narrowly avoiding hitting her with it. “You drink, aye?”
“Thanks, but—”
“Nay, nay, lil miss. You drink, or you ain’t get down, aye? All must drink.” His chapped lips stretched and flaked in a gruesome semblance of a smile, like a fat worm crawling across his face, revealing broken, graying teeth. “All must drink, or the energy, she ain’t work.”
Shit. Who the fuck knew what was in that nasty cup? Even if the “tea” was harmless—which she doubted—the thing looked like it hadn’t been washed since before Haunted Week. She could practically see germs crawling along the rim.
The bonus on this job would be a couple of grand, she reminded herself, and snatched the cup from his dry, bony hand.
His gaze locked on hers. She held it while she tilted the cup and poured the contents down her throat.
For a second the room spun around her, whirling on its side like an amusement park ride. The concoction tasted of bitter herbs and glue, of seawater and sewage. It was the most revolting thing she’d ever put in her mouth, and that was saying a lot.
She held it down through sheer force of will, and was rewarded with another flaky smile. Something lurked behind that smile, but she didn’t have time to analyze it. His hand was on her sleeve, urging her into the dark mouth of the stairway, and her feet clumped on the wooden slats as she made her way into the damp cave below.
The others were already there, sitting in a circle beneath flaming torches, around a scarred wooden table. Across one end of it was draped a blue silk scarf, stained with blood or wine—or perhaps someone else’s stomach had lost its battle with the tea.
No time to think about it, even if she’d cared to. Instead she made her way to the table, to the straight-backed wooden chair someone had pushed out for her.
“Someone,” she saw, was a five-foot-tall human parody of indeterminate sex wearing a belted garbage bag and white face paint. Heavy black rims surrounded its beady, pupilless eyes, and its voice was barely more than a dry whisper, like a knife cutting through cardboard.
“Sit ye down, lil miss,” it rasped. “Sit ye down, and the Ladywitch, she’ll be out.”
“The Ladywitch” was Madame Lupita, formerly known as Irene Lowe, and as soon as Chess had the evidence she needed—in the form of her own eyewitness testimony and whatever the minirecorder concealed in her bra picked up—Madame would have a date with a guillotine. The Church did not take a forgiving stance on illegal ghost-raising or séances, even fake ones such as Lupita was rumored to run.
Rumor, hell. What was about to happen here was obvious, was even more so when a black-painted door opened opposite Chess and an enormous woman thrust her bulk into the room.
Her face was white, her eyes black-ringed, a garish parody of Church Elder makeup. Any resemblance stopped there. Madame Lupita wore a shiny silver caftan, on which were painted various runes and magical symbols. Small pieces of iron hung from it, too small to offer any real protection. Chess supposed they were there for effect, as was the heavy iron-and-amber necklace around the woman’s short, fat throat or the matching silver turban covering her head.
Whatever they were for, Lupita’s appearance was obviously what the other people around the table expected. Chess felt rather than heard their sigh of satisfaction, their belief that they’d done the right thing in coming here. For those who couldn’t afford to pay a Church Liaiser to contact the spirits of their dead loved ones, amateur séances like these seemed the answer to the prayers they were prohibited from uttering.
Too bad they were illegal, which was why Chess was there to begin with. Helping the Black Squad make a case against Lupita meant some extra cash for her.
And too bad it was all fake. If Lupita and her ilk were truly powerful enough to raise ghosts, the Church would have found them through the tests every child in the world underwent at the age of fourteen, would have trained them and hired them. Many of them had a glimmer of power, enough to send a shiver through the air and fool their clients, most of whom had no idea what real power, real magic, felt like.
Chess did. Knew the feeling—loved the feeling—almost as much as the cool, smooth peace of her pills, or the foggy bliss of Dream smoke, or the sparkly, fizzing sensation created by the occasional line of speed. She knew them all, loved them all, because anything that distanced her from reality was a blessing in a world where blessing was against the law.
Of course, her drugs were illegal, too. But that hadn’t stopped her from doing them, hadn’t stopped her dealer, Bump—or her whatever-he-was, Lex—from selling them. It just meant they all had to be a lot more careful.
Speaking of careful…Madame Lupita settled herself at the table, clapped her hands. Something clinked behind Chess. She didn’t turn around, but she heard it, soft wings beating the air. A psychopomp. Madame Lupita knew how to put on a show.
“All hold hands,” she commanded, in a deep, liquid voice. “No messin, aye…hold hands, or they don’t come.”
To Chess’s left sat a rake-thin young man. His fingers were sweaty, his face wet with tears as he stared at the picture on the table before him. Chess couldn’t make out the image.
To her right was the female half of a middle-aged couple, clad in a cheap fake silk dress. Her hand shook against Chess’s palm.
Lupita reached across the table and grabbed the picture in front of the woman. “What be this girl’s name?”
“A-Annabeth. Annabeth Whitman.”
Lupita bowed her head. The others did the same, including Chess, who used the opportunity to look around the room from under her lashes.
The psychopomp settled on a perch behind Lupita’s left shoulder. A crow, its black feathers gleaming in the firelight. To Chess’s right, against the wall, row upon row of skulls grinned blankly at her. Most were small animals, cats and rats and the occasional dog. To her left a wall mural; spirits straining for the sky, their long arms and spidery fingers gruesome and sad.
Sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled down the side of her face. Had it been that hot in there a few minutes before? No one else seemed to be sweating, why was she?
Of course, no one else was wearing a high-necked, long-sleeved sweater, either, despite the cold outside. Chess had no choice; every inch of her arms and chest was decorated with the tattoos marking her as a Church employee, magical symbols that focused her power, warned her, protected her. They tingled now, but whether it was from the heat or her nerves or the tremors in the atmosphere, Chess didn’t know. It was nothing serious. She’d been right. Lupita didn’t have anywhere near the kind of power required to raise a ghost.
Good thing, too, as she hadn’t even bothered to mark her “guests” with basic protective sigils or circle the floor with salt or anything else Church employees learned in their first year of training.
Chess wondered what they might see. Holograms, probably; their technology had advanced to the point where it was difficult or impossible to tell the difference between a real ghost and a fake one—at least if you didn’t have any natural abilities in that direction—and if Lupita brought in this kind of money on a regular basis, she could probably afford the top of the line.
Or it could be some of the old-fashioned tricks, the kind used by charlatans long before Haunted Week. Dim lighting, the bizarre
