Finding Magic (downside ghosts) by Stacia Kane

Author:Stacia Kane [Kane Stacia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy
ISBN: 9780345540522
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Whatever Tom Imry had done after the Mission closed, it hadn’t paid very well. Yeah, she knew that already; people who made money didn’t live in Downside. But—“Wait a minute.”

“What?” Jillian looked up from Tom’s bookshelves, where she’d been scanning the titles while Trent and Vaughn accessed their laptop, mumbling to each other and—in Trent’s case—shooting Chess the occasional baleful glare.

“Mark,” Chess said. “He didn’t mention it.”

“What do you mean?” Vaughn asked. He sat perched on the edge of the cushion on the book-propped couch, in front of a window covered with a tattered, bloodstained blanket. Chess didn’t like to look at the bloodstains; some of them, she knew, would be from Tom’s untimely demise, but some … They were faded and watery—more like rust stains—and they reminded her of fireworks or flowers, with dark splatty heads and long trailing stems. She recognized those bloodblossoms. Someone had been cleaning needles in that room, filling them with water and emptying them again so they’d be ready when the time came for another fix. She’d seen it done. She’d been made to do it.

Damn, not even any of the sacks of shit who’d put a roof over her head had cleaned their spikes against the walls. That was hopelessness. That was truly not giving a shit anymore, about anything.

But then, that was where the needle led. Always had, always would.

“Mark didn’t say anything about the others.” Chess pulled her attention off the blanket and back onto Jillian and Vaughn. “Four people he knows—or at least used to know—including the Warings, have been killed in the last couple of weeks, and he didn’t say anything?”

“He probably didn’t know,” Trent said.

“Their deaths weren’t in the papers? They had no contact with each other, really?”

“Their deaths weren’t news.” Trent glared at her. “We’re not telling the public, remember? So maybe they had obituaries, maybe they didn’t, but even if they did, the details of their actual deaths wouldn’t be made public. And who the hell knows if they stayed in touch with each other? We didn’t find any evidence of a connection between them, remember?”

Fuck it. She cocked her right eyebrow, let her gaze rest on him just a beat longer than necessary. “Yeah. I know you didn’t.”

Vaughn stood up, fast, like the couch had an ejector seat, and reached for her. She started to flinch away but he had her; his grip on her arm was surprisingly gentle as he led her toward the open doorway off the kitchen area. “Since you did find the connection, why don’t you come with me and see if we can find something else relating to it? Maybe there’s something in the bedroom.”

There were a lot of things in the bedroom. Especially junk. Long twisted ropes of dirty sheets across the floor, wires and bits of paper and needle caps and spent matches, clothing so full of holes it looked like only the copious stains held the fabric together. Evidence of a life nobody cared about, not even the person living it.

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