The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
nodded. “He ain’t feeding you, you find me. True thing, Lucy girl. Aye?”
Lucy nodded.
“Cool.” Terrible gave Hunchback one last nudge with his toe, and turned to Chess. “Let’s get us moving.”
His bad mood wreathed his face like smoke as he drove through the bright streets without speaking. Chess glanced at him, glanced again, but his eyes stared straight ahead.
“That was a nice thing you did,” she said finally. “Telling that girl to come to you.”
He shrugged. “Hunchback ask Bump for work, sayin he gotta take care of them kids. So Bump lets Hunch operate, and Hunch letting them kids starve. Ain’t right. They need food if they working.”
“I didn’t know Bump was such a philanthropist.”
He glared at her. Oops.
“That’s a person who runs charities and—”
“I know the meaning.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
He turned another corner, heading farther into a part of the city Chess wasn’t familiar with. Like most Downside residents she tended to stay in her neighborhood as much as possible. You never knew what you might find on an unfamiliar street.
Here it was apparently a street fair, like the Market but less organized. The Chevelle rumbled past booths selling scarves and silver, clothing and cell phones, past firecans with spits propped over them. The scent of roasting meat floated in through the window, and Chess realized she was a little hungry.
She grew even hungrier at the end of the street, as Terrible pulled up in front of a barbeque stand. It was nothing more than a large black barrel grill and a folding table, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smelled anything so tempting. The wizened man behind the makeshift counter nodded as Terrible stepped out of the car.
“Aye, T-man,” he said, his voice high but smooth as the motion of his arms as he flipped the long row of meat with a rusty metal spatula. “You eating from me today? What you need?”
“Maybe later.” Terrible opened Chess’s door—another courtesy she didn’t expect, she’d simply been so busy watching the barbeque man’s sweat-shiny arms move like pistons, she hadn’t thought to get out of the car. “You know Brain? One of Hunchback’s kids?”
“Aye, I knows him. Seed him earlier, that’s what you askin. He powerful scared. Ain’t in no trouble with you, hoping?”
“Naw, not with me. Trying to find him though.”
The barbeque man shrugged. “Headed down the aisle, guess to Duck.” His gaze skittered over Chess’s body, then back to her face, but he said nothing.
“Thanks.”
For the second time that day Chess followed him down an alley, but where the first one had been wide and sun-drenched, this was so dark it felt more like nighttime. She slipped her sweater back on and checked her watch, surprised to see it was almost six. No wonder she was hungry and restless. She dug in her bag for her pillbox.
Terrible waited while she swallowed a Cept and washed it down with a slug of water, then started moving again as soon as she screwed the cap back on the bottle.
“Gonna be dark soon,” he said. “Best be back in the car afore then.”
“Where are we?”
“Near Chester, but the other side. Docks that way. Ain’t nothing good come out of them docks at night.”
She shivered. The alley grew darker as they walked down it, like the sun didn’t dare shine there. Terrible turned left at the end, into a space even more narrow. The walls were lined with chicken wire and damp, moldy rocks, and it smelled like a burned-out urinal.
She couldn’t see to the end of it, either. It curved away to the right, giving her the bizarre impression that it pinched shut at the end. Her stomach was empty enough that the sweet peace of her pill started seeping through her blood quickly, but it didn’t entirely eliminate her nerves. Nor did having Terrible’s huge body right in front of her. Brain came here? That skinny, pale child made his way through this foul-smelling darkness alone?
When she was young she’d often thought kids like Brain had it better than she had. She didn’t anymore—two different kinds of misery were still both misery—but when she saw places like this it made her wonder. She seriously doubted Brain had made it to what ever age he was without having his body violated, his bones broken, his spirit crushed. Just like her, but at least she’d known where the threat came from most of the time.
She wished he hadn’t left her place.
They took another turn, right this time. Chess started to wonder how long they would be in here, if they would ever get out. If they at least could get out before dark. She had her knife, and she knew Terrible was armed to the teeth, but somehow that didn’t reassure her.
Finally they reached a makeshift door, a scrap of warped and broken plywood hung in a ragged hole in the wall by straps of leather. Terrible opened it and they stepped inside.
A single flame gave the only illumination save the fading sun’s rays trying desperately to cut through the grime on the windows. Here and there a panel was broken, and light forced its way in, but was defeated by gloom before it could have an effect.
Bodies crowded the space, hunched together along the walls and slumped across the floor. Some young, some old, all covered in rags and stiff blankets.
“What business you got here?” demanded a voice, and Chess turned to face a small man, holding a candle of his own. The light made him look bigger somehow, making his dark skin gleam as if he’d been carved from mahogany. “Ain’t no need for Bump to bring people into my place.”
“You know Brain?”
The man—Duck?—didn’t even blink. “Can’t say I do.”
Terrible didn’t blink either, but he held his hands out, palm up. “Ain’t looking to hurt nobody. Young one might be in trouble, me and the lady just wants to help him out. She got a home for him up her place.”
“Since when does Bump take an interest?”
“Ain’t Bump’s interest. The lady’s interest. You wanna keep Brain safe, you tell me where I find him. True thing, Duck.”
Chess felt like she ought to speak, but the mental pissing contest between the men was too fascinating to interrupt.
“Gonna need your word on that, Terrible. And who she is.”
Terrible opened his mouth, but Chess was faster. She liked this man, Duck, and she revised her earlier thought as she took in both him and her surroundings. Brain was definitely luckier than she’d been. It might be a scary place to come to, but it was safe once you arrived. “Cesaria Putnam. I’m a Debunker for the Church.”
Recognition flared in Duck’s eyes. “You Bump’s Churchwitch.”
“No, I’m Cesaria, and this has nothing to do with Bump.” Which was kind of a lie, but not enough to keep her from meeting his eyes clean. Whether Bump had gotten her involved or not, Brain still would have seen what happened at the airport and would still be in danger because of it.
“Brain over there,” Duck said after staring at her for a long moment. “In the corner, in the back.”
At his words a tiny gasp sounded; a flurry of movement caught her eye, and she saw the back of Brain’s head disappear through a dingy flap in the far wall.
“From the cemeteries they came, from the battlefields long overgrown, from the forests and the lakes