Ghost of a Chance Read online

  Heavy clumps of webbing fell in sudden jerks from the ceiling, hanging down like grey stalactites. JC’s breath caught in his throat as he realised there were shapes inside the webbing. Human bodies, wrapped and cocooned, with blank, staring faces barely visible through the dull grey shrouds. The bodies didn’t move. They were dead. They had to be dead. JC made himself study what he could make out of the faces; but he didn’t recognise anyone from the missing persons files he’d studied earlier. He wasn’t sure what he could have done if he had recognised anyone. And then a thought struck him . . .

  “Happy,” JC said carefully, “I don’t think I trust this. Any of this. It’s . . . too sudden to be anything natural. Is any of this real?”

  “Not even close,” said Happy. He was standing up straight now and was actually smiling. Now he had something he could recognise and deal with. “It’s all a projected image.”

  Melody scowled as she tried to scrape thick masses of webbing off her precious instruments. It clung tenaciously to her hand as she tried to shake it off, and she had to rub her hand hard against her hip to shift it. “Bloody well feels real enough . . .”

  “Of course it feels real, that’s the point,” said Happy. “But it’s all nothing but a telepathically broadcast image designed to prey on standard fears and discomforts.” He snapped his fingers dismissively, and every bit of webbing disappeared from the station. Happy smiled, smugly. “Kid’s stuff. They must think they’re dealing with amateurs.”

  “‘They’?” said Melody, still surreptitiously rubbing her hand against her hip. “What they? Are you saying those images didn’t come from whatever was running the hell train?”

  “Exactly,” said Happy. “Something that powerful doesn’t need to deal in images. No; we underwent a psychic attack, one of the first things my Institute trainers taught me to defend myself against. It’s the Project telepath. She knows where we are.”

  “Okay,” said JC. “This we can deal with.”

  “And the other-dimensional nasty?” said Melody.

  “We’ll get to it,” said JC. “After we’ve kicked the Project agents out of here.”

  “I love it when he gets all confident,” Happy said to Melody. “Don’t you just love it when he gets all confident? Doesn’t it make you feel all safe and protected?”

  “The hell train was sent to break our nerve, undermine our confidence,” JC said patiently. “But in the end, it doesn’t matter what’s behind this haunting. If it’s come into our world, it has to obey our rules. It can’t operate here unless it’s taken on a material form; and if it’s material, we can kick its arse.”

  “I knew it,” said Happy, rolling his eyes. “He’s going to walk up to an other-dimensional entity and look for an arse to kick. I want a transfer to another team. Do you know if the Foreign Legion’s hiring?”

  “You don’t speak French,” said Melody.

  “I’ll learn!”

  “Hush, man,” said JC imperiously. “Your leader and commander is talking. Even if we are dealing with some Force or Power from the afterworlds, whatever it is must be using someone or something from our dimension as a focus, an entry point into our plane of existence. Some original event that roots the haunting in this station. So all we have to do is identify and locate the focal point, deal with it, and we can shut this whole mess down. Melody?”

  “I’m working on it,” said Melody. She felt rather better, now that she had a definite goal to pursue. “I’m getting so many readings, it’s hard to tell what’s significant and what isn’t . . . I’ve never seen so many manifestations in one location. This place must be lousy with ghosts at the best of times.”

  JC looked at Happy. “Well?”

  “Don’t push me!” he snapped. “I’m trying! But the aether’s so full of psychic information it’s practically saturated. There’s too much going on; it’s like a thousand signals all broadcasting at once and bouncing around inside my head.”

  “Try,” said JC.

  “Bully! I need my pills.”

  “Then take some,” said JC. “Do whatever you have to, to put your thoughts in order. Because you’re no use to me like this.”

  “JC!” said Melody, turning away from her keyboards to glare at him. “You know what too much of that stuff does to him! Those pills are killing him by inches!”

  “Yes,” said JC. “I know. But we all do what we have to. Needs must when the Devil drives, and all that. A few for now, Happy. Just enough to let you function.”

  “You ruthless little shit,” said Melody. And she turned her back on both of them and concentrated on her machines.

  “You’re a good man, JC,” said Happy, fumbling a handful of bottles from out of his pockets and peering myopically at the handwritten labels. “I don’t care what anyone else says.”

