Downside Ghosts: Unholy Ghosts Part 25

Doyle spun away from her, his feet slapping the wet cement as he started to run. Terrible's pace didn't change. The tire iron flew from his hand, spinning sideways like a Frisbee. Chess barely had time to gasp before it caught Doyle in the legs, knocking him to the ground.

His scream was m.u.f.fled in the mist and drowned out by the clank of the tire iron skipping across the cement, but Chess felt it reverberate through her entire body just the same. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Still Terrible did not speed up, did not even glance at her as he pa.s.sed, moving as purposefully and inexorably as a river cutting through mud.

Doyle had made it halfway to a stand when Terrible reached him, knocking him back to the pavement with a swift, neat kick to the jaw.

They were at the edge of the lot. Five feet away it ended in soft gra.s.s, and Doyle, flat on his back like a turtle, flipped over and tried to crawl toward it. He barely advanced an inch before Terrible picked him up and threw him-threw him-onto the gra.s.s.

"Wait, wait," Doyle said, scrambling to his feet and holding up his muddy hands. "I'll file a complaint, I'll swear a warrant, I'll-"

He doubled over as Terrible's fist slammed into his stomach. Next came an uppercut, flinging him back to the wet gra.s.s.

Terrible yanked him up by the hair. Doyle made a feeble attempt to hit back, his arm swinging wide and short.

Another punch, and another. Blood flew everywhere, pouring from Doyle's nose and mouth, spattering his s.h.i.+rt and the gra.s.s. He fell to his knees, his shoulders slumped, almost unrecognizable save the thick, s.h.i.+ny hair on his head. Even that didn't identify him, she thought, not when from behind he and Randy Duncan could practically have been twins.

Speaking of Randy ... Chess glanced in the direction of his cottage. That was all she needed, was for him to be watching. By morning everyone in the Church would know that Chess and some guy had come along and beaten Doyle up; Randy was incapable of keeping a secret.

But then, most people who wanted to be liked as badly as he did were.

Terrible let go of Doyle, who dropped like a corpse. Only the weak moan pouring from his mouth told Chess he was still alive.

The faint snick of Terrible's switchblade finally galvanized her into speech. "Terrible, no!"

He didn't even look at her. Instead he knelt beside Doyle, turned him over, and pressed the blade to his throat.

"You thinking on touching her again?" he asked, low and impersonal, as if he were asking what Doyle thought of the weather or if he could direct him to the nearest gas station.

Doyle shook his head. Chess, unable to look at his fear-white eyes, glanced away and saw he'd wet himself.

"That's good. You touch her again, I kill you. Dig?"

Doyle managed to nod.

"Chess? You got any asks for him?"

"I-Is Elder Griffin in on it, Doyle?" It wasn't the question she meant to ask, but it was the first one that came out. Probably the most important, too. She had better sense than she should, staring at Doyle's ruined face.

"What?" His voice sounded thick.

"Is Elder Griffin in on it? Is he with you?" When Doyle still stared dumbly at her, she crossed her arms over her chest impatiently. "The Lamaru. The Dreamthief. Goody Tremmell. Is Elder Griffin one of you? Did he do the ritual with you?"

"What-the Lamaru? What ritual?"

Terrible pressed the knife harder. A drop of blood appeared at the point. "Ain't got time for games. Give her the answer."

"I can't! I don't know what you mean!"

Terrible lifted his fist, ready to slam it into Doyle's face again, but Chess reached out and grabbed it. "Doyle ... when did you see the Dreamthief?"

"I told you. I didn't know what I was seeing until Bruce told me about it. I saw him in my bedroom once, and in a couple of Dreams. Why are you asking me this again? Why are you talking about the Lamaru?"

Chess and Terrible exchanged looks. Doyle could have been lying. He wasn't bad at it. But would he really be willing to die to protect Goody Tremmell-and Mrs. Morton?

"Please, I swear I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know anything about the Lamaru or rituals or anything." Tears rolled down the sides of Doyle's face. "Please, Chess, I'm sorry, I'll never come near you again, but I don't know! Please don't let him hit me again."

"How well do you know Goody Tremmell?"

"What?"

"You talk to her a lot. How well do you know her?"

Doyle coughed. A little blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. "I don't, I mean, not well. We don't talk talk. We just ... chat. I'm nice to her, that's all."

"Have you ever seen her with any other Debunkers?"

"Well, we all talk to her, don't we? When she a.s.signs cases and stuff." Doyle's brows wrinkled. He winced and touched his forehead with his fingertips. "What are you getting at?"

"But does she seem to have a particular friends.h.i.+p with anyone else?"

Both he and Terrible looked up at her. She shrugged, knowing her face was coloring. "I don't live on grounds, remember?"

"I can't think of anyone. She doesn't seem to ... Wait a minute. Is this something to do with the nightmare man?"

"Never mind, Doyle."

