Chasing Magic

  “Love you, Chessie,” he murmured. “Ain’t never … Fuckin love you, more’n anything.”

  “I love you, I love you so much.” Her eyes still burned; her cheeks were wet with tears. She stood on a rooftop in Downside not too far away from Bump and Lex, who were probably standing there watching her, while a paid murderer waited to earn his money by ending Terrible’s life, while an army of unkillable magic-enthralled junkies waited on the streets below, while she was about to join their ranks and try to end the magic holding them all by herself.

  It was one of the best moments of her entire life.

  Not a long moment, or not long enough; she could have stayed like that forever, pressed against Terrible’s strong warm body with his lips on hers and his back solid and hard under her palms. But he pulled away, his hands cradling her face, and rested his forehead against hers. “Needing somethin from you, though. One thing.”

  “What?”

  “Rather be with you here. So whyn’t you make sure you stay yourself alive, dig? Don’t get dead, Chessiebomb.”

  She made a sort of half laugh, half sob, as she dug her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. “Don’t you, either. Please. Okay?”

  “Aye.” He lifted his head and took a small step back. Her body felt cold without his against it. “Ain’t gotta worry on me. Ain’t even can die with this thing on me, aye?”

  It might have sounded like an odd question given what they’d just discussed. But she knew what he was really saying, what he was asking. And maybe it was wrong of her to answer it honestly, but she couldn’t help it. “I don’t think you can die with it on you, no. But if it was gone—yeah, that would do it. Without it— Removing it would kill you.”

  He nodded. “Aye, figured so.”

  They stood looking at each other for another few seconds; there didn’t seem to be much more to say, not at that moment. Not when the enormity of what they’d said still pressed its weight on her, terrifying and exciting and comforting all at once. So many feelings, too many; normally she’d be reaching for her pillbox right about then to dull them out so she could breathe.

  That was what she wanted to do. But she didn’t, because she was about to take a dose of something that very well might kill her, and because … well, because for some reason those feelings—the love and trust and commitment ones—didn’t seem unbearable, scary as they were. She could handle them. So she would.

  At least for now.

  And they needed to go. They’d already taken too much time. Not wasted. She could never think of it as a waste. But they’d taken it, and they couldn’t take any more.

  “Right,” he said. He gave his eyes a quick rub, then slid his hands down her arms to take hers. “Let’s get us on with it, aye?”

  Bump and Lex hadn’t been watching them, or at least they had the decency to pretend they hadn’t. Neither of them looked up until Chess and Terrible were standing at their sides—or between them, because they’d retreated to opposite corners like boxers between rounds.

  “Getting fuckin worse on down there,” Bump said. He said it accusingly, as if Chess had somehow orchestrated the whole thing. “When you get the fuckin shit broke up, Ladybird? Wanting this fuckin done out, dig?”

  Normally she’d grit her teeth at something like that, but she couldn’t be bothered. Now that the moment was over, the whole scared-shitless thing started up again. The noise from below returned, as if she’d just taken her hands off her ears. She took a deep breath. Might as well get it over with. “Now. I’m going to do it now.”

  Terrible shook his head. “Cable Joe still ain’t showed. Don’t want— Lemme get some else up here, aye, find—”

  “Whyn’t I stay on?” Lex said.

  Bump snorted. “Ain’t can guess why you still fuckin here all the same, yay, an why you getting you the thought we let you—”

  Terrible cut him off. “Aye.”

  “What?”

  Terrible looked from Lex to Chess and back again. “Aye. You stay. You watch her. Keep her safe.”

  Bump’s eyebrows shot up, almost to the edge of his frizzy hairline. “You fuckin put on the joking, yay, Terrible? Ain’t even fuckin know he—”

  Terrible ignored Bump. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lex, and Lex had been staring back at him just as intensely. Chess didn’t know exactly what was being communicated with those looks, but she had a pretty good idea. “You stay with her, dig? You watch her.”

  “Ain’t goin nowheres she ain’t.”

  “An you text me, aught happens. Chess, give he yon phone.”

