Close to You
Author: Stacia Kane
Date: 2013-10-08 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Paranormal; Fantasy; Romance
Description: Close to You: A Downside Ghosts Story by Stacia Kane THE HOLIDAYS ARE HELL Churchwitch Chess Putnam has seen, and banished, her share of ghosts, but not of the Christmas Past variety--the holiday has been illegal since the Church of Real Truth defeated the undead and took control of the world in 1997. Yet when she and her boyfriend, Terrible, make a trip to an abandoned auto junkyard, they find more than the rusted auto parts and spare tires they'd bargained for. They also run across a creepy Miss Havisham-type hell-bent on reuniting with her long-dead husband just in time for Christmas--even
Publisher: St. Martin's
Rights: All rights reserved

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Chapter One

Chess had never seen an auto graveyard before. Human graveyards, sure, more than she wanted; her job required her to enter them on occasion—on bad occasions, since entering a graveyard meant she had a confirmed haunting in whatever house she was investigating as a Debunker, which meant no bonus for her—to collect dirt from the grave of whomever it was who’d returned as a ghost so she could banish it back to the City of Eternity under the earth.

The auto graveyard—junkyard, really—was very different. Aside from the obvious, there were no high stone walls and gates and locks, no signs warning people that, by the authority of the Church of Real Truth, unauthorized persons were not permitted to enter.

And she wasn’t alone in there, either.

Rusted-out hulks of cars made treacherous walls. Razor-sharp edges could slice skin and clothing; odd shapes made holes and nooks where anyone could hide. Where he could be hiding. Chess quickened her pace almost to a run. Where was he? Listening for footsteps didn’t help. He was too quiet, and it was too loud there, anyway. The cold wind whistled down the aisles and around the corners, whined through holes in the stacks of metal and made them creak and rattle.

Not to mention the music, the faint and very creepy tones of the Carpenters’ “Close to You.” Ugh. It was tinny-sounding, faraway and half-lost in the wind, like maybe it was some weird auditory hallucination. Like a memory of the song rather than the actual sound of its playing.

She was pretty sure it was playing, though, because why the hell would she think about that song? And why would her head play it start to finish, over and over?

It wouldn’t. So no, she was definitely hearing the stupid song for real. It didn’t help the butterflies in her stomach one bit. He was going to jump out at her, grab her. Anticipation made her palms sweat.

She looked behind her. Nothing. She turned a corner, peering down the alley of wreckage. Nothing. All she could see were dead cars and junk, the remains of a society that no longer existed. The ancient Greeks and Romans left statues and art. The world Before Truth had left garbage.

Not really fair, she knew, but she was too busy trying to find a place to hide to feel bad. He was close. She could feel it; she knew it. Her feet moved faster, almost as fast as her heart. If she could get to the car, if she could just make it to the car before he—

Too late. Hard arms wrapped around her waist, yanked her back against an equally hard body. Her feet left the ground. Her gasping shriek was lost in the wind even before it dissolved into giggles and Terrible’s lips found her neck just above her scarf.

“You win,” she said.

“Aye.” He spun her around. His left hand slid into her hair while his right tugged her hip closer; he kissed her neck again, harder. “So what I’m getting? For a prize.”

“Um…” She shivered. “I’m not sure winning a game of Hide and Seek really qualifies for a prize.”

“Aw, damn.” The Chevelle stood only fifty feet or so away. He started walking toward it, using his body to push her along. His teeth nipped at her earlobe. “Causen I had me a real good idea.”

“Oh?” She meant it to sound arch and disinterested, but she just couldn’t seem to accomplish that. Especially not when his palm slid over her behind and came to rest on the back of her upper thigh. If he shifted it just an inch…

He stopped walking and kissed her. Hard. Hard enough for her to forget the cold wind and the stupid song in the background. Hard enough for her to practically forget her own name. She wrapped her arms around his neck and strained on her tiptoes, afraid she’d fall over if he let go of her.

Except he wouldn’t. He never would. That was Fact and Truth, and she believed it, trusted it, more than she’d ever trusted anything in her entire life.

“Oh, aye.” He pulled back so his dark eyes met hers, so she could see that... that something, that whatever it was, that was just for her and her alone. “Were thinkin I take you on home now, throw you around a little. How’s that sounding?”

It was sounding pretty fucking good to her, was how it was sounding. Her entire body throbbed. And he knew it. She could see he knew it.

Then she felt he knew it, because he hoisted her thighs up to wrap around his waist and his hot hand snaked up under her coat, under her shirt, to stroke her bare back. This time she kissed him; this time she drove her fingers into his hair.

The Chevelle was closer than she’d thought, and still warm beneath her when Terrible set her on the hood and leaned her back so his hard body covered her and his erection pressed against her. Another deep, insides-melting kiss swallowed the tiny sound that she couldn’t stop. His tongue played with hers, making all kinds of promises as his palm glided over her breast and his other hand squeezed her thigh.

Cold wind blew over them, but she barely noticed it. Or maybe she just didn’t care, especially not when his lips left hers and his nimble fingers tugged her scarf open so he could nibble at her throat, so his mouth could travel further down into the vee of her shirt’s neckline and send tingles dancing all over her skin.

