Unholy Magic

“Stay on, aye? Gimme a minute.” Over the screams and shouts of the brawl she heard Lex speaking Cantonese to someone, heard several different voices answer.

Chess crouched lower in her not-very-good hiding place, her stare focused on the fight. Berta kept swinging her machete, southpaw. Chess expected to see heads start flying at any second. With her free hand she found her knife; her palm was so sweaty it took her three tries to get a grip on it and pull it out. Just in case…

“Tulip? You there?”

It took her a few seconds to find her voice. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Aye, hang on there. All be over soon. You all hidden up? Stay out of sight. Them dudes, they ain’t know you, dig?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

“What you doing on Forty-fifth?”

“Terrible asked me—”

“Terrible’s there? All by hisself, aye?”

“No, not by himself. There’s a fucking army here, okay? And even if he was by himself—which he isn’t—I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Thought you was fun.”

“I’m not.”

“Why he ask you to go there for, anyhow? Ain’t safe there, you know that.”

“There’s a—there’s a dead girl. One of Bump’s girls.” Hell, he was going to find out anyway, if any of his men made it back safely. Which she guessed they would. A voice rose over the shrieks of the girls on the street, Cantonese ratcheting through the empty air. A call to retreat, she hoped.

“Oh? Looks like somebody getting some payback,” Lex said with satisfaction. The empty eye sockets of the dead girl flashed into Chess’s mind. If he’d been standing in front of her, she’d have tried to slap him.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Ain’t talking about nothing. Just saying, is all.”

“What’s that—I gotta go.” She snapped the phone shut as Terrible appeared at the end of the alley, his broad form blocking out what little light there was. Behind him she saw Slobag’s men becoming shadows again, disappearing into the spaces between the buildings.

“Come on out now, Chess.”

Her legs didn’t want to support her as she stood. More bodies appeared—Red Berta, a few of the other girls, Chess couldn’t tell which ones. All were panting like they were being paid extra to get into it, but they were alive.

Most of them, anyway. The hooker Chess had watched fly through the air did not get up. Neither did four of Slobag’s men. Red Berta and her girls emptied the dead men’s pockets with crisp efficiency, like murderous bank tellers.

Chess dug into her bag and pulled out some tissues, which she used to dab at the deep, swelling cut under Terrible’s eye. She had to brace her free hand against his chest and stand on tiptoe to do it, putting her face only inches from his when he looked down at her.

Their eyes met, and heat flooded her skin. Her heels slammed back onto the sidewalk. “Sorry, maybe, um, maybe you should—here.”

She shoved the wad of tissues at him, felt him take them from her. Too bad he couldn’t take away the confusion—and something like panic—making her stomach feel like someone was tickling it from the inside. Stupid sex magic.

She cleared her throat. “Another half-inch to the left and you’d need a hospital.”

Orange light caught the wet spots on his shirt and illuminated a long rip in one sleeve. Beneath it the flesh was almost as raw as his knuckles.

“Naw, I’m right.” He took the tissues away, sniffled, and pressed them back against his face.

“It’ll scar.”

A deep rumble of laughter. “Guess another scar make a difference?”

He had her there.

“What’s your thinkin on Daisy?”

“Wh—oh.” The dead girl still lay on the pavement. Whitish frost on her skin turned her into an eerie sculpture, like the statues of the original Church leaders outside the Government Headquarters up Northside. Those were carved from white limestone, coated with diamond dust to make them gleam. The rime on Daisy’s dead body created the same illusion, making her mutilated form beautiful.

“I don’t—I don’t know. If it was a ghost, I mean. It’s really too soon for me to tell, it’s so dark and…” Chess shivered. She’d have to tell him about the sex spell, but not now. Not when her blood still simmered a little too fast for comfort.

“Aye. Don’t worry on it, Chess. Maybe you free tomorrow, come back for another look? In the daylight, dig at the walls an all. Bring yon Church stuff, them little machines and all you use.”

“I thought you didn’t think it was a ghost.”

His eyelids flickered and he nodded toward the huddle of girls, counting their money and lighting the dead men’s smokes. “They do. Bump an me, we ain’t so sure. You ain’t think it’s fair chances, them showing up here this night, aye?”