  He finally selected one particular bottle, smiled cheerily in anticipation, got the cap off with only a little effort, and knocked back two little green pills. He dry swallowed hard, considered, then took one more before replacing the cap and making the bottle disappear. He stood very still, contemplating what was going on inside him, then his lips widened into a smile like a death’shead grin.

  “Oh yes . . . This is the stuff to give the boys! It’s bad down here, but I’m the baddest thing in this station! Yes yes yes!” He broke into a soft-shoe routine, lost interest, realised JC was looking at him steadily, and giggled briefly. “On the job, JC! Oh yes! I’m getting something. I’m picking up all kinds of psychic traces, but only one original to this location that’s recent enough to qualify as a probable focal point. God, I feel lucid. Something happened right here, on this platform, within the last few days.”

  “Are you . . . all right, Happy?” said Melody. “You don’t look too good.”

  “I feel fine! Fine!”

  “The sweat is pouring off your face, Happy,” said JC. “And your eyes . . .”

  “I am in the groove!” said Happy. “Now shut up and let me work. Oh, I’m on fire now! Someone died here. Murdered. A young woman . . . robbed of so many years, so much future life. That’s a great source of power for whoever was responsible, all those potential years. Murder magic. Necromancy. Bad stuff.”

  “Can you reach her?” said JC. “Can you contact her? Bring her here, make her manifest for us?”

  “She’s coming,” said Happy. His face was flushed, he couldn’t stop grinning, and his eyes were fever bright. “Our life energies are drawing the murdered girl here. We blaze so brightly to her dead eyes, and so she comes to us out of the dark like a moth to a flame, or a child to a familiar, once-loved place. She’s almost here. Be gentle with her, JC. She doesn’t understand that she’s dead. She’s trapped in a half-way state, caught up in a dream that never ends. Never really aware of where she is, or what’s happening. Don’t try to wake her, JC. That would be cruel.”

  He’d barely finished speaking when a young woman appeared suddenly out of nowhere, right there on the platform before them, standing with her back to them as though waiting for a train. She stood on the very edge of the platform, lost in her own thoughts, occasionally looking down the tracks at the tunnel-mouth, waiting for a train that would never come. She didn’t seem to notice JC or Happy or Melody. JC moved slowly, cautiously, forward until he was standing beside her, a polite distance away. She didn’t look at him. JC looked at her.

  His first thought was how beautiful she was. A pre-Raphaelite dream of a woman in her late twenties, with a huge mane of glorious red hair tumbling down around a high-boned, sharply defined face. Her eyes were a vivid green, and her mouth was a bright red dream, with a smile tucked away in one corner. She wore a long white dress that clung tightly here and there to show off a magnificent figure. She seemed calm enough, real enough . . . so full of life, with so much still to live for. All the things she might have done, all the things she might have achieved . . . For a moment, JC couldn’t speak, overwhelmed with pain and rage at what had been done to her, at what she’d been so cruelly deprive
d of. He made himself look away and glanced back at Melody.

  “Use the database of missing persons,” he said quietly. “Find her. I need to know her name, and exactly what happened. I need to know everything about her.”

  “Way ahead of you,” said Melody. “I’m looking at the police report now, but there’s not much in it. Only the bare facts of her murder, death from a single stab wound . . . no witnesses, no suspects. Nothing here to suggest she was anyone important.”

  “They’re all important,” said JC. “All the people, all the victims, who end up as ghosts. That’s why we do this.”

  “This is an unusually strong manifestation,” said Happy. “Try talking to her, JC. See if she’ll answer you.”

  “What’s her name?” said JC. “Do we at least have a name for her?”

  “Kim Sterling,” said Melody.

  JC moved in close beside the ghost, and she turned her head slowly to look at him with her lost, dreamy eyes.

  “Kim,” said JC. “Kim, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m an actress,” she said, in a warm sweet contralto voice. “On my way to an audition. It’s a good part, come right out of the blue; and I have a good feeling about it. This could be my big break, at last. I could really shine, in a role like this. I wish the train would come. It feels like I’ve been standing here for ages.”