She caressed his broad shoulders, his back solid and wide beneath his shirts, and tightened her legs around his waist to pull him closer.

“You taking me home or what?” she managed. Finding breath to talk was hard. Getting her tongue and lips to obey her demands instead of his was even harder.

“Aye.” The words were half-mumbled into her throat. A final kiss, a final caress, before he straightened up. Pomaded strands of hair fell over his forehead. “Let’s us get there fast.”

She slid off the hood and watched him bend down to pick up the grimy engine parts he’d found—the grimy engine parts that were apparently the reason they were there, in the middle of the auto graveyard, in the middle of a cold, gray winter afternoon. “That’s the flam you need for the ganorzle problem?”

His grin made her even more desperate to get out of there and get home immediately. Amazing how she still felt that way. Even more amazing was how he seemed to still feel that way, too. “Aye. Lessin you gots a better idea.”

“Eh. I’ll let you try it your way first. But if you get stuck, let me know.”

He kissed her again before he popped the trunk and tossed the metal in. “You hearing that music?”

She nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at her. “Where’s it coming from?”

“Ain’t knowing.” He opened her door. “Nobody living out here, what I got.”

The auto graveyard was on the very outskirts of Downside, so far south the bay’s gray winter water lapped the shore to her right. So far south the territory war between Terrible’s boss, Bump, and his rival, Lex, didn’t matter, because nobody lived there to war over. “Somebody must be here, though.”

He shrugged.

“I hope you’re gonna pay for that.” A woman’s voice, nasal and twangy. Not a Downside accent.

They both turned. Okay, that woman was... what the fuck?

Despite the December cold, she wore a thin evening gown with no coat. No, not an evening gown. A wedding gown. Dingy and tattered, with a high lace collar, dirty pearls and sequins dotting the bodice, and a shredded tulle skirt that had probably once gotten its fullness from layers rather than wrinkles but didn’t anymore. The long sleeves came to points over the backs of the woman’s hands. That was a fucking wedding gown.

It was weird enough, even without the fact that the woman was clearly at least in her sixties—gray hair rose in a matted cloud from her creased, elaborately made-up face. Not that “elaborately” meant “skillfully.” It didn’t. She looked like a five-year-old had attacked her with markers: bright green shadow that extended well past the outer edges of her eyelids, bright red lipstick that bled into the papery skin around her mouth, bright pink spots on her cheeks. She’d even painted a beauty mark over her lip on the right side.

“You ain’t thieves, are you? You don’t look like thieves.” The woman frowned at Terrible, taking in his enormous frame, the black hair still messy from Chess’s hands, the thick mutton chops and hard dark eyes and scars. “Well, maybe he does.”

Chess bit her lip to keep from laughing. Terrible was better at hiding that stuff than she was; when she looked at him, his expression hadn’t changed. She could see it, though, the glint of amusement in his eyes.

Except it wasn’t all funny. It was suspicious, too. Hadn’t he just said nobody lived there? Who the hell was that woman?

“Ain’t been here afore,” he murmured, then, to the woman in a louder voice, “Aye, then. How much you wanting?”

The woman stared him up and down again, then turned to Chess. Chess couldn’t tell if the woman approved or not, but something in her face changed. She turned her back, raising one clawlike hand in an impatient “come on” gesture, and started walking away. The tulle skirts, yellow-gray with age and grime, billowed and shifted in the wind.

“Maybe we should just leave,” Chess said, but Terrible shook his head. Which she’d expected him to do.

“She’s needing to eat, too, dig. Iffen she owns the place, guessing I oughta pay her.”

“She’s creepy.” Damn it. Her body still hummed and throbbed; she wanted to go home. She wanted to dive into the big gray bed with him and stay there until the sun set behind the crumbling buildings across the street.

“Aye.” He dipped his head at the Chevelle. “Can wait in the car, if you’re wanting. Ain’t guessing this’ll take long.”

“And send you off alone with Miss Havisham? I don’t think so.” More like, “No fucking way.” Even knowing he could handle just about anything that might happen—people weren’t terrified of him for no reason—she wouldn’t do that. Not only because he was everything to her, not only because she was mildly curious, and not only because the whole reason she was there with him to begin with was she’d just finished a Debunking case and so they hadn’t gotten to spend much time together in the last few weeks.

It was because warning bells were going off in her head. Something didn’t feel right about this, and the auto graveyard was just the kind of place where witches who liked to play on magic’s bad side would hang out to do that playing, and the woman sure as fuck looked to her like she could be one of those witches. Or like she could be someone who knew those kinds of witches, or even like someone who’d be victimized by those kinds of witches. Terrible could handle any kind of physical attack; Chess didn’t doubt that for a second. But a magical one? That she wasn’t so sure about.

He smiled, getting the reference like she’d known he would; he hadn’t read the book, but she’d told him the story once. “Thinkin she attack me iffen she gets me inside on my alones?”

“Hey, I owe you a prize, is all. I don’t want you to forget.”

