Sacrificial Magic

“Here’s Miss Putnam now,” Beulah said. She unfolded her arms and straightened from her elegant lean. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to answer your questions.”

Bitch. She’d barely finished the last word before they all started talking at once. Because it was totally easy for her to make out individual comments from that, right? How stupid were these people?

Asking that question wouldn’t win Chess any friends. And the worst part was that she actually needed them to be—well, not friends, but at least sort of friendly, because there were too damn many of them and she had nothing to go on in the case.

So she stood against the door, waiting for the inevitable moment when someone would finally drown the others out.

The drowner emerged rather more quickly than she would have expected: a man, not tall but solid, with thinning hair and a broad face. “When is the Church going to do something about this? Students are afraid to come to school.”

“It’s been three weeks,” a woman—heavy, officious, sneering—interrupted. “If you people actually cared about us, you’d have done something by now.”

Another voice, she didn’t see whose. “The Church doesn’t care. They’ve never cared.”

“They care about our money,” said another, and as if that were some sort of switch, the yelling started again.

But they weren’t yelling at each other. They were yelling at her, looking right at her with their eyes narrowed and their faces reddening. She pressed herself against the door and shifted her weight, getting ready to duck from the angry voices and their condemnation, to brace herself for the fists and use her own, when she realized what she was doing. Getting freaked out? By these people? Who the fuck were they, anyway? A bunch of officious assholes who thought she owed them something. Fuck that, and fuck them.

So she straightened her back, raised her eyebrows, and just looked at them. Waiting. Sure enough, the shouts turned into speech, into grumbles, and finally into the embarrassed silence of someone who’s just vented their rage and discovered that the subject of that rage doesn’t give a shit.

Which she didn’t. Well, she did, of course she did, but not about them. Or their self-righteous desire to play victims.

She gave them another minute in the silence. “Who are you all, again?”

Balding-and-Stocky glowered at her. “We’re concerned parties.”

“And what is your concern? Do you work here? You have kids here? What?”

The small crowd was suddenly full of shifty eyes. Uh-huh. “I’m Wen Li. I’m chairman of the Student Association.”

“What is that?”

“We help mediate between students in trouble and the school administration.”

A woman—helmet hair, glasses—piped up, “I’m co-chair. Martha Li.”

Yes. They looked perfect for each other.

The introduction game made its circle around the room; every single damn one of them was chair or head of some committee or project or something. Which meant, if her memory served and what she’d learned the day before was correct, that every single damn one of them stood to bank some cash if the haunting turned out to be real. Which made them and their anger about as believable and sincere as a declaration of pure and faithful love from Bump.

After they’d finished she gave them another minute of silence. “And have any of you actually seen or experienced anything here?”

She didn’t expect anyone to speak. She was right. No one did.

“Fine. If anyone has information that might help me, let me know. I really am here to help, and believe me, I want this situation settled just as much as you do. Okay? But if you’ll excuse me, I do have some work to do today.”

She pushed herself through the crowd—well, not pushed, they stepped out of her way—and handed Laurie the list she’d made earlier. “I need to speak to these students individually, and I need an empty room to do it in.”

“Those students have a right to have an adult with them while they’re being questioned,” Wen said.

She wanted to roll her eyes, but refrained. “No, actually. They don’t.”

“They’re—”

“They’re not suspected of any crime, I’m not the Squad, and they’re over fifteen.”

Laurie scanned the list. “Room 122 will be empty in forty-five minutes. You can use that one. It’s down the hall, at the other end of the building.”

Damn, who would have thought Laurie—who still looked just as sour and disapproving as she had the day before—would be helpful? But then, with a roomful of people, none of whom she appeared to like, why wouldn’t she be? “Thank you.”

Beulah still watched her. Well, good. She could quit smirking and do something for Chess, since she obviously had nothing else to do. And since she had keys. And since the crowd apparently looked to her, for whatever the hell reason. “Beulah, will you come with me, please?”

Chapter Eleven

A Church employee never panics in the face of danger, because a Church employee knows the Truth of the afterlife.

—The Example Is You, the guidebook for Church employees

The wreckage of the catwalk still stretched across the theater, a dead steel monster staring at her when she stepped into the room. Beulah brushed past her to hit the lights. Brighter this time. Interesting. And worth mentioning. “There are overheads?”

“Yes, why?” Beulah did innocent very well. “Oh. Sorry, I just didn’t think to turn them on yesterday.”

“Uh-huh.”

Beulah followed her farther into the room. “They’re farther along on the—You can’t think I deliberately left it dark in here.”

