Downside Ghosts: Unholy Ghosts Part 12

Cold seeped through her jeans as she leaned back against the side panel of her car and crossed her arms. A window brightened in a house down the street, some early riser starting their day. She'd gotten here around three. It couldn't possibly be later than five now, but blue light streaked the horizon and turned the chimneys into blackened teeth against it.

What the h.e.l.l was taking him so long in there? It wasn't a mansion, for f.u.c.k's sake, it was a d.a.m.ned two-story Colonial.

Maybe the ghost ... no. Lex hadn't been frightened in the tunnel, not even a little bit, and although the thing in the house was worse, much worse, she still somehow doubted it would bother him.

Come to think of it, it didn't seem to have bothered any of the Mortons either. What she'd seen in Albert's bedroom didn't resemble the description Mrs. Morton had given in the slightest. No gray rags decorated his shapeless form, and he had definitely been male. Did more than one ghost haunt the place? But then why was she the only one who'd seen the figure in black?

And why hadn't he killed her? He couldn't be real. That was the only possible answer, the only thing that made sense. He wasn't real, and she was on so many drugs, her body didn't even know what it felt anymore. She rubbed her forehead, the bridge of her nose. She was losing it, oh s.h.i.+t she needed sleep, needed to give the speed a rest and let herself kick back down to normal.

Lex appeared, holding her bag in one fist and the Hand in the other. The look of disgust on his face would have been comical anywhere else.

"Don't fancy carrying this thing for work," he said, handing everything back to her. "Don't know how you do it."

"You get used to it." She tossed the bag into her car and set the Hand on the pa.s.senger seat. Normally she would blow out the candle as soon as she left a house, but given how late it was, she thought it would be better to get away first. People tended to wake up immediately from enchanted sleep, and she didn't want to take a chance that she'd be still visible when they did.

Lex stood for a minute, watching her. "So you head home now?"

"That's the plan."

"Ain't you gonna ask what your owes is?"

"I a.s.sume you'll tell me." She didn't particularly want to unzip her jeans and show him her tattoo here on this empty morning street, but she would. She did owe him. And all things considered, it was a pretty harmless request.

"Aye." He nodded his head, but his gaze didn't leave her face. "Thinking I got an idea."

She swallowed. "What?"

"Touching that Hand, you know, weren't pleasant. Kind of a big favor, aye?" He'd stepped closer to her, close enough for her to see each individual eyelash and to smell cigarettes on his breath. Her heart rate sped up.

One hand caught her neck, gently, with his thumb under her chin. The other slipped around to the small of her back. His body trapped her against her car, but there was no threat-or rather, no malice.

"Think I kiss you, tulip," he murmured. "How's that for an owes?"

Chess opened her mouth, unable to think of a reply but feeling certain she should make one. She didn't have a chance. His lips took hers with the utter confidence of a man who knows his kiss is welcome, and fear blossomed in her chest as she realized he was right.

Heat snaked through her body, into her arms and legs, into the fingers she gripped his shoulders with and slid along the back of his neck. His tongue insinuated itself into her mouth, finding hers, greeting it and leaving again as he pulled away from her.

"Guess like we all even now," he said. His car door opened with a faint snick, and he got in. "You call me, keep me on the update, aye?"

She hadn't quite gotten her mouth to form words again when he sped away up the brightening street.

Smoke curled into the sky as she turned the car off the highway onto her exit. Nothing surprising in that. Once a month or so someone's firecan turned over, or a junkie pa.s.sed out with a lit cigarette in whatever squat they inhabited at the time, and a deserted building became a destroyed one. The craggy, black-stained walls interspersed with whole buildings mutely testified to the poverty of Downside. No one would pay to have the wreckage removed. No one would pay to build new. And no one really mourned the dead.

Of course, they weren't supposed to, not in the way mourning had been done Before Truth. Bodies were incinerated, souls transported to the City and kept there. For a prohibitively large fee those left behind could still, with the aid of a Church Liaiser, communicate with them. All neat and tidy, all controlled in the same careful and precise way the Church had controlled everything since Haunted Week twenty-three years before. Almost exactly twenty-three years, in fact. The anniversary was just a few weeks past.

