Chasing Magic

  “I see,” he said again.

  That package of tissues wasn’t going to last much longer. She’d already used up about two-thirds of them.

  He stood up. Shit. He was going to pick up the phone, he was going to turn her in. And she couldn’t blame him for it, because she’d killed a psychopomp to keep it from performing its duty. She deserved to be punished for that.

  She deserved to be punished for a lot of things.

  “I am getting a drink. Would you care for one?”

  She shook her head.

  He left the room, heading into what she guessed was the kitchen; she used the opportunity to crunch up two more Cepts, fast, swirling water from her bottle in her mouth to try to cut the horrible bitterness on her tongue.

  It didn’t help. Nothing would help. But it soothed her, at least a little, and at that moment she could use whatever she could get.

  What she should probably be doing was throwing herself out the door, tearing across the grounds to her car, and hauling ass back to her apartment or Terrible’s, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. The Church was her home, the Church had rescued her, given her a future, made her something real. And before Terrible had come along, the Church had been everything she had; well, the Church and her pills had been everything she had.

  The thought of leaving it made her heart feel as if it were made of wet sand, sluggish and heavy. She wouldn’t do that until she had absolutely no other choice; she wouldn’t do that until all hope was gone.

  She should have known better than to hope, yeah. But it kept happening, anyway.

  Elder Griffin reappeared, holding two cans of Coke. He opened one and set the other on the table in front of her. On a coaster on the table, rather. Any other time she would have smiled.

  “So,” he said. “I confess I have very little idea what to say. What you have done … It is a grave crime, Cesaria. Grave indeed.”

  How was it possible that her entire body was numb but the sharp cold ache in her heart grew worse with every second?

  Not just because he could turn her in, not just because she could be executed. She realized, looking into his sad blue eyes, his serious face, that ever since Terrible had found out about her sleeping with Lex, Elder Griffin was the only man she cared about—the only person she cared about—in the entire world who didn’t know about a bad choice she’d made, a bad thing she’d done. The only one who didn’t know who she really was, that she was a junkie, that she was a slut, that she was a failure, that she was worthless and disloyal.

  Elder Griffin had believed she was special. He’d believed she was good. The disappointment in his eyes hurt.

  “ ’Twas a selfish thing you did.” His gaze left hers; he stared at the ceiling. “I am … I am shocked to hear this. I am disappointed to hear it.”

  Fuck. She was crying in earnest now, crying from shame, crying because she’d lost something valuable. Something she’d always known was valuable but hadn’t realized how much she counted on. He was right to call her selfish. He was right to be shocked and disappointed in her. Aside from everything else, what she’d done had broken the oaths she took when she was officially inducted into the Church.

  And she still couldn’t say she was sorry. Because it would be a lie.

  “I never would have expected such a thing from you.”

  Enough. Death would almost be preferable to hearing more, to hearing how badly she’d fucked up again.

  Another tissue. “I know you have to turn me in. It’s okay, I understand. I just … maybe you could let me go, and I’ll, I’ll leave Triumph City or something.”

  “No.”

  He wasn’t even going to let her run away. He didn’t even care enough for her anymore that he’d let her live. “Um, okay, can you, can I call Terrible and tell him—”

  “I have no intention of repeating this to anyone.”

  “I know it’s your— What?”

  He looked down at his hands clasped together in front of him, like in pictures she’d seen of people praying when they still believed the old religions. “I have no intention of turning you in, Cesaria. You know what the penalty is for killing a psychopomp. I cannot … I cannot do that, though I know I should.”

  Relief made her dizzy—relief or the first flush of happiness from her pills, or both. She didn’t know and she didn’t care. Instead she sat there, her tears starting afresh, faster than before, feeling relieved and slimy to be feeling relieved. Sleazy.

  “Thank you,” she managed. Shame. More shame, piling on what already lurked in her heart and soul. Shame because he was going against something he believed—she knew he was—and shame because he was doing it for her. “Thanks.”

  He acknowledged her gratitude with a dip of his head, gave her another minute to stop sniffling before he spoke again. “You do know what that sigil could do? Why it’s making him vulnerable to dark magics?”

  “It could— It makes him more vulnerable to possession, right?”

  Anger flashed across his face. “How could you be so— You knew what the consequences could be, I told you the story and—” He stopped himself, pressed his hand to his forehead for a minute and sighed.

  She’d never seen him angry, aside from one moment in the battle in the City of Eternity months before. She’d never heard him yell. Maybe he would yell. He certainly should.

  He didn’t. Small cabinets flanked the couch; Elder Griffin leaned over to open one of those, from which he pulled a large blue ashtray and set it on the table. “Feel free to smoke. Keith does on occasion.”

  It hadn’t occurred to her before, but suddenly she was dying for a smoke. She could use a line, too, but she didn’t think she’d get one until she got home. Yeah, she could bump up in the car if she had to, but she had a feeling that wouldn’t be enough.

  He watched in silence as she lit up, then he spoke. “The sigil broadens his own magical powers slightly, and, of course, because you activated it with your blood it gives him a minute amount of your power. But it weakens his natural defenses, because it uses his energy to bind his soul to his body. So when he comes in contact with magic, it affects that energy and changes it, because he is not powerful enough to handle it. He doesn’t know how.”

