Chasing Magic

She nodded, trying to smile, trying to look as optimistic as he did. A place, or a job, where the negative aspects of humanity weren’t readily apparent? Where there was goodness and kindness everywhere?

It sounded great, yeah. Too bad it didn’t exist.

Gordon Samms lived—had lived—at Eighty-eighth and Wood, almost in Cross Town. Still Downside, of course—windows devoid of glass, walls and streets thick with graffiti, litter, and grime made that clear—but close enough that a few of the buildings they drove past appeared almost decent.

More than a few, in fact. Chess noticed a sold sign outside one and fresh paint on a few others.

Terrible nodded when she pointed them out. “Some parts here got new ones movin in, fixin em up. Still cheaper’n Cross Town, dig.”

“Gentrification.”

He glanced around. “Aye. Bump gave me the tell on the other day, gots people askin on a few him places. Them all lookin for cheap.”

“But he’d never sell.”

“Fuck, no. Glad on it, too. Don’t even wanna think on living any elsewhere, aye? Be all bored up.”

“Me, too.”

He smiled at her, the kind of smile that made her breath freeze in her chest for a second because happiness had exploded there and squeezed out everything else. “Aye. Know that one.”

He did, too. She remembered him saying it—sizing her up so neatly—in her bathroom one night, only a couple of days after they’d started investigating at Chester Airport. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, he’d said, and she’d blushed and fidgeted and got all weird and uncomfortable, because it sucked to think someone could figure her out so easily, that someone could understand her so quickly.

But he had. He still did. And despite the tiny prickle of nerves in her stomach—if he could figure that out so fast, if he knew so much about her, sooner or later he’d know all the bad stuff, too, and how could he understand then, how could he stay with her?—it made her feel good.

What didn’t make her feel good was thinking of what he’d just said about not wanting to live anywhere else, and thinking about the sigil, and where they were headed at that very moment. Terrible had touched Gordon Samms and passed out. Dark magics did that to him. And if word got out, if news of that spread … how could he stay in Downside, even if someone didn’t take advantage of that weakness and kill him outright?

What would he do if he had to leave Downside? What would he do if he couldn’t fight anymore—if he couldn’t do the one thing he was proud of being able to do.

And she’d stolen that from him.

Well, she’d just have to fucking fix it, then, wouldn’t she? He pulled up against the curb, taking his hand off her thigh to shift into neutral. “Hey, Chess. Maybe—I been thinkin, maybe I ain’t should go along with you. To that wedding, dig. Might be—”

“What? Why?”

“Just—you don’t need me there, aye? Thinkin they all give you the squint-eyes iffen they see me.”

Her first thought was to wonder where this had come from, why he was bringing it up now, but then, she knew, didn’t she? A look at how regular people lived, a bit of thought about the difference between Downside and the rest of Triumph City, between Downside and Church headquarters, and it was clear enough. Or at least why he was talking about it at that moment; he’d probably been thinking it already. Shit. “I don’t care what they think.”

“You oughta, though. ’Speople you workin with, it matters.”

“No.” Damn it. They were out in public, where she couldn’t touch his face or climb into his lap or whatever else to change his mind. She grabbed his hand instead, low, where no one would see. “What they think doesn’t matter. They don’t have any effect on how I do my job or what cases I get or anything else, and even if they did I don’t care. I want you there with me. I want you to meet Elder Griffin.”

“Have he thinkin you lost yon mind.”

“No, he won’t. And you know what, even if he does, I still don’t care.” She squeezed his hand to make him look at her, so she could look in his eyes. Or where his eyes were, because his sunglasses were on. “I care what I think, and I want you there.”

He hesitated. “Don’t wanna fuck things up for you—”

“You won’t. You’re not.” She clenched her jaw so hard it hurt. It wasn’t that big a deal, really, it was just … just that she finally had a chance to be with him in public, to show everyone that she belonged to someone, that she mattered to someone, and that she was proud of that. Because she was. “I want you to be there.”

“Maybe you—”

“It’s—it’s important to me, okay? Please come with me.”

“Don’t think you need—”

“Terrible. You are coming. And if anybody doesn’t like it they can fuck off. That includes you.”

His lips twitched. “You givin me the orders now, aye?”

