City of Ghosts

  “Oughta give he the knowledge you own self, baby. No good playing pass-on, ain’t solve nothing.”

  For once that damned Binding came in handy. She lifted her wrist. “Actually, I probably can’t tell him myself. So will you just do it, please?”

  His lips pressed together in a thin line, but he nodded. “Aye. I give it over, on the soon-as.”

  “Thanks.”

  They chatted for a few more minutes, mostly about Galena and the pregnancy, before Chess moved on. Walking might clear her head, and she could certainly use a little clear-headedness at this point. Maybe she should go home. She still had two hours or so before she had to meet Lauren for another round of Bitch Games. If she went home she could sit down and go through the file again. She could make notes. She’d be safe there, too.

  Okay. Snack, then home. She made her way to the row of permanent booths against the fence, not hungry but figuring at least eating was something to do. Not to mention that it could be hours before she got to eat anything; she had a sneaking suspicion that Lauren wouldn’t let her go until well after dark.

  She should ask Elder Griffin about her file and see if the picture was still in it. See if duplicates were made, too.

  Should she tell him why she wanted to know? Good question. Redundant question, since she’d been turning it over and over in her mind since the moment she’d done that exact thing with the photo in her hands, but still—

  Instinct brought her hand down to her pocket when someone bumped into her. Instinct made her grab her bag in time to catch the child trying to sneak its grubby hand into it.

  The second her skin touched its—his? hers? she couldn’t tell—energy shot up her arm. Creepy, oozy energy; she staggered under the weight of it in her head.

  But she didn’t let go, although the child struggled and wriggled so hard she barely managed to hold on, and still couldn’t even make out its features. A shaggy mop of black hair obscured its eyes; its face below the hair was a reddish blur with a gaping, semi-toothless mouth. And its energy felt like the dirty whispers of a pervert in a dark room.

  Chess dug her short fingernails into the delicate skin of the child’s inner wrist and held on.

  The child shrieked. Chess didn’t give a shit. Neither did anybody else. If every Downside pickpocket and cutpurse drew crowds, nobody would ever get anything done.

  The energy grew stronger, felt worse, as Chess dragged the child out of the noodle line and toward Bump’s place. Not because she wanted to go to Bump’s place, but because nobody stood outside his front door; she could have a little privacy there, and it would be harder for the child to escape.

  A child shouldn’t have energy like that. Chess’s tattoos itched and stung; no living thing should make her feel that way.

  “Lemme go!”

  A sharp foot slammed into Chess’s calf. The kid was tougher than she—closer inspection made Chess fairly certain it was a girl—looked.

  “I’m not fucking letting you go. I’m going to find Terrible. See how he likes thieves in the Market.”

  “Weren’t stealing!” The girl slapped at Chess’s hand, tried to twist her arm away.

  “Were too. You were trying to get into my bag.”

  “Weren’t stealing!” With every movement the girl made, a fresh wave of that horrible energy slid up Chess’s arm; with every movement she made, a fresh wave of her horrible stench assaulted Chess’s nose. The girl stank of sweat and animals and filth, like she’d been sleeping in the sty at the slaught—

  “Where do you live?”

  The girl must have sensed Chess’s anger turning into curiosity. Her struggles quieted. “Ain’t got no tells for you. Lemme go.”

  “What were you trying to get out of my bag?”

  The girl glared at her. Up close Chess could see the child’s eyes, squinty and strangely unfocused, too small and too close set. Her nose didn’t fit properly either; it looked more like a fat earlobe, just a knob of flesh rising above her tiny upper lip. Her features crowded too close to the center, leaving wide, pale cheeks and a prominent chin floating around the edges. She looked like a computer simulation of a human rather than an actual one.

  And she felt like something that shouldn’t be breathing at all.

  “What were you trying to take from my bag?” Chess repeated, daring to take her eyes off the girl for a second to hunt for Terrible in the crowd.

  Mistake. Sharp pain exploded in her forearm; the child had bitten her, sinking those crooked, needlelike teeth into her skin.

