Sacrificial Magic

  The nausea started right before Maia left, the dark hollow feeling in her gut. So quiet at first she barely noticed it, thought it was frustration from Maia’s zipped lips. But no. It grew, kept growing, until Chess realized she was sweating, sitting behind the teacher’s desk staring at her notepad blurry in front of her.

  She was going to be sick.

  That tea … Was it the tea? Had that shit even been tea?

  Whatever it had been, the taste of it, the sour-bitter dankness of it, flooded her mouth again. A hideous reminder that she’d actually put that shit into her body. That was where the nausea came from. The tea—assuming it had been tea—seemed to coat her tongue, throbbing there, waves of it stronger and stronger.

  Fuck, that was so disgusting.

  She had a few minutes before her next interview—hell, she had all day if she wanted it, and who the fuck cared, they weren’t going to talk to her anyway—and she’d be damned if she was going to spend another minute with that flavor, worse than crunching up Cepts with her teeth, worse than the metallic, gritty feeling of her teeth during a speed comedown. She always kept a folding travel toothbrush in her bag; brushing in a public restroom didn’t exactly appeal, but if she didn’t get the essence of slime out of her mouth she was going to puke, and that would be even worse.

  Her feet echoed in the empty hall as she half ran down it looking for the bathroom. Where the fuck was it? Hadn’t it been down— Yes!

  The bathroom was grimy, coated like all school bathrooms with a thin, sticky film of estrogen and teenage angst. Chess didn’t need either touching her. She felt queasy enough already; the building was depressing enough.

  Having Mrs. Li walk in while she brushed her teeth at the sink didn’t help. The woman looked at her with shocked disapproval, as if Chess was giving herself a full-on intimate wax instead of just brushing her teeth.

  Ha, that was one thing she didn’t have to do anymore, not after Terrible admitted he liked it better when she didn’t, and now that she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.

  Not that that helped her at the moment, as she stood over the sink drooling foam while Mrs. Li’s cold eyes, beady behind thick glasses, stared her up and down. “What are you doing?”

  What the fuck did it look like she was doing? Chess didn’t answer, just started cleaning the toothbrush. Rinsing and spitting while being stared at really didn’t appeal—she hated having anyone watch her brush her teeth—but neither did she want to stand there with a mouth full of toothpaste, either.

  She finished up, trying to ignore Mrs. Li. Not easy when the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end. Not magic, just creepiness; Mrs. Li was creepy. Who stood and stared at someone while they brushed their teeth?

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  Oh, for … “I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Toothbrush, sink, toothpaste—”

  “Not that. I know what you’re trying to do to us. Undermine us. Get control of this school back to the Church. Get rid of us.” Her painted-on eyebrows drew together. “Get rid of me.”

  Chess sighed, tossed the paper towel she’d used to dry her face into the trash can. “Mrs. Li, I’m not trying to get rid of anyone. I’m just trying to find out if there’s a ghost, that’s all.”

  “A ghost. Incredible. Almost twenty-five years since she died and that slut’s still causing problems here.”

  “I don’t have any— What?”

  Sometimes people grew more attractive the better you got to know them; Terrible again. Mrs. Li was not one of those people. With every passing second she looked more and more like one of those crazy-haired troll dolls vendors in the Market sometimes sold for a dollar. “You heard me. She was a slut. Slept with everyone. Made them fall in love with her.”

  “Made them?”

  Mrs. Li sneered. “Love spells. The kind of thing you people do. The kind of thing you people brought into the world.”

  “The Church didn’t create magic, they just used it. To save humanity, remember?”

  “Not the kinds of spells Lucy did. Ruining boys, making them obsessed with her, writing about her, pages and pages, and did she care? No. She didn’t even know who that baby’s father was, not really.” The woman’s eyes started to glaze over. Chess’s stomach fluttered.

  Lucy? The name rang a distant chime somewhere in Chess’s memory. Lucy … Beulah had mentioned the name, right?

