City of Ghosts

Especially when it was her fault.

“I don’t see how she could have made it past the detectors,” Dana said, echoing something Chess herself had wondered earlier but without providing the answer Chess had come up with.

She gave it now. “She didn’t. She wasn’t Hosting when we busted her.”

“But that isn’t—”

“I was there, Dana.” Chess paused, gave the other woman a small smile in an attempt to make her words less harsh. She’d never had a problem with Dana and wasn’t interested in starting one. “I mean, I know you were there too, but I felt her energy. She stole mine, remember? So I know she wasn’t Hosting. There was nothing inside that woman but Dumpster cag-mag and that awful tea.”

“Cag-mag?” Elder Griffin looked puzzled. Shit. She shouldn’t have said that. He knew she lived in Downside, of course, but didn’t really know what that meant. Nobody did. And that was the way she liked it.

“It’s a—It just means, scraps of whatever meat’s about to go off. Like you get in the butcher’s Dumpster.”

The Elder’s eyebrows rose; his shoulders relaxed. Like she’d said something that pleased him.

Which made no sense at all. Why would that make him happy?

“So you have managed to learn something about the area,” he said. “You’re not so isolated from your neighbors there as I had assumed.”

For the first time in a while, Chess felt almost like laughing. Yeah, she’d found a way to fit in with the rest of Downside. That was one way to look at it.

“Yes,” she said finally, dragging her tired mind back to Elder Griffin. Shit. Only ten at night and she was exhausted. She had more speed in her bag; hopefully they’d be done with this soon and she could go bump up.

Or, fuck that. She could go sleep. Drop an Oozer, drift away…Maybe she’d even get lucky and not dream. Her dreams didn’t tend to be cheerful these days. But then they never really had been.

Elder Griffin smiled, the kind of smile that made Chess wonder even more what exactly he was up to, but he didn’t speak. Muffled voices came through the door, the scuffle of feet on the shiny wide floor of the hall outside the office.

Dana shivered. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Elder Murray…It doesn’t seem real.”

Elder Griffin’s face rearranged itself into more sympathetic lines, but when he spoke, Chess heard the steel beneath his bland tone. It made her own eyes widen. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak to anyone like that—at least, not anyone still living. “Remember, Dana, Elder Murray will still be with us in spirit. There is no reason to mourn.”

“Of course not.” Dana straightened in her seat, pushed her light hair back from her face. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just shocked. I liked Elder Murray.”

“I liked him as well. And for that reason, Dana, and because I know the Truth, I rejoice for Elder Murray. The peace he’s found in the City, the quiet…” Elder Griffin shook his head. “I envy him.”

With difficulty Chess suppressed a shudder. The City—ugh. What Elder Griffin thought was peace, she thought was emptiness. What he thought was quiet, she thought was horrifying loneliness, with no pills or anything to make it bearable.

“We’ll set the ceremony for”—he flipped the pages in the daily calendar sitting on the shiny wide desktop before him—“Saturday. Yes. Five days from now is Saturday—‘tis so late I forgot for a moment what day it was. Saturday, Dana, you shall have your chance to see Elder Murray’s happiness for yourself.”

Dana nodded, her expression cleared. Meanwhile Chess felt as if someone had shoved a blender into her gut. With everything else, the deaths and the wondering where that damned wolf had come from and—okay, and her stupid babyish whining about her personal life, what a fucking joke—she’d forgotten about the Dedication ceremony. About what the death of an Elder would entail.

“Cesaria? Are you well?”

Chess nodded, opened her eyes wide and met Elder Griffin’s blue ones with as much innocence as she could muster. “Fine, sir. Fine. Just a little tired.”

“You do look tired.”

She didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say? Thanks?

“How is your leg, my dear? Do you feel well enough to come back to work officially?”

“Yes!” The word came out a little too loudly, a little too eagerly. She couldn’t help it. Yes, she wanted to get back to work. Wanted to have something to do besides sitting around her apartment being mocked by the empty walls, by the empty spot next to her on the sagging couch. Wanted something to do aside from avoiding having Lex inside, because she knew if she invited him into her apartment he would expect to be allowed into her body as well, and she didn’t think she could face that conversation.

