City of Ghosts (20 page)

Chapter Twenty

A promise to the Church is far more important than any other promise. Not just because the Church protects you, but because the Church is always watching you.

—
The Book of Truth
, Veraxis, Article 1340

The swelling in his face had gone down; he looked like himself again, with only a slight tension in his jaw letting her know he was still wired up inside.

Shit, was she actually glad to see him?

Yeah. Yeah, she kind of was. Despite the conversation she knew they were about to have, despite her resolution not to do the things that seeing him immediately brought to mind … she was, in fact, glad to see him.

And it wasn’t even because she knew that in the inside pocket of his leather jacket he had a bag of pills just for her.

Not entirely.

“Hey.” It came out a little breathlessly; the trot up the stairs had strained her abused lungs more than she’d realized. And of course she was surprised. And probably looked like utter hell, dirty and torn, stinking like a barbecue pit.

He noticed it, of course. “Damn, girl. Know I ain’t seen you in a while, but ain’t had the thought of you going rabid on me.”

“Ha-ha. I was in a fire.”

“Oh, aye? Figured you was doing some witchy shit at you Church.”

“No.” He smelled of soap and leather; she caught a whisper of it when she pushed past him, avoiding his attempted kiss, to unlock her front door and release the wards on it.

“So where this fire at, then?”

“Why do you want to know?”

She wanted to get her jeans off—needed to get them off, so she could take care of the burn. But something told her it wasn’t a good idea to start disrobing just yet. Well, no, not
something. Everything
in her knew that wasn’t a good idea.

She’d made a resolution. No more. No matter how good it was, she was not going to sleep with Lex anymore. Part of her penance, part of her attempt to convince a man who no longer gave a shit about her that she wanted to be with him.

Stupid. Really stupid. She’d almost died, and she had to admit she was a little freaked out about it. Not to mention her heart still running double-time and her mind still swirling like a nasty stew over her little chat with Lauren.

So why not? Wasn’t like Lex was going to say no. Wasn’t like Terrible would ever know or care. And she needed it. Needed to forget, needed to lose herself, needed to put it all behind her.

She toed off her boots carefully, trying to avoid rubbing her injured thigh against the denim still half-covering it. Her hands went to the button of her jeans.

And stopped there.

No, Terrible wouldn’t know, and he might not care—hell, no “might” about it, he
wouldn’t
care. But
she
would know. If the subject ever came up she wanted to be able to tell the truth: that the last time she’d been with Lex was two nights before Terrible caught them in the cemetery. Wasn’t the best timing in the world, considering that had been the night when Terrible told her how he felt about her. How he
had
felt about her; how he
used to
feel about her.

But it was true, and it was clean, and she wanted to keep it that way.

Conscious of Lex’s gaze, she padded across the cold linoleum to the fridge and opened it, grabbed two beers and gave him one. “How’s your jaw?”

He took the beer from her but didn’t drink it. Instead he watched her, his head tilted slightly to the side. When he spoke his voice was soft. Almost tender. “You giving me the gillwheep, Tulip?”

Shit. “Lex …”

“Aw, c’mon now. Ain’t like I ain’t figured on this coming, me. Just ain’t figured on it bein now.”

“It’s not … It’s not you, I mean, I know that sounds—”

“Aw, nay, ain’t needing the explains. Dig the picture, I do.” He pushed himself off the wall, strolled to the couch and dropped himself into it, with his Fear T-shirt riding up and his Chucks propped on her rickety coffee table. “Funny, though. Got some discussin to do, you and me, on the elsewheres.”

That was it? She’d just broken up with him—well, sort of, it wasn’t like they were dating or anything, but still—and that was his entire response?

Not that she cared. No, it was much better to have him shrug and get over it. She hadn’t really expected anything else. But she had to admit, at least a small part of her felt a little … let down. Had their this-doesn’t-mean-anything-to-either-of-us affair meant
nothing
to him?

“Discussing on what?”

“Why you witches been taking the sight-sees in my tunnels? Thought you ain’t like the downs.”

“What?”