  Yes. Lucy. Lucy McShane. The theater suicide from twenty years or so before, the ghost the kids thought they saw—said they saw. Well, damn. This could be good, and the more Mrs. Li lost herself, the more she’d let slip.

  “She slept with all of them, everybody knew it. And she said it was his, but—”

  The bathroom door opened. Fuck! That could have been—almost definitely had been—important information. But the way Mrs. Li’s face flushed when she saw Monica, the way her gaze hit the floor and she scuttled into one of the stalls, told Chess there was no point asking questions, then or ever. Mrs. Li wouldn’t open up like that again.

  Monica watched Mrs. Li close the door of the stall, gave Chess a smile and a shrug, a friendly eye-roll. “How are you? How are your interviews going? Good, I hope.”

  “Fine so far, yeah.”

  “Great. Do you want me to get Vernal Sze now or …?”

  One last glance at the shut stall door. “Um, yeah, thanks.”

  Monica wasn’t done with her, though. She followed Chess out of the bathroom, waited until they were about halfway down the hall before she spoke again. “Having fun with Mrs. Li? She’s awful, isn’t she?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Chess replied, even though she totally would. But what was she going to do, admit that to Monica? Hell, no.

  “I guess you haven’t spent enough time with her yet. She’s always in the office, hovering around, watching all of us like a hawk. She’s convinced that every woman in the world is after that husband of hers. If we so much as say hello to him she looks like she wants to kill us.”

  “Really.” Mildly interesting.

  “It’s especially bad because she insists on being involved in everything, so she’s always here, and he’s always here, and—it just makes things very uncomfortable. I mean, really, it’s not like Wen Li is some sort of lothario, with a girl in every room.” She laughed at the thought, and Chess felt an unwilling smile spread across her own face.

  They reached the front doors of the school. One of them stood open to the warm breeze; through it Chess saw more kids, standing around, sitting on the steps or the greening crabgrass.

  “There’s Vernal.” Monica pointed. “The blond one, see him?”

  Vernal Sze stood maybe a couple of inches taller than herself—he was definitely under six feet—but stocky, with a short-sides-long-front retro skater boy haircut bleached blond on top. Rubber bracelets covered his right wrist, a silver watch covered his left, and he wore skinny black jeans and a snug black T-shirt.

  She checked the back of his left hand. Clean. Not one of Slobag’s, then, at least not fully initiated or dedicated or whatever they called it.

  “I guess I’ll see you later, then.” Monica gave her a smile, a quick wave, and trotted off down the hall. Her outfit that day was even worse than the day before, wide orange and purple stripes like something puked up by a barber pole.

  Chess pushed through the doors, through the crowd outside it to Vernal’s side. “Come talk to me, Vernal. I have some questions for you.”

  “Ain’t talkin shit with you,” he mumbled. His eyes looked everywhere but at her.

  She’d bought a small bag of pretzel sticks and a Coke from the vending machine earlier. Vernal shook his head when she offered him a pretzel—she figured he would—but she needed to get something into her stomach. “So you can listen to me. Come on.”

  He followed her toward a cherry tree at the edge of the makeshift parking lot, still with the same sullen expression. He didn’t speak again, and she was too busy chewing to talk. But someone f
rom the crowd had something to say. “Vernal! Have fun with the yee mm lui!”

  Laughter followed this comment; Vernal didn’t laugh. Neither did Chess. She’d heard that phrase a few times that morning already, and it wasn’t one she’d picked up from Lex. Which meant it probably didn’t have anything to do with sex. “What did that mean?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’re going to have to talk to me at some point, Vernal. You might as well do it now.”

  Shrug. For fuck’s sake.

  “So you’ve seen two ghosts? Or was it one ghost in two places? Do you have any idea why they might be after you or attracted to you?”

  That was a thought, actually. Vernal couldn’t have the power to be a witch. If he did, he would have been discovered through the tests every child in the world took in their fifteenth year.

