The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
it seemed, the complete absence of light behind him making the outlines of his robe—or what ever it was—squirm and ripple. Her gaze couldn’t seem to catch on anything, to find the definition of his form outside that narrow, pale face and the terrible black depths of his eyes.
He smiled, revealing sharp, dingy teeth, too many teeth. His nose hooked down, thin and crooked like a stalactite in the center of his face.
He should have been another flat image, a film projected from a hole somewhere in the wall, as she’d thought the first time she saw him. But he wasn’t, and she knew it. She felt him, felt the absence of humanity and conscience crawl over her skin and try to invade her body.
His hand materialized in front of him, stretching toward her. Not a gesture of supplication, but of threat. He was coming for her, and she could not escape.
It felt like hours Chess stood there, with his eyes burning into her and his presence staining her soul, but it could not have been more than a few seconds before he moved, so fast she couldn’t track it. He seemed to disappear only to reappear again a foot closer to her, inside the doorway, as though a strobe light was flashing in the room.
Her legs refused to move. She tried and tried, but they would not budge, as if her feet had sprouted roots and dug themselves into the thinly carpeted floor.
Closer again, standing at the edge of Albert’s bed while the boy muttered in his sleep and shifted under the blanket. Now the creature’s other hand was visible, also held out to her, fingers curled in preparation to close around her throat. Her skin there burned already. Her lungs fought to inflate. He was going to kill her, this was it, there was no way she could escape him. Especially if she couldn’t get her fucking feet to obey.
Another movement. He stood in Albert’s bed, mired to the thigh by it as though sinking into quicksand. Another. He stood in the corner. Another. He hung in the air by the ceiling, playing with her, disorienting her, forcing her to look wildly around the room to find him.
The knife in her back pocket dug into her. She reached around to grab it, closing her fingers over it, and her palm shrieked in pain. Only then did she realize it had been throbbing for several minutes.
As a weapon the knife would be useless, but it made her feel better, stronger, to hold something as she crept out of the corner holding it in front of her.
He appeared again, right at her side, so close she could see a droplet of red fall from the sharp edge of one canine tooth. Chess screamed and waved the knife at him, but he disappeared again in a breath of icy cold.
Her chest ached as she spun toward the door and started running, banging her shoulder hard on the doorframe and hurtling herself down the stairs. He could have been on those stairs, he could have been anywhere. The darkness was so complete, she couldn’t see where she was going, couldn’t see anything at all, and she could feel his hands on her neck as she fell the last few steps and landed in a heap on the polished wood floor at the bottom.
He was across the room. He was in the doorway to the kitchen. He was everywhere in the house, in her head. Her palm hurt so bad, she thought it was going to explode. Her shoulder ached, and both her knees where she’d landed on them. No matter. She had to get out, out into the cool fresh air, back into the world she knew existed outside this house of horror.
It wasn’t until she was there, crumpled on the street, brushing tears off her face, that she realized she’d left the Hand inside, along with her bag and everything else.
“Now the lack of gods is fact, which is Truth and need not be believed or doubted. The Church offers protection, and so the Church makes law.”
—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1641
Lex shoved his hands into his pockets and stared up at the Morton house. “I gotta touch what?”
“A hand. A dead hand. It’s on the floor of the bedroom on the right, at the top of the stairs. Just grab it, and my bag, and bring them down here, okay?”
“Don’t know I want to touch some dead witch hand, tulip. No offense.”
“It’s not a witch’s hand, it’s a convicted murderer’s, and it’s harmle—never mind. Are you going to do it for me, or should I call someone else? There’s not a lot of time left until sunrise.”
Chess waited for him to call her bluff. There was no one else she could call. Her only options had been Doyle or Lex, since she didn’t have Terrible’s number. Lex had won easily. At least he wouldn’t spread news of her ridiculous flight all over the Church in the morning. Maybe that wasn’t fair to Doyle, but she didn’t care, not when the thought of going back into that house made her feel like she was going to wet her pants.
“Aye, I’ll do it.” His dark eyes scanned her up and down, in her black jeans and snug black top. “But I get something in return.”
“Fine. Just go get my stuff, okay?”
She watched him slouch his way up the walk and disappear into the house, half-convinced he wouldn’t come out. And now he wanted something in return, and if she were honest with herself, she’d known he would when she called him.
And maybe that, more than anything else, had been why she called him. The thought didn’t make her comfortable, but then most of her thoughts these days didn’t. Her mind seemed to be endlessly turning over pieces of a broken vase she couldn’t put back together. Airports and ghost planes and runes and bodies and eyes, those black eyes that seemed to sear right into her flesh when they focused on her … Why hadn’t he killed her?
Cold seeped through her jeans as she leaned back against the side panel of her car and crossed her arms. A window brightened in a house down the street, some early riser starting their day. She’d gotten here around three. It couldn’t possibly be later than five now, but blue light streaked the horizon and turned the chimneys into blackened teeth against it.
What the hell was taking him so long in there? It wasn’t a mansion, for fuck’s sake, it was a damned two-story Colonial.
Maybe the ghost … no. Lex hadn’t been frightened in the tunnel, not even a little bit, and although the thing in the house was worse, much worse, she still somehow doubted it would bother him.
Come to think of it, it didn’t seem to have bothered any of the Mortons either. What she’d seen in Albert’s bedroom didn’t resemble the description Mrs. Morton had given in the slightest. No gray rags decorated his shapeless form, and he had definitely been male. Did more than one ghost haunt the place? But then why was she the only one who’d seen the figure in black?
And why hadn’t he killed her? He couldn’t be real. That was the only possible answer, the only thing that made sense. He wasn’t real, and she was on so many drugs, her body didn’t even know what it felt anymore. She rubbed her forehead, the bridge of her nose. She was losing it, oh shit she needed sleep, needed to give the speed a rest and let herself kick back down to normal.
Lex appeared, holding her bag in one fist and the Hand in the other. The look of disgust on his face would have been comical anywhere else.
“Don’t fancy carrying this thing for work,” he said, handing everything back to her. “Don’t know how you do it.”
“You get used to it.” She tossed the bag into her car and set the Hand on the passenger seat. Normally she would blow out the candle as soon as she left a house, but given how late it was, she thought it would be better to get away first. People tended to wake up immediately from enchanted sleep, and she didn’t want to take a chance that she’d be still visible when they did.
Lex stood for a minute, watching her. “So you head home now?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Ain’t you gonna ask what your