Unholy Magic

That was the scariest thing of all.

Chapter Two

Never fear to call the Church if you have any questions, or stumble upon signs of magic that frighten you. The Church’s job is to protect humanity from such things.

—The Church and You, a pamphlet by Elder Barrett

Madame Lupita’s curses and screams as she was dragged into the Church van still echoed in Chess’s head when she walked into Trickster’s Bar a few hours later. It was early by Downside time, not quite one o’clock. The Rolling Ghosts were playing and she wanted to catch the tail end if she could. At least that would chase the memories and sounds away.

And at least it was warm, in the sweaty, stifling way of bars. Her earlier sensation of being overheated had vanished by the time she finished giving her report at the Church and headed back home to Downside. Even if it hadn’t, the drafts from the stained-glass window that made up one entire wall of her apartment and the lazy water heater that turned showers in winter into a gamble would have finished it.

Thanks to the Dreamthief case, she got most of her drugs for free—not through her regular dealer, Bump, but through Lex, who worked for Bump’s chief rival, Slobag. She didn’t know what exactly Lex did for Slobag. Not only had she never bothered to ask, she doubted he would tell her if she did. Their relationship, such as it was, worked a lot better when they kept their mouths busy elsewhere, but the fact remained that since she didn’t pay for most of her drugs, she could have afforded to move.

Could have, and probably should have. Somehow, despite having more money in theory, it didn’t quite work out that way. Instead of more money she ended up with more drugs. Something told her that was probably not healthy. Something else in her didn’t give a shit. And the rest of her was realistic enough to know it didn’t matter.

Lex was fun. She liked him, and he gave her what she wanted in more ways than one. But dependable he was not—maybe she wouldn’t have liked him as much if he had been—and she couldn’t count on free drugs forever. Sooner or later she’d need to supply herself again, and living cheap was the only way to keep up.

Besides, Downside was her home, and there weren’t many better places available. At least her building—a converted Catholic church, one of the few that hadn’t been destroyed when Haunted Week ended twenty-four years before—was quiet. Even the hookers on the corner kept it down most of the time, which was more than could be said for most of the neighborhood.

The bouncer stepped aside for her, admitting her into the dark red interior of the bar. The Rolling Ghosts hadn’t gone on yet. Instead the Clash blared out of the speakers, loud enough to turn the talking heads in the room into ghosts themselves, silent but trying to overcome it.

She didn’t want to think about ghosts. She held up a finger at the bartender and gripped the beer he handed her with fingers that were finally starting to lose their stiffness.

Terrible stood in his usual spot near the back. She headed for him, watching the red lights play off his shiny black hair and illuminate the breathtaking ugliness of his profile. She didn’t notice it anymore, not really; even now her eyes simply slid over it. He was Terrible, that was all. He was her friend…sort of.

But she knew it was what everyone else saw. The heavy, jutting brow; the crooked nose that looked as though the bones were trying to break out through the skin; the scars; the jaw like the prow of a ship. They saw the thick muttonchop sideburns, the impenetrable darkness of his eyes, and backed away. A face like that was a walking advertisement that the man behind it didn’t give a fuck, and a man who didn’t give a fuck was a very scary man indeed, especially considering he made his living as Bump’s chief enforcer, especially considering his size. Someone catching sight of him expected the shoulders to end before they did, expected the chest to be less broad. They didn’t, and they weren’t.

Chess watched him lurking back there for a few more seconds before he caught sight of her. His chin lifted in a greeting, but he made no other move. Something bothering him, then, and no way to ask. They’d tried to have a deep conversation in a crowded bar once before. It hadn’t ended well. Chess tried not to think about it.

“Hey, Chess,” he said. She got the words not so much from his voice, barely a rumbling murmur over “Garageland,” as from watching his lips move. “Figured you ain’t comin after all, gettin so late. You right?”

“Yeah. Right up. The job went on longer than I expected.”

“Lookin pale.”

She shrugged and drank her beer. No point discussing it, not when they could barely hear each other. “When are they going on?”

“Few minutes, maybe. Not long. They—Hold on.” From his pocket he produced a small black phone and flipped it open. The stark white glow of the screen invaded the darkness of the corner and highlighted his furrowed brow. “Fuck.”