"You don't suspect Goody Tremmell's behind that, do you? Goody Tremmell mixed up with the Lamaru? s.h.i.+t, Chessie, you're even crazier than I thought if you really think-"

She opened her mouth to say something snotty back, but Terrible got there first. He grabbed Doyle's left hand and, with one quick savage twist, snapped Doyle's pinky finger. Doyle screamed. Terrible didn't even blink.

"You need ought else, Chess? Or we done here?"

They needed to get out of there. Lex was on his way, and she wasn't eager to have him face-to-face with Terrible. She needed to get a few more things from Edsel so she could do the ritual to free Slipknot's soul that night-Slipknot's and her own, she remembered with an ugly twist in her gut-and figure out then what to do about Chester's ghosts. Chances were good the Mortons were home, too, and she wanted to have another chat with them. Get this over with. She wanted this case closed like she wanted her Cepts.

Speaking of which. Her palms were starting to sweat.

"Yes, we're done," she said. "At least here."

A smile broke over Edsel's thin face when he saw her coming. "Hi, baby. What you needing? Hey, Terrible."

"Ed, you know any other uses for copper? Anything aside from the usual stuff? I've got something else to show you."

"Hope it ain't like that amulet. Gave me the creeps, that thing did."

"Yeah, well, your buddy Tyson gave me more than that, so we're even."

"Ain't my buddy, just a customer." Edsel took a contemplative drag off his long pipe and leaned back. "He ain't scared you too much, hoping?"

"No, I'm fine. Take a look at this." She pulled the photo of the Dream safe out of her bag and handed it to him. "You ever seen anything like that before?"

If he wondered why she didn't simply look it up in the Church library, he didn't show it. Instead he examined the photo, lifting his dark gla.s.ses to get a better look. "Look like a Dream safe, but an odd one. Least with that copper and the hair. Like it made to ward a specific ent.i.ty, aye?"

"That's what I thought. Not just a Dream safe, but a protection."

"Awfully small piece, though. Don't know as it's even big enough to work."

Chess thought for a minute, chewing her lip. "Could it be sympathetic? I mean, if it's related to that amulet I showed you, have you ever heard of that, using the same thing that called a spirit to ward it?"

"Remind it of what's holding it, meaning?"

She nodded.

"Aye, could be, could be. Gang I knew once, back in the when, used to do experiments with metals. Like alchemy, only not trying to turn things into gold, just trying to see what vibes everything had. Some metals ain't magnetic, but they can work magnetic-sending energy away, like a shock."

"And copper is electrically conductive. Which makes it magically conductive."

Edsel nodded. "Somebody build a thing like this, they know what they doing."

"That's what I thought." She pulled out her notepad. "There's a few things I need, okay?"

Chapter Thirty.

"The Debunker protects, first and foremost. He or she protects the Church from fraud and falsehood, yes; but above all the Debunker protects humanity. From spirits, from their own natures, and from others who seek to do them harm."

-Careers in the Church: A Guide for Teens, by Praxis Turpin Cool wind blew across her face as she knelt before the lock. Pretty basic, really. Shouldn't take her more than a minute or so to pick.

What was going to be more difficult were the wards and spells. An itch that had nothing to do with drugs crawled across her skin, made her jaw clench like she'd just chewed a couple of Cepts.

She slipped one of the smallest lockpicks from its case and stuck it into the ridged slot in the bottom of the lock. The mere fact that it was a key lock and not a combination one worried her. Someone from the Church would know how easily those locks could be picked. They must have a lot of confidence in their spells.

"Okay," she said, glancing back over her shoulder while her gloved fingers worked the pick. Terrible stood with his back to her, watching the empty parking lot. At the sound of her voice he turned his head just enough to acknowledge her.

The lock clicked. Chess snaked the shackle out of the metal hasp in the door. "I'm not sure what they've got protecting this place, so ... just give me a minute."

Another short nod.

If the last few days had taught her anything, it was to be prepared, and the trip to Edsel's had certainly helped. From her bag she pulled sandalwood, benzoin, and two gla.s.s jars wrapped in bubble wrap. The larger jar contained an infusion of herbs; the other a mixture of inert salt and her own menstrual blood, which all women in the Church were required to save and share with the men.

Chess would have saved it anyway; the blood was too powerful-potent for both positive and negative spells-to simply discard. She saved her hair, too, the tangles from her brush or the ends after a trim, and burned it to keep anyone else from using it in magic against her. Hair wasn't like blood; it couldn't be depersonalized and used as a generic spell ingredient. If someone was doing magic with her hair, they were doing it with her as a specific target, and although it was possible they had positive results in mind, it was far more likely they were trying to harm her. She'd learned early in life to make "cautious" her default setting.

All the same she hoped Terrible wouldn't ask what it was. It wasn't simply the personal nature of the blood powder; it was magic itself, the complex system of energy and meaning, the way her own magic differed subtly from that of the next Church employee, and theirs from the next after. One of the most important parts of training was developing one's own style, finding what energies worked best. It became as personal as a fingerprint in time, identifiable if one knew how to read it; too bad the group nature of the Lamaru magic made it impossible to trace to any one person.

