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

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СКАЧАТЬ didn’t want to go home. Not after the break-in—had that really only been the night before? It had, and she couldn’t bear the thought of spending a night there alone. Not now, when she knew the person after her knew her, knew everything about her, had worked with her for years.

      Tyson could have been lying, but Chess knew he hadn’t. Knew it the way she knew what the Truth was, the way she knew … the way she knew the only safe place now, even in the midst of all her doubts, was the Church. This late at night the building would be deserted, no one would be in the great library, and she had a key. She could do some research, try to decide what everything meant. She could just sit and breathe. The locks in her home could be picked, but the locks of the Church buildings were impregnable.

      Of course, whoever had murdered Slipknot had a key, too. But they wouldn’t know where she was. It was still the safest place she could think of.

      She spread her notes on the table before her, scanning them to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything, looking for things she might have missed, before starting.

      Neither Ereshdiran nor the symbol on her assailants’ robes appeared in any of the standard texts. She hadn’t expected them to, but wanted to be thorough.

      Why would someone want to summon a Dreamthief? This wasn’t the first time illegal entities had been summoned, of course. When Chess was still a student someone had tried to call an elemental hate spirit, to show off at a party. Those who’d survived the carnage had failed to be impressed.

      But a Dreamthief …? She kept thinking if she could remember where she’d seen that damned symbol she might have some idea what was going on, but her memory of it seemed too fuzzy. She couldn’t be sure in her mind it actually looked like she remembered, or if she’d embellished it somehow, made it up.

      Sighing, she closed the last book and glanced at the clock. Almost ten. She’d have to leave soon if she wanted to replenish her supplies, and she definitely wanted. Only a desire to get to the bottom of this had kept her from running straight for the pipes after Terrible dropped her off. After the book … after the memories, carving themselves fresh into her head and leaving bloody tracks running down her neck … if she hadn’t been determined to make that hellish experience worth the price of admission she would have done it.

      She gave herself half an hour more. Enough time to check a couple of the restricted books. Then she’d go. Straight to Bump’s.

      The door to the Restricted Room was locked, but Chess knew where a spare key was kept, tucked on the ledge at the top of the center desk drawer. She’d never needed to steal it before, but then she’d never done research like this after hours before—the library Goodys had always been there to let her in. Feeling a little like a criminal, she felt around the ledge with her fingertips until the key dropped into the drawer, then crossed the room and slipped it into the lock.

      It gave an audible click as the catch released, a click that seemed to echo in the big, empty room. Chess froze. Had that just been the lock, or had another click followed it, so closely she just mistook it for an echo?

      She whipped around, her gaze skittering from shelf to shelf, across the empty expanse of shining wood floor and up the walls to the fans hanging like bizarre spiders from the ceiling. Always look up. Nobody ever looks up.

      Nothing was there, and gradually her heart rate—already fast from all the speed—calmed down. She gave a soft, snorting laugh at herself, like a child bravely declaring themselves unafraid of the dark, and turned the knob.

      She’d always loved the Restricted Room. Here were the banned books, the esoteric books, the relics of past forms of religion. Ornate gold crosses and a diamond-encrusted Star of David in glass cases lined the walls and glittered in the dim light, welcoming her into their presence like they’d been waiting for her. Bibles and Korans rested silently on pillars, their wisdom no longer needed, and in one corner sat an enormous gold Buddha, his benign smile blessing them all—if blessing had been permissible, anyway.

      To own such items without proof of historical worth outside the Church meant heresy. Here she could look at them all she wanted, read the archaic words, piece together what life must have been like even thirty years before, much less centuries in the past.

      She padded across the thick carpet to the Esoteric shelf at the far end, flicking the light switch as she went. The main library room disappeared as the light hit the long, tall windows separating the sections. Funny how she’d never really noticed that before, but then she’d never been in the Restricted section this late at night, when the great library was a cavern of silent secrets between thick dusty covers.

      Her skin prickled as she grabbed the largest book, one of her favorites. If it couldn’t be found in Tobin’s Spirit Guide it probably couldn’t be found anywhere. The heft of the book comforted her as it always had, but even it could not hide the fact that she’d thought she heard another sound.

      A rustle, like breeze blowing a sheaf of paper or, she thought with a vague sense of nausea, the sound made by the pages of Tyson’s horrible book when Terrible’s fingers brushed against it.

      She stopped and stood rock-still, with the weight of the Spirit Guide starting to make her wrist ache. Looking toward the windows did nothing to help. That damned glass may as well have been a mirror; all she saw was her own pale face staring back at her.

      Her muscles creaked as she stood there, letting the seconds stretch into minutes, her ears straining for another sound, but the silence continued for so long she started to doubt herself. She hadn’t slept in days, not really. She was so wired she imagined her pupils were the size of pinpricks and her fingers felt grimy no matter how many times she washed her hands. Of course she was hearing things. It was probably Brownian Motion, or her own brain sizzling as the speed burned away at the cells.

      Had she heard a noise, really?

      She was being ridiculous. No, not in being cautious. Caution was the only way to stay alive. But in thinking she’d somehow been followed here by the unknown Church employees who’d imprisoned Slipknot’s soul. Tyson didn’t even own a phone. The idea that he’d somehow managed to get himself back together and notify whomever it was, that they’d managed to track her down here when she’d told no one where she was going, was stretching things a bit.

      Thus convinced, she sat down, grabbed her note pad, and started checking the Guide’s index. Eraduac, Eramuel, Erbereous, Eredmiam … Ereshdiran. Page one hundred fifty-three.

      She pulled off the cap of her pen with her teeth as she used her left hand to flip through the pages. Ugh. The line drawing was crude, but it captured the thin, cruel face and the hooked nose. It even managed to suggest the bloody teeth.

      Her pen scratched across the paper as she made notes, her skin growing colder with every word. She was going to have to call Doyle, to agree to go with him to see the Grand Elder. This wasn’t something she could handle on her own—or rather, it wasn’t something she wanted to handle on her own.

      Who the fuck had summoned him, and why? What possible reason could there be to invade dreams, to invest that much power into something as banal as sleeping patterns? If they wanted to put homeowners to sleep so they could break in, they could get a Hand of Glory like hers, or perform some other sort of spell. How many homes could they invade in one night? And the damned thing simply wasn’t safe, there was no real way to—

      This time the noise was definite. A click, like the step of a hard-bottom shoe on the wood floor. She might not have heard it if she hadn’t paused in her writing, but she had, and so she did. Someone was in the library, and whoever СКАЧАТЬ