The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane
her shirt over her head, arranged it over her hips, and grabbed the phone. Time to call Elder Griffin, she guessed, waiting while the phone rang, hoping he would pick up his line himself.
He didn’t. Randy Duncan did.
“Chessie, how are you?”
Her brow wrinkled. Why was he answering in Griffin’s office? “Fine, Randy, what’s up.”
“I’ve been talking to Elder Griffin. About … about some of the strange stuff going on lately.”
“Strange?”
Pause. “You haven’t heard?”
“No.”
“Somebody broke into the building last night. Well, they didn’t break in, but they managed to get down to the platform and pull the fuses. The elevator, the train, everything was shut down. It even looked like they’d worked the City doors, tried to get in there. And I thought I … never mind.”
“No, what? You thought you what?”
“Have you seen anything odd lately? I mean … like a ghost, but a strong one?”
She bit her lip. “No, why?”
“I just, I heard about it, then I … Look, have you seen Doyle lately?”
“Why?” It wasn’t original, but it would do.
“I think something’s going on. With Doyle. I thought I saw him last night, around ten, running across the lawn. I think maybe somebody’s after him, Chessie. Somebody who wants to hurt him, maybe hurt all of us. I’m worried about him, you know? He seems really nervous lately. And I thought you might know why.”
“Sorry, Randy. I don’t really talk to Doyle very much, you know.”
She heard him breathing over the line for a second before he spoke. “Right. Okay, well, listen. If you do, or if you see him, could you tell him I’m looking for him? But don’t tell him why. I just want to help him, I mean, if we would all just be a little closer to one another, really band together, we could accomplish so much more. And I told Elder Griffin everything I know and he agrees.”
Typical Randy. Next he’d be telling her love made the world go round. What a fucking sap he was.
She rung off and sat down on the couch. So Randy had seen the thief, too. He hadn’t said so in as many words but that had to be what he meant. And he’d seen Doyle right around the time of her attack. Awfully damning.
It should have been difficult to believe Doyle would do such a thing. It wasn’t. Doyle thought he was above everyone else, smarter and better-looking and more skilled. It was that arrogance that had attracted her to begin with, wasn’t it? The unconscious knowledge that he didn’t really give a shit about anyone but himself, wouldn’t put any pressure on her? Was it so strange to think someone so aggressively self-centered might get involved with Lamaru?
If her life had taught her anything, it was that you never really knew what people had going on beneath the surface. People were shit. The only difference between them and animals was people felt the need to hide it.
That was why she hadn’t quite bought it when Doyle showed up trying to sweet-talk her. It was one thing to fall into bed with someone because you wanted to. It was another thing to be duped into it with bullshit.
Oh, Doyle … She shook her head. It was so much better to know you were nothing of importance. She might have done a lot of things she was ashamed of but at least she hadn’t ever gotten confused about that.
“That no god exists is Fact, which is Truth. That the soul exists is also Fact and Truth. That the soul must be protected, that it can be used by the unscrupulous, is a most terrible Fact, and the Church condemns those who would seek to do this.”
—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 154
Not quite an hour later, she followed Terrible across the flat, brown scrub grass at the edge of a long row of dilapidated storage units and down the block. The steady beat of a drum came from the far end of the row; a lot of bands rented places like these to practice, especially in Downside where neighbors with noise complaints used fists and knives rather than phones to make sure things quieted down.
Terrible’s broad shoulders blocked her view of the inside of the storage space, but the chilly air flowed around him and blasted her before she reached the doorway.
Cold indeed. Bump had apparently had this place modified. Dull steel lined the walls, broken only by the industrial mesh faces of heavy freezing units. Terrible had said “chiller” but she hadn’t thought he meant this. Her thin cardigan was no match for it. Might have been nice if he’d warned her, but then he looked completely undisturbed by it himself. His bare arms didn’t even roughen with goose bumps as he staked himself a spot off to the left.
Bump stood in the middle of the room, wrapped in a heavy fur coat, with a black silk top hat covering his fuzzy head and unnecessary sunglasses hiding his pale face. He looked like the Abominable Snowpimp.
“Well, well. Miss Chess gave up to come here after it all. Why ain’t my fuckin airport runnin, ladybird? Thought we had ourselves a fuckin deal, yay?”
The words made her head hurt. Or maybe it was the cold. All she knew was by the time Bump finished speaking he sounded like he was talking through a tin can and her temples throbbed.
“Takes time, Bump,” she managed.
“Bump ain’t got time. Got shipments. Got them pills waitin, got lashers need goin in my fuckin pockets. I ain’t get my fuckin pills, you ain’t get yon pills. You dig?”
Without waiting for an answer he stepped to the side, sweeping his arm to the right with the air of a man showing off his new car.
Slipknot’s body lay on a metal table, covered to the chest with a nubbly brown blanket that looked like it had been wrapped around car parts then wrung out in swamp water before being placed on his ruined skin.
“Bump thinkin maybe you take another fuckin lookie here, maybe you see all what you needs to see. What you say? Maybe you miss you a clue, it bein dark last time you fuckin see. Leastaways you give Bump some knowledge what thing we after, yay?”
“He’s a—like a hybrid ghost,” she managed to say. Wanted to say, because her feet felt stuck to the floor and if she talked she could delay the moment when she had to look at the body.
“What you meaning, hybrid? Bits of other fuckin spooks and all? How the fuck that happen?”
Chess glanced back, saw Terrible open his mouth. Fine. Let him explain it; she didn’t want to. Felt like trying to would make her even sicker than she already was.
Slipknot’s heart gave another horrid squelching beat when she stepped closer. The condition of his body had deteriorated further since she last saw him, or perhaps it was simply that without the blazing sunset gilding his body she saw him as he truly was.
Ghastly white skin like candle wax, covered with a fine sheen of what looked like oil but was probably some sort of secretion she didn’t even want to think about. The cold had slowed the pro cess of decay, but hadn’t stopped it the way it would if he hadn’t been powering a spell; the magic keeping his soul trapped warmed his corpse enough to keep him from freezing.
Tears stung her eyes. She wanted to say something, do something to soothe him, but nothing came to mind. There was nothing. His soul was still there, but it was beyond communication, beyond any help she could give, at least until she managed to set him free. Guilt made her chest ache, a dim, faraway pain she couldn’t quite feel. She’d only taken a couple of pills, no more than usual, why did she feel so disconnected …?
Her vision wavered. She lifted a shaky