Chasing Magic (31 page)

But she had speed—she probably shouldn’t take too much of it, either, but she could have some.

Two more bumps, bigger ones, and she could keep talking. Two more bumps and Terrible’s hand holding hers on his warm thigh when she was done. “When I was talking to him, a customer walked up. He claimed to be a customer, at least. He said he wanted cat bones and … all kinds of shit, whatever. But he didn’t feel right. I just—damn it, I didn’t notice it, I didn’t think about it, I was so—I was looking for you.”

His hand tightened around hers.

“I felt better when I got farther away, but I thought it
was because I was, I don’t know, actively searching or something. I was worried because you hadn’t answered my text and I just … Fuck.”

Because it was all about her, right? All about her and her stupid fucking feelings.

“Ain’t yon fault. How you was s’posed to—”

“I was
supposed
to be fucking paying attention when something suddenly felt wrong in the air. I was
supposed
to be doing my fucking job and thinking about what that shit meant, and don’t tell me you don’t know exactly what I mean.”

Yeah. That was great. Why not piss off and upset him, when he’d just forgiven her for pissing off and upsetting him?

Fuck.

The road brightened as they got farther from Downside: more lights, better ones. Unbroken ones. The Chevelle zoomed under those lights, fast enough to almost turn them into a solid streak, and Edsel remained silent and unmoving.

He wasn’t the only one.

Two hours later she’d lost count. Lost count of how many cigarettes she’d smoked, how many bumps she’d sneaked in the bathroom, how many times she’d reminded herself it was all her fault. Two hours later and she finally took a couple more Cepts while she and Terrible stood outside the emergency-room doors, watching nothing much happen in the parking lot.

Two hours until Edsel’s wife, Galena, finally came outside.

He’d been stabbed a dozen times. He was concussed. His ribs were broken. They knew that. What they didn’t know was whether or not he’d live, and the weight of that question looked heavy on Galena’s curly head,
slowed her steps even more than her pregnant belly had when Chess saw her a few weeks before.

Oh right. Her friend, the one she’d totally let down and allowed to almost be killed, the one she’d practically handed over to the people who wanted to kill him because she was too busy worrying about her love life to focus on everyone around her? He had a wife and a baby on the way.

What was the record for number of people fucked over in a single day, because she was pretty fucking sure nobody could beat her at that one.

Galena’s skin shone dark in the flat yellow glow of the bug lights outside the entrance as she made her way to where Chess stood against the wall with Terrible’s arms around her. At least there was that; they weren’t in Downside so they didn’t have to be so careful, and if the hospital Goodys and the doctors and Elder-Doctors looked at them strangely, she didn’t give a fuck.

“Were woken up he a time,” she said, her sweet high voice barely a whisper. “Gave you name, he done. An some other name I ain’t knowing, maybe you do?”

Chess shifted position, careful not to break contact with Terrible. Not then, when she needed him—well, she always needed him, but at that moment the strength of his body against hers was pretty much all that kept her from having a total fucking fit. Especially not when she heard that Edsel had come around and said her name. He probably blamed her.

She hoped he did, anyway, because if he didn’t, that was just further proof that he was someone whose friendship she didn’t deserve.

“What name he gave you?”

“Agneta Katina. You know she? Ain’t—ain’t like some other dame he got, aye? He ain’t—”

“Naw, naw.” Terrible’s grip tightened on Chess’s hand. “Ed ain’t pull that, you knowin that one. Heard
that name before, we did. Thinkin that what knowledge he wanted to give, aye, Chess? Be what Gordon Samms were sayin, you recall?”

Shit, that was right. She’d made a note on it, even, and then hadn’t asked Terrible about following it up. Stupid. “Has he ever said it before, Galena?”

“Never hearin it.”

Chess glanced at Terrible. He shook his head. “Ain’t got shit back on it yet. Not one of Bump’s, not one Berta knowin.”

“Did he say anything else, Galena? Anything at all?”

“Just you name, an that one.”

Okay, then. At last they had somewhere to start—well, not start, but somewhere to go next. Chess guessed that as much as she hated to leave Galena there, they were going to have to.

