Sacrificial Magic

These weren’t really women, of course. They were girls, high school girls. So focused on the small firedish before them, the pocket-sized floral book next to the little portable stang they’d set up—they were fucking serious—that they didn’t even notice Chess rounding the corner of the building and approaching them until she was close enough to hear their individual breath. Her shadow fell over their altar, and they froze.

For a moment they all just stood there—or in the case of the girls, knelt there—looking at each other. What was Chess supposed to do? Magic certainly wasn’t illegal. Quite the opposite. Citizens were encouraged to try their own spells, though the girls were being more elaborate than most. Even if magic had been illegal, Chess’s authority only covered one or two very specific crimes.

And even if it didn’t, the bottom line was that she just didn’t care enough to bust them. Especially not when she was there to investigate their possible haunting; the last thing she wanted to do was set herself up as a horribly strict authority figure. She needed them to talk to her.

Finally one of the girls—her bleached-blond hair made a striking contrast with the warm, pale golden color of her skin—spoke, rather bitchily. “You needing something?”

Right. Her arms and chest were covered; the girls had no idea who she was. “Just wondering what you’re doing. I was about to get in the car and heard you, and thought it might be related to the haunting I’m here to investigate.”

“You the new Churchwitch, then? The new Debunker, or whatany you’re called?”

Chess nodded. “Do you know anything about it, have you seen anything?”

Bleached Blonde shook her head, but her friend—oh, such a typical best-friend type, a little chunkier, a little less pretty, a little more desperate—spoke up. “I ain’t—we ain’t—but Vernal did.”

“Vernal Sze?” The one Beulah had mentioned as a good kid who needed a place to hang out, and Monica had acted as if he was one step down from a serial killer.

The boy who’d apparently scared Aros.

The girl nodded. “Saw in the theater, and in the gym on the later.”

In the gym, too? No one had mentioned a sighting anywhere but the theater.

Of course, it was possible they just hadn’t gotten to it yet. Aros’s notes were as bad as Elder Griffin had implied; after the first couple of pages they degenerated into scribbles and random words like “turtle” and “butler.” Who knew what information he’d gathered?

And he’d disappeared, so she couldn’t even ask him.

“Vernal told you about it?”

The girls glanced at each other, like they needed to check before they answered. Hmm.

“Aye,” said the bleached blonde. The challenging look in her eye grew deeper, stronger; an edge crept into her voice. “Gave the story to lots of people. Sayin it’s proof the Church ain’t doing them job.”

Chess would not rise to the bait. Wouldn’t remind them that they were only alive because the Church was doing its fucking job, and that the general statistic in the District of one ghost-related death per 350,000 people was further proof. If the Church wasn’t doing its job, no one would be alive.

But no, she wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t, wouldn’t, wouldn’t. Instead she just shrugged, let the girl see the comment didn’t bother her. “Do you believe him, that he saw a ghost?”

Another pause. Another glance. “Aye. Vernal ain’t give us the lie, not on a tale like that.”

“Besides, he ain’t the only one seen it,” her friend said. “Were like four of em in the theater, I recall, they all seen.”

If that meant anything at all in cases like this one, Chess would be glad to have that information. As it was, who the fuck cared? So a bunch of kids lied for each other. Yeah, that was really trustworthy confirmation.

They could all be telling the truth, of course, but lying was probably the better guess. “Do you know who the others were? And maybe what they were doing in there that day?” The tray and candle behind the curtain crept back into her head. Had Vernal and his pals been doing something they shouldn’t have been doing in that theater? Not just drinking, as Monica had said, but magic? Summonings, even?

It shouldn’t have been possible. If they had the kind of power required to do that sort of magic, the Church would have found them, and they’d be in school there.

Unless, of course, being from this part of town they’d refused. But even then—She forced herself to stop the mind-wander she was about to take when Bleached Blonde opened her mouth again.

“One of them Goodys should be able give you the knowledge. Ask them.” Her mouth turned down. “In the middle of something, we are. An wanna get it finished up.”

Little bitch. “Right. What are you doing? Memory spells for studying, or a glamour or something?”

