City of Ghosts (19 page)

Yeah. Less than ten minutes, and the Lamaru were still fighting whoever it was they were fighting.

Wait a minute. Vanhelm and the woman he’d been with, the blonde. She’d said if Vanhelm entered Downside, Maguinness would find him, hadn’t she?

Looked like she’d been right. Now that she knew what she was looking for she saw, at the very edge of the circle of illumination from the single streetlight in the center of the slaughterhouse parking lot, the fluorescent glow of Maguinness’s assistant’s tall purple hairdo.

Maguinness’s men were there. Not only were they there, she realized as one of them lit something and tossed it into the blazing building that they’d set the fire. She and Lauren had walked right into an ambush intended for someone else.

“Cesaria, are you done?”

Oh, right. “Almost.”

But she wasn’t. The bars moved a little, and left welts and bits of rust in her palms, but they refused to give. Exhaustion dragged at her limbs and clouded her mind. Too hot in that room. She was being cooked.

One last try. Her palms burned, it took every bit of will she had not to let go. Her feet lifted off Lauren’s back and braced against the wall. She leaned back, putting all of her weight behind it, all the strength she had.

The bars shifted, so fast Chess lost her balance and let go, landing on her side on the hot floor. Pain jolted through her upper arm, her shoulder and hip, but it didn’t matter. The bars had come loose. They would get out.

And would walk right into a Lamaru/whatever-he-was battle at the bottom of the fire escape. Shit. She didn’t see any possible way they could get through that unharmed or unnoticed; the Lamaru would be looking to kill them because they’d caught on to the Lamaru plot, if not just on general principles, and the Maguinness crowd—well, they’d probably want to kill her just for fun. They needed help.

So, while Lauren finished pulling the bars off the window and smashed the glass, Chess grabbed her phone and dialed the one person whose help she really wanted—the one person she thought could actually help—and the one person she knew wanted to talk to her less than anyone else.

But he would come. He wouldn’t let her die, no matter how angry he was. Right? He wouldn’t just let her
die
.

“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and dial again. Facts are Truth.”

What? That couldn’t be right. Okay. Don’t panic.

She scrolled though old texts until she found one from him, hit reply, and quickly tapped out a help-I’m-in-the-slaughterhouse-and-need-you-here-it’s-on-fire message. He probably knew about the fire—well, no “probably” about it, of course he knew—and she’d be willing to bet he was in the area. Bump had a pipe room not far away, and they wouldn’t chance the fire spreading to it.

“Your message could not be delivered.”

“Cesaria! Come on, we need to get out!”

Chess barely heard. The bright screen of the phone hurt her eyes, mocked her. He’d changed his number. He hated her so much that he didn’t even want her to have his number anymore. Even with them working on this together.

Fingers like the raven’s talons earlier gripped her arm and yanked her off the floor. “Cesaria, come on!”

Semi-clean Downside air swirled through the now open window to caress her face. She almost fell down again, it felt so fucking good. Not good enough to heal the ache in her chest—nothing could feel good enough to heal that, she didn’t think—but good. Her lungs practically danced with relief when she sucked it in. She grabbed the rough edge of the window frame and hoisted herself up.

Leaning too far out gave her vertigo; in her mind she saw ghostly hands poised right behind her—hell, she saw
Lauren
right behind her—ready to give her that one solid shove that would end all her problems. In her mind she saw herself stepping over the edge of the window. He’d changed his number, it didn’t make a difference, all her stupid hopes about getting him to forgive her, to talk to her again … She could just let go. Just fall, and make the pain in her chest stop.

Then she saw the City, and gripped the window frame harder. Nope. Not today. The fire escape waited for her, just barely out of reach.

One more deep breath, cool and sweet despite still being tinged with smoke. Her muscles tensed, her eyes narrowed, and she jumped.

Landing on the rickety steel made a horrible clattering sound. Fuck! They had to have heard that. No matter. Keep going. She was out, she’d gotten out, and if she’d done that she could do almost anything.

The steep steps shook and groaned beneath her, rusted railings bit her palms slick with sweat.