He kissed the side of her head, took her hand to start following the woman’s waving skirts back through the aisles of junk. “Ain’t forgetting that one. True thing, Chessiebomb.”

It wasn’t easy keeping up her cheerful mood on the journey. Stacks of dusty metal loomed over them. Cracked windows shifted slightly in the wind and caught the weak sunlight like mosaics of a single color; thick elderly cobwebs waved and shook. It was like being in a horror novel illustrated by Dr. Seuss. And with every step the sound of that dreary song grew louder, boring into her head like a drill-wielding ghost, and Chess felt more and more like something was wrong—not wrong in the someone-else-could-be-in-trouble way, but wrong in the she-could-be-in-trouble way.

She held Terrible’s hand tighter. He squeezed back, absently, without looking at her; he was too busy looking around, with his chin up in that way he had that made him look like the predator he was, like he was hunting.

They reached the end of the makeshift hallway and followed the woman around a curve Chess hadn’t noticed before. A stretch of weed-choked gravel extended a few feet beyond the last pitiful dead car, a walkway bordered by a torn and rusted chain link fence. It used to be a fence, at least. All that remained were a few posts and patches, torn steel doilies fighting the breeze.

Down the walkway to the right, in a clearing, sat the house. It was a much bigger house than Chess would have expected, a long ramshackle structure with a sagging roof and a termite-fodder porch hanging off the front. Silence fell the second she saw it; the song had ended, but before Chess had time to be glad, the opening notes played again. A disc on repeat, or a record player starting over and over. The thought of finding that record player and smashing it to pieces grew more tempting by the minute.

But as soon as they stepped onto the patchy dead lawn in front of the house—littered with rusted metal and bald tires and sun-faded chunks of plastic—she forgot about the music. That was magic she felt, crawling up her legs from her feet, wrapping around her in the air. Not strong, no, but magic just the same. Unpleasant magic, too, from the way it itched. Shit. She glanced at Terrible. “You okay?”

“Aye.” He did seem okay, too, which was a relief. Why she expected him to not be—worried that he wouldn’t be—didn’t make sense, considering that the sigil Elder Griffin had helped her design for him had been working just fine, but still. She couldn’t help it. Especially since it was her fault he was so vulnerable to dark magic, her fault because of the sigil she’d carved into him to save his life the night he’d been shot. That the problem seemed to have been solved didn’t make it right.

The woman had already ascended to the wide, unscreened porch, and was standing with the door half-open, looking back at them. “Well, hurry up. We don’t have all day.”

Actually they pretty much did, but whatever. Chess didn’t want to spend it there, and she knew Terrible didn’t either. So she hurried up, and in a few seconds they were climbing the creaking, splintery stairs to the porch.

This got more fucked-up with every step. Paint flaked in huge chunks off the house’s exterior walls, paint the color of rotten egg whites. Dead plants—that might have been just because of the cold, true, but Chess didn’t think so—lined those flaking walls, bare brown sticks below a faded wooden sign that read, “The Hudsons.” The screen on the door was torn.

And beyond it... beyond it was some sort of ode to violated health codes disguised as a kitchen. Water stains and shreds of wallpaper. Filthy hardwood floors sagging with age, the boards so covered in muck that squelching sounds filled the air as they walked. Dirty silver cardboard stars hung from the ceiling—what was that about?—and red ribbons dangled from the cabinets. A stove covered in layers of baked-on food; a sink piled with dishes.

And the smell. Mold and dust that made her sneeze, unwashed bodies, rotting food, and the cloying, nauseating fugue of cheap rose perfume. It made her want to gag almost as much as the thought of the germs and bacteria tap dancing on her skin did. She shuddered.

“Vincent will be back tonight,” the woman—Mrs. Hudson?—informed them, turning right into a hall that stretched, it seemed, the entire length of the house. “It’s our anniversary. Fifty years we’ve been married. I can’t wait to see him again.”

Chess hoped Vincent didn’t have very high hygienic standards. But then, if he was married to this stranger-by-the-second woman, he must already know what sort of state that house was in. Chess had been inside some shitty buildings in her life, but this place went beyond even some of the “homes” she’d lived in as a child.

Mrs. Hudson gestured toward the kitchen table piled with papers and plastic containers and dirty clothes. “You can sit there, if you want.”

Yeah... that wasn’t going to happen. Chess didn’t much feel like sticking to a chair, and she definitely didn’t feel like inviting diseases to set up camp on her clothes. She took a few steps after the woman instead. The magic she felt increased. Still not strong, but still there, and still worrying. Had Mrs. Hudson been doing magic, or did she just have some magical objects—spellbags or whatever—buried in the mountains of junk?

It wouldn’t be unusual if she’d been doing magic; lots of people did, trying or buying little spells or glamours, and the Church encouraged it. Every time some citizen used a spell that worked, it proved the Church’s Truth that magic was real. But most spells done by ordinary people didn’t feel as... complete as whatever it was Chess was feeling. Magic done by non-witches tended to have an unformed sort of feel to it. It was weak.