No answer. She crouched down herself, bracing one hand on the ground so the weight of her bag didn’t make her tip over. Maybe they were doing a love spell or something equally embarrassing, and that’s why they didn’t want to say?

No. Whatever they were doing, it was not a love spell. Wasn’t any kind of spell anyone should have been doing outside of the Church, and she would have known that even if the girls hadn’t leapt up, snatched the book, and run when she saw the Herb Paris berries in the firedish.

Half an hour later she closed her front door behind her with a sigh, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, and headed for the two-week-old couch. Pretty cool not to have to dodge broken springs when she sat down anymore, yeah, but … That old couch had been one of the first things she’d bought when she moved into the cozy one-bedroom apartment in what used to be a Catholic church. One of the first things she’d ever bought for herself that was permanent, bought for the first real home she’d ever had outside the Church.

But then, she probably could have held on to it longer if she and Terrible hadn’t broken it one night, so she guessed that was a pretty fair trade-off. Blood rushed to her face at the memory; her face, and other places, too. He wouldn’t be there for at least another hour or so.

Which she supposed was fine—or, not fine, it sucked. For the tenth or twentieth time she considered calling him, just to hear his voice. Just to see what he was doing, to know from the way he answered the phone that he was happy she’d called him, that he wished he was with her.

But he was probably busy, and she’d be interrupting him. He’d get annoyed, and she’d look clingy and pitiful. It would be like admitting she needed—no, not admitting, there was nothing to admit. It would be like saying that she needed to have him around, and if she did that he’d be turned off.

How the hell was it that she’d always been so comfortable with him before, but as soon as she’d realized she was in love with him, as soon as she told him that … she was nervous all the time?

So she didn’t press the button on her phone. Instead she pulled out her case file to look over while she waited, and hoped that when he got to her place he wouldn’t be in a worse mood over the fire at the pipe room. Had that really been only the night before? It felt like years had passed.

The girls had been playing with Herb Paris berries, and whatever that book was that they’d snatched from the base of the stang when they ran.

Could have been some sort of love spell, sure. Herb Paris berries were very versatile.

But Herb Paris berries were also used in casting the Evil Eye—among other things—and something told her the girls were a bit more the Evil-Eye-or-other-things type. Perhaps it was the fact that they took off so damn fast. Chess didn’t buy the old “innocent people have no reason to run” line—the only people she’d ever known who did were naïve, stupid, or just plain assholes—but given the shit attitude both girls had given her before she discovered their little firedish crime, she suspected “innocent” wasn’t a word that would describe either of them. It wasn’t a word that described anyone in Downside, really. Certainly not her.

Anyway. The girls and their spell were probably irrelevant. The ectoplasm … that was relevant. The fact that Aros’s notes degenerated further and further into utter nonsense with every page—alarmingly quickly, in fact—was relevant. Had the ghosts made him crazy? Someone doing some sort of illegal magic? Had the stress of the case snapped a spring in his brain? Or was he just fucking insane, and it had finally come out?

What would really help would be a conversation with Aros himself. Too bad nobody seemed to know where he was. He’d dumped off his notes with Elder Griffin, thrown his fit at the school, and took off.

If they hadn’t cleared his cabin on the Church grounds, she might be able to get some information from looking through it. She also needed to know if he had family anywhere, people he might have gone to. That should be in his employee file, but perhaps she could find some of his friends or whatever through the cabin.

The sound of an engine rumble outside—the rumble of a particular engine—drew her from her ruminations. Her heart gave a cheerful leap; most of her other body parts started tingling in anticipation. And there was that damned grin again.

That was so dangerous. So fucking dangerous. And every day that went by only made it worse, only made it harder to face the inevitable moment when he’d decide he’d had enough of her, when he’d get tired of her body and realize who she really was. That he didn’t trust her and never could.

Every day that went by was another day gone. Another day closer to the end.

She popped into the bathroom to give her hair a quick brush, give her face a bit more makeup. She had to tell him where her case was. She had to tell him she’d gone to Lex’s place. Had to tell him right away. Not just because he might find out himself, but because that was the right thing to do, and she wanted to do that.

