Youll be fine, was the one she gave him, and to her surprise it seemed to work. Come on.
Every step they took, every slow step through the soup of bacteria and rot sucking at her boots brought them closer to that faint death-glow. Shed mixed some graveyard dirt and asafetida earlier, stuck it in a bag in her pocket; now she reached inside and grabbed a small handful. Ready.
They moved a few steps in silence broken only by the occasional plonk of water dripping from the ceiling behind them. Something rattled. Chess spun around to look but saw nothing.
Ghosts werent the only things that might hang out in abandoned buildings at night. They werent in Downside, no, but they werent exactly in the nicest area, either. This building, which had once housed offices of some kind and a warehouse, stood just a few streets into Cross Town, a whole city block of condemned cement with a ten-foot chain-link fence around it.
A chain-link fence with holes in it. She wondered how many neighborhood kids had made this their weekend hangout until two nights before, when one of them met a gruesome death just inside the front doors.
Another tiny glimpse of light.
It is a ghost, right? Riley whispered. I mean, I feel like theres a ghost here, but could that be something else?
It could be anything else. But its probably a ghost, yeah.
The comforting weight of her knife sat in her pocket. Debunkers werent supposed to be armed. Fuck that. Shed rather take her chances with Church discipline than with anyone or anything she might come across in a place like this.
She probably wouldnt need the knife anyway. Damn it, the kids nervousness was making her twitch, and as much as she sympathized with him she really didnt need that at the moment. It had been a good two hours since shed taken her pills, and while she still had timeshe wasnt worriedplaces like this didnt help her keep calm. All that filth, all those germs, soaking into the bottoms of her jeans, brushing against her skin, her hair, invading her lungs. People caught diseases from places like this, especially after a rain.
Or they got their throats sliced open by ghosts armed with rusted shards of metal or whatever the fuck else. She edged her way down the hall, her back pressed against that gross excuse for a wall just because she couldnt really see well enough to walk down the center. The glow got stronger with every step. Her fist clenched around the dirt.
Another plonk. Another rattle. Something like a whisper, that could have been a voice or the sound of a makeshift blade leaving its sheath of soaked pulp or crumbled cement. The glow from a doorway another ten feet or so down the hall.
In its reflection, Rileys face looked even paler. The only thing keeping hers from looking the sameassuming it didnt, which she was just going to go ahead and assumewas the fact that she was still just high enough to be not quite as scared as she should be. And the fact that she was an absolute fucking expert at lying to herself.
But with every step closer to that glowing doorway, that ability drew just a tiny bit farther away from her.
Whatever. Wasnt like she could just turn around and run. So she took one last deep breath and spun around the doorframe with her arm ready to throw the dirt at the first dead thing that moved.
And found herself staring at three teenagers, who were obviously very alive, and who obviously thought theyd done something very clever, and who should have been thanking the gods who didnt exist that Riley was there too because if he hadnt been she would have been very tempted to beat the shit out of them with the nearest heavy object.
What are you doing here? Riley asked, but it was obvious from the stunned looks on their faces. Whoever theyd been expecting to walk through that door, it wasnt two Church employees.
One of them glanced at the other two, and cleared his throat when they didnt speak up. Fucking cowards. We, uh, we thought you were some friends of ours.
Damn it, why were her tattoos still tingling, if a ghost wasnt in this room? This didnt feel right, not at all. She needed to get those little bastards out of there as quickly as possible. You need to leave, okay? Time to go.
Weve been in here for like an hour, the kid replied. The flashlight hed hidden under his dark-blue jacket still glowed, made him glow. Thats where that bluish light had come from, she guessed, but nothing about these kids should have been setting off the alarms in her tattoos. Something else was around, waiting. We havent seen anything.
Oh, right. That must mean nothing is here. This is such a small building. She stepped sideways from the door; Riley, she was pleased to see, had already taken a step back into the hall. Go on, get out of here.
But we can help you, the first guy started.
Started, but didnt get to finish. Because before the last word hit the air, the ghostswhod clearly been waiting for just this sort of noisy funslipped through the walls. Four of them.
And thanks to the debris and shit on the floor, including what appeared to be a damned cigarette lighter sitting on top of a backpack tucked against one of the drier sections of wall, they were ghosts with weapons.
Chess started to throw her dirt, put as much power behind it as she could, but missed as the teenagers freaked out and started running. One of them knocked her against the wall; another bounced off her and tumbled back. The third the third had a face half obscured by blood, presumably from the chunk of concrete the ghost beside it was readying for another swing.
The kids screamed. Riley yelled something. Chess fought the rising tides of fear and irritation and grabbed another handful of dirt.
Go for the concrete-wielding ghost first, because if it smacked that kid again thered be a nice layer of brains added to the general slime and mess on the floor. She managed to freeze that one, glanced around to see Riley doing the same with another.
That left two. Two ghosts and three teenagers who really should have fucking known better crowded into that small space. There was barely room to move in there, much less do anything else, and two of the ghosts were still mobile.
Flames erupted in the corner of her vision. That backpack had apparently been filled with papersof course it was, they were high school kidsand one of the ghosts had set the whole thing alight. It threw the flaming sack at her.
She ducked, and slipped in the vile sludge covering the floor. Eeew. Cold waterand who knew what else, probably blood and urine and vomitsoaked her jeans.
Worse, while shed been distracted, the other moving ghost had found a length of pipe and used it to try to pop off one of the teenagers heads like a ball off a tee.
At least thats what she assumed had happened. The flashlight in the one guys jacket had gone out, or been smashed. The unearthly, hideous glow of the four spirits provided the rooms only illumination, giving everything the unreal look of a nightmare.
Another garbled yell from Riley. She barely heard him over the sound of her breath in her ears and the shouts of the teens. One of them slipped just as she had. The ghost raised its pipe.
Graveyard dirt still in her fist. She threw it, threw her power, too. The ghost froze and dropped the pipe; it clattered on the kids back, knocked him down into the floor sewage.
Riley had managed to freeze the fourth ghost. Not that it mattered that much. They wouldnt stay frozen forever; ten minutes tops. Riley and Chess needed to get passports on the things, and they needed to get a salt circle down as fast as possiblethat would be fun, in the wet sludge.