The magic Chess felt may not have been strong, but it also wasn’t unformed. She didn’t know for sure what kind of magic it was—except that it wasn’t sex magic, which tended to be the amateur magic she encountered most, since any idiot could get turned on—but it wasn’t good, and it wasn’t unformed. It was like a spell waiting to be finished, like a trap ready to snap shut over a fragile bone. Waiting. Ominous.

Of course, Mrs. Hudson seemed so out of it that it was entirely possible that gangs of random witches were holding full-blown rituals in the yard every weekend, and Chess was just feeling the residue of that.

She didn’t think so, though. And that wouldn’t be in the house. Mrs. Hudson might not notice, sure, but where would they find the space?

From the mouth of the kitchen Chess could see slices of three rooms, and all three were stacked to the ceiling with old newspapers, plastic bottles, broken toys—the rocking horse was particularly creepy—and furniture and boxes and... just junk, piles of junk that must have taken years to collect. Yes, they were in a junkyard, but that seemed like taking the concept a little too far.

Terrible didn’t seem any happier about being in there than Chess. His gaze darted up and down the hall, checking the doorways, the ceiling, the floors. His right hand sat warm and heavy on the back of Chess’s neck; she knew his left was probably on the handle of his knife behind his back.

But why? Why was he so uneasy—why were they both so uneasy? Despite the uncomfortable twitch of magic, which could have been almost anything, nothing about the woman seemed particularly threatening. She was just a crazy, rather creepy old woman, so scrawny that Chess was surprised the wind hadn’t blown her away. And Terrible was cautious about everything, especially when she was around, but grabbing his knife seemed a little excessive even for him.

She guessed he just couldn’t shake the sense of unease, and she couldn’t, either. His broad, strong chest warmed her back as she leaned against it, wanting to be closer to him, wanting to feel the steady, reassuring movement as he breathed. His chin rested on the top of her head for a second.

The song started again. The contrast between the schlocky soft-rock ballad and the utter filthy chaos surrounding them made the whole thing even worse. It just didn’t seem to fit. But then, what would Chess know? She’d never fit anywhere, either. Not until Terrible came along, anyway.

Curiosity about other people had never been something Chess had much of. She knew all she needed to know about people: they were shit. This woman was probably no exception, which meant whatever was going on—she was delusional, she was squatting in the house, she was hiding a dead body in her bedroom—was really not something Chess needed to get involved in. The best thing to do was pay her what she wanted so they could go home.

But she still felt on edge, and uncomfortable. Her phone told her it was just past eleven in the morning—they’d gotten up early for various reasons—which meant it had been about three hours since she’d last taken her Cepts, and that was long enough. She dug into her bag for her pillbox, grabbed two of the little white keys to peace that sat inside, and popped them into her mouth, washing them down with water from the bottle she always carried. They wouldn’t start kicking in for a few minutes, but she still felt better. Calmer.

“I guess we can sell those for twenty.” Mrs. Hudson slid past Chess and Terrible to walk down the hall. She smelled like something a dog had thrown up. Ugh. “It being the holiday and all, I didn’t expect to see anybody here today, but I guess a day off work is a day off work.”

“Holiday?”

Mrs. Hudson shot her an are-you-fucking-crazy sort of look, which was rich coming from her, but whatever. “It’s Christmas Eve.”

Chapter Two

Oh. Well, oh shit. Christmas.

“It’s Vincent’s favorite holiday,” Mrs. Hudson went on, drifting farther down the hall and turning into a doorway. “It’s his birthday, too, you see. That’s why we got married on this day. He’ll be back tonight. Oh, how I miss him when he’s not here.”

Chess almost didn’t hear that last part, and not just because backup vocals were aah-aah-aah-aah-aaaah-ing from the speakers across the room. She was too busy returning Terrible’s confused look, and wondering what the fuck to do.

There was a ritual space in the house after all. But not a magical ritual space, at least, not the kind Chess was familiar with. This was a very different sort of ritual, one illegal since 1997 when the Church of Real Truth defeated the dead and in exchange was given control of the world. It was a ritual celebrated by families and friends, and while Chess guessed it was magical in its way, it wasn’t a magic she’d ever felt or experienced—at least, she’d never felt or experienced that kind of magic until Terrible came along.

He leaned down so his lips were close to her ear. “Ain’t legal, aye?”

“No.”

She waited for him to ask if she was going to report the Hudsons, but he didn’t. He probably knew she wasn’t sure what to do; he usually did. “Maybe oughta just get us outta here.”

“Yeah, I think so.” But despite her unease, Chess couldn’t help being honestly fascinated. She’d never seen anything like the room in front of her, not for real anyway; the Church’s museum housed a few items related to the day, and she’d seen pictures in books, but this was an actual room in an actual house, decorated by people who were actually celebrating.

It was beautiful. Even more so than the exhibit in the Church’s museum, because this was real; this was a personal home decorated for an important holiday, with personal items and touches. And it was spotless. The scent of pine filled the air from the tree in the corner, which rose almost to the ceiling. Strings of colored lights wound through the dark green branches heavy with bright ornaments. Beneath that tree were piles of presents, bright shiny wrapping paper faded and covered in dust—that didn’t seem to make sense, but hey, maybe Mrs. Hudson didn’t have any clean paper. Wouldn’t be a surprise, in that house.