She threw three more Cepts into her mouth, washed them down just as his key turned in the lock and the wards on the door slipped open around him.

His presence filled the room. He seemed to vibrate when she looked at him. Of course that could be her nerves, but she didn’t think so. It wasn’t the first time it had happened.

She stood up, waited at the juncture of kitchen and living room, trying not to grin like a lovesick lunatic. Trying to be casual. Trying to gauge his mood. “Hi.”

His eyes sparked hard behind their darkness as he crossed the kitchen floor, not speaking. Too much energy moved in the air around him, and when he stood right in front of her—close enough to make her tilt her head all the way back—and reached out to touch her cheek she knew what it was. He’d had quite a day, she guessed; violence clung to him like black oil.

Violence and a wild sort of intoxication from that violence, to be more exact. Whatever it was inside him that made him so good at his job, that made him the most feared man in Downside, had been riding him for hours from the looks of it, the feel of it. Now there was nothing else to hit, and that energy, that almost feral whatever-it-was … wanted to find some other satisfaction. Something or someone else to overpower, something or someone else to subdue, to defeat, to conquer.

She knew he’d never think of it that way. He probably wasn’t even aware of it, that dark bloodthirsty excitement lurking behind his eyes, surrounding him like a vicious cloud. His work—fighting in general—didn’t always do that to him, not that she’d seen, but when it did … Her heart jumped into her throat, then fell straight into her pelvis and stayed there, beating like a hummingbird’s wings.

“The fuck happened here? It hurting?”

“Oh, I just …” She bit her lip. “I got a new case today. And no, it doesn’t hurt, not really.”

“Aye? Ain’t so much?”

“Yeah, it looks worse than it—”

Definitely violence. Even if she hadn’t known from his energy she would have known from the way he kissed her, the way he fisted her hair tight at the nape of her neck, the firm possessiveness of his hand on her bottom as he yanked her up against him, bending her backward. Rough and eager, and that energy infected her, too, made her grab his shoulders, wrap her leg around his.

She bit his tongue just hard enough to hurt a little, her head already swimming. His gasp shot a thrill straight down her spine, shot her temperature up what had to be ten degrees or so, because she was sweating even before he slid his hand between her legs from behind and it was her turn to gasp. A gasp more like—almost embarrassingly so—a whimper. A week was too long, way too fucking long. A minute was too long, it was all too long when he was every fast panting breath she took, when the smell and taste and sight of him blotted out everything else in the world.

She already had one leg around him; she wanted to add the other one, to climb up him and let him take her wherever he wanted to go.

Which he did anyway. Instead of her climbing him, he grabbed her hips, hustled her the few steps into the living room until the backs of her thighs hit the arm of the couch. She drifted over it slowly, controlled by his hold on her.

She needed to tell him. She needed to tell him right away. Now, as he helped her slide up on the couch so he could cover her with his body. Now, before they actually had sex. If they had sex before she told him, it would look as though she’d been trying to hide it from him, as though she’d known he’d be mad and wanted to make sure she got laid first. Or as though she hoped that after, he’d be in such a good mood and so relaxed that he wouldn’t care. It would look like manipulation.

But fuck, she didn’t want to say anything or do anything that might make him stop. Not when his mouth left hers to play with her neck, sucking on it, biting it. Not when she could feel the energy around him changing, that savagery that told her what he’d been doing all day turning into something else, something just as primitive. Just as dangerous. Her heart pounded and wouldn’t stop; desperation choked her.

She ran her palms down his back over his shirt, then up under it over his chest to feel his skin, the thick hair and the scar on the left side, over his heart. The heart beating fast against her hand, almost as fast as hers. The heart that kept beating because of that scar, because of what she’d done.

What she was so glad she’d done. Because if she hadn’t done it he wouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t be there with his hands hot on her back, unfastening her bra beneath her shirt, then sliding around to her front. She wouldn’t be shivering harder and arching her back into those hands, reaching up to grab his hair thick between her fingers.