  If the situation hadn’t been so serious, she might have laughed at the dumbfounded look on Bump’s face. But it was, so even that couldn’t make her crack a smile. She brought up the addresses on her phone and handed it to Lex, pointing to which code was Terrible’s. Lex nodded and put it in his pocket.

  “Right, then.” Terrible pulled two cigarettes from his pocket and lit them. “Better get on the move.”

  She took the one he offered her, trying not to think of it as the last one. It wasn’t the last one, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. “Yeah. Why are we all standing here when there’s so much fun we could be having?”

  The men gave her a polite laugh, even Bump. Silence fell while they all stood there looking at each other, waiting to see who would be the first to break the little circle, who would be the first to end the relative safety in which they stood.

  It was Terrible. He took her arm and pulled her away, back to the staircase. “Don’t want you thinkin on me, dig? Just get what you need done.”

  “You, too. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  He glanced at Lex. “Aye, well. Figure he ain’t let shit happen to you. Knows he don’t get to make he fuckin jokes on me iffen you ain’t around.”

  She smiled. “No, that’s true.”

  “Chessie …” Terrible looked at her, up and down, a long searching look as if he was trying to memorize her face. Which he probably was, because that’s what she was doing; well, she already had his face memorized, but she was trying to memorize the moment, the sensation of his hand touching her cheek. Trying to freeze it all in her mind so she could experience it again whenever she wanted to, the exact feeling of it, the exact way the wind still blew across her skin and the moonlight hit his face.

  He lowered his hand, and it was over. “See you on the later then, aye? No matter what.”

  She forced herself to smile, forced herself to blink back the tears threatening to fall again. He didn’t need to see that. He needed her to be strong, needed to know how much she believed in him. “Yeah. No matter what.”

  One last quick kiss, one last quick word with Bump and one last look at Lex, and he disappeared down the stairs.

  She finished the smoke Terrible had given her and turned to Lex, standing a few feet away with his hands in his pockets. “Okay. You ready? Let’s get this done.”

  He grinned. “Been ready all the day, Tulip. Just givin you the wait.”

  She glanced at Bump, but he was on his phone again. Good. Lex needed to watch that shit. It was one thing to do it to annoy Terrible; it was another to do it in front of Bump, who might well wonder why Lex had given her a nickname when they’d supposedly only met a couple of times.

  Oh, what the fuck was she worrying about that for? Like it mattered. She probably wouldn’t live through the night, anyway.

  The packet of speed sat in her bag, wrapped in a shroud of inert plastic in an effort to dampen the energy it gave off. The plastic didn’t help much, but she hadn’t figured it would, because she’d grabbed what seemed to be the strongest packet of speed from her Blackwood box. The low wall wrapping around the roof had broken in places, but one corner was still intact, and a bit higher than the others. It faced the wind, too, so when she ducked down into it the breeze died and she could use her hairpin without worrying too much.

  “How much you gotta do?”

  “I don’t know.” Holding the packet sent tremo
rs up her arm, that sick feeling of dark magic washing over her. “Not too much, I don’t think. Just enough to get it into my blood.”

  “Thinkin you have a problem with it, seeing as how you already got magic in you blood and all?”

  Shit, she hadn’t thought of that. “I guess we’ll find out, huh.”

  Lex crouched beside her, reaching out to touch her arm. “I be watchin on you, aye? No need for worryin.”

  “Don’t think I’m not still pissed at you.”

  “Hey.” His fingers closed around her arm, urging her to look at him. “Know you is. But that one’s business, aye? Still gonna watch you. Ain’t wanting shit happen to you, I ain’t. True thing.”

  She met his gaze. The moonlight spilled over the top of his spiky head, over his shoulders, but not his face; it remained shadowed by the walls around them.

  “I know,” she said finally. “I know you don’t.”

  That didn’t stop him from trying to have Terrible killed, of course, but she didn’t mention it. Not because it didn’t matter, but because it would lead them down some other conversational path, a strange and uncomfortable one she didn’t want to travel. She didn’t think Lex was in love with her—she knew he wasn’t, unless he was extremely good at hiding it—but obviously he hadn’t wanted their relationship to end, and obviously he was rather put out by the fact that it had ended so she could be with Terrible.

