Ghost Silk (Ghost Perfume, Book 2) | ✔

13 - Rest with me - Part 1 (Alexander, Rose)

Alexander

We watched police officers escort the prisoners, now freed, into ambulances. Flashing lights blazed through the night. A small army of mortals had descended on the former church and its parking lot.

Just the beginning of the public drama to come, as the mortals brought into the open air what had been hidden and festering below ground.

Goddamnit. We'd have to keep a watch that they didn't discover us, we'd have to monitor the records they kept ... it would have been infinitely simpler to kill them.

"Let's go," Gabriel said.

We headed towards the hotel, running faster than humans ever could and sticking to the shadows of residential streets.

Lukas muttered, perhaps to himself, "We're getting there. Didn't think the material world was this messy, but it's fine. The cult is neutralized. Revenants next. Then she'll be fine ..."

"We'll have to check back on the cult once in a while. It's not over," I warned.

"The revenants may not be easy," Gabriel said. "The meeting with them will have every potential to start another nightmare."

Wind whistled in my ears.

"There's a risk, yeah," Lukas agreed, "but Jackal and those other two, what are they called?, they'll guard her."

"Ass ... slim?" Gabriel said. "I don't remember." He checked the course to the hotel on his phone again.

"Not a name."

"Do you remember?"

"Astrid and Lester," I said.

"Like in the Addams family?" Lukas laughed.

"That's Fester," Gabriel called back.

"Lithium," Lukas said. "It's more like Lithium."

We slowed down to cross a bridge that was too much in the open. Gabriel shoved his mask and gloves into his pocket, and we followed suit, so that we looked like ordinary men in dark clothes.

A car passed down the street. When the lights disappeared, we sped up again.

"Liam," I remembered. "Lithium is a drug."

"Fine, Astrid and Liam. Those two. They'll watch over Rose."

"They'd better," Gabriel snarled. He dragged the hair out of his eyes. "And we need to find out how the humans got our silver."

In the trunk of the car that Michael and Rose had taken to the hotel, we had placed various records of the Inezchet identities, documents with the now-useless contact information for the ones we'd already stopped in the other Mayville, a pile of their cell phones and laptops with the batteries dead, and a small library of philosophy books and notebooks in case any were less insignificant than they originally seemed. But we had also found a box with a collection of our silver shackles, which we took in addition to the broadsword.

Michael had pressed the cult for how they'd gotten their hands on our things. They said it was the lovers' diary, the one that told them everything. It told them exactly where to find, in the mountains around Mount Kyllene, a small collection of 'supernatural ties strong enough to stop a soul or demon'.

Somehow the Inezchet had gotten something of our people's, of the priests', and of the Wischets'. Three sources of closely-guarded secrets, leaked to one place. And our only lead was Ashe Perkase and Diana.