City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

rested in her palm, next to a sprig of mistletoe. Spiritweed. Excellent. They’d need all the help they could get.
    Chanting male voices rolled across the lot, slithered along Chess’s skin and set her tattoos tingling and itching. She grabbed her chalk, sketched a couple of protection sigils on her forehead; they burned the second she finished them.
    Her skull she grabbed last, then hesitated. They couldn’t cast a circle, not unless they wanted to close the blaze inside it, and that would take too long and bring them too close. But without one, the psychopomps could escape, and that would be almost as bad as whatever was about to burst out of that fire ring; a psychopomp without control would snatch the first soul it found, and that was murder.
    Lauren’s eyes met hers. Clearly she’d had the same thought. “I guess we’ll just have to wing it.”
    Chess started to reply, but a wave of energy tore the words from her mouth, tore the ground from beneath her feet. Her elbow slammed into the dirt; her shout was lost in the wild crescendo of squeals, the final triumphant shout of the men. Thick, pulsing darkness throbbed around her, so heavy her ears popped from the pressure.
    Silence fell. Dead silence, a vacuum. She flipped over, started to push herself to her feet, her eyes full of the circle before her. Wind pushed her hair off her shoulders and face; her entire body waited, like standing on the edge of a cliff and taking the first step off. The relentless beat of her heart thundered in her ears; her body throbbed, a drumbeat in her soul against the reverberating emptiness around her.
    Wraiths exploded from the ring of fire.

Chapter Five
The soul should not leave the body until the moment of death. To do otherwise is to court disaster.
— The Book of Truth , Laws, Article 449
    With their filmy black bodies came the return of sound. The moment of hesitation was gone. Chess had a sick feeling it was the last semi-peaceful moment she’d be experiencing for some time.
    Wraiths. A witch’s freed living soul, joined with one of the restless undead. A ghost cranked on living energy, strengthened by magic, its living partner giving it the ability to do what astrally projected spirits could do: fly.
    She’d never even seen one, much less fought one. The secret of their creation was closely guarded, the rituals needed—like the sacrifice of black sows—extremely difficult to perform. It was worse than she’d imagined. They swooped and dove above her, absorbing the red light, their slim bodies fluttering in the breeze their flight created.
    Beside her Lauren moved. Chess glanced over and saw her on her knees, pulling a wad of silk from her bag. Inert silk, the type used to hold psychopomp skulls. But why? Unlike regular ghosts—unlike psychopomps—wraiths weren’t earthbound; they’d have to touch the ground for a psychopomp dog to be useful, and Chess wasn’t entirely sure what good it would do anyway. What would happen to the living souls when the dead ones were taken to the City? Would they die?
    Not that she gave a shit. She just didn’t know.
    The wraiths circled closer now, their eyes glowing red in their shadowy faces. Snakelike arms waved and flowed from their ragged bodies. The air temperature dropped. Such cold, such awful cold …
    And what the fuck was she doing standing there? Quickly she knelt, opened her bags of herbs. Lauren already had the fire going, so Chess dumped wolfsbane on it, grabbed the melidia. As far as she was concerned the spirit prisons were too good for these fuckers, but it was better than nothing—
    Her fingers brushed the bag of iron filings, and she stopped. Glanced at the wraiths again, then back. The filings were quite small, more like dust. If there was a way to get them into the air … Astrally projected spirits weren’t harmed by iron the way the dead were. Could she separate them somehow? Turn the wraiths into regular ghosts that she and Lauren could dispatch?
    Only one