Unholy Ghosts dg-1

by Stacia Kane

  Nothing had ever sounded sweeter than the clattering of the pick as he dropped it onto the floor. Chess rested her head against him, breathing in the comforting scents of smoke and pomade and soap, wretched sobs erupting from her throat. She didn’t think she’d have the strength to lift her head. She knew she wouldn’t have the strength to stand.

  Terrible did. Disentangling himself gently from her grasping arms, he got up and opened her freezer. She watched through blurry eyes as he wrapped ice cubes in some paper towels and came back, pressing them into her hand. It felt wonderful. Adrenaline rushed through her body in a tidal wave, leaving her with the inexplicable desire to laugh. She did laugh, weakly, a hysterical giggle that sounded nothing like her, and tasted blood on her lips. Not her blood; her lips felt fine. His.

  “I’m sorry,” she began. “I didn’t mean to hurt—”

  “No problem.”

  “But…”

  “Just keep that ice on for a minute. An tell me how to break yon curse.”

  “Shit.” She gave another shaky laugh. “I actually forgot about it, can you believe?”

  “Aye.”

  “Okay.” Deep breath. Deep breath. “Bring it here.”

  He looked doubtful, but did, setting it a safe distance away from her. The burning cold of her palm made it impossible to tell if the bag affected her or not, but she didn’t think so.

  Following her directions, he used the picks to ease the bag open and empty it. Her eyes bulged. “That’s not just a curse. That’s…that’s a death curse.”

  He nodded. “Figured it were some heavy shit. What do I do?”

  For a minute she just sat, clenching the wad of soggy paper and ice in her hand. A dead insect. Black powder. Broken pins and a coffin nail. A ball of black wax that proved, when carefully scraped at, to contain a slip of paper with her name on it, and a long strand of hair, crinkled from the wax.

  Her hair. How the fuck did—right. Someone from the Church. Someone got hold of a piece of her hair. Harvested it. Plucked it from her shoulder, from her bathroom floor or her bed. Taken from Doyle’s pillow, perhaps, the morning after? The worst thing she’d ever done was let that slimeball put his sticky little hands on her.

  Well, obviously not the worst. That was a long fucking list. But it had been a stupid mistake, one she wouldn’t make again.

  Terrible’s lips twisted as the last items fell out. A fleck of copper that made her shudder and press her lips together, but didn’t surprise her. A smaller ball of tight, curly hair, and a wad of fabric stiff and brown with dried blood.

  “Hair from a corpse. Menstrual blood,” she said, answering his unspoken question. The blood could be hers, too, for all she knew, taken from the Church’s supply. At least Doyle hadn’t gotten hold of that during their night together.

  He shook his head. “Some nasty. What happen iffen we ain’t find this?”

  “I probably would have died. Eventually. Death curses take time to work. Weeks, maybe. If I spent a lot of time at home it’d be faster—it would have had more time to affect me—but I haven’t been around much lately.”

  He nodded. “So who done this, then? Any clues?”

  “Lots of clues. No answers. Something like that requires a lot of fucking power, more than I would think—whoever it was probably performed another sacrifice for it, but that body would have been discarded somewhere.” She moved her legs and tried to get up. That seemed to work, so she stood. The room spun onto its side for a second, but righted itself quickly enough.

  “Shit. Ain’t even know you can do that shit with magic, for real an all.”

  “It’s just energy,” she said. “Everything has energy, you know? It’s just a matter of how you use it, whether you have the ability to use it. The more powerful you are the more you can do.”

  “So them made this, they powerful.”

  She nodded. Fear slid down her raw throat; fear not just at what they were facing, but at the reminder that some of that power was her power, thanks to the stupid blood connection. A mishmash hybrid ghost comprised of sick and evil, made stronger by her own blood. And nothing to do but fight it.

  Speaking of which…“Want to wash that all down the sink and come lurk menacingly in front of a dull suburban family?”