  But then … Terrible had never been tested. He didn’t have a name; well, he had a few, on different forged identification cards and licenses, but legally, according to the Church, he didn’t exist. He probably had a birth certificate somewhere—he’d been born before Haunted Week—but without knowing his name, birth date, or who his parents had been, how was he supposed to find it?

  The point was, he hadn’t been tested. “Vernal, when you were fifteen did you undergo Church testing?”

  He eyed her, the suspicion in his gaze so hard she could almost feel it physically. “Aye. Ain’t everyone?”

  So much for that theory. “Tell me about the ghosts.”

  “Ain’t telling you shit.”

  They’d reached the tree, its pale blossoms delicate and almost unbearably pretty against the bright blue sky. Just as she’d hoped, the ground was dry and the shade perfect to sit in. That she did, and after an awkward half minute or so Vernal sat down, too. Not next to her, of course, or even particularly close to her. But not too far.

  “I really don’t want to keep you here all day,” she said when he’d gotten himself settled and she’d grabbed her notebook and pen.

  “Ain’t that just like a Churchie, wanna throw around the power. Ain’t ascared of you fuckin Church.”

  “I didn’t think you would be.” The breeze blew a lock of her hair over her face; she tucked it back behind her ear, flicked it over her shoulder. Crunched another pretzel stick. “I’m not trying to scare you. What I’m trying to do is just get you to tell me about the ghosts you’ve seen. Why don’t—”

  A car pulled into the lot beside her, blasting the Damned out of its open windows. Not just any car, either. Lex’s car. What the hell was he doing there? Hadn’t he gotten her in enough trouble?

  But then, he didn’t actually know he’d gotten her into trouble, though she was sure he could guess. For that matter, he didn’t necessarily know for sure that she and Terrible were together. She thought he knew, he most likely knew, but she’d never actually come out and said it.

  Probably because knowing him, that would only make him try harder to get her into his bed again. Nobody liked to lose, but Lex enjoyed winning a bit too much.

  “Give me a minute,” she told Vernal, and stood up. “Just think about it. I really could use that information.”

  She probably wasn’t supposed to smoke there, but what the hell. The kids were. She tugged one out, lit it up as she waited for Lex to come talk to her. Which he did, wandering across the gravel lot toward the tree as if he was just out for a stroll, enjoying the lovely weather. “Hey, Tulip. What’s on the happening?”

  “Why are you here again?”

  “What’s that for? Still mean, you is. Ain’t I can just come check you, see how you do?”

  She took another drag off her smoke, more to waste time than anything else. “You can check anything you want. I’m just not sure why you want to.”

  He shrugged. “My side of town, dig. Shit like this going down, I wanna see the tale is.”

  “Did you come here when Aros was here, and check on him?”

  “Ain’t knew him.”

  Vernal was watching them both very closely, she noticed. So was the crowd of students gathered outside the front doors; didn’t they ever go to their fucking classes? “So you’re checking on me, but not on him.”

  “Came to check he were here, aye. Just ain’t got him chatterin much.”

  “What did he say?” Shit, she’d left her notebook by the tree. Didn’t matter, though. Lex probably wouldn’t appreciate her writing down what he said.

  “Say ain’t sure be a ghost. Say none talking to he neither. Say you Church ain’t trust him, sendin he out here. Like they wanting he dead, he say.”

  “What? That’s crazy.”

  Another shrug. “What he say. Ain’t my words.”

  “Sure. Well, look, I’m trying to interview somebody here—that kid there, by the tree—and it’s Church business. You can’t sit there with me while I talk to him, and I don’t know how long I’ll be, so you might as well go.”

  He grinned. “Aw, nay, thinking I gots meself all kinda shit could be doin here, me. You get on your business, I get on mine, aye? Maybe after we get some food in us.”

  “I have to go to the Church after that. And what do you have to do here that’s going to keep you all busy?”

  “Just business, aye? You give me the wait when you done, before you get your drive on for that Church.”

