Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane Page B

feet moved along the pavement in unison. But in her apartment…he seemed too big for the space somehow. Like an invader. His restless gaze traveled over every item in the room, not picking out any one thing, but like he was trying to read her belongings and figure out the best angle to get her back into bed.
Chess pulled a couple of beers from the barren fridge and handed him one, glad for something to do with her hands. She perched on the edge of the couch with her feet on the cushion, her legs a barrier between them.
“What did you do to your hand?”
For Truth’s sake, was everybody going to ask her that? “Cut it on a can.”
“Did you go to the hospital?”
“No.”
“Let me see.” He held out his own hand, waiting for her to place hers in it. This she did, although she could certainly think of better topics of conversation than her injury.
He unwrapped the gauze. “Damn, Chess. That looks like it’s getting infected.”
Did it? She supposed so. The red line curving across her palm looked wider than it had the night before, the skin around it shiny and puffy. She tried to close her fingers over it. “It’s fine.”
“It probably needed stitches. Did you clean it?” He didn’t let go, clasping her wrist tight in his warm fingers.
“Of course I cleaned it. I’m not an idiot.”
“Why don’t you let me try?”
She yanked her hand back. “I’m perfectly capable of cleaning myself, Doyle.”
“You had it wrapped too tightly, and it looks like there’s a few speckles of dirt or something on the edge. I’m serious, Chess. Let me do this for you. Go get all your supplies and stuff. Cotton balls and bandages and ointments. And get me a knife or something, too.”
“Oh, no. No knives.”
“It’s healing over the infection.”
“Why don’t I just go to the hospital tomorrow?”
He folded his arms across his chest. “My dad is a doctor, and I watched him help my friends dozens of times. Go get the stuff.”
Her palm felt stiff when she flipped the light switch in her bathroom. Maybe Doyle was right. Maybe it was even sort of nice, to have someone take care of her. No one ever had before. She should stop being so cranky and suspicious, and relax. Isn’t this what normal people did, help one another?
She laid a towel over the toilet lid and started gathering all of her medical supplies. Debunkers often found themselves in attics and crawl spaces, or climbing through airshafts. Injuries were common. A few years ago Atticus Collins even got bit by a rat.
Odd, then, that this cut got infected, when she usually took such good care of her wounds. But then, being locked in a dungeon for almost twenty-four hours and being bathed in raw sewage wasn’t exactly conducive to healing.
Her knives were in the kitchen, but she decided to grab a razor blade instead. The sharper the edge, the less it would hurt. She ran the flats of the blade over her tongue, just to make sure there wasn’t any residue left on it. There was. The muscles in her cheeks tightened.
Finally she guessed she had everything. Antiseptic, cotton balls, gauze, antibiotic ointment, the razor blade, a straightpin. She chomped another Cept—this was probably going to hurt—and headed back out into the living room, carrying the little towel bundle in her left hand.
Doyle knelt on the floor in front of the bookcase, flipping through her copy of On the Road . “You have a lot of stuff from BT,” he said. “I didn’t know you were into that.”
“I like history. I like to read.”
“But this is, like, all BT.”
“It just interests me. It’s not a big deal or anything, they’re not forbidden books. They’re great literature.”
“I know, I just…you seem so live-for-the-moment.” He placed the book back in its slot on the shelf. “I always thought of you as someone who didn’t have a past, so wasn’t interested in the past.”
“So because I’m an orphan and don’t know my ancestry I’m not allowed to read?”
“No, no, I…It’s