  JC didn’t have the heart to tell her that the train would never come, for her. Kim smiled at him suddenly.

  “Do I know you? You look nice. Kind.”

  “I try to be,” said JC. “But it’s not always easy. I’m here to help.”

  “That’s nice,” said Kim. “But I don’t need any help. I’m fine.” She looked directly at him, and some of the dreaminess went out of her eyes. “Except . . . I have this feeling, that there’s somewhere else I ought to be.”

  “Yes,” said JC.

  “I feel so cold . . . and alone . . .”

  “You’re not alone any more,” said JC. “I’m here. We’re all here, to help you. I’m JC.”

  “I’m Kim. I shouldn’t be here, should I?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you crying, JC?”

  He hadn’t realised he was.

  “Are those tears for me, JC? No-one ever shed a tear for me before. No-one ever cared that much. I’ve been so alone since I came to London, despite all the people . . . I wish I’d met you before, JC.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I wish I’d met you before, Kim.”

  She reached out a hand to him to wipe away the tears on his cheek. But her fingers were already transparent by the time they reached his face; and when he put up a hand to hold hers, his fingers passed right through her ghostly hand. Kim Sterling faded slowly away and was gone, and JC was left standing alone on the edge of the platform, reaching out to no-one. And then Kim reappeared, standing at the end of the platform, next to the tunnel-mouth from which the hell train had appeared. She looked entreatingly at JC, then faded away again. JC turned savagely to Happy and Melody.

  “That’s it! She’s the key, the focal point, the start of this haunting! Solve her murder, and we solve this case.”

  “Slow down, slow down,” said Melody. “We don’t know anything of the sort. Yes, her murder might be the instigating factor, but . . .”

  “But nothing. Grab what you need; we’re going after her.”

  “Are you sure about this, JC?” said Happy. “I could feel what you were feeling. And this is very definitely not the time to fall for a pretty face.”

  JC glared at Happy. “Stay out of my head!”

  “It’s not my fault! In my current, well-medicated state, it’s like you’re shouting the whole contents of your head at the top of your voice, and I do wish you wouldn’t.”

  “She’s the key,” JC said stubbornly. “And we are going after her. Right now.”

  “Going where?” said Melody.

  “We follow her! She’s leading us somewhere.”

  “I’m not leaving my machines here, unguarded!” said Melody. “Anything might happen to them!”

  “Your machines can look after themselves; you’ve said so often enough,” said JC. “We have to go now; we can’t risk losing her!”

  “It’ll all end in tears,” said Happy. But as usual, no-one was listening to him.

  JC was already off and running down the platform, heading towards where he’d last seen the ghost. Happy and Melody looked at each other, shrugged pretty much in unison, and went chasing after JC and the ghost of Kim Sterling.

  The three ghost finders ran full tilt through Oxford Circus Station, chasing the ghost as she receded endlessly before them, appearing and disappearing and reappearing. JC led the way, pursuing Kim down the endless white-tiled corridors, dashing in and out of low-arched entrances and exits, onto station platforms and off again; and still she hung on the air before him, drawing him on like some ghostly will-o’-the-wisp. Sometimes she was directly ahead of him, so close he could almost reach out and touch her, sometimes so far ahead she was only a pale figure in the distance. She wasn’t moving of her own accord. He knew that. He could see it in her face, and in her eyes. Sometimes she called out to him, but her voice only came to him as the barest whisper. Something was using her as bait, drawing him like a fish on a line. JC knew that, but he kept going anyway, running as fast and as hard as he could drive himself. Because this was his job, because he had to stop the haunting from spreading . . . and because he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let Kim down.

  Happy and Melody pounded doggedly along behind him, keeping up as best they could. Happy’s face was an unhealthy red, and already he was labouring for every breath. Melody’s arms pumped at her sides like a sprinter’s though it didn’t seem to be helping her much. They both knew the ghost was bait, luring them on into some kind of trap, but they trusted JC. Just as he trusted them to have his back. They were a team, and they were professionals, and God help whatever was behind all this when they finally caught up with it.

