“I already know.” She didn’t even bother trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Damn it. “Her name is Lucy McShane. She was a student here when the school first opened. She killed herself in the theater.”
They started toward the stairwell, picking up pipes and scraps of twisted catwalk as they went to return it to the theater. The last thing Chess wanted to do was leave evidence that someone had been in the school that night.
“How’d she do it?”
“Threw herself off this,” she said, waving a piece of steel. “The catwalk in the theater.”
He shook his head. “Fuckin drop, aye?”
“Far enough, yeah.” She thought about it, that vertiginous second looking down at the floor so far below. “Far enough.”
He plucked off most of her metal pile as they hit the stairs, added it to his own. She was glad, too, even though his hand brushed against her breast when he did and sent another sharp stab of desire through her, so hard it almost hurt.
They started up the stairs in silence.
“Good thing you ain’t done it,” he said. Casually, like it didn’t matter. “Glad you ain’t, meaning.” His gaze focused on the landing, looking straight ahead. Not at her. Giving her privacy.
She hesitated. No point in asking how he knew she’d thought of it when she was younger, before she’d joined the Church. There had been days when suicide was all she could think about, when it was a secret dream she’d clutched to herself, the ultimate escape. And the only reason she’d never done it was that if she failed, she’d be in even bigger trouble.
It didn’t surprise her that he knew that, either. He would. She kept her voice just as casual. “Did you ever think about it?”
“Naw.” Now he did glance at her, fast but enough that she saw it, felt it. “Weren’t me I wanted dead. Only all them others, aye?”
“Do you still?”
He shrugged. “Don’t give a fuck neitherway, most of em.”
A window at the landing showed her a glimpse of the empty field outside as they rounded it and started up the next level. It looked dead out there, cold and still under the mottled sky. She wanted to point it out to him, to say something about it. She wished their arms weren’t full so she could touch him.
He cleared his throat. “We get this dropped off, get us home, aye? Ain’t likin the thought some other witch in here. Feels like bein watched.”
Relief. “We probably should, yeah, and come back tomorrow night.”
“This give you the help? The knowledge somebody doin magic there, callin the ghost. Make a difference?”
“Yeah, but—shit. It just sucks, is all. I won’t get a full bonus on this one. When ghosts are summoned the Church doesn’t have to pay a settlement, but it’s not an actual Debunking, either.”
His eyes fastened on her, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he said, “Ain’t needing the lashers, aye? Causen I got—”
“No, no, I’m fine, I have money, I just … it’s depressing to lose, you know? I don’t like it.”
He smiled, and even in the middle of her misery, in the furious tangle of her mind, she was able to see it, feel it all the way down to her toes. “Oh, aye? Never would guess that one.”
Her smile couldn’t compete with his, but hey, at least she was able to make the attempt. “Yeah, I guess that’s not really a secret, is it?”
“Ain’t to me.”
Her arms ached. “Let’s drop this stuff off now, huh?”
They passed into the theater, headed across the back to the booth and then down the stairs toward the stage. Damn it. What a fucking night, what a fucking waste. She’d managed to set up one camera, discover she wouldn’t earn her full bonus, and get injured. Whoopee. She could have spent the last two hours in bed with Terrible, bursting into flame again and again. Feeling secure for the first time in days.
“Got any thought why she? That ghost, meaning. Still around causen she kill herself, or aught else?”
She thought about it for a second, setting her metal down—finally—by the catwalk’s wreckage. Oh, that felt good. She flexed her hands, turned her wrists to try to wake her skin back up. “It could be any reason, really. The spell felt like two people, but I think one of them was her. Lucy. So it was a man doing the summoning, at least I think so. And whoever he is, I guess he wanted her.”
A clatter of metal as he dropped his pile. “That why the ghost ain’t come after us at the start? Like we wasn’t even there, aye?”
“Probably. That implies a really close relationship between the summoner and the ghost, you know? Like a Binding or something. Communication.”
