City of Ghosts
The third book in this gritty, sexy urban fantasy trilogy.If you liked the compelling characters in 50 Shades of Grey, you’ll love the Downside Ghosts series.Rogue spirits and psychopomps are terrorising people, and now someone is planning to open the gates to the City of Ghosts and unleash the dead on humanity.Faced with her greatest challenge yet, Chess has to travel to the spirit city to finally lay all her ghosts to rest…Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’s bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city’s most notorious crime boss – and Chess’s drug dealer – gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn’t bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he’s not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity.Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths and a lot of seriously nasty magic – all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man she can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.
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Downside Ghosts
3
City of Ghosts
Stacia Kane
Table of Contents
Not all of your duties will be pleasant. But that is the sacrifice you make, for as a Church employee you must always remember that you are privileged above all others.
âThe Example Is You, the guidebook for Church employees
The guillotine waited for them, its blackened wood dark and threatening against the naked cement walls of the Execution Room.
Chess limped past it, trying not to look. Trying not to remember that she deserved to kneel before it, to place her neck on the age-smoothed rest and wait for the blade to fall. Sheâd killed a psychopomp. Hell, sheâd killed people.
Only the death of the hawk meant automatic execution.
But nobody knew about that. At least, nobody with the authority to order her death knew about that. She was safe for the moment.
Too bad she didnât feel safe. Didnât feel the way she should have felt. The dull ache in her thigh with every step she took in her low-heeled Church pumps reminded her of the almost healed gunshot wound; her limp reminded everyone else, drew attention to her at a time when she wanted it even less than usual.
Elder Griffinâs hand was warm at her elbow. âYou may sit while the sentence is read and carried out, Cesaria.â
âOh, no, really, Iâmââ
He shook his head, his eyes serious. What was that about? Granted, an execution wasnât exactly a party-it-up event; very few Church events were. But Elder Griffin looked even more solemn than usual, more troubled.
He didnât know, did he? Had Oliver Fletcher told him about the psychopomp, about what sheâd done? If that bastâNo. No, she was being stupid and paranoid. Oliver wouldnât have told him. When would he have? As far as she knew, the two men had only shared one conversation since that night, the night sheâd killed the psychopomp, the night Terrible had beenâ
Her breath rasped in her chest. Right. This wasnât the time, or the place. This was an execution, and she had testimony to give, and she needed to calm the fuck down and give it.
So she sat on the hard, straight-backed wooden chair, breathing the disinfectant stink heavy in the room, and watched the others file in after her. Elder Murray, the rings painted around his eyes as black as his hair, almost disappearing against the rich darkness of his skin. Dana Wright, the other Debunker whoâd been at the bust at Madame Lupitaâs, her light hair curling around her face.
For Lupita herself, no one came. Any who might have cared about her, who might have wanted to be there for her in the last moments of her physical life, had either already been executed themselves or were locked in their cells in the prison building.
Lastâlast before the condemned woman herselfâcame the executioner, his face obscured by a heavy black hood. On his open right palm rested a dogâs skullâhis psychopomp, ready to take Madame Lupita down to the spirit prisons. Clenched in his left fist was a chain, and at the end of that chain was Madame Lupita, her legs and wrists shackled together with iron bands.
The door thunked shut behind them, the lock popped; it would not open for half an hour. Time enough for the execution to take place and the spirit to be taken to the City of Eternity. The timelocks had been instituted in the early days of the Church, when a series of mishaps had led to a ghost opening the door and escaping. Like everything the Church did, the timelocks made sense, but Chess couldnât help the tiny thrill of panic that ran up her spine. Trapped. Something she never wanted to be.
The executioner fastened the chain-end he held to the guillotine and began setting up the skull at the base of the permanent altar in the corner. Smoke poured from his censer and overpowered the scent of bleach and ammonia; the thick, acrid odor of melidia to send Lupitaâs soul to the spirit prisons, ajenjible and asafetida, burning yew chips to sting Chessâs nose. The energy in the room changed, power slithering up her legs and lifting the hair on the back of her neck, that little rush that always made her want to smile.
She didnât, though. Not today. Instead she pressed her teeth together and looked at the condemned woman.
Lupita had changed since Chess saw her last, in that miserable, hot little basement that stank of terror and burned herbs and poison. Her big body seemed to have shrunk. Instead of the ridiculous silver turban Chess remembered, Lupita wore only her own close-shorn hair; instead of the silly sideshow caftan, her bulk was hidden beneath the plain black robe of those sentenced to die.