  His face broke into a grin. “Lead the way.”

  They were too late. The Morton house was silent as death, the harsh light from the overhead bulbs leaching the color from the Mortons’ faces until they looked ethereal, the babes in the suburban wood forever sleeping.

  They were sleeping, the deep, untroubled sleep of the just, no matter that they were guilty. Their still bodies curled like newborn kittens on the couch and floor. Either they hadn’t made it to their beds or they’d become too afraid to sleep in them.

  From outside the house came only the sounds of crickets chirping, of wind rustling through young trees. Every house on the street was dark, revealing nothing as they’d walked past; was everyone asleep? Had the thief already begun stockpiling power?

  Chess raised a nervous hand to her forehead, careful not to smudge the sigil there but wanting to reassure herself. Terrible’s eyes rolled up as if he could check his that way, but outwardly he seemed completely unconcerned. She tried to tell herself that was because Terrible hadn’t endured having red-hot steel thrust into an open wound, but that wasn’t the case. Terrible also hadn’t dealt with the Dreamthief before. She didn’t think either of those facts truly accounted for his calm.

  Still his presence reassured her, loath as she was to admit it, and she made her way up the stairs with more purpose than she felt. About halfway up she stopped to examine the blank space she’d seen in the picture. It wasn’t as clear in the eye-crackingly glaring light, but it was still visible.

  The Morton bedroom hadn’t changed much either. Still just as tidy, but The Book of Truth was nowhere to be seen. They probably stuffed it under the bed.

  “What we hunting for?”

  “Anything. Pictures, especially. Spellbooks or books on entities. Charm bags. Letters.”

  He nodded. “Any worries on keeping this hidden?”

  “No. Let’s just be quick.”

  They worked without speaking for a while, with the sounds of drawers opening and hangers rattling the only sounds. Terrible was handier than she’d thought he would be; he could see on top of furniture and along the top shelf of the closet, and he could move furniture with ease.

  The charm bag hid between the headboard and the wall, just as Albert’s had done, and when she opened it she found the contents identical.

  “But they sleeping,” Terrible said. “Because they away from the charm, or because the charm ain’t work?”

  “I don’t think it works,” she said slowly. Shit, those extra Cepts might have helped her hand, but they sure weren’t helping her head. “Whoever put it together didn’t activate it, or they didn’t use enough power to do it properly. Amateurs.”

  “Like them.”

  “Yeah, like them. I wonder if…hmm. I wonder if they were given the ingredients and told what to do? Maybe someone wrote it down for them.”

  Terrible started hunting again, dumping drawers out onto the pale carpet and sifting through the contents, while Chess stared at the objects on the bed.

  It was possible someone was trying to kill the Mortons. Screw someone, she might as well say Goody Tremmell, using the Lamaru as her instrument. It was possible Goody Tremmell was trying to kill the Mortons, and she’d deliberately given them inadequate Dream safes to make them think they were protected. Possible she’d hatched this little plot at the Bankhead Spa with the Mortons, then figured she’d double-cross them.

  Goody Tremmell issued the payout checks. Goody Tremmell could easily make the check out to herself, or funnel the funds into a separate account, or whatever other scam she could think of.

  But why give them these safes at all, then? With materials that Chess’s reading had indicated would certainly hold some sway? She almost could
have believed they were powering Ereshdiran in some way, except the amulet that powered him was still in her bag and the soul that powered him—aside from hers—was due to be moved back to the airport later so she could break the spell.

  The Lamaru wouldn’t summon the thief from here, but if her theory was right—and it had to be, it just had to be—there had to be something here. Something to direct the entity, something to ward it, something to control it, something.

  Black salt was common enough. Most Banishing spells or controlling spells used it. The claw was more unusual, but as she’d noted when she found the safe in Albert’s room, it wasn’t completely out of place. Lots of magic systems used bird parts to signify dreams or sleep, and the pink witch’s ladder would bring good dreams, too, provided such intentions were tied into the knots. The fleck of copper and the single black hair. That had to be it, it had to be.