He nodded.
The stage rose a few short steps above the theater floor. She switched on her flashlight as she climbed up them, turned to give the light to him. As she did, the beam caught his face. “Hey!”
“What?”
Across the base of his neck on his left side a dark red line marked his skin, just above the tattoo there. She reached out and touched it.
“Aw, got me with a pipe, ‘sall. Don’t even hurt.”
Sure it didn’t. He could lie all he wanted but that had to fucking hurt; being hit in the neck wasn’t fun, as she knew from experience.
The top few buttons of his bowling shirt were still undone, so she could pull the collar away, hook her finger into the neck of the white T-shirt he wore under it, and pull that aside, too.
“Ain’t worry on it. No problem, aye?”
She’d never done this before. Never really seen it done outside of a movie or something. Certainly no one had ever done it for her, not seriously. Lex didn’t count; he didn’t tend to be area-specific enough.
Terrible was probably going to think she was an idiot for doing it, too, but she wanted to try it anyway. That skin looked so raw, so insulted, and it was soft and defenseless. It was her fault he’d been hurt, and he’d been hurt trying to protect her. And it seemed like … well, it seemed like something people did, right?
“C’mon, let’s get us—”
“Us” almost echoed in the warm still air around them as she pressed her lips to the beginning of what she knew would soon be an ugly bruise. She loved his neck, especially that part, loved the way he reacted when she sucked on it. No sucking this time, of course, but the smell of his skin, that soapy-smoky-bay-rum-pomade smell, still made her tingle.
His hands warmed her even more, fingers curled tight at her waist. He swallowed. “What you doin?”
He’d probably laugh, or think she was a total dork, but she said it anyway. “I’m kissing it better.”
She kept going, moving slowly from one end of the bruise-to-be toward the other, making sure she got every bit of it. Wouldn’t do to miss a spot. Just the feel of him under her lips, the taste of him, made her dizzy. Overwhelmed. She could keep going, she could kiss his earlobe, down his chest—
“Chess.”
“Yeah?”
His left hand curled into her hair, gathered it, and twisted it. Tugged it to pull her away. “Think it’s all better now.”
The words were a handful of dirt tossed onto the burgeoning fire inside her. Shit, she knew it. What a dorky fucking thing to do. “Oh. Right. Um, sorry, I just—”
His mouth on hers, the kind of insistent kiss she knew well. The kind that made her blood race through her veins until it found a good place to stop, the kind that made her clutch at him harder than she meant to.
The kind she felt sometimes when he wasn’t even there, because she’d thought of him, his hands touching her head, her face, sliding over every inch of her body, and no matter where she was her stomach leapt and her muscles tightened.
Just like they were doing at that moment. He kissed her deeper, harder, as he took her hand in his and turned it, guiding it down past his belt so she could feel how hard he was. How the hell was she supposed to breathe when he did that?
The theater floor was cement. Probably not very comfortable.
“My car,” she
managed. Harder to talk when his fingers caressed the back of her neck. Harder to talk when his right hand slid over her bottom, yanked her tight against him, heat seeping through her shirt.
Both hands at her hips now, down to her thighs so he could pick her up and climb the remaining stairs, stopping to kiss her again when he reached the stage. The car seemed too far away, they’d never reach it, the top of her head was going to blow the hell off if—
“Well, well, well. So it is true.”
Chess pulled away from him, fast. Lucky his reflexes were fast, too, or she would have fallen on her ass on the stage.
Right in front of Beulah, who stood next to the booth at the top of the rows of seats. Chess couldn’t make out her expression, but she’d have bet money the woman was grinning.
Terrible set Chess down on her unsteady feet; they both turned to face Beulah. Out of the corner of her eye Chess saw him reach around to grab the handle of his knife under his shirts. Just in case.
It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him not to worry, but that was bullshit, wasn’t it? Obviously they needed to worry. What the hell was Beulah doing there in the middle of the night?
And what the hell was “So it is true” supposed to mean?