  “It changes the energy that’s holding his—it changes that energy?”

  He nodded.

  Her hand shook as she dragged off her cigarette. “That means the energy isn’t effective, right? When it changes. It’s not doing its job, binding his soul to his body. That’s what you’re saying, right?”

  Another nod.

  “So that means he’s not passing out. He’s— His soul is …”

  “Escaping, yes. The sigil prevents it from leaving entirely, but there is an extremely brief time period—I would guess the merest fraction of a second—when the bond breaks. Cesaria … he’s not fainting. He’s dying.”

  Her stomach churned. She was going to be sick, she was going to be sick, she couldn’t stop it.

  But at least she made it. At least she managed to choke out the word “Bathroom,” and at least she was able to hear and understand his response over the ringing—the screaming—in her ears. And at least she made it.

  Dying. Dying every time. Would his soul always come back, what if one day it didn’t? How could his body take that, how long would it be able to—did his heart stop when it happened, was his fucking heart stopping, was his breath stopping, what if one day it didn’t start again, how long could he go without oxygen? Was his body dying when his soul left it?

  Her stomach was empty. That didn’t stop it from trying to empty itself further, over and over. She stayed there, her knees aching from the tile floor, her forehead sweaty under her bangs.

  One thing she knew, anyway. They could never remove that sigil from him. If they removed that sigil he’d die. They had to find something new to add to it—to him—something protective, some sort of shield. She had to find something, had to do something. Immediately.

  Finally he
r stomach settled. She managed to stand, to splash cold water on her face—she avoided looking in the mirror—and make it back into the living room. Her body felt like a slack rubber band.

  Elder Griffin handed her a cold damp cloth. It almost set her crying again. He was being so nice to her, and she didn’t deserve it.

  Not just nice in handing her the cloth, either. Nice in pretending she was perfectly fine and resuming the conversation without a bunch of hovery questions. “I take it you have attempted to rectify the situation?”

  “I’ve—I’ve marked some other runes and stuff on him, and a couple of those helped, but not enough, and I don’t know which one works best. We keep meaning to try them individually but whenever we get started on it … um, we get distracted or something.”

  Mercifully he didn’t ask by what, but she assumed he knew, anyway. Her flaming face was probably as good as a blinking sign over her head.

  “There is no way to completely destroy the risk associated with that sigil.” He stood up, walked past her to the far end of the room where the built-in bookshelves had already been filled. “It will always be a danger for him. I take it he had some mild ability before that happened?”

  “Not a lot, but yeah, it was there.”

  He grabbed several books, handing two of them to her as he walked back to the couch. “All right, then. Let us see what we can find, shall we?”

  Her phone rang when she was about halfway home. The code MSB came up on the screen: Blue. Lex’s sister. “Yeah?”

  “This is why I like calling you. You’re so friendly.”

  “Good.”

  An edge crept into Blue’s voice. “What’s wrong, Chess?”

  What’s wrong is that your brother is trying—no, not trying, is actively pursuing, has paid someone—to kill my boyfriend. What’s wrong is that once again someone who trusted me has learned how fucking stupid that was.

  But she didn’t say that. “Sorry. Sorry, I just— I’m not having a great day.”

  “Want to meet up for lunch or something? I kind of wanted to talk to you. About that speed. We found six more people out of their heads from it last night.”

  A gaggle of girls in a blue convertible cut Chess off; she swerved to avoid them. Bitches. “Shit. That— Wait, how do you know about that, why are you the one calling me?”

  “What?”

  “Why isn’t Lex calling me? He’s the one who talked to me about this before, he brought some of it to my apartment so I could check on it.”

  She could hear the shrug in Blue’s voice. “I don’t know. Lex asked me to call and tell you about it, and I was going to call anyway to see how your dress went over last night. It was last night, wasn’t it?”

  Right. Lex asked her to call. Lex asked her to call because Lex knew damn well Chess wouldn’t want to talk to him, that she’d be furious with him.

  If she had any doubt at all that he was behind the attack the night before—which she didn’t—that would have put an end to it. Bastard.

  But Blue didn’t get involved in that side of Lex’s business; in any side of it, actually. Which meant Chess couldn’t take her anger out on her.

  Nor did she particularly want to. What good would telling Blue about Lex’s contract on Terrible do?

  “Chess?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah, it was last night. It was fine.”

  “Did you have a good time? What about the dress, did Terrible—”

  “Yeah, it was okay. You said six more last night? Do you know where they bought the speed, did anyone find out?”

  Pause. “Um, yeah, actually. There was a guy with them who hadn’t done any of it. He said they got it up off Baxter, Baxter and Seventeenth.”

  That was north. That was way north. It was also definitely Lex’s side of town. “Is he still around? Did you guys keep him or something?”

  “Lex found out where he lives.”

  Right. Chess flashed her blinker, pulled into the right-hand lane in preparation to exit. Lex. He’d want to be there if and when she questioned someone. If he even told her who it was and let her be there. “I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s not here right now, he’s—”

  “Not Lex. The guy.”

