by Gary Jonas
A woman in a flapper dress appeared out of nowhere between Brand and me. My heart jolted. It was Esther, a ghost who had befriended the other Jonathan. Maybe more than befriended. What the hell was she doing here?
Then I looked again. It wasn’t Esther, but another flapper ghost. She looked pissed.
“A girl can’t get any shut-eye around here, with all this ruckus.” She gestured to the crowd. Through her translucent body, I could see Brand’s confused face. I must have looked equally confused to him. From my understanding, usually the only way to see a ghost was to touch something that belonged to it, unless the ghost had enough juice to manifest a semi-physical body. The only thing Brand and I both had contact with was the floor, so I looked down.
We stood on a long, red-brown stain covering the floorboards, trailing from behind the curtain and fading out about six feet away. It looked like something had leaked as it was dragged across the floor. The last remains of the flapper girl.
I smiled sweetly at Brand. “Afraid of a little ghost?”
He flipped me off.
I turned and nudged Amanda, who watched us with utter incomprehension. I pointed with my chin toward the stage. We edged around the crowd, trying not to draw attention.
It wasn’t difficult. The Kin who weren’t riveted to the speaker were eyeing each other, different factions sizing up the enemy. Old bloodstains dappled the floor, and each time we stepped on one, a ghost appeared, sometimes where we were, sometimes corralled against a wall or corner. They all looked as pissed-off as the flapper.
We reached the edge of the stage, climbed a short flight of steps and ducked behind more rotted curtains.
Behind them, Jiggs paced back and forth, waiting for the opening act to end. He saw us and stopped.
“Kess and Bliss?” Amanda asked.
Jiggs looked miserable. “We couldn’t find our little girl. I’m hoping to either find someone tonight who can take me to her, or that maybe New Mother will show up. I don’t know.” He looked at me.
“I’ve got you covered.”
He smiled, sadness still filling his eyes. “Kess told me she’s pregnant. That’s why she took out the no-kill button.”
Amanda touched Jiggs’ arm. “I’m glad she told you. Congratulations.”
“Kess is in hiding now. Gotta protect her and the little one.”
He scratched at the bump under his chin. “I’m worried that Bliss will fully develop the taste while New Mother has her. I’m worried about Kess and the baby.” Jiggs looked around. “Last time I was in here, Marcus was up on stage and I was bodily thrown out, just trying to feed my daughter. Now look where I am.”
I nodded. “Look where you are.”
“Do you think they’ll listen to me? I’m a handsome specimen of Kin, granted, but I’m no Marcus.” He’d put on his best suit and practically marinated in cologne to compensate. “I need more proof that New Mother has the taste.”
“You’ve got it,” Amanda said. “I can set up a replay of Marcus and New Mother devouring Lee. Hi def, surround sound, 3-D. Any wizard can verify that it’s a recording and not an illusion.”
“The verification doesn’t matter much. Not many Kin trust wizards right now.”
“No, but they trust you. You’ve got the truth on your side. That beats a pretty face,” Amanda said.
Jiggs wiped his brow. “If they don’t believe it, I don’t know what to tell them.”
“They all want what you want, Jiggs,” I said. “You told me yourself – a chance to provide for your family and raise your kids in peace. It’s up to all of you to stop fighting each other, recognize the real enemy and get your kids back.”
“But what do I say?”
“Just think of Bliss. The words will come easy after that.”
Jiggs surprised me with a bear hug. “Thank you for everything. I knew it was the right thing to retain you.”
I let out an exasperated breath. “You should have retained Amanda. She’s done more for you than I have.”
“The day’s not over, Kelly.” Jiggs let me out of the hug, but kept his hands on my forearms. “If anything happens, you’ll look after Kess and Bliss and the baby, right?”
“Only if you’ll make sure Jessica gets home safe in the event you make it and I don’t.” Which I thought was more likely.
Jiggs nodded.
“The point’s moot, though,” I said. “When this is over, we’re all going to celebrate at the dojo because I have champagne flutes and strings of lights.”
Jiggs looked at me funny.
“Yeah,” I said. “I know. Now get out there and kick some ass. Your people are waiting.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Amanda and I flanked Jiggs, looking for trouble. When we appeared on stage, the crowd erupted both in cheers and boos. Jiggs almost didn’t get a chance to talk before the in-fighting started.
“Please, Kin, please stop! This isn’t us! We need to recognize the real enemy.” His words went unheard over the shouts and protests. My head pounded abruptly, and I realized Amanda was casting a spell. I stepped back to get out of the range of magic.
“I’m sorry,” she mouthed to me. She turned up the volume on Jiggs’ voice until it thundered over the crowd.
“KIN!” The room went deadly silent. Protesters let go of their fellow Kin who held makeshift signs reading, Jiggs for New Father. Everyone turned to face the stage. I realized how hardwired they were to listen to the loudest voice in the room. Listen and usually obey. I wondered if it was nature or nurture. Probably impossible to tell at this point.
Once he had the crowd’s attention, Jiggs hesitated. All those orange-tinted eyes, bare or hidden behind contacts, wanted something from him. Then I think Jiggs took my advice, thought of Bliss, took a deep breath, and went on.