  The hair could be anyone’s. Not any of the Mortons’, but anyone else, any one of the Lamaru. Whoever had committed the murder that summoned Ereshdiran could in theory control him with that hair, at least to some degree.

  “Cool, Chess?”

  She jumped. “Shit! Sorry. I forgot you were here.”

  “Look like you a million miles away. Been starin at that stuff for five minutes, like you listening to it.”

  “No, I just—what?”

  “Look like you trying to make it talk.”

  Her knees went weak. “Trying to—of course. Of course! They’re trying to talk. They’re trying to keep tabs. Remember what Edsel said about copper conducting electricity, so it conducts magic, too?” Shit, she should have thought of it herself, would have if her head hadn’t been so fuzzy.

  “The amulet is copper. These bags have flecks of copper in them. They conduct together. There’s probably more bags, too, I bet everyone involved has one, so they can sense if the Dreamthief is active and gaining power, keep tabs on him, you know? The…the power sends out a signal, like a shiver, and if you’re sensitive to it you’ll feel it.”

  “So sayin I got a bag on me, and the Dreamthief is moving around by one of the other bags. I might know it?”

  “Exactly. And it…even that little bit of charged copper would draw him. Keep him under control, by limiting his movements—fuck, so would the damned bird claw, birds are psychopomps too, they conduct spirits to and from the City. So he can’t be brought here and then just disappear somewhere else in the country. He’s forced to stay in the area, it’s like one of those electric fence things.”

  One of those bits of copper had been in the death curse at her place. A calling card, or a summons?

  “Stay in the area, or stay nearby the copper bits? Ain’t they summoned him partly so he could haunt here? So they build their safe thing, to keep him from killing the Mortons, aye, but they put yon copper in to make sure he stays here and haunts em.”

  She could have kissed him. Might even have done it, if he hadn’t been all the way across the room and…well. He was right. It wasn’t so much a fence as a magnet. They’d bound him to certain places, certain spots. At least they’d made some attempt to minimize the risk, although only the truly arrogant could have thought it would actually work for long. But then they didn’t need it for long, did they? She had no idea when they planned to stage their breakout.

  So in leaving that piece of copper at her apartment, they’d tried to bind him there as well. To kill her. Maybe they thought she no longer had the amulet? Or maybe it was simply to strengthen the effect. Either way, she’d had enough.

  She thought of the Church, of all the employee cottages and the larger buildings where the Elders lived. Dozens of hiding places there. Hundreds. Had the Lamaru and Goody Tremmell already planted them, or were they hoping to get the Morton payout first?

  Her hand still throbbed as she started going through one of the file boxes Terrible had dragged out of the closet. All she wanted to do was get to Chester and get this done, but she needed to find out if she was right about Goody Tremmel or not, if money really was the only motive. The key ring and the tossed-out invoice were good, but she needed something better. Something she could give someone in authority, anything to prove to them and to herself that she hadn’t climbed quite as high on the crazy tree as she felt she had.

  It was so tiring, all of it. She was sick of this case, sick of these people, sick of it all, and her back ached under the strain. Bump, Terrible, Lex, the Mortons, the Lamaru, Doyle, Goody Tremmell…it was enough, it was too much. If her life and the Church’s very existence hadn’t been in danger she would have abandoned all of it and holed up in a Dream den for the next week.

  She kept digging through the files like an automaton, her body working in dependently of her mind. Bills, bills, bills. Receipts. She discarded them one by one. None of them contained anything that might possibly relate to Ereshdiran or Goody Tremmell or anything else.

  But then, Goody Tremmell would know where she would search, and when. Which made possible hiding places in the house few and far between. Chess hadn’t yet gotten authorization to go into the Mortons’ safe-deposit box.