Paper cut-outs of grinning snowmen and angels—wow, shit—covered the walls, along with a big banner that said “MERRY CHRISTMAS” in red and green letters strung together. A wreath hung over the roaring fireplace; Chess had a moment of panic before she saw the wreath wasn’t mistletoe, and so couldn’t open a doorway to the City of Eternity.

The clock on the wall had stopped at twelve-fifteen.

“Nobody celebrates anymore,” Mrs. Hudson said. “I guess they just don’t care. They’ve forgotten. Instead they have those fires at Halloween, all week they have them. Fires and drums... I don’t understand it.”

Chess certainly did. And yeah, from her position there on the bay, Mrs. Hudson would have quite a view of the Haunted Week rituals, the bonfires and parades.

But how the hell could she not know what they were? She’d lived through Haunted Week back in 1997. She’d been there as the world changed. She’d been an adult who could watch it happen, instead of a parentless infant like Chess had been.

How was it possible to live in a city, surrounded by people, and have no idea what was going on?

But then, reality seemed to have deserted Mrs. Hudson some time ago.

“People don’t really celebrate Christmas anymore,” Chess said, more as a test than anything else.

Mrs. Hudson sighed. “It’s a sad, sad world, that doesn’t celebrate the holidays.”

She was right about it being a sad world, but Chess didn’t think it had much to do with holidays. It had a lot more to do with the fact that the world was made of people, and they were in general pretty miserable.

“Vincent loves Christmas,” Mrs. Hudson said, in a softer voice than she’d used before. Her eyes shone oddly; she seemed to be staring at Chess’s neck, at her chest still exposed from Terrible’s hands earlier. Creeeepy. “He can’t wait to open his presents. I don’t care about what happened with the ghosts. He’s getting his presents and his Christmas.”

Terrible cleared his throat and started digging in his wallet. Yeah, she was ready to leave, too.

Mrs. Hudson ignored both the sound and the gesture. “It’s so hard to be away from my husband. There’s no point to being alive, when my husband isn’t with me. When it’s just me, alone... Half of me is missing.”

Unwilling, unwanted sympathy pricked Chess’s heart. She knew that feeling. It was the worst feeling in the world.

Mrs. Hudson’s fingers trailed over the pictures lining the top of some kind of cabinet. The pictures, like everything in the room except the presents but unlike every single other thing in the house, were spotless, and they were clearly of her and Vincent: a large wedding photo in the center—was that the same dress? Yes, it was—a few portraits, a few snapshots, Mr. and Mrs. Hudson standing beneath a sign for Hudson Veterinary Clinic. Something about those pictures bothered Chess, but just as she was about to put her figurative finger on it, Mrs. Hudson said, “We never had children. We tried for years, but we couldn’t. So it’s just us here. For so long, just the two of us…”

That feeling of identification grew worse. Just the two of them, and no children, and no possibility of children. Just like Chess and Terrible; well, he had a daughter, but he couldn’t have more and she couldn’t have any.

Not that she really wanted to, or thought it would be a good idea. Even without her addiction, Terrible’s job—and to some extent her own—didn’t exactly lend itself to good parenting. Hell, her personality didn’t exactly lend itself to good parenting. That was a responsibility she’d never particularly wanted. A responsibility she’d invariably fuck up if she did have.

Still. Hearing those words caused a tiny, lonely pain to twist in her chest, sappy as it was. Suddenly the entire scene didn’t seem creepy and disturbing—well, no, it was still really fucking creepy and disturbing, but it was tragic as well. This woman spent her days like this, while her husband was away? Listening to a shitty song over and over and thinking about how she had nothing to live for when her husband wasn’t home? And all the happy photos of the past didn’t—

Wait. That was it. That was the problem with the pictures.

They were all old. The oldest Mrs. Hudson appeared in them was maybe forty-five; her hair was still mostly black, her face a lot less lined. Chess had never been a big picture-taker—she had maybe three pictures of herself with Terrible, and one of them had been taken before they were together and another was from Elder Griffin’s wedding, taken by one of her co-workers without her knowing it—but the Hudsons appeared to have documented almost every second of their marriage on film. The Hudsons at a restaurant. Mr. Hudson in a white coat with a stethoscope, smiling next to a sleeping tiger. The Hudsons at an amusement park. The Hudsons holding champagne flutes at a racetrack, with horses in the background.

So where were the more recent pictures?

“You’ve been married fifty years, Mrs. Hudson?”

“Eliza. Yes... fifty years tonight.”

Chess edged closer to the pictures. Sure, it was possible the newer photos were in albums or something, but it was still odd, wasn’t it? And given Eliza’s talk about Vincent not missing this Christmas, and about his opening presents that looked like they’d spent a few decades in a dustbin, and especially the low-level sense of magic and wrongness in the air... Either Vincent was dead or Vincent had left Eliza years ago, and given the happy-smiley-lovey-love in those pictures, Chess figured “dead” was the safer bet.

