Chasing Magic

Terrible glanced at her, then back at Bump. “Burnjack say him were yellin when him come onto the street, just jumped him on Yellow Pete, started beatin him.”

“Yellow Pete was the dead guy? The dead guy killed by this one, I mean.”

He nodded. “Were a street dealer, dig, down Seventieth.”

“So why was he near my apartment?”

“Ain’t knowing on that one. Could be him live there, maybe gotta dame there, family, ain’t know.”

Right. It didn’t matter anyway, did it? “Does Burnjack know what the ghost was saying? Did he catch any of it?”

“Asked he on that one, too. Said him only caught a word or two, thinkin be a name. Agneta. Agneta Katina. Be a dame, he said.”

Hmm. “Girlfriend? Wife? Daughter?”

“Naw. Ain’t married. Ain’t sure he likes the dames, dig. Never seen him with any.”

“Oughta give Berta the fuckin ask, yay.” Bump poked at the body with the tip of his cane, for no good reason Chess could fathom. “Do her got one onna street that fuckin name? Maybe her got some fuckin knowledge on it.”

Terrible nodded.

Okay, this wasn’t getting them anywhere. She hated to do it, didn’t want to do it, but she didn’t think she had a choice, either. “I need to get his clothes off.”

Bump snorted. “Ain’t had the thinking you into the fuckin dead ones, Ladybird.”

Chess gave that remark the response it deserved—which was none—and reached for the tattered, singed remnants of the shirt on the body.

Terrible was faster. He always was. “Ain’t you do it, Chess. Lemme, aye?”

His eyes caught hers. Warmth rose in her chest, spread through her whole body. Looking into his eyes—into him—was a high she could never get tired of. Bump disappeared, the mutilated corpse on the table before them disappeared, the icy air around them disappeared. It was just the two of them, standing so close the warmth of his body caressed hers.

She reached up to touch his face, meaning to pull it down to hers so she could kiss him, when Bump cleared his throat. Loudly. The moment ended.

“Thinkin we fuckin get on the move this fuckin night? Maybe you quit on the cuddle-ups, get some attention on the fuckin job, yay?”

Asshole.

Terrible reached out for the buttons on the shirt. And fell.

Chess was already moving when his eyes started to roll back in his head, thrusting her arm in front of him over the body. She couldn’t catch him, couldn’t stop him from falling, but she could at least keep him from face-planting into a corpse.

Or she could quit fucking playing around and figure out a way to make it stop happening. Another good idea might be to get her damn head together; she’d felt the magic, she should have known it would affect him. She’d been so busy getting mushy she hadn’t been focusing, and that was a Bad Thing.

He was out for only a second. That was usually the case when he touched something— Wait. What the fuck?

The body on the table—Gordon Samms’s—was empty. The soul inside it was gone. So there shouldn’t be much for the magic to work on, it shouldn’t still feel as strong as it did. Yes, she should feel it, of course, but not that much. And it shouldn’t be strong enough to do that to Terrible.

Nobody spoke as Terrible stood up. He didn’t look at her. She didn’t need him to. The color rising up his neck, the stiffness of his movements, spoke clearly enough, even if she didn’t already have a pretty good idea what he would say.

“Okay,” she said finally, tossing the word into the silence as if it didn’t matter. “So I’m not just feeling residual magic, I guess. Whatever the spell is, it’s still—there’s still a bag on him or something, there’ll be something there. Bump, you have his wallet, did anyone search his other pockets?”

Bump shook his head. “Figured on letting you have the fuckin job, dig, you the one got the handle on it.”

It was so cool the way he was always thinking of her. She suppressed the eye-roll and dug around in Gordon’s front pockets, stopping at the left one when she pulled out a spell bag about the size of a walnut. Darkness rolled up her arm in waves. Not good; of course it wasn’t, what did she expect?

She set the bag on the table near his feet, to check when they were done, and kept searching. Nothing else. Just the spell.

So why did his body still radiate magic, why did it still make her tattoos itch and sting the way ghosts did?

Terrible started to reach for Gordon’s shirt buttons again, then stopped. “All cool now?”

“No.” Her first instinct was to grab his hand and pull it back, but not only would he really not like that one bit—how childish did she want to make him look? She didn’t see it that way, but she knew he would—but she didn’t want to touch his skin with anything that had touched that spell. Like her gloves. “There’s something in the body, still.”

