Chasing Magic (6 page)

Thick smoke started drifting from the dish, barely visible in the darkness settling over the street. The smell of it filled the air, filled Chess, and chased some of her fear away. That was the smell of Church, the smell of magic, the smell of things she knew how to do. Things she
could
do, and do well. She might not be worth much as a person, but she was a fucking good witch, and she could do this.

Iron had lessened the spell’s power before, so that was the first thing she grabbed, gritting her teeth against the sensation of alien hands scrambling her innards. Iron
had lessened it and salt had held it, and the two of them together were pretty fucking strong. Stronger than the spell, she hoped.

She filled her palm with them, held them over the hot, fragrant smoke. “Power to power, these powers bind.”

Energy warmed her skin; she could practically see it glowing. Good. She took a deep breath and threw the iron and salt at the animated body still fighting against her circle.

“Cadeskia regontu balaktor!”

Blowback like a brick flung at her chest knocked her over. Her head hit the sidewalk with a thud she barely felt. The power was too strong, too dark, for her to feel anything else. It surged over her, buried her beneath it. She struggled for air.

Through her slitted eyelids she saw the body in the circle wavering, saw the ethereal glow of the ghost emanating from it. She’d done something, she’d managed to start separating them somehow, but not enough. Fuck.

Okay. Crow’s bone and wolfsbane, some black powder and blood salt. Ignore the throbbing pain in her head and get to work. Again she placed her hand in the smoke; again she said the words of power and flung the charged herbs.

This time she was ready for the backlash. It hit her, but not as hard, and she was able to keep watching.

The body—the killer, the ghost, the animated corpse, whatever she should call it—started to weave, its movements slow and staggering like a drunk looking for a place to vomit. What the fuck did it take to separate that thing? Usually the corrideira and ajenjible were enough, more than enough.

She tossed a chunk of snake onto the fire in the dish, gathered more salt in her hand, and scooped up some cobwebs to go with it. The cobwebs might trap the spell; that worked with some hexes, so why not try it here.

Without much real hope, she powered it over the smoke—purplish now from the burning snake flesh—and threw it. No. Just as she’d thought. This was bullshit. Anger rose higher in her chest every second, anger and a kind of frustrated determination. She should be upstairs with Terrible, warm and safe and high from Cepts and his body. Instead, she was on the street, looking more stupid every minute that she failed to break that spell.

Should she go ahead and summon her psychopomp? Yeah, the ghost-thing would probably hit her while she did the summoning, but it wasn’t as if she’d never been hit before. And her psychopomp could tear the ghost from the body—if she could get a passport on it.

The thought of touching that stump of an arm, ragged from where she and Terrible had sliced it in two and still dripping dark blood, made her want to be sick. But if she couldn’t separate them any other way … what else could she do?

Nothing she could think of, unless she wanted to be there all night. Which she didn’t.

Right, then. She dug into her bag, pulled out the silk-shrouded dog’s skull, and unwrapped it. Her psychopomp. In her right hand she grabbed her Ectoplasmarker and tugged the cap off with her teeth. She had no idea who that ghost was, so no way to design a proper passport for it even if she had time, but whatever. If she marked it the psychopomp would sense the marking, and hopefully take it instead of her.

She tucked more wolfsbane into her pocket to help hide the scent of asafetida on her skin from the psychopomp, and stepped into the circle.

It felt so awful in there, so awful, like stepping into a pool of cold murky water. A pool brimming with dead things, with sea beasts full of teeth.

The body sensed her, or heard her, or something. She didn’t know. What she did know was that it turned
and walked toward her, waving that fucking disembodied arm—what the fuck, was it some kind of security blanket or something?—and making horrible grunting noises.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Terrible move. She shook her head, held up her hand. No. As much as she wanted him to, no. Too risky.

She braced herself and waited for it to come. Once it got close enough, she could scrawl something on it and duck away. At some point she’d have to fight the thing off her; she didn’t have a choice. But not yet.

It lunged. She managed to grab its arm above the wrist, avoiding the gruesome prize it brandished but not able to avoid touching it at all. Under her palm its flesh was warm and solid, as if it were alive. What the fuck did that mean, then? Because the thing felt like a ghost and she couldn’t imagine a living person was in there, so how the hell did its body still feel normal?

She guessed she’d find out later. She hoped she’d be alive to find out later, anyway.

Three circles would do for a passport. She scrawled them on quickly, tossed the Ectoplasmarker toward Terrible, who caught it, just as she knew he would.

Okay. Time for the psychopomp.

She let go of the body, ducked around it, and set the skull on the ground. Her left pinkie had stopped bleeding from setting the salt circle; she squeezed it hard to get the blood flowing again. Kept squeezing until her blood fell on the skull.

This wasn’t the ideal place or situation for a ritual—she didn’t have her stang, didn’t have her cauldron, didn’t have candles—but oh fucking well. “I call on the escorts of the land of the dead. I offer an appeasement for their aid.”

