Chasing Magic

  Thinking about it made her reach for her pillbox. “Lex, you didn’t feel anything when you touched it. So you would have done it, right? If you’d bought it. You would have chopped a line like normal.”

  “Aye, guessing so. Them two days past were shooting it, too.”

  “And it feels like magic, too.” She washed three Cepts down with water from her bottle and grabbed a cigarette. “It’s not just ectoplasm, it’s magic.”

  “You get high on that?”

  “Not that kind of high, no. And especially not magic like that.” Yes, there was a little high in it: the rush of power, the lifting feeling of magic in the pit of her stomach, and the way it could force a smile onto her face like a drag off the pipes. It was a weak high, usually, not one she chased, but still there.

  The men waited for her to continue. “It’s dark magic. Someone who can feel it will know that. It feels … well, it feels bad. It feels unhappy and sick. Nobody who could actually feel the energy coming off that shit would snort it, seriously. But if you can’t feel it when you touch it, I don’t think you’d feel it after you did it, you know?”

  Terrible nodded. “So you thinkin it ain’t the ectoplasm they tryna get high from, an not the magic neither. Them buyin it ain’t know—’sall hid in there.”

  “Right.”

  Lex put his empty beer bottle on the rickety table. “Aye, sounding all on the sensibles, but where the hell it coming from, then? Ain’t thinking we got no troubles in our supplies, iffen you dig. Ain’t can say the same on Bump, but guessing Terrible knows.”

  “No trouble, not what I got.”

  “Guess you guys need to start asking some questions, then,” Chess said.

  Lex lit up a cigarette, leaning back on her couch and propping his feet on the table. “Talkin on questions, when you coming on over, Terrible, start working with me?”

  “I ain’t.”

  Silence. Lex blew smoke slowly into the air. “Really thinking you wanna have you a mind-change on that one, I do. Ain’t tryna pull no shit with you here.”

  Terrible didn’t respond; his face didn’t move, not a blink, not a twitch. Any normal man would have been extremely uncomfortable right about then, with that cold blank look aimed right at him.

  Lex wasn’t a normal man. Or, he wasn’t abnormal, he was just … normal with a few extra shots of arrogance, like a cocky blended coffee drink. And Chess knew that Lex didn’t believe deep down that Terrible would seriously injure him. Didn’t believe Terrible would kill him.

  Because of her. She’d stopped Terrible from continuing to attack Lex after he’d broken his jaw that night, and she guessed in doing so she’d proven to Lex that she wouldn’t let Terrible kill him and—worse—that Terrible would listen to her and let him live.

  She couldn’t feel bad about saving Lex’s life, but damn, she didn’t feel good knowing Lex sat there with confidence wrapped around his shoulders like a king’s ermine because of her. “Making the offer causen of Tulip, dig, but making the offer causen I got a need for my own muscle. Getting that one whether it’s you or some else.”

  Terrible shook his head. “Guessin you find some else, then.”

  “Aye, I dig it.” Lex stood up and took a few steps toward the kitchen, stopping just beyond where Terrible stood so he could face both of them. “Ain’t can say I ain’t gave it the try, though. You remember that one, aye? On the later. Gave it the try, I did.”

  He was talking to Terrible—it seemed as if he was, anyway. But as he finished he looked directly at Chess, right into her eyes, and cold spread through her chest because she knew what he meant. What he was really saying to her, to them both.

  He was planning to have Terrible killed.

  “Here.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to put his arm into it. Was her hand shaking? Not surprising. Despite the fact that her high was kicking in, nerves still jittered up and down her spine. They were probably going to find some of that powder at Rickride’s place, and what she was about to try would probably not work.

  Admitting she couldn’t fix a problem she’d caused—yeah. Not really the best start to her day.

  Seeing the doubt in Terrible’s eyes while she scrawled the new sigil on his skin didn’t help. Even the tingle of magic sliding through her to him didn’t help. The only thing that would help would be if it worked, and she didn’t think the odds were great. Maybe it would, sure, but … maybe not.

  “Okay.” She put the chalk back in her bag. “We’ll see what that does.”

