Page 49 of Aberrant Monsters
“She knows the ghosts that live in the Underbelly. She used to hang with them until she decided to settle in the coffee machine.”
Archie opened his mouth to comment.
I cut him off. “Don’t.”
“How can a ghost help us?”
“Not just any ghost, a rift walker ghost,” Nandi said.
My heart lurched. A rift walker ghost? Could it be—
“It’s a guy.” Nandi’s gaze was warm and sympathetic. She knew exactly where my thoughts had gone. “Dot can take us to him. If an eldritch was in the Underbelly, he might have seen it. He might even know where it is.”
I looked from Nandi to the coffee machine. “Wait, does that mean—”
“Yeah, we’re gonna have to take her with us.”
fourteen
Awoman walking down the street with a coffee machine under her arm wasn’t a curious thing, but when the woman was stopping every few minutes to ask it for directions, it drew some curious looks.
Luckily, we were in the Underbelly, a place filled with oddities and curiosities. Even the guards had barely given us a glance as we’d flashed our IDs before heading in.
As far as they were concerned, if we were dumb enough to go in, then it was our funeral. Getting out…Now those checks were more stringent. New Bloods could only leave if they had a permit to work outside of the Underbelly.
Archie would have had an issue if he hadn’t gone invisible. He had no permit to be outside the Underbelly. He’d simply fallen off the grid, and we planned to keep it that way.
The streets were narrow in this part of the city, a deliberate tactic to get as many homes built in as small a space as possible. Not that I’d call these structures homes. Narrow, three- or four-story buildings filled with apartments that could house a single person up to a family of five, because yes, some norms chose to come here with their loved ones. They chose to live among the freaks and the weirdos.
Walking through the Underbelly was a head fuck. Nothing matched, there was no consistency, and even the lampposts on a single street varied in size and design. It was as if the government had found the cast-off materials from various projects in the main city and used them to construct this one.
Tiled roofs sat next to tin ones, red brick next to gray stone, and the businesses were literally piled on top of one another, accessible by rickety-looking metal steps.
The air smelled sharp and crisp, a far cry from the pollution of the city. It cleared my head.
A norm-looking woman walked hand in hand with a child who had horns and a tail. The kid skipped along, happily licking a lollipop, but the woman’s face was drawn and gray. Her eyes haunted.
What kind of life did she lead? What were her daughter’s abilities? Pink tentacles slipped out a window of the house behind her, latched onto the shutters, and slammed them closed. A man with only one eye stared at us from the other side of the road.
We were the freaks here.
New Blood after New Blood passed us on our trek, some curious, others oblivious to our presence.
Several looked like norms, their mutations probably hidden, making them even more dangerous in the government’s eyes.
“Okay, now where to?” Nandi asked Dot. “Okay, thanks.” She turned down another narrow street away from the businesses and New Blood foot traffic. The sun was low, leaving this street to gathering shadows. The tall houses seemed to lean in toward the road, giving the street a claustrophobic air.
A cat—at least I thought it was a cat—darted across our path, vanishing behind a rubbish bin.
“Fuck!” Archie said, making me jump.
He’d been so quiet, and with him being invisible, I’d completely forgotten he was there. I’d have thwacked him one, but I had no idea where he was standing.
“Here we are,” Nandi announced, coming to a standstill outside a dead-looking house. “Dot says he lives here.”
“Lives?” Archie snorted. “Interesting choice of words. They call this street Death Grove. Abandoned houses where the dead have taken up residence, playing at life. New Bloods steer clear of this place.”
“That’s right,” Nandi said.
