Chasing Magic (22 page)

When he didn’t respond she reached out and set her hand on his thigh. She squeezed it. “Hey. I love you, okay? I really, really do. You know that, right?”

A nod. “Aye.”

Relief loosened the tense knot that had formed in her chest. “Good. Because I do. So let’s not worry about it. As … as long as I get to be with you, I don’t care where, you know?”

Shit, that was too much, wasn’t it? She still couldn’t get the hang of the whole I-love-you thing, the romantic stuff. It always felt like she either sounded as though she was having a little joke or writing a greeting card, like there was a fine line in between that was just right but she couldn’t quite balance on it. At least not very often.

But he nodded again and let his hand fall on hers. “Aye. Aye, me too.”

Too bad they weren’t somewhere private, where she
could kiss him. She settled for wrapping her fingers tight around his. “I wish it was different, though.”

“No worryin on it.” He pulled his hand away and turned off the engine, ending the conversation in that one swift movement. “C’mon, let’s get this done.”

He took her arm when he opened the door for her, leaned down to look her in the eyes. “Let me talk, aye?”

She nodded. It felt good to agree to something he wanted; even if it hadn’t she would have nodded, because he was right, but still.

The stairs to the porch creaked when they stepped on them. The front door appeared to be fastened by nothing but wires and stubbornness. Terrible pushed that open slowly, one hand on the knife tucked behind his back, peering around in the relative gloom.

Relative because a hole in the ceiling allowed sunlight to bleach a patch about two feet by two feet on the dark-wood floor. Enough light flowed in and reflected from it to allow her to see a staircase in front of them, a couple more doors along the hall past it.

Those stairs, too, protested as they climbed them. Terrible didn’t seem to be making any effort to be quiet, which reassured her. Of course, he was almost silent when he walked—force of habit, she always imagined—but when he didn’t try, he didn’t try.

Sharp-eye Ben’s door was the third on the right along the narrow upstairs hallway. The house itself had never been one of the grander ones; most of those were farther south. But it appeared to predate those, too. Chess guessed it had been built in the nineteenth century, maybe even earlier. It was a piece of history, fading and disintegrating like a memory no one cared enough to keep alive.

Ben didn’t answer Terrible’s first knock, or his second, louder one. “Ben! Got some asks for you, open up!”

“He ain’t comin out two days past,” a sharp high voice
piped up. Chess and Terrible both turned to see that the door catty-corner to Ben’s had opened. In the doorway stood a woman with blue braids erupting from her head in an odd patchy pattern, as if she’d grabbed clumps of hair and braided them, then tied them off with scraps of red T-shirt.

A hole-filled jersey dress about five sizes too big covered her from neck to mid-calf. Well, covered most of her; one of her breasts poked out of a hole. She didn’t seem to notice it or care.

She shuffled her dirty bare feet. “Seened him two days past, I did, an he actin all secret-scared, you see what I say? An ain’t hardly said a speak, neither. Ain’t like himself, causen he a chattery talker, had the guessing causen he speedy always, see. But he coming on home two days past, an ain’t even said not a speak to me, hardly, just closing himself in there an ain’t coming out.”

She paused. Terrible opened his mouth, but the woman started another torrent of words before he could make a sound. “I knows he ain’t had a come-out, see, causen I’d a hear on it. He door broke. It making noise like a cat getting skin ripped off it, anywhen gets opened.”

Ben must have come there directly from selling the key to Edsel, and he’d probably scored then, too. Which meant it was very likely that he was locked in there with his eyes about to fly out of his skull, convinced ghosts or murderers or, hell, human-sized insects or something were banging on his door. Speed-bangers on a run didn’t tend to be tight with reality.

“Somebody’s coming visit himself, though, on that same day, sunset time, right about. Hearing voices in the hall, see, so’s I had myself a peeping through the hole the door’s got, an saw who them was.”