Wasn’t even sure she wanted to have it. Why? Why give up a friend and perfectly serviceable bed partner for one who couldn’t be avoiding her more obviously if he’d hung up signs around her neighborhood telling her to stay the hell away from him?

Elder Griffin didn’t seem to think she was overeager, though. “Excellent. Excellent. Wait here, please.”

Chess and Dana exchanged mystified looks as he unfolded himself from behind his desk and crossed the floor. In the pale yellowish glow from the gentle lamps, his stockinged calves flashed, dried blood spatters from earlier forming lacy patterns the color of dead leaves against the white. He left the room and closed the high dark wooden door behind him with a quiet click.

What was he doing? She would have thought he was going to get a new case file for her, but he wouldn’t assign her a case right in front of Dana, not on a whim like that. She had no idea where she even stood in the case queue; two weeks of hospitalization and another two weeks of enforced rest had taken her pretty far out of the game.

“So, back to work,” Dana said, in the weary, flat tone of someone talking simply because she thought it would be rude not to talk.

Luckily for Chess, she didn’t have the same concerns, or the same discomfort. She just nodded, pressed her palms together, and glanced around the room. Glanced at Dana, taking in the other woman’s blond curls and expensive rings. Well, why not? Most Debunkers spent their money on actual things, rather than just buying anything they could swallow, smoke, or snort.

Unlike Chess.

Speaking of which…Three hours now since she’d taken the Panda and Cepts. She had plenty of time, a few more hours, but it never hurt to be aware.

The door opened, and Elder Griffin came back in, followed by Elder Thompson and a red-haired woman Chess had never seen before.

Not that it mattered, because the woman was clearly a Church employee. Her bare arms were decorated like Chess’s, like Dana’s, with one striking exception: the black snake, coiled up the length of her arm from wrist to shoulder, each scale perfectly delineated in a silvery magical ink that gave off a faint shimmer in the dim light.

A member of the Black Squad. Church law enforcement—Church government, as opposed to Debunkers like Chess and Dana, who were regular Church employees.

Her blood turned to ice. Had the woman come for her—had they found out? She’d been so careful all this time, all these years, never letting anyone get too close, never letting anyone see her take so much as a fucking aspirin, and now—and in front of Dana, of all people? They were busting her in front of—No. No. She was being stupid, acting like some panicky moron, and she needed to stop it.

Preferably right that second, because the red-haired woman was looking at her rather oddly. Examining her, as if she could see the guilt. Not good. Chess tightened her grip on her own fingers to calm herself, and held the redhead’s gaze. The woman wanted to play power games, wanted to have some dumbass little staredown? Fine. Her loss.

The woman smiled; then, very deliberately, she broke the contact and looked down at the floor. Ohhhkay. What did that mean?

“Dana,” Elder Griffin said, breaking into whatever the hell was happening, “perhaps you should go back to your cabin. Get some rest.”

Dana opened her mouth, then stopped. Elder Griffin’s dismissal hadn’t been rude, but it had been a dismissal just the same, and Dana wasn’t stupid. She left in a flurry of muttered goodbyes.

Chess was alone with two Elders and a woman who probably had the power to throw her into prison just for looking at her funny, and the silence in the room pounded into her skull like a speedfreak with a hammer.

Elder Griffin sat down. “Cesaria, may I present Lauren Abrams? She just arrived from New York this morning.”

The woman—Lauren—held out one thin pale hand. Her tattoos went all the way down the back of it, like a fingerless glove; at the end of those bare fingers her nails were short like a man’s, and shiny. “Nice to meet you, Cesaria. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

An electric hum ran up Chess’s arm when she shook Lauren’s hand. She ignored it. Ignored too the way Lauren clearly wanted her to ask what she’d heard, or make some kind of joke. It wasn’t her job to jump through hoops, and she didn’t like this one bit.

She’d done some work with the Black Squad before, a few little side jobs, but this was different. This time she wasn’t being brought into a group and given a quick briefing; she wasn’t meeting a gang of lower Squad members. Lauren’s power, her air of command, told Chess more clearly than anything else could have that this woman was a higher-up. Very high. In fact…

“Abrams,” she said. “Any relation to the Grand Elder?”

