Ghost Story

mortal agony, which means there’s a certain amount of pressure involved in the act. It isn’t easy, and that’s just considering farm animals.

Killing another human being magnifies the worry, the ugliness, and the pressure by orders of magnitude. You don’t make a choice like that lightly. There’s calculation to it, consideration of the possible outcomes. Anyone can kill in a frenzy of fear or hatred—you aren’t making the choice to kill that way. You’re simply giving your emotions control of your actions.

I watched Fitz’s eyes as he calculated, considered, and made his choice. His face went pale, but his jaw was clenched, his eyes steady.

I don’t know what motivated me, exactly, but I leaned down near him and snapped, “Don’t!”

The young man had begun to shift his weight, to get his feet beneath him. He froze in the act.

“He’s expecting it, Fitz,” I said in a harsh, forceful tone. “He spat on you to drive you to it. He’s ready. He’ll kill you before you’ve finished standing up.”

Fitz looked around him, but his gaze went right through me. He couldn’t see me, then. Huh.

“I’ve been where you are, kid. I know this bald loser’s type. Don’t be a sucker. Don’t give him what he wants.”

Fitz closed his eyes very tightly for a moment. Then he exhaled slowly, and his body relaxed.

“Wise,” Baldy said. “Make good on your claim, and we might still have a way to work together, Fitz.”

Fitz swallowed, and grimaced as if at a bitter taste in his mouth, and said, “Yes, sir. I’m going to check the perimeter.”

“An excellent idea,” Baldy said. “I’d rather not see you for a while.” Then he walked away from Fitz, leaning down to touch the shoulder of one of the young men, and muttered softly.

Fitz moved, quickly and quietly, getting off the shop floor and moving out into the hallway. There he hugged himself tightly, shivering, and began walking rapidly down a hallway.

“I’m not crazy,” he said. “I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.”

“Well . . . kinda,” I said, keeping pace. “What are you doing working for an asshole like that?”

“You aren’t real,” Fitz said.

“The hell I’m not,” I replied. “I just can’t figure out why it is that you can hear me talking.”

“I’m not crazy,” Fitz snarled, and put his hands over his ears.

“I’m pretty sure that won’t help you,” I noted. “I mean, it’s your mind that perceives me. I think you just happen to get it as, uh . . . one of those MV4 things, instead of as a movie.”

“MP3,” Fitz corrected me automatically. Then he jerked his hands from his ears and looked around him, eyes wide. “Uh . . . are you . . . you actually there?”

“I am,” I confirmed. “Though any halfway decent hallucination would tell you that.”

Fitz blinked. “Um. I don’t want to piss you off or anything but . . . what are you?”

“I’m a guy who doesn’t like to see his friends getting shot at, Fitz,” I told him.

Fitz’s steps slowed. He seemed to put his back against a wall out of reflex more than thought. He was very still for a long moment. Then he said, “You’re . . . a, um . . . a spirit?”

“Technically,” I said.

He swallowed. “You work for the Rag Lady.”

Hell’s bells. The kid was terrified of Molly. And I’d known plenty of kids like Fitz when I was growing up in the system. I met them in foster homes, in orphanages, in schools and summer camps. Tough kids, survivors, people who knew that no one was looking out for them except themselves. Not everyone had the same experience in the system, but portions of it were positively Darwinian. It created some hard cases. Fitz was one of them.

People like that aren’t stupid, but they don’t scare easily, either.

Fitz was terrified of Molly.

My stomach quivered in an unpleasant manner.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t work for her. I’m not a servitor.”

He frowned. “Then . . . you work for the ex-cop bi . . . uh, lady?”

“Kid,” I said, “you have no idea who you’re screwing around with. You pointed weapons at the wrong people. I know where you live now. They will, too.”

He went white. “No,” he said. “Look . . . you don’t know what it’s like here. Zero and the others, they can’t help it. He doesn’t let them do anything but what he wants.”

“Baldy, you mean?” I asked.

Fitz let out a strained, half-hysterical bark of laughter. “He calls himself Aristedes. He’s got power.”

“Power to push a bunch of kids around?”

“You don’t know,” Fitz said, speaking quietly. “He tells you to do something and . . . and you do it. It never even occurs to you to do anything else. And . . . and he moves so fast. I’m not . . . I think he might not even be human.”

“He’s human,” I said. “He’s just another asshole.”

A faint, weary spark of humor showed in Fitz’s face. Then he said, “If that’s true, then how does he do it?”

“He’s a sorcerer,” I said. “Middleweight talent with a cult to make him feel bigger. He’s got some form of kinetomancy I’m not familiar with, to move that fast. And some really minor mind mojo, if he’s got to pick kids to do his dirty work for him.”

“You make him sound like a small-time crook . . . like a car thief or something.”

“In the greater scheme, yeah,” I said. “He’s a petty crook. He’s Fagin.”

Fitz frowned. “From . . . from that Dickens book? Uh . . . Oliver Twist?”

I lifted my eyebrows. The kid had read. Serious readers weren’t common in the system. Those who did read mostly seemed to focus on, you know, kids’ books. Not many of them rolled around to Dickens unless they got unlucky in high school English. I would have been willing to bet that Fitz hadn’t made it past his freshman year of high school, at the very most.

He was someone who thought for himself, and he had at least a little bit of magical talent. That probably explained why he’d been put in charge of the other boys. Aside from his evident good sense, his company notwithstanding, the kid had some innate magical talent of his own. Fitz had probably been slowly learning to shake off whatever magic it was that Baldy—Aristedes—used on him. The bad guy operated in a cultleader mind-set. Anyone who wasn’t a slavish follower would be utilized as a handy lieutenant, until such time as they could be disposed of productively—or at least quietly.

I didn’t like Fitz’s chances at all.

“Something like that,” I said.

Fitz leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone,” he said. “I don’t even know any of those people. But he ordered it. And they were all going to do it. And I couldn’t let them just . . . just turn into murderers. They’re the only . . . They’re . . .”

“They’re yours,” I said quietly. “You look out for them.”

“Someone has to,” Fitz said. “Streets weren’t ever easy. About six months ago, though . . . they got hard. Real hard. Things came out. You could see them at night sometimes—shapes. Shadows.” He started shivering, and his voice became a whisper. “They’d take people. People who didn’t have someone to protect them would just vanish. So . . .”

“Baldy,” I said quietly.

“He killed one of them,” Fitz whispered. “Right in front of me. I saw it. It looked human, but when he was done with it . . . It just melted, man.” He shook his head. “Maybe I am crazy. God, it would almost be a relief.”

“You aren’t crazy,” I said. “But you’re in a bad place.”

The light went completely out of the kid’s eyes. “What else is new?”

“Oy,” I muttered. “Like I didn’t have enough to do already.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Look, kid. Go back to the guns at eleven tonight. That street will have gotten quieter by then. I’ll meet you.”

His dull eyes never flickered. “Why?”

“Because I’m going to help you.”