His eyes narrowed, and a chill ran right up her spine. Oh. Right. He wasn’t taking anything easily. He thought she was up to something, and that ending their whatever-it-was had something to do with it. Thought she’d been working with Bump and Terrible to take over the tunnels under the city. Bump ran most of Downside, sure.
Above
ground. Only Slobag and his men used the tunnels.

For a second the impulse to laugh bubbled crazily up from her stomach. He actually thought Terrible was speaking to her?

Then again, he was. Sort of. As long as he didn’t have to take her calls.

“Witches down my tunnels, Tulip. Finding all kindsa shit down there, aye, all kinds. Frogs an fingers and shit, like that dead hand you carry? What you got on the action down there?”

Frogs and fingers. The fetish. Maguinness. The Lamaru. Her mouth went completely dry; she drank half her beer, aware that she couldn’t have looked guiltier if she’d plastered a sign across her forehead that read
I DID IT
.

“No use putting the stall on. Ain’t never figured we’d be playin this rundown game, but you want—”

“It’s not me, Lex.”

“C’mon now, ain’t—”

“It’s not me, Lex. It’s not. It’s the Lama—
Aah!”

Fuck! She’d forgotten. Forgotten the Binding, forgotten the shriveling pain of it. An entire evening spent with Lauren, talking freely, an entire evening of stress and fire and near-death fun had completely wiped her mind of that particular complication.

Now she was on the floor in a puddle of beer, with blood seeping from her wrists and her thigh shrieking from the impact.

To his credit and her surprise, Lex came and helped her up. “The fuck is that?”

“I’m Bound. They’re Binding marks. I can’t talk about—All I can say is it’s not me. It’s not the Church or anything, it’s nothing to do with Bump or anybody.”

She had to lean on him to get to the couch; her muscles felt like they’d been microwaved. What were they doing in the tunnels? For that matter, how had they learned about the tunnels? She’d thought they were a myth before; so did everyone but Slobag and his gang, as far as she knew. “What were they doing down there? You said toads and fingers—what else was there? Did you see it? Where was it?”

“Hush now.” He pulled the magic little bag from his jacket pocket and dug around in it, then opened his palm. Two Cepts and two Oozers; lady’s choice.

She shouldn’t. She needed her wits about her. Her Cepts wouldn’t put her too far under; she could take enough notes that she wouldn’t miss anything important. But the Oozers … she couldn’t write on those. Couldn’t do much of anything.

Fuck, that sounded good.

“Them cuts, they achy?”

“Don’t they look achy?”

“Look kinda sexy, seein as you asked.” But his smile was bland enough, as he held his flat palm out for her to make her decision.

Fuck it. She emptied his palm and tossed the entire contents into her mouth, washed them down with beer. She’d have to switch to water; one beer wasn’t going to do much to her, even on top of the Oozers, but it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep drinking. “Thanks.”

He nodded. “So, them Lamaru back, aye?”

The purple marks under her skin moved. A warning? They moved anyway, but were they moving faster? It’d be awfully nice to find a warning system that didn’t hurt. Yes, it was obvious, don’t talk about the case. But she needed to if she wanted to stay alive.

“Ain’t can give me the knowledge, aye?”

She just looked at him, raised her wrist so he could see the ridged black cuts.

“What was the happening with that leg you got? Jeans all torn to fuck there.” His gentle hand moved over her thigh. “Oughta get you cleaned up, Tulip. Ain’t looking to me like something can be left on its own.”

“Yeah.” He was right. She should. But she didn’t want to get up. The pills hadn’t hit yet, but they would soon; fifteen minutes, maybe twenty tops. Her stomach was empty.

“Lemme give you the help, aye? Stay you there.”

She waited, staring at the watermarks on the ceiling. Tomorrow she would think about it all. She’d sit down and try to figure out what it all meant. They were making cursed fetishes and they were using them to create psychopomps or alter them, or both. And they were doing it underground, at least part of the time. Obviously the slaughterhouse was off the menu as far as a ritual space went.

Why underground? Why were they leaving magic items in the tunnels? “Hey, Lex.”

“Aye?” Something clattered in the bathroom; she sighed. He was probably making an enormous mess.

“Will you show me where you found the stuff in the tunnels?”

Another noise; plastic falling on the tile floor, she thought. It had that particular hollow sound, like an offbeat bongo drum. “Why you gotta see?”

She blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her he wouldn’t—Well, why would he? She’d just dumped his ass, and he knew why. He had no reason at all to believe she had any loyalty to him at this point; for all he knew, she was going to map the damned things out for Terrible and Bump.

And the sad thing was, she might, if she thought it would make Terrible change his mind.

How the hell did people do this, this emotion-and-forgiveness thing? How did they stand these feelings? She could barely handle it and she had lovely, necessary, reason-for-living drugs to smooth over the rough spots. How did people do this shit sober?

Lex walked back into the tiny living room and sat beside her, his arms loaded with first-aid supplies. It looked like he’d brought everything she owned. “Already gave you the knowledge what they found.”

“Yeah, but I need to—If I could feel the energy there, it might really help.”

“Take them jeans off.”

Oh, right. She’d have to, wouldn’t she? Shit. Well, maybe taking her jeans off would make him more inclined to say she could check out his tunnels.

Of course, he was pretty much
guaranteed
to say yes if she let him check out
her
tunnel again, but … no.

“Lex.”

He unraveled a long strip of gauze, laid it across his lap. “Aye?”

“Terrible … he isn’t talking to me. He doesn’t really want anything to do with me. He called me a—He said some things. So it’s not like I’m trying to spy for him, or he asked me to get information for him or anything. I swear. I need to see where you found that stuff for work. It could be really important.”

By the time she finished, her face felt as hot as the raw skin on her thigh. And for once—for pretty much the first time since she’d met him—he was tactful enough not to look at her, to examine her discomfort and tease her about it.

“Aye, then.”

“Wh—Really?”

He shrugged. “Aye, take you down, I will. But Tulip … you and me, we ain’t never had the troubles before, over that slicktongue and he fist-man, aye? Ain’t figuring we start now. You dig me?”

Relief flooded her limbs; relief, a little apprehension, and the first warm swirls of her pills. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it. We’re not starting any trouble there.”

“Aye. Now get them jeans—”

They both stopped. Her bag was beeping.

Stupidly, she felt in her pockets. Was that her phone? Her phone didn’t beep. What the—Oh, shit. Her bag had been on the floor in the psychopomp room, had the Lamaru planted something in it?

No, dumbass. Who planted things in the bags of people they were about to kill? The Lamaru had certainly thought she was about to die when they locked her in the psychopomp room and left her there in the burning building like Romans throwing Christians into the lion pit. So why the hell would they have put some kind of electronic device into her bag first?

The thought made her grin. Oh, yeah. The Oozers were definitely kicking in. Her stomach started to lift, her blood to warm and thicken, running slow and smooth through her veins.

“Tulip?”

“Yeah?”

“You gonna see what the beeping is?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Okay.”

Her leg hardly hurt at all now. She could feel the ragged edges of her torn jeans touching the wound, but it wasn’t painful. Nice.

Of course, it also made her feel a bit like she was walking on legs that didn’t actually exist. Like floating. Floating was nice, too. She felt graceful, moving smoothly through the dense, gentle air around her to her bag, bringing it back to the couch before opening it simply because that seemed like the right thing to do.

But what was that thing? It looked vaguely familiar. More than vaguely. If it hadn’t been for the Oozers she would have twigged faster, but as it was she held the chunky black box with its greenish LED-grid screen in her hand and forgot why she was looking at it in the first place.

“What you got there?”

“Huh? Oh. Um … oh! It’s Lauren’s tracker.”

That didn’t seem to clear it up for him; he sat beside her with his arms folded and his eyebrows raised, waiting for her to continue.

“It’s a tracking device, you know? For, um, tracking people. You plant the sensor on something, like their car or whatever, and it gives you their … their coordinates. Where they … where they are.” Was she making sense?

“Oh, aye.” He took it from her, turned it over in his hands. The thick silver ring he wore flashed in the weak light; it was hypnotic.

Or maybe it was simply that she was really starting to drift. Glorious lethargy spread over her like … well, like something warm and runny, she had no idea what and she didn’t care. All she knew was the room kept fluttering around her as she struggled to keep her eyes open and she didn’t seem to have bones in her body anymore; it was utterly delightful.