His face darkened; he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, still not meeting her eyes.

For a second she considered asking Bump to help her, but … yeah, like that was going to happen. No, lucky Chess got to strip the corpse all by herself.

Naked, it was even more pitiful—and gross, but she’d expected that.

What she hadn’t expected was the faint teeth marks—dog teeth marks, psychopomp teeth marks—on Gordon’s upper thigh. What she hadn’t expected was the familiar milky-blue cast on his skin, the coloring she hadn’t seen on his face and hands because they were mutilated or dirty.

“Oh fuck.” She jerked back, her hand automatically going to cover her mouth; she caught it just in time. “Shit.”

“What?”

Her stomach roiled and shifted. It didn’t matter, she tried to tell herself. Gordon Samms had to die, she’d had no choice, there’d been nothing else she could do. …

That was Fact, and Truth, and she knew it. But her throat still ached as she forced herself to speak. “He was alive. He— I thought it was a ghost stuffed into his body, that he was dead before he attacked Pete, even, but he wasn’t. He was alive. He was still alive.”

Bump and Terrible watched her: Bump with impatience, Terrible with concern, but neither with understanding. Right, of course they wouldn’t know.

“I killed him,” she said. “My psychopomp killed him. He was alive, and my psychopomp ripped out his soul and killed him.”

She would not throw up. She would not cry, either. She hadn’t had a choice. And, as she recovered from her initial panic, she realized that she really hadn’t had a choice. If he was still alive and moving—or at least, if his soul was still in his body and he was moving, what the fuck—after Terrible crushed his throat and head, then there hadn’t been any other way to kill him, and there hadn’t been any way to subdue him, and she’d done the only thing that could be done save for literally chopping him into pieces while he watched.

That made her feel better. Some. But still … she’d used magic to kill someone. She’d used her psychopomp to kill someone, and that was different from using a real weapon to save her life when she was being attacked. Using magic to commit a murder … that was an automatic death sentence.

Of course, so was killing a psychopomp and carving an illegal sigil into someone’s chest to prevent them from dying, and she’d already done those, so what the hell.

The thought almost made her smile—not quite, but almost. At least it loosened her chest enough for her to take a deep breath.

“You right, Chess?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Um, yeah, I’m okay. Come on, let’s see if we can figure out what’s inside him or whatever.”

Bump raised his eyebrows. “Any fuckin place I gots the thinking of where some shit maybe got stuffed into, I ain’t for fuck wanting get my fuckin look-see in.”

Eeww. She hadn’t thought of that. “Yeah, I’m not really, either.”

Terrible shifted his weight beside her, his arm touching hers. “I cut he all open, aye? Straight down, we get a look inside.”

“I’ll check his mouth first,” she said, moving to do exactly that. What there was of his mouth; his teeth wobbled at odd angles—the few still remaining did, though she had no idea how many of them he’d had before Terrible used his skull as a footrest—and beneath the skin his jaw felt like gravel in a sack.

It made her job easier. His lips stretched open wide enough for her to fit her latex-covered hand inside; she wiggled her fingers in his throat, swallowing the sympathy gag threatening to rise in her own. The man was dead, after all. She could shove her hand all the way down into his stomach and he wouldn’t feel it or care.

“I don’t feel anything.” Except tonsils. Ugh.

Terrible pulled out his knife. “Straight down, aye?”

“I guess so.”

The point of the blade slid into Gordon’s flesh and disappeared, moving like a zipper’s tongue from the base of his throat to his groin. Terrible glanced at her. She shook her head.

“Yay, let he have the keeping on he fuckin cock.” Bump grinned. “Ain’t fuckin wanna see that come off nowheres.”

Ah, Bump. Polite as ever.

Silence reigned as Terrible made another cut perpendicular to the first across Gordon’s abdomen. He kept his left hand above the skin, making sure not to touch, but Chess wondered how strongly he felt it, how hard he was fighting against that horrible darkness rising like steam from Gordon’s innards.

He stepped back. “Cool?”

“Yeah, I—yeah.” What was she supposed to do, reach in and start pulling stuff out? Shit, what was she doing, why was she doing this? How the hell had she ended up there, in a freezer, about to shove her hand into a corpse like it was a cereal box and she was looking for a prize?