Beulah hadn’t spoken again, and Chess was not about to speak first. Not when she was already pretty much as powerless as she could be in this situation. She couldn’t even tell Beulah to get out because her presence interfered with some made-up magic thing Chess could pretend to be doing; however much Beulah had seen, she sure as hell knew it wasn’t related to the school or the investigation.
“Cat got your tongue? Or I guess it wouldn’t be the cat, huh.” Beulah started down the steps toward the stage, slowly, then stumbled when Chess lifted the flashlight so the beam caught her full in the face. “Ow, shit! Turn that thing off. What the hell are you trying to do, kill me?”
“Maybe.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Beulah had reached the foot of the stairs. Terrible’s arm tightened against Chess, ready to pull the knife; Chess slid her own hand into her pocket, curled her fingers around hers. She wouldn’t really be able to use it but it made her feel better, like a talisman.
Beulah sighed. Damn, she was good at that. She managed to convey irritation, exhaustion, condescension, pity—all in one exhale. That took skill. “Cut it out. I’m not going to attack you.”
“Why are you here?”
“Why shouldn’t I be here? I work here.”
“A couple of days a week.”
“Sometimes more.” Beulah lowered herself into one of the chairs in the first row, her legs crossed tidily at the ankle. She wore snug black jeans and a pair of shiny black ballet flats, a black V-neck sweater with just the right amount of drape. How the hell could she afford that wardrobe? Even Chess could see that shit was expensive, and the nicest item of clothing she’d ever owned was the Church ceremony dress that had cost her forty bucks.
More to the point, there was the fact that it was all black. Just the right color to blend into shadows, especially in vast dark rooms, in unfamiliar places. “What are you doing here?”
“Not what you were doing, obviously, but—”
“Come on.”
“Oh, lighten up. Someone heard noises outside. They called me, and I found the side doors unlocked. You really shouldn’t leave those open like that, you know.”
Chess glanced at Terrible. He was still staring at Beulah—glaring at her—with the kind of intensity with which hawks tracked mice. Dislike sat in the faint downward twist of his mouth, subtle but there.
“We didn’t leave that door open,” she said to Beulah. “We came in through the …” Shit.
A pause, a long one, while she wondered whether she should tell Beulah about the magic, the other person in the building. To stall she said, “Why would they call you to come check out a noise? Why would you come?”
“I was afraid it was Vernal and his friends. They’ve done it before. I didn’t want them to get busted.”
“But why you?”
“Why not me? I’m not exactly a stranger around here or anything. If you didn’t open those doors, who did?”
Above the flashlight’s beam her face was blurry, set back in soft shadows. But her eyes glittered as she looked back and forth between them. “Ah. Someone else was here, huh? Did you— No, I guess you didn’t catch them. Maybe you scared them off?”
Damn. Chess shook her head.
“No what? No, you didn’t catch them, or no, you didn’t scare them off?”
“Both. I guess. We didn’t catch them.” She was beginning to feel like an idiot standing there on the stage while Beulah sat below her, like a director holding auditions. But when she started to sit, Terrible grabbed the back of her shirt. Why wouldn’t he want her to sit down?
He wasn’t going to tell her right then, that was for sure.
“So were you going to look for them, or what? Oh, I guess you weren’t, were you?”
“We knew they left the building. So we were going to leave, too, is all.”
Beulah’s gaze switched to Terrible, swept from the top of his head—pomaded strands falling over his forehead, messy from her hands—past his half-unbuttoned shirt and stretched collar, all the way to his dirty worn-down boots. “You don’t talk much, do you, Terrible? I’d heard that about you.”
When he didn’t answer she shrugged and turned back to Chess. “Well. I guess I’ll let you two get on with it. I’m tired.” She stood up.