Carefully she started down. From this vantage point on the side of the building she saw how close the place was to complete destruction. Smoke and fire poured out of every window, climbed the outside walls. They didn’t have much time.

Lauren came down after her. The ladder gave a mighty creak, the balcony above broke free of the wall and hung crazily over them. Shit. Go faster. Faster.

Her hands slipped on the rails, her fingers stiff and aching. With every step down it got harder to let go; her legs ached, her head went light.

The ladder boiled and shifted beneath them. Down, and down; she’d been doing this forever, all her life had been spent on this fire escape, with orange light taunting them and the sky a hazy dull gray above them.

Flames danced along the wall and found her right leg; her jeans caught fire. Without meaning to, without thinking, she screamed. Her right hand left the rail, batted at the fire, and she fell.

Chapter Nineteen

Don’t forget the Church. They’re always willing to help, and should be the first place you turn when there’s trouble, whether it’s ghosts or fights with your beloved husband.

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

Death waited at the bottom, she knew it. She’d been up too high, there was no way she could survive the fall—

Her back slammed into the pavement. She was dead. She must be dead. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt that bad, her leg screamed but she was—

She wasn’t breathing
.

For one long, agonizing moment she stared at the sky while her lungs refused to inflate. Flames poured from the window above her, bits of ash dancing on the wind. She saw it in slow motion, the fire escape black, Lauren’s body a denim spider inching down the ladder at the end. She could not breathe. She could not breathe, this was it … Her psychopomp would come for her, she waited for it, watched the nightbirds circling overhead and wondered which one it was, hoped the horrible ravens hadn’t escaped from the building but knew they might, if they didn’t burn up …

Something gave in her chest, a gear finally snapped into place. Her lungs inflated. Her eyes stung, her mouth opened.

She rolled over, thinking she was going to be sick, but nothing happened. Nothing but the world coming back into focus, the feel of her blood racing through her body and the agony of her burned and cut leg and sore hands and her throat raw from smoke and screams.

Lauren hit the pavement beside her—on her feet, a much more graceful landing than Chess had managed.

Oh, shit. She was lying there ruminating while beside her a burning building was about to collapse and the parking lot was full of Lamaru.

She didn’t need Lauren’s rough hand to get her up. She did need it to hold her steady; for a moment the world veered crazily around her.

She was moving before it righted itself, a hesitant, stumbling run that jarred her knees. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the crowd breaking up, turning toward her and Lauren.

Her ears were ringing. At first she thought it was from her fall, but as hands brushed her arms she realized it wasn’t ringing, it was sirens, and her body flooded with relief as red lights swirled against the surrounding buildings and caught Lauren in their strobe effect.

The fire trucks had arrived.

The Lamaru—and Maguinness’s people—shouted and ran around her, ignoring her now in their haste to escape. Firemen were Church employees, and they never traveled into Downside alone—well, they hardly ever traveled into Downside, period, but when they did they brought with them a full Squad. Clearly the Lamaru didn’t want to stick around to tell the Squad how someone had interrupted their illegal psychopomp party.

Behind her, steel groaned, the sound tearing the air and shooting straight up her spine. Every step was agony. Everything hurt. Her chest felt ready to explode, her smoke-choked lungs wanted to die. But if she didn’t haul her ass out of there immediately it was going to burn right off, and she hadn’t escaped from that fucking building just to be crushed by it when it collapsed.

They hit the bushes and turned, heading for the main gates. No need for stealth now, and they needed to wave down the arriving Squad members and inform them of the ghosts and the three psychopomps still in the building.

On the other side of the fence—the street side—Chess caught a glimpse of a tall, shaggy form that could only be Maguinness, strolling along with his hands in his pockets like an innocent freak just out for a casual jaunt. She’d been right, then. It had been him;
was
him.

Bastard. She didn’t give a fuck about him trying to kill the Lamaru; hell, she’d give him a hand if she could—and if he wasn’t such a bizarre ball of criminal awful.

But he’d bombed that building with her inside it, just as she was about to catch the Lamaru and earn herself fifty grand. Fifty grand and the chance to be done with Lauren for good. So fuck him.

