Finding Magic (downside ghosts) (3 page)

Typical. Did she
want
to end up giving thirty-dollar blow jobs off the street corner? No. So she needed to get her shit together.

She set the luck charm down. Time for the—for the other one. While Jillian watched. Fuck.

Her hand shook as she picked the sex magic bag up again. Ugh. Yes, she was ready for it this time, braced for it. But she was also gloveless this time. She was opening herself up to it, flexing those energy muscles the Church had been teaching her about, training her to use.

The spell washed over her again, stronger now without the barrier, faster. It roared through her blood thick and dark, gloating as it invaded her body, found her weak spots—so many of them—and prodded them; it found her empty spots—even more of those—and filled them.

Someone else’s sexual energy forced on her, someone else’s arousal slithering over her skin like hands on her body,
in
her body, pinning her down, covering her mouth so she wouldn’t cry. Laughing at her fear. Laughing as she struggled and tried to make it stop—and she couldn’t, she couldn’t struggle or stop it, because Jillian was watching and Chess was supposed to be getting information from this, learning something. She needed to do it. Needed to show Jillian she could.

Sweat broke out on her forehead, under her arms, and where she wasn’t specifically sweaty she was still damp. Uncomfortable. And uncomfortably aware that Jillian was watching her, that no matter how she might struggle to hide it Jillian knew what was happening to her, what she was feeling.

Ignore it. Ignore Jillian, ignore all of it. Whose magic was this, who—a man, was it a man? It felt male, it felt rough and demanding. Angry, almost. It felt, deep down, frustrated.

Which was a weird thing for sex magic to feel like, wasn’t it, since the point was to end frustration, to satisfy?

Her palm burned where it touched the velvet bag; the rest of her body burned where it didn’t, wanting to be touched itself. It had been a while, so much studying … so much following the rules.

Shit, she did not want to be thinking of that, of any of it. Later she could do something about it, if she still wanted to. Now … She gritted her teeth against the dark whispers in her blood, the intrusive lure of what the bag promised, and focused harder. A man. It felt like a man. A man’s energy, a man’s magic. Strong, too. Not strong like one of the Elders, but stronger than the luck charm, certainly.

Her hand shook. She was shaking everywhere, she realized, and she opened her eyes and saw Jillian still watching her, watching her with something in her eyes that Chess didn’t like. The bag fell to the floor.

Instantly cool air swept over her. Well, no, the air wasn’t cooler, her body was cooler. The spell’s created lust—created heat—vanished, leaving her standing there trembling with her hair stuck to the back of her neck and her skin tingling. She swallowed hard against the bile threatening to rise; it felt like her heart had been hooked up to a fucking jumper cable. Her legs were too weak, threatening to give out beneath her. She needed to sit down. No, what she needed was to be alone. She needed cold water on her face, she needed to get out of that room because her breath wasn’t slowing the way it should and red spots exploded in her eyes and she was freaking out, she was losing it, she needed to—

“Having fun, ladies?”

Trent stood in the doorway, grinning like a gambler holding a full house while his gaze raked her up and down. Funny to be almost grateful to see him there, but she was; at least she could focus on how much she hated him even though they’d just met, and hold off the fucking full-scale panic attack threatening to take control of her body any second.

Hatred was better than panic. Hatred was strength, hatred was something she could use. She grabbed it like a drowning woman grabbing a life jacket, and let it burn in her eyes while she glared at him. Yeah, he could maybe report back to an Elder that she hadn’t been very nice to him, and later she’d probably think of that and worry, but at the moment she didn’t give a shit. Let him do it. Better he reported that than tell them she’d gone hysterical.

“Are you all done down there?” Jillian stood up. “I’m sure Gloria wants to go home.”

Trent gave Chess one last knowing look—how she itched to slap that right off his face—and nodded. “We tore up the carpet but the blood’s soaked through. We can’t clean that up, either. But that’s all there is for her to see.”

“Guess that’s the best we can do.” Jillian pulled a camera from her bag and handed it to Chess. “I’m going to go ask Gloria a couple more questions, see if she knows anything about her parents being involved in magic they shouldn’t be. You get some pictures of all this stuff, okay? The bags intact, and then take the ingredients out of each, photograph them, and put them back. Got it?”

Chess nodded.

“Good. Back in a few.”

Trent gave Chess one last smirk—oh, he’d definitely seen what had been happening to her, knew what kind of spell she’d been holding, the bastard—and swept out of the doorway, following Jillian, leaving her finally alone.

T
he second Trent’s back disappeared from view Chess got up, stumbling over her own feet in her rush to get to the bathroom. Whether it was okay to use the toilet or anything in there she didn’t know, but it didn’t matter; she didn’t need it.