But Chess didn't have time to think of how busy she had been during the Festival, or of anything else. Her bones ached with tiredness. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton b.a.l.l.s. Her hand-among other parts-still throbbed faintly, and she craved sleep almost as much as another Cept.

Her ramshackle little car-on its last legs, but how was she supposed to afford a new one?-crawled through the deserted streets, past boarded windows and graffiti, finally sliding into a parking s.p.a.ce half a block from her building. Chess grabbed her bag and her knife and headed for home.

She crossed the entry hall that had once been the nave and headed up the stairs, only to stop halfway up the first flight. It wasn't unusual to find people in here trying to escape either rain or cold or people with weapons, but the boy sprawled across the landing was neither.

"Chess," he said, and that slightly high, nervous voice placed him in a way his narrow face had not. "I talk to you?"

"What are you doing here, Brain?"

"I talk to you?" he asked again, glancing around the stairwell as if he expected someone to leap out of the solid wall and attack him. His nervousness bothered her. If someone was after him she didn't want to be involved.

But neither could she tell him no and send him back out on the street. He was just a kid. d.a.m.n it.

"All right," she said, pus.h.i.+ng past him up the steps. "Come on."

It felt like she hadn't been home in weeks. She half expected to see a shroud of dust covering all the furniture. Or rather, more dust than there was already.

Brain closed the door behind him and stood, s.h.i.+fting his weight from foot to foot. In his small face his eyes looked huge, s.h.i.+ny as marbles.

"So what's up, Brain? What's the tale?"

"Hunchback. He ... He heared about t'other night. Guessing Terrible gave him the speech. He mad at me, Chess. Say he don't want me around no more ..." He blinked rapidly, his thin mouth twisting.

s.h.i.+t. "What did Terrible say to him?"

"Angry, methinks. Of cause Hunchback saying the tales about Chester being haunted and all. Hunchback blame me now. Say I not so brainy after all." His too-big black coat bunched up around his shoulders as he crossed his thin arms over his chest.

"Ain't got no other place, not now. Maybe I sleep here? Just a few hours, aye? Then I find a new place. I knows other people out there, somebody help me. Only none of them awake now."

Something about the way his eyes s.h.i.+fted as he spoke made Chess suspect this wasn't the entire truth. He'd had no reason to believe she'd be awake either, but he'd come here, and if what he'd said about Hunchback on Friday night was true, his squat was a good twenty blocks away. A long walk in the chilly, dangerous Downside predawn.

"You can stay for now," she said, setting her bag on the kitchen counter. "But just for now. You're not moving in, got it?"

"Aye, oh my thanks, Chess, my thanks, you ain't gonna even know I's-"

"No, I won't, because you're not going to be here long enough for me to notice. You can sleep on the couch. Don't touch anything, got it? Nothing."

He nodded.

"And don't tell anyone either. How did you get into the building?"

"Back door lock's loose."

"What do you mean, loose?"

"I only had to play with it a minute afore it gave. Loose."

"You broke in?"

"Was I ain't supposed to?"

She sighed. As if her money situation wasn't bad enough, now she'd have to pay to get the lock fixed and new keys made for everyone in the building. Leaving the back door unprotected was out of the question.

In fact ... she always carried spare nails, good strong iron ones so they had the additional benefit of warding spirits. That would at least put a temporary stick on it. It wasn't a fire-safe stick, but the chances of someone breaking into the building were a lot better than those of it catching fire. She didn't particularly rate the odds against either.

"No. You weren't supposed to, but it's done now. You can fix it before you go to sleep. I'll get you some nails and a hammer, you can close the door and jam the lock."

"Ain't suppose you got some eats? Only my belly getting tight. Can't remember last food I put in."

Chess ignored him and set a couple of nails on the counter. Their pointed tips reminded her she'd need to refill her lube syringe, so she grabbed the bottle of oil from under the sink, too.