  Another pause. “What the fuck is going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You’re right, Lex doesn’t have me talk to you about this stuff. He hardly talks to me about it at all. Why do you sound so cagey when you say his name?”

  The light at the bottom of the exit was red. Chess paused, glanced around, and kept moving. “Nothing’s going on. I’m just worried about this speed thing.”

  “Right. I assume you don’t mind calling Lex and asking him to tell you where the guy is, then?”

  It was Chess’s turn to pause. Shit. She really didn’t want to put Blue in the middle of anything; bad enough she was anyway just because she was who she was. Lex’s sister, who lived on the wrong side of town.

  Lex was all Blue had left. “Yeah. I’ll call him.”

  Relief came through the phone loud and clear. “Okay, good. Now tell me about last night.”

  She expected the Market to be packed on an afternoon as sunny as that one, but it … wasn’t. It was busy, sure, but only busy, certainly nowhere near the standing-room-only levels it usually reached on hot sunny days.

  But then, it was early afternoon, and it was hot out—already in the nineties—so that might account for it. She bet once the sun started to set, it would be a zoo.

  Damn that stupid promise she’d made to Terrible the night before. The pipes were across the Market, but she really didn’t have time, and she couldn’t score anything else because she’d said she would ask him for it.

  Unless … she could ask Bump, couldn’t she? Terrible said she could get it straight from Bump.

  Bump’s “private stock” kicked ass, too.

  She headed down the center aisle, past the booth selling cheap vinyl tie-back tops and miniskirts, past the blue-velvet-draped booth laid out with jewelry made from bolts and scraps of tin, past the booth with oil lamps and broken appliances sold for the parts, until she reached Edsel’s, almost at the end.

  “Hey, baby.” Edsel’s deep, smooth voice poured over her like syrup; his pigmentless skin was hidden under a black wide-brimmed hat and his pigmentless eyes behind black lenses. Edsel had to be careful of the sun. “Ain’t seen you in a week, you right?”

  “Yeah, sure. Right up.” It wasn’t as hard to smile as she thought it’d be. Seeing him really did make her feel better. Once he’d been the only person she could call a friend. He still was her friend, and one of the few people who knew about her relationship with Terrible—not because she’d told him, but because he’d followed the whole story as it happened. “How’s Galena?”

  His ice-blue eyes sparkled over the frames of his glasses for a second, the way they always did when he talked about his wife. “Gettin big now, she is, feelin some kicks an all.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Bout four months.”

  Chess ran her fingers over some of Edsel’s merchandise, not paying much attention but enjoying the shivers of power floating up her arm. That high was even legal, and Galena’s pregnancy imbued everything she made with extra power. A few defense-charm bags made of shed snakeskin, bird-bone scrying sticks, insects in wax for hexes. All vibrated with that energy.

  Not to mention the regular items: spiderwebs, bones, herbs, mirrors, animal bloods, various types of salt, black powder, iron in all different forms. The basics.

  She took her almost empty iron sack from her bag and started scooping filings into it. She could get them cheaper from the Church, but not only did she like buying from Edsel—not only could Edsel use the money—but she didn’t particularly want to go back there.

  Ever.

  “Business good?”

  “Aye. Been meanin to give you a touch on the phone, dig. Somethin I got the thinking you ought should see.”


  He turned to the back of his booth and opened an African Blackwood box like hers; in fact, she’d bought hers from him when she first moved to Downside four years earlier. The African Blackwood blocked negative energy and dark magic, which meant if he was keeping something in there, it was not good news.

  Fuck. The second he lifted the lid her tattoos reacted, tingling and itching, a burning on the surface of her skin. Whatever he had, it wasn’t just touched with dark magic; only ghost magic, ghost energy, would elicit that particular reaction.

  What he held out to her was a key.

  She didn’t want to take it. She took it anyway. The irritating pin-scratched feeling of her ink intensified. The key didn’t feel like a key somehow, like an inanimate object. It felt alive, warm and heavy, slightly damp as if from sweat; it was repugnant. Like holding a boiled earthworm.

  It was one of those old-fashioned keys with a round bar and big crooked teeth. The kind the Church used for doors within the building, the kind that had magical powers anyway. All keys had a touch of magic simply by virtue of their existence; keys were gateways.

  Thick black paint coated it, but a chipped spot revealed what lay underneath. She looked up at Edsel. “It’s iron.”

  He nodded. That explained the warmth of it, then. When iron and ghost energy mixed, the iron heated.

  It still made no sense at all, but at least she knew why it was warm.

  “But—how can it take ghost energy if it’s iron? Iron repels ghost energy. How can that work?”

  The thing in her hand was an impossibility. Something that could not, should not, exist.

  But, then, Terrible should be free to not pass out when he touched dark magic. Elder Griffin should still be proud of her. Theoretically she should be living on Church grounds, normal and happy like everyone else. “Should be” was another term for “bullshit.”

  Besides, she’d answered her own question. “They’ve infused the paint.”

  “Aye, that’s how I got it figured on, also. Be some kinda controller, that do, with the iron an ghost, and just bein what it be, dig.”