“Yes. So cut it out.”

Another pause; she could see him trying to come up with another argument and plastered a don’t-even-fucking-try-it look on her face.

Finally he sighed. “Aye, right, then. But iffen you wanna change yon mind, you just say.”

“I won’t.”

They’d parked near the dull industrial-green façade of Gordon’s building, peeling and dusty in the afternoon sunlight. He opened her door and led the way up the semi-intact sidewalk. Hopefully they’d get some information in there.

Or not. The second she picked the lock and Terrible swung open the door to Gordon’s apartment, she knew they wouldn’t find anything of use—or, to be more exact, they wouldn’t find anything magic-related. No energy beckoned them farther into the room, no dark power set her tattoos on fire.

A good thing, yeah, but not helpful.

Searching through Gordon’s things wasn’t much better. Playing cards were everywhere—scattered over the carpet and furniture, decks tidy on shelves and the kitchen counter. Chess stopped counting them when she hit twenty-three.

More signs of Gordon’s habit showed up in other places. Books on poker and blackjack strategy by the bed, in the bathroom, lying with their spines bent on the floor. Racing forms. Sports pages from four different newspapers. Sports magazines. Poker chips made bright circles all over the dirty brown shag carpeting; torn lottery tickets and betting slips covered them, confetti for a loser’s parade.

“Lots of boxes around,” she commented as they entered the dim, stale-smelling bedroom. Gordon hadn’t been too worried about personal cleanliness; a dark sort of coffin-shaped smudge on the right side of the bed indicated both where he slept and that he didn’t change his sheets much. “Was he moving or something?”

“Ain’t got any on that.” Terrible shifted a few of the boxes so he could get to the closet doors, then stopped. “Hold up. Check this.”

She crossed the dirty carpet to take the paper—no, the photograph—from his hand. Two men sitting at a table covered with beer bottles, their arms around each other, drunken grins plastered across their faces. “What? Who’s that?”

“’sGordon there, aye? An Yellow Pete there.”

Gordon and the man he’d killed. The man he’d been magically directed to kill. “They were friends?”

“Guessing so. Never seen em together what I recall, but ain’t like I seen either much, ceptin when Pete checked in, handed over he lashers an whatany else. Pete weren’t a gambler, neither.”

She started to sit on the bed, then reconsidered. “So somebody didn’t just kill Pete, they made his friend kill him?”

“Aye. Guessing they figure makes it easier, dig? Pete ain’t be scared on Gordon, he sees him comin.”

“Did Pete have reason to be scared of someone?”

He shook his head once, a quick twitch. “Aw, Chess. Always reason to, aye? Ain’t can trust on nobody you see.”

Yeah. She knew that.

He opened the closet doors to reveal the emptiness within. “Guessing—”

“Wait.” Okay, that could be something. That might get them somewhere. Right? “Gordon and Pete knew each other. They were friends.”

“Lookin so, aye.”

“So someone—whoever did this—knew that, right? Because it’s too weird to think they just happened to pick Gordon to kill Pete, and they just happened to be friends. The sorcerer knew.”

The approval in his eyes made her feel warm all over. “So the spell maker, he knew em too, aye? Knew em both.”

“Looks like it, huh.”

He nodded. “Maybe be good talkin to some at the card games. Ain’t guessin he neighbors be much for knowledge on him.”

Terrible’s phone rang. Shit. Lately it seemed like it was never good news, and this time didn’t seem to be an exception. He hung up—slammed the phone shut, would be a better term—and rubbed his forehead. “Gotta go. Gots us another man down.”

“What? Another—Lex, you mean. Another street guy dead.”

He nodded, already pulling his keys out of his pocket and heading for the door. “By the docks, this one. Lemme get you home.”

“Why? Why?”

“Gettin late, baby, ain’t wanting you up there—”

“And taking me home is going to cost you at least another twenty minutes or so. No. I’m going with you.”

“Ain’t safe there, an I don’t—”

“But you’ll be there. There are people there, right? I’ll be fine. Come on, take me with you.”

Another dealer killed by Lex—another man killed by Lex or at Lex’s order. At least so Terrible and Bump thought. But maybe it wasn’t him; maybe someone else was doing it. Maybe if Chess saw it, she could find out.

