Sacrificial Magic

  “I have to be there.”

  The Chevelle slowed enough for him to turn it, passing a few bodies huddled in a doorway. “What?”

  “I have to be there. If Aros is going to be there—the kind of power he’s generating so far, and where he’s getting it from? He’s destroying the balance of energy, that could be—”

  “Naw, ain’t wantin you nowhere nearby, dig? Ain’t be safe there, don’t even—”

  “What am I supposed to do, let him kill someone else?”

  “Be plenty people around, he—”

  “And if he casts some sort of hiding glamour—which he could do, with that kind of power—nobody but me would be able to see him. Not to mention—” She shut her mouth. Fuck.

  “What? Not mentioning what?”

  They’d almost reached the warehouse and her car, damn it, and he wouldn’t let her go until she told him; she knew him well enough to know that.

  “Not mentioning what, Chess?”

  Fine. “The sigil. The sigil on your chest. You—”

  “Aw, shit. Ain’t on this one again, aye? The fuck am I sposed to do, hide—”

  “I just think I should be—”

  “Maybe you oughta be figurin on makin it stop, aye, ‘stead of makin me some fuckin pussy sit on the outside.”

  He hadn’t said that before; their discussions on the subject hadn’t gone that far before, though, either. He’d always found some way to distract her, to change the subject.

  Now she knew why, and it was so fucking obvious she couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen it.

  “It’s not like that.” She touched his neck, played her fingers in the hair at his nape, but he wouldn’t look at her. “It’s not like you can’t handle it or something, it’s just—this is stuff I can do, you know? So I want to be there to do it, is all.”

  He still didn’t reply.

  “You’re the one who said that between you and me we could handle anything, right? And this is my part.”

  The warehouse appeared on her left; her car sat a few lengths down on the street. He stopped the Chevelle next to it, sat there in silence for another minute.

  “Aye,” he said finally. “Guessin you should be there, handle the magic. Only—only you give me the wait, aye? Ain’t come on till I say. Causen if he don’t show up … rather you ain’t be there, dig.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She swallowed the sigh of relief that wanted to burst from her, the sigh of something else, too. She’d known how to handle it. Something had bothered him—something big, she knew, how fucking hard must that have been for him to say that, to admit to her how much his reaction to magic since the sigil scared him—and she’d been able to talk to him about it, to make him feel better.

  Maybe she wasn’t a complete failure at this after all.

  “Send you a text then, aye?”

  She nodded.

  He glanced at the streets around them, then leaned over to kiss her, faster than she would have liked; the rain had slowed, after all, they were visible through the windows. “An Chess … ain’t want shit bein off with you. But ain’t can have you pickin fights and shit, neither, givin me tests.”

  What the hell could she say in reply to that? Nothing came to mind, not a thing. So she nodded, swallowed, squeezed his hand. And got out of the car as fast as she could.

  Her mood didn’t improve when, three hours later, she pulled into the parking lot at the Mercy Lewis school and saw Beulah and Lex standing outside.

  “You can’t come in with me,” she said as soon as she’d parked and gotten within speaking distance. “I’m doing a ritual.”

  “Aw, Tulip, that any way to give us a hello?”

  “You’ll be in my way.”

  If it had just been him standing there she would have been, well, nicer. But it wasn’t just him. Beulah was there, too, and Chess had a report in her bag that said Beulah had given her a plate of food with a one-way ticket to the City mixed into it, in the form of several thousand milligrams of psychotropic medication. She also had the memory of the tea, and that Beulah may have introduced Aros to Slobag, that Beulah may have known more about Jia Zhang than she let on.

  And she had the knowledge that Beulah not only hated the Church—or at least seemed to, all those snippy comments—but had been suspiciously pally almost since the moment they’d met, with her fucking jokes and smiles and “I won’t tell Terrible about the kiss” and “Do you want to talk about it” bullshit.

