Close to You

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.”