“You think—”

“I pick you up tomorrow round midday, cool?”

She didn’t want to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him; it was that Lex’s words about payback wouldn’t stop echoing in her head. If this was a gang thing, some sort of territory struggle, she did not need to be involved. Her life worked, as much as it could. Getting in between the people to whom she owed her loyalty—the one person to whom she owed loyalty, anyway, all Bump did was sell her pills and run the closest pipe room to her apartment—and the one with whom she swapped bodily fluids probably wasn’t the best way to make sure it kept working.

But there really was no good way to refuse. It wouldn’t just look suspicious, it would be…it would be wrong.

She glanced again at Daisy’s body, abandoned like a busted Dream pipe on the cracked and pitted sidewalk. If it weren’t for the Church, that could have been her. Probably would have been her. Certainly it was what she’d grown up expecting.

So she nodded. “They told me not to worry about coming in tomorrow, not after what happened tonight. No new cases anyway.”

“They give you the day off? How bad your night go?”

“Oh…it was nothing. I got poisoned a little bit. They had an antidote, no big deal.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m here, right? No problem. Where’s the girl who saw the ghost?”

He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Laria. She name is Laria.”

“Yeah, her.” Chess scanned the little crowd of women, picking out the frizzy brown head. Laria stood near the back, a confused look on her face. Chess tried to catch the girl’s eye, but she wasn’t sure if it was possible for anyone to catch the girl’s eye at this stage; she looked like she was ready to keel over backward.

“I get her.”

Laria looked younger close up than Chess had thought. Sixteen, perhaps, or seventeen at the oldest. Her pale blue jacket had stains on the sleeves and a tear in one elbow. When she squeezed her arms tighter around her chest her pinkish-white skin poked through the hole like a turtle peeping from its shell.

“Laria, I’m Chess. Could you tell me what you saw earlier? The man who killed Daisy?”

Laria shook her head. Her clouded brown eyes filled with tears. “Ain’t seen nothin.”

“You said earlier you saw—”

Laria shook her head again. Her hair moved with it like a clump of dirty steel wool.

Chess glanced at Terrible, not bothering to hide her irritation. She had sympathy, sure, but it was late and freezing cold and she just wanted to go home, and Laria’s reticence wasn’t helping anyone.

He gripped Laria’s arm. “You tell she, girl. Only way for us to catch him, dig?”

“I ain’t—”

“Ain’t nothin. You the one left she alone so’s you could go stab up, aye? Least you owe she some knowledge.”

Laria gasped; Terrible’s fist was so tight around her arm that his thumb pressed the second knuckle of his middle finger. “Terrible, you hurtin—”

“Be hurtin worse, you don’t talk up.”

Chess held out her hand. “We can do this tomorrow, can’t we?”

“Come the morrow she won’t get any recall,” he said. “Gotta get what we can now.”

Laria’s cheeks were wet. “He had a hat on. All’s I remember, he had a hat on.”

“He big? Small? You see through him?” Terrible’s grip relaxed, his voice softened. “Come on, Laria. You recall it, aye? You just gotta think on it.”

“He weren’t big. Ain’t much bigger’n me. He were bendin over her when I come close enough to see—he stood up and he was…” Laria swallowed once, then again. “I seed through him.”

“He was transparent?”

“Could see through him,” Laria whispered. “‘Ceptin he looked up at me, under the brim o’ his hat, aye…funny hat, with a point in the center and them flaps on the side, on the ears? All of him clear, his clothes and all, ‘ceptin…” She raised a hand to her face, patted trembling fingers beneath one eye.

“His eyes?” The chill creeping up Chess’s spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.

“Not his eyes,” Laria said, and it came out like the low moan of a wounded animal. “Hers.”

“What?”

Laria started to cry. “Him were wearin she eyes.”

Chapter Four

You must always be vigilant in guarding against the desires of the flesh. Even those acts not deemed illegal can stain the soul in some situations.

—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 278

The knock on the door came just when she’d started to think it wouldn’t. Typical Lex. She opened it, determined not to let her tiredness loosen her lips.

