reminded her. She wanted to see if there were any records on Chester Airport before she left.
Elder Griffin stood at the podium and swept off his hat, so the blue light in the room shone off his blond hair and turned it silver. The whites of his eyes floated in the black makeup ringing them. Chess bowed her head.
“I have no need for faith.” Hundreds of voices raised together, intoning the Credo; Chess imagined other Church buildings, other parts of the country, of the world, with everyone speaking in unison. “I do not need faith because I know the Truth. I do not need to believe. Belief is unnecessary when fact is Truth. I do not pray to a god. Prayer implies faith and gods do not exist. Only energy exists, and this is Truth. The Church shows me the Truth and protects me. If I hold to these Truths I will enter the City of Eternity, and there I will stay.”
By the time they reached the last words, voices echoed and crashed off the walls, joyous, emphatic, trusting. The room’s energy snaked over her skin and warmed her all the way through, as she knew it was doing for every Church employee. Sensitivity to such things was the first basic indicator of talent.
“Heard about the Sanfords,” someone whispered. “Bad luck, huh?”
She turned, glaring right into Agnew Doyle’s grinning face. He probably wouldn’t be grinning so cheerily if she slapped him, but this wasn’t the place. Doyle had caused her enough trouble already. She didn’t need to start fighting with him in the middle of the hall.
“Hey, wait. I just wanted to say sorry, Chessie. I heard this morning how it was a real haunting, and I thought—”
“You thought you’d get the full story, some good gossip to pass on?” Bodies brushed hers as people left the hall.
Church services were very short, as a rule. They didn’t need to be long. What mattered most was the swiping of identification cards to prove one had attended, to prove one was faithful; coming to services wasn’t mandatory, but everyone knew those who did had a better chance at getting good jobs, at getting their children into superior schools. What benefits the Church provided always went first to those who did their part.
No donations were solicited, no pleas for funding the way the old religions used to do. The Church protected the People, and the People paid their taxes to the Church. No middleman, no quibbling about how tax money was spent. It was spent the way the Church wanted to spend it, and if the People didn’t like it, there were hordes of malicious ghosts waiting in the City of Eternity, eager to rise again and murder the People should the Church decide to set them free.
Besides, the Reckonings were the real action. Nobody wanted to miss those, and you had to attend services to be admitted.
“That’s not fair. Just because—”
“You know what’s not fair, Doyle? That thanks to you half the people I work with think I’m a whore, that’s what’s not fair. Get out of my way.” Just the thought of being talked about, of having people know things about her, made her squirm. Technically she and Doyle hadn’t violated any rules—they were unmarried and of age—but being looked at, knowing her coworkers were picturing it in their heads …
“I didn’t tell anyone.” He reached for her arm, then pulled his hand back as if her skin burned. “Someone found out, that’s all I know.”
“Right. Sure. All those spies hiding in your bedroom.”
“Why would I tell? You’re not the only one people are looking at, you know. Somebody must have—” He glanced around the empty room, lowered his voice. “Somebody must have heard us.”
“So somebody is probably listening right now, too. I have to go. I have work to do.”
“You can’t have already gotten another case.”
“I did, and unlike some people, I really need this one. We don’t all get handed Gray Towers.”
“That was luck.”
“Luck and a besotted Goody, you mean.”
Gray Towers was a mansion on the outskirts of town with a reputation for being haunted. Unfortunately, the owners had exploited that reputation, offering tours and going to the press with stories of various events—sounds, physical manifestations, even a psychic attack—making the case extremely high profile. Doyle had Debunked it. Rumor had it he’d earned close to a hundred thousand dollars, the biggest bonus ever given to a Debunker—ten times the basic single-ghost claim amount. Several others were fairly pissed about that one, not least Bree Bryan, who had been next in the case queue.
The corners of his lips turned down. “Why am I even discussing this with you? You don’t believe me, fine. What ever. Have a great day, Chessie. Good luck with your new case.”
Watching him walk away was a mistake. The way his broad shoulders moved, the blue light bringing out highlights in his shoulder-length black hair … that hair was extremely soft, she remembered.
Following him was the fastest way to get to the Archives, but instead she took the longer route, heading out the door to the right past the elevator. This hall always made her skin prickle. She’d taken that elevator once—the long, slow journey below the earth’s surface, and the silent twenty-minute train ride to the city itself—on her first evaluation visit, and she didn’t have any real desire to do it again. That’s why she chose Debunking instead of Liaising. The City of Eternity wasn’t a fun place, at least not to her.
What everyone else saw as peaceful and happy, a long, well-earned rest,