His arms moved. His shadowy form shifted. “Naw, guessin’ she take it. Only... hold on.” More movement; he sat up, leaned forward, half-lifted himself from the floor, leaned back. Checking to see if the smaller folding knife he kept in his boot was still there, she guessed, which was confirmed when he spoke again. “Took my big knife, dig, but not this one. Here. You sit up?”
“Yeah.” She pushed herself up and turned her back to him. “Can you see me?”
“Aye.” Rustles and shifts behind her, and the touch of cold steel on the inside of her wrist. “I holding it steady, aye? You cut the rope.”
And possibly a couple of veins, she thought, but didn’t say it. Wasn’t like she had a choice, anyway. Especially not when magic pulsed over her skin, a thick nauseating wash of it that made her shiver. “Shit. She’s really going now.”
“What plan you got?”
“I don’t know.” Her muscles screamed at her—they weren’t meant to move that way, she didn’t think—but she managed to lift her wrists against the blade and find what she hoped was an angle where she wouldn’t slice herself open. “I want to stop her before she summons him, if we can. I don’t think I have enough salt to put a ring around the whole house to hold them in until the Squad gets here, even if I can find my bag. And I doubt she’s actually made a circle herself, so…”
“Nothin to hold the ghost in, aye? Can go anywhere he’s wanting.”
“They can go anywhere, yeah, after he kills her. Which he will.” There! The rope gave; she yanked her wrists apart and grabbed the knife to start cutting him free. So much faster and easier when she could see what she was doing. “If she thinks she’s going to get some happy fucking holiday, she’s in for a real surprise.”
Terrible started to reply, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by her gasp. She rested her head on his back for a second. “Can you feel that?”
“Feel something, aye.” He must have felt the rope weakening, too, because he jerked his arms outward. It broke. “She brought him up yet?”
“No.” Chess watched him free her ankles, and then his. Her feet tingled as blood rushed back into them. “But she’s close.”
A click, a flare of warm light; Terrible had pulled his lighter, and the wild high flame showed her a bedroom. The master bedroom, she guessed; a door at the other end by the headboard looked like a bathroom. And, oh, yeah, in the corner stood a flatbed dolly, the kind used to transport loads of construction materials or heavy, bulky items. Like sedated large animals. Or sedated large people. Bitch. She’d loaded them on there like cases of beer.
Terrible stood up and held out his hand to help her do the same. In the golden light she could see his eyelids lower than usual in his pale face and the unsteady way he stood. Well, yeah, he’d been shot up with animal tranquilizers. So had she, but her body was used to downers. And uppers, and just about anything else she could get her hands on. His wasn’t. And he’d been hit twice, instead of once. “You okay?”
He nodded. “Let’s just get us outta here, aye?”
He wavered on his feet when another wave of magic hit them, and a new worry blossomed in her mind. The sigil she’d carved into his chest to save his life had made him more vulnerable to magic—particularly dark magic—and for a while he’d passed out every time he was exposed to it.
No. Not passed out. Died. He’d died every time he was exposed to it, died for just a tiny fraction of a second but died just the same.
The sigil Elder Griffin helped her design had solved that problem, but it still depended in part on his own strength to work, his own energy. If he was weakened by, say, animal tranquilizers... what would that mean?
She didn’t want to find out. Instead she took his arm to guide the lighter. “I can’t imagine she’s put my bag—oh, shit. No, I bet she did.”
“Put it where she can use all what’s in it, aye?”
“Probably. I don’t see it in here. All I—” Oh, ew. Eew eew ugh yuck.
They were in the master bedroom. Faded curtains with huge yellow-and-green daisies on them covered the window to her right, the same pattern as on the wallpaper. Not that she could see much of the wallpaper, because more framed photos obscured it. Eliza and Vincent’s grinning faces watched her and Terrible from every surface, huddled together on top of the dresser and lining the top of the cabinet-style headboard of the queen-size bed. That wasn’t the gross part.