  He nodded and got out of the car.

  Rickride lived on Eighty-seventh, far enough from the docks that the crooked skyline of ships wasn’t visible but close enough that the sour undercurrent of brine and dead fish clung to the air. A fairly typical Downside street, made grubbier by its proximity to the docks; more boarded windows and garbage on the pockmarked sidewalks, more crumbling walls. And a—was that a SOLD sign attached to a porch six or seven doors down? How old was that? She didn’t get a good look; Terrible was moving too quickly for her to see. Had to have been fairly old, though. Or maybe stolen and stuck up to repair a hole?

  No time to ask. They’d reached the top of Rickride’s steps, and before Terrible’s fist hit the wood she knew something was wrong. That smell creeping out from under the door, the shabby curtains over the front windows, visible from where they stood, spattered with darkish spots and splotches. Shit.

  Terrible pulled his knife. Chess did the same, and he pushed the door open.

  Yeah. Someone had gotten to Rickride. Maybe the same person who’d hauled Greenback into and out of a car the day before. Probably the same one who’d put Gordon Samms under magical control and gotten him to rip up Yellow Pete. Almost definitely the same one, in fact, because Rickride was in pieces all over the place and the floor under her boots was sticky, and death invaded her nostrils.

  Not just Rickride’s death, either. As they wandered through the rooms, they found more: another couple of men, torn up and discarded as if a giant psychotic child had grown tired of trying to find the prize inside.

  Terrible nodded at her questioning look. His skin had flushed darker with almost every step they took, his eyes narrowing with anger. “Aye. Bump’s, too.”

  “So …” She didn’t want to ask. She knew she had to ask. “You think this could have been Lex? Someone he hired?”

  His head tilted. “I … Shit. This ain’t like Greenback yesterday, just got sliced. Or them others, them street-men. Shot, stabbed, dig? Like normal. This ain’t normal.”

  “No.” She switched on her flashlight, slipped on a glove. “Let’s see what we can find. Maybe one of those walnuts or something.”

  He nodded and started to turn away, but she grabbed him. “Wait. Here, put one of these on, okay? Just—it’s pretty gross in here, you don’t want to get any blood or whatever else on you.”

  His slightly raised eyebrows told her he wasn’t fooled, but he took the glove anyway and forced his hand into it.

  They didn’t talk for a few minutes, each picking their way through piles of body parts and blood slicks. Chess felt around underneath the battered couch and ramshackle coffee table, searching for a walnut spell, but didn’t find one. Nor did she find one in any of the corners or behind the small television set or stereo. There wasn’t one in—

  “Terrible. Look here.”

  “Aye? What?”

  She held up the box. A box full of speed packets; a box full of magic. The bad kind, the kind that made her hands and arms go almost numb.

  He reached for it but stopped himself at the last second. “All spelled up, aye?”

  “Looks like it, yeah. And he was selling this out there, to that guy yesterday at least.” She flicked through the packets, the tingles growing worse with every one she touched. “And these didn’t come from Bump?”

  “Woulda come off Levi, he hands out up here. Don’t think he does like that, in boxes, but maybe ’sjust how Rick holds it, dig?”

  “Can yo
u ask him?”

  “Ain’t can find him. Been lookin, but—”

  A shuffling noise, like a slow clumsy footstep, on the floor above. Shit.

  Terrible shook his head at her as he picked his way silently through the detritus on the floor to stand beside the wall dividing the staircase from the rest of the room. His expression clearly told her to stay put, but fuck that. She got up and crossed to stand at his side.

  Another movement up there. Fear trickled down her spine. If the killer was up there, and the killer was another bespelled freak who couldn’t be killed by normal means …

  She guessed they’d find out pretty quickly.

  She was right. Her eyes barely registered the presence of the man before he was moving, practically flying down the stairs at them.

  Damn, he was fast. Before she could react Terrible had shoved her to the side, banging her shoulder against the wall. His right hand moved, aiming that wicked-looking knife of his with deadly accuracy, or what would have been deadly had the man been able to die. He wasn’t, not in the state he was in—the state she thought he was in, was pretty sure he was in.