Maybe she just needed to see it. To see that Lex really had done it, that he really was doing his best to fuck up her life.

Whatever the reason, relief blossomed in her chest when Terrible nodded. “Aye, right, then. Only you do what I say, dig? I say get in the car, you do. Aye?”

“Don’t I always do what you say?” She raised her eyebrows, grinning at the little flash of memory—memories—the words invoked and the accompanying heat in her veins.

“Aye, guessin you do.” His hand brushed her behind when he stepped back to let her in the car, and her temperature kicked up another degree or two. Probably not the most appropriate response right after getting news of a murder, but it wasn’t as if they were detouring to her place for a quickie, so what the hell. A second or two of inappropriate thinking was fine.

They were in the Chevelle and speeding up Eightieth before she thought to ask. “By the docks? I thought Bump didn’t put men up there.”

He shook his head. “Naw, gots a few locals do some selling, only in the day, dig. This ain’t one, though. Greenback, he name. Works—worked—round Fiftieth. Only found by the docks.”

“So what was he doing up there?”

He sighed and nosed the Chevelle around the corner. “Guessin we gonna find out.”

Chapter Six

A crowd of wrong people is still wrong; numbers do not make Right.

—The Book of Truth, Veraxis Article 1549

She’d never been this close to the docks before. Terrible had refused to take her—not that she was desperate to see them or anything.

But it was still … interesting.

She’d seen a neighborhood like it once before, out by the Nightsedge Market on Lex’s side of town, up near the Crematorium. A neighborhood where the few remaining intact buildings almost seemed ashamed of themselves for being so, where crumbling walls and roofless rooms open to the sky were the norm.

And it smelled, the dank rotten scent of the bay mixed with oil and human waste and filth, a horrible fugue that made her wish she had a surgical mask or something to put on. All those germs in the air, bacteria dancing on dust motes and searching for a nice warm body to invade and set up home in.

Terrible noticed her shudder. “Can wait in the car, if you’re wanting.”

“No.” Whatever the reason she wanted—needed—to see the body, she still did.

“Told you were shitty here.”

“Yeah, but—look, the water is kind of pretty.”

He followed her gaze across the pitted cement to the water, which gleamed with the sunset’s reflection between the looming hulks of boats. Under that glow, she knew, lurked filth and muck and death, but the surface … the surface was beautiful. Just as with so many things.

He shrugged and took the few steps that brought him to the small circle of people in the middle of the intersection. They moved aside for him without speaking; Chess wondered if a few of them were able to speak. They looked barely human, like evolutionary throwbacks to the period when tiny dark creatures discovered fire. Masses of dirty hair tangled from the tops of their heads to midway down their backs; what appeared to be burlap sacks covered their bodies, and their feet were bare. Even Chess had never seen anything like it. Downside was poor, yes, but these people weren’t poor, they had nothing. And people who had nothing developed their own world to compensate, and now she’d walked into it.

They knew Terrible, though, backing away from him without looking into his face.

“Who find him?” he asked, and when he stepped to the side Chess saw the body.

Greenback lay on his stomach in a pool of blood on the tar-streaked concrete, his pale face staring at the street beyond. It took Chess a second to realize what had happened, how that was possible; he should have been facedown, but his neck had been cut with so much force it had almost been severed, and his chin rested on the concrete.

Terrible crouched beside the body. Chess tried not to see his boots making dents in the sticky blood puddle. “Who find him?” he asked again.

Someone stepped forward, a dirty, skinny wraith of a woman with long thin scratches on the outsides of her arms and track marks on the insides. “Were me. Seen it, I done. I done seen it.”

Mutters ran through the crowd at this; a few people edged away from her. She didn’t appear to notice. “Were two mens. Jumped outen a car an cut he. Lay he out like so an drive off.”

“What kinda car, you knowing?”

The nest of hair on her head—it had once been blond—shook, like a leafy branch moving with the breeze. “Black one. All I know.”

“You seen the men, them faces or aught you could know iffen you see em again?”

Another shake. “Black car. Black clothes.”

“You touch he? Got him wallet?”

Yet another shake, faster, so fast Chess knew—even if she hadn’t already—that it was a lie.