  Her cigarette was little more than filter between her fingers; she dropped it, gave it a slap with the toe of her shoe to crush it out. “Hey, really quick. I need a translation.”

  “Aye? What you hearing?”

  “It’s not really important, I don’t think, but … Yee mm lui. What does it mean?”

  He burst out laughing; the sound of it scraped at her, irritating like poison ivy. She folded her arms and waited until the laughter finally settled into deep breaths. It couldn’t be that fucking funny, whatever it was. “They callin you that?”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Saying you a snitch, they are. Think you playin the greasy-tongue, ain’t trusting you.”

  “And that amuses you?”

  “Gotta get my kicks somehows,” he said, still grinning. “But guessing that ain’t make it easy get you job done.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  He glanced at Vernal, still watching them; glanced at the crowd of students, larger than it had been. She felt those eyes on her, on both of them, felt their curiosity and the way they pretended they had none. “Mayhap I give you some help.”

  “I think I can manage—”

  Holy shit. She didn’t know how to react, what to do, because he kissed her. Hard. His left hand squeezed her hip; his right clasped her neck and kept her from pulling away.

  And before she had time to think, she was kissing him back.

  She’d always liked kissing Lex. Always liked doing anything that involved kissing Lex; he was awfully damn good at all of those activities. It wasn’t as good as kissing Terrible, but it certainly didn’t suck. Somehow her own hand was on his shoulder and her other hand touched his neck, slid up into his hair, and it felt so familiar she could almost ignore the burning throb of guilt in her chest.

  She didn’t, though. It only lasted a few seconds, really; she took her hand off his shoulder almost as fast as it had landed and started to pull back, anticipating a struggle.

  But Lex let her go, though both his hands rested on her hips. His voice had that soft tone to it, the one she hadn’t heard in a couple of months. “How’s that for some helping?”

  She glanced back at the crowd of kids, just in time to see a few of them close their mouths and turn away, to see heads duck together in whispered consultations. “Is that what that was supposed to be?”

  He shook his head. “You give it the try-on now. See iffen you get some words out of em.”

  He was probably right. If they all thought she was somehow connected to Slobag, then … yeah, they’d probably talk to her.

  Nice. They wouldn’t respect or talk to her because of her abilities or talents, be
cause of the place she’d earned in the Church through hard work and nearly getting herself killed several times over. But let Lex kiss her, let it look like she was with him, and suddenly their mouths opened. No respect for herself or her power; respect because she fucked someone powerful.

  Well, what the hell did she expect? Hadn’t she known pretty much all of her life that her only real value came from what hid between her legs? She’d been told it often enough.

  And the one person who truly cared about her for more than that, for more than just what he could get out of her and what she could do for him, the one person to whom she was more than a commodity to be traded or discarded … well, she’d just fucking betrayed him again, hadn’t she, the instant she responded to Lex. A few seconds or a few minutes, what did it matter. Betrayal was betrayal.

  Shame settled so thick over her she thought she might collapse under the weight; she’d done it again. What the fuck was wrong with her?

  She loved him, and she’d hurt him, and she couldn’t seem to stop; couldn’t stop taking her own happiness, throwing it on the floor, and jumping up and down on it until it shattered.

  Lex’s finger caught her chin, lifted it. Softness still touched his voice; she couldn’t quite read the look in his eyes. “Just business, ain’t needing to give nobody the tell, aye? Just giving you the help, me.”

  Yeah. Just hide it, don’t ever tell. That would make it all okay. If only. “And that was the only way you could think of to help me out?”

  He grinned and became the old Lex again, the one she was used to, jaunty and a bit arrogant. “Nay, but surely were the most fun.”

  “Yeah, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

  “And you did. Ain’t try the pretend game with me, Tulip. Got experience with you, I do.”

  Fuck. She had to get out of there, get away from him, immediately. He was right, and she knew he was right and he knew she knew it, and she couldn’t stand there and see that knowledge on his face and feel it heavy in her heart another second. “I have to get back to work.”