This time neither Terrible nor Chess tried to speak. Chess wondered how much this woman would tell them if they let her keep going. Wondered, too, how it was
that none of her neighbors had beaten her up or killed her yet. Most people in Downside didn’t appreciate having their private business blabbed.

“Were himself ladygirl, an guessin be some friends she got. She an them went on in there, see, an I hearing themselfs coming out on a fifteen minutes later, thinking it were. All they left, then, heading out to them car onna street, see, but ain’t seed Sharp-eye coming out never since, an that were on two days past long now.”

“Ladygirl?” Terrible glanced at Chess. “Gotta name for she?”

The woman grinned, showing gaps in her crooked teeth. “Only callin her Ree, on sometimes, an hearing him say lovey-like names, see, them lovey-like names like sweetness an all.”

Ree. Rianna? Ria? Luria? Maria?

Marietta.

Terrible must have had the same thought. He pulled the pink wallet from his pocket again, slipped Marietta’s driver’s license out of it, and crossed the hall. “This she?”

“Aye! Were she, that one. Knowing that, seed her many times, she the lovey one two-three months going on now. Ain’t knowing where themselfs had the meeting-up, see, only one day she were around the place alla time, making the noises. Only themselfs be having the fightings onna last weeks or so, screamin yells. Ain’t got the knowledge on what they fightings on, but Yellow Pete stopping coming.”

Yellow Pete again. So Yellow Pete had been friends with Sharp-eye Ben, too? As well as with Gordon Samms. His murderer.

Or, the man who’d been magically forced to become his murderer.

Chess fought the urge to grab the woman and take her home. What else did she know? What else could she
see? Maybe if she lived near Chess, she could figure out what the hell was wrong with Chess’s life, explain it all.

Ha, like Chess needed that. She knew exactly what was wrong with her life: her. And everything she touched turned to shit, and everyone she touched ended up bleeding, at least on the inside. Some of the cheer the woman’s babbling had created left her.

“Yellow Pete be a friend to Ben? Or to she?”

“Aye, oh aye. To Sharp-eye, Pete was. Here on a lot, see, an when Ree coming along themselfs having three togethers. Only on the weeks past Pete ain’t having himself coming over no more, causen all they three having some big screaming fight on one day.”

“Fight on what?”

“Dunno. Only hear a speak or two, see. Sounding like they argue on who they gots loyalty to, who’s makin deal better. Ain’t had the hearing all, though, causen my man were wanting himself fed an bedded up, see.”

Terrible handed the woman a twenty. “Got any else for us?”

“Got plenny.” The gap-toothed grin showed again; one of the few remaining teeth hung at an angle, as if it was trying to escape. She reached up to scratch her exposed breast. Obviously she knew it wasn’t covered, then. Chess had no idea what to think of that. “Ree looking all clean-like, she not being from here, see, not around here. Ain’t never could have the figuring why she wanting Ben, he all skinny-like an big ears, only she do, guessing, causen she here alla time an they making the noises.”

That one Chess could figure out on her own, and when Terrible glanced over at her, she saw he could, too. Marietta was a Northside girl wanting to live on the edge, and she’d found herself a boyfriend who was already there to give her what she wanted.

Talking to her family—assuming she had one—might not be such a bad idea.

Or it might be completely irrelevant, of course. What was relevant was that they talk to Ben immediately. Maybe he’d crashed?

Terrible nodded at the woman. “Be a help, aye? Thanks on it.”

“You coming back anytime, I helping more. You telling Bump? Telling himself I were helping?”

Terrible nodded, then crossed back to Chess and tried the doorknob. Locked. “What you thinkin I oughta do? Break it open?”

“Let me try first.” The lock looked pickable, at least, and if it was pickable she’d be able to pick it. If it was chained Terrible would need to kick it in, but best not to do that unless they had to. She could picture Ben hiding inside, paranoid, with sweat dripping off his body. The last thing they wanted to do was burst in and give him a heart attack.

It took her a minute or so to pick the lock. No chain. Blue-braids over there—still watching them—hadn’t lied. The door did sound like a cat being skinned when Terrible pushed it open, a hideous screeching sound that raked up Chess’s spine.

