City of Ghosts (25 page)

At least not just then. “I guess we should go to the right. Maybe they just aren’t bothering to clean up after themselves so much.”

“Figure they use these?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Damn it. That fucking Binding was really starting to piss her off.

“Guessin you ain’t can talk about that fire, aye?”

Now it was her turn to shrug.

He paused, took her elbow roughly to help her over a particularly large dirt slide. “What happen, you chase em there, you and that Churchcop?”

She ducked her head; not a nod, but enough like one that he could see it.

“So they catch you in there, blaze the place up?”

She managed a small shake, a twist of her head to the side; she had to press her lips together, hard, to keep from answering.

“They ain’t burned it out? Who done the job?” Then, at the pleading look in her eyes, “Be the potion guy, aye? That how you know he in it?”

“But why would he be trying to kill them?” She spoke before she thought; luckily her wrists kept silent. Apparently speaking hypothetically was acceptable.

“Maybe them buyin his magic shit. Or buy aught else, an ain’t paid, or using it against him.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “I don’t know why they’d buy some useless potions, though.”

“Maybe a front, an he hiding his real business. Maybe he just ain’t like em.”

“Yeah, making friends isn’t really their strong suit, I guess.”

He smiled; shit, he smiled, and it was the first one she’d seen from him in a month and it made her heart twist hard in her chest. “Aye, well, we catch on why he after em, could be we—Aw, shit.”

His gaze had jumped to the left while they talked; she followed it now and saw the reason for his darkening expression.

The tunnel ended ten feet or so away from where they stood, in a regular steel door like all the others. Dim light showed beneath it; the street entrance, she assumed. End of the line.

But to the left of it stood another door, surrounded like an exit wound by jagged cement. Magic pulsed from it, from the weathered boards held together with bent nails and half-rotted leather straps; it throbbed faintly before her.

Terrible’s eyes narrowed; his head tilted to the side.

“Can you see it?” Lex wouldn’t have, she knew; she wasn’t sure if Terrible would, or if she hoped he could or couldn’t. He’d never had a lot of power; enough to feel uncomfortable in the presence of magic, or to sense a ghost before one appeared, but only a tickle. A fraction of what she felt, or what any other witch would feel.

But all bets could be off at this point, and she’d done that when she’d carved that sigil into his chest, and guilt warred in her mind and heart with the absolute certainty that she would do it again in a second.

“See something. Like a—Look like the wall moving there, dig? Like breathing.”

That was something at least. He couldn’t see it entirely. “There’s a door there. They broke through the cement, I think. And it’s—it’s not a good door.”

She stepped closer, wrapping her arms around herself. Something was scratched into the wood, a sigil? A … No, not a sigil. This was a drawing; skinny curved arms, a bloated potatoesque body …

Her breath caught.

“What? What you got?”

“There’s a toad scratched into the door. And …” She straightened, checked the top of the rough boards. Swallowed. “A fetish. On top of the door. It’s a toad’s leg.”

A toad’s leg, tied to a bone with black thread. Herbs poked out of the hole at the top of the leg, the joint where it was once connected to a body.

“Like what them had on yesterday? That thing you take apart, aye?”

“Yeah. This isn’t a whole toad, though, it’s just a leg.”

“What’s the tale on it? Toads, meaning. They magic?”

“They’re familiars.” She stepped back, pulling herself from the sucking darkness of the makeshift door. “They’re extremely powerful, magically. I mean, they’re illegal, they’re so strong. The Church breeds them—they’re really useful for a lot of things, or they can be, but yeah, they’re used for a lot of black magics. And they’re also …”

Her voice cracked. She dug around in her bag for her water bottle, but it wasn’t dryness that made her throat tight.

“Aye?”

The water tasted like plastic, and like the murky air around them. She grimaced. “They’re used to create psychopomps.”

Chapter Twenty-five

There are those who seek to hide from the Church, to keep unsavory secrets. They do not succeed. The Church and Truth see all.

—
The Book of Truth
, Veraxis, Article 728

“What action you want?”

She didn’t mention what her first choice would be. “I guess we have to go through it.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets, considering. “Got any knowledge where we at?”

“We’ve been headed northeast is all I know, really. I don’t know how far we’ve gone or anything.”

“Guessin ten blocks or so, dig. Put us up Ninetieth, round there.”

“Ninetieth and Foster,” she said.

“Aye, maybe. You got some knowledge there?”

“Ninetieth and Foster, that’s where Maguinness lives. It’s the address he gave when he visited Madame Lupita. Remember I mentioned in the car how he saw her before her execution?”

Curt nod. Whether it was from her mentioning the scene in the car or something else, she didn’t know, and she wasn’t really eager to find out either.

“Anyway. So maybe this is his place, maybe he …” No, that wasn’t right, though, was it? Well, she guessed it was as good a theory as any, but it still didn’t feel right. That sensor in the tunnel, almost like she was being led here. If he was at war with the Lamaru, and they knew she was tracking them … She wouldn’t put it past those evil fucks to send her into a trap.

He leaned back against the opposite wall of the tunnel, unobtrusively taking another step back from the hellish door. “So iffen he got a fight up with em, and he livin here, he behind all this toad shit, aye? Them yesterday who killed Ratchet an they. Maybe them toads what he selling em.”