Terrible glanced at the body, then back at the woman. “Any lashers in it you keep, dig? Drugs, too. Ain’t give a fuck on it. But needing to see he wallet, iffen you got it.”

She didn’t respond.

Terrible stood up slowly. Chess never could figure out how he managed to make himself look even bigger when he wanted to—a particular furrow of his brow, a slight hunch to his shoulders, his arms held just an inch or so farther out from his body—but he did it then, staring at the woman with a calm intensity Chess felt even from a few feet away.

The woman hiked up her dress in the back and produced a leather wallet. Shit, had she been keeping that thing in her underwear?

Yes, she had. Chess hoped to see some sort of thigh holster or garter, but lifting the excuse for a dress showed the woman’s spindly bruise-covered legs, and they were bare.

Terrible wasn’t coming anywhere near touching Chess with those hands again until they’d been washed. Twice. At least.

He didn’t look any happier about where the wallet had been kept, but he opened it anyway. “Got any else? Needing to see all it, dig?”

Greenback had apparently also had a watch, several small bags of pills and powders, an earring, and a few scraps of paper. That was a lot to keep in a pair of underwear; Chess had to hand it to the woman for that.

Terrible set the items on the ground at his feet and kept digging through the wallet.

He glanced at Chess. “No lashers taken, dig, still all in here. Adds up, too, for what bags there is missing.”

“They didn’t steal anything, then.”

“Naw, ain’t lookin like.” He turned to the woman. “You see him before the car come? Were he standin here?”

The woman licked her lips, her gaze flicking from the wallet in Terrible’s hands to the drugs on the ground and back again in constant restless motion. “Were in the car.”

“What? Greenback were?”

“Greenback dead one?”

“Aye.”

She nodded. “Him get outen car. Other two followed. Killed he.”

Terrible’s expression didn’t change, but Chess could imagine what he was thinking. Probably it was the same as what she was thinking, which was: What was Greenback doing in the car? If those were Lex’s men, why was he in the car with them, and why hadn’t they stolen his money and drugs?

“He look like him wantin get out the car, you see?” Terrible pulled a couple of things out of the wallet—papers, she thought—and tucked them in his pocket before handing the wallet back. “Or like them pushed he out?”

“Said I keep the lashers, you did.”

He shrugged. “An you keeping em. Weren’t lashers I took. Papers, an you don’t need em, dig?”

The woman glared at him. He stared back at her, with that same deadly patience.

The woman gave up. “Look like him got pushed. Them follow right on he, cut him throat. Lay him out. Drive on off.”

Terrible nodded, then scooped up the bags at his feet. “Any else seen? Heard aught? Got any knowledge?”

A hand raised at the back, a skinny pole with fingers jutting above the crowd of matted hair. “Mr. Terrible? Gots trouble. Mine friend, gots him trouble.”

“Aye? What’s on?”

The man pushed through the crowd, his bright orange hair—spray-painted, it looked like—glowing as the last rays of sunlight hit it. Seeing it reminded Chess that the sun had almost set, and with that realization came another, an unpleasant one: The crowd around them had grown, and at the end of the street, mist rolled off the bay and started inching toward them.

The man stopped in front of Terrible. Ribs showed through holes in his thin T-shirt like the bones had cut the fabric, and his ashy ankles protruded from the bottom of tight, gaudy striped pants. He wore mismatched flip-flops on his feet. “Mine friend, him taken the speed. Bangin it. Him gone all fluffcutty, ain’t won’t leave him room, screamin them after he, screamin on ghosts in him head.”

“Aye? Maybe him oughten quit the bangin a day or two, get he some sleepin.”

“Nay, ain’t like it. Ain’t like it. Him …” The man glanced around, took a step closer to Terrible. “Him done gone out on the morn, come back with blood on he. All wet blood. Fucked in crazy, him bein. Talkin to he, ain’t like he, ain’t in he eyes. Then him come back, start screamin. Then go all silent on the again.”

Terrible looked at Chess, then at the street. The mist had advanced another quarter block or so; it had almost reached them, and the streets darkened by the second.

The crowd grew closer by the second, too. Chess took a step closer to Terrible—easy, because he was moving closer to her—before realizing the crowd wasn’t looking at her. They were looking at the body on the street, and she did not want to know what they had planned for it.