The gross part was the horrible oblong stain stretching down the right side of the bed, the bits of what looked like dirt but probably wasn’t scattered inside it, and the clumps of matted hair on the pillow. Chess didn’t even have to think about it to know exactly what had lain there, and for how long, and where that object was now.
A long pause while they both looked at the bed. Terrible swallowed and took a step closer to it. “Been sleeping with he body, aye?”
“It’s been in here, I don’t know that she’s been sleeping with—oh.” Her stomach twisted. On the pillow beside the stained one were several long gray hairs. “I guess she has. I don’t—shit. She’s got his body.”
“Be easier for him coming back.”
“Right.”
They stood in silence for a second. “Guessing be why she got all them clocks stopped? Like you say on the earlier, Havisham. You tell me she stopped all she clocks, in that book, aye?”
“Yeah. I guess... after Haunted Week it took a few months to finish getting all the ghosts down to the City. There were still some isolated attacks. I think I read about one in late December that year, around here. Maybe that’s what happened to him.”
It was probably what happened to him. Which made things worse. “If it’s the anniversary of his death, and his birthday, and she has his body, that can make it pretty easy for her to bring him back even without me here. Maybe that’s why she was so sure she’d see him tonight. We need to hurry. If we get there before she finishes summoning him, it’s not a problem, but without my bag…”
He tried the doorknob. Locked. Of course. “Want me breaking this or the window?”
She hesitated. Wandering around outside in the freezing cold didn’t appeal, but for all they knew Eliza had her tranq gun all loaded up and ready to go, and the sound of the door flying open would give her plenty of time to take aim.
He seemed to know what she was thinking. He pushed the curtains open, which didn’t let in much light at all, and tried to slide the window open. It didn’t budge. “Grab you that pillow offen the bed, aye?”
She did, while he stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his fist and forearm.
“Is this going to be that much quieter than the door?” she asked him.
He shrugged. “Iffen she hear it and comes down, still ain’t be so easy to aim at us. Ready?”
Chess ducked her head behind the pillow. The sound of shattering glass drowned out “Close to You” for a second or two; icy air caressed Chess’s skin. She pulled the pillow down to see Terrible brushing glittering shards off the sill and hoisting himself up on to it, over it, landing outside with a barely-audible thud. He held his hand out to her through the hole. “C’mon. Bring the pillow.”
It probably wasn’t necessary, but she set the pillow on the sill anyway. Being sliced by jagged glass wasn’t her idea of fun. Neither was trying to find places for her knees and feet among the photographic detritus covering the dresser. But she did it, and Terrible pulled her safely out through the window and into his arms as a surge of magic from the living room took her breath away.
Or maybe it wasn’t the magic, or at least not that kind of magic. His arm curled around her waist, yanking her to him, and before she could react, his mouth was on hers. One of those kisses she hated as much as she loved, a kiss that knew they were about to throw themselves right into the path of danger and might not survive; a kiss that told her how much he loved her just in case they didn’t.
And she said the same, in the same way, pressing her hands on the sides of his face and pushing her finge
rs into his hair. This wasn’t the end for them. It couldn’t be. It wouldn’t be, because there never would be an end for them. She knew that. It was Truth, and she believed in it more than she believed in anything else, even the Church.
His fingertips stroked her cheek, barely a touch before he grabbed her hand and started running around the back of the house.
The tide was in. Waves lapped the stone retaining wall only twenty feet or so away, the sound shrouded by both the thick fog that made her feel like they were running through a nightmare and the ever-present “Close to You” that made her want to shove a fucking drill into her eardrums. She gripped Terrible’s hand tighter.
They had to slow down when they reached the end of the house, almost invisible in the mist. Gravel and rocks littered the ground, and who the hell knew what junk they might trip on? Even with the eerie glow coming from what must have been the lit Christmas tree in the front window, there wasn’t enough light to move at anything like full speed. The energy in the air, in the mist, from Eliza’s ritual, thrummed against Chess’s skin and burrowed into her soul. It was hard to breathe, would have been hard to breathe even if the air hadn’t frozen her lungs.