Did it matter? Addiction led to working for Bump, working for Bump led to falling in love with Terrible, and it would take weeks spent pawing around inside dead bodies to even come close to making her wish she didn’t have him. She guessed all things considered, messing around with body parts was a small price to pay.

That didn’t stop her insides from jerking a warning when her fingers closed around something she was pretty certain was Gordon Samms’s stomach.

“How’s it feelin, Chessie?”

“Really fucking gross,” she managed. “And yeah, still powerful. Can you cut this open?”

That was what did it. When Terrible cut the stomach open so she could see what remained of Gordon’s last meal … she barely made it to the wall before throwing up, humiliated to be doing it in front of Bump, humiliated to be doing it at all, but unable to stop herself.

Terrible’s hand in her hair, gathering it behind her and holding it out of the way. His other hand on her back, rubbing it in slow circles until she finally managed to get herself under control. “’Sall cool, baby, aye? No worryin on it, ’sall cool here.”

She started to raise her hands to her streaming eyes and nose but he stopped her, turning her instead to face him while he wiped her face with a rag he’d gotten from somewhere. It was smudged with motor oil on one side but clean elsewhere. Even if it wasn’t, she would have been grateful. “Thanks.”

“Aye.”

Bump nodded when she returned to the table. “Ain’t fuckin put the blame on you, Ladybird. Fuckin sick, yay.”

What? Had Bump—had Bump just been nice to her?

How the hell was she supposed to feel about that? Ugh. Who cared. She had way more important things to worry about.

Like the fact that as the pile of internal organs—ugh, ugh, ugh—grew, she wasn’t finding any other spell bag, no spell ingredients. But everything felt like ghosts and magic, every part of him she touched. As if the spell was part of him. How could that happen?

“Ain’t finding shit, yay, Ladybird?” Bump shook his head. “Got he all fuckin emptied up, what you fuckin do on the now?”

“I don’t know.” She eased the gloves off, trying but failing to keep the blood off her skin. When she got home, she was going to spend an hour or so in a very hot shower, and maybe Terrible could pour bleach over her every couple of minutes. “I don’t know. Let’s see what’s in the spell bag, I guess.”

She slipped on a fresh pair of gloves and jerked the tip of the iron blade she kept in her pick case through the black stitches at the top of the bag.

The rough edges of the fabric fell open, revealing a—well, damn. The spell was about the size of a walnut because it was a walnut—a large one, but a walnut all the same.

She dug the point of her knife into the crack in the shell and pried it open. Blood oozed out. Thick dark blood, so clotted that for a second it looked like some sort of rotted fruit inside the shell.

Her stomach gave another heave, but she ignored it. Not just because she didn’t want to go through that again but because part of her was honestly fascinated. How the hell had he—the same spell caster, the same man—done that? What the hell was that spell?

“Ain’t lookin so fuckin bad.” Bump leaned over the table, peering down. “Fuckin small, yay?”

“But really strong.” Were those clots in the blood, or was something else in there? “Blood … I think it might be corpse blood, like from a murder victim, or maybe menstrual blood. When someone’s using blood like that in a spell, they’re not fucking around.”

Of all the things she could have done without that day, having to say “menstrual” to Bump was—okay, not the biggest or the most important, no, but it was certainly on the list. Not because she was embarrassed; she wasn’t. She just didn’t want to have to discuss anything remotely related to the female reproductive system with him.

Sure enough, he grinned. “Yay, seen me some of that blood fuckin turn dames into—”

“There’s hair in there,” she interrupted, holding one of the hairs up with her gloved index finger and thumb. “See? It’s been tied in knots, too. I wonder if it’s his.”

It probably was. The fingernail clipping she found might have been, too. But the rat’s eye, the three sharply bent pins, the tiny pieces of eggshell and feather, the ball of cobwebs and wax—and were those fish scales?—definitely were not.

By the time she’d finished laying it all out in an orderly if grisly row, her neck ached. As did her head, because she had a pretty good idea what those ingredients were for, what the spell did. “I think that’s it.”

“Aye?” Terrible reached over, offering her a drag off his smoke. She took it. “What’s on with the blood, then?”

“I don’t know. I guess it’s clotted, old, you know?”

