Stacia Kane: City of Ghosts

Which made no sense at all. Why would that make him happy?

“So you have managed to learn something about the area,” he said. “You’re not so isolated from your neighbors there as I had assumed.”

For the first time in a while, Chess felt almost like laughing. Yeah, she’d found a way to fit in with the rest of Downside. That was one way to look at it.

“Yes,” she said finally, dragging her tired mind back to Elder Griffin. Shit. Only ten at night and she was exhausted. She had more speed in her bag; hopefully they’d be done with this soon and she could go bump up.

Or, fuck that. She could go sleep. Drop an Oozer, drift away … Maybe she’d even get lucky and not dream. Her dreams didn’t tend to be cheerful these days. But then they never really had been.

Elder Griffin smiled, the kind of smile that made Chess wonder even more what exactly he was up to, but he didn’t speak. Muffled voices came through the door, the scuffle of feet on the shiny wide floor of the hall outside the office.

Dana shivered. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Elder Murray … It doesn’t seem real.”

Elder Griffin’s face rearranged itself into more sympathetic lines, but when he spoke, Chess heard the steel beneath his bland tone. It made her own eyes widen. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak to anyone like that—at least, not anyone still living. “Remember, Dana, Elder Murray will still be with us in spirit. There is no reason to mourn.”

“Of course not.” Dana straightened in her seat, pushed her light hair back from her face. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just shocked. I liked Elder Murray.”

“I liked him as well. And for that reason, Dana, and because I know the Truth, I rejoice for Elder Murray. The peace he’s found in the City, the quiet …” Elder Griffin shook his head. “I envy him.”

With difficulty Chess suppressed a shudder. The City—ugh. What Elder Griffin thought was peace, she thought was emptiness. What he thought was quiet, she thought was horrifying loneliness, with no pills or anything to make it bearable.

“We’ll set the ceremony for”—he flipped the pages in the daily calendar sitting on the shiny wide desktop before him—“Saturday. Yes. Five days from now is Saturday—’tis so late I forgot for a moment what day it was. Saturday, Dana, you shall have your chance to see Elder Murray’s happiness for yourself.”

Dana nodded, her expression cleared. Meanwhile Chess felt as if someone had shoved a blender into her gut. With everything else, the deaths and the wondering where that damned wolf had come from and—okay, and her stupid babyish whining about her personal life, what a fucking joke—she’d forgotten about the Dedication ceremony. About what the death of an Elder would entail.

“Cesaria? Are you well?”

Chess nodded, opened her eyes wide and met Elder Griffin’s blue ones with as much innocence as she could muster. “Fine, sir. Fine. Just a little tired.”

“You do look tired.”

She didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say? Thanks?

“How is your leg, my dear? Do you feel well enough to come back to work officially?”

“Yes!” The word came out a little too loudly, a little too eagerly. She couldn’t help it. Yes, she wanted to get back to work. Wanted to have something to do besides sitting around her apartment being mocked by the empty walls, by the empty spot next to her on the sagging couch. Wanted something to do aside from avoiding having Lex inside, because she knew if she invited him into her apartment he would expect to be allowed into her body as well, and she didn’t think she could face that conversation.

Wasn’t even sure she wanted to have it. Why? Why give up a friend and perfectly serviceable bed partner for one who couldn’t be avoiding her more obviously if he’d hung up signs around her neighborhood telling her to stay the hell away from him?

Elder Griffin didn’t seem to think she was overeager, though. “Excellent. Excellent. Wait here, please.”

Chess and Dana exchanged mystified looks as he unfolded himself from behind his desk and crossed the floor. In the pale yellowish glow from the gentle lamps, his stockinged calves flashed, dried blood spatters from earlier forming lacy patterns the color of dead leaves against the white. He left the room and closed the high dark wooden door behind him with a quiet click.

What was he doing? She would have thought he was going to get a new case file for her, but he wouldn’t assign her a case right in front of Dana, not on a whim like that. She had no idea where she even stood in the case queue; two weeks of hospitalization and another two weeks of enforced rest had taken her pretty far out of the game.

“So, back to work,” Dana said, in the weary, flat tone of someone talking simply because she thought it would be rude not to talk.

Luckily for Chess, she didn’t have the same concerns, or the same discomfort. She just nodded, pressed her palms together, and glanced around the room. Glanced at Dana, taking in the other woman’s blond curls and expensive rings. Well, why not? Most Debunkers spent their money on actual things, rather than just buying anything they could swallow, smoke, or snort.

Unlike Chess.

Speaking of which … Three hours now since she’d taken the Panda and Cepts. She had plenty of time, a few more hours, but it never hurt to be aware.

The door opened, and Elder Griffin came back in, followed by Elder Thompson and a red-haired woman Chess had never seen before.

Not that it mattered, because the woman was clearly a Church employee. Her bare arms were decorated like Chess’s, like Dana’s, with one striking exception: the black snake, coiled up the length of her arm from wrist to shoulder, each scale perfectly delineated in a silvery magical ink that gave off a faint shimmer in the dim light.

A member of the Black Squad. Church law enforcement—Church government, as opposed to Debunkers like Chess and Dana, who were regular Church employees.

Her blood turned to ice. Had the woman come for her—had they found out? She’d been so careful all this time, all these years, never letting anyone get too close, never letting anyone see her take so much as a fucking aspirin, and now—and in front of Dana, of all people? They were busting her in front of—No. No. She was being stupid, acting like some panicky moron, and she needed to stop it.

Preferably right that second, because the red-haired woman was looking at her rather oddly. Examining her, as if she could see the guilt. Not good. Chess tightened her grip on her own fingers to calm herself, and held the redhead’s gaze. The woman wanted to play power games, wanted to have some dumbass little staredown? Fine. Her loss.

The woman smiled; then, very deliberately, she broke the contact and looked down at the floor. Ohhhkay. What did that mean?

“Dana,” Elder Griffin said, breaking into whatever the hell was happening, “perhaps you should go back to your cabin. Get some rest.”

Dana opened her mouth, then stopped. Elder Griffin’s dismissal hadn’t been rude, but it had been a dismissal just the same, and Dana wasn’t stupid. She left in a flurry of muttered goodbyes.

Chess was alone with two Elders and a woman who probably had the power to throw her into prison just for looking at her funny, and the silence in the room pounded into her skull like a speedfreak with a hammer.

Elder Griffin sat down. “Cesaria, may I present Lauren Abrams? She just arrived from New York this morning.”

The woman—Lauren—held out one thin pale hand. Her tattoos went all the way down the back of it, like a fingerless glove; at the end of those bare fingers her nails were short like a man’s, and shiny. “Nice to meet you, Cesaria. I’ve heard a lot about you.”