Stacia Kane - Unholy Ghosts

The envelope wasn’t under the mattress, not quite. It sat inside the box spring, tucked into a clumsily mended slice in the flowered fabric, but Chess’s breath caught just the same. She hadn’t expected it would be there. Most people destroyed incriminating documents, or at least stored them elsewhere. In the normal run of a case Chess might interview dozens of friends and acquaintances, would break into their homes later to hunt for anything they might have been given and told to hide. So for this to be here, still in the house…inside the box spring was a safe hiding spot, but not the safest.

Unless they’d known it was all going wrong, had felt their energy being sucked away as the thief gained power, and had put it there in hopes it would be found by someone who could help them. Someone who would need to know who’d done this to them, so the culprit could be punished. Also possible.

She shrugged. Wasn’t up to her why they’d chosen to incriminate themselves, only that they had. She picked up the envelope and straightened the pins on the flap.

The contents were light. Only a few sheets of paper and two faded photographs. One of a woman—barely more than a girl, really—with a tired, mournful expression, holding a baby. The other was of a young man at a graduation—a Church graduation, wearing a blue brimmed hat and sash. Chess had a hat just like that in her apartment, still in its clear plastic box shoved to the back of her closet shelf.

Oh, fuck. She’d been wrong, wrong and stupid. The awkward smile on the face staring back at her—how many times had she seen that smile, dismissed it? Dismissed him? Not a good Debunker, boring, not very smart…

Looked like Randy Duncan was a lot smarter than she’d thought.

Randy Duncan who, according to the birth certificate in the envelope, was Mrs. Morton’s illegitimate son. Now that Chess was looking at it she saw the resemblance, the very thing that had bothered her the first time she met Mrs. Morton.

Randy never told her he’d found his birth mother, or anything about his life at all. Chess knew he was adopted, but all of this—the birth certificate, the bill from a private investigations firm showing how much money the Mortons had invested in finding him—he’d never mentioned. Not once. Of course…He wouldn’t have. Not when he figured he could use the Church to recoup their money for them and finally get them that bigger house.

The Mortons would report a haunting. Randy would investigate and claim it was a real one. The Church would pay, and everyone would be happy.

Until she stepped in and took the case. Now at least she knew whose name had been next in the case queue.

Was this really what all of this was about? Why the fuck had he brought the Lamaru in on this, what the hell was he thinking? Was he really such a failure he’d needed to turn to them to summon a ghost, instead of doing it himself? They learned basic Summoning in their second year, for fuck’s sake. She could have summoned a ghost right there, if she needed to—it would have been illegal, but she could do it—so why couldn’t Randy? Why had he needed to go to the Lamaru, why summon an entity like Ereshdiran instead of a basic ghost?

That just didn’t make sense, didn’t fit, even as the rest of her questions were answered. Her instinct at her first visit, that the Mortons were faking, had been right on. They had been—before. But somehow during that visit, they’d managed to get Ereshdiran here—Ereshdiran, jacked high on her own power—and all hell had broken loose, with her in the center of it. And all because Randy wanted to help his family. Poor, stupid, naïve Randy—Randy who’d gotten mixed up somehow with the Lamaru.

No wonder Mrs. Morton hadn’t destroyed these, hadn’t even been able to bear storing them elsewhere. It must have been awful, giving up a baby, searching for years…Chess couldn’t imagine it, any more than she could imagine what it would be like to have someone spend that much money and time just to be a part of her life.

She cleared her throat. “Okay. I think this is all we—”

“Not so fast.”

Oh, shit. She spun around on legs that felt ready to collapse beneath her to see Randy in the doorway, barely three feet from her, with a dull, black hunting knife clutched in one shiny, pale hand. His normally messy hair stuck to his forehead in crooked, sweaty stripes; his teeth gnawed at his dry lips, leaving red spots where they tore the fragile skin.

How stupid was she? Of course Randy was going to show up here. Of course he would have a knife. Had she actually thought a locked front door would keep him out?

She’d thought she was being so clever, having Terrible park one block over so their presence in the house wasn’t advertised, bringing him up here with her to help her search so it would go more quickly. It hadn’t even occurred to her to set any magical traps of any kind.

Now she would pay for that with her life.

Terrible was on the other side of the bed. There was no way he could reach Randy before Randy reached her, and she wasn’t a bad fighter, but she didn’t think she could take Randy down before he hurt her badly. She caught Terrible’s eye, gave her head a tiny shake.

“I think you have something that belongs to me,” Randy said. “Quite a few things, in fact, starting with my birth certificate and ending with my amulet. Drop the papers and tell me where the amulet is, please.”

The papers fell back to the bed with a quiet rippling sound. “It’s in my bag. Over there by the closet.”

“Oh, no. You go get it. I’m not taking my eyes away from you and whoever this thug you’re hanging out with is. Not after what he did to Doyle.”

“So you ran into Doyle, huh.”

“Get the bag. Move slow.”

She slid her foot to her left, inching sideways across the carpet. Terrible stared at her, his face immobile but his eyes a little wider than usual, a little more intense. What?

Randy’s hand slid over her shoulder to grip the back of her neck. “I don’t think I want you too far away from me,” he said. “And yeah, I ran into Doyle. He told me you were asking about Goody Tremmell—like she’d have anything to do with this, please—and about the Lamaru. Why don’t you mind your own fucking business? Didn’t you learn anything from what happened to that kid you were hanging around with?”

Brain had seen the ritual…From the back Randy and Doyle could almost pass for each other, especially in the dark. Especially when the witness was a terrified young boy. No wonder Brain had run, and run again when he saw her coming for him. He’d thought she was involved. He’d died thinking she’d given him up.

She felt sick, tried not to show it. There’d be time for that later. And Goody Tremmell—Randy must have broken into the filing cabinet, taken that invoice, and tossed it away, while he was hanging out in the Church earlier, intercepting phone calls and such. Not the Goody at all. He must have given her the key ring, too; a bribe to make sure she didn’t skip his place in the queue? She thought of offering a silent apology to Goody Tremmell, but remembered the snotty look on her face when she’d seen Chess behind her desk and decided not to. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. “What I don’t understand is how you got mixed up with them in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t, would you? You thought I was an idiot. Just like everybody else. Poor Randy, he’s a lousy Debunker, he’s a fool…Whatever. You don’t know anything. The Lamaru do, and so do I.”