The Downside Ghosts Series Books 1-3: Unholy Ghosts, Unholy Magic, City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane

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СКАЧАТЬ he’d said. A Church employee? “I have to have it, I have to go back for it.”

      “Oh, naw. You stay.”

      She couldn’t argue. All she could do was watch as he ran back into the house and emerged a few moments later dangling her bag from one bloody-knuckled hand.

      “What did you do to it?”

      He looked down. “Ain’t my blood. Couldn’t just let him get off free, aye?” He was breathing too hard, the knuckles of his other hand white.

      “Sit down, okay? Just sit here with me for a minute.”

      “We oughta go, he cold out now but—”

      “Please? Just … just sit with me.”

      He sank to the ground beside her, with his legs bent and his arms resting on his knees, while the ocean shifted and whispered before them. The sound soothed her, but she did not think the harsh fire in her stomach would be appeased so easily. Those images, those memories … it all felt again as if it had just happened.

      “Thanks. I mean, thanks for doing that for me, I didn’t think, well, I didn’t know it would be—”

      “Nothing, Chess.” His shoulders moved in a casual shrug, but he didn’t take his gaze from the water before them. “Why I here.”

      “No, it’s not. That was—I don’t even want to think about what that was, and you couldn’t have—”

      “Forget it. It’s over now, aye?” Now he glanced at her. She caught a glimpse of his eyes red-rimmed in his pale face before he turned away again. “Over.”

      What had he seen? She would never ask. It was private, just as hers had been private. But at the same time she was aware of her curiosity, irritating and unwelcome like a splinter in her finger. She felt she owed him something now, in a way she hadn’t when he’d helped her at the airport … when, she realized, he’d helped her several times over the last few days. And she’d assumed, when they’d come here, that he would do it again. Shit, when had that happened? When had she started trusting him? She should know better than that.

      But it was there, nonetheless, mixed with her curiosity. She trusted him, and she owed him.

      “You know,” she said, scooping up some sand and letting it fall between her shaking fingers, “ancient people used to think the ocean had healing qualities. They said if you left offerings to it, if you sat before it long enough, all of your problems would wash away in the tide.”

      “You think there’s truth in it?”

      “No.” Her voice cracked. She owed him something, but she couldn’t carry through the lie. “No, I don’t.”

      He nodded. “Me either.”

      Waves broke and crashed against the shore as they got up and started trudging back up the hill, taking their time, until Chess’s hair clung to her head and she could not tell anymore if her face was wet with tears or spray.

      A silent drive, two Cepts, and a line later, she sat in the Mortons’ tidy living room and frowned. Nothing. Either these people were particularly good, or the lack of food in her stomach combined with speed and pills was putting her more off-kilter than she should be. Their faces were so distorted by fear it was like looking into a fun-house mirror. Would she see the same bizarre warping of her own features?

      Shit, this wasn’t right. She’d never had problems with what she took before, not like this. A little memory fuzz once in a while, sure—it was one reason why she took copious notes—or sometimes asking people to repeat things because she couldn’t get their words to process in her head, but … sitting with them now was like sitting in a wind tunnel.

      Something else was different, as well. All the lights were on, though the sun was just setting.

      “I don’t know why you’re asking all these questions,” Mrs. Morton said, for the third or fourth time. “I haven’t slept in days. Please, when will you be able to get rid of it?”

      “We’re working on it. Have you thought of staying somewhere else for a while? A friend’s house, perhaps, or a hotel?”

      “We can’t afford a hotel,” Mrs. Morton snapped. Her eyes widened. “I mean, a hotel for weeks would be very expensive.”

      Chess didn’t react, or make a note. She didn’t need to—this part was set hard into her brain. “According to the records you gave us, you have approximately ten thousand dollars available on your credit cards. Surely you can stay at a hotel for a while? You would of course be reimbursed by the Church after the Banishment.”

      She said it with such confidence, she really did. Just as if she hadn’t found out earlier that one of her fellow Church employees was doing illegal magic to call forth something whose name she’d never heard before. Something that reeked of evil like a dead dog in the street reeked of decay.

      And speaking of decay … The image of Slipknot’s rotting flesh, sliced open, marked up like a demented child’s tortured dolly, refused to leave her. What his soul must be suffering as he lay trapped in the stinking wreckage that was once a living, breathing body, was unimaginable. And she was responsible for it, because she hadn’t yet figured out how to release him.

      It was hard enough not to think of herself as someone who barely deserved to live, without that kind of shit smeared all over her conscience.

      How could one of her coworkers do such a thing? For what felt like the millionth time since leaving the beach she tried to think of illegal ink, forbidden tattoos, the possibility that the culprit might simply be someone who looked like a Church employee.

      But no. Tyson knew who he’d seen, would know the difference between genuine Church tattoos and illegal ones. Inked like thou, he’d said, and it couldn’t have meant anything but Church ink.

      She hoped he’d been lying. She couldn’t deny the possibility that he hadn’t.

      “Yes, well, we’d rather stay in our home and have everything taken care of quickly, instead of being in-convenienced by living in a hotel,” said Mr. Morton. It took Chess a second to remember what they were talking about.

      “Has the haunting escalated? You said last time that it was just a gray sexless shape, Mrs. Morton. Has it taken form? Started moving objects, anything like that?”

      “It’s not gray anymore.” Mrs. Morton pulled at the string of pearls around her neck as if they were choking her. “It’s black. A man, in a black hood. He … he watches us while we try to sleep, he sneaks into our dreams … he scares me.”

      She dissolved into sobs, sobs Chess could not hear over the pounding of her own heart.

       Chapter Twenty-one

      “So they found the open spaces beneath the surface of the earth, and found the power there stronger than even that of the spirits, and they sent their guardians and messengers to the surface and brought the spirits to their new home, and imprisoned them there.”

      —The СКАЧАТЬ