  This was too fucking weird, having some sort of Moment with Lex. He seemed to think so, too, because after a second he let go of her, leaned back. Moonlight washed over his face, wiping it clean of whatever serious emotion might have been there. “Get this shit over with then, aye? Got places I could be.”

  She went along with it. “Girls waiting for you?”

  “Could be. Ain’t wanting em get all bored an go home.”

  “Maybe they could have a pillow fight in their underwear while they wait.”

  He laughed. “Hopin they is, leastaways.”

  Pause. Okay. Time to get on with it. Rather than use her hairpin—she didn’t think her hands were quite steady enough—she went ahead and dug the tip of her car key into the packet.

  When she glanced up at Lex, he’d turned away, watching the psychopomp birds swirling in the sky. If only Terrible could have stayed, could have been with her …

  But he would be. He’d be waiting for her after it was all over. No matter what. She pulled out the memory she’d fixed in her head earlier—the sound of his voice, his fingers on her cheek—and held it close while she lifted the key and snorted back the bump.

  Her nose caught fire for a split second before going completely numb. Numbness up into her sinuses and, when she pulled air hard through them, into her head and the back of her throat. That bitter batterylike speed taste was there, but under it was something awful, something that made her want to gag. Something like—like death and rotting vegetables, mixed together and coating her throat.

  The taste grew stronger in her mouth as the speed itself hit her bloodstream in earnest. The familiar kick of her heart, the way it felt like bubbles spreading through her bloodstream, but this time something else rode those bubbles, something creepy and dark. As if her heart wasn’t speeding up from joy but was trying to run away.

  Was this what the others had felt? It couldn’t have been; it had to be the magic already in her blood reacting with the magic in the speed, because nobody would have done more if this was what it felt like.

  Her skin burned, the magic tattoos up her arms and across her chest reacting to the threat now inside her, in her veins. Burned hard and hot, as if she was back in that white room at the Church, getting inked all over again, while the Elders and her fellow employees watched and chanted to raise power. She looked at her arm and half-expected to see it blistering from the heat.

  She didn’t realize she was panting, that she was sweating, until Lex touched her shoulder. “Tulip? You right, there? What’s on with you?”

  “I’m fine,” she managed. “I just— You’re right, it’s reacting weird, it—”

  The magic took hold then, tearing into her flesh, hooking cat-sharp claws dipped in poison into her brain. Feeling her out. Testing her.

  Her vision went white. The pain disappeared. In its place was a feeling she knew very well, too well. A craving. More of that speed, she had to do more. Wanted more, as if she hadn’t had any in months, in years. She had to have more.

  Some dim part of her understood what it was. Not a real craving, a magical one.

  “That’s so smart,” she whispered, fumbling around to fit her key back into the packet, still clutched in her sticky palm. “So fucking smart, shit.”

  “Aye? What?”

  “It’s—it’s part of the magic, part of the spell, it makes you crave more. To build it up in your system, I guess.”

  Even as she said it she was lifting the key again, loading more sick magic into her nose, into her body. Chasing the magic, chasing the high, because the high had to be coming, right? The high, the ultimate one, the one as good as the first one ever. Some whispering voice inside her, inside the speed, promised that high, and she was going to get it; that magic promised her she could find its source and she was going to get that, too. She hadn’t forgotten.

  The death-taste, worse the second time, stronger. The shaking, the burning. Her brain was leaving her head, her body leaving her control. It was so peaceful … so peaceful for once. Like being wrapped in cotton, soft around her, swaddling her tight like the mother she’d never had.

  She bet if she did one more bump she’d feel it even more. It would get her closer to the source, too, help her find what she was looking for. So she did, barely tasting it this time. Maybe one more? Somewhere beneath the padding of artificial peace she felt her body shaking and twisting inside, felt her skin still burning and tears running down her cheeks.