“Naw, that ain’t it.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Too thick, leastaways what I’m thinkin. Old blood don’t get … rough like that, dig? Gets thicker, aye, an darker, but not like that.”

Well, she guessed he would know. Yeah, she’d seen lots of spilled blood in her life, but she probably hadn’t paid as much attention to it, had a chance to observe it as time passed, the way he had. “Yeah? You think something’s mixed into it?”

He shrugged. “Ain’t can say on that one. But that ain’t usual blood.”

“It feels kind of grainy.” She rubbed it between her fingers.

“Ain’t should.”

“Shit. I have no idea how to analyze it or whatever.”

“Ain’t you got you a fuckin lab, up you Church? They got the fuckin skills run it all through, yay?”

She stared at him for a second. “Sure, Bump, how about if I head on in there and ask if they’ll test the blood from a spell I found on the body of a man I killed with my psychopomp? That’ll be no problem at all.”

He hunched his shoulders a little, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Were only giving the fuckin ask, yay, no needing to get all fuckin rumbly-sharp on it.”

She glanced at Terrible, whose features were arranged into the carefully blank look he always had when she bickered with Bump. He’d been wearing that look more and more lately, hadn’t he?

Something to worry about later. “It might be some sort of powdered herb in there, or … well, almost anything can be powdered. Bones, animal parts—I don’t know how to figure it out, really. But whatever it is, this is a fuck of a spell.”

“Know what the purpose is?”

“Yeah, I think so. The hair, the fingernail clippings—it’s a binding spell. A control spell. I don’t know for sure how it works or how magic got inside him like that, but I think the spell is the reason why he killed Yellow Pete and attacked us. The spell made him do it.”

Terrible considered that for a second. “Be why he ain’t died, too?”

She nodded, the realization taking shape in her mind as she spoke. “His soul—if the soul is under that much control, I mean, if it’s been so strongly ordered to carry out a particular task, it’ll force the body to keep going. Like, you know how under hypnosis, people can be injured without feeling it?”

“Aye.”

“That’s kind of like what this is. His soul isn’t his own, it’s powered by someone else, which means his body is powered by someone else. So it doesn’t matter what happens to his body. As long as it can move, it will.”

They were silent for a minute, absorbing that. With every passing second the implications grew worse; with every passing second the blood on her gloves looked darker, more threatening.

Terrible finally spoke. “So whoever made that spell got heself a killer ain’t can be killed, aye? Got heself a weapon can be used anyplace.”

She nodded.

Bump raised his eyebrows, tilted his head. “Damn, then, Ladybird. Lookin like you got some fuckin tough work coming, catchin em all.”

Chapter Five

And they had laws to cover all sorts of unnecessary things, because they did not have Truth to keep the peace.

—A History of the Old Government, Volume V: 1950–1997

She’d just tucked her new psychopomp into her bag and headed through the vast dark-wood hallway when Elder Griffin stepped out of his office and smiled. “Ah, good morrow, Cesaria. I trust you are well?”

She gave him a quick curtsy. “Very well, sir.” Aside from the scrapes and the bump on her head and the fear a decent night’s sleep hadn’t chased away completely, of course, but that wasn’t something she could tell Elder Griffin about. Sure, she liked him a lot, and sure, he liked her, too, but some things were best kept to herself. “And you? Nervous?”

“I confess I am, a bit.” His face colored slightly, almost pinkish beneath his pale hair. “It seems to be coming up awfully fast. You are still— That reminds me. Come in, please?”

Elder Griffin’s office soothed her; it always did. The smell of herbs, the shelves stuffed with books and jars of spell ingredients and skulls and bones … Those shelves were empty today, of course, since he’d be moving to a new position after his wedding, and boxes sat everywhere on the carpet, but it was still his office. His heavy desk before the window, and his antique globe on a stand near the small easy chair. Chess especially loved the globe. Seeing where the countries had divided in the days BT—Before Truth, when people still believed in gods and the dead hadn’t risen to kill so many people—fascinated her.

She sat down in the wooden chair before his desk. “Yes, sir? Is everything okay?”