  Chess wasn’t sure what pissed her off more: Beulah’s attitude toward the Church, or that she’d actually almost started to … well, to like Beulah. She’d never had a female friend before; looked like she wasn’t going to start. She should have known better.

  Sure, it might not have been Beulah who tried to kill her. It might have been some completely random stranger. But the odds of that being the case were awfully slim.

  Lex shrugged. “Only sayin, ain’t gotta be mean.”

  “What are you guys doing here, anyway?”

  “You said you were coming to do that Banishing thing, so we thought we should be here. Keep watch and everything.”

  “Aye. We oughta get ourselves inside, we ought. Ain’t no telling how long we stay on our alones out here, ‘swhat thought I got. Could get us company on the anytime.”

  “Right.” Chess lifted her hands, indicated the empty parking lot around them. “Clearly this is a hub of activity at night.”

  “There’s no need to be a bitch,” Beulah said. “What do you care if we want to be here?”

  Do not tell her to fuck off, do not tell her to fuck off. “Sorry. I guess I’m just on edge. If you guys want to stand around out here, you go ahead.”

  “Ain’t standin out here, nay. Going inside, along with you. Keepin watch, we are.”

  The rain had stopped by the time she’d set out, but the breeze still smelled of it, felt cool and heavy with it as it brushed her skin. “Why are you doing this, anyway? Why are you so fucking set on helping me?”

  “The fuck problem you got this night, Tulip? You wanna get on down the City, you go straight ahead. Guessin I had the thought you ain’t wanted that, figured on givin you the help.”

  So much for pretending everything was fine. She sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry, guys. I just want to get this over with, is all.”

  That was true. The sooner she Banished that fucking ghost the sooner she could get over to Twenty-fifth and Mercer and hide, waiting for Terrible’s text.

  “Gots other places I could be, I do, too,” Lex said, with that air of noble suffering he was so good at. “But figured I ain’t have me so much fun iffen you dead, so here I am. Maybe you ain’t give me the junters for it, aye?”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Let’s not stand out here and talk about it, okay?” Beulah glanced around the still-empty parking lot as if she expected a lynch mob to appear any second. “Let’s just get in, and you can argue with us then.”

  Chess shrugged. “Whatever.”

  None of them spoke again until they got inside the atrium; Chess felt them watching her as she picked the lock and wondered if Beulah had a key and just wasn’t telling her. Probably.

  Didn’t matter, though. As with everything else Beulah-related, she didn’t care. “Okay. I’m going to set up in the cafeteria, I think, so you guys can wait here.”

  “I think we should go with you.”

  “Well … I don’t.”

  “Gots me an ask, I do. What happens them ghost shows up here, an you in there?”

  Shit. She hadn’t thought of that. Stupid of her, yeah, but then she hadn’t actually wanted to think of it, had she? No. Because that meant she had to let them come along if she wanted to not turn them into some kind of sacrificial ghost-bait, and she didn’t want to do that. Or at least she didn’t want to do that to Lex.

  She closed her eyes, wished this was already done and she was out of the building. Too bad it wasn’t, and she wasn’t. “Fine. Come on. But no talking, and yo
u do exactly what I tell you to. Okay?”

  She ended up being kind of glad they’d tagged along after all. The tables in the cafeteria weren’t heavy, but they were numerous, and rather awkward to move. It would have taken her a lot longer to clear the floor herself.

  The ghost probably wouldn’t be outside the building, so she could mark those walls and the windows looking out onto the sad field of scrub grass and rusty goalposts that Mercy Lewis students were supposed to play sports on or whatever. She marked the floor to solidify it on the astral plane while she was at it, had Lex help her get the ceiling just in case.

  One set of stairs didn’t have a door; she sketched a quick Bindrune over it to act as a barrier. She’d leave the other doors open until Lucy showed up, so the herb smoke and the sounds would spread through the building more easily.

  “Okay. That’s as much as I can do until she gets here. When she does, if it’s possible for you to close the other doors, do. If she’s carrying a weapon or coming after you, just get away. Lex, I know you know the rules, you don’t look her in the eyes, you try not to engage her or attract her attention. She might not notice you with me here. Questions? Good. Go sit over there.”