  “Fuck!” She dug her fingers deeper into the girl’s wrist, but that made the girl bite harder. They wobbled for a second in front of Bump’s black door, Chess’s bag slipping from her shoulders, before she tangled her free hand in the girl’s hair and twisted it.

  The girl howled and let go of Chess’s arm. Her hair felt like a bird’s nest full of motor oil, but Chess twisted harder, pushing down as she did so. Yes, it was just a child, and Chess didn’t want to hurt a child, but the little bitch had tried to turn her arm into lunch.

  And now the little bitch had a knife. Sun caught the blade and sparked into Chess’s eyes; she barely managed to avoid having it sunk into her stomach.

  Her fist was still tangled in the girl’s hair. The girl fell backward, twisting Chess’s wrist and forcing her to lose her grip.

  Chess stumbled. So did the child, but she had the advantage of not having a bleeding bite wound on her arm to distract her. She hopped up and started running across the Market, toward the animal vendors.

  Another exit stood right behind those vendors. Another exit, and beyond it the Downside streets full of alleys and squats and other hiding places for a little girl to sneak into. No fucking way was that kid hitting that exit. If she did, Chess would never find her.

  So Chess followed. The girl ducked and dove between people; Chess had to shove them out of the way. Her heart pounded. Blood dripped from her arm onto the dirty ground; Chess sure as fuck hoped nobody knew what kind of power resided in that blood or what its uses were, because if some enterprising shithead decided to scoop up the dirt on which it fell they’d have a lovely little spell ingredient or the means to build a curse against her.

  No time to worry about that. She leapt over a couple of chickens, her eyes still pinned on the child’s thin, dingy gray shirt and too-big jeans with fat rolls at the ankles.

  The child ducked through the exit and turned left. Chess followed. She almost had her, just another few inches and she could grab that awful hair and pull her back—

  The girl spun around. Her knife flashed in the air again. This time Chess tripped over an empty beer bottle and fell, slamming her knees onto the broken sidewalk. Pain shot up her legs.

  She got up anyway, refusing to let some kid get the better of her, but it was too late. The girl ducked sideways into an alley; something clanked, louder than the fast-receding sound of the girl’s footsteps.

  By the time Chess reached the narrow space she was gone. Or at least, she was almost gone. Movement caught Chess’s eye at the end, where the alley opened onto Fifty-third; two figures disappearing into the sun-drenched crowds. One second she saw them. The next they were gone.

  But she had seen them. The girl’s shaggy head was easy to recognize. Almost as easy to recognize was the much shaggier head of Arthur Maguinness beside it, as he scooped the child up and carried her away.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Their roads are marvels of technology, which the Church has only improved upon over time.

  —A History of the Old Government, Volume V: 1930–1974

  Maguinness needed money. Maguinness sent some kid to steal from her. From her specifically? Or just to steal from someone, and she looked like an easy target?

  But she didn’t look like an easy target—at least she didn’t think she did. Trouble lurked around every corner in Downside and hung over crowds like layers of smoke, but not only was Chess careful, not only was Chess Church, Chess worked for Bump. Since that ha
d become common knowledge she hadn’t had any trouble.

  And why would Maguinness start trouble with her? He had no idea what she was investigating. Right? And even if he did, if the Lamaru were scared of him or in some kind of fight with him, he’d be glad she was investigating them, right?

  Shit. Why was it that every time she so much as breathed in the Lamaru’s direction, everything in her life went totally fucking haywire?

  No, the business with Terrible had nothing to do with the Lamaru, but at that particular moment, as she pulled into the Church parking lot, it felt like it did. After all, if the Lamaru hadn’t been pulling their shit at Chester Airport she never would have gotten involved with Terrible, or Lex, right? So this was their fault.

  The lie totally felt like a lie, but whatever. She wanted to blame the Lamaru, so she did. What were they going to do, attack her? They’d do that anyway. Scum-sucking shits.

  And speaking of shits … Lauren stood outside the huge double doors at the Church entrance, tapping her foot. Chess glanced at the digital clock lurking beneath a thin layer of dust on her dashboard. Five minutes to six. She was early. So what was Lauren’s problem?