What she needed was a door she could close and lock behind her. What she needed was a corner to press herself into, a place to make herself small, where she could see into every space and under every counter, and know no one would come in. Shit, she hadn’t had to deal with anything like that since she’d entered the Church, she hadn’t expected it to be so bad.…

She huddled next to the cold porcelain bathtub with her arms wrapped around her knees, curling herself into the tightest ball she could. It was okay, she was okay. It was just magic. It was unpleasant but no one had actually touched her. It hadn’t hurt. She was safe; she was with the Squad and the Squad was Church and they were safe. She was okay. She was, she was okay, and she kept repeating it in her head, reminding herself with every shuddering breath she managed to take until finally the pain in her chest started to ease.

And a new one to take over. Fuck, what was wrong with her? She
was
okay, it
was
just some dumb magic, why the hell couldn’t she just deal with it? How was she going to get anywhere if she couldn’t handle a little sex magic?

Her bag sat right next to her, pressed up against her side. Her left hand rested on it, right near the zipper. She could … It wasn’t a good thing to do, no. It wasn’t the right thing to do. She was working, she was supposed to be working, and she’d already messed up by not testing the energy from those bags and comparing them. The Church had given her an opportunity and she was already wasting it.

But … her head hurt and her chest hurt and her mind raced, all those memories she didn’t want swirling around in a kaleidoscope of shit. If she could just make them go away—she needed to make them go away, and she needed to do it fast because Jillian could be back any second and no way was Chess going to let her see that anything was wrong. Not only could it mess things up as far as her work—her future—was concerned, but it was none of Jillian’s damn business, anyway. It was nobody’s business.

But she was working …

Right. Okay, then. She was fine, and she’d be fine on her own, she didn’t need—

Her hands were moving. Without her telling them to, they’d unzipped her bag. While she thought about how fine she was, they were digging around in it; while she thought how she didn’t need it, they’d found the flask she’d bought at a secondhand store on her eighteenth birthday and started unscrewing the top.

Before she could stop them, they raised the flask to her lips and tilted it up. And before she could stop it vodka poured down her throat.

Not a lot. No, definitely not a lot; she did manage to do that, to stop it after she’d swallowed half a mouthful or so. Not even a real shot. It hardly mattered because it wasn’t even a full shot, it was barely more than a sip. Right?

She told herself that was right. She knew it wasn’t.

Fuck! What was the—what was wrong with her, damn it? Even as warmth spread in her stomach and drifted out through her bloodstream, even as her eyes half closed in relief and her head sank back to rest against the wall behind her, she felt it, the shame, the sickness festering deep inside her, the fear of what it meant. Her first day outside of class, her first real work for the Church, and she couldn’t even make it four hours before she was at the flask.

Never again. Okay, she’d done it, but she’d never do it again. Yeah, it was her first day, but it was a grisly ghost murder, and really, most people would be freaked out by that, right? Most people were freaked out just hearing about such things; sure, it had been seventeen years, but people still remembered. They’d always remember. And even if they tried to forget, the Festival still happened every year, the dead still walked the surface for six nights, reminding humanity that they were still there and the Church was still in charge.

So it was perfectly natural that, being faced with two corpses chopped to bits by ghosts, she’d need something to calm her down a bit. Doctors even prescribed a little nip to people who’d had a shock, right?

Right. It was totally understandable. It was totally natural. She’d just never do it again, was all.

Never again. She promised.

With her head somewhat cleared, her body calmed, she glanced around the bathroom. She couldn’t stay in there—she had to get pictures of those spells for Jillian—but she could sit just a few more seconds. And grab some cinnamon candies from her bag, too, because she’d need them. Vodka might not have a specific smell but it certainly smelled of alcohol, and she couldn’t have that.

As she stood up and popped the candy into her mouth her gaze fell on something beside the sink. Another spell, it looked like; well, sure, lots of people kept magic somewhere they’d be likely to see it often and come in contact with it, since most spells relied on physical closeness to work. People kept sleep-safes under their bed or behind the headboard, that sort of thing, which—Actually, yeah. Why had the luck charms been in the closet? Why had the sex spell been in the closet?

Chess braced herself and reached out to touch the bag, feeling brave because her mind was still calm enough from the—well, the thing she shouldn’t have done.

A protection charm. Right, because people shaved in bathrooms, maybe? Either way, she felt the difference. If that was Mr. Waring’s energy, which she thought it was, it was definitely not the same as the energy of the person—the man—who’d made the sex spell. No aggression colored this magic, no anger. And hardly any power, either; the man who’d made this might as well have just thrown some cotton balls into the bag, for all the strength it had.

Well, Jillian had said someone else must have been hired to make the sex spell, so no big surprise there, right?

That still didn’t explain why they’d kept the sex spell so far away, though, or why it had felt so angry.

