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Downside Ghosts
2
Unholy Magic
Stacia Kane
To Stephen, and to Caitlin
Table of Contents
The penalty for summoning the dead back to earth is death; if the summoned spirit does not kill its summoner, be assured the Church will.
—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 3
Ghosts were stronger underground; no witch willingly went below the surface of the earth, not without a Church edict or a death wish. Chess had both to varying degrees, but that didn’t make the doorway looming behind the skinny man holding the cup any more appealing. The doorway, and the stairs. Down into a basement, down into the ground.
Chess’s skin crawled from more than just the squatfaced, wizened appearance of the man, more than the bizarre energy in the dirty shack. Something told her this was not going to end well.
But then, things so rarely did.
She could have busted the bastards simply for having a basement. The Church decreed they were illegal, and the Church was not to be disobeyed. But she needed more than that—a month of investigation demanded a more satisfactory resolution than that—so instead she pasted what she hoped was a smile with the right touch of nervousness on her face and handed the skinny man the picture she’d brought, careful not to touch his grimy fingers.
The picture was of Gary Anderson, a fellow Debunker, but the skinny man didn’t know that. At least Chess hoped he didn’t.
“My brother,” she told him. It would have been better if she’d been able to squeeze out a tear, but the Cepts she’d taken didn’t allow it. It was hard enough to feel emotions when she was high, let alone emotions intense enough to make her weep. Hell, that was one reason why she kept taking the fucking things, wasn’t it?
The skinny man focused his rheumy eyes with effort on the photo, then nodded.
“Aye, seein a lookalike,” he mumbled, scratching his bony chest through a hole in his ragged green sweater. He shoved the cup forward, 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