City of Ghosts (34 page)

“Had the knowledge where you was,” Terrible said. “Where I dropped you, anyroad. You ain’t still there—checked all them rooms, aye? The whole building—so we guessed on them … dumpin you off somewheres.”

“You looked in every apartment in the whole building?”

He shrugged.

Heat rushed to her face. After a second she said, “Wait. So nobody was in Lauren’s place? Did you find her place?”

“Aye. All empty. Meaning, got furniture and all but them not in it. Lookin like they leave in a fuck of a rush, dig, all scraped. An—”

“What about the skulls?”

“Skulls?”

“Yeah, there was—she had a room full of—ow!”

Shit. And double shit, because she’d just caught the implications of Terrible’s words. Yes, it was possible that when the two men had gotten to the building, Lauren and her Lamaru pals had been out making their fun little Dumpster deposit—she hadn’t thought it was possible to be more pissed off at Lauren, but it didn’t really surprise her to discover it was—but why would they all have gone along on that ride?

No. Better odds were that they’d headed off to the Church, to take their places before the Dedication ceremony.

“You right, Chess?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, just—I need to make a phone call.”

It was five in the morning; damn, she’d been out for, what, three hours? Four? Okay. The Dedication was scheduled to start at dawn, which was only a little less than an hour away. It was entirely possible Elder Griffin would be in.

His phone rang once. Twice. Three—

“Elder Griffin’s office, Facts are Truth.”

“Hi, I need to speak to—” Wait. There was something very familiar about that voice. “Dana?”

“No, this is Cesaria Putnam,” said the girl on the other end.

Chapter Thirty-six

To impersonate a Church employee is to commit as grave a crime against Truth as is possible, and the penalty is death.

—
The Book of Truth
, Laws, Article 894

Her entire body went numb; for a second the phone threatened to slip from her grasp and get lost in the haze of red covering her vision. No. No, that wasn’t possible.

“Lauren?”
The name came out like a growl. “Lauren! Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare—”

“Cesaria? Shit, you’re still alive?”

“I swear on fucking Truth, if you don’t—”

Lauren gave a soft laugh. “Sorry, I have to go. The ceremony will be starting soon and, of course, I have to be there—I mean,
you
have to be there, since Inquisitors don’t attend. Enjoy the rest of your day, though—I’m sure I’ll be seeing you later.”

“Lauren! Don’t you hang up—
fuck!”
Chess pulled the phone away from her ear. She’d try again. She’d try all the extensions, she’d keep going until she got somebody, anybody, surely someone would believe her—

Except they wouldn’t. Not if she wasn’t standing right in front of them so they could see for themselves. Nobody she’d ever heard of had been able to cast personal glamours strong enough to fool a witch. Nobody in the Church would believe it was possible—hell,
she
still couldn’t believe it was possible, even after hearing her own voice talking to her on the other end of the phone. Even after finding that fetish designed to cast glamours just like that, and seeing the picture of the girl who wasn’t her.

No answer when she tried Elder Griffin’s office again. No answer in Goody Tremmell’s office. No answer for Elder Ramos, Elder Thompson, the library, the Archives, the Liaising office … She even tried the supply room, the prison, and the Grand Elder’s office.

Nothing. Nothing but a recorded message informing her that due to the passing of a Church official, the offices were closed.

Fuck.

“What’s troubling, Tulip?” Lex lit a cigarette, watching her drop the phone into her lap and rest her head on the back of the seat. Beside her, Terrible’s arm tensed; she realized he was twitching every time Lex called her “Tulip,” but couldn’t figure out a way to tell Lex to stop it without calling attention to it.

“I can’t reach anyone. They’re all—they’ve all gone down to the City, and Lauren is—ow!—impersonating me!”

“What, like got she magic make her look like you?”

She nodded.

“Ain’t knowing were possible, me.”

“Yeah. I didn’t think so either. Shit! The ceremony is about to start, they’re all heading down to the City, and I don’t know what they’re doing but I have a feeling it’s—ow—bad.”

“Give you the tell what else bad. Them dogs? They all in my tunnels, dig, all over. Ain’t can get down there.”

“What?”

“Aye, why I gave you the ring up on the earlier, aye? When you screaming. Right before it them dogs started down there. Fillin all up, they are.”

Her mind whirred. Okay. So the ceremony was about to start and the Lamaru were in on it, would be in the City, ready to unleash their crazed ghost-destroying psychopomps.