As if he felt her eyes on him, read her thoughts, Maguinness stopped and turned around. Even at that distance she could see him smiling.

“I just don’t get it,” Lauren said again. Her sports car, dusty but none the worse for wear, idled on the street outside Chess’s building. Dirty baby wipes filled the interior; between them they’d used almost a whole pack trying to tidy themselves up.

Chess shook her water bottle over her open mouth, desperate for the last drops. Her throat felt like she’d been sucking tailpipes and she did not want to talk. Not now. Not tonight. She wanted to go upstairs and swallow her entire pillbox, wanted to trudge to the corner store and buy a tub of ice cream and eat it on her couch while watching mindless television. Oliver Fletcher, the bastard, had sent her an entire box of his intellectually vacant TV shows on disk; she hadn’t done more than glance at it, but tonight she couldn’t imagine anything better.

Well, no. That wasn’t entirely true. She could imagine a few things better, but only one of them was feasible, and even she didn’t think the pipe room was a good idea with her throat the way it was. Damn it, she’d been looking forward to that all day.

“I don’t either,” she managed. Her voice creaked. “But what difference does it make? Either they somehow got into your bag—when they slashed your tires, maybe—or they’ve managed to cast some kind of spell over—No, wait. They had some kind of fetish, in the psychopomp room. Maybe it infected your ravens.”

“I can’t see how they’d be able to make anything that powerful. But then I guess they are pretty … pretty strong …” Lauren sighed. Sighed again.

And again. Chess glanced at her, her thoughts running fairly solidly along what-the-fuck lines, and then she saw with horror that Lauren was crying.

Oh, shit. What was she supposed to do?

She reached a hesitant hand over, rested it lightly on Lauren’s shoulder. “Hey … um, are you …”

Stupid question. People didn’t cry because they were okay. Even Chess knew that. Hell, she knew that better than anyone, didn’t she?

“How did you get over it?”

“What?”

Lauren looked at her, her eyes gleaming in her sooty face. “How did you get over it? Having them—having them do things to you?”

Oh, fuck. Sore throat or not, she was getting her ass to the pipe room the second she managed to extricate herself from the car. She knew what Lauren was talking about. Knew she’d been right when she wondered if Lauren had managed to fight off her own attackers. Knew she hadn’t.

And apparently—obviously—Lauren knew things, too. Things about her. The bitch, the total fucking—She’d read Chess’s file. Not just her regular file, her
confidential
file. The one with the results of her medical tests, the ones that showed how she didn’t need the birth control implant given to female Church employees in active jobs because her body was as barren and inhospitable as the world around her.

The file that said why that was the case. The results of the single discussion she’d had about it with Elder Banks years ago.

Elder Griffin … He’d probably read it, too. That’s how he knew, the night before in that horrible purple circle. That’s how he’d known how to help her.

And he’d never told her. No one had ever told her. Did they all know? Did they all watch her walk past and see dirty fingerprints on her body? Did they see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice?

Her head throbbed, fury boiling up her throat and into her brain, loaded with bile from her stomach twisting and leaping in her belly. They all knew,
they all knew …

“You just do,” she said finally. Gave Lauren the lie, because she couldn’t bear giving her the truth. Because she didn’t think Lauren needed the truth. “You just move on, and you stop thinking about it because you don’t let yourself think about it.”

“I can’t stop.” No wonder Lauren’s nails were so short; while Chess watched she ripped a hangnail so viciously with her teeth that blood welled from the cuticle, a perfect red teardrop on her pale skin. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Yeah, it just happened, I mean … Why don’t you talk to someone, you know, maybe your father or someone can—”

“I thought I
was
talking to someone. You.”

“But I’m not—I’m not really, I mean, I don’t think you’ll be really comfortable talking about this with me, right?”

Lauren was a pretty girl—a pretty woman. She didn’t look it now, with her jaw set and her eyes narrowed and her skin dark and still smudgy. Jagged streaks of pale ran down from her eyes. “I think you’re the one who isn’t comfortable with it, Cesaria.”