  Howling winds came blasting out of nowhere, hitting JC like a hammer, slamming him in the face hard enough to blow harsh tears from his eyes. The wind came roaring out of several side tunnels at once, bringing JC to a sudden halt and buffeting him this way and that. He fought it savagely, forcing himself on into the face of the bitter-cold gale-force winds. He dug his feet in, leaned forward with his head well down, and drove himself on, step by step. Happy and Melody were right behind him; using him as a wind-break and urging him on. In the face of such stubborn resistance, the wind itself seemed to lose heart, and all at once it fell away and was gone. JC saw Kim floating not far ahead, and was off and running again, followed by the others.

  Blasts of almost lethal heat hit them next—a vicious heat-wave that came at JC from all sides at once, as though he’d been thrown into a blast-furnace. His exposed skin reddened and smarted painfully, and his cream-white suit started to smoulder. JC put his head down and kept going. The heat vanished, replaced by a vicious, bitter cold. JC almost cried out but was damned if he’d give his attacker the satisfaction. He pressed on, shaking and shuddering, grinding his teeth together to stop them chattering. He could sense Happy and Melody, still close behind him, but didn’t dare break his concentration long enough to stop and look back.

  He wouldn’t let Kim down. He was damned if he’d let her down.

  Psychic attacks came next: nameless dreads and anxiety attacks, illogical aversions and paranoias that jerked through his head like razor wire. The thought of going on became impossible, intolerable, unthinkable. But JC did it anyway. He snarled into the face of the attacks, shouldering aside his fears through sheer stubborn will-power. He didn’t look back for Happy and Melody. He knew they’d still be there.

  And that was when Natasha Chang and Erik Grossman launched their attack from ambush. At the last moment, Happy sensed somebody’s presence and yelled a warning, and that was enough to save JC and his team. One word of warning, and their training kicked in. They all threw themselves in dif
ferent directions, as a fusillade of bullets ripped through the air where they’d been. Puffs of pulverised stone and plaster flew on the air as bullets punched long lines of ragged holes across the corridor walls, and the occasional ricochet screamed through the still air. But not one bullet hit its intended target. JC and Happy and Melody had gone to ground, tucked away in convenient hiding-places. Natasha and Erik were forced to leave their own hiding-places in search of targets. Natasha stalked down the empty corridor, gun held out professionally before her, while Erik scurried along behind, clutching his gun with both podgy hands.

  Happy hit them both with a telepathic blast, his chemically enhanced brain shouldering Natasha’s defences aside long enough to undermine her thoughts and disrupt Erik’s. Both Project agents yelled aloud as their guns seemed to become blisteringly hot, and instinctively they threw their weapons away. The guns were still in mid air when JC and Melody and Happy erupted out of their hiding-places and threw themselves at Natasha and Erik.

  Natasha realised immediately what had happened, pulled her mental shields back into place, and hit Happy with a telepathic onslaught that stopped him dead in his tracks. The two most powerful minds went head to head, while their bodies stood perfectly still, staring unblinkingly into each other’s eyes. Natasha had intended to go after JC, as the most powerful member of the Institute team, and because she ached to test herself against him; but Happy had proved himself the biggest immediate threat, so she had to kill him first. Happy caught that thought and laughed breathlessly at her.

  Erik drew his Aboriginal pointing bone and stabbed it at Melody as she ran towards him. She changed direction immediately, and the tiles on the walls behind her cracked and exploded one after the other as the bone’s influence moved in an arc across them. Erik raked the pointing bone back and forth increasingly wildly, spitting out a series of baby swear-words, but Melody jumped and spun and ducked with unexpected acrobatic grace, always one step ahead of him.

  JC hesitated, caught between helping his team and needing to pursue Kim. And in that moment of indecision, Natasha hit Happy with a mental blast of pure rage that rocked him back on his feet. Natasha seized the moment and threw her thoughts at the ghost of Kim, hanging on the air at the end of the corridor; and Kim screamed shrilly as streams of blue-grey ectoplasm burst out of her ghostly form, torn from her by the sheer force of Natasha’s will. The ectoplasm quickly formed itself into solid bars under Natasha’s urging, imprisoning Kim inside a spirit cage. Kim screamed again, caught between two implacable forces, both of which had power over her while she had none. But summon as it would, the unseen force could not pull Kim through bars made from her own ghostly form. The spirit cage held her.