If they hadn’t been there, she’d have punched him, or grabbed her knife and held it to his throat. Enough of this shit. Enough of this selfish bastard. He was going to fucking talk.
But the Squad was there, so she just met his teary eyes with her best fuck-you glare and said, “Why did you do it?”
“She was going to leave me.” For a second—just a second, but she saw it clearly—his fear disappeared, replaced by fury. Then it came back. “She was going to New York, she didn’t want me to go with her. She knew some guy up there—she was going to be with him.”
He started crying. “I didn’t mean to do it, I was only twenty. I just, I pushed her, that was all. It was an accident. It was—”
Maria appeared.
Pete’s words turned into a howl. He struggled to get away but Chess dug her knuckles into the base of his throat—a trick Terrible had taught her—until he went still.
Sue Randall screamed, and kept screaming, heartbreaking shrieks that made Chess’s eyes sting. She couldn’t imagine what that woman was going through; finding out her daughter was murdered and then seeing her ghost immediately after…awful.
Especially since Maria’s rage transmitted itself so clearly, like electricity in the air, that Chess bet Sue could feel it—she bet everyone could feel it. Maria wasn’t just a ghost. That would be bad enough, since ghosts were like sharks without the whole swimming-and-making-baby-sharks thing: perfect machines. All ghosts did was kill. It was all they wanted to do.
No, Maria was the ghost of a murder victim. So that violence and rage, that instinct to murder every living thing they saw, was amplified by a hundred.
She moved with a speed Chess hadn’t expected, that obviously the Inquisitors hadn’t expected, either. One second Maria was there in the kitchen, her features twisted with rage as she selected a knife from the block on the counter. The next she was a luminescent streak across the room, and the next her fist, solidified around the knife, collided with Chess’s cheek and knocked her off of Pete. Fuck, that hurt. Ghosts were strong, and cold; it was like being slammed in the face by a large block of ice.
Pete tried to crawl. He managed a sort of pitiful scoot, pushing with his legs. Maria followed him, slowly now, obviously savoring his fear. His hoarse sobs and pleas scraped the air.
Shit. The herbs and dirt had flown from Chess’s hand when she went after Pete, and her bag was inside. No way could she get it and be back before Maria killed Pete—or, even if Maria kept drawing the whole thing out like a kid sucking a hard candy instead of biting it, it wouldn’t be too long before Pete broke the circle around the house. Which would allow Maria to go anywhere. And Inquisitors didn’t carry graveyard dirt and asafetida as a matter of course, at least Cohen and Lewis apparently didn’t.
Shit, shit, shit. She couldn’t let Maria kill Pete, as much as she’d like to. Not only were the Inquisitors there, and not only was she trying to wrap this case up as impressively as possible, but she sure as fuck didn’t feel like dealing with two ghosts instead of one. No other choice, then; she’d have to climb into the living room, find her bag, and—
Maria’s window wasn’t far from where she sat. Maria’s window, with her grave the dirt beneath it. No, Chess didn’t have time to dig two feet down—the best depth from which to gather grave dirt—but all that dirt would still be grave dirt, and it would be Maria’s.
Maria’s pale form, almost iridescent in the darkness, stood over Pete. The breeze that ruffled Chess’s hair didn’t touch hers, didn’t ripple the fabric of the sundress she wore.
Chess scrambled toward the bedroom window. Her cheek still throbbed in pain—well, almost all of her did, she’d gone through a fucking window—and all of the terror and misery in the air made her want to scream herself, but she dug her fingers into the dirt, picked up a fistful, and flung it at Maria, throwing as much power as she could along with it.
It hit. It worked. Thank fuck, it worked, and Maria froze in place, crouched over Pete’s supine body, the point of her knife only inches from his throat.