What the fuck did she want? Some kind of fucking encounter group or something? Empowering chants by candlelight? She could get that shit somewhere else. Chess only lit candles when bright light was too much for her narced-out pupils.

Lauren was imposing on her. Maybe it was wrong to feel that way, not supportive or whatever, but that’s how it felt: as though Lauren was pressing sticky little hands all over her, trying to pull off bits of her skin and see what was beneath it.

And despite the other woman’s tears, which seemed real enough, Chess couldn’t get past the idea that Lauren’s eyes were fixed on her, that she was being viewed through a microscope. Whether that was because Lauren thought she’d somehow Triumphed Over Her Past or because she wanted to make Chess uncomfortable or simply because she was at heart a creepy fuck, Chess had no idea, and at that point it wouldn’t have been possible for her to care less. All she wanted to do was go home, clean and dress her wounds, change her smoke-stinking clothes, and get high. Sobriety was not a fucking option.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” she said. A cough fought to free itself from her throat, but she refused to let it. She didn’t need to show any sign of weakness. “I just don’t think I’ll be very good at helping you. I think there are people better qualified than me. It happened a long time ago. I don’t remember it very well, I mean, I don’t think about it anymore. That’s all. I just think if you go—You should go to the hospital, right? Let them do their tests, and they’ll set you up with someone. You know the program.”

“Right. And let everyone I work with know what happened. That I couldn’t defend myself.”

“There were like a dozen of them, you couldn’t—”

“You did.”

“I only had one of them there. You could have beaten one of them, too.” At least so she assumed. She had no idea if she was right about how many men had attacked Lauren, but Lauren didn’t contradict her, so she wasn’t going to worry about it.

“Whatever.”

Okay … was that enough? Could she go now, or—No. Damn it. “Look,” she said, and put her hand back on Lauren’s shoulder. “You have two choices now, right? You can let this eat at you because you’re too ashamed or scared or whatever to get help—if that’s what you need—or you can try to move past it on your own. And that’s different for everybody. What worked for me might not work for you, and that’s why I can’t really advise you, okay? Just … I’d go to the hospital if I were you. That’s what I would do.”

That was
such
a fucking lie.

“But you have to do what you think is best. It’s not like, if you don’t do something about it right this second, you’ll never have the chance, you know?”

Shit, had she really said that? That actually sounded kind of wise. Or maybe not. How the hell would she know?

But it was amazing what kind of motivator it was, knowing that all she had to do was get rid of this woman—this woman with whom she felt she’d spent years at this point—and she could be alone. Blessedly alone, and blessedly close to unconsciousness.

Lauren nodded.
Yes!
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just feel, I don’t know … so dirty. Like it was my fault. Like I did something to make them want to do it, like I should have been able to defend myself.”

Just like that, Chess’s triumph evaporated. Fuck. She was never going to get out of that car, and to make matters worse she felt that wound, all those old wounds, rip back open at Lauren’s words.

“There is no ‘should have.’” For the first time since this conversation had begun, she knew exactly what she was talking about. “There just isn’t. What happened happened. You can’t change it now; it’s done and you can’t ever go back. So now you just have to move on. However you can.”

It seemed to strike a chord with Lauren; Chess wasn’t sure if she was glad of that or not. Her freedom from that car was worth just about any price, but she hadn’t counted on having to pay with truth. That sucked.

“Thanks, Cesaria. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

They made tentative plans for the next day; as it was two days before Elder Murray’s Dedication, neither could be certain what it might bring and how much time they might have. The entire discussion had lasted much longer than Chess would have liked, but then, the entire endless day had lasted much longer than she would have liked, so what was a few more minutes?

She finally bounded out of the car. Her wounded leg reminded her not to run but fuck, it was tempting. She unlocked the tall wooden door, crossed the tiled lobby that had once been the nave. Pushed herself up the stairs as fast as she could, her keys in one hand, her pillbox already in the other. The second she got inside and closed that door behind her—

Or not.

Lex waited outside her apartment, his long lean frame slouched negligently against the doorjamb. “Hey, Tulip,” he said. “Where you been at?”