The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
to breathe.
“You fucked up, Chess?”
“Who, me? Noooo …” She shook her head, trying to look solemn and honest but unable to wipe the grin off her face.
“What’d you take? What you on?”
The look on his face stopped the giggles, anyway. Had she imagined that glimpse she’d caught of that other Terrible? Because he looked as forbidding now as if he’d been an Elder catching her wasted in a bar trying desperately not to pee herself laughing.
“Nothing, nothing, really. Just, um, a couple of Cepts, and a Valtruin I found, have you ever had one of those? It’s really … wow. I mean … What?”
His hand covered his face, wiping from forehead to chin. “I ain’t believe I’m doing this,” he said, and stepped back. “I’m gonna call somebody, dame I know. You can crash her place, aye?”
“What? Oh, no. Wait. This isn’t why, okay?” Laughter burbled up her throat again, embarrassed and slightly hysterical. She fought it back down. “It’s not that. You just … No, don’t look at me like that. Look like you did before. When you didn’t look like you.”
His head jerked back as if she’d slapped him. Oh, shit.
“No, Terrible, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you look different now, I mean … listen.”
She stood up and leaned toward him, putting her hand out to touch his chest, but she knew before her fingers brushed the fabric of his shirt that it was too late.
Terrible stared at her for a long moment, as impassive as a stone effigy, and pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Forget it. Just forget it, okay?” Escape was the only decent option at this point. If a hole had opened in the floor, she would have leapt into it headfirst just to avoid his gaze. He didn’t want her, he pitied her and she disgusted him, and now she’d made him mad, too. She tried to push past him but he caught her with one hand on her arm.
“Hold it. Lemme call, aye? You ain’t just leave like this.”
“I’m not. I have people I can call, too.”
“You ain’t go back to that Church tonight. Not after—”
“I am fully aware of what happened earlier.” The words felt forced out through a wad of cloth. Her face burned with shame. “I am not going back there. Let go of me.”
“Naw, look, I—”
She jerked her arm away, almost falling into the opposite wall. “Get your fucking hand off me!”
That did it. What ever hint of sympathy he still had for her—amazing he had any at all, and it made her feel even worse—disappeared. He shrugged and turned away. “Whatany you want.”
“Yeah, this is what I want!”
But he’d already disappeared back into the bar, leaving her in the hallway with a bunch of strangers and her own fierce regret.
“There is no sin, as the misguided and incorrect old religions would have people believe. There is crime, and there is punishment. There is right and wrong. But these are based on fact, and not belief.”
—The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 56
“Turn here.”
Doyle obeyed, easing the car around the corner. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Just a friend’s.”
“Is there some reason why you don’t want to tell me? Don’t you think you kind of owe it to me, after you dragged my ass out of bed and all the way down here?”
His voice was like the buzzing of a gnat in her ear. Why had she called him, again? She should have just walked. “You didn’t want to give me a ride, you should have said no.”
“And left you stranded alone in a bad part of town. I couldn’t do that.”
“Then don’t bitch about it.” Chess folded her arms tighter around herself and stared out the window. Rain blurred the red spots of traffic lights, oddly festive against the blackness of the empty street. She could almost imagine she was in a spaceship, or a boat, gliding smoothly across a calm glassy sea. All alone. Just the way she wanted to be.
She could almost imagine it, because Doyle wouldn’t stop talking. “I’m not some errand boy, you know. I don’t appreciate being treated like one.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
“No, what is your problem, Chessie? You practically leapt on me and dragged me into bed with you, then you treated me like a leper. You don’t return my calls, then you wake me up in the middle of the night and beg me to come down here.”
“You didn’t have to—”
“Don’t give me that, you sounded like you were about to burst into tears on the phone, what was I supposed to do? And you look like—Damn, seriously. Like you haven’t slept in—Wait a minute.” The car, already crawling along at a speed that would have made a sober Chess nervous about being carjacked, slowed down even more. “Have you seen him? The nightmare man?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I told you before.”
“You have to come with me to talk to the Grand Elder. We have to tell him what’s going on.”
“I’m not talking to anyone about anything.” Shit. How many people had he gone around discussing this with? If the Lamaru were after her because of what she knew, how much danger was Doyle in, Doyle who could not keep his mouth shut to save his life? Unless—
No. No, that wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have done it.
“You never talk to anyone about anything. I’ve been trying for weeks to get you to and you won’t. You won’t talk to me, you don’t talk to anyone else, you just hang around here in your precious ghetto with all these fucking crazy people who talk like they’ve never heard a proper word spoken in their lives, like that big guy who looks like somebody hit him with a brick full of stupid, and—”
“You’re such a fucking snob, Doyle, you know that?” The words tumbled from her mouth too fast, almost hurling themselves across the space between them. Doyle was a snob, an insufferable snob, and she couldn’t figure out why she hadn’t seen it before. That damn Valtruin was showing her a new side to everyone, wasn’t it? “You don’t know anything about him, he’s not stupid, and just because you can trace your ancestors and your—”
“Hey, at least I don’t make a habit of inviting diseased-looking homeless kids back to my place or spend all my time at that creepy market.”
Brain. Holy fuck, she’d forgotten about Brain, hadn’t she? She hadn’t even thought to look for him today, hadn’t even asked Terrible if he’d seen him.
Brain had left when Doyle showed up. Brain had been about to tell her something—to tell her what he’d seen at the airport—when Doyle arrived, at the spur of the moment, with breakfast. And he’d looked scared, hadn’t he? Trying to picture it in her mind now, she thought Brain’s eyes had been wide, his upper lip damp with sweat.
He’d seen Doyle at the airport. It had to be. Doyle had tattoos like hers. Doyle knew where she lived, knew she’d been in contact with the amulet—he’d picked the fucking worms out of her palm.
Doyle would have known she was investigating Ereshdiran, that she would visit the library after hours to do that research. No, he wasn’t trapped in the elevator, but she didn’t know that she’d trapped the man following her.
Had it been so airless