Finally they reached the window. And stopped, staring for a moment they couldn’t afford at the scene framed by fog-edged glass. Mrs. Hudson stood by the tree, her body limned in festive multicolored light, and raised a knife. Chess’s knife. That bitch. Terrible gave her that knife. She’d have to re-consecrate it if she were to use it again—oh, what the fuck was she whining about that for? Surviving this holiday nightmare was sort of a bigger concern just then.
Just as Chess figured, Vincent’s body—well, it wasn’t much of a body at that point, just a skeleton covered in scraps of fabric and scraps of things Chess didn’t want to think about—lay at Mrs. Hudson’s feet. A pillow supported its skull. Around it several items were arranged like afterlife tokens at a Viking funeral: a wallet, a pair of worn tennis shoes, what looked like baseball cards, a pair of socks and some underwear. Very personal, so very powerful. One of the items was a hammer, which was awesome because what they really needed was for Vincent’s ghost to have a deadly bludgeoning tool within easy reach.
She had to admit, though, that she was a little impressed. Despite Mrs. Hudson’s obvious lack of training and her failure to mark a circle, she’d planned her little ritual awfully well, substituting personal items, anniversaries, and a corpse for real magical ability, thus enabling herself to bring the whole thing off even without Chess’s power. But Chess figured she’d had years of practice at that; something told her this wasn’t the first time Eliza had tried this. Maybe it was a yearly ritual, too, just like the decorations and presents.
What Chess didn’t see was her bag. Shit. Not only were all of her magic supplies in there—including the black chalk she’d use to mark protective sigils on herself and Terrible—but her fucking pills were in there, and maybe not all of the itching she felt was magic. Maybe some of it was early withdrawals, which meant she really really needed to find it and end this mess. It was too late to escape and call the Squad, because even as she started to jump toward the window, Eliza stabbed herself in the hand. Blood poured from the wound onto the decayed corpse. Magic blasted like a mushroom cloud, blue light flared, and Chess’s skin erupted in stinging, burning itches as that magic grabbed her own power and the runes and sigils tattooed on her body reacted to it. She gasped and stumbled, suddenly weak, and especially suddenly a lot more pessimistic about their chances of surviving, because the flash of blue cleared to reveal the ghost in the living room.
Vincent Hudson had arrived.
Chapter Four
He was wearing a Santa suit.
A fucking Santa suit.
Ghosts always appeared pale ice-blue, clothes and all, but Chess had seen images of Santa Claus in the Church archives and museum, and there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that this ghost was dressed like Santa, even down to the weird hat.
The itching all up and down her arms and across her shoulders grew worse. That seemed like an awful lot of itching, actually, for just one ghost. Which it might not have been. The room was full of junk and the area around the house even fuller, so who the hell knew what else might come through the hole Eliza had opened—if she was using personal objects as totems and power-generators, she could raise half the City with all the old crap in that place.
For that matter, who the hell knew how big the hole was? Anything could be ready to materialize, in a place that was basically a deadly-weapon-smorgasbord for ghosts, and without her bag Chess couldn’t do a damn thing to stop them. Or to stop them from turning Eliza and Terrible and herself into ghosts who would then leave the house and join the slaughtering fun. Ghosts didn’t stop killing until either someone stopped them or the sun came up, and it was just a couple of days past the longest night of the year.
Vincent’s face—the same one from the pictures, only a little older, and obviously not flesh-colored—broke into a wide grin at the sight of his wife. Chess wasn’t fooled.
Eliza was. She opened her arms, threw back her head. Her voice came tinny and jubilant through the glass. “Vincent! Oh, Vincent! I did it! I did it this time!”
“Come on.” Chess started hunting through the fog for something to throw through the window. “My bag’s got to be in there somewhere, once I find it I can—”
Terrible’s hand hard on her arm, stopping her. She turned to him, ready to ask what the fuck he was doing, but the look on his face stopped her. It was serious, and sad, and he said in a quiet low tone, “Let she have it.”
