Stacia Kane - City of Ghosts

She wasn’t going to make it.

Terrible was going to hit the street soon, what would he think when she wasn’t there? Did he trust her enough again to know something had happened to her? Or would he assume she’d ditched him?

She should drop something. Leave something. So he would know she hadn’t ditched him, that she hadn’t played another trick on him.

The street loomed in front of her, she was almost there. Behind her a snarl, the sound of panting—

She reeled around the corner of the building just in time to see Terrible’s date slap him.

Ordinarily she would have ducked back out of sight, but nothing in the world would induce her to step back into that alley, not even the very good chance of being assaulted by a furious woman who’d apparently just found out what her date had been up to in the bathroom with another girl. With her .

Luck was with her in that, at least. Sela didn’t turn around. Instead she did something much worse; stalked off on her five-inch platforms to where Terrible’s Chevelle sat under a streetlight, and leaned against it with her arms folded over her chest. “Taking me home, you are,” she called. “I ain’t walking back alone.”

Terrible glanced at Chess. “Ain’t can just leave her—”

“I have to go with you. I mean, I can’t stay here.” Quickly she told him about the alley. “He’s here, he’s probably watching, if I don’t get out of here—”

“Shit.” He glanced at Sela, back at Chess. “Ain’t gonna be a fun ride, aye? She pissed up right. Ain’t can say I blame her, guessin somebody gave her the happening.…”

“It has to be better than sitting here waiting to be attacked.”

“Ain’t so sure you ain’t gonna be,” he muttered, but he jerked his head just the same for her to follow him to the car.

“… and whoever the fuck you thinking you are, you runcy slut,” Sela went on, glaring at Chess from the shotgun seat, “you want him, you fucking take him. See how you like it when he forgets calling you causen he too busy with some other dame. Thinking about some other dame. Amy don’t even see him no more causen of it, you knowing that?”

“Hey,” Terrible started, but Sela cut him off.

“So ain’t you think just causen you in this car now means any damn thing. It ain’t. He pretending it do, he lying and saying it do, but it ain’t. Pretend that other dame just he friend, so he say, but ain’t like it true.”

Terrible turned up the music, trying to drown Sela out with Nashville Pussy. It didn’t work. She reached over and snapped it off. “Some Churchbitch she is, too. Leastaways that’s what Amy telling me. Amy say she met her once and she weren’t shit.”

Chess cringed. Not that this little monologue wasn’t fascinating, but Terrible looked as though his head was about to explode.

He whipped the Chevelle around a corner with a squeal of tires; she checked the speedometer and saw they were doing about fifty-five. Well, she guessed she couldn’t really blame him for wanting Sela and her mouth the hell out of his car.

Still, she almost found herself wishing the journey could last a little longer.

“Thinking I seen her too,” Sela said. “Some Churchbitch, all her tattoos, thinking she so special. Seen her two weeks past, I did.”

Two—What? “What did she look like?”

Sela snorted. “Ain’t so fucking hot. Hair like mine, and she poking around some vacant lot. Betting she looking for more magic shit, trying to hurt people. Them all—”

“She had red hair?” It had to be Lauren. None of the other Church employees—at least none Chess could think of—had red hair.

But Lauren had supposedly just arrived in town the day Chess met her.

“Aye, red like mine. And she skinny, too, she like you, got no—”

“Two weeks ago? You’re sure?”

Sela rolled her expertly made-up eyes. “I ain’t stupid. Were two weeks past, causen I’d just got paid the day afore. I recall it causen I’d bought new shoes and I were—”

“What was she doing?”

“Why you care?”

Terrible was looking at her, too; she caught his eyes in the rearview. He snatched them away before she could see the expression in them.

“It might—I mean, I’m just curious.”

“Just snooping around, she were. Like she looking for summat. I seen her and can’t even take a guess why Terrible so—”

“She was snooping around in a vacant lot?”

“Aye. Freaky, iffen you asking me. But guessing that what Terrible like, aye? What he deserve, sneaking off into the bathroom with some rigmutton cunt , leaving me on my alones in the bar, and other men talking to me and me saying I got me a date there and he fucking some whore while everyone outside the bathroom hearing them—”

“’S enough, Sela,” Terrible cut in.

“—and ain’t even got the balls to pay me my fair jannocks and gimme the tell he own self. Cocksucker.”

They squealed around another corner. Terrible cut the Chevelle up sharply in front of a rundown house with a sagging roof.

Sela glared at him. At both of them. “Ain’t wishing you luck, bitch. Or you neither. And ain’t you call me again, dig? Done, Terrible. Bad enough I gotta hear that Churchbitch name all the damn time, now you pull this trick on me. No more. You go fuck yourself, aye?”

She threw open the heavy door of the car and flounced out, nearly slamming it on Chess’s hand.

Chess barely noticed, though. She was too busy giggling, helpless snorts of laughter forcing themselves out from between her tight lips. She didn’t want him to see she was laughing, to think she was laughing at him.

She glanced at him guiltily, expecting to see him frowning at her. But he wasn’t even looking at her. Didn’t appear to even realize she was still in the car. His shoulders were shaking, hunched over the wheel. His face was turned away.

Her laughter died. “Hey …” She stretched out her hand. Should she touch his shoulder or something? Shit, if he was that upset …

But he was laughing. He turned to her and she saw it, and her own giggles came rushing back, and she climbed over and collapsed into the front seat with tears in her eyes, she was laughing so hard. She couldn’t even have said why it was so funny; it was horrible, what they’d done to Sela. She couldn’t blame the girl for being angry or for saying any of the things she’d said. Hell, if Chess had been in her position she probably would have said a lot worse. But for some reason she couldn’t explain it just struck her as endlessly amusing, funnier than anything she’d seen in ages, and it felt so good to laugh she didn’t bother analyzing it. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d laughed, really, really laughed.

They laughed until her chest started to ache, and then suddenly they weren’t laughing and his face was only a few inches from hers. Darkness hid his expression from her, she had no idea what he was thinking. What he thought of her now. It didn’t make sense that everything could have changed in the course of one short drive or a few minutes of shared amusement, but how would she know? The sum total of her wisdom on the subject of emotional relationships could be written on the head of a fucking pin.

He cleared his throat. “Guessing we oughta move on, aye?”

“Yeah. I guess so.” Was that her voice? It didn’t sound like her.

For a second she thought he wasn’t going to move after all; her entire body tightened. But then he did, pulling away from her, shoving the car in gear and nosing back onto the street. She gave him Lauren’s address, and they rode the rest of the way in silence.

Damn.

There had to be a reasonable explanation. Had to be.