  Another few minutes to set up her stang in its iron holder, the firedish at its base and the Church-grown blue and black roses wreathed over the top. She poured water into her cauldron, added wolfsbane, and lit the flame under it. A few minutes for that to heat up and she could light the mullein and benzoin to call Lucy’s ghost; wasn’t always necessary—usually wasn’t, actually—but given how large the building was, and given what Terrible and Bump were doing and that Lex would undoubtedly hear about it when it happened … she figured the faster she called Lucy, the faster she could get rid of her.

  She’d topped up her salt canister, and she set up the bag of graveyard dirt taken from Lucy’s drawer in the Church’s Grave Supplies department on the right side of the stang. Her black chalk—shit, she should probably do that, too.

  “Here,” she said, crossing the room. “Let me mark you guys, just to be safe, okay?”

  Lex shrugged. He’d sat on one of the long benches at the far end of the room, where the lights were especially dim. “Know it ain’t bother me none.”

  “Yeah.” She smiled, went ahead and let him see the fondness in it. “I know.”

  Beulah didn’t say anything. Fine with Chess.

  It felt weird to be so close to Lex again, weirder even than it had felt to be in his room, almost weirder even than it had been to kiss him. Sitting on the couch across from his bed hadn’t involved touching. The kiss … well, that hadn’t lasted long, hadn’t meant anything, and had ended almost before she realized it was happening.

  But standing with her hand on his cheek … his own came to rest on her hip, and she didn’t know how to tell him to take it off. It would be kind of prissy of her to say that, wouldn’t it? Wasn’t that big a deal when he set the other one on her other hip, either. Right?

  She could say Terrible wouldn’t like it, and that if she knew he wouldn’t like it, she shouldn’t let Lex do it. The problem with that method was that Terrible wouldn’t like anything Lex did to her, up to and including smiling from across a crowded room. So that really wasn’t the best guideline.

  And it didn’t matter anyway, because she had a responsibility to mark him. She focused on putting as much power as she could into the protection sigils she drew across his forehead and down his cheeks. Only protection; he wouldn’t be doing anything but sitting, so he should be safe anyway. The marks were just a little insurance.

  “Here, look up.” This was harder than she’d thought it would be. Not because she still wanted him; she didn’t. It was just that … well, she still kind of wanted him. How did that make sense?

  She wasn’t in love with him. The difference between how she felt about Terrible and how she felt about Lex couldn’t have been deeper or more obvious. And given the choice between sleeping with him and sleeping with Terrible … that wasn’t a question, either. Hell, that was a decision she’d already made.

  But she couldn’t lie and say she didn’t still enjoy touching him, looking at him. Couldn’t say that when she did, when she stood there with him so close, with his faint smoke-and-spice smell in her nose and his hands on her, her body didn’t react, even though it wasn’t as intense. Or that she didn’t remember other times, didn’t recall those hands in other places and how skilled they were. Didn’t remember how they’d made her gasp. Or how he’d made her laugh.

  Not like Terrible did. And the thought of regretting that choice didn’t even cross her mind; how could it? Terrible was who she wanted, he was the part of her that had been missing, and she was terrified she’d lose him, and she’d never worried about losing Lex or felt like Lex understood her. He didn’t.

  But her fingers curled around the back of his neck anyway, sliding into the hair at his nape, and she rested her knee on the bench just outside his thigh and leaned into him without fully realizing what she was doing. Leaned in probably closer than she should have, while she marked the back of his neck.

  “Tulip.” His voice, low and a little husky, slid under her clothes, slipped into all those spots where she’d just been remembering his hands; those hands tightened their grip when her eyes met his. “Lessin it were someone I ain’t know gave you them neck bites, maybe you oughta be all finished on me now, aye?”