“Kin. My Kin.” Amanda’s magic kept his voice amplified. “So many promises have been made to you from where I’m standing right now. Promises that have all been broken in one way or another, by men and women who would rather use you as stepping stones to their own seats of power than to see to it that you – that we – all have the things we need to live our lives in peace and prosperity.”
“Outcast! You’re not one of us!” Someone yelled from the back. He went on to yell something else, but Amanda turned his volume down. Jiggs immediately held up his hand with his palm facing her.
“Stop. Please. We all have a voice here.”
Amanda dropped the muffling spell.
Jiggs scratched at the bump under his chin. “It’s true, we have our differences. Some of us work in sanitation, others in hospitals, some in landfills, graveyards. Some even work for DGI. Anyplace where we can make a living for our families, provide for our children. And that is what we all have in common. Those of us who struggle with the taste and those who live without that torture, it doesn’t matter – we all want the same things, my Kin. To raise our children in safety and peace.
“But those things have been taken from us, along with our kids, in return for empty promises, lies, and a few crumbs from the big table, just to sweeten the deal. We have no say in what’s happening to them, choosing to believe instead that we have given them up for their own safety. But I’m here to tell you that terrible, terrible things are happening to them. And we have to stop it.”
“You’re the one who’s lying!”
“Shut up and let him talk! I want my son back!”
The Kin threatened to devolve into fighting again. Amanda and I scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who might be carrying a weapon.
Jiggs held up his hand for silence.
“I want my daughter back, too. Her name is—” Jiggs choked up. “Her name is Bliss, and she was forcefully taken from my wife and me by New Mother herself.”
Jiggs turned to Amanda. She nodded and began chanting. The stage darkened to night, as figures appeared and Amanda and Jiggs seemed to fade away. The scene from the other night played out in detail, down to every last blade of grass. When Marcus to
ok his first bite out of Lee, the crowd gasped as one.
The spell ended, and there was silence from the crowd, then a low murmuring, like a beehive coming to life after winter. Individual voices became distinct.
“Did you see? New Mother just stole that girl.”
“She has the taste.”
“She has our children.”
“She’ll give them the taste so they can feed her.”
“I don’t believe any of it.”
“It’s a trick. A dirty DGI trick.”
“No, it’s real.”
“I want my son back.”
“I want my daughters back.”
“Where is she? Where is she keeping our children?”
A tremor ran through the crowd. Now the ghouls who supported Jiggs turned to the ones who didn’t and shouted at them for answers. Jiggs called for order, attempting to stem the rising tide of panic.
“Stop fighting each other or the ones at the top win! If you leave here with one thought in your head, let it be that one!”
And they did. They stopped fighting. For one blessed moment, the Kin stood as one family united, ready to take back their lives and their fates.
Jiggs beamed. “I am so proud of us all right now. We can do this. Together.”
Amanda backed up to where I stood, her face full of concern. “Kelly, there are ghouls in here with different no-kill buttons.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t install them. And the buttons look bigger than mine.”
“Point them out.”
“Two are moving to the back of the room together, see?”
I did. Brand still stood next to the curtain. Alerted to our behavior, his eyes scanned the crowd, then looked back at me. I held up two fingers, turned them upside down and wiggled them like a pair of walking legs, then pointed at the suspect ghouls. Brand caught my meaning and soon spotted the pair. He drew his gun.
“There’s another one. And another. Shit!” Amanda pulled up magic while I drew my katana.
The audience grew quieter as they watched us in confusion. Jiggs turned.
“Amanda, Kelly, what—?”
The first explosion answered his question.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When Amanda added her wards to the doors, ghouls faithful to Liz were already in the ballroom among us. We expected that. Disguised as outcasts, some ghouls had been outfitted with oversized no-kill buttons. But these weren’t meant to deter a ghoul from attacking the living – they were made for maximum damage. We should have expected that.
In the second before the peace was shattered, before the carnage began, Brand stopped and turned as if something tugged at him. It had to be the ghost. He looked past her to a third ghoul only a few feet away and closing in. Then the déjà vu hit me, and I knew one of my other selves had watched her Brand die, and that I’d never see mine alive again.
I watched in shock as the ghoul lifted his own arm to his mouth and bit down. Then I saw Brand drop as a blinding flash took him from my sight. A fissure of fear split my soul. Not for me, but for Brand. For everything we’d lost before we even had it.
The explosion reverberated through the ballroom and sent Kin crashing to the floor. Some tried to pick up their fallen comrades, while others looked around in stunned confusion.
Amanda chanted a spell raising a protective shield over the stage. She and Jiggs would be safe.
I didn’t want to be safe. I launched off the stage into the crowd, katana raised over my head and ready to kill. I was in a blind, adrenaline-fueled rage.
The first ghoul I encountered opened his jaws wide to take a bite out of me. He had an oversized no-kill button under his chin. I split his head open before his jaws could snap shut.
I pushed through the crowd. A ghoul screamed, “I can’t open a shadow!”
Kin ran every which way. Some rushed the stage, attempting to get as far away from the explosion as they could. Others ran toward it, knowing the only doors out were back there.