But first … “Did he talk to anyone in particular today, do you know? Or go somewhere he doesn’t usually, anything like that?”

Galena considered it for a minute. “Went he lookin for stuff on the morn, see, stuff I can make up for the booth or what he can sell right off the booth, bones an such an all, if you diggin me?”

“Where did he go?”

“Ain’t said. Just that him were headin out, had he some guesses on some animal teeths to find.”

“He— Where? I mean, I know he didn’t say, but did he say anything that might give you a clue, or did—”

“Fuck.” Terrible held up his phone. “All gone again. Sent one over to give the house a check, dig, the three watchin em dead and all them gone.”

“All—the ones you just told me about at Bump’s, the ones who took the speed?”

He nodded.

Damn it! “How the fuck is that happening? How are they being found, how are they being taken?”

His face was grim as he pulled his keys from his pocket. “ ’Sgo have us a look.”

Not that it made a difference. They’d found exactly what they’d found at the other safe house: a building empty of everything but corpses. No clues. No nothing.

But they’d gotten a name. So after spending a sleepless night doing lines and berating herself, Chess went to the only place she could think of to get some information: the Church library.

The name “Agneta Katina” turned up a few hits in the system, the most recent being a woman who’d died in Sweden during Haunted Week. Chess wrote down the information but without much hope. Sure, it was entirely possible some dead Swedish ghost was working with the person infiltrating Downside with ghost-cut speed, but it seemed like a long shot.

The search results indicated another page available, though, so she clicked on the link. Probably nothing, a follow-up on the dead Swedish woman, or maybe a—

A ship.

Holy fuck, it was a boat. Not just any boat, either; a privately owned ex-military ship, converted into a freighter/transport ship for a shipping company. KVB Shipping, it was called.

She scribbled it down and started a new search, aware of her heart pounding faster in her chest but ignoring it. It could be nothing, it could still be nothing. Drug dealing wasn’t usually something corporations got involved in.

But drug
smuggling
was definitely something shipping companies got involved in, and if they could find someone, if they could find some of the sailors from the ship who might talk to them, who might give them some names … She knew enough from Bump to know that it was pretty easy to bribe some dockworkers and
shipworkers to look the other way while a couple of cases were loaded or unloaded.

KVB Shipping wasn’t just a corporation, it seemed. It was a division of a larger corporation. Shit, she should have paid more attention to this stuff in school, because figuring out what all those initials and titles meant wasn’t easy. Stockholders, yes, she knew what those were, and she knew what a CEO was, but CEOs weren’t usually doing a lot of work on-site with ships, right?

And KVB had like a dozen different divisions. Shipping. Media and Entertainment. Housewares. Technology—that’s right, they’d introduced some new kind of cellphone or something, hadn’t they? She had some vague memory of seeing a news story about it one day while she smoked a kesh and watched one of those mindless TV shows about how the latest gadget was the only road to real happiness.

KVB Chemical. She jotted that one down, along with KVB— Oh, KVB owned part of Triumph City’s major-league baseball team, the Elders. Did that mean— No, because different divisions also owned part of several other cities’ teams.

So who the hell owned the company to begin with? The actual business records on the mainframe were dull stuff, annual reports in incomprehensible business-ese, but … Hold on. She might be able to get the information a lot more easily elsewhere, right?

She logged out of the Church database and opened an Internet window. Funny, she’d never really used the Net for case research before, but why would she? Her cases usually involved private rather than public information, and either way the Church’s Computer and Data department—sometimes referred to as the Code Squad—kept as tight a grip on the cyberworld as the Church did on the real one; every page, every website,
every bit of information available online, had been cleared through them first.

Hell, C&D brought in almost as much money as tithing taxes did, what with the fee to license and register a computer, the fee to license and register an Internet access line, the annual fee to keep that access and the identifying permanent browsing address active, the fees to build a website, the fees to have C&D clear it, the monthly charges to have them recheck the site to make sure it was acceptable … millions of dollars in income every month.