  The words were as effective as a bucket of ice water thrown over her head. Shit. In his eyes was a Truth, one she hadn’t wanted to see before, one that made her feel guilty. No, he wasn’t in love with her, either, at least she didn’t think so.

  But he wanted her. He still wanted her, and she’d hurt him when she’d ended their—well, she’d told herself it wasn’t a relationship, but it had been, the first one she’d ever had. All those memories playing in her head were playing in his, too, and if that familiar tingle of arousal stirred low in her belly, it definitely did in his. He wasn’t telling her to stop, he was asking her to. Asking her to give him a break.

  She should have known that the minute she started getting involved with other people they started hurting. Bad enough when it had only been herself she was trying to destroy. Now she was taking other people down with her.

  All of this flashed through her head in one confused second; all it took for her to remember the last time she’d heard that tone in his voice, and for guilt to crash down on her like a wave, carried on that tide of shameful pain she expected to drown her any day.

  She stepped back so fast she almost stumbled. “Sorry, I— Sorry.”

  He gave her a shrug, a half nod, casual as if he’d practiced it in a mirror. Which knowing Lex wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility.

  But he didn’t look her in the eyes again.

  Well, she wouldn’t have to worry about that with Beulah. Not that Beulah didn’t present her own set of problems. She did. Not least of which was fighting the temptation to fake some scribbles on her and let the ghost have fun.

  Which she wouldn’t do. Of course she wouldn’t; she wouldn’t do that to someone she hated, and no matter what she felt about Beulah at that moment, the fact remained that even if Chess could be so callous, that girl was Lex’s sister, someone he cared about. And Chess had hurt him enough, hadn’t she.

  So she gritted her teeth and set the chalk to Beulah’s forehead, pushing her hair back out of the way. Beulah wasn’t quite as magic-dead as Lex; her eyes widened a little. “What is that?”

  “They’re just protective sigils. They won’t keep you from dying or anything, but they make it harder for ghosts to hurt you, like they won’t be able to solidify around you.”

  “And you put power into them, or whatever? That’s why they feel kind of itchy?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you have to do that on purpose, or is that just something that happens when you touch people, or when you draw things on them?”

  Chess hesitated. But really, what could Beulah do wi
th that information? How magic worked wasn’t some big secret. Just some of the individual spells. “I have to channel it. I mean, if I’m not paying attention sometimes it projects anyway, most people have energy around them. But yeah, when I’m doing something like this I’m pushing it, because it gives the sigil strength. It makes it work. Without that, it’s just a scribbly line.”

  “Hmm.” The sigil she’d just drawn on Beulah’s forehead wrinkled. “So, how does that work, like, if you have to do that for Terrible? Would he pass out the way he does with other magic, or is—”

  “Blue!”

  “What?” The chalk dropped from Chess’s numb fingers; she saw it fall in slow motion, bounce on the tile, tumbling end over end like it would never stop falling. “What did you say?”

  But the look on their faces let her know she’d heard right, and that if she’d thought her situation couldn’t get any worse, she’d been—as always—totally fucking wrong.

  Ugly silence shrouded them all, filled the room until Chess felt herself choking on it. Her voice sawed through it hard like a rough serrated blade. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Too late. It was too late for that; it had been the minute Beulah said it. Because she knew. She hadn’t been fishing, looking for some kind of confirmation with that question. It had been genuine. Honest curiosity. What the fuck?

  Lex didn’t know about that. Nobody knew about that, no one had been told about that. The last thing Chess wanted, the last thing anyone needed, was for it to be common knowledge that the most feared enforcer in Downside had a fatal weakness, one that any two-bit piece of shit could pay any halfway-talented witch fifty bucks to exploit.

  She looked from Beulah to Lex and back again, at the matching expressions of dismay. How she’d managed to miss the family resemblance when she met Beulah she didn’t know, except that she’d expected Lex’s sister to look Downside, not to be a tidy, glamorous community organizer. Whatever, it had been stupid of her to miss it, because they looked so much alike it scared her.

  But not as much as Beulah’s words had. “How— Who told you that?”