“Can’t I?” Hell, why not just say it outright? Wasn’t like Beulah thought they were becoming friends or something. Wasn’t like Chess cared if she thought that, either. The only reason Beulah was there was to open the door and turn on the lights, and to get her out of the office.

“You can believe anything you want to believe. That doesn’t make it true.”

“Wow, you’re so wise.” Chess walked down the aisle, ducking under the catwalk, toward the stage. Checking the camera she’d tied to the catwalk the previous day would be useless; all it could have filmed was a small section of floor, and since it was motion-activated she seriously doubted it would have caught anything.

But there was plenty of work she could still do in the theater.

“Are you trying to be unpleasant, or are you just like this all the time?”

Chess didn’t even glance back. “But gee, you’ve been so nice to me.”

Beulah muttered something; Chess didn’t hear it well enough to know if it was in English or Cantonese, and she didn’t care. All she cared about was searching that backstage area. Alone. She’d wanted Beulah to let her in, wondered if she would say anything about the others; since she hadn’t, and since the theater was open, she’d served her purpose. “You can go now.”

“Oh, am I being dismissed?”

“Do you plan to keep sniping at me? It’s not my fault you have an issue with the Church.”

“Who says it’s got anything to do with the Church?” The amusement in Beulah’s voice made Chess turn around. “Maybe I just don’t like you personally.”

“I guess I’ll have to live with that pain,” Chess replied, turning back to the stage. It wasn’t until the sound of the door closing echoed in the empty room that she realized Beulah had left. And that she herself was smiling. Weird. But oh well.

A set of short black-painted steps led from the floor at the bottom of the rows of seats up to the stage; off to the left a small orchestra pit hid quiet and empty. Chess ignored that for the moment.

Dust hit her nose when she walked across the curtain now crumpled on the stage, sending her into a brief sneezing fit. Ugh. And she couldn’t even have a cigarette to settle it down; the staff at—Wait a minute. Yes, she could. She could do anything she wanted to. What were they going to do, fire her?

And while she was at it she could grab another couple of Cepts from her pillbox.

The overheads revealed a floor covered in dusty footprints; the faint scent of kesh smoke hung in the air, but whether that was recent or from the curtains or, hell, from her cardigan, she had no idea.

She walked around some boxes and a stack of wooden platforms of varying heights, looking for something, anything. Any evidence of ritual magic.

The odds of her finding any were about as good as her odds of getting Terrible and Lex to have a pajama party together. If she’d been able to look the day before … But she hadn’t, and that left them plenty of time to clean up. For all she knew, the minute she’d left the office they’d had an alert raised.

Sometimes, for just a second, it bothered her to be so suspicious of everyone. Then she remembered she was dealing with people, and that people were capable of every sick fucking thing she’d ever experienced or imagined and a whole lot of other shit that even she hadn’t, and that feeling disappeared.

Something creaked on the other side of the curtain.

She stopped, one foot half off the floor ready to take her next step. Her body buzzed. Was that a ghost, or nerves?

It didn’t feel totally like a ghost. It didn’t itch as much as ghosts did. But her skin tingled and crawled an alarm, the kind that told her someone was doing something with magic or ghosts, something they shouldn’t be doing. The kind that told her she wasn’t alone anymore, that made her feel as though a target stood out clear and bright on her head and someone had their finger on a trigger.

For a long, aching minute she stood there without moving, until the sound of the creak began to blur in her memory and she couldn’t be sure she’d actually heard it. Fuck. Her cigarette fell to the dusty stage and she ground it out with her toe.

The silence waited. Breathed around her.

Her muscles ached. This was bullshit. She’d count to five, and then she’d get back to work. One … two … three …

The movement came at four. A tiny blur in the corner of her eye, so fast she couldn’t catch it. Fuck!

Her skin tingled worse. Something wasn’t right. That felt like a ghost, but it also felt like magic. A witch doing ghost-magic? Shit, after Maguinness she really didn’t want to deal with that again.

Too bad it wasn’t up to her. There was a ghost, and there was magic, period. A summoned ghost, maybe, or a ghost working with a mate. Double fuck.

She pulled her knife out of her pocket and snapped it open, used her left hand to grab a handful of asafetida and graveyard dirt. Let them fucking come. She was ready.

What she wasn’t ready for was the fast whoosh of something flying through the air, or the heavy sharp weight slamming into the back of her skull. The dirt and her knife flew from her hands; the floor flew up to greet her. Painfully.

She barely had a chance to realize what had happened before everything went dark.

It was still dark when she opened her eyes, and her head felt like someone had jammed nails into it.

Not that the rest of her was any more comfortable. She felt stiff and smushed

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