Just as she’d thought, the ghost wheeled back around and came after her with the knife. Dana and Elder Griffin moved, Chess didn’t see where. She was too busy watching the ghost, seeing his solid hand raise over her head, grabbing his wrist with her left hand and bringing the marker up with her right.
He didn’t have a passport—they hadn’t expected him, hadn’t designed one. Oh fucking well. The blade hovered above her eye, its point tacky with coagulating blood, while she scrawled a series of Xs on the spectral skin. The ghost’s face twisted with rage.
Now for the worst part. With every bit of strength she had left she pushed herself to the side, to the skull, and, dropping the marker, brought her right hand to the blade’s point.
She hadn’t expected it to hurt instantly but it did. Ow, it really fucking did, and her blood poured from the wound onto the skull, and she shoved all of that pain and all of her power into her next words.
“I offer the escorts an appeasement for their aid! Escorts come now! Take this man to the place of silence, by my power and by my blood I command it!”
The dog roared into being, huge and shaggy, its fangs bared. This wasn’t just a dog, it was a wolf, what the fuck was the executioner doing with an unauthorized psychopomp—
The ghost’s eyes widened. His mouth opened in a silent scream as he tried to jump away, all thoughts of killing forgotten. The dog—the wolf—went after him, its body moving low and fast like the predator it was.
The ghosts of the executioner and Elder Murray were fully formed now, huddled in the corner. Chess could see the last vestiges of sanity, of who they were in life, draining away, could see them trying to hold on.
It didn’t matter. The wolf howled. A hole ripped open in the thin veil between her world and the spirit one, the wolf snatched the original ghost in its massive jaw. Ectoplasm burst from the ghost’s body under the wolf’s teeth. The ghost screamed, an act somehow more horrible because of its silence.
The wolf turned toward Elder Murray and the executioner. They huddled together, trying so hard. Tears sprang to Chess’s eyes. She’d never known Elder Murray well, never dealt much with him, but his last act was to struggle to retain some humanity, and she couldn’t help the surge of affectionate sadness, of pride, that threatened to overwhelm her.
Dana and Elder Griffin were beside her, Dana squeezing her hand. The wolf leapt, still clutching their unwelcome visitor in its teeth, and caught Elder Murray and the executioner in a bizarre bear hug; he carried them through the wavering hole and it snapped shut behind them, leaving the three still alive to stare open-mouthed at where it had been.
The most sacred vows are those given to the Church, and overseen by the Church, for those involve not just the heart and mind but the soul.
—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 331
“I don’t understand how it could have happened,” Elder Griffin said again. They’d returned to his office, the welcoming, soothing room full of skulls and books. For once the television mounted by the ceiling was off; usually the Elder kept it on all the time to keep him company.
Apparently he didn’t feel much like companionship at the moment. Neither did Chess, but then, she never did. What was the point? You let people into your life and you ended up getting hurt. Or hurting them. Either way, the road to pain was paved with other people, and she wanted no part of it anymore.
At least that’s what she kept telling herself. Just then it worked. Usually of late it didn’t. Once the decision was made to open up to someone, to welcome them…it wasn’t so easy to accept that the place she’d opened for them was empty. And always would be.
Especially when it was her fault.
“I don’t see how she could have made it past the detectors,” Dana said, echoing something Chess herself had wondered earlier but without providing the answer Chess had come up with.
She gave it now. “She didn’t. She wasn’t Hosting when we busted her.”
“But that isn’t—”
“I was there, Dana.” Chess paused, gave the other woman a small smile in an attempt to make her words less harsh. She’d never had a problem with Dana and wasn’t interested in starting one. “I mean, I know you were there too, but I felt her energy. She stole mine, remember? So I know she wasn’t Hosting. There was nothing inside that woman but Dumpster cag-mag and that awful tea.”
“Cag-mag?” Elder Griffin looked puzzled. Shit. She shouldn’t have said that. He knew she lived in Downside, of course, but didn’t really know what that meant. Nobody did. And that was the way she liked it.
“It’s a—It just means, scraps of whatever meat’s about to go off. Like you get in the butcher’s Dumpster.”
The Elder’s eyebrows rose; his shoulders relaxed. Like she’d said something that pleased him.
Which made no sense at all. Why would that make him happy?
“So you have managed to learn something about the area,” he said. “You’re not so isolated from your neighbors there as I had assumed.”
For the first time in a while, Chess felt almost like laughing. Yeah, she’d found a way to fit in with the rest of Downside. That was one way to look at it.
“Yes,” she said finally, dragging her tired mind back to Elder Griffin. Shit. Only ten at night and she was exhausted. She had more speed in her bag; hopefully they’d be done with this soon and she could go bump up.
Or, fuck that. She could go sleep. Drop an Oozer, drift away…Maybe she’d even get lucky and not dream. Her dreams didn’t tend to be cheerful these days. But then they never really had been.
Elder Griffin smiled, the kind of smile that made Chess wonder even more what exactly he was up to, but he didn’t speak. Muffled voices came through the door, the scuffle of feet on the shiny wide floor of the hall outside the office.
Dana shivered. “I still can’t believe it,” she said. “Elder Murray…It doesn’t seem real.”
Elder Griffin’s face rearranged itself into more sympathetic lines, but when he spoke, Chess heard the steel beneath his bland tone. It made her own eyes widen. She didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak to anyone like that—at least, not anyone still living. “Remember, Dana, Elder Murray will still be with us in spirit. There is no reason to mourn.”
“Of course not.” Dana straightened in her seat, pushed her light hair back from her face. “I wasn’t—I wasn’t implying anything. I’m just shocked. I liked Elder Murray.”
“I liked him as well. And for that reason, Dana, and because I know the Truth, I rejoice for Elder Murray. The peace he’s found in the City, the quiet…” Elder Griffin shook his head. “I envy him.”
With difficulty Chess suppressed a shudder. The City—ugh. What Elder Griffin thought was peace, she thought was emptiness. What he thought was quiet, she thought was horrifying loneliness, with no pills or anything to make it bearable.
“We’ll set the ceremony for”—he flipped the pages in the daily calendar sitting on the shiny wide desktop before him—“Saturday. Yes. Five days from now is Saturday—‘tis so late I forgot for a moment what day it was. Saturday, Dana, you shall have your chance to see Elder Murray’s happiness for yourself.”
Dana nodded, her expression cleared. Meanwhile Chess felt as if someone had shoved a blender into her gut. With everything else, the deaths and the wondering where that damned wolf had come from and—okay, and her stupid babyish whining about her personal life, what a fucking joke—she’d forgotten about the Dedication ceremony. About what the