Stacia Kane - City of Ghosts

“Safety in numbers” was one of those tropes she knew from experience to be utter bullshit. But she still felt better, pushing past the bouncer into the sultry, sweaty bar. She didn’t stop to pay; she never did. Nobody charged Bump’s Churchwitch, not if they didn’t want trouble. Chess wasn’t the type to cause any, but they didn’t know that, and she had no compunction about using her job—such as it was—to get in free. Besides, she spent enough at the bar to make up for it.

The crowd shifted and flowed beneath the red-gel-covered blue lights, a small land mass in constant state of earthquake. Chess fought her way to the bar, pushing past girls in miniskirts and fishnets and guys with high spiked hair. Silver flashed at her from cheeks and eyebrows and lips, silver from chains connecting ears to noses and locked around skinny necks. All of them familiar, maybe not the individual faces but as a whole. The Lazy Cowgirls blasted through the speakers, and she relaxed inside for the first time in days, tapping her foot.

One finger to the bartender got her a beer. A few minutes of searching got her a seat in a booth against the opposite wall. The vinyl beneath her was sticky and torn, the tabletop covered with graffiti and grime. She lit a cigarette and slouched against the wall, scanning the crowd, picking out a few people she knew from around. Yes. This was a good idea. None of Baldarel’s people would be able to get in here, and even if they did—well, shit. If they did, they’d probably bring their dogs with them, and everyone would die. The thought was like swallowing a rock.

No. No, this wasn’t a good idea. No matter how comfortable she was, she shouldn’t be there. She was putting them all in danger by being there.

Except … Why had the dogs disappeared when they reached the street? Psychopomps didn’t do that. They didn’t just disappear; they were summoned, they retrieved whatever soul they were supposed to retrieve, and they took that soul back to the City. No Banishing needed, no nothing.

And nobody summoned a psychopomp for fun; it simply didn’t happen. You couldn’t play with a psychopomp. It wasn’t like they chased sticks or shook hands or anything. Even in training no one had ever summoned a psychopomp without having a ghost for it to collect. The instructing Elders always had a few ghosts for them to practice on, in a special room devoid of anything that could be used as a weapon.

It was possible to summon a psychopomp without a ghost being present, and there were a few cases on the books of psychopomps being used as murder weapons, but it was rare, and the chances of getting away with it were virtually nil. A person killed by having their soul ripped from their body carried certain marks; it was easy to detect. And once detected, the energy signature of the one doing the summoning was tracked, and the murderer caught.

Either way, she’d never heard of a psychopomp simply disappearing without claiming a soul. Never.

So why the hell had Baldarel’s done it? How had they done it? She hadn’t heard any words of power spoken, smelled any herbs, or felt any sort of extra energy blast of the type that would come from magic like that. Of course, considering that she’d been terrified and frantic and overloaded with the power already in the tunnels, that wasn’t saying much, even if you discounted the speed in her system.

At least it answered one question. She knew why they were underground. Ghosts were stronger there. If she were creating ghost bound spells she’d probably go there, too, for the extra power; it made sense that Baldarel would live there.

She stubbed out her smoke, drank her beer. Inspected for several minutes a flyer for a Poor Dead Bastards show. The idea of staying there still made her nervous; being the catalyst for mass murder by psychopomp wasn’t something she particularly wanted. But the life around her, hot bodies crowded into the small blaring space, beer and sweat and smoke, smiling faces, dazed drugged-out faces, even the slightly queasy look of one or two people who would probably be puking in the alley soon—it made her feel part of something, just as much as working for the Church made her feel part of something.

So, yeah, she’d stay for a while. Think about things. Try to—

Terrible walked in.

Her stomach leapt into her chest. Should she—What should she do? Leave? Leave was probably the best idea, yeah, but to leave she’d have to walk right past the booth he’d just emptied with a jerk of his head and taken over.

With his … date. She guessed.

Amy was the only one of the girls he saw to whom she’d been introduced, and that had been a fluke. The girl now sitting beside him, her face bright with the slightly desperate chatter of the ignored, was new—new and, Chess thought a little meanly, looked as though she’d never had a serious thought in her dyed-red head.

Pretty enough, though. Especially if one’s tastes ran to heavy makeup and voluptuous breasts. Which Terrible’s apparently did—well, what man’s didn’t, really. She must have been a real disappointment for him in that department. He must have—

No. No, and no. She was not going to do that to herself, not anymore. Whatever. He was on a date, fine. Out with some other girl—now draped over his chest like one of Dali’s melting clocks—who didn’t even have the grace to look a damn bit like Chess so she could comfort herself with the idea that he was hunting out some kind of replacement for her.

Not that that actually would comfort her, but at least she could think shitty thoughts about it. As it was, she just felt shitty, and that was infinitely worse.

She managed to make it to the bar for another bottle of cheap self-esteem without being seen, but as the bartender handed it to her, she felt it. Him. Felt his gaze on her. How she felt it she didn’t know, but she felt it just the same, knew the second she turned around she’d catch him looking at her.

Sometimes she hated being right.

His face didn’t move while he watched her walk back to her seat; not so much as a blink or a twitch of the lips to indicate he even knew who she was, that they’d ever shared a conversation, much less bodily fluids. Fine. She could do that, too.

And she didn’t have to do it alone. She sat back down, threw a glassy smile at the guy sitting in her booth.

“Saved your seat,” he said.

Terrible was still watching. She smiled wider. “Really? From a fate worse than death?”

It took him a second, but he got it. “Yeah, you could say that. Or maybe I saved me. You should have seen the guy who wanted it.”

“Not your type?”

He shook his head, his expression solemn. He had a nice face; any other time she would have studied it, would have wondered how he looked from the neck down. Would have considered finding out, if she had nothing else going on.

As it was he was nothing, just a face at which she could smile and pretend to be having the time of her life. She didn’t think that if she blinked she’d recognize him again when her eyes opened. “I like them smaller,” he said. “Makes me feel like a man.”

“Do you not usually?” Terrible had looked away; now he glanced at her again, shifted in his seat. She leaned forward a little, keeping tabs on him out of the corner of her eye.

“Am I supposed to?” He didn’t appear to notice her sneaky eye-corner spying.

“Well, it’s usually—” Oh. Oh, no. The music changed. Chess recognized that song, heavy with bass, those sonorous opening notes …

The Stooges, “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” The song that played the night she and Terrible first—that night at Trickster’s, the night she’d fucked everything up for the first time. The most serious time. The night before she’d gone ahead and slept with Lex, sending all of them down the slippery road to hell.