Last she grabbed a half-full bottle of water, in which rested three iron rings, and three stubby black candles.

The late-afternoon sun felt good on her back, but had warmed the pavement a little too much. She sat anyway, wincing slightly as her tender skin scorched through her jeans, and pulled off her boots. "Terrible, I need you to switch your shoes."

"What?"

"Put your shoes on the wrong feet."

His broken, scarred face didn't do "nonplussed" very well, but she caught definite hints of it.

"Footprints are powerful. Magically powerful, I mean, the left one is. If someone's going to hex you, it's one of the first things they'll go for. So if you switch your shoes-"

"Confuses em, aye?" He nodded. "Okay."

Even just the short moment of shared laughter when they both looked at each other's feet, now in the wrong shoes as if they were toddlers who'd insisted on dressing themselves, eased a little of the tension in her chest. Her sense that she'd been correct to come out here, correct to connect this place to the Lamaru-of course, what other explanation could there be, for the way Goody Tremmell had tried to bury that invoice-grew with every pa.s.sing moment. Unfortunately so did her sense of foreboding.

"You wouldn't happen to have a little broom or something in your car, would you? A brush of some kind? I remembered all this other stuff ... Do you have one?"

"Lemme see." He popped the trunk. Chess wiggled her toes in her now-uncomfortable boots and watched his head disappear into the blackness of the Chevelle's trunk.

He popped up a minute or two later with a small paintbrush, only an inch and a half wide or so, but good enough, and watched as she used it to thoroughly dust the rough cement lip at the bottom of the door. Her legs ached by the time she was done; she was crouched as far away as she could be, holding her breath so as not to accidentally inhale any dust, if it was there.

"Basic warding," she said, seeing his expression. "Sprinkle goofer dust or any kind of hexing powder, and people pick it up on their shoes."

"d.a.m.n."

"Yeah, I know. Give me your hands."

Wearing gloves helped; she didn't have to feel his bare flesh against hers. All the same, the memory of those hands elsewhere on her body, holding her up, buried in her hair ... She swallowed and focused on moving the black chalk over his palms and the back of his hands, made herself casually avoid meeting his eyes when she reached up to draw another sigil on his forehead. He didn't move during this process, didn't even blink, focusing his stare somewhere over her shoulder.

Businesslike, she sketched the same patterns on her own hands and forehead, and bent to light the candles. "Saratah saratah ... bes.h.i.+koth bes.h.i.+koth ..." She dumped the herbs and the blood powder in her little firedish and set them alight. "Power to power, these powers bind. Let this power, my power, become pure."

Energy, invisible but tangible, swirled around her; the energy of the earth and air, the inherent energy of all living things, which the Church taught her to channel. She waved her hand through the smoke, making sure to cover the entire door and Terrible in the fumes. Her skin warmed, but not from whatever hexes had been placed on the door. Her spell was working.

One last thing, a Church-designed anti-hex. Goody Tremmell would surely have used a Church ward to protect her s.p.a.ce.

Chess spun counterclockwise, closing her eyes, feeling the energy vortex rising from her toes up into the sky. Her mouth opened; it would be so easy now, not to say the words, to keep letting the power take her, to ride it like any other high. To keep spinning, and spinning, until she didn't even exist anymore, until she exploded.

But the words came anyway. "Hrentata vasdaru belarium!"

Her spell flew forward at the words. She felt it invade the s.p.a.ce behind the door, felt it unlock the hex ward inside the unit. Dizzy, she stumbled sideways, her feet in the wrong shoes unable to find purchase. Terrible caught her then jerked his hands away. She didn't blame him, wouldn't have even if it weren't for what had happened the night before. She could only imagine what it felt like to touch her just then, while her hair still stood on end. A shock for a normal person, but for someone she suspected carried a bit of power himself, not enough to work for the Church but enough to convey some sensitivity ... it must have been like trying to grab the business end of a stun gun.

Without waiting for the dizziness to pa.s.s, she nodded at him and grabbed the handle jutting from low on the right side of the door. Terrible grabbed the one on the left, and together they rolled the door up.

A blast of malevolence hit her in the face, like the foul breath of an evil giant. Her eyes stung, her throat locked up, her legs shook. It only lasted a few seconds, but when it was done Chess was gasping, hanging on to the brick dividing wall between the storage unit and the one beside it.

No sooner had her breath returned than it left again. Not because of power or magic, but because she saw what waited inside the unit.

Stacks and stacks of junk, boxes full of magic implements and ragged parchments. Against the back wall stood a rack covered with jars and bottles of blood like carbuncles on the rusty shelves. There were herbs, and bones, and rough sketches of every kind of magic symbol she'd ever seen, and some she hadn't.