She hesitated, waiting for pain to streak up her arms. When it didn’t, she nodded.

“They need to kill to make them psychopomps? That what they getting on?”

She hadn’t really thought of that, that the killing might itself be part of making whatever psychopomps they were making. If the spell was a destruction spell—which it was—she supposed that was possible. “Psychopomps don’t usually require death to make, but theirs aren’t—ow!—normal. And it’s … it’s a capital crime to kill a wild one, you know. An executable offense.”

One she’d committed. For him. She let that memory ride behind her eyes for a minute, hoping he’d know and see, but she had no idea if he did. And she sure as fuck wasn’t going to just come out and say it, not now. Not when she knew he’d see it as her trying to force herself on him.

Again.

If he did know what she was alluding to, he ignored it. Just what she’d expected. “So we go in here, could get all solved.”

“Yeah.”

The answers could be behind that door, sure. The solution to the mystery, the end of—the end of working with Terrible again. For good.

Fuck, she was so sick of herself—herself and her fucking emotional retardation. How did people do this shit all the time, this wanting people, caring about them? How did they stand it, how did they ever get anything done?

She was sick of being lost.

“Yeah, come on. We’re here, we might as well.”

“Ain’t—I gonna be able to—”

“Yeah. It’s just a glamour. I’ll have to help you through it, though. It’s kind of short. Okay?”

She didn’t miss the suspicious cut of his glance, but ignored it. “Aye.”

“Okay. Hold on a minute.”

The door didn’t appear to be locked; it was held shut not by a normal bolt or knob but by a metal hook in a loop. A makeshift jamb had been fashioned from a couple of two-by-fours wedged into the dirt just behind the cement hole.

But looking easy to open wasn’t the same as being easy to open, and nothing that felt like that door did should be touched without first investigating.

She raised her hand, held it with her palm facing the door. Her tattoos tingled a little, a mild buzzing like touching her tongue to the end of a battery.

The first ward registered as a blip, an empty space near the topmost leather hinge. Okay. Probably something pretty basic; a decent push of power would likely be enough to unlock that.

But that very simplicity bothered her. Nobody who created the kind of energy she felt vibrating off that door would be unable to produce a few good wards or hexes. It felt like a trick to her. Like bait, like the crying child on the sidewalk who enticed passersby into stopping so their parent or master or owner—in Downside you never knew for sure—could clock the innocent, stupid victim over the head and steal their wallet.

So she kept checking. Yes. Another ward, stronger, at the bottom left corner. Black spots appeared before her eyes.

She knelt on the pebbled floor and pressed her hand closer. Along the bottom of the door … she’d work her way up, instead of down—the opposite of the way it was normally done, but anyone trying to be sneaky would automatically do it backward in an attempt to create confusion. So she figured, anyway.

A creepy, crawly tickle started at the base of her spine when she hit the center of the door. Okay, that was kind of weird. She followed it, using it as a guide for her hand; when it grew stronger, her arm slowed, when it grew weaker, she moved it back.

The darkest energy came from the fetish on top of the door, as she’d assumed it would. The fetish … She’d have to cross that bridge when she came to it. Which unfortunately would be in only a few minutes.

For a second she thought of Terrible. She could have him grab the fetish—guide his hand to it, tell him what to do. But the thought evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared. She couldn’t do that to him, not now. Not when she had no idea how it might affect him, not when she had no idea what it might do in general. Toad bones—which she suspected the bone tied to the herb-stuffed leg was—were incredibly versatile. The bone could be a simple ward, or it could be a death curse; it could poison her, or it could bring water rushing from the earth to drown them.

Three more wards sat at intervals up the door, connected by thin lines of energy she felt when she waved her hand over them. And the hook holding it shut …

Ha! It was connected to that first ward, to the empty, harmless-feeling space. Like the point of a star it sat diagonally—Shit. Yes. Like the point of a star.

A pentacle, made of dark magic, hanging there over the door. Guarding it.

She rocked back on her heels, stared at it for a minute. Yes, she could see it, now that she looked: vague lines of darker air crisscrossing the seams of the wooden slats.

“What’s troubling?”

“Huh? Oh.” Her knees creaked a little as she got up. For a minute she’d actually forgotten he stood behind her. “It’s hexed. Guarded by a black pentacle—an upside-down one, I mean. They definitely know what they’re doing.”

“You do, too, aye? You get it broke up—” The words had barely hit the air before his eyes narrowed, stealing from her whatever pleasure his compliment might have given her. He hadn’t meant to say it, regretted saying it.

The heavy silence was almost worse than the slimy energy emanating from the hexed door. “I can break it,” she said finally. “It’s just going to take a couple of minutes.”

Good thing she’d stocked up at Edsel’s. From her bag she drew the mandrake and the black mirror and set them down before the door. Next came a stub of candle; she sprinkled a few iron filings—damn, she’d forgotten to get more again—over the top, and grabbed a coffin nail from a little pocket.