  She lifted the key again; something caught her hand, stopped it from finding her nose. What the—

  “Ain’t that enough, now?”

  Oh, right. Lex. She’d forgotten about him for a minute there. “Just one more, I think—”

  “Lookin mighty shaky, Tulip. Maybe you oughta—”

  She squinted at him. When she spoke, her mouth felt funny, as if she wasn’t enunciating properly. As if her tongue were made of rubber. “One more, one more’s going to do it. I’m—I’m sure of it.”

  He let go of her hand. “Aye, right up, then. Only then we get the move-on, aye? Start findin whatany we s’posed to be on the find of. Lookin wrung out, you is.”

  As if she cared what she looked like, when she was on the verge of the greatest high she’d ever had, she knew she was. The magic promised it to her. That promise insinuated itself through her body, deadened her mind, made her body feel mushy and irrelevant while at the same time excited and tense. As if she was about to have sex, as if Terrible was sliding her panties down her legs on her bed and his hands were hot on her bare skin, his lips exploring her upper thigh like he had the other night.…

  Terrible. Terrible, and Lex crouching at her side, and all of them down on the street. Shit. She needed to focus. Okay.

  The last bump hit her throat; magic filled her body. So high, and so good, but this time she didn’t let go. This time she fought the immediate craving, the desperation for more, and concentrated on what was behind it. Concentrated on the magic.

  “We need to get down,” she managed. Her voice still didn’t seem like her own, and with every passing second the need for more grew stronger. Maybe she should do one more bump before they left the roof, just to make sure she had a good enough grip on it? Another there, and one at the bottom of the stairs— Shit, no wonder those packets they’d taken from the group outside Trickster’s had been so empty, no wonder there had been so many of them in Marietta’s socks.

  She didn’t realize she’d been scooping out another bump until Lex grabbed her hand again. “Aye, let’s get us down there. You got hold of it, you thinkin?”

  Did she
? She felt it, that was for sure, but she didn’t feel as if she was part of the spell yet, didn’t— Oh shit. Of course.

  The inert plastic tub was still in her bag, the tub containing the spell they’d found earlier. She’d taken it apart but hadn’t salted it or separated the pieces under running water or anything else, so it should work, and the magic in the speed needed the walnuts to set it off, right?

  Right. She dug out the tub and handed it to Lex. “When we get down there, like around them all, we’ll need this. You’ll need to open the tub and hold it. It’ll neutralize the spell on them. Only on the ones close by, but it should be enough to get us through the crowd.”

  “Gonna fix you up? Make you lose the magic?”

  “Yeah, it will, and I don’t know how much. So—go over there and stay until I call you, okay? Don’t get too close to me until I say.”

  If she was going to be able to say, that was. She had no idea if she’d need to be away from the thing in Lex’s hands in order to trace the magic back, no idea if she’d need to be near it in order to speak. “Um, actually, if I start moving without saying anything, go ahead and bring it over to me. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  Now the walnut. She could just carry it, yeah, but the nut was just a container, not an actual part of it, and she needed to get as deep inside as she could. So she grabbed one of those and opened it, had the presence of mind to brace herself before she stuck her finger into the mess of blood and parts inside.

  Numbness. That same icy shocking numbness, tearing through her, making her body disappear. Kicking her out of her body, to be more specific; she couldn’t feel it anymore, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t hear. Was Lex still there? Was she still there, was there still there, was she anywhere? Fuck, where was she, what was happening?

  The magic inside her, around her, didn’t soothe anymore. It trapped her, entangled her like seaweed at the bottom of the cold deep ocean, and she was drowning. She struggled against it, fought against it, but it only held on tighter.

  Shit, that was it. What little conscious mind she still possessed knew what was happening: She’d completed the spell, she was inside it now. She’d chased it and, instead of catching it, it had caught her. It held her in vicious steel arms that wouldn’t let her go; it had stolen her and she belonged to it. Maybe she shouldn’t have done so much of that speed, maybe that last bump had been too much, she’d gone too far into it and she couldn’t escape—