Meanwhile Baldarel must have had his own psychopomps in the tunnels. The tunnels that he knew led to the train platform—at least she assumed he did.

So what was he doing? Was he planning to burst into the City and—what? Kill the Lamaru and take over? Use his psychopomps to deliver the ghosts from the—No, because his psychopomps couldn’t go above ground, right? Or at least they hadn’t before.

“Tulip?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m thinking. Shit.” Her hand was cool on her forehead; she pressed her palm against it, hard, trying to squeeze the answers out.

Okay. The Lamaru’s psychopomps tore up ghosts. If they were planning to set them loose in the City, the carnage would be—She couldn’t even picture it. Didn’t want to picture it.

“Where I takin you?” Terrible swung the car around a corner; they weren’t far from her place, or from the highway.

She wanted to go home so bad. Take a quick shower, wash off everything that had happened and come out fresh and ready. Ten minutes was all she needed.

But it was ten minutes she really couldn’t afford, and the state of her clothes didn’t matter, not when—Oh, right.

“Are you planning to come into the City with me? I think the La—I think there’s going to be some fighting down there.”

Lex hesitated. Terrible didn’t. “If you’re needing, aye.”

“Aye, me too, then.”

“You’ll have to wear robes. Over your clothes, but you have to wear them.”

“Thought you tell me before nobody wearing clothes down there,” Lex said.

“The Liaisers don’t. This is for a ceremony, so it’s a little different.”

They shrugged. The car roared up the entrance ramp to the highway. They were coming with her, they would help her. She would have smiled with relief at any other time; as it was she didn’t think she’d ever be able to smile at anything ever again. The image of the City grew in her mind, the City empty of all but her coworkers’ screams.

It spread and got worse. A world without ghosts meant a world without the Church. A world of anarchy. It was easy to imagine humanity happily settling into freedom, celebrating its escape from the constant threat of spectral attack.

But Chess lived in Downside, a place where the Church’s laws barely reached. She knew what happened when there was no authority. She saw factions battling for supremacy, using innocent people as cannon fodder or shields. She saw destroyed cities. Destroyed lives.

How many times in school had she been taught about the wars that had resulted from multiple governments? About racism and xenophobia and intolerance and everything else that existed simply because it could, simply because when cultures and belief systems clashed, no one wanted to give in or see the other side?

In the Church those things didn’t exist. If the Church ceased to exist, would they return? Or worse?

She didn’t want to find out. Didn’t ever want to find out. So she took a deep breath, and prepared herself to break one of the Church’s most ironclad rules—one she hoped they would forgive her for, because if they didn’t she’d be executed. If she survived the fight, that was.

“Hey—maybe you guys have some more people you could call? Have them meet us there? I think—I think we’re going to want an army of our own.”

* * *

It wasn’t an army, but it wasn’t bad: twenty or thirty men, covered in weapons, with dangerous eyes and heavy boots. One or two she recognized. Most she didn’t. And it didn’t matter either way.

They stood outside the enormous iron-banded double doors of the Church, right by the pillory where Reckonings took place, waiting for her orders. For her to tell them what to do; both Lex and Terrible had stepped back. She was in charge.

Which made sense. She was the one who knew what they were facing.

Okay. She turned her back on them, grabbed her pillbox, and tossed another Nip into her mouth. Not the smartest thing in the world to do, probably; speed fucked with her power and her ability to sense ghosts. But then, her system was still struggling with the heavy Dream load and she needed to be as alert as possible. And as for interfering with her ability to sense ghosts? She was going to the City. Of course there would be ghosts.

At least she hoped there still would be. The sky was lightening above them. Time was running out.

As quickly as possible she marked them all with her black chalk, using the heaviest wards and sigils she knew. The risk of possession was high in the City, and none of these men would be able to fight it off. Hell, none of them would be able to fight a ghost at all. Maybe bringing them wasn’t such a good idea.

No choice. She pushed up her sleeves and went to work on her tattoos, finishing the incomplete ones, an unwilling smile forming on her lips as power sizzled along her nerves and up her spine. A rush that never got old.

