The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
The Mortons did not believe in leaving a light on, it seemed, and they did believe in running the heater even on a night like this one, when autumn’s chill barely touched the air. The heat didn’t bother her but the lack of light did. People who were genuinely frightened of ghosts in their home tended to leave them on, often even sleeping under their glare.
“Algha canador metruan,” she whispered, striking a match. Light flared from the tip, casting shadows on the tasteful ivory walls of the living room. Once again the Hand twitched as she lit the candle and shook out the match, placing it in her pocket.
She relaxed. The Mortons would sleep now under the Hand’s magic, more heavily and sweetly than they had in a while, and she didn’t have to worry so much about noise.
The living room held no secrets. In the faint glow from the flame Chess crawled along the perimeter, sliding her fingertips along the baseboards and joints, using her penlight to see behind the furniture. Not that it was too necessary. With the exception of Albert, the Mortons didn’t appear to be readers. No bookcases gave hints as to the interests of the owners.
Instead the room was filled with what she thought of as spindly furniture: occasional tables with one single knick-knack on top, or couches with tiny legs and space beneath. She slid the beam of the penlight beneath them and found only a thick coating of beggar’s velvet. Mrs. Morton apparently didn’t bother to clean under there.
Good thing, that. The dust made it clear nothing had been moved. No wire trails marked it, no scrapes indicated sound or film equipment had been hidden here. She hadn’t expected there to be, but still good to know.
The kitchen was next. She set the Hand on the counter while she opened the fridge and peered inside, finding it stuffed with condiments and neatly labeled and stacked plastic containers, complete with dates. The freezer held numerous blocks of white paper, also labeled, that would become roasts and chickens when they were unwrapped. She made a note. If she found nothing else before she left, she’d have to come open them all, to see if they contained anything other than dead animals—or rather, the wrong kind of dead animals.
Probably not; the windowsill was lined with cookbooks, their spines ridged and unreadable from heavy use. Chess picked them up one by one, flipped through them, glancing idly at the elaborate photos. The Meat Lover’s Cookbook … Cooking with Taste … Mrs. Increase’s Family Recipes … Cuisine of the Bankhead Spa … Wait. What?
The Bankhead Spa was the kind of resort where movie stars and extremely high Church officials went on vacation; incredibly expensive, incredibly dull, with a private ferry and hordes of asskissy staff. Not the sort of place she’d expect an optometrist—or was he an optician? She could never remember the difference—to visit. Not the sort of place she’d expect one to be able to afford, more important. But just the sort of place she could see Mrs. Morton insisting on being taken to. For people who gave a shit about such things, she supposed it would be quite a coup.
The spine on that book was not fuzzed with age. It cracked when she opened it, in fact. Brand-new. Definitely brand-new; the receipt was still inside. September. Only two months before.
No wonder they were still in this neighborhood. No wonder they needed money. With a faint smile, Chess snapped a quick picture of the receipt and the book, and replaced both. It might not be important, that was true. But it might be, and every little bit of evidence would help.
The only place she couldn’t search was behind the fridge, so she pulled her electric meter from her bag and fed the wire around. A flip of the switch showed her nothing else back there used electricity. Next she tried the mirror on its long metal antenna. Clean—well, as clean as it could be behind a refrigerator.
This was a waste of time, but still she searched, following the Church-set routine so that if she needed to testify she could say she had. Cabinets stuffed with packaged food and sugary snacks—no wonder Albert looked like a small, squashy torpedo instead of a boy—and still more plastic tubs. Had Mrs. Morton once sold the stuff, or what? Chess couldn’t imagine any reason why one small family of three needed the ability to store enough food to feed the entire Downside for a year.
Pots and pans clanked as she shifted them to look behind. The oven was clean and empty, the drawers practically overflowing with lids for all those tubs.
One last stop, the laundry room—actually a small alcove off the garage—where Mrs. Morton had been the day Albert supposedly first saw the apparition. Clean, as was the garage itself.
She climbed the stairs, listening to the heavy, regular breathing of the Mortons. Somebody snored so loudly that if it weren’t for the Hand, Chess imagined it would have woken everyone up. The sound grated up her spine like a broken saw.
Ah. Pay dirt. Albert had replaced his books. Everything from electrical wiring for dummies to complicated texts on animation and film editing. She took several pictures of the shelf as a whole, then started removing books, shaking them by the spine in the hopes that something would fall out before photographing them.
His drawers were next. Chess grinned. Looked like Albert had been studying blueprints of the house itself. Interesting. She took more photos, and just out of spite decided to take pictures of his rather extensive collection of porn as well. Ha, she knew he’d have one.
Albert sighed and rolled under the covers as she bent down to search under the bed. The bag of wires she’d noted Saturday night was still there, along with an ancient DVD player and a few more books on film and wiring, suggesting Albert may indeed have been hiding his activities from his parents.
Wedged between the headboard and the wall was a small black velvet bag. Chess reached for it, then pulled her hand back, certain nothing electrical was inside it. It was a magic bag, a gris-gris, even, and she did not want to open it.
Most homes were full of such items, and none of them ever bothered her the way this one did. Perhaps it was simply tiredness, or the way her nerves still jangled when she thought of the dead man at the airport. But something told her this was not legal magic, not a basic protection bag or charm for safe dreams. This didn’t even feel like magic Church employees were authorized to do.
She nudged the bag with the toe of her boot, trying to pull the thread holding it closed. No luck. It was knotted at the top and sealed with wax.
She slipped on a pair of surgical gloves—after the amulet, she wasn’t taking any chances—and lit another match, slipping a small white china cup onto the carpet to catch the melting wax. Albert mumbled something in his sleep.
“What’s that, Albert?” she said under her breath.
“Didn’t mean to,” he said.
Chess glanced up sharply. No, he was still asleep.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” she replied gently, shaking out the match. Most of the black wax had melted into the cup. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
He sighed. “I was hungry and I didn’t have any money, and I like chocolate …”
What ever. So he stole a candy bar from a convenience store or something. Big deal.
He kept droning on while she untied the bag and held it upside down over another dish, then snapped a few hasty pictures of the contents. Black salt, a crow’s talon, some pink thread tied in knots … nothing particularly unusual here. It might be unorthodox for a dream safe, but within legal limits certainly—it was personal, and it didn’t affect anyone else. So why did her skin crawl, why did she feel as if something large and black and sharp were about to swoop down on her?
Her hands shook as she snapped a quick photo then poured everything into the bag, resealed it, and stuffed it back behind the headboard. She wanted to leave. Wanted to get out of this house that was suddenly suffocatingly warm and filled with eyes.
Eyes like the ones of the hooded figure watching her from the doorway.
Chess jumped up so fast she stumbled against the rickety bedside table, banging her knee hard on the edge. The lamp fell over and