City of Ghosts. Stacia Kane

out?”

      In the opposite corner an expanse of floor stood bare, as clean as it was possible to be. When Terrible handed her the short knife she stood up on legs that barely felt attached and headed for it.

      Newspaper still covered the window there. She set the fetish down and tugged at it, tearing it away.

      In the bright afternoon sunshine the thing was an abomination. Black stitches ran in a crooked line up its stomach, bulging with whatever lay inside. She held it steady with her gloved left hand, used the iron blade to break the stitches.

      Oh, shit. The stench pouring from it burned her nose and eyes, made her cough. That wasn’t natural, not all of it. Something chemical lurked in there too, mixed with the odor of dead toad and sour milk and what appeared to be a rotting bird’s heart.

      That was unusual. Really unusual. Bird hearts weren’t typical in hexes; hell, they weren’t typical in any magic she knew of. She used the tip of the blade to wedge the thing out and deposit it on the floor, along with a wad of tight hair and—yuck, an eyeball.

      Not human, thankfully; after what had happened a few weeks before she didn’t think she’d be able to take even the faint suggestion that human eyeballs had anything to do with this particular case. No, not human. Animal. Goat, perhaps? Or dog. Stray cats and dogs were plentiful in Downside. It could have been from a fox or something, she guessed, if they’d gotten a supplier. Another possibility to ask Edsel about.

      Terrible’s lighter clicked to her left, a lazy curl of smoke drifted toward her. Once he’d always offered, always lit one for her, too. She thrust the thought back into her still-churning stomach and focused on removing the rest of the toad’s stuffing. With every item she pulled out the power lessened.

      More hair. Some blood-soaked cloth. Pretty standard for cursing, really. A…a finger, a small one. Pinky? Not so standard. She shuddered. A dead cockroach with a pin through it, a tiny rodent head, some black cotton wadding and some herbs. Their fragrance was killed by the other items, but she recognized one of them. Her lips turned down.

      “What you finding?”

      “Mistletoe.” She glanced up at him; he was standing at the window, smoking. Not looking at her. “It’s used for a lot of things, but mostly for regulating ghost travel. Summoning and Banishing, but not like what we do. It’s…it’s more like opening the doors to the City, if you know what I mean. A guardian instead of something that actually has power over the ghosts itself.”

      “Figure maybe they giving the City a try-on again?”

      “I guess. Shit.” She was going to have to tell Lauren about this, damn it. Somewhere in the back of her mind had lurked the vague hope that they wouldn’t discover anything of use. No such luck. Instead she was going to have to come up with some kind of lie to explain how she came to possess the fetish.

      Whatever. She’d deal with that when the time came. Her gloved hand poked around inside the now-empty corpse, grateful she could breathe again. The thing was, for all intents and purposes, disarmed. She dumped salt over it all to make sure, almost sighed when the energy dissipated completely.

      Terrible stayed where he was, smoke twisting into the air around him, while she hunted around in her bag. Inside it she kept inert plastic bags; she grabbed a handful—almost her entire supply—and began carefully sealing up the fetish’s ingredients, shaking them clean of salt before dropping them in the bags. Normally something like that would be thrown into running water or, if it was small enough, washed down a sink. But this was part of a Church investigation. She’d need to hand it over to Lauren, let the Black Squad have a look at it and see what if anything they made of it.

      She took a quick glance around the room, more out of nerves than anything else, and noticed what she hadn’t before. Some of those lumps on the floor—dogs. Dead ones, unmarked but unmistakably deceased.

      “Those belong here?”

      He followed her gaze, shrugged. “Dogs everywhere.”

      She stood up, snapped the glove off and dropped it on the floor. Beyond the landing the death room loomed; another thing she’d have to tell Lauren about, she supposed.

      But right now she was looking at the dogs. Two of them, heaped in the corner. When she got closer she saw they were not, in fact, unmarked; one of them had a long slice down its back. She bent over. “What the hell?”

      “Looks like they takin the skin.” He stood close enough to see, but not close to her, she noticed.

      “Yeah, but—”

      “Maybe for eating. Or keepin warm, dig.”

      He could be right. Probably was, disgusting as the idea might have been. Most people didn’t eat dogs or cats, but “most” didn’t mean “all,” especially not in Downside. And really, dining on innocent pets seemed like something the Lamaru would take particular pleasure in.

      But then, lots of people took pleasure in destroying innocent things. In that the Lamaru were no different from anyone else.