Of course there were other things to do with those. Despite the way she’d hung up on him earlier, he seemed to be in a good mood—at least his kiss indicated he was. She was almost dizzy by the time he pulled away and set a plastic baggie in her hand. More pills.

“Plan on giving me the clapperclaw, Tulip?” His dark eyes gleamed with amusement—or desire. She didn’t bother to analyze.

“It’s no more than you deserve, being so flippant. I thought I was going to get killed in that damn alley.”

“But you ain’t killed.” He opened her fridge and grabbed a couple of beers. “Look, you still here. So whyn’t you tell me what was on the happening?”

She stiffened. “Why do you want to know?”

“Ain’t I allowed some curiosity? You get stuck in the middle of some road brawl, I can’t ask why you was there in the start? Why you always so mean to me?”

“I’m not mean.”

“Aye, you sure is mean.” He kissed her forehead and handed her an opened beer. She watched him slump gracefully onto the couch and lean back, his Buzzcocks T-shirt riding up to expose a thin line of flat stomach. “Especially after I called them men off. But no matter. Come on in here and sit down.”

She drank off half her beer in one nervous swig. She did not want to sit down. If she put herself within easy reach of him, they’d never get around to discussing anything, even if she wasn’t still jacked from the sex magic around that poor dead girl. “Tell me what you meant first.”

“Meant by what?”

“You know what. You said it was about time Bump got some payback. What did that mean?”

“You ain’t really wanna talk about dead folks and that Bump, do you? I ain’t seen you in a week.”

“Just tell me what you meant, and then we can talk about anything you want.”

She didn’t want to ask him if Slobag’s men were responsible for the dead girl. Didn’t want to ask, because fear coiled in her stomach when she thought about what his answer might be. Payback could mean a lot of things, yes, and she honestly couldn’t believe he would have anything to do with men who would cut the eyeballs out of a human head, living or not. But still…

Finally he shrugged. “Lot goes on here, you know that. Sometimes people turn up dead, and no way of knowing who did the killing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You ain’t asked a question.”

“Do you know anything about the dead girl? Do you—do you know who killed her?”

He didn’t act offended, or as though he didn’t understand the question. That, more than the way his gaze grabbed hers and held, made her believe him. “Nay, Tulip. Ain’t had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Don’t know who does—order ain’t come down from us, dig?”

The breath she hadn’t realized she was saving left her in a quiet rush, only to catch again when he said, “Coursen, Bump ain’t say the same thing.”

“What?”

“You hearing right. Can’t say as that girl ain’t payback from somebody decided to take matters into they own hands.”

Without thinking Chess reached into the baggie he’d given her, still dangling from her clenched fist, and extracted a couple of pills, swallowing them with more beer. Hey, she didn’t have to get up early in the morning. Good thing, too, as it was after three.

“’Specially with she so close to us, hanging the border like that. Why she up there? You ask Terrible that one?”

“No.”

“Maybe you oughta.”

Talking to Lex about Terrible made her twitchy, as it always did. It felt like they were talking around something rather than through it. She crossed the open space between the wall and the kitchen and leaned on the countertop, hiding her lower body. “I wish you would stop hinting around and say whatever it is you’re trying to say.”

“I’m saying, you gots a dead hooker. Only it ain’t the first dead hooker I seen about.”

“What? Wait. You mean somebody’s been killing hookers on your side? Slobag’s girls?”

He nodded. “See? I keep thinking you smart, you keep proving me right.”

“And you think Bump’s behind them.”

“Who else?”

She blinked. “No offense, Lex, but they’re hookers. I can think of a lot of who elses.” Like the Cryin Man, she thought, but did not say. Life had taught her ghosts were real, but the Church had taught her to be skeptical when faced with rumors of one, even if the magical evidence of human involvement wasn’t making fine sweat break out on her skin.

“Aye? Like who. They ain’t with a trick, dig, when it happen. Just picked right off’n the street. You think—hey.” Chess watched the nimble movements of his hands as he lit a cigarette and exhaled thick bluish smoke, more fragrant than the cheaper smokes everyone else she knew bought. “You figure it for a spook, aye? Bump bringing you in to catch a ghost.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Ain’t gotta say it. You ain’t got such a stiff face as you suppose, least not with me. I got some practice with you, aye? So Bump bringing you in to see if you gotta kicker doing the killing. Lemme say, Tulip, you sure do get yourself in demand.”