☠
FOUR CEPTS SAT IN THE palm of her hand as she trudged up the steps to home, four—or was it five? Oh, who the fuck cared—hours later. After Banishing Maria and sitting in while the Inquisitors interrogated Pete, filling out all the paperwork, and going over everything with the Randalls, all she wanted to do was get high and get some rest. The Randalls’ horror and misery, Pete’s wailing apologies and self-justifications, refused to stop echoing in her head, and she didn’t want to hear them anymore. She had enough of her own shit in there already—some old, some new. The new was worse, at least at that moment.
Terrible sat on the couch, reading a Cornell Woolrich novel while Bo Diddley played on the jukebox in the far corner. His smile eased some of her unhappiness, but didn’t chase away Pete’s voice.
“I didn’t think you’d be home so early,” she said after he’d greeted her. The pills hit the back of her tongue; she washed them down with water, and crossed the floor to sit next to him.
“Aye,” he said. Concern darkened his eyes; his fingers traced the tiny glass-cuts on her face, the bruise forming on her cheek. “What’s all this?”
“Oh.” She’d almost managed to forget that. “I went through a window, and then a ghost—the girl’s ghost, the murdered girl—punched me. It’s no big deal, though, really.”
She’d think it was good that at least the people she worked with would know it happened on a case, but really, what difference did it make? They’d think whatever the fuck they wanted to think, regardless of what she said.
“Ain’t look like no big deal,” he said, but he dropped his hand to rest on her thigh. “You get him? The killer, meaning. You get all the knowledge an all?”
“Yeah.” She bit her lip. He was going to ask, so she might as well tell him. “He buried her in her yard. Under the window he used to sneak in at night when they dated. But she was leaving, running away to New York. Alone. To see some other guy, she said he was just a friend but Pete didn’t believe her. So he killed her. Because he was jealous.”
Terrible lit a couple of cigarettes and handed her one without speaking. Letting her go on, letting her get it out.
So she did. “He tried to say it was an accident, you know, but it was a lie. I could see it in his eyes. He liked that he’d done it, because she couldn’t get away from him. He even admitted it later, sort of, because we asked why he buried her there, right at her house, and he said he wanted to keep her close to him. Where she always had been, where she should be.”
His eyebrows rose, just a quick twitch, but he still didn’t speak.
“And about a year after that he met Gabrielle—that was the name of the woman he hired, Gabrielle—when he’d just started working at a real-estate office. She was doing some kind of scam, and he figured it out, and he stole a bunch of money to send her to New York and gave her all of Maria’s ID and everything. He still had all that stuff. He’d kept it all.”
“Damn,” Terrible said. His hand moved farther up her thigh; not hitting on her, but reassuring her. “Guessing iffen she ghost ain’t showed up, he ain’t woulda got caught for it, aye?”
“Right. Her parents were totally fooled by the letters and everything. But then when the haunting started, he knew what it probably was. So first he tried to convince me it was fake—well, you remember, I told you earlier—and then he tried to buy the house, thinking he could stop the investigation.”
She shook her head. When the hell would her damn pills hit? “But that wasn’t the only reason. He didn’t want anyone to dig up her body, because then it wouldn’t be there anymore, close to him. He didn’t want anyone to take her away. He wanted the house so he could keep her there forever.”
“Pretty fucked up, aye.” He didn’t sound surprised, but really, why would he? She wasn’t surprised, either. It wasn’t surprise making her feel so awkward.
It was wondering just how close she was, how close any of them were, to doing what
Pete Malina had done. Wondering how far jealousy might drive a person; wondering when love turned into anger.
She was pretty sure that no matter how jealous she might get, she wouldn’t kill Terrible. She certainly didn’t think he would kill her, and he’d had a lot more cause to be jealous than she ever had. Looking into Pete’s eyes hadn’t stirred some sort of primal recognition or anything.
But still…she’d seen Chloe with Terrible and her immediate thought had been how much she’d like to punch Chloe in her pert little face, just for daring to stand next to him and smile at him. Maybe that wasn’t a big deal—it probably wasn’t.