But a large company like KVB might very well pay the fees, probably would pay them. And she might— Yes. Hell yes, there was a website, and there was an “About Us” page, and there was a company history that told her exactly who owned KVB, who’d started the company back in 2000.

Kyle Victor Blake, born in the Midwest, raised in the South, and a resident of Triumph City according to his last Church identification—his driver’s license—issued in the last year.

Kyle Victor Blake. Marietta Blake’s father.

What the
fuck
.

She started to head for Elder Griffin’s office, her mind already whirring to think of a good explanation for why she wanted Kyle Blake’s financial records and private files. The idea died in her head before it was even fully formed. Right. Elder Griffin wasn’t about to be doing her any favors anytime soon, was he?

No. In fact, the best idea was to leave. She knew where Blake lived; she could go back and talk to him again about the
Agneta Katina
and about his daughter. And about his comments about Downside, for that matter, which took on a new and very interesting tone in retrospect, didn’t they? Why was he doing business in
Downside when he hated it so much? Or was that just a front?

She’d go home, grab Terrible, and head for the Blake house, and it would be almost as if she hadn’t been at the Church that morning at all.

Or she’d end up seeing Elder Griffin anyway, because when she stopped by her memo box outside Goody Tremmell’s office, she found a notice from the Elder Triumvirate. Probably confirming her— Wait. What the hell?

Okay. It could mean anything. It could mean nothing. There was no reason to panic, none at all.

Yeah. Maybe if she told herself that enough she might one day manage to believe it, but she doubted it. She sure as fuck didn’t believe it then, when she stopped in the open doorway of Elder Griffin’s office with the Triumvirate’s notice clutched in her fist and her entire body filling with dread.

What she saw through the doorway didn’t help calm her down.

The office had been almost empty the last time she’d seen it, all of his things in boxes as he prepared to move to his new position, whatever position that would be, and make way for whoever would be overseeing the Debunkers next.

It was still almost empty, but growing less so by the minute, because Elder Griffin stood in front of his bookcase, unpacking his boxes.

She must have gasped or something, because he looked up. Their eyes met; that hurt. He looked almost as if he didn’t know her. He looked exactly as if he didn’t care about her or like her. “Good morrow, Cesaria.”

She curtsied. “Good morrow, sir. I …”

He turned away and kept moving, pulling skulls from a box and setting them back on the shelves.

She swallowed. Swallowed the panic, the tears threatening
to clog her throat, the gorge threatening to rise. Swallowed it all and tried again. “Sir … there was a letter in my box, a notice from the Elder Triumvirate canceling my interview with them on Wednesday. The one to discuss you and your new position? I don’t— They don’t say I should contact them to reschedule, so … um, I just wondered if something happened.”

How fucking stupid. Of course something had happened. Please, please let her be wrong about what she thought it might be. Please, she didn’t deserve to have things work out for her but Elder Griffin did. Shit, please let her not have ruined his life, too.

Another glance. “Come in. Close the door.”

She’d never thought his office—his presence—would feel so cold and uncomfortable. She should have; life had certainly taught her that nobody stayed happy with her for long. Why would they? She was a fucking junkie who ruined lives every time she opened her mouth.

But it still sucked. A lot.

The door
snick
ed shut behind her. A few cautious steps took her not to his side, of course, because she didn’t dare, but close enough. “Did something happen?”

“Yes.” He set an empty box on the floor and picked up a full one. “Something has happened. I shall no longer be leaving my position.”

“What? But your promotion, you were—” She needed to stop. It wasn’t her business.

But she couldn’t help it. “You were looking forward to that, sir, I don’t understand.”

He stopped. “I am no longer deserving.”

“I don’t—”

“Cesaria.” He shook his head and looked at her, taking a step closer so he could lower his voice. “Surely you don’t believe I can still accept a position of higher authority? After our discussion?”

No. Oh shit, no, this couldn’t be happening. “I don’t—”

“I’ve agreed to lie for you. I’ve agreed to hide your crime from the Church. In doing so, I condone your behavior and I prove myself disloyal and unworthy of further promotion. I prove myself weak.”