The second the door parted from the jamb, power hit her, the deep slithering power of dark magic, of ghost magic. Of a particular kind of ghost magic.

Ben had scored, all right. But what he’d bought himself wasn’t very good.

The apartment stank, a smell she tried to ignore even though she knew what it meant. They crept into it, the grimy floor trying to grab their shoes. To the right a kitchen, dirty take-out boxes and containers on the counters creating a buffet for the flies buzzing around. Ugh.

To the left the living room. Someone had made an effort
to tidy up in there. A warped slab of wood sat on two stacks of old water-bloated magazines to form a makeshift coffee table, on which three loaded syringes were lined up with military precision. Beside them a rubber catheter coiled neatly, and beside that a notebook with its cover closed and an empty ashtray.

Behind the table, against the wall, was the sofa, a hulking shape under a dirty sheet. Someone had put a vase of now-dead flowers on the windowsill, taped a picture of Triumph City at night to one bare-plaster wall. An ancient TV sat on cinder blocks in the corner.

But the feel of it, the feel of that magic, the skin-itching feel of ghosts, refused to let her fully process the room itself.

She followed Terrible down the short hallway, past a bathroom she didn’t even want to consider looking into. At the end of it, on the left-hand side, stood a door, and beyond that Ben’s bedroom waited for them.

Ben waited for them, too, torn into pieces and strewn around, scattered on the blood-soaked bed, surrounded by flies.

“Just ramblings, it looks like,” she said, flipping through the pages of the notebook they’d taken from Ben’s. Her throat still ached from being sick; her stomach still threatened to twist again every time she failed to keep the memory of Ben’s body from flashing back into her mind. “Shopping lists, shit like that.”

Terrible swung the Chevelle up onto the curb and came to a stop, leaving the engine running so its throaty rumble echoed off the houses around them. “Now he gone, Pete’s gone, Samms’s gone. An all of em friends.”

“He must have known something. Him and Pete.”

“An them fightin with the dame.” He lit a smoke. They sat outside one of Bump’s safe houses, the one where Marietta and the men she was with had been taken the night before.

It looked exactly like any other shell house in Downside, covered with peeling paint and filth, its gutters stuffed with years’ worth of rotting leaves against the cracked and missing shingles on the roof. Anyone on a casual pass-by would have no idea what it was.

Only someone with experience would see the signs. The shadows of the upstairs windows almost hid the
bars across them on the inside. The downstairs windows were blocked by old furniture and junk. The door was intact, and closed; not unusual, no, but another clue. Chess knew there would be plenty more inside.

“And she was dealing,” she said.

“Guessin a bunch of em is. Gave it to Rickride, maybe Levi, too, an now the dame. An whoever sellin on Lex’s side, iffen he gave us the truth. Got us seven, eight street men dead, all over.”

“When Edsel gave me that key, he said it’s up by the slaughterhouse, too. Galena’s brother said there’s been a lot of people acting crazy around there.” But no murders that she knew of; did that mean something? “Oh, maybe Bump could kick some cash his way for that?”

“I’ll take care of it.” He looked around them, looked at the house. “Guessin we oughta get us in, aye? See if she still alive so we can give her some asks.”

More signs of the house’s true purpose inside, as Chess had expected. Especially the heavy steel door at the foot of the staircase. Bump never used the first floor; too difficult to keep the presence of his people hidden.

Terrible knocked on that steel door, a set pattern of knocks: three, then one, then two. No reply.

He glanced at her and tried again. Still no reply.

“Ain’t right,” he said. “Oughta be answerin.”

Uh-oh. Chess shifted on her feet. Marietta had been up there, along with the men and probably more of that speed. Her guardians—guardians, jailers, watchers, whatever—hadn’t tried any of it, had they? And gone crazy?

Terrible shook his head when she asked. “Naw, them ain’t so stupid. Know them ain’t s’posed to tank while them workin, ’specially not that shit.”