Another explosion rocked the room. Plaster fell from the ceiling like hellish snow.
I staggered, then regained my balance and pushed toward the last place I saw Brand. Panicked Kin slammed into me on their way to the stage. A ghoul tried to bite a fellow Kin. I didn’t have room to swing my katana so I stabbed him in the back of the head. He turned and I stabbed him again, this time in the throat. He stood there supported by the crush of ghouls around us.
Another ghoul grabbed hold of an outcast – a true one – and raised her hand to his mouth. I grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back, freeing her hand. I slid my sword across his throat, and pushed past him.
I found myself short of breath.
I pushed through mobs of panicked Kin who shoved every which way, toward whatever escape they could find.
But there was no escape. The room had been completely sealed from the outside, like a shell. No Kin could open a shadow.
“Amanda!” I shouted. “Open the wards!”
“My wards keep people out, not in! It’s Liz!”
The only exit was the ballroom doors. As the Kin realized this, they stampeded toward the doors and I crawled up trying to crowd-surf my way across the room. I vaulted onto the shoulders of a ghoul and looked to where I’d last seen Brand, trying to catch a glimpse of him.
Or what was left of him.
Another explosion went off behind me, in the vicinity of the stage. It sounded strangely muffled. Still on the Kin’s shoulders, I spun toward the blast. It looked like a bomber had attempted to get to Jiggs and Amanda, but she had detonated him inside a shield to protect everyone around him. The force field wavered, but still protected them, for now.
I jumped off the Kin’s shoulders and went down, sliding on the body parts of others probably killed in the first blast. I’d made it to the back of the room.
Three big ghouls stood blocking the ballroom doors. They snapped at the others. I saw the oversized kill-buttons under their chins. I’d have to take out the bomber ghouls, and would do so with every ounce of joy my heart could muster.
But first, I looked toward the curtain where I’d last seen Brand. He wasn’t there, but his blood was, splattered across the rotted cloth and pooling on the floor. It covered the older stain. I wondered if Brand would be the newest ghost in the room.
They’d taken Jessica from me. They’d killed Brand in front of me. Amanda was next, as soon as her magic gave out. Bliss was gone. I remembered an oath I’d made to Jiggs when we met in my office, about what I would do if I found out any ghoul had taken or hurt Jessica. I raised my katana, ready to kill every last ghoul in the room.
I was an assassin bred to kill, about to die, and everyone in the room would die with me. I wanted to slaughter them all with a song in my heart and go to my grave satisfied.
A pale flicker of light by the curtain caught the corner of my eye. Another bomb going off, I thought, and lunged toward it, reflexively swinging my katana to take out the ghoul responsible.
The blade passed harmlessly through a ghost’s raised arm. I recognized the flapper girl from earlier, though she was much more transparent. She’d been waving at me, trying to get my attention. The ghost pointed down at a dark shape concealed in the shadows behind the curtain. She was hovering over it protectively.
Brand. Unconscious, horribly maimed, but alive.
And healing quickly, I saw. Through torn clothing, I watched muscle on his arm regrow and knit itself back to the bone as skin spread over it.
I looked into the ghost’s face and realized she was the reason Brand was alive. He didn’t just fall before the blast. She had pushed him down, using all the incorporeal strength she could muster. Then she pulled him back from the blast site and hid him behind the curtain, where she’d died so long ago. It had to cost her a lot of power. She was so transparent now, I could barely make out her shape.
“Thanks. I owe you.”
“You’re darned tootin’ you owe me, China doll.
” Her voice was an echo from a seashell.
“Why’d you save him?”
“I’m dead, but I ain’t a jerk. Somebody’s gotta be decent around here for a change. Kinda like your fella up on the stage was tryin’ to be.”
Brand groaned as his body fought to repair itself.
“I’ll keep my peepers on him while you clean up this debacle.” The ghost smiled at me and made a shooing gesture. “Looked like you needed something to fight for’s all.”
“Thanks again.” I returned to the fight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The three ghouls blocking the ballroom doors should have been easy to take out. They were lined up like fence pickets, just waiting for me to come along and drag my sword across their throats like a kid with a stick. Speed-wise, I thought I could do it before they had a chance to grab any hostages and bite down.
I was still fast, but there were too many normal ghouls in the way for me to make an easy strike. I calculated the risk, and came up short. Half the room would die if I wasn’t fast enough.
The bomber ghouls’ chins bulged with magical explosives, the size of goiters. They smiled, fanged and gruesome, tongues sticking out, ready to bite down. Amanda’s spell held a failsafe that prevented a ghoul’s head from exploding if it accidentally bit its tongue. These buttons obviously didn’t include that nicety.
The ballroom smelled of blood and ash. The cries of the dying mingled with the sobs of loved ones they left behind. After realizing they couldn’t escape, the trapped crowd of Kin huddled together, waiting for the next explosion to tear them apart. The fight seemed to go out of them as shock settled in. Jiggs’ speech came to nothing in the face of an actual threat.
Two of the three ghouls guarding the doors worked their way to either side of the gathered Kin – a pair of wardens penning in their prisoners.