"Chess? Got me a few dollars, I could help for some food ..."

"Take a look in the fridge. I don't think there's much."

There wasn't. Brain stared into the empty depths as though a four-course meal would magically appear. When one didn't his shoulders sagged. "I have a beer?"

She shrugged. "If you want one. Get me one, too." Hey, he wasn't her kid, and chances were he'd already done a lot more than have a beer or two. Kids younger than him OD'd every day.

He handed her one. "I ask you something?"

"Sure."

She filled the syringe and a spare and set them on the counter. Her bag was a jumble of magic items and mundane; she really ought to clean it out. No time like the present. For some reason she didn't feel like going into the living room and sitting down. Perhaps it was the unexpected presence of a child in her apartment, or maybe she was just afraid that if she did she'd fall asleep.

"You gonna try to clear them ghosts at Chester?"

"Why?"

Brain leaned against the opposite wall and studied the floor. "I just curious. About what you do. Good thing, right? Good magic clears the ghosts."

"In general, yes. The Church doesn't do black magic."

"But do you?"

"What is that supposed ... Brain? Do you know something about that airport?"

His eyes widened. "Don't know what you're meaning. I just curious, is all."

No. He'd started to say he'd been there before, hadn't he? Friday night with Terrible. He'd almost said he went there all the time.

"Did you see something out there, Brain? Did you see something happen?"

"No! No, I never been there cepting when you met me. I see nothing there." His fingers wrapped around his beer bottle were white.

"You can tell me, you know. If you saw something, it might be important. Really important, okay?" She paused. "I bet b.u.mp would be grateful if you saw something that helped him open that airport. Might even give you a job."

"Terrible hate me."

"Terrible doesn't hate you. And even if he did ... he'd like you if you helped. Wouldn't you like that? Working for b.u.mp? Having Terrible as a friend? You could tell Hunchback to f.u.c.k off right to his face and he wouldn't be able to touch you."

Some of the fear drained from Brain's face. "Thinking so?"

"I do. If you know something, Brain, you should tell me. It might be important. And I'll ... I'll keep you safe. You can stay here, as long as you need to."

"With you?" The hopeful expression on his face was like an arrow straight into her heart. How many times in her childhood had she dreamed of safety, of being somewhere no one would hurt her or of being so powerful no one could?

Now she was. Practically untouchable, thanks to her position with the Church and her new alliance with b.u.mp. No wonder he'd come to her.

"Yes, with me."

"True thing?"

"True thing, Brain."

He sighed, a long, shaky sigh that seemed to come from his toes and work its way up, and nodded.

Chess picked her beer up off the counter. "Okay, great. So let's go in the living room and sit down, and you can tell me all about it, okay? Everything you saw."

The knock at the door startled them both. Months went by and not a single person came to visit her. Now she had two, at the crack of freaking dawn. Great.

Doyle held up a white paper bag. "Thought you might like some breakfast."

Chapter Fifteen.

"It is not permitted for those outside the Church to inscribe power into their skins. Only purely decorative tattoos are acceptable."

-The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 420 He took her silence for a.s.sent, and brushed past her to come in. "I was up, and I figured you'd be up-you went to the Morton place last night, right?-so I figured, why not. Wanted to find out how that hand is doing, too. Have you been cleaning it?"

He set the bag on her kitchen counter and started unpacking it. Sodium fumes filled the air, along with the scent of damp sausage. It didn't make her remotely hungry.

Chess's first instinct was to send him away, but Brain had wanted something to eat. If Doyle was so eager to feed someone he could feed him. They'd get some food into the boy, then Doyle could go away and she could hear what Brain had to say. And if Doyle didn't like it, too bad. It was awfully presumptive of him to just show up here like that.

"How did you get in the building?"

"Somebody was leaving." He glanced at her. "It's okay, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but I just wish-"

"Chess?"

Brain stood in the middle of her living room, his cheeks paler than usual. "I gots to go, Chess, sorry, I forgot something I's supposed to do, aye?"

"But there's plenty of food, we can talk after-"