“What’s—”

He cut her off with a look, a quick jerk of the head to indicate she should follow. This she did, trying to stay in his wake as he cut back through the crowd to the front of the room, narrowly avoiding razoring her cheek on some guy’s Liberty spikes, and out the front doors.

Desultory clumps of people huddled outside, braving the cold to get a free listen once the band started playing. They shuffled out of the way when Terrible headed for the side of the building. Chess followed. For a second the cold soothed her heated skin before it became too much and she shivered. She should have brought a jacket, but they were such pains in the ass to hold on to in a club.

“Got problems.” He didn’t look at her as he dialed the phone and lifted it to his ear. “You know Red Berta, aye?”

“I know who she is.” Red Berta handled all of Bump’s girls—which meant she handled all of the Downside prostitutes west of Forty-third.

“Well—Hey.” Whoever he’d called must have answered. “Aye, she—When they find it? Shit. Aye, hang on. I’ll be there.”

She knew before he snapped the phone shut that he wanted her to go with him. What she didn’t know was why.

“What’s going on?”

He stood for a moment with his eyes narrowed, sliding the phone back into his pocket without paying attention while he worked out whatever it was he needed to work out. “Feel like ridin with me?”

“What’s going on?”

“Dead body.” His other hand went into his pocket. The movement made his shoulders look even broader, but the threat of his size had never been less evident. “One of Bump’s girls. Third one they find.”

“Somebody’s killing hookers?”

He shrugged. “Lookin like a ghost doin the killin. Wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

“What, just in the streets?”

“Ain’t you cold? Whyn’t you come on, Chess. Warmer in the car, aye? Just take a look.” His head turned back toward the huddled crowd. Right. Probably not a good idea to discuss this in public. So she nodded and followed him across the street while the music kept playing inside the bar.

Terrible’s ‘69 BT Chevelle straddled the curb two doors down, making the streetlight look like it was set up just to display it. New black paint gleamed in the orange glare. Chess was almost afraid to touch it, the way she would be afraid to approach any predator. The car seemed ready to leap forward on its fat black tires at any moment and start swallowing the road.

Sitting on the leather seat was like sitting on a block of ice, but Chess didn’t mention it. Terrible didn’t seem in the mood for jokes. Instead she waited for him to talk, knowing he’d get to it in his own time.

They’d gone about ten blocks through the abandoned streets west of Downside’s red-light district before he did. “First hooker,” he said. “But the third body, dig? Bump ain’t paid much attention before, outside getting pissed. Dealer first. Slick Michigan, know him?”

She shook her head. The heater was starting to work; she could have relaxed if it weren’t for her nerves. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved with a murderous ghost. Another murderous ghost, that is—she still hadn’t fully recovered from the Dreamthief.

Terrible kept talking while she fished out her pillbox and popped a couple of Cepts, washing them down with the beer she still held. “Found him maybe five weeks ago, down by the docks. Nobody think much of it. You know how them docks get. And Slick weren’t exactly the calm type. Figure he gets into a fight, aye? Plays with some boy got a quick knife hand.”

“He was knifed?”

“Aye.”

“But then—”

He glanced at her. “Second one came a couple weeks ago, guessin. Little Tag. He a runner, aye? Ain’t sell, ain’t handle much. Just carryin from one place to another. Found him in an alley off Brewster.”

“I didn’t even know there were alleys off Brewster.” She looked out the window. They’d gone south first, down to Mather. Now Terrible swung the big car left against the light. What was a hooker doing this far off the drag, this close to the end of Bump’s territory?

“Aye. Ain’t much good in them places, neither. Nobody even sure how long he was there. He body…ain’t pretty, if you dig. Hardly any left.” He took a long pull on his own beer and set it back down between his thighs, then took two cigarettes from his pocket and lit them.

Chess took the one he offered her and leaned back in her seat, letting the smoke curl out of her mouth and up toward the roof. “And now a girl,” she said.

“Aye.”

“You still haven’t told me why you think it’s a ghost.”

“Ain’t sure it’s a ghost. Not me, not Bump. Got others thinkin so, though.”

“So you want me to come in and say it isn’t?”