She caught Terrible’s eye, jerked her head toward the door as unobtrusively as possible. He raised his eyebrows; she nodded. Yes, something really not-good was happening, and they needed to get out of there so she could call the Church. This wasn’t something she wanted to handle on her own, and even if she did, it was outside her jurisdiction, so to speak. The only crime over which Debunkers like her had real legal authority was faked hauntings, technically known as “Conspiracy to Commit Spectral Fraud,” and usually done to get a nice cash settlement out of the Church. And even then she had to call in the Squad sometimes to make the final arrests—she didn’t carry handcuffs or a weapon, at least not a legal weapon. Technically she wasn’t supposed to carry her knife. She definitely needed the Squad for this one, and she needed them soon.

Terrible held out a crumpled bill. “Said twenty, aye? Oughta get us gone, let you get back to... back to you day.”

Eliza drifted forward and took the money. “Sure. You want to get to your own Christmas, I bet. It’s Vincent’s favorite holiday, you know. He won’t miss this Christmas. Tonight he’ll be here. It’s our fiftieth anniversary. We’ll spend it together, just the two of us.”

Chess forced a smile. Time to get the fuck out of there. “That sounds great. We’ll let you finish getting ready.”

“Oh, yes, there’s so much to do... So much to do,” Eliza said. “I have to bake cookies and finish decorating and gather everything I’ll need. So much work to do. But I can do it. I have the power of love on my side. And that’s all I need.”

Ordinarily Chess wouldn’t have thought so. But who the hell knew what was in that house? Personal possessions that could become totems, junk that could have magical value... it wasn’t exactly an energy-free place. They were right on the water, too, and the incoming tide and mist would be full of power later on.

As for the power of love... well, it wasn’t something they’d taught in her classes at Church, but if anyone knew how transforming that could be, it was Chess.

Chess the witch. Chess who had the power needed to raise the dead herself. Chess who—shit, Chess whose tattoos Mrs. Hudson had been staring at. Whose tattoos Mrs. Hudson had seen outside right before she invited them into her house. Lured them into her house. Fuck. Did Mrs. Hudson actually know what she was doing, did she know what those tattoos meant? Was she planning to try to steal Chess’s power?

“We’ll let you finish getting ready,” Chess said again, grabbing Terrible’s hand as she reached him, and pulling him—or letting him pull her, since he obviously understood what was going on—back into the hall and toward the front door.

Eliza Hudson followed. Closely. “Oh, yes, I’ve got a busy evening ahead of me. I can’t wait to see Vincent. He’s going to love his presents. We’re going to be so happy. Nothing will stop that.”

Terrible opened the door and pushed Chess through. Her skin crawled with the need to move.

“You watch your step,” Eliza called after them. “The ground’s real uneven.”

No more uneven than it had been, Chess thought, but even as she thought it she felt Terrible tense up beside her, heard the shot, felt him start moving.

Another shot. Terrible threw himself at her. Too late. A stab of pain in her neck, hard sharp pain. She hit the frozen ground with a bone-crunching thud she almost didn’t feel. Her vision blurred.

“Shit,” Terrible said. He lifted himself off her, but too slowly. It sounded like he was talking through water. She reached up and felt her neck, expecting blood and torn skin.

Instead she found a dart. Like the one poking out of Terrible’s neck. What the fuck? What was—why was that there, what was happening? It felt like she knew, like she should know, but she couldn’t seem to make the connection. Like her brain had been replaced by a sock full of pudding. Terrible’s hand rose to the dart protruding from his skin and yanked at it; his other hand grabbed hers and tugged, trying to lift her from the ground, but another dart appeared an inch or so away from the hole left by the first.

He fell. Chess watched him fall. Her own body had evaporated. She didn’t have a body, and she was so tired... Some part of her screamed and tried to move, knew that she couldn’t sleep there outside on the ground, but there was nothing else she could do. The sky grew hazy and narrowed to a slit, and in that slit Eliza Hudson’s face appeared, surrounded by a whitish corona.

“I am not letting you ruin my Christmas,” she snarled, and everything went black.

Chapter Three

Fuck, her neck hurt. Well, her whole body hurt, but her neck seemed especially sore, like someone had bitten her really, really hard. Harder than even Terrible had ever bitten her neck.

Terrible. Where was he? Opening her eyes didn’t help; it was too dark in whatever room she was in. Her wrists and ankles were tied, which made it rather difficult to sit up, and her mouth was so dry that when she tried to call his name, all she managed to produce was a sort of wheeze.

Shit. Turning her head made stars dance in front of her eyes and sent waves of fresh pain radiating from her neck. Pain she could take. Panic, though... panic wasn’t as easy to deal with, and she could feel it threatening as her eyes started to adjust to the darkness and she didn’t see him.

“Terrible?” It still sounded like a wheeze, but at least it was audible. She licked her lips with her too-dry tongue, swallowed, and tried again. “Terrible? Are you in here?”

