City of Ghosts

Chapter Twenty-eight

It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon before she managed to stumble into the Market with her mood even darker than her sunglasses. All that work. She’d been the one in danger with Maguinness—and still was—she’d been the one who’d wanted to check out his place, to check out his room. She’d been the one who’d found the fetish.

But Lauren had practically snatched it away from her, and she had not a doubt in her mind that Lauren planned to behave as though finding it had been all her doing.

After all, technically it wasn’t connected to Chess’s case, right? So Chess got to piddle around running Lauren’s errands, and Lauren got to look like the golden girl in front of the Elders—as if she needed more of a boost in their eyes.

Which wasn’t really fair. Chess wasn’t an Inquisitor, she was a Debunker, and as such all this jockeying-for-position shit wasn’t part of her job. She didn’t have to worry about promotions or quotas or whatever else the Squad members had to worry about. Debunkers got bonuses, and if she needed help solving a case it looked bad for her, but beyond that she didn’t worry much about Church politics or looking impressive. Which was probably a good thing.

But part of the reason she became a Debunker was so she wouldn’t have to take orders from somebody else. Wouldn’t even have to work with anybody else. So not being in charge on her own investigation, giving up her independence … felt like a fucking iron band around her throat.

Edsel smiled when she got closer to him. “Hey, baby. Guessing you got my message, aye?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

The black lenses of his sunglasses shifted to the left, then to the right. Nervous, then. An anticipatory shiver ran up her spine; not that she wanted Edsel to be scared or in danger, but if he had good information for her … Hell, if he had really good information, Bump would kick him some cash, and with his wife pregnant he could use every penny, she knew. She’d like to see him get it. Would have given him some herself if there was a way to do it that wouldn’t have offended him.

He jerked his head to the right, indicating she should slip behind the counter. Okay, change that “nervous” to “really nervous.” She’d never been back there before.

Not that it was all that different. Just everything on the counter looked upside down, and the power from the really valuable objects, the rare things Edsel kept out of public reach, skittered along her exposed skin and under her clothes, a cheery little high she hadn’t expected.

“Aye, run this down for you, baby. You ever hear the name Baldarel?”

“I—Yeah. Yeah, actually.” Baldarel was the author of the book on ghost magic she’d picked up in the Restricted Room two days before, the one she planned to look through when she went back there after talking to Edsel. “Why?”

“Got a friend got some friends, if you dig. Gave me the tell them Lamaru, they been talking to the dude. Getting him in some of them work. All letters they been sending, ain’t ever seen him for real. Figure maybe the Church got some knowledge where he at, maybe find they like that.”

Slim. But something. “Thanks, Edsel. That might come in handy.”

“Hear knowledge, too, they gots them an enemy. Whatany they got the gear-up for, they tryin to push causen someone after em. Somebody strong, if you dig. Them figuring they get them plan workin, them win. What tell were gave me, anyroad.”

Hmm. Again, not much she didn’t know, although the idea that the Lamaru didn’t quite have their plan in place, or ready to go yet, reassured her a little. People who rushed things made mistakes. Maybe she could catch them in that mistake? Maybe they’d already made it, by involving Maguinness in whatever fashion they’d involved him—by buying his magic and not paying, probably, as Terrible had suggested.

Still, it was something, and at the moment she was pretty desperate. The Church could hide, pretending there wasn’t a problem, for a few weeks. Maybe even a month. But at some point they’d run into a problem. At some point the Lamaru would come forward.

She’d do anything to keep that from happening. And it looked like she’d probably have to.

Unfortunately, figuring out what to do wasn’t proving to be easy, and the slight confidence boost the conversation had given her faded as she forced herself to read every title on the lower left section of the Restricted Room shelves again. And again.

No question about it. The Baldarel book was gone. What the fuck? Books weren’t supposed to leave the Restricted Room. Not ever. They weren’t even supposed to be taken into the library proper.

But it was all based on the honor system. There were no security sensors in the books, no detectors hidden in the walls. Just Goody Glass hunched behind her desk, glaring at everyone and guarding the key like a gold-hoarding dwarf.

Goody Glass hated her. The feeling was mutual. Still … the book may or may not have contained information that would help her, but the fact was she couldn’t find out now. Not to mention what it could mean if someone had deliberately taken it to keep her from finding it.

So she pushed the door open and approached the desk. “Hey, Goody Glass. Did one of the Elders—”

“Good morrow, Cesaria.” Goody Glass stared pointedly at Chess’s knees until Chess finally caught on. Shit, she hated that woman.