“Be a help, aye.”

“But what if it is?”

He glanced at her as he pulled the car up by a burnedout building. “You think be a ghost, Bump gonna call the Church, ask them take care of it? Or you think he come to you?”

Shit.

His jacket practically swallowed her when she slipped it on. She shrugged it off and handed it back. Best not to look like a little girl. Probably best not to show up wearing his clothes, either. Their casual friendship already sparked enough rumors—although those probably wouldn’t have been as fierce if she hadn’t lost her head and let half of Downside see her practically fucking him in a bar three months before. She shrugged the memory off, too, tried to focus on what was in front of her instead of what was behind.

Fires in steel trash cans added a little heat to the air and cast eerie shadows against the blank, broken walls along the street. Forty-fifth was practically no-man’s-land this far down, a street constantly under siege from Slobag’s men as they struggled to gain more territory. Here and there lights flickered in broken windows, indicating human inhabitants, but for the most part only shattered bottles and dirty needles called the street home.

Chess glanced to her left, across the street. A block away Slobag’s buildings started. Ten or eleven blocks farther north and a few east lived Lex. She shivered and had to force herself not to cross her arms over her chest. If she was going to suffer the cold in order to look tough, she needed to do it right.

The cold was abating a bit anyway as those last two Cepts worked their way into her system. Speaking of Lex, she’d need to go see him in the morning.

A tall woman with a mane of red hair so bright it glowed in the light strode away from the ragtag crowd and headed toward them. Her long legs were wrapped in woolly tights almost the same color, finished with thick knee-high orange-striped socks that peeped from the toes of her red high-heeled sandals. She wore no skirt, only a thick green sweater, and over her shoulders hung a sleek black fur coat. On anyone else Chess would have thought it was rat, but this was Red Berta. It could have been sealskin from before Haunted Week, or just about anything else. She looked terrifying, like a doll dressed by a homicidal child.

“Terrible,” she said, and beneath the brashness of her tone Chess heard her fear, felt it tingle. “Took you long enough.”

He didn’t reply, just pushed his way through the ring of people and glanced back at Chess. She followed, her steps slowing against her will. A dead body was not what she’d had in mind when she went out for a drink. A dead body, in fact, was never what she had in mind for anything, and feeling so many eyes on her did not make it easier.

Some watched with curiosity, some with hostility. Those she could ignore. It was the hope that drove a knife into her stomach and twisted it. A few girls in short skirts, their pale legs the ashy pinkish-white that indicated the beginning of hypothermia, huddled together and stared at her as if she could wave a magic wand and bring their friend back to life. Very few people realized she really wasn’t that powerful. Usually it made her life easier. Tonight it didn’t.

Neither did the unmistakable evidence that at least a few of these girls were using some low-level sex magic. Not unusual for those in their profession, but not comfortable for Chess. Their energy licked over her skin, damp and insistent. Molesting her. Heating her blood against her will. The warmth was welcome; the reason for it was not. Neither were the memories it brought back. She never used sex magic.

Terrible caught her eye. His were shadowed, both from the absence of light and from something like sadness. Not good, then. She steeled herself and went to his side.

Empty eye sockets stared at the sky, filled with blood. It was all Chess saw for a long minute, that dark space where life should be. Whoever had killed the girl hadn’t just taken her eyes, he’d cut the flesh around them so bone peeped from the ragged edges. Chess closed her own eyes and set her feet more firmly on the cracked sidewalk. Not just because of the sight before her; that same invasive magic hung in the air around the girl, stronger than from any of the others.

That didn’t make sense. The girl was dead. Her spell should have died with her instead of insinuating itself farther into Chess’s own energy, curling and spinning, tinged with a throbbing darkness Chess didn’t understand. Instead of running hot it felt cold, dank, and oppressive. Like being shoved into a cave. She knelt by the girl’s pale, motionless arm, hoping to steady her trembling legs.

The girl’s age was indeterminate, in the way of most prostitutes. She could have been fifteen or fifty; the slack, ruined skin of her face told Chess nothing.

Neither did her body. Beneath the blood already freezing into a crackled coating, her limbs were slender, but it was rare in Downside to find people who managed to eat more than a few times a week. Almost everyone was thin, even painfully so.