“Wait.” Chess shook off Terrible’s grabbing hand on her shirt again and headed down the stairs. There was one thing she could do, and she would. Beulah could say all she wanted to that some good Samaritan—ha, good Samaritans in Downside were about as common as diamonds in boxes of rat poison—had called her, but Chess didn’t buy that for a second. There had to be some other reason Beulah was there, and she intended to find out what it was.
Reaching for Beulah’s hand felt like a stupid thing to do, and Chess had no idea what to say as she did it, but it needed to be done. Her mind clicked and flashed until she finally came up with, “Are you going to be here tomorrow?”
Wow. That was clever.
Beulah’s eyebrows rose; she looked down at their joined hands. “Are you asking me out? Holding hands is okay, but I don’t kiss on the—”
“Ha-ha. Yes, Beulah, I’m dying to—”
Behind her Terrible made a sound; not a sarcastic one, more like surprise. Beulah’s gaze snapped to him; her face paled for a second before she turned back. What the hell was that all about?
“I’m dying to make you mine,” Chess finished. “Please. I just want to know if you’ll be here tomorrow so I can ask you some more questions, that’s all.”
“I will be, yes.” Beulah looked at their hands again, deliberately.
Chess let go. She had what she needed, anyway; Beulah’s energy, the feel of it, very faint—she wasn’t a witch, and didn’t seem to have much talent in that direction, either—but still enough for Chess to make a judgment. She hadn’t been doing ghost magic, hadn’t been around it. At least not that Chess could feel.
“Fine. See you tomorrow, then.”
She and Terrible watched Beulah climb the steps, sashay behind the booth and over to the theater door. It closed behind her with a soft clunk.
The second it did, Terrible turned to Chess. His brows drew down; redness crept up his neck, hiding the bruise-to-be. “Why the fuck ain’t you tell me she was here? She work here?”
“What?”
“You been talking to her? An you ain’t said a word.” Suspicion lurked behind his eyes, growing bolder by the second, almost as fast as her bruised heart started breaking into pieces.
“I don’t— Why would I, she’s just some community liaison person.” When he didn’t respond she reached out, touched his hand with her own. Her fingers were too cold, too stiff to wrap around his, and when she talked she heard the edge of panic in her voice. Too bad being ashamed of that
panic, embarrassed by it—and oh, she definitely was—didn’t make it go away.
“What did I do? I don’t know why I would need to tell you, I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate or anything—”
His deep-set black eyes, pools of shadow in his face, focused on her. His head tilted. “You ain’t know? True thing?”
“No, I— Please tell me what I did. I didn’t mean to, whatever it was I didn’t mean to, okay? Tell me, please?”
Ah, yes. How much better could she make herself look? She’d failed to Banish the ghost, and now she stood there begging, with her eyes stinging and hot. Fuck.
“Ain’t can believe you don’t know, sleepin at—at Lex’s place all you did.” With a jolt of surprise that sent waves of nausea through her, she saw the hurt on his face, the confusion. This was it, this was it, she knew it was too good to last, she knew she’d fuck it up just like she always did. Just like she took anything and everything that might be good for her and trampled it beneath her irresponsible feet every chance she got.
“I’m sorry,” she managed. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”
Pause. “Callin her what? Beulah? What the fuck game she got on.”
It wasn’t really a question, but she tried to answer it anyway. “That’s her name, I don’t— That’s how she was introduced to me is all …”
Oh, no. Oh fuck no. Oh please please please no, because the pieces snapped into place in her head and she knew what he was going to say, and her blood turned to acid. Suspicious indeed.
“She’s Lex’s sister, isn’t she. Blue. That’s her, isn’t it.”
He nodded. Opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was going to say snapped off like a spent rubber band when Beulah’s scream invaded the theater.
There had been worse nights than this one. This one didn’t even really compete, all things considered; hell, most of her life she’d considered any night a victory if she managed to survive until morning with food in her stomach, without being beaten or used.
But not this night. Not when she still felt Terrible’s distance even though he stood by her side smoking a cigarette; not when she felt Beulah’s shock and grief like bristly wires jabbing her skin.