She raised an eyebrow. He grinned. “Oh, you in demand with me, and you know it. How Bump trick you into checking this one out?”

She blinked. There hadn’t actually been a trick, had there? Only the vague, implied threat that if she didn’t do it, Bump might make trouble for her. Maybe invent another debt—she still bought from him, despite getting most of her drugs free from Lex, simply because to stop buying from him would raise suspicion. And she wouldn’t dare visit Slobag’s pipe rooms. Not everyone in Downside stayed with Bump or Slobag. Some switched back and forth. The last thing she needed was to be recognized, even if most of the Chinese gangs—like Slobag’s gang—didn’t hate Church employees on principle.

Not that she didn’t understand. When so much of your culture was based on ancestor worship, to be suddenly told you had to pay to commune with their spirits in a Church-approved fashion had to be a bite. Understanding didn’t make life easier, though.

“No trick,” she said finally, realizing he was watching her decide what to say.

“Just doing it outta the kindness of your heart, aye?”

She nodded. The trap was there, she knew it and she knew what it would be. What she didn’t know was how to get out of it.

“So you gonna help me too, aye?” He stood up and came toward her, his footsteps silent on the floor. She watched him advance, again seeing the trap and this time not caring. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was ready to fling herself into its steel-sharp teeth by the time he stood behind her.

His hand slid over her hips and forward, palm flat on her stomach, fingertips working their way under the waistband of her jeans.

“Maybe ghosts on my side of town, what do you guess?” Smoke from his cigarette touched her skin when he pushed her hair back from her shoulder. His teeth scraped her earlobe and nibbled a line down so he could suck gently on her neck the way he knew she liked. “Think you come over there, help me out?”

“I think I help you out enough already,” she managed. He popped the button on her jeans, slid the zipper down to give himself room to get his hand into her panties. She gasped.

“Think we help each other here, ain’t you? Got anything I can help you with, Tulip?”

“Maybe.” She reached back, finding him hard and ready beneath his jeans and opening them.

He made a low, satisfied sound in the back of his throat, one she’d come to associate with him and the time they spent in his bed. The cigarette flew into the sink and landed with a tiny sizzle. His palms slid up her ribcage under her shirt, under her bra, then back down to shove her jeans and panties off her hips.

“What you say? Gonna help me? Come round my neighborhood, check the sights?” His hand on the back of her neck forced her gently down, bending her over the counter, while one knee pressed the inside of her thigh and urged her legs apart as far as they could go with her jeans pooled around her ankles. His erection butted up against her, hovering, waiting. “Sure could use you, Tulip.”

“Yes,” she managed.

“What’s that? Ain’t sure I caught it.”

She drew as deep a breath as her tight throat would let her. “Yes.”

One hard thrust told her how much he appreciated her answer.

Eight hours later she crossed the empty square in front of the Church with her sunglasses on and a few lines of speed making her heart beat fast enough to get her moving. Lex had hung around until almost five, and she’d woken up to the sound of the phone ringing just after ten. Elder Griffin calling. A new case had arrived unexpectedly, could she come down and start it up?

She pushed the sunglasses up on top of her head once she was inside the dim, blue-lit interior of the hall. It was warmer here, enough that she could take off the coat she was wearing for appearances. All that speed was like carrying a radiator inside her chest anyway.

The hall buzzed with people around her. Other Debunkers, Elders coming from their weekly meeting, Goodys carrying files. Thursday was the busiest day for the Liaisers, those who communicated directly with the dead. The benches along one pale wall were thick with people waiting their turn to be escorted down to the Liaising Rooms, to wait while their assigned Liaiser rode the long train deep into the ground to visit with the pale, emotionless shades of their loved ones or distant ancestors.

Chess suppressed a shudder. That train, and the City itself, were the reasons why she’d chosen Debunking rather than Liaising; she’d shown talent for the latter but couldn’t stomach it. Some days the only thing that kept her alive was fear of the City, and she still hadn’t quite gotten over the night she’d been trapped in the dark on the train platform.