But she gave her a quick curtsy anyway, wished her good morrow just as if she hadn’t already done it not half an hour before when she’d asked for access to the fucking room to begin with. “Did one of the Elders maybe take a book from the Restricted Room?”

“It is not permitted for books to leave the Restricted Room.”

“Yeah, I know, but I thought maybe—”

“It is not permitted for books to leave the Restricted Room, Miss Putnam. Art thou implying one of the Elders has committed a crime against order? Has broken the rules, which are laws, which are Truth?”

“No, that’s not what I meant, I just thought—There’s a book missing.”

“Impossible.” The Goody half-turned away from Chess, lowered her eyes back to her novel and scratched her hairy chin.

“Forgive me, Goody, but it is possible. The book was there three days ago. Today it’s not. I believe that’s pretty much the definition of missing.” She heard the impatience in her voice and didn’t care. Yes, she could be disciplined for her rudeness; no, it wasn’t a good idea to express her own feelings despite how Goody Glass had never bothered to hide hers since the day she’d discovered the truth about Chess’s background.

But she didn’t have time to worry about it just then. She was supposed to meet Lex in an hour to take a look in the tunnels, and she wanted to have a chat with Elder Griffin before she left.

Goody Glass slammed her book on the desk with an echoing thud. “Art thou being impertinent?”

“Impertinent” wasn’t really the word for what Chess wanted to be at that moment; “violent” would have been more accurate. Or “high,” but that was a given.

What she didn’t want, though, was to get in trouble or stand there arguing any longer. So she clenched her fists behind her back and lowered her eyes. “I didn’t intend to be, Goody. But I need that book, and it’s not there. And I thought—You see everything that goes on in here, I mean, you know everything, so maybe you had some ideas.”

Her respect for the Goody went up one tiny, unwilling notch when she saw the woman wasn’t buying her cheap attempt at flattery one bit.

But at least she answered, stretching her black-cloth-encased arm to the phone on her desk. “It’s been a busy few days, Miss Putnam. I’ll call someone to help thee search for the book. What was the title?”

Chess told her, and watched her mildly revolted expression switch back to fully revolted. “What need hast thou of that book?”

“It’s research for a case.”

“What sort of Debunking case involves research of that nature?”

“It’s—it’s not a Debunking case. I’m working with the Black Squad, and—”

Goody Glass shook her head. “Dangerous. Dangerous and unnecessary. I will call someone to look for it, if thee insist. It may take some time.”

Chess opened her mouth to argue, but shut it again. What was the point? She’d go downstairs and tell Elder Griffin instead. He’d help her look, and wouldn’t Goody Glass love that. So instead she just forced out a terse “Thank you” and headed for the stairs.

Shit. It was starting to get dark outside, and she didn’t have much time before she had to meet Lex. Either way, the book was a wash for the day, and since the Dedication was the next day she couldn’t count on having much time then, either.

The ceremony itself would only take a couple of hours, but there was usually a meeting afterward to anoint a new Elder and discuss changes being made or whatever else came up, and those took the better part of a day.

Elder Griffin wouldn’t be pleased when he heard the book was missing. And she wanted to show him the fetish. She’d never really worked with him before, not like that; he oversaw all the Debunkers but didn’t generally get involved. This was different. It might actually be fun to talk to him about it, to see if he had any theories himself.

With all the work and planning being done, and the shock of what had happened, the hall buzzed with activity. A couple of Elders she’d never seen before whispered past her to disappear around the corner, the Liaisers huddled in a small group against the opposite wall, a few Goodys carried stacks of files up the stairs. All of them with somber expressions and hushed voices. She’d never felt so much tension in the building, so much fear coating her skin. It made her want to hide. Instead she forced herself to knock on Elder Griffin’s door. It opened so fast she wondered if he’d been waiting for her.

“Ah, Cesaria. Good morrow. How fare thee?”

The wan smile on his normally peaceful face looked like it hurt. She curtsied and greeted him, forced a smile of her own, and followed him into his office.

He slumped into his chair with less than his usual grace. “Cesaria, how do you think the Lamaru have learned to create these psychopomps, to turn our own against us? Hast thou formulated a theory?”

“I—Yeah, I have. I think I have. Here.” She hoisted her bag into her lap and pulled out the bagged fetish parts. “I—I was attacked. I’m fine, it wasn’t a big deal. But they had this. I think they got it from this street vendor in Downside, who sells potions. He’s been doing toad magic, I know, I—” She dug out the toad bone she’d taken from the bed. “These were all over his place. And he had a fetish that was more like a glamour, it changed my face and Lauren’s when we touched it. She took that one.”