The only thing that stood out about the girl, save the obvious, horrible fact of her death, was the thick sex energy wrapping itself around Chess, sliding up her arm when she touched the girl’s ice-hard flesh. It couldn’t be hers, it couldn’t belong to her. It had to be an aftereffect of her death. Part of the ritual, perhaps? Had they somehow used sex magic to kill her? The darkness hiding in that energy, smooth and secret as an intimate chuckle, indicated that whatever it had been, it was not a regular sex spell.

“It be the Cryin Man,” someone said helpfully. “He tooken she eyes, so she ain’t see him even in the City, aye?”

“Left his mark on her, too,” another voice piped in, younger and higher with fear. “On her, and on yon wall.”

Chess glanced up, finding the speaker’s pointing finger and following it to the symbol scratched into the wall. Not a rune, as she’d originally feared. A glyph of some kind, like a gang sign. A triangle, decorated with upside-down arrows and crosses. It looked more like a bizarre doodle than something to inspire fear, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood up just the same.

Finding the symbol on the girl took a minute. Chess expected it would be carved into that too-pale skin, but it wasn’t. The mark covered her left breast, just below the plunging neckline of the girl’s hot-pink top. Not cut in. Burned. And burned before she died, because blisters had started to rise on the wound.

“Did anybody hear anything?” She had to clear her throat to get the words out, to busy herself with snapping a couple of quick pictures of the mark to keep from seeing the entire body, as if she could filter away the girl’s lost humanity by viewing it through the lens.

“Cryin Man ain’t let she scream,” someone told her. “Nobody hear nothing.”

“Was anyone with her?” Did it matter? Shit, how was she supposed to do this? Yes, Debunkers sometimes investigated witchcraft-related crimes, but only as they related to cases like Madame Lupita’s or ghost abuse. She wasn’t a detective. How the fuck did Terrible or Bump expect her to look at this poor dead girl and know whether or not a ghost had done this?

Of course…shit, she already knew one hadn’t, at least not alone. Ghosts couldn’t do magic. Unless the girl had been trying out an incredibly strong new spell—not likely, as the kind of power Chess felt wasn’t the kind just anyone could project—her murderer had definitely been human.

Red Berta shoved someone forward, one of the hookers standing in the circle. The girl stumbled on her teetery shoes and righted herself, but not before Chess saw how high she was.

“I hadda go get somethin,” the girl mumbled, swaying in place.

“You left Daisy alone to die.” Red Berta fixed her with a glare that would have made a sober person quake. At almost six feet tall, Berta wasn’t someone to mess with. She’d been a showgirl before Haunted Week—Haunted Week and an attack from a razor-wielding ghost. Berta had survived. Her looks had not.

Chess stood and glanced at Terrible’s impassive face, then back at the girl. “Did you see anything? When you got back?”

“Bettin she saw lotsa things,” someone whispered in the back. “Flowers an puppies floatin upward the sky, aye?”

“Saw the spook.” The girl hugged herself. “Saw it disappear when I come back.”

“You saw the ghost?”

“Aye.”

“What did it look like?”

“Wearin a hat.”

Fear rippled through the crowd as everyone took a step back. “She seen the Cryin Man. Cryin Man wear a hat.”

Before Chess could reply, Berta spoke up. “Terrible.” She nodded across the street.

Chess followed the look with the slow sinking feeling of someone whose night had just gone from worse to deadly.

Slobag’s men watched them from the alley.

Chapter Three

Violence is the worst of humanity’s foibles, and the least necessary. The Church protects you from the need to perform such acts; there is no excuse for violent behavior in modern society.

—The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 347

It wasn’t a large crowd. Five, perhaps six men stood in the shadows, caught by the firelight. They didn’t move when all faces turned toward them. Somehow that stillness was more threatening than sharpening machetes or playing with guns would have been, as if they knew beyond a doubt there would be no reliable defense against their attack.

Then Terrible stepped forward, lifting the bottom of his bowling shirt so the diamond-patterned handle of his knife showed. Chess tried not to respond. On his opposite hip the brushed steel butt of a gun reflected the watery moonlight. When had he started carrying a gun? Usually he didn’t, at least not so obviously.