He smiled, that peaceful smile that made him look so kind. He was kind. He was, in fact, one of the only—no, the only—truly, completely kind person she’d ever met in her life. “Perfectly well, my dear. I simply forgot to have you sign for your bonus yesterday. And I confess I am a bit at loose ends today. So much happening …”

“Of course.” She signed the form he handed her, acknowledgment of receipt for the bonus check attached. Nine grand, the standard amount. And she could use it. Yeah, she’d gotten a pretty good chunk of change back when the whole Maguinness/Baldarel thing had gone down, but after her new car, new couch, and various other expenses—days at the pipes, a couple of nights here and there with Terrible at a hotel in Northside … she was doing okay, but it was always good to have more.

Especially since, if things were heating up between Lex and Bump—which it appeared they were—she wouldn’t be getting her pills at a big discount from Lex anymore.

Paying full price again. Before Chester Airport, before her deal with Lex, she’d been spending a few hundred a week. She somehow suspected it would be more now. She’d been stepping on it some, the last few months: a few extra here or there, two instead of one or three instead of two, or the couple right before bed that she’d learned meant she felt human still when she woke up in the morning … whatever. They cost what they cost, and she needed them, so she’d pay it.

Elder Griffin slipped the form into the Darnell file and set it down. “You are still attending, correct? Along with your—your young man? You are bringing him to the wedding?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t miss that.” She wouldn’t, either. Every Church employee in Triumph City was invited—that was standard protocol—but he’d made a point of asking her, and of asking her to bring Terrible.

Or, well, he hadn’t exactly said “Terrible,” because he still didn’t know his name. She wasn’t quite sure how to bring that one up.

Of course, she could bring it up as the answer to his question. “What is his name, again?”

Shit.

She kept forgetting to talk to Terrible about it and ask what he thought. He had several forms of ID with different names on them, she knew; they were never used but were there just in case. Did he want to use one of those names? Did he want to be called “Terry,” as his daughter, Katie, called him? No, he hated that—she didn’t blame him. Katie’s mother had started that one.

Elder Griffin watched her, his eyebrows a little higher than usual over his blue eyes. Right. It really shouldn’t take so long to give him a piece of basic information.

Shit again. “Well, see, sir, he … he grew up in Downside, you know, and he never had any family or anything. …”

The eyebrows rose higher. “Indeed? I had no idea.”

Shit, he was right, wasn’t he? Stupid that she hadn’t thought of it before, but she’d never specifically told Elder Griffin that the man she was “seeing” was from Downside. She had no idea if he’d assumed so or what, but his expression—well, his expression and the fact that he’d just fucking said he didn’t know, duh—told her he hadn’t.

But she didn’t want to lie to him, either. She wasn’t going to lie and she wasn’t going to try to hide Terrible or who he was. She loved him and he was hers, and that made her so proud her chest hurt, and if anybody didn’t like it they could go fuck themselves.

“Yeah, I mean, yes. So he never actually—nobody ever named him. But he used to get into fights a lot, and people started to call him Terrible. So that’s what he’s called.”

Pause. “I see.”

Did he? She scanned his face for signs of disapproval or criticism but found none. A weight she hadn’t realized was there lifted from her chest. No, of course Elder Griffin wouldn’t do that; he wasn’t like that.

He nodded. “I shall look forward to meeting him, indeed. I take it things have gone well, since your … disagreement?”

Her face warmed. “Um, yes. And he’s, he’s looking forward to meeting you, too.”

“Excellent,” he said. “Well, I should get back to trying to work, I suppose, while I am still in this position. Have you heard from the Elder Triumvirate, to schedule your interview?”

“Wednesday.” She hesitated. “I’ve never done an interview like this before. Is there anything specific you want me to say, or …?”

“’Tis nothing to be nervous about. They shall only ask about me and how you feel I handle my position here. Please say whatever you feel is best.”

“Do you know yet where they’re going to send you?”

“I do have some suspicions, indeed, but your interview is part of the process, as they want to determine where I will best fit.”

“Should I tell them you’d be a great warden in the spirit prisons?”

His smile widened. “I confess that is not a position I mentioned as one I should like to fill.”

The light from the window behind him faded as a cloud covered the sun, adding to the unexpected solemnity of his next words. “I find myself growing weary of being reminded so often of the depths to which people will sink, Cesaria. Debunking … ’tis so important, but I would like, perhaps, to work in an area where there is more hope. More proof of the good in humanity, rather than the bad. Does that make sense?”