Whatever. Maybe the spell had been too strong for them. Maybe they’d felt the anger somehow, too, and just hadn’t gotten around to tossing the thing. Maybe they liked to fuck in the closet. Probably didn’t matter as far as the case went; probably none of her business.

She rinsed her hands and popped another candy into her mouth, giving herself one last glance in the mirror. Did she look okay? Sober, calm, collected? Yeah, basically, at least she thought she did, so good.

Time to take her pictures and get the hell out of there. The place was starting to make her itch.

J. F. Sebastian’s was one of those chain restaurants that tried to pretend it was fun and high-end, rather than just a yuppie meat market with overpriced drinks and mediocre food. The walls were covered with fifties-style posters and ads; those were actually fun to look at, but aside from them the place basically sucked.

A gang of men in ties stood together near the bar, their eyes following Jillian and Chess as the two women sat down in a booth outside the bar area. The men looked loathsome, like the kind of people Chess would want to slap after ten minutes of hearing about their cars or their expensive belongings or who designed their fucking suits. But they also looked like men, and she wanted to get some stuff out of her head, and the best way to do that—aside from the booze—was to let a man distract her. Maybe … no, she was with Jillian, and Jillian was reporting on her behavior, so it wasn’t the time.

A few minutes of silence while they skimmed over the lame-ass menu full of fried things and trademark symbols. A few minutes of chatter while the gaudily dressed waiter pretended he liked them and took their orders. Not that Chess was interested in food. Work was done and it was dark; she wanted a drink, and she wanted it alone in her room with the door locked and a good book in her hand. Or she wanted a man, someone who’d do what she wanted him to do and then shut up so she could go home.

What she did not want was a Grande Burger and a Coke, but it was what she asked for, because Jillian hadn’t ordered a drink—a real drink—so Chess figured she shouldn’t, either, despite the pounding in her head, the voices coming back.

“Gloria said her parents didn’t mess with magic they shouldn’t be messing with,” Jillian said, her eyes scanning the restaurant aimlessly as she talked. “She said they were kind of scared of the whole thing, really, and never got over the loss of their religion.”

“A lot of people feel that way.” Chess resisted the urge to add “Right?” to the end of the sentence. They’d been taught this; even before she entered Church education she’d been taught this, about the suicides and the small hidden cults and everything else.

Jillian nodded. “It’s not unusual. Might be why the Warings hired someone else to do their sex spell, too, if they weren’t comfortable doing their own magic.”

“They did the luck charms. And the protection charms. At least it felt like them.” Did that sound bitchy?

Apparently not, because Jillian didn’t remark on it. “They did feel like them, yeah. So why would she get someone else to do her sex magic?”

“Maybe she needed something a little stronger,” Chess said before she thought. Her face warmed. “I mean, that’s the only thing I can think of.”

Not that she wanted to think of it at all. That sex spell refused to leave her memory, refused to leave her alone.

Jillian shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, really. The sex spell didn’t feel like ghost magic, and we didn’t find anything that would indicate they were doing ghost magic.”

“Why’d they keep the sex spell in the closet, though?”

“Hmm?” Jillian wasn’t looking at Chess; she was looking at the guys by the bar, and they were looking back. Hmm indeed.

The last thing Chess was going to do was look interested in the men, though. And she wanted an answer to her question. “Why was the sex spell in the closet? Don’t most people keep them under their beds? And—and that spell felt kind of dark to me, kind of, like, frustrated.”

“Maybe that’s why they kept it in the closet. It just didn’t work and they were planning to get rid of it.”

“I wonder who made it for them.”

Jillian flashed a smile at the men across the room. “Look, Cesaria, I get that this is your first case and it’s exciting and everything, but I think you’re reading way too much into this.” The smile softened a little. “If you’re just curious, fine, but this was a crime of opportunity. It’s the third ghost murder like this in the last two weeks. It’s bad, and I’m interested in what you have to say, but we should be focusing on identifying the ghosts and trying to catch them, instead of worrying about where our victims bought their magic.”

Fuck this. Yeah, fine, Jillian was trying to be nice. At least it looked like she was. And yeah, fine, Chess was new at this, and she was curious, and she was anxious to make a good impression, but she wasn’t an idiot and she wasn’t a child, and fuck Jillian and her condescension.

Chess stood up. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Walk by those guys, see if they say anything to you.”

“Sure.” Ugh.

But she did, and they did, and by the time she came back from the bathroom sucking another candy and feeling much calmer—the voices quieted, the world softened just a little bit; hey, she wasn’t technically working anymore, right?—the men were firmly ensconced at their table, with Jillian holding court over their newly arrived food.

Looked like work time was over. Fine. Chess sat down and turned toward the least objectionable-looking of the men, plastering a smile on her face as she did. There was more than one way to forget.