He’d been hit twice, she remembered. That bitch Eliza had plugged two darts into his neck. Animal tranquilizers, she’d bet; like the ones Mr. Hudson had probably used on the sleeping tiger in the photograph, like the ones any vet would have. Hudson Veterinary Clinic, and the Hudsons standing there grinning. Motherfucker.

At least the fear and anger were helping her wake up. She wriggled along the floor—eew, she pictured sliding across germs and bacteria like a box on a rolling conveyer belt—until she’d moved her head away from the wall so she could see more of the room.

A dark shape against the wall. A big dark shape, a Terrible-shaped shape. Mrs. Hudson had managed to drag him into the house somehow, then. She hadn’t left him unconscious in the freezing cold. It would have been a relief except she still didn’t know if he was alive. She assumed she would have felt it if he wasn’t, that she would know, but she honestly couldn’t be sure.

Time to make sure. More maneuvering across the sticky, nasty carpet, until she was close enough to hear Terrible’s breathing. He was breathing. Thank fuck. “Terrible. Terrible, wake up.”

Nothing. Shit. She probably could have woken him if she’d had access to her bag—some of those herbs were pretty pungent—but her bag hadn’t been at her side when she woke up. Bending her legs told her that her knife wasn’t in her pocket, either. Great. No knife, no—no bag. Not only was she tied up, not only did she not have a weapon or any of her magical supplies, and not only did she suspect a crazy old woman was going to try to use her like a battery, but if she didn’t end up killed by Vincent’s ghost, she’d end up withdrawing there in a filthy room in a house that seemed held together only by mold and delusions.

She took a deep breath, pulled her tied-together ankles back, and kicked Terrible as hard as she could.

He stirred a little, but didn’t lift his head or otherwise indicate he was awake. Fuck.

“Sorry,” she whispered, and kicked him again. The force of the movement knocked her onto her back, which hurt her hands, but whatever.

He shifted position. “Ow.”

“Terrible, wake up. You need to wake up, okay? We have to get out of here.”

Pause. “We on the floor?”

“Yes. And we have to get up. So you need to be awake.”

“Fuck.” Another pause. “How long we been out?”

“I don’t know. But it’s dark out and she’s probably getting started soon, and if we don’t get out of here, we’re going to be the presents Vincent unwraps. Do you have your phone?”

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 fingers 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.

Eliza caught the knife on its descent. Light flashed from the blade as she flipped it, ready to drive it into Terrible’s back.

Chess was already moving. She threw herself forward. A blast of freezing cold, even colder than it already was, as she passed through Eliza’s ethereal form. It didn’t make Eliza drop the knife, but it did give Terrible the second he needed to duck out of the way.

Chess hit the Christmas tree. Ow, that really hurt; they didn’t call them pine “needles” for nothing, and pinpricks of pain erupted all over her body. The tree wavered and fell into the wall behind it.

Chess grabbed one of the ornaments from it and threw it at Eliza’s solid hand as it raised the knife again. Vincent had one of the framed pictures in his hand and kept slamming it over Terrible’s head. The frame splintered and cracked.

Chess disentangled herself from the tree. Try to stop Eliza, or try to find her bag? She didn’t want to leave Terrible there with two ghosts, but without her bag they were fighting a losing battle. She needed graveyard dirt and asafetida to freeze them, salt to bind them inside a circle while she called the Squad or just went ahead and banished them herself—assuming her psychopomp skull was in her bag and unbroken.

More than that, she needed her pills. All the energy in the air made her skin feel like it was shriveling up and splitting, but it wasn’t just magic doing that, and it wasn’t just magic making her start to feel queasy. That was withdrawals. She had no way of knowing what time it was but it was definitely at least eight or nine, which meant it had been at least seven or eight hours since she’d taken her Cepts. That was a problem. A sick witch was a weak witch, and she could not afford to be weak. Yes, Eliza’s ghost-summoning had already used what power of Chess’s it wanted to—it wasn’t pulling anything from her anymore—but that wasn’t the only sort of energy she needed if she was going to get them out of this alive.

So her bag had to come first. She started to duck around Eliza only to be caught by her fist on the backswing. Fuck, ow! Spots exploded before her eyes. Just what she needed: compromised vision.

Terrible managed to escape from Vincent. She saw him scan the floor for another weapon, but she didn’t see anything of use and apparently neither did he. At least not much, because he bent down—taking a hit on the shoulder from Vincent’s statue-clutching hand—and yanked loose one of Vincent’s bones. Ugh. Not that she could blame him, but still ugh. He went for Eliza’s hand with it, a few good solid blows before Eliza jerked away and the Christmas tree slammed over Terrible’s back.

Vincent had dropped the statue and picked up the fucking Christmas tree. Ornaments jangled and shattered, lights blinked on and off, as he swung it like a baseball bat again and again. Terrible swatted at it with the bone. Pine needles and pieces of colored glass flew everywhere.

Chess ran from the room and into the hall. Her bag, where would her bag be? It wasn’t in the living room, and it hadn’t been in the bedroom or the yard—at least she didn’t think it had been, it was so foggy she couldn’t know for sure. If Eliza had dragged her and Terrible in through the front door, maybe she’d left it in there?