But Terrible was supposed to be dead. Right then, as he sat next to her, he should be dead. She’d broken the law, she’d broken her oaths to the Church, she’d broken a sacred trust in order to save him, and she’d done it because she couldn’t stand not having him with her.Because he was hers. Just like she’d wanted to punch Chloe because Chloe was smiling at and touching her man, who belonged to her. Mine mine mine.
What was the difference? Was there a difference, really? Yes, she’d saved a life and Pete had taken one, but it could definitely be argued that being in the City was a good thing. Most people wanted to go there, felt comforted knowing they would.
“It just kind of weirds me out,” she said finally, because he was waiting for her to speak. “He was so able to justify what he’d done. He’d broken the law but he could justify it because it kept her close to him, because he didn’t want to lose her. Or whatever.”
Pause. She almost felt the wheels click in his head, things snapping into place. “Aye. Only I’m thinking it ain’t what he done that’s mattering. Be what she wanted matters, aye? She wanted leaving, an he ain’t let her. Iffen she wanted staying, dig, be different.”
She smiled at him, a real smile. Her pills were finally hitting, that delicious slide from her stomach to her head and everywhere else. What a fucking relief that was.
But it wasn’t the whole reason for the smile, or for the relief. It definitely wasn’t the reason why she felt like the absolute luckiest person on the planet. “That’s kind of a labored analogy there, you know.”
He dipped his head. “Ain’t like words what I’m best at. Thinkin you dig my meaning, though.”
“Yeah. I get it.” And she did. She took his face in her hands and kissed him, a long solid kiss. More relief, more happiness clearing away the filth. His pulse throbbed against her fingertips when she pulled away to look at him. “So…what are you best at, anyway?”
He took her hand and stood up. “C’mon with me, aye? I show you.”
She followed him to the big gray bed, and let him do exactly that.
THE END
And here’s the new story! A touch of inspiration from Dickens again, BLEAK HOUSE this time.
1.
THE PERFECT PLATE WAS ESSENTIALLY a greasy spoon with delusions of grandeur, squeezed between a dry cleaner and a dollar store in a bland-looking strip mall a few blocks away from Church headquarters. Chess thought the food sucked, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t like she was going to eat anyway.
What mattered was that the place wasn’t in Downside, which made it a place she could meet Beulah for lunch without people noticing them together. Word that Bump’s Churchwitch was hanging out with the sister of his rival, Lex, would travel pretty fast; word that Terrible’s girlfriend was hanging out with Lex’s sister would travel even faster. Nobody would be happy about that.
It was a good thing she’d spent her entire life keeping secrets. Otherwise she might wonder if she was ever going to be able to just be honest with other people. Other people besides Terrible, at least.
Speaking of secrets…she dug her pillbox out of her bag, grabbed three Cepts from it, and choked them down dry before she got out of the car and made her way through the heavy, steamy heat toward the restaurant.
Ice-cold air blasted her the second she opened the door, instantly chilling the sweat on her skin. It took her eyes a second to adjust to the dim interior—well, dim compared to the sunlight outside, so bright it felt like an assault—to see Blue already there, lounging at one of the little tables in that elegantly lazy way she shared with Lex. Her white sleeveless top exposed bare golden-skinned shoulders; her hair was up in a perfect messy twist, and her black cigarette pants probably cost more than Chess’s base monthly salary.
She smiled when Chess sat down. “You’re late.”
“It’s only five past.”
“Five minutes late is still late.”
“Well, you’re still a bitch,” Chess said, “so I guess we’re even.”
“True.” Blue straightened in her chair and picked up the menu. “Are you eating? Am I actually going to see you consume food?”
Chess shook her head, just as the waitress arrived and they went through the whole dull just-a-Coke-no-really-just-a-Coke routine and Blue ordered one of those rich-girl salads that were mostly green Styrofoam and cost fifteen dollars.
“Busy at work?” Blue asked, when the waitress finally wandered off.
“No.” Damn, that came out kind of flat and cold, didn’t it? “It’s just, August is a really slow month. It’s been a really slow summer.”