Lauren gave a light, soft laugh. “He’s my father.”

If Chess hadn’t already been sitting down she might have stumbled. No fucking way. They were sending her on a case—there had to be a case here, either that or they were busting her, and she somehow suspected that if that’s what was going on they would have done it already—with the fucking Grand Elder’s daughter?

“Oh,” she said finally, since everyone was looking at her as if they expected her to respond. “Okay.”

Lauren sat down in Dana’s empty chair, crossed her legs with a whisper of nylon. “I bet you’re wondering what’s going on.”

Chess shrugged.

“We have…an offer for you. An investigation we think you could really help us with. Interested?”

“What is it?”

Lauren opened her mouth, but before she could speak Elder Thompson cleared his throat and leaned forward, his heavy brows drawn together in a solid line. His eyebrows fascinated Chess; they seemed to grow wilder and thicker every time she saw him, while the hair on his head grew lighter and thinner, like some sort of migration process. Someday she imagined the brows would simply fall over his eyes in a wiry curtain.

Lauren glanced at him, nodded, glanced back at Chess. “It’s a very…sensitive case.”

“All my cases are sensitive.” What the hell was this? Why were they looking at her like they expected her to explode? “I don’t gossip, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s not it. It’s just—I’m not explaining this very well.” Lauren looked helplessly at Elder Griffin, biting her lipstick-coated lower lip.

Great. One of those women: tough and authoritative when it suited her, acting like a simpering poor-me baby when it didn’t. So they wanted to bring her in on a case with the Grand Elder’s pampered little daughter, who would expect Chess to do all the work while she batted her eyelashes and took all the credit? Ugh. No, thank you.

But then…how much money was in it? She fully expected she’d have to start paying for her own supplies again, once the bag she had ran out and she had to tell Lex she wasn’t going to sleep with him anymore. So it wasn’t like extra money wouldn’t come in handy. The payout on her last case would have been huge, but she’d been forced to give it up to save her own skin, so…she was broke. As usual.

“Cesaria, the problem isn’t that we do not trust you,” Elder Griffin said. “It’s that the sensitivity of this case, the subject of it, makes explaining a little difficult.”

Elder Thompson folded his arms. “We can’t tell you what it’s about. Not until you agree to take it.”

“What? I don’t—”

“And it will require a Binding Oath.”

Her mouth fell open. A Binding Oath? They had to be kidding. No. No way. They wanted her to take a case so serious it required an oath of secrecy—a form of magical control over her actions—and they weren’t even going to tell her what it was about first? Not even a hint?

Lex would surely front her. If he was going to stop giving her what she needed for free, she knew he would at least front her until she got a real case, one where she’d get a bonus. It wouldn’t be long, it never—

“The case comes with a bonus before you begin, simply for agreeing and accepting the Bind,” Elder Griffin said. “Thirty thousand dollars. You will be given a thousand dollars a week on top of your salary for the duration of the case—we anticipate a resolution within two weeks, however—and an additional fifty thousand when it ends.”

Her protest died in her throat. Eighty-two thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars minimum. That was a fuck of a lot of money.

That would buy her a fuck of a lot of oblivion. And the way things were going these days, oblivion was even more important than usual.

And she still needed a new car.

“I assume,” she said, pushing the words out through a throat gone gummy, “that it’s a dangerous case?”

Lauren Abrams rearranged her legs with another nylon hiss; Elder Thompson and Elder Griffin both watched her like they thought she might get up and run screaming from the room. None of them replied.

She’d just watched two people die. Her hand throbbed where she’d sliced it. Her thigh ached. She wanted a cigarette, and she wanted her pills. And she wanted eighty thousand dollars.

No matter what the case was.

“I’ll do it,” she said, and hoped it would be worth it.

Chapter Three

And we honor those first Elders above all others, for they were the Founders of our Church and thus the saviors of mankind.

—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1256

Elder Griffin stood up. Light from the candles on the floor spilled across his face, cast jutting shadows over one eye. For a moment he looked alien, almost scary; then he turned farther to his left and was himself again.