The kitchen looked even worse than it had, full of murky shadows and, probably, bold-in-the-dark rats waiting to jump out of them and onto Chess’s head. Well, let them jump, she guessed, despite the way her skin crawled at the thought of it. She waded forward, knocking over stacks of papers and empty food containers. A pile of clothing fell into her path. Her bag, where was her bag? She forced herself to open cabinets and stick her hand into the darkness beyond. Her hand touched dusty things, too-soft things, things that squished against her fingers and made her gorge rise in her throat.

But no bag.

Back into the hall, peering into the rooms. Nothing. Fuck, fuck, Terrible was alone in there with two ghosts and he needed her and she couldn’t help him without her bag, and she had to find it. Had the bitch really left it outside?

Fine. Out the front door, down the porch steps, to stumble around in the fog looking for a bag practically the same color as the ground at her feet. No flashlight, no lighter, not even a match to help her see; just the intermittent glow from the living room window and the sound of “Close to You” to orient her, and the pounding of her heart worse by the second, and the fear rising in her chest.

Her foot hit something. Something that gave with a clunking rustle, and she knew it was her bag. Thank fuck, she’d found it. It had been opened, and her skin crawled at the thought of Eliza’s bony hands rummaging around in her belongings, but at least she’d found it. Even better, a quick shuffle told her everything was in there; two seconds to find the pouch that held graveyard dirt and dip her fist into it, and she was ready. Or not quite ready, because she really needed her pills, but she couldn’t let Terrible stay in there a second longer than she had to. Dirt first, then pills.

The scene that confronted her through the window was like something from the world’s sickest educational holiday re-enactment. Terrible stood in the corner, fighting off Vincent and the Christmas tree with Vincent’s bone, while Eliza threw framed pictures and Yuletide bric-a-brac at Terrible’s head. Blood ran down the side of his face; his shirt was torn. And “Close to You” still played, making the whole thing even more bizarre.

First thing Chess was going to do when the ghosts were locked down was break that fucking record.

Which she did. Despite the way her body screamed for her pills, when she ran through the window and threw the dirt, her power flew along with it in a clean arc, and her voice rang clear. “Dallirium espirantia!”

It wasn’t as strong as it would have been if she’d been feeling better, but it worked. Vincent and Eliza froze in place. The Christmas tree thudded to the floor. Terrible climbed around and dragged it out of the way as she salted a circle around them, moving as fast as she could to get it done before they became mobile again. She could feel their furious gazes on her back as she worked.

“With blood I seal the circle.” Her knife slid through the pad of her left pinkie. Blood welled from the cut to drip onto the salt. The circle snapped shut. Done. Her breath escaped in a rush; she dug in her bag for her pillbox and grabbed three Cepts. Pills, then rest for a minute, and then she’d banish them herself. It was too cold to sit waiting for the Squad. And if she were honest with herself, well, the Squad would send Vincent and Eliza straight to the spirit prisons, wouldn’t they? Chess could do the same—she had melidia in her bag—but…

Despite what Eliza had done to her, to Terrible, she just couldn’t quite bring herself to condemn her to an eternity of torture for it. Eliza’s words from earlier echoed in her head again, about it being just the two of them, no children, no one else. Eliza had spent the last twenty-five years alone waiting for him to come back, trying to bring him back. Suffering. It was a little too close for comfort, really, and Chess knew all too well about committing crimes in order to be with the person she loved—the person she needed. Was Eliza’s crime really worse than her own?

Maybe she was just going soft from withdrawals.

She’d just finished crunching the pills into a bitter mess and washing it down when the sound of scratching vinyl interrupted the Carpenters, and silence fell. Beautiful, wonderful silence. Terrible handed her a lit cigarette.

“Damn,” he said, looking around the room at the dark remains of the Christmas tree, at the destroyed ornaments, at the tattered wall hangings and smashed picture frames. “Christmas always such a fucked-up holiday?”

She smiled. “I’m pretty sure it was just this one.”

“Know how to make it all better, though.” His arms slipped around her waist. “Seem to me you still got some owes with me, if you dig. Supposed to be a prize I’m getting.”

She glanced at the ghosts, pacing the circle and glaring at her with furious intensity. She looked at the room. She thought about what Eliza had wanted and why she’d summoned her husband’s ghost, and how they’d be together in the City of Eternity forever. And how she and Terrible would be, too.

Then she looked up at his face, blood dried down his cheek but still smiling at her. “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I do.”

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Stacia Kane is the author of the gritty, dystopian urban fantasy “Downside” series starring Chess Putnam and featuring ghosts, human sacrifice, drugs, witchcraft, punk rock, and a badass ’69 Chevelle. She bleaches her hair and wears a lot of black. Visit her at: www.staciakane.net

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

“Close to You: A Downside Ghosts Story” copyright © 2013 by Stacia Kane.

All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover art © Trisha Schmitt (Pickyme)

eISBN 9781466849198

First eBook Edition: October 2013