The skull started to rock. Something hard slapped into the side of her head, knocked her over. Her arm scraped
the sidewalk. What the—shit, eeww. It had slapped her with the dead hand; her cheek felt as if someone had thrown an ice pack at it.

Ignore it. She lifted her right hand, pressed it against the body’s stomach to keep it away.

Then had to swallow, hard, three or four times, before she could speak without gagging. “I call on the escorts. Take this spirit back to its place of silence.”

The skull erupted into life, rising from the cement as blue light sparked in its eyes. Bones formed behind it, the dog’s skeleton flowing into being, skin and shaggy black hair growing over it. Her psychopomp. It would take the soul back to the City of Eternity under the earth—the hole had already formed, blurry shapes behind a thin place in the air—and it would stay there. Forever.

The psychopomp lunged. Chess ducked.

The killer beat at the dog with the arm in its hand, its grunts turning to howls. No. No fucking way was it going to defeat her psychopomp, no
way
. Psychopomps were— They always won; it was their job to win.

She had to get that arm out of its hand, and she had to do it without getting in front of the psychopomp, because it would give up on the embodied ghost any second and hunt for a soul it could catch. Like hers. The only other soul in the circle.

Hers might have been worthless—well, no “might have” about it, her soul wasn’t worth shit—but she still wanted to hold on to it for a while longer.

She needed something that would distract the killer, make it drop the arm, but not hurt the psychopomp.

Fire. She needed fire.

The killer’s grunts had turned into wails, loud angry moans in the silence as it beat the dog with its gruesome weapon. The crowd had stepped back. Everyone stood there watching, with their arms wrapped around
themselves and fear in their eyes. Ha. They could join the fucking club.

She held out her hand to Terrible. “Lighter.”

He set it in her palm a second later, the black steel warm from being in his breast pocket, warm from his energy. She clutched it for a second, wishing she could do the same to him, then opened it and spun the wheel.

Flame burst from the top, six inches high and pale at the base, just like always. Good. How flammable the body would be she didn’t know, but maybe at least that shirt would catch fire. She only needed a distraction, not a full-on cremation.

The psychopomp appeared on the verge of giving up; its tail had ducked between its legs. It turned to look at her. Fuck.

No time like the present. Especially not if she had any chance of surviving. She jumped forward, fisted the shirt, and touched it with the flame.

As she did, the killer swung that arm at her again, hitting her in the back of the head. She ignored it, fought through it.

Thank fuck, the shirt burst into flame, and she scrambled away as the killer roared again and started to beat at its chest with the arm.

Chess gathered her breath. “Take this spirit back to its place of silence!”

The psychopomp obeyed. The killer still waved the arm around, but its eyes—what was left of them—focused on the fire eating its clothing. It didn’t see the psychopomp lunge.

One last howl from the killer, which turned into a squeal as the psychopomp grabbed its soul. The hole in the world behind it rippled again, like water running over glass; the psychopomp leapt through it, dragging the soul in its teeth.

The hole snapped shut, the skull hit the ground and
shattered as the body fell on top of it, and Chess sank to her knees in the now-empty circle, wondering what the fuck was going on this time.

The corpse’s ruined head didn’t look any better under the dull glow of the refrigerated warehouse’s fluorescent lights. Its blood had dried a sticky brownish-red; the skin was pale, marked with the tread of Terrible’s boot and various scrapes from hitting the pavement. Even the six Cepts in her system didn’t help it look any better.

Chess held her hand over it for a second. She hadn’t touched the body at all since drawing the passport on it back in the circle. She didn’t particularly want to touch it now, but she had a feeling she was going to have to.

This time she wouldn’t forget her gloves.

Energy slammed into her palm, anyway, thick dark energy that set off a horrible ringing sound in her head, as if her ears had been boxed. Whatever the spell on the body was, it wasn’t pleasant.

But, then, she hadn’t expected it would be.

“What you think, Ladybird?” Bump drawled from behind a fur scarf. “What kinda fuckin witchy shit be this time?”

She hated to admit it in front of him. “I don’t know.”

Silence.

“I can feel the spell, whatever spell it is, and I can feel that it’s male—the spell caster is male, I mean—but I have no idea what the spell is. It feels like ghosts, too.”

“Be him soul inside him fuckin body do the magic, yay? Like him gone an died, then give a fuckin try to coming back.”

“Ghosts can’t cast spells,” she said, only half paying attention. “Do you know who he is? Who the body is, I mean.”

Bump dug something out of one of the pockets in his floor-length white fur coat. “Got us him fuckin wallet
here, dig. Be Gordon Samms, it tell. Ain’t knowing him, I ain’t.”

“Had some owes,” Terrible said. He stood at her side with his arm around her shoulders, helping to keep her warm. “Lost he some lashers on the card games, were payin slow.”

Bump’s thin reddish eyebrows rose. “Yay? How much?”

“Six hundred, now. Won heself a game on the other night, paid he a hundred then. At the tables all the time, dig, ain’t could stay away.”

Gambling. That was one thing she’d never seen the point of, one addiction she’d never picked up. Good thing, too. She’d really be broke if she had.

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.