“He’s going to kill her, we can’t just—”
“What she’s wanting, aye? Be why she’s done all it.”
“But—”
“Chessie.” He dipped his head toward the house. “C’mon. Look.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but nothing came out. His eyes were full of sympathy, and she turned to the window and realized he was right. Eliza just stood there with her arms outstretched. Her face shone. Her chest heaved.
Vincent stepped forward, the slow, horrifying stroll of a ghost ready to claim a victim. His grin widened into a rictus of glee, like a parody of joy, and he took the knife—still Chess’s knife, damn it—from Eliza’s hand while Eliza stood, watching him. Waiting.
Chess and Terrible waited, too. Terrible slipped his arm around Chess’s shoulders and drew her close; she wrapped hers around his waist and pressed her head against his chest, right over the sigil carved into his skin beneath his shirts. The sigil keeping him alive. Her eyes stung, and she couldn’t even say why—or maybe she could, and just didn’t want to think about it.
The pale light cast by Vincent’s ghostly form and the bright Christmas bulbs bathed Eliza’s face, made it glow. Maybe it wasn’t just the lights. Maybe it was happiness, the way the years seemed to melt away as she smiled at her husband. “I love you,” she said. “I’ve missed you.”
The knife flashed across her throat.
Time, already running incredibly slowly, stopped altogether. It seemed to take an hour before blood poured from the wound over the lace collar, another hour before it oozed over the too-big bodice, before it soaked into the dress in a wide dark stain and dripped into the messy tulle.
Eliza’s lips moved. It looked like “Thank you,” or maybe “I love you,” again, but Chess couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter, either. Eliza’s body crumpled.
Terrible’s feet hit the porch before Eliza’s body hit the floor. All those planters lining the wall; he hoisted one and pulled it back, ready to throw through the window. Vincent didn’t pay attention, because Eliza’s ghost rose from her body like Venus from the shell.
Chess had never seen ghosts exhibit affection to each other. Of course it happened in the City, but outside of it was different. Outside of it she’d never seen them really interact with each other, except when they ganged up to kill people. But Eliza and Vincent looked at each other. Really looked at each other. They reached out
in unison. The song kept playing, playing so loud, and Chess’s vision blurred so she could hardly see the two of them embrace, reunited by death.
They broke apart when the planter crashed through the window. Identical snarls appeared on their glowing, eerily perfect faces. Vincent lifted the knife.
Terrible hurled himself through the gaping hole in the wall; in his hand was a length of pipe he must have picked up from the porch. Chess followed with no clear idea what the fuck she was going to do to help him except finding her bag, which could take forever in the piles of junk everywhere.
It wasn’t in the living room; a quick scan showed her that, which was all she had time for because while Terrible wrapped his hands around Vincent’s knife fist, Eliza found her own weapons.
That woman had been holding on to her Christmas shit for twenty-five years. Twenty-five years worth of projectiles to fling at Chess, and her aim was really damn good. A china Santa hit Chess in the shoulder. One of those ceramic light-up houses with snow painted on it hit her in the chest. She stumbled; her foot slid on a piece of broken Santa and she fell to the floor.
Heavy Christmas decorations continued to pelt her as she struggled to get back up: glittery silver and gold balls, figurines that must have come from one of those little tableaus they called Nativity sets. A wooden baby Jesus hit her in the face. She picked it up and threw it back, knowing it wouldn’t do any good but pissed off enough not to care. It sailed right through Eliza’s translucent form.
Terrible was still struggling with Vincent. He was trying to pull Vincent by Vincent’s one solid hand—ghosts could solidify around objects but not on their own—into the center of the room, away from any other potential weapons, while Vincent was trying to pull Terrible back toward the walls and shelves. As Chess scrambled to her feet, Eliza turned to Vincent. A look passed between them. That could not be good.
It wasn’t. Chess saw it coming and opened her mouth to scream, but it was too late and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Vincent dropped the knife. His hand instantly lost its solid form and slipped through Terrible’s grasp.