Chess’s heart pounded in her chest. It’s just a bit of magic, she told herself. Just an oath, no different from the ones she’d taken when she started her training, certainly no different from the ones she’d taken when she completed that training and became a full Church employee at the age of twenty-one.

It didn’t work, though. This was different, and she knew it. And she didn’t like it. Nor did she like the energy rising in the room, sly and intrusive, or the peculiar smile on Lauren Abrams’s face as she watched the Elders set up the altar.

Chess stood in the center of the room with her hands clasped behind her. Dried blood had settled into the fabric of her plain ceremonial dress, making her stomach protest a little when she thought about it. She didn’t worry about the executioner and Elder Murray; what few blood- or fluid-borne diseases had survived the Church’s strict quarantine and eradication policies, Church employees had been vaccinated against.

But Madame Lupita…disease aside, who the hell knew what sort of bacterial stew had simmered in her plaque-clotted veins? Realistically, Chess knew the risk was gone now that the blood had dried, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to get the damned dress off as fast as she possibly could.

But of course she didn’t have much choice. And the sooner she took the damned Oath, the sooner she’d get a nice fat check. She could slip it in the night deposit on her way home.

Movement to her left brought her back into the room, back into the ceremony. The Elders had started laying out a salt line, murmuring words of power as they moved solemnly clockwise. Lauren stood against the wall, outside the circle, watching them with her arms folded and her ankles crossed. Irritation prickled Chess’s skin.

It wasn’t that it was so unusual for her to dislike people right off the bat. That was pretty much the way she felt about everyone. But she wasn’t usually forced to work with people she disliked right off the bat. She felt…intruded upon.

But then, nobody was forcing her to take the case. No, not forcing. Bribing. And she was taking the bribe, because she needed the money.

Behind the Elders the salt line erupted into shining deep purple, hissing faintly as it rose in thick lines and cast colored light across everything. Their white stockings glowed, their faces glowed; Elder Griffin’s pale hair surrounded his head in a corona of blazing violet that made Chess’s eyes sting.

Not just her eyes, either. The energy buzzed and twirled around her, battered her skin. She was caught in it, a vortex of power swirling around her, catching her in it and twisting her inside out. She didn’t know where to look, what to focus on; she couldn’t bear to close her eyes.

So she looked down, focused on the dusty, bloodspecked toes of her once-shiny black heels. It wasn’t a good compromise. Her head swam; her feet looked vertiginously far away. But it was better than watching the Elders move—setting up their bowls and setting fire to their herbs—inside the sparkling, viciously bright dome.

The only good thing was that Lauren Abrams could no longer see her. The circle would block her view. It was some relief.

Smoke filled the circle, thick, choking smoke the same purple as the circle, the same color as the fire burning in a large firedish opposite her. She didn’t want to breathe it in. Breathing it in was part of the Oath, part of the Binding. Even she didn’t know what some of those herbs were, but when they entered her lungs they would enter her bloodstream, locking every cell of her body into the magical oath she was about to take.

Powerful binding herbs, too. The calamus herbs, vetiver, and sweet flag, combined with the deep, throbbing energy of licorice root. She could feel them spreading through her, finding every empty place, drawing her own magic and mixing with it. She was naked, open to them; they swept through her without caring, without feeling, winding from her feet to her head and forcing her to bend to their power.

This wasn’t like the oaths she’d taken when she was initiated, not like the ones when she began her training. This was…this was heavy, dark magic, trapping her, squeezing her with so much pressure that she thought she might implode. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before. This wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right…

Dimly she heard the Elders speaking, saw vague movement as they added more herbs to the glowing purple fire in the north end of the circle. Myrrh and cedar, bergamot and dragon’s blood. Her vision blurred. Shapes formed in the smoke, open mouths, staring eyes. Someone moaned. She wasn’t sure if it was her.

Elder Thompson started chanting, low and slow, his voice thick with smoke and power and the spine-tingling thrust of command. She moved without intending to, bound by him. Bound by his commands. Somewhere deep down she fought against it.