“Okay.” She gestured for them to gather around her. Magic from their marks shifted in the air, adding to hers, a pleasant buzz in her brain over the speed and the still-present slow euphoria of Dream. “Guys, we’re heading into the City of Eternity, so there are some things you should know. Don’t approach any ghosts, or look at them directly. The wards I gave you should protect you, but be careful. They don’t have weapons down there—at least they usually don’t—but it’s entirely possible someone might be … someone might have given them some. Keep your hands on your own weapons at all times. If you let go, they’ll grab them, and they’ll come after you first—but they can’t harm you without a weapon. If you just ignore them, no matter how sca—no matter how uncomfortable it is, you’ll be fine. Okay?”

General nods. She couldn’t tell if they were overconfident or too scared to speak, or maybe they just genuinely didn’t give a shit whether they lived or died.

“Civilians aren’t supposed to enter the City. I need your word, all of you, that you won’t tell anyone about this or about what you see down there. Nobody. Got it?”

More nods.

She looked at them for a minute, at the mixture of excitement and unease reflected in their expressions, in the tense poses of their bodies and the way their gazes kept darting around to see if someone was going to crack.

She wanted to say something else, to wish them all luck, or repeat her warnings, or … anything. But it was only a delaying tactic, and they couldn’t afford it.

So she just nodded, turned around, and unlocked the double doors.

Inside, the hall waited, huge and silent. Energy buzzed in the air, stronger than usual, a combination of her fear and the ceremony now taking place.

“This way.” Her voice echoed in the vast space around them, louder than usual without the low hum of voices in other rooms.

The men trooped along behind her past the offices, through the doorway under the main staircase, and into the supply room behind the chapel.

Here shelves were lined with everything a witch could ever need to defend against spectral attacks. Bins of herbs, rows of candles, their scent thick and spicy-sweet in the still air. Spare stangs. Iron filings, iron chips, iron blocks. Black and blue flowers for stang decoration; firedishes in every size from tiny to serving platter. Bulging sacks of graveyard dirt. And in the corner lay a stack of ceremonial robes. She slipped one over her head and handed out the rest.

Her cardigan was still smeared with filth. She took it off and tied the arms backward around her waist so the body hung down like an apron. There might not be time to dig around in her bag once they were down there; hell, there definitely wouldn’t be. So she turned the sweater-apron into a pouch and loaded it up, choosing not just items that would fend off crazed psychopomps but anything she thought might have a use against the Lamaru or Baldarel and their particular brand of creeped-out, bloodthirsty black magic.

“If you guys want to carry some iron too, it might be a good idea,” she said, reaching up to grab the wolfsbane bin. Its edge had just come off the shelf when Terrible’s hand joined hers, lifting the bin away and bringing it down for her.

He didn’t look right. Well, no, he looked fine—better than fine, just seeing him gave her strength—but he looked … uncomfortable. Unease hovered around him; his eyes glinted at her from his too-pale face.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“Aye.”

She opened her mouth again, ready to press him on it, but something in the way his jaw set made her close it again. Not only was there not time; even if there had been, this wasn’t the
right
time. Especially not in front of men who worked under him. Most especially not in front of Lex.

So she let it go, and focused on loading the men up with as many protective items as she could grab: amulets on iron-link chains, small totems, charm bags stuffed with herbs and stones. In their identical pale-blue robes with their spiked hair and scarred faces they looked like prison inmates putting on a show.

Silence prevailed as she led them through the chapel to the elevator and pressed the button. Her nerves were joining the game in a big way, her heart kicking in her chest, her stomach doing a tap dance beneath it. What was going on down there, in that silent place below the earth? The ceremony must have started; had the Lamaru already made their move? Had Baldarel?

What would they find when they reached the platform? Had Baldarel’s dogs reached it yet?

The elevator doors slid open and they climbed in. For the first time, Chess was grateful the car had been designed with rituals like the one they were about to crash in mind; it was a squeeze, and it made her a bit nervous about the weight, but they all fit. Silently. No one spoke. Her hands were freezing. She clenched them together in front of her, twisting them, flicking her fingernails the way she always did when speeding out of her skull. She couldn’t stop moving. Couldn’t stop picturing the possible carnage that awaited them, those earlier visions of an empty City and a world at war searing themselves into her brain.

And beneath it all lay the old fear, the familiar one: of the City itself, of the silence and the spectral shapes and the dirt, of the empty-eyed ghosts sliding past her. Reminding her, always reminding her, that this was all that waited at the end: this desolation that everyone else seemed to find peaceful and comforting but that still caused her to wake up drenched in sweat a couple of nights a year.

They came to the bottom of the elevator shaft with a small jolt, and the doors slid open.