She swallowed; hard to do with her breath coming so fast in her throat. She couldn’t get enough air to speak louder than a husky whisper, didn’t want to break the kiss long enough to speak at all. But she had to. “I wanted to tell you something.”

In response he lifted the hems of her two shirts together. It almost hurt to have to take her hands off him so he could tug both of them over her head, catching her open bra on the way; the second her arms were free she grabbed him again, feeling as if it had been months and not barely an eyeblink. And every fearful alarm in her brain warned her about that, and she couldn’t ignore it but neither could she help it.

She wanted to continue, to tell him what she had to tell him; instead she put her mouth to much better purpose, tasting the skin of his throat salty from sweat. And while she was pulling the collar of his shirt out of her way she might as well start undoing the buttons, get it off him so he could take off the shirt underneath and she could feel his skin against hers. Her insides buzzed; she felt shivery and hot, like her body was made of liquid just about to hit the boiling point.

Or maybe just at the boiling point. His lips traveled over her collarbone and farther down to tease her nipples in turn, to pull them into the hot cavern of his mouth, and what had been a whimper turned into something even more than that. More like begging, and his eyes flashed satisfaction at her when he glanced up. Pleasure at his victory.

It felt like years instead of a week since he’d touched her, since she’d gotten to feel his weight on hers, his lips on her body; they’d decided it was better not to start anything they couldn’t finish.

She had to tell him. Had to, but the words wouldn’t come out. Not when every cell in her body threatened to explode, not when her body acted on its own accord from wanting his so fucking bad and she knew he felt the same.

She tilted her pelvis up so the ridge of his erection pressed against her through their jeans. Another gasp from him, a mumble of something that sounded like her name but the roaring of her blood made it too hard to hear.

Her thoughts were starting to disappear, to focus less on actual thinking and more on instincts and sensations, especially when he popped open the button of her jeans, tugged the zipper down, and hooked his fingers under the waistband and her panties. She lifted her hips so he could pull them down, his gaze fixed on her bare skin being revealed.

The words burbled up in her chest, flew out of her mouth before she could stop them. Before she even realized she’d thought them. “I hung out at Lex’s place for a while today.”

Pause. Long pause. His head dropped, hanging loose from his neck. His hands stopped moving and left her hips to sink into the couch cushion beneath them. Oh, shit. Even for her—and her track record of saying the right thing, or of not saying the wrong thing, was pretty abysmal—that was bad.

“Aye?”

Just one word, but that one word felt like a slap, so distant, so … so impersonal. Fuck. He wouldn’t even look at her; he sat up, ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck with his gaze focused somewhere off in the distance. She’d known he wouldn’t react well—how could he—but she hadn’t expected him to be this cold.

Kind of a stupid expectation on her part. Particularly stupid given the mood he was in when he arrived. Sure, Lex’s name had come up before, but she hadn’t spent “a while” with him since the battle in the City of Eternity. And Terrible had been there then. She certainly hadn’t been to Lex’s place since then; hadn’t been there in a couple of months, actually, since two nights before Terrible caught them in the graveyard. Hadn’t really been alone with Lex.

Not to mention that having this conversation—any conversation—was obviously not what he’d wanted to do. Especially not when that had been their first chance in a week, and he was so cranked up that her skin felt ready to burst into flame just from his energy touching it.

“My case, my new one? It’s on Twenty-second, the Mercy Lewis school.” It felt rather odd to be discussing work while she lay on the couch naked from the waist up; part of her wanted to grab her shirts or at least her bra, but she didn’t want to sit up, either. If she did that she’d be admitting this was going to be a real talk, a long serious one, not a quick interruption. “He showed up as I was about to leave. I guess someone told him a Churchwitch was there and he wanted to see who it was.”

Actually, that wasn’t right, was it? Someone had told him she was there, specifically. Or they’d described her and he knew who it was. Maybe she shouldn’t mention that, since she wasn’t certain.

“An lucky chances, turns up bein you.”