She didn’t want to do this anymore. She’d changed her mind. Her heart slammed around in her chest like a pinball caught between the paddles, trying frantically to escape. Her mind fought against the Elder, against what he wanted her to do, but she was caught. Trapped. Her hands rose at his words, turned so her pale wrists, veins blue-purple beneath the thin skin, faced the top of the dome.

Elder Griffin’s hand on her arm. Desperately she swam through the smoke before her eyes, fought to see him. Fought the spell that slid hard hands up her legs, curled over her shoulders, caressed her stomach and breasts and stroked her neck. Everywhere.

Phantom hands, unfamiliar hands, all over her body. No. No, she’d sworn she wouldn’t ever—wouldn’t lie there, she wasn’t a child anymore, she didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to let them do this, she could fight, she was powerful. She was a witch, a fucking Church witch; she was grown up and she had the power now. She did not have to let them—not anymore—she didn’t want this anymore, no…

“Stop.” Her voice didn’t work; her dry lips ached around the word. She couldn’t do this, didn’t want to be controlled anymore, couldn’t give up her power. Couldn’t give up her autonomy. Her independence. The strength she’d fought so fucking hard for, the right to keep her own thoughts and her own body, not to be forced to let other people use her like a fucking toy, to ignore her until they took her out of her box to play with her some more and cast her aside when they’d had their fun.

“Stop!” she tried again, but all that came out was a gurgle. Panic overtook her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel her hands or feet. Elder Thompson’s voice grew louder, thundering in her ears; his power forced itself into her, over her. Fighting with her to keep her still.

Her feet moved, like wading through half-dried cement. She had to get out. Had to. Fuck the money. It wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth this, wasn’t worth being trapped by heavy black hands and forced to give up everything she’d fought all her life to gain.

Elder Thompson was shouting now. His words slammed into her, beat her like fists. She pushed harder, aiming for the thick purple wall. Get out, she had to get out, had to—

Another hand on her, squeezing her arm. She tried to swing, to bat him away, but he caught her. “Cesaria. Cesaria. Cesaria.”

Elder Griffin. Elder Griffin speaking to her, his voice quiet but still somehow audible over Elder Thompson’s roar. He repeated her name again and again, and the tiny piece of her able to focus grabbed him, grabbed the sound of her name in his voice, and clung to it.

“Cesaria. I am here with you, Cesaria. Give in. Let go and have trust in me. You know me, Cesaria. I know you. You will not be hurt here, no one will hurt you. I promise it will end when you relax, and you will come to no harm. I promise you—let go and it will end, stop fighting it, no one will hurt you. No one will hurt you, Cesaria, I promise…”

She didn’t want to. Her head flew back and forth, denying it, refusing.

He kept speaking, the same soft litany over and over. Tears ran down her cheeks. She could feel them, taste them, salty and flavored with calamus and cayenne from the herbs invading her body.

Somewhere—she had no idea how long it took, how many times he repeated her name or urged her to give in and let Elder Thompson take control of her—she relaxed. Elder Griffin would not let anything happen to her. She knew he wouldn’t. She trusted him as much as she trusted anyone, trusted him more than anyone except—She trusted him, and he wouldn’t let her get hurt, and gradually she felt the energy around her change, heard Elder Thompson’s voice quiet. With a sigh she reached into herself; with a sigh she gave in to her trust.

The energy changed. Instantly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Not scary anymore, not dangerous. She was in this. She was resigned to it. She’d agreed to it and she was doing it, and suddenly she didn’t care. In fact…

It filled her, sent her floating. Better than her pills. Better than a knob of Dream. Every cell in her body was pure power, pure thick sweetness, light and full of joy. She had no choices to make, no battles to fight. No memories to deal with, no shame, no misery. She wasn’t herself anymore. She was someone else, someone who belonged to someone, and that someone would make all the decisions and let her float…

It switched again, and she slammed back into herself. Her eyes opened.

The light had changed. Still purple, still glowing, but colored with shooting stars of black and red, streaking across the bright screen of energy. Her blood raced through her veins, through her brain, faster and faster, her tattoos screamed and tingled and writhed on her skin, searing through muscle and bone, setting off alarms in her soul.