Blue’s slightly raised eyebrows showed that she’d caught the lame repetitions of ‘really,’ and knew what they were hiding. “And I guess it doesn’t help that you’re not the most popular girl in the place these days.”
“I guess it doesn’t.” That was an understatement. Ever since Elder Griffin found out about the psychopomp hawk she’d killed and the illegal sigil she’d carved on Terrible’s chest to save his life, he’d been, well, less than enthusiastic about her.
To be fair, at least she was still alive. Both of those crimes were executable offenses, and if Elder Griffin had turned her in for them she wouldn’t have been sitting there whining to Blue. She wouldn’t even have been in the City of Eternity, the enormous cavern beneath the earth where the spirits of the dead wandered in endless icy silence. She’d be in the spirit prisons, her soul forced into solidity by electric current and tortured with fire and light and iron and whatever else the Church could think of to torture it with—and when it came to torture, the Church was awfully inventive.
It was worth losing some income to stay alive and out of the City. It was worth losing every penny she had to keep Terrible alive; hell, if she had been busted and sent to spirit prison, that would have been worth it, too.
But it wasn’t the loss of income that depressed her. It was the loss of Elder Griffin himself. He’d been…he’d been her friend. More than her friend. He’d cared about her, helped her. Stood behind her. That had mattered more than she’d ever realized until the day it was gone, and it still made her chest feel hollow when she let herself think about it.
Which she didn’t want to do, any more than she wanted to talk about it for even one more second. “No big deal. How’s your thing, did you look at that place yesterday?”
A totally-not-fooled expression played over Blue’s face, but thankfully she let it drop before Chess could finish bracing herself. “I think it’s going to work, yeah. There’s enough space for all the girls to practice, and it’s not far from the school.” She hesitated. “The owner’s son asked me out.”
“Oh? What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m sure I’ll find out. Or, you know, Lex will, and he’ll tell me.”
The waitress arrived with their drinks. Good. Not only was Chess thirsty, but hearing Lex’s name, so casually, made her feel sick. It was as if a greenish lens of nausea had suddenly slid over everything. Not unusual, for thinking about him to make her feel…well, bad, but it was unusual for her to feel it so strongly.
The waitress—her name, according to the plastic tag on her white short-sleeved button-down, was Ella—didn’t look too hot, either. Or rather, she looked exactly too hot, as if after taking their orders she’d zipped into a rubber suit and gone outside for a jog. Her dark hair was damp, her face flu
shed.
But she smiled to acknowledge their thanks, and seemed sprightly enough as she trotted off back toward the kitchen. Maybe she’d just been making out with the cook or something. Not Chess’s business, certainly, but at least it got her mind off Lex for a second and eased some of the queasy feeling. The Coke helped, too.
What really helped was the fact that her pills started to kick in, sending enough warm peace through her body that she didn’t blink when Blue asked, “Are you ever going to talk to him?”
Unfortunately, not blinking didn’t mean she didn’t still feel the hit, or that she had any idea what to say. “I don’t know.”
“It was just business. And he did warn you. He asked for your help and you said no, what was he supposed to do?”
Like what Lex had done to Terrible—trying to hire him, and then when Terrible refused, trying to have him killed—was the only reason she was pissed. It was the main reason, yes, but not the only reason at all. But then, Blue probably didn’t know about the rest of it, about Lex’s little “Too bad it ain’t in you to make that mean shit,” speech or how he’d almost destroyed everything for her just to prove he could. Somehow she doubted he’d told Blue about that, and she certainly wasn’t going to.
“Not what he did,” she said. “Kind of anything other than what he did, actually.”
Blue ignored that. “Look, I was pissed at him, too. I don’t blame you. But I know he feels bad about it.”
“I’m sure he spends hours crying from shame. Is this why you wanted to hang out today?”
“No. We just haven’t talked about it and I thought I’d—”
A blast of heat on Chess’s right side so hot it lifted her hair from her shoulder; screams erupted in the room, and Chess started moving. Fuck, what was that, had someone set off a bomb or—what the hell?