  And now he was a bespelled man with an ugly gap in his throat, like a bloody fucking Pez dispenser.

  He turned and swung at Terrible, who ducked and kicked out with his right foot. His boot connected with the man’s knee; a horrible loud crack rent the air, and the man stumbled.

  Stumbled but didn’t fall. Chess realized his knee was broken; his leg bowed the wrong way, as if the joint was on backward, but he was still standing. He didn’t feel it.

  Worse, if he touched Terrible, Terrible was going to collapse. And she’d be left to deal with the mindless, unfeeling, indestructible killing machine on her own.

  Shit. The man swung at Terrible again, almost hitting him. Terrible attacked with the knife, widening the ghastly blood-drooling pseudo-mouth in the throat. The man’s head tilted at an angle, not quite hanging off his body but clearly not held on the way it should be.

  Would he fall, when his head was removed? Would that make his body still?

  Looked like she was going to find out. Terrible darted around him, drew the knife through the air one more time.

  The head fell off. It tumbled toward the floor in slow motion, eyes wide and staring, mouth hanging open. It bounced off Terrible’s arm as it went, and they hit the ground together. Sure enough, her new sigil had failed.

  And sure enough, she was most likely the only woman in the world who knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the beheaded corpse of a magic-controlled soul would still walk around.

  It stumbled around the room for a few seconds, arms outstretched like every stereotypical headless man ever, before a new head popped into place. Well, not a new head. Its ghost’s head, luminescent in the dim room.

  It saw her. Looked right at her, its translucent features changing as it grinned. It grinned at her like she was a jug of water and it was dying of thirst; grinned at her like she was a pile of money and it was broke.

  Grinned at her like she would grin at a free bag of pills.

  She started to leap out of the way, only to lose her balance and fall to the disgusting floor. A disembodied arm lay only a foot or so away from her face. She swallowed hard to keep from throwing up.

  The ghost—the body, the man, whatever the hell it was—had almost reached her. Well, fuck it, she was already filthy, right? She rolled over, shoved her legs up with all of her might.

  This time the man tumbled back, and this time Terrible was up and moving, grabbing her hand and yanking her to her feet. She was already digging into her bag for her salt canister, already trying not to think about what she was about to do with her psychopomp, about the way certain types of magic could stain a person’s energy, pollute it, and how she didn’t know how many times that magic would need to be performed before it would cause that kind of damage.

  She stayed behind Terrible, both of them taking slow, careful steps backward to draw the man away from the wall. Of course, what they were going to do once it got away from the wall she had no idea, but—

  Oh. That’s what. As the man neared, Terrible threw himself forward, collapsing in a heap with the man trapped beneath him.

  She supposed that was one way to do it.

  She also supposed she’d better hurry up, because ghosts were strong, and who knew how long the spell would last or what would happen when it ended. Every instinct she had told her to grab Terrible and pull him away from the body wriggling beneath him like an overturned turtle, but she couldn’t. He’d done that for her, so she could create her circle, and she knew without even having to think that he’d be pissed at her if she didn’t do what she was supposed to do.

  So she did, focusing as much as she could on the circle and trying not to think about just what the hell was going on.

  And what the hell it meant.

  She was still trying not to think about it five hours later as Terrible turned the Chevelle in to the Church parking lot. Not because she hadn’t thought about it in the interim, and not because they hadn’t discussed it in the interim, either, but because the sun was about half an hour from setting, and Elder Griffin was getting married.

  Terrible slid into a spot and shut off the engine. “Don’t bother me iffen you wanna change yon mind, go in on your alones, aye? I dig it, maybe this ain’t—”

  “Terrible. Shut up.” She leaned over and kissed him, a good, long, hard kiss to let him know how much she wanted him there. Four Cepts and two lines before leaving the house, combined with the fact that he was actually there, actually going with her, made her entire body feel light and cheery, as if she was made of glitter.

  Maybe too cheery. His hand slid down her front to cup her breast through the white cherry-patterned dress Blue had gone with her to buy. “Maybe we take a longer while, aye? Be late.”