“Terrible …”

His bowling shirt lay in a careless heap on the floor; the heavy muscles under his skin moved as he dug around in it—shit, she could watch that all day, even through her fear—pulled out two cigarettes, and handed her one.

When he flipped the wheel on his black steel lighter the six-inch flame cast shadows on the walls, on his face; sunset had darkened the room to thick dusk.

“I didn’t ask for the case. They just—Elder Griffin gave it to me, because Aros, the guy who had it before me? He took off and Elder Griffin thought I’d be able to handle it.”

Still no response; still he didn’t look at her. Shit.

Her shirts draped over the arm of the couch where he’d tossed them. It took her a second to flip them right-side-out together; then she pulled them over her head, tugged them down, wished she’d kept her damn mouth shut.

“It’s not like I can say no. This is—Damn it, I can’t help where they assign me, and I shouldn’t have to—”

“They tell you head back his place after?”

She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “No. But I thought maybe I could find something out, maybe I could find out who the spy was, how they knew the pipe room was empty last night.”

The silence changed a little, thawed a little. “Get anything?”

“No. He wouldn’t talk to me about it. At all. I asked as soon as we got to his bedroom, but—” Fuck. Oh, motherfuck, what was wrong with her? She’d almost been off the hook, or at least on her way to it, why had she just said that? Why had she said it that way? Damn it. “Nothing happened or anything, okay? Nothing.”

“Stayed a while, though, aye?”

“I just—I almost died on that fucking catwalk—I was on a catwalk and it fell, that’s how I hurt my cheek—and I didn’t feel like being alone and I knew you were busy, and he was there.”

“Oh, I dig. Hey, maybe you give me the number that dame Cassie, the one wore your face? Next time aught happens to me, I give her a ring-up for company. No worries, aye?”

“He’s my friend, okay, that’s all, and you know that, you know I still talk to him. You said—”

The ringing of his phone interrupted her, loud and annoying. Terrible shot her a this-isn’t-over glare and checked the phone, then answered it. More bad news, probably. The only people she could see him taking calls from at that moment were Bump or Felice, the mother of the daughter he had in another part of Triumph City. No one except Bump and Chess knew about Katie; Katie didn’t know Terrible was her father. And Terrible wanted to keep it that way. “Aye.”

His face paled, so pale her heart skipped a beat before the dull red flush of anger started creeping up his neck. “Aye, what—Aw, fuck. Aye.”

What should she do? Should she touch him? Or would that just piss him off more? What the hell did people in relationships do when shit happened, when the other person was probably regretting being there to begin with and wondering how they could have ever thought they actually wanted to be?

“Coming.” He snapped the phone shut, scooping up his long-sleeved shirt in the same movement and slipping it on. Even in the midst of everything Chess felt a pang of regret seeing his chest disappear; not just because it was his or the fact that she liked to look at it so much—which she did—but because of what its disappearance meant. He had to leave, probably right away, while something awful and painful and all her fault crouched between them like a troll under a bridge.

And he might not be able to come back that night. Hell, he probably didn’t want to come back. Ever. Fuck!

“Get yon shoes on.” His voice was flat; he didn’t look up from buttoning his bowling shirt.

“Why, what—”

“Found a body. Corner man, name of Bag-end Eddie. Just find him in the pipe room, half-burned, dig. Gotta get us up there.”

The fact that he wanted her to go with him should have made her feel better. And she had to admit it did. But not much.

Why did he want her to go? Sure, maybe he wanted to finish their “discussion,” but he was going to look at a dead body. Surely he didn’t think she should be forced to look, too? Looking at dead bodies wasn’t really very high on her Things-Chess-Enjoys list. And yeah, her total knowledge on what people in relationships did might fill a shot glass—especially if she used extra-large letters to write SEX—but something told her “looking at dead bodies” wasn’t a generally accepted togetherness-type activity, either.

Of course, not going might look—Oh, fuck this. “Um, I’m fine to go with you, but … do you actually want me along? I mean—”

The look on his face cut her off, grim and dark. “Bump say me bring you. Ain’t just killed. Say got magic shit all around. Somethin you oughta see.”