Against the pallor of his skin the dark smudges around his eyes were pandalike; the wide fear in those eyes was anything but. “Transformational magic. This is how they’re controlling our psychopomps.”

Chess nodded. “I think so, I—You already know what happened in the slaughterhouse. What they were doing.”

“I was informed, yes.”

“That guy Maguinness, he was the one who bombed the place. He was trying to wipe out the Lamaru.”

“So Lauren said. She seemed to feel that was proof he was on our side, working with us, no matter how wrongfully he chose to do it. I see by thy expression thou dost not feel the same. How do you find working with her?”

She shrugged. “She’s okay. I mean, we’re not best friends or anything, but she’s okay.”

“And you feel you’re being given an equal voice in the investigation?”

“Mostly.” Discretion warred with the need to discuss her suspicions; suspicions won out. She told him about her little chat with Maguinness—a carefully expurgated version—and about Edsel’s information that the Lamaru had an enemy. “Lauren thinks he’s only peripherally related, that he has this personal problem with them and we should let somebody else deal with him. I think he’s important, that he’s the one who started all of this and sold this stuff to the Lamaru to begin with.”

“Ah.” He sat back, clasping his hands in his lap the way he did when thinking. “You feel he’s working with the Lamaru?”

“No, at least not anymore. I think he was, but—Have you heard of this Baldarel person? He wrote a book on ghost magic; it disappeared from the Restricted Room. Someone told me they’d heard the Lamaru were corresponding with him. Maybe he taught Maguinness, too. Maybe that’s how they met.”

“I have heard of him, yes. At one point he desired to join the Church; this was before I entered training, I believe. A very powerful spellworker, but an unorthodox and unethical one.”

“Where is he now? Can we get in touch with him?”

“Hmm. I believe he passed to the City not long ago, or at least so the rumor states.”

“So the Liaisers can find him? Can we—”

He shook his head. “I apologize, my dear, but we cannot involve a non-Bound employee in the case. And”—he held up his hand—“I do not believe the Grand Elder will approve another Binding payment. Especially not now, when our very existence hangs by a thread.”

Shit. The first thing she’d had in days that looked like it might end in an answer instead of more questions, and she was getting a big fat no.

“Can we at least see if we can confirm his death?”

If the Lamaru had been working with Baldarel, they might have killed him. If Maguinness had been working with Baldarel, he might have taken great offense to that killing.

Of course she could still be right about it being related to nonpayment for supplies. Debunking cases were usually solved by following the money; she couldn’t help that her first instincts always led her straight into people’s wallets. But any new theory was a new chance to solve the case, right?

Elder Griffin smiled. “Indeed. Wait a moment.”

She watched as he pulled up a computer screen and started typing, soothed by the clicking sounds his fingers made on the keys but made ever more anxious by the frown darkening his face. “No. No, it appears he has not passed—at least, I find no certificate of such here. And no address.”

Rumored dead, but not dead. An address the Lamaru were writing to, but no address listed in the Church system.

Baldarel had disappeared. And Chess knew a damn good place to disappear to.

If Maguinness and Baldarel were the same person, it would answer a lot of questions—how he’d known to find them at the slaughterhouse, for example. It would also create more. The Lamaru were learning from and at war with the same person?

Unless Baldarel had, by letter, advised them to visit “Maguinness.” He’d wanted to check them out in person, to see what kind of people he was dealing with, and she guessed he’d found out. And now he was slowly leading them into trap after trap. She almost admired him, but she was more terrified by him. Someone who could use the Lamaru like lapdogs—how appropriate—and get them running scared was definitely someone she didn’t want to fuck around with, and that someone knew who she was, had read her.

But hadn’t come after her. Why?

The whole thing made her head hurt; or would have, had she been capable of feeling physical pain. As it was she was simply tired, her thoughts running creaky circles in her head like an exhausted treadmill mouse. Baldarel and Maguinness and dogs and toads and Lamaru, rooms and streets crimson with blood … Terrible’s hands on her skin, his mouth on her throat—

“I have an image here, if thou wouldst look.” Elder Griffin turned the slick flat screen of his desktop toward her; a flash from the overhead light turned it momentarily into a blank silver slab, revealing nothing. “Is this the man you encountered?”

The screen cleared. With very little surprise Chess found herself nodding, staring at a picture of a young Arthur Maguinness—a young Baldarel—leering out of a grainy scanned photo.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, that’s him.”