Elder Griffin wasn’t in his office yet. Chess settled herself on the dark, shiny wooden chair next to his door and tried to still her jiggling feet. Maybe that third line had been too much.

“Good morrow, Cesaria. Thank you for coming in. Are you well? No ill effects, I trust?”

She bounced up from her seat and bobbed a quick curtsy. “Very well, sir. Good morrow.”

He turned the ornate iron key in the lock of his office door and ushered her in, closing the door behind them. “Sit down, my dear.”

She did, waiting in the cushioned armchair across from his massive stone desk. She’d always loved this room, loved how peaceful it felt. But then, she’d always liked Elder Griffin as well, and knew the feeling was mutual, so perhaps it wasn’t just the décor that made the room feel like a sanctuary.

He sat down at his desk, the tall window framing him. Pale sheers turned the harsh winter sunlight into a hazy glow that illuminated his hair like a halo and touched every inch of the room. Ivory walls, soft gray stone, leather, dark wood. An antique globe in one corner had always fascinated her; she could have spent hours studying all those lines and shapes where the old country boundaries used to be.

And books everywhere, lining the walls, stacked under glass-topped tables with their spines out. The shelves bowed beneath their weight, and where there were not books there were bowls of herbs, rows of consecrated skulls and bones to be used for spells. On the wall behind her was a flat television tuned to the news service with the volume down and the captioning on; when she left, she knew, he would put the sound back up to keep him company while he worked. It was touches like those that made her comfortable with him, made so many others comfortable with him as well.

Today, though, he didn’t look comfortable himself. Without the makeup that made his face a pure mask on Holy Days, she could see shadows under his eyes, and his brow furrowed as he used another key to unlock his desk and extract a file.

“This came in two days ago,” he said, placing the file on the desk with exaggerated care, as if by placing it in the exact center he could emphasize its importance. “The Grand Elder and I have had several discussions about it. Yea, we have found ourselves concerned about it, and decided in this case to circumvent the normal process and give the case to you.”

“I thank you, sir,” she said, leaning forward in the chair, “but I’m a little confused. Why me?”

“Your…your handling of the Morton case, my dear. You proved to all of us then that you were capable of discretion, as well as being a fine investigator. This is a sensitive case. Are you familiar with Roger Pyle?”

Had there been a drop of moisture in Chess’s mouth, she would have spat it out. As it was, she tried to swallow and managed only to produce a dry clicking sound. “The actor?”

Elder Griffin nodded. “I believe he is, of some sort.”

“He’s haunted?”

“He is reporting a haunting, yes. Apparently he has just moved into a new house and has been having some problems.” He pushed the file forward so Chess could take it. “It’s all here.”

Papers and photos slid out from between the pale covers of the file when she opened it. “He took pictures?”

“He has a lot of documentation.”

She didn’t respond. They both knew how easily documentation could be faked, especially documentation like this. Pictures of hazy gray shapes, of walls covered with shiny streaks that looked like ectoplasm but could have been anything. The deed and blueprints to the house, and a clipping from an old BT newspaper. Chess scanned it.

She looked up. “The previous dwelling was a murder scene?”

“That seems to be the case, yes.”

What was it with murder this week? Hearing about murders, seeing dead bodies, now the possibility of tangling with the ghosts of murder victims—hardly her ideal way to spend a few days.

Elder Griffin shifted in his seat. “It was the decision of the Elders that given your…experience with malevolent entities, your handling of Ereshdiran…”

“I’m the go-to girl for murderous ghosts?”

His eyebrows rose. She couldn’t tell whether he was amused or displeased. “We felt you were the logical one for the case, yes. If you find yourself uncomfortable, we can assign another Debunker, of course, but I don’t have to tell you what a case like this could do for you.”

She waited for him to continue. She’d take the case, she already knew that. When the Elders made a decision it was best to abide by it.

And she couldn’t help it. The thought of handling something like this, a career-making case, appealed. Agnew Doyle was still coasting along on the success of his Gray Towers Debunking, and probably would for years.

Doyle. There was a name she thought of as little as possible. He stayed well out of her way these days. As well he might—after Terrible beat the hell out of him for hitting her, Lex had taken his shot, too.