  Lauren’s problem was simply that Chess existed, it seemed. With a sigh Chess got out of the car and trudged over, discarding as she went her loose plan to tell Lauren about the pickpocket attempt and connect it to Maguinness as someone the Lamaru might possibly deal with. Lauren wouldn’t listen anyway, not when all Chess had to go by was an overheard conversation she couldn’t share and an attempted crime that happened dozens of times every day.

  “I’m not late. It’s only five till.”

  Lauren’s lips thinned. “Did I say you were late?”

  “No, but you look irritated.”

  “Not everything is about you, Cesaria.”

  Chess treated that comment with the dignity it deserved—none at all—and plunged on. “I had another look at the file. I was thinking maybe we could start hunting for the kind of equipment someone would need to create embryos, or implant them, or whatever. There’s got to be a black market for that stuff, maybe the Squad would know something.”

  Lauren considered it. “I think if we knew something, we’d have busted them, but it’s worth a try, I guess. Let me call—Shit!”

  Chess started to reach for her, wondering what exactly the problem was, but Lauren’s gaze was fixed on a spot behind her. Chess turned, Lauren’s ghost-white face making only the faintest, most fleeting impression on her before all the blood drained out of her own.

  Erik Vanhelm stood not twenty feet away, on the lawn near the stocks.

  For the space of a heartbeat he stared at them. They stared back. Chess noticed every detail, the way the bluish dusk light darkened his hair, the flaring of his nostrils, the blurry faint movement of branches in a tree behind him.

  Then he took off for the parking lot.

  “The car,” Chess said, already making her way toward Lauren’s egomobile. “Come on, he’s—”

  “No, he’s probably running somewhere—”

  “He’s getting in his car, why wouldn’t he?” Chess grabbed the door handle and yanked it. Locked. Her pulse throbbed beneath the thin, decorated skin of her wrists. “Come on, he’s going to get away!”

  “I think he’s still here!”

  “Yeah, but he’s not going to be for much—”

  “No, we need to follow on foot.”

  “Follow where? He has a car, he has to, and—”

  A door slammed. An engine started.

  Chess didn’t even have time to say “Told you so;” Lauren could move that little-rich-girl ass when the situation called for it, she had to give her that. They were both inside and the powerful engine was turning over before the black sedan roared past them with Vanhelm at the wheel.

  They spun out of the lot right behind, blew two red lights up the street. “He’s heading for the highway,” Lauren said, laying on the horn as they sped past an oblivious pedestrian.

  “Yeah.” Chess had a feeling she knew where he was headed, too. Where else would he go but Downside, where he could get lost in a crowd or down an alley with a hidden entrance or … wherever?

  Especially not when he probably had a cell phone on him as well. Which meant he could have a happy little Lamaru welcome party waiting for them when he finally decided to dock that boat he was steering.

  She’d just come from Downside, damn it. She could have stayed home.

  She said as much to Lauren—except for the part about staying home—and Lauren nodded. “What have you got on you, anything?”

  “Um … yeah, actually. I’ve got some mandrake and a couple of chunks of snake, and some frankincense I think. Graveyard dirt. Melidia. Asafetida. Iron filings, but not much, I forgot to refill them this morning.”

  “Good kit.” Lauren swerved around a convertible full of hip young things and grabbed Vanhelm’s ass again. She wasn’t a bad driver, Chess noted. Not bad at all. Not as good as some, but she was certainly holding her own. “I have some filings, so that’s taken care of, and I have some wolfsbane and blood salt. Oh, and some ajenjible, and a set of hare bones. Well, not a whole set, but some.”

  They were on the highway, zipping along in the fast lane. Before Chess had a chance to suggest it Lauren fell back a little, trying to trick Vanhelm into thinking they couldn’t keep up.

  “You guys carry that stuff all the time?”

  Lauren smiled. “I could ask you the same thing.”

  “I just believe in being prepared.”

  “Me, too.”

  The car jolted back; some idiot cut them off. Lauren cursed and buzzed around him.

