The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
was an indication of their regular food and not part of a separate stock they brought out for Terrible.
It was even clean, which was saying something. No wonder it had filled so rapidly. She didn’t recognize a lot of the faces, but some she did, people who ran stalls in the Market, a guy who lived in the building across the street from her, a shadowy face with coals instead of eyes half-covered by a black hood …
Her hamburger fell from her hand.
“Chess? You cool? Chess?”
She barely heard him over the roaring in her ears. Her legs wobbled as she tried to stand, her stiff fingers fumbling for her bag even though she knew it would be no use. What ever he—it—was, it would take more than a few herbs and some dirt to send him away. She’d have to go in with Doyle and the others, take their case to the Grand Elder …
But just as Terrible had appeased the alley ghosts earlier, so she hoped she could make him disappear, just for now, just until …
“Chess! What you seeing?”
She thrust herself out of the booth, smacking right into a waitress carrying a heavy tray. The edge of it caught her in the ribs; the waitress fell sideways with a squeal that seemed to go on forever.
The man was gone.
Chess scanned the restaurant, her heart pounding, unable to believe it. He’d shown up and then just … disappeared again? Was he following her? Hovering invisible over her while she wandered the city all day?
No, he couldn’t have, right? She’d have felt him.
You didn’t feel him just now, did you?
Her legs gave; she gripped the edge of the table to keep from falling. Only then did she realize Terrible and the waitress were talking, that she’d knocked the woman over, and that a vanilla milkshake had flown from the tray and poured all over Terrible’s shirt.
The sketch on the folded piece of paper made her heart give a funny leap in her chest. No words, but the artful rendering of a tulip in black ink could only have been left by one person.
Terrible was apparently too discreet to ask—she imagined he had a lot of practice at ignoring things, working for Bump—but his heavy eyebrows rose. She folded the note and tucked it into her back pocket.
“Right. Get that shirt off and give it to me.”
“I just wash it home, Chess, no worries on it.”
“I don’t want it to stain. Come on, it’s the least I can do.”
He stared at her for a minute. She stared back. The white patch on his black shirt taunted her, reminded her how she’d lost her cool, how she’d been losing it ever since she saw that thing in Albert Morton’s bedroom. She couldn’t erase the memories or the shame of them—although she’d be able to blot them out awfully well when she opened her pillbox again—but she could erase that stain from Terrible’s shirt.
Finally he shrugged and lifted his hands to the buttons. “You so determined, you have yourself a time, then.”
The wet fabric slid across her fingers as she carried it into the bathroom, followed by Terrible in his white T-shirt. The room seemed to shrink around him, and when he sat on the edge of the tub his feet almost touched the opposite wall. Splotches of white stood out on his jeans like he’d been playing with bleach.
“Maybe you should give me your … um.”
He glanced down. “Keep em on all the same, aye?”
“Sure. Of course.” She busied herself at the sink with the liquid laundry soap she used on the few good items of clothing she owned. Her right palm stung; she’d almost forgotten about the wound, it had been healing so nicely.
“You not bad at that washing,” Terrible said. “Maybe I start bringing all my clothes here, aye?”
Surprise tore the smart reply right out of her mouth. Terrible made a joke?
“You do mending? I tore on the fence the other day, you recall.”
“Ha ha.” The white stain had come out. She rinsed it and started soaping again just to be sure. “Don’t think I’d be too good at that. It’s not really my thing, you know?”
“Not dangerous enough?”
“I’m not into danger, either.”
“Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain’t climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?”
“It’s just—I mean—I just do, is all.” Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have let him come in here. She should have just sent him home and let him wash his stupid shirt himself.
“No shame in it. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, else we ain’t like feeling at all, aye?”
“Your shirt’s done.” She handed him the sopping bundle, suddenly eager for him to leave. “You can wring it out, if you don’t mind. My hand’s still a little stiff.”
He accepted the change of subject and turned around. Water splattered into the tub, again and again, until the shirt was almost dry and looked as though it had been pushed through the eye of a needle.
“Thanks again for your help earlier,” she said, hoping he would take the hint and go. She had a kesh all rolled and ready to smoke, and she had a pillow calling her name. “With those army ghosts.”
“Ain’t army.”
“What?”
Terrible strode back into the kitchen and put his hand on the doorknob to leave. “Ain’t army, them ghosts,” he said. “Air force. Them pi lots we saw.”
“Those who seek to undermine the Church’s authority through their own communion shall be punished; and their sentence shall be death.”
—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 40
The image of the man in the hood—whom Doyle had called “the nightmare man”—hovered in front of her as she tried to sleep. He wasn’t present, physically, in her apartment, but all the same he was there. Haunting her. Taunting her. Every time she started to drift off he appeared, chasing her into her dream, startling her awake. Refusing to go away and give her peace, even with the soft light and sounds of the TV on low.
Bed hadn’t seemed very inviting. Not with the small pale walls of her bedroom closing in on her. The living room felt safer, as if the colored light from the stained-glass window somehow sanctified it, even though she knew there was no such thing.
Being on the couch didn’t help her sleep. But it did mean when the picks scratched faintly in the front door deadbolt she heard them immediately.
Her knife was—Shit! Where was her knife? Had she set it down in the bathroom when she washed Terrible’s shirt?
The lock clicked. Oh, fuck.
She slipped forward off the couch and scrambled across the floor, pushing herself to her feet as she went. She had razor blades in the bathroom, at least, if her knife wasn’t there. She had—
They burst into the room, throwing the door open so hard she heard plaster crack as the knob hit the wall. Only a muddled impression of shapes, big black shapes in hoods, made its way through her mind before they were on her, arms like steel around her waist, a hand painfully tight over her mouth and jaw while another hooded figure knelt and hugged her legs so she could not kick. She tried to anyway.
“Where is it?” The voice in her ear was an accentless hiss. “Where is it?”
Her head was pressed back against the figure’s shoulder. She