Free City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane

tossed the pill into her mouth and got out of the car in one movement. Maybe if she was lucky she’d pass out.
    Why she expected Bump’s place to be different from before she had no idea, but part of her did. So much had changed since the last time she was there. It somehow didn’t make sense for everything else to remain the same, for the horrible cacophony of reds to assault her and make her already tight nerves jangle as though she’d wandered into a hell dimension, for the naked women on the walls to eye her seductively.
    But they were all the same. And so was Bump, leaning against the shiny black bar, toe ring, gold-topped cane, and all.
    Terrible sat down; she turned and started to sit beside him the way she would have done before, but his look stopped her. Right. She scooted down, leaned against the opposite arm.
    Still Bump did not move. Both his hands rested on the top of the cane. His head was bowed. Sky-blue silk covered his skinny chest and arms; gaudy bright gold covered his wrists and fingers.
    “Ladybird,” he drawled. She could feel him watching her out of the corner of his eye. “Hear tell you wanderin round Bump’s places, yay? Bringin you fuckin Churchcops along. Bump hear true?”
    “Yes.” Okay. No First Elders showed up; the room was still clean—figuratively speaking. But then, that wasn’t the difficult part, right? Where she’d been wasn’t part of the Binding.
    “Got a fuckin tell for me?”
    Okay. Deep breath time. “It’s nothing to do with you, okay? Church business.”
    The cane switched hands, angled to the side, like Fred Astaire performing some graceful move. But this wasn’t a Technicolor musical. And it sure as fuck wasn’t a beautiful dance hall. “All business Bump’s business down here, Ladybird. All business. You want to keep doing Bump’s business, yay? Keep getting yon fuckin needs? You chatter it out now.”
    “I—it’s an investigation we’re doing. That’s all.”
    Bump’s brows turned into an arrow; he spun on her with the kind of speed she knew he possessed but had never seen. “Think we playin a fuckin game here? Ain’t fuckin playin, yay? You tell now. Or Terrible get he fuckin fight up. Thinkin you ain’t like that one, yay?”
    “It’s nothing to do with you, Bump, okay? I can’t talk about it.”
    Bump shook his head, his expression sorrowful. Chess didn’t buy it for a second.
    Then she didn’t have a chance to buy it, because her face hit the dusty red carpet and something hard and heavy dug into the small of her back. Terrible’s knee.
    He’d taken her down. He’d really, genuinely taken her down. Like he’d never talked to her, touched her. Like he’d never bought her dinner or sat next to her on her broken couch. Like she was nothing to him. Just another junkie who owed Bump money, just like all the rest of them.
    Her right shoulder rang an alarm; he’d twisted it back, pinned her wrist between her shoulderblades. It didn’t hurt, but whether that was because she was so loaded with painkillers she wouldn’t have felt it had he amputated her foot or because he was being gentle with her, she didn’t know. She suspected the former, hoped for the latter.
    “Ain’t can believe we here,” Bump drawled. “Thought we had us some fuckin trust, yay? You an Bump. Thought we had us some fuckin understanding. Hurts Bump, this do. An Terrible … Dig me, Ladybird, think you putting the fuckin hurt on he, hard. Why ain’t you just give me the fuckin tell, yay? An end this, so’s we can be fuckin friends again. Ain’t you like bein Bump’s friend?”
    “Black magic,” she managed. “The Lama—”
    The words turned into a scream, one so loud and long it scared even her, as her wrists caught fire. Agony like she’d never felt before, agony like the worst withdrawals multiplied by a dozen, shot up her arms and into her chest, into her brain, until nothing else existed. Bright red flared behind her squeezed-shut eyelids, searing her