  “Well, aren’t we a couple of Girl Apprentices,” Chess murmured. “Hey, do you know how to place a track? That’s something you guys do, right?”

  “Yes …”

  “What?”

  “I’ve never done it in a moving car. I mean, usually you sneak up and set it while it’s parked or get close and set it on them.”

  Chess raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think you can handle it?”

  “Oh, fuck off.” Lauren thought for a second, sped up a tad. Vanhelm’s car was a good five lengths ahead now. Damn it, there was no way he was going to think he’d lost them, not while they rode in the automotive equivalent of a pair of five-inch fuck-me pumps. “I have to get close, and either you’ll have to take the wheel or I’ll have to talk you through it.”

  “Great choices.”

  “You don’t think you can handle it?”

  Chess acknowledged the joke and unbuckled her seatbelt. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “Get my bag.”

  Unlike Chess, Lauren carried her work supplies separately. She had a petite Coach purse on the backseat and a larger black nylon and suede bag on the floor behind Chess. It was heavy and awkward to lift; the edge of her seat dug into her empty stomach, and the cars and scenery whirling past in that position made her feel, for a moment, disoriented, like she’d been hanging upside down. Add to that the jolt of energy from Lauren’s supplies and she got a nice queasy little headrush right when she didn’t need it.

  The black bag was covered in designer initials woven into the fabric. Chess wasn’t sure if it was a lack of taste or an excess of it that made her find the thing ugly.

  Still, it was well stocked. She pulled out the tracking reader and a couple of sensors; they came with minute blobs of sticky goo, like chewing gum, at the corners.

  Okay, here’s the problem with bravado, Chess thought. They were currently running at about seventy miles per hour, but they were just tailing Vanhelm now, taking a leisurely little cruise along what the newspapers called “the 300 Corridor.” Once they got close to him he was going to start evading, and she was not looking forward to being the center of a rubber-and-steel sandwich at probably double their current speed.

  Erik’s car could probably handle it. Those BT bigblocks could run it out—as she well knew, after months of listening to Terrible extol
the virtues of heavy pre-Church muscle—and Lauren’s car, despite Chess’s initial assumption that it was nothing more than a fancy lawn mower, had plenty of room left on the tach and wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

  Unlike certain Churchwitches she knew. Namely herself. She could think of a fuck of a lot of things she’d rather be doing than getting ready to lean out the window of one speeding car to get friendly with another.

  Lauren glanced at her. “Ready?”

  “No. But let’s do it.”

  She kept the window up while Lauren gunned it, closing the space between themselves and Erik. Chess’s stomach sank with every foot they gained.

  Erik noticed them coming and sped up. Lauren followed. Chess gritted her teeth. Her palms felt sticky and dirty; she rubbed them on her knees and wished she hadn’t agreed to do this. Who cared if Lauren thought she was a pussy? Was it really worth the arm she was pretty sure she was about to lose?

  Another car jumped into the passing lane ahead of Erik, who slammed on his brakes, forcing Lauren to do the same.

  “Hold on.” Chess’s throat was dry; she grabbed her water and took a few gulps. “He’s going to know what we’re doing. We need a distraction.”

  “I’ll shoot at him.”

  “Are you fucking—No! No shooting. You might hit me. How about—Shit!”

  Vanhelm swerved, almost hit them—would have, had Lauren not been quick at the wheel.

  “Do it now,” she said. “He’s coming again, look—”

  Chess caught a glimpse of Vanhelm’s profile, saw his hands jerk the wheel as if in slow motion. She grabbed the sensor. Leaned out the window.

  Nothing between her and bloody highway death on the gray pavement beneath her but the rim of the car door. Her hair completely obscured her view, stung when it snapped against her face. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see. Her hand stretched out with the sensor and she gritted her teeth, waiting for the crunch of bone, the tearing of flesh.

  The sensor hit the car. The car swerved toward her again; for one horrifying second she lost her balance and fell forward. She was about to be crushed, the black quarterpanel of Vanhelm’s car loomed before her like a brick wall she was speeding into—