“Just keep he locked in, dig? He sobers up, he be right then, aye?”

The man shook his head again, his eyes huge in his dark face. “Been like this three days gone. Please comin have you a see. Be the speed, gotta be. Got he a bad batch, thinkin.”

Another glance at her. Another glance at the mist, at the fading glow of the sun dying behind the buildings. “Come back on morrow, dig? I come down see he—”

The scream, so loud and shrill, so full of darkness and horror that it made Chess cringe, cut Terrible off—cut everything off. For a long minute, all there was in the world was that horrible banshee-like shriek, tinged with madness and death and unholy glee.

They all turned—everyone—to see the figure emerge from one of the intact buildings a few doors down and start running toward them.

He was naked. At least from the waist down. A tattered T-shirt stretched across his chest, stained with ever-darkening sweat-rings of gray, like gathering storm clouds. Black shoes covered his feet. The crowd parted; shit, she was looking at a man even Downside dock-dwellers were afraid of.

He stopped screaming. The silence slapped her, made her body sigh in relief for a split second before he started again.

The closer he got, the weirder he was. Before Terrible stepped in front of her she could see the man’s body crisscrossed with scratches and marks, all up and down his skinny legs and arms. Track marks, some of them, but not all of them.

He kept wailing, his voice cutting in and out as it cracked. He stumbled in a pothole and fell; when he stood, blood ran down his knees.

For a second she thought maybe he’d keep running, that he’d be just another freaky-ass thing to see near the docks, but no such luck. He fell again, with an ugly crack. Had he broken a bone? He didn’t seem to be in any particular pain, but she had a distinct feeling that he wasn’t exactly dealing with reality at that moment.

Terrible’s hand closed over her arm; she could feel him wanting to drag her back to the Chevelle and throw her in. No fucking way. She let him stay in front of her though, so she was partially hidden by his broad frame but still able to see. The man remained on his hands and knees on the street, wretched hoarse sobs coming from his throat.

“Please,” he said. “Please, don’ lettem get me. Don’ lettem get me.”

“Be my friend,” the man with the orange hair murmured. “Told you, he fucked in crazy.”

Terrible glanced down the street from where the man had appeared. Chess did, too. Emptiness. No one chasing him. Hell, no one even followed him, at least not that Chess could see.

But he kept turning back, his eyes wide and terrified. “Look. Look, they coming.”

“Ain’t nobody there.”

“I see em.” He tried to stand up. Oh, fuck, he tried to stand, and he’d snapped his leg. When he stood the bone broke the skin, popping out of his shin like a flipped lever. He tumbled back to the pavement.

Terrible’s hand touched hers in warning, and he took a step forward. “Nobody comin. None there.”

“Be the truth, Creaseman,” said the orange-haired man. “Be me here, be DV. You friend DV, aye? Nobody comin, nobody there, you—”

“They see me.” Creaseman kept dragging himself along the street, leaving a trail of blood behind him. His voice shook; it was barely a whisper. “They see me.”

He moved his hand to pull himself farther along and collapsed.

It took Chess a second to realize what was happening. At first she thought maybe he was crying, but then she realized his entire body was shaking and horrible foam started dripping from his open mouth. A seizure.

She jerked forward. Terrible’s hand stopped her. Right. Nothing she could do, really, and who knew what he might do to her if she got near him. No point in trying to help. She knew that.

It still made her feel sick, though, as he kept seizing. It didn’t last long, she didn’t think; thirty seconds, tops. But long enough for the image to embed itself in her brain and join the other horrible things in there. Another member for the club, something else to taunt her in her dreams.

He stopped. Started again. Stopped. His hands stretched over his head. He flipped onto his back.

And died.

Chapter Seven

You must always look beneath the surface. The real solutions are always hidden. So are the real mysteries.

—The Example Is You, the guidebook for Church employees

Without realizing it, she’d been pressing herself against Terrible, fisting his shirt. His arm slid around her and gave her a quick squeeze before releasing her. Right. She ought to let go, needed to let go, because they weren’t alone on the street, and while she wasn’t the only woman grabbing the nearest man—or vice versa—even by the docks it wouldn’t be a good idea to look too comfortable touching him like that.