A Boat Made of Bone (The Chthonic Saga) (55 page)

What next?
Ghosteye wondered.
Perhaps a kiss?
He laughed, no, not yet. No chance.

His hands moved in a blur as he adjusted hues and tones, applied filters to accentuate beauty or delete blemishes. Sometimes Ghosteye felt like a machine, working so efficiently. Not only that, his training in micro-expressions gave him insight into the subjects’ minds—really, he’d sensed this whole thing coming with Ramone from the minute the bastard entered the lawyer’s office.

When Ghosteye got the assignment, it had come down with a letter of explanation, which, in summary, told him the following: Ramone was a Goliath. To topple him would benefit the Organization in two ways. One: it would neutralize him as a threat, and that would, Two: undermine the strange integrity to which he clung. That integrity turned him into a threat. It was based on old values. Values that were only helpful so far as they created the allure for the forbidden—those sacred things that begged for violation and thus enhanced the intrigue, the temptation of the stories. 

Honestly, the only thing better were the feeds where a priest succumbed to his forbidden lust. Ghosteye sighed, recalling the appeal of
those
feeds. They were growing rarer as the old religions died. What mattered now was science, the intellect, and self-worship. The new gods were the body reconstructed, fame, money, and the next conquest that landed a person in a viral feed and gave them the next level of fame and stardom. What wouldn’t anyone do for the flash of the screen, that window into a feed, someone else’s life, someone else’s adventure, that beauty and all it’s lovely promises?

That was what the masses wanted now. People like Ramone were the anomaly. Everyone else hungered for the feeds.

And Ghosteye was the human machine by which it came. The filter. The artist with a golden touch.

Ghosteye grinned and ran his fingers through his hair—greasy; he hadn’t showered in two days, there was too much going on! What he did was art, really. It was! The art of manipulation. He watched his subject leave the lawyer’s office and laid a blue-tint over the image, inserting a melancholy song even as he moved the feed from camera to camera, finding the perfect angles to relay the story Ghosteye felt building—where? Ah, there! A setting camera, switch the feed to that one, yes, it was
beautiful
. Made Ramone look tiny next to the skyscraper, accentuating so much anguish and desire. It spoke volumes of what Ramone must be feeling. Volumes!

Ghosteye picked a song quickly, having selected beforehand the proper music for any contingency with Ramone and the lawyer. There was a five minute lag to the feed that also allowed Ghosteye time to decide just what might happen and how he’d put this particular narrative together.

Without warning, a rumble broke through the smooth curtain of the song—and really, the song was perfect. Made Ghosteye want to curl up on the couch at the back of his studio and snuggle with a, a blanket or something. Maybe a pillow. Some hot chocolate. Or coffee. Something. The grumble came again, echoing through his body. He leaned forward and turned a knob—the volume fell in response. There it was again.
Ah,
he thought,
my stomach
. He glanced at the clock in the corner of his screen and sighed. He’d missed dinner. Rubbing his eyes, he stood and stretched. Tapping a button, an autopilot program took over and Ghosteye left the cold, dim studio.

At least Ramone had left the building. The bot could run things now. Well, it could do a passable job. Certainly nothing up to Ghosteye’s expertise. He was an artist, after all. An artiste. With an
e
on the end. High class. 

In the kitchen he heated up a bowl of noodles and leaned against the counter as he ate. He considered the thing Ramone was trying to conceal and laughed aloud at the futility of keeping something secret from him. Them. The Organization. Even though Ghosteye didn’t know what it was exactly, Ramone was too well-known to have escaped constant scrutiny. He’d been watched long enough to have amassed a file on his behaviors: his likes, his dislikes, and his habits to the point that the upper echelons of the Organization—the
Decemviri,
he thought the name with a shiver—were aware of Ramone’s potential for damage.

Ghosteye finished his small dinner, set the bowl next to the overflowing sink, and washed his hands, trying his best to ignore the rotting odor of days’ old food and caked on grime. The hot water soothed his tired fingers. As he dried his hands, stretching each bony digit between the rough folds of the towel and kneading the pads of his palms, his eyes fell on the cork-board he kept near the fridge. He looked away quickly, avoiding the note from Beth—elegant script, words that still punched a hole through him. “Come find me. You know where I’ll be. I can’t hide from your eyes, but can you see what’s in my heart?”

Throwing the towel on the counter in disgust, he retreated back to the studio. He imagined he could hear the sound of the invisible nanocameras—the bastards. It was their fault, really, well, somehow it was—following him as he strode down the hall and then, as he opened the heavy door separating the studio from the rest of his condo, he imagined the sound of the cameras turning away, following a computer-generated concoction of himself—a front. His very own olive oil importing business.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my ever-supportive husband Stoker—for willingly giving me so many nights off and time away to do my writing, in addition to all the hours patiently spent listening to my ideas about plot and character. Thanks for the people who supported me through Kickstarter, especially my family and the fans who’ve decided to stick around! Thanks to Sally Hannoush for the support and willingness to read along with me as I write. Thank you to author Megan Thomason for the advice and consultation. A million thanks to alpha and beta readers Alisa Brough, D.J. Masterson, and Jordan White. And finally, without the amazing skills of Carrie Westover, there would be a billion mistakes in this book—thanks to her for the proofreading and style-sheet.

by Nicole Grotepas

Kindle Edition

Copyright © 2014 Nicole Grotepas

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Nathalia Suellen

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

For more information, please visit http://www.nicolegrotepas.com or email the author at [email protected] to receive information on new releases.