Next to Chess, Berta reached up and extracted what looked like a machete from the crimson bird’s nest of her hair. In an instant the mood changed from terrified sadness to hot rage. Excitement. Butterfly knives opened in a blur of metal, zippers gave way so sharpened nail files and pipes could be pulled from cheap nylon purses. One of the girls flicked open an ivory-handled straight razor that had to be a hundred years old. Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.

Slobag’s men didn’t move. Fuck! What was she supposed to do here? Slobag’s men were Lex’s men, and she doubted he’d take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed. On the other hand, Terrible was her friend, and the people around her were—well, they were his friends, or his to protect, anyway.

Not to mention the dead body turning to ice on the pavement at her feet.

“Chess,” Terrible said, his lips barely moving. He held his head like he was sniffing the air for prey. “Whyn’t you head back into yon alley, aye? Get yourself offen the street.”

“I have my knife.”

“Naw, naw. Get on out. Ain’t your fight.”

Wasn’t going to be a fight at all, if she had anything to say about it. She held up her hand, intending to pat him on the back or arm, something to show her thanks, but she dropped it before it reached him. It would only be a distraction.

Instead she pulled her phone out of her bag as she picked her way through the black alley. Things rustled and moved in the garbage piled along the battered walls. Rats, probably. Maybe cats or small dogs. She stepped carefully, hearing the sliding shink of Terrible’s knife being drawn as she opened the phone.

The bright screen hurt her eyes and made her feel like a fucking target, standing there in a pool of light. It hit her then what she’d done. Left the fight, picked up a phone. Target indeed. She didn’t have much time.

Her fingers didn’t shake as she scrolled down to Lex’s code name. He was only one of three numbers she had programmed into the phone.

Her ass hit something hard and sharp-edged when she crouched down. A metal box of some kind. Her mind automatically took note of it—it looked like just the sort of place to hide electronic equipment of the kind used to fake hauntings—but Lex picked up before she had time to really register it.

“Hey, Tulip, what you up to this night?”

“Call them off, Lex,” she whispered, but as the words left her mouth she knew she was too late. Someone shouted. The fight was on. They clashed in the middle of the street opposite the alley, giving her a perfect view of what was happening. Not just five or six of Slobag’s men; at least as many again poured onto the street from somewhere. How many had been waiting, and why? Did they just keep an eye on the street, or what?

“Call who off? Ain’t know what you saying. You right?”

“No, I’m not fucking right. Your men, Lex. Slobag’s men. They’re here, they’re—” A scream cut her off. Red Berta in full battle cry, the voice that used to belt out show tunes, striking fear into the hearts of anyone within a few miles. The machete sliced through the air and grabbed a piece of one of Slobag’s men. He howled and stumbled sideways.

Terrible didn’t miss a beat, grabbing the man’s hair and slamming a heavy fist into his face. The man fell. Terrible turned to the next one.

All around were the hookers, stabbing at the men with their small blades, wielding pipes like pros. Sharp heels dug into soft leather shoes. They were holding their own, but they were outnumbered. Even as Chess watched, one of the girls went flying, her screech ending abruptly when her face hit the street.

“The fuck is that sound? Where you at?”

“I’m on Forty-fifth, dammit, Forty-fifth and Berrie, and there’s a bunch of your guys here and they’ve started a—”

“What you doing there? Ain’t nowhere near your place.”

“Can we talk about this later? Call them off, now.”

Metal scraped the pavement. A long, slim knife skittered on the sidewalk across the mouth of the alley, the blade sticky and dark. One of the men fell. His blood steamed in the cold air.

“Shit. A fight? You safe, Tulip?”

“For about the next two minutes. Lex, I’m not kidding here. There’s a fight, and it’s on Forty-fifth and I’m stuck in the fucking middle of it, please find out who it is and call them off!”

Another scream. Blood spurted from one of the hookers’ arms. Chess couldn’t tell which one she was, and in a moment the girl had disappeared, another wounded fighter in a crowd full of them. Over it all Terrible’s face, oddly peaceful, totally absorbed. As she watched he ducked down, catching a man midleap and shoving him over his shoulder and onto the street. His knife flashed in his fist.