  “No, we can’t. Come on, let’s get in.”

  His short, quiet laugh heated her throat. “ ’Swhat I’m tryna do, Chessiebomb, iffen you—”

  “Right.” She smiled and put her hands on his cheeks but pulled away just the same. “Come on, seriously. It’s getting late.”

  “Aye, right then.”

  He came around to her side and opened her door for her, eyeing her up and down as she got out of the car. His hand squeezed hers; a slight twist of his arm turned her to face him, standing not quite a foot away with his face in shadow. “Shit. You so fuckin pretty, Chessie. True thing. So … ain’t even can breathe sometimes.”

  Everything stopped. Her breath, her heart, everything, even the breeze making her hair dance over her bare shoulders. It all stopped, leaving her standing there watching herself. As if it wasn’t her, because nothing like that could be happening to her. He was talking to some other Chess, some Chess who wasn’t filthy and wrong, wasn’t a liar and a junkie.

  She was stealing him from that Chess, the Chess who deserved the happiness pounding its way through her system like a line of the best speed she’d ever done in her life, the Chess who deserved to have someone love her.

  She wasn’t that Chess. But she wasn’t giving him up, either. No fucking way. No matter what she had to do.

  She leaned forward on her tiptoes to kiss him again. His palm cradled her cheek, slid back so his fingers could play in her hair.

  “Thanks.” With her heels on she was—well, she was still shorter than him, he had her beaten by about a foot normally—but the distance felt so much less. She wrapped her arms around his waist. “I mean … thanks.”

  “Only sayin the truth.”

  Another car door slammed nearby, ending the moment. Damn. Well, time to go in anyway, really.

  Her heels clicked on the cement and her full skirt tickled just above her knees as they headed for the tall, heavy double doors of the Church building. Pale blue light glowed in the row of windows to the right—the chapel windows, where the ceremony itself would take place. Chess held Terrible’s hand tighter. She never got to do that in public; it was almost
scary.

  People filled the entry hall. They leaned against the blue-white walls, sandwiched themselves together on the long low benches, so many of them that they hid the dark wood. They stood in groups, holding glasses, laughing and chatting; their bodies in the requisite black or white made the room look like a checkered flag.

  Automatically her eyes sought Elder Griffin, only to realize that of course he wouldn’t be there. He’d be getting ready somewhere, doing whatever pre-ceremony rituals he was supposed to do. Another reason—as if she needed one—to be grateful Terrible had come with her. She usually hung around with Elder Griffin during these all-Church-employee things. Or at least she tried to, because when she didn’t she ended up doing incredibly stupid things, like she had at the Festival Closing Ceremony the year before when she’d ended up in bed with Agnew Doyle, a fellow Debunker.

  What a mistake that had been.

  The chapel doors opened. Good. They could go in and sit down, instead of milling around hunting for someone to talk to or an out-of-the-way place to stand. People were looking at Terrible, in his black bowling shirt with the blue stripe down the front, with his DA haircut and thick muttonchops, broken nose and scars. Chess straightened her back further. Fuck them all. If they wanted to judge him—judge her, too, because of him—they could go ahead. The only person she worked with whose opinion she cared about was Elder Griffin’s, anyway, and he wouldn’t look at Terrible like that. At least she hoped he wouldn’t.

  They found a seat about five rows from the front; not all the way in the back, but not too close, either. The chairs around them began to fill up, too. Chess caught Doyle—sitting next to Dana Wright, so that was still going on, then—staring at her. Staring at Terrible, actually. Oh, right.

  Terrible noticed, too. He caught Doyle’s gaze and raised his eyebrow; his left arm slid around her bare shoulders and pressed her to his side. Doyle paled and looked away. Heh. She guessed his last meeting with Terrible, when Doyle had ended up huddled on the ground with broken fingers and wet pants, had made quite an impression.

  Two Goodys in their blue ceremonial dresses circled the room, lighting the candles. Someone switched off the overhead lights. The entire atmosphere in the room changed; voices quieted, people shifted into more comfortable positions on the hard wood seats.