  But then, Goody Tremmell wasn’t the most imaginative woman as a rule, right? It had been pretty careless—or arrogant—to just throw out that bill or toss it into her purse instead of shredding it, hadn’t it, even if the Goody usually took her trash to the incinerator herself? So perhaps the Mortons were just as dull.

  “Help me lift the mattress,” she said, turning around.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “It is always wise to have a fireproof safe, or perhaps a safe-deposit box located elsewhere, in which to store family photos and documents, particularly those of a genealogical nature. You never know when disaster might strike.”

  —Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase

  The envelope wasn’t under the mattress, not quite. It sat inside the box spring, tucked into a clumsily mended slice in the flowered fabric, but Chess’s breath caught just the same. She hadn’t expected it would be there. Most people destroyed incriminating documents, or at least stored them elsewhere. In the normal run of a case Chess might interview dozens of friends and acquaintances, would break into their homes later to hunt for anything they might have been given and told to hide. So for this to be here, still in the house…inside the box spring was a safe hiding spot, but not the safest.

  Unless they’d known it was all going wrong, had felt their energy being sucked away as the thief gained power, and had put it there in hopes it would be found by someone who could help them. Someone who would need to know who’d done this to them, so the culprit could be punished. Also possible.

  She shrugged. Wasn’t up to her why they’d chosen to incriminate themselves, only that they had. She picked up the envelope and straightened the pins on the flap.

  The contents were light. Only a few sheets of paper and two faded photographs. One of a woman—barely more than a girl, really—with a tired, mournful expression, holding a baby. The other was of a young man at a graduation—a Church graduation, wearing a blue brimmed hat and sash. Chess had a hat just like that in her apartment, still in its clear plastic box shoved to the back of her closet shelf.

  Oh, fuck. She’d been wrong, wrong and stupid. The awkward smile on the face staring back at her—how many times had she seen that smile, dismissed it? Dismissed him? Not a good Debunker, boring, not very smart…

  Looked like Randy Duncan was a lot smarter than she’d thought.

  Randy Duncan who, according to the birth certificate in the envelope, was Mrs. Morton’s illegitimate son. Now that Chess was looking at it she saw the resemblance, the very thing that had bothered her the first time she met Mrs. Morton.

  Randy never told her he’d found his birth mother, or anything about his life at all. Chess knew he was adopted, but all of this—the birth certificate, the bill from a private investigations firm showing how much money the Mortons had invested in finding him—he’d never mentioned. Not once. Of course…He wouldn’t
have. Not when he figured he could use the Church to recoup their money for them and finally get them that bigger house.

  The Mortons would report a haunting. Randy would investigate and claim it was a real one. The Church would pay, and everyone would be happy.

  Until she stepped in and took the case. Now at least she knew whose name had been next in the case queue.

  Was this really what all of this was about? Why the fuck had he brought the Lamaru in on this, what the hell was he thinking? Was he really such a failure he’d needed to turn to them to summon a ghost, instead of doing it himself? They learned basic Summoning in their second year, for fuck’s sake. She could have summoned a ghost right there, if she needed to—it would have been illegal, but she could do it—so why couldn’t Randy? Why had he needed to go to the Lamaru, why summon an entity like Ereshdiran instead of a basic ghost?

  That just didn’t make sense, didn’t fit, even as the rest of her questions were answered. Her instinct at her first visit, that the Mortons were faking, had been right on. They had been—before. But somehow during that visit, they’d managed to get Ereshdiran here—Ereshdiran, jacked high on her own power—and all hell had broken loose, with her in the center of it. And all because Randy wanted to help his family. Poor, stupid, naïve Randy—Randy who’d gotten mixed up somehow with the Lamaru.

  No wonder Mrs. Morton hadn’t destroyed these, hadn’t even been able to bear storing them elsewhere. It must have been awful, giving up a baby, searching for years…Chess couldn’t imagine it, any more than she could imagine what it would be like to have someone spend that much money and time just to be a part of her life.