Tormentil and powdered crow’s bone, hopefully to counteract the toad bone at least a bit, some dragon’s blood resin and a chunk of snake. She didn’t have her stang with her, but she did have a small firetray; that would do, she supposed.

Last she pulled out the little plastic container of blood salt she always carried, and the bottle of water purified by iron rings.

She lit the candle.
“Saratah saratah … beshikoth beshikoth.”
A few pebbles lay near her knee; she slid them over, used them as a makeshift base to set up the mirror so it faced the door. The trick to breaking a spell like the one she thought they were dealing with was turning its malevolence back on itself, essentially creating a circuit that would burn itself out. It usually worked, anyway.

Next she used her knife to slice off a piece of the mandrake root and set it in the firedish, then piled it with the dragon’s blood and tormentil. Lighting it was the next step; she pushed her own magic into it, grabbed a thick pinch of powdered crow’s bone, and said, “Power to power, these powers Bind. Let this power, my power, become pure.”

Thick smoke rose from the fire; through it she saw the lines of the black pentacle clearly, saw the five points of darkness and the small, seething clump of it in the center. She tossed the powdered bone at it, watched it catch the lines and hold. Good. She needed to see the center, find out what it was, so she could break it. It might be something as simple as a Bindrune, if she were lucky.

Oh, who was she kidding? She wasn’t fucking lucky. But hope sprang eternal, for whatever stupid reason.

With her left hand she waved the smoke back, over herself, over Terrible. Power caressed her, slid into her nose and mouth and spread out from her lungs; it hit the energy already there, not just hers but the power of the Binding, and heated and twisted inside her, fighting to get out. Her right hand trembled as she dropped the chunk of snake onto the firedish.
“Sessrika.”

The fire leapt high and bright pink before her, and so did the energy. She squinted and ducked her head, panting, checking the mirror where reflected flames danced against the black.

The pentacle flared into pinkish focus. Behind her Terrible made a sound, something between a grunt and a gasp, but she didn’t turn around. Couldn’t turn around, not when power roared through her body like a mad dog chasing blood and her fingers clenched tight and she wanted to fly, and she wanted to make him fly with her. Knew she
could
make him if he would let her.

The Church-designed basic counterhex required her to stand, to spin counterclockwise and build and release the energy that way. Something told her not to; there wasn’t much room anyway. Instead she used her left pinky to stir the smoke in ever-decreasing circles, watching it build into a vortex. The slow build: it would work just as well with the amount of power coursing through her system. Fuck, she could probably light up half of Downside at that moment.

She watched the funnel form, its low point touching the flames, the high point stretching to her moving finger. Felt the same funnel form inside her, pulling her power up, twisting it, sucking it from her, leaching it from her internal organs, from her very soul …

The black pentacle blazed before her, throbbing, reaching for her. It wanted her, wanted to pull her in, and she’d be safe there, there was no fear, no sadness, no—

Her vision scrambled, she shook and couldn’t stop shaking, and she was going to explode. Her hand was just a blur above the pink tornado she’d created and this was it, the sigil appeared in the center of the pentacle and it was so simple, and she pushed the vortex forward with all her might.

“Hrentata vasdaru belarium!”

The pink smoke exploded; the energy exploded from her. The pentacle shrieked, ululating high and sharp in her mind. She popped the cap on the blood salt and flung some at the door, felt it scatter and burn. The coffin nail practically leapt into her left hand, she grabbed her knife with her right and used the handle to hammer the point of the nail into the sigil.

Blowback threw her against the wall. Her firedish flew to the ceiling; so did the black mirror, which shattered. Black-silver glass rained down on her. She ducked her head, raising her hands to try to protect herself. Pink flames mixed with the shards; she clutched at the nearest solid thing she could find and it was Terrible and she couldn’t even be embarrassed because everything died around them, the candle and the flames and the pentacle and sigil, and they were plunged into silence with the wooden door hanging open before them.

It was almost a minute before he let her go, edged silently away. Without his arms, without the buzzing rush of power, she felt cold and shaken; it was all she could do not to grab him and yank him back to her.

“Damn,” he said, after another pause. “Were … damn.”

“You okay?”

He nodded. The light returned to normal, the flat unreality of the flashlight’s beam. In it his eyes glittered dark, his heavy muttonchops were black slashes against his pale face. “Aye. Right up.”

She wasn’t. Not at all. But she wasn’t going to admit it, any more than he was, so she stood on legs that threatened to rebel and dusted herself off.

It only took a minute to clean up. She couldn’t do anything about the mirror shards, and the coffin nail needed to stay in place, but the rest she packed back in her bag, save the iron-ring water. That she opened and took a healthy swig before offering it to him. “Here.”

He took it without comment, and she watched him drink before handing it back with a nod.

Every muscle in her body hurt; she forced herself to stand, squared her shoulders before draping her bag’s strap over them. Fuck, was this day ever going to end?

Probably. No, definitely. Whether she would still be alive to see it was another question entirely.

And it didn’t matter. She
was
alive, and she was stuck in this fucking tunnel, and she had just broken a fuck of a hex ward, and now she was going to have to walk through the toad-door into who-the-fuck-knew-what with someone who touched her only under duress.

Some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed; in that sense at least, this day was no different from any others.