Finding Magic (downside ghosts) (8 page)

“Maybe.” She shifted the file in her arms. Ordinarily she wouldn’t mind talking to Doyle, but Jillian could call her any minute and she wanted to try to at least learn something before that happened. So it wouldn’t look like she’d been wasting her time. So it wouldn’t look like she didn’t deserve to be there.

“Well.” He raised his hand like he was about to touch her, but stopped. “If you change your mind …”

“Sure.”

“Have fun with your week, anyway.”

She watched his back as he strolled down the row of cabinets and turned, disappearing past the next aisle of books. How much of that interest was in her, and how much was just curiosity about her training?

They were probably about equal, really. Yeah, he’d asked her out before, but yeah, he was also ambitious and arrogant, which meant he’d do anything to get some kind of inside or advance information.

Whatever. She had far more important things to focus on just then. Like Mark pollert. Like the names of the ghosts Summoned from the City, and who they might be to him. All but one of them had also died before Haunted Week, so she grabbed their files and carried them and the pollerts’ to a table by the wall, where no one could come up behind her.

Jason McBride’s was the first file she opened. Jason had been forty-three when he died, a sudden heart attack while at his job as … oh. Oh. Well, damn. Jason McBride had been a social worker for Child Protective Services, the BT version of the Church’s Department of Minor Care. Chess could only imagine how lousy things must have been for kids BT, given that they had to have improved under the Church and they hadn’t exactly been great for her.

But then, as she kept reminding herself, she must be an anomaly or something. Because contrary to what she’d grown up believing, the Church actually did care about her; they’d found her, they’d rescued her, and look at her now. Actually working for them, working with the Black Squad, getting ready to have an actual life beyond anything she’d ever dreamed of. They deserved her loyalty for that, her gratitude, and she’d give it to them.

But whoever had done the job of “protecting” children before the Church … they deserved nothing, and she scanned the photo of Jason McBride with little curiosity. He had that wispy, ineffectual look she’d seen so many times, the kind of guy born to be stepped all over.

Not that it mattered what he’d been in life. In death he was a killing machine like 99.9 percent of all ghosts, an ethereal shark endlessly searching for human chum.

Just like Marie and Ryan Wagner, the other two ghosts. Aw, a married couple, how sweet. Ryan had been a salesman, Marie a teacher—and Chess could just bet she knew who one of Marie’s students had been.

Too bad she couldn’t confirm it. If the name of Mark’s school had been in his file—and Chess imagined it had been, because everything like that would be—it either hadn’t been in the part she could access or she just hadn’t written it down, which was more likely.

But Jillian could access the files. So could Elder Griffin, couldn’t he? And since Doyle had actually talked to him and requested his training week be in Debunking—and why had no one told her she could do that? Or maybe Doyle had just created his own opportunity, which seemed more likely—and since Elder Griffin had actually seemed pretty decent to her when she’d met him, maybe she could ask him about it. Let him know she was taking the assignment seriously, that she was using her head.

Files weren’t supposed to leave the library, at least that’s what she thought she remembered being told. But taking them to Elder Griffin’s office wasn’t—No, they weren’t supposed to leave, and she didn’t want to take a chance. So instead she quickly scribbled down the names and their places of employment, shoved the files back into their approximate places in the cabinets, and headed for the wide staircase and Elder Griffin’s office.

The hall was empty. Well, sure—it was getting close to six, and the offices technically closed at five-thirty. Most employees stayed later than that, but no regular people sat on the benches waiting for appointments. A Goody Chess wasn’t familiar with passed her on the steps, but that was it.

Which was why she was able to hear the voices inside Elder Griffin’s office so clearly when she raised her hand to knock.

Actually, that was a lie. She heard murmurs beyond the door, and one of those murmurs sounded exactly like Elder Griffin saying her name. Her hand froze just before hitting the wood—good thing, too, because it turned out the door hadn’t latched, and that’s why she could hear.

Shit. What should she do?

Listening wasn’t the right thing. She knew that.

But doing the right thing wasn’t exactly her strong suit. Not really possible for her, even; she was a walking wrong thing, wasn’t she?

So she listened. She inched her head forward, careful to keep from view and
very
careful to keep from accidentally touching the door and opening it, and heard Jillian say, “She’s very standoffish, actually. She’s already made an enemy of Trent.”

“Oh?”

“Trent’s not the easiest guy to get along with, but it’s like she’s gone out of her way to be disrespectful to him.”

Pause. A pause, while Chess’s stomach twisted and her eyes started to burn.
She’d
gone out of her way to be disrespectful to
Trent
? When she’d taken every bit of shit he’d flung at her until just a few hours ago and finally made one single comment in response?

What the fuck, Jillian? She’d thought … well, she hadn’t thought she and Jillian were becoming friends, because she didn’t want friends, and she especially didn’t want friends who seemed to be only interested in simpering and obsessing over men. But she’d thought there was some kind of
respect
there, that Jillian had at least liked her okay, had valued what she’d contributed so far.

Apparently not. Good to know. She felt sick.

Elder Griffin spoke; Chess put Jillian’s betrayal aside—for the moment—to listen. “But you’ve had no problems, aside from her … standoffishness?”

“I don’t know. I kind of think she resents me, resents having to clear her actions with me. She keeps wanting to go off on her own.”

“She does not follow directions?”

“She follows them, she’s just really caught up in her own ideas. I don’t think she sees this as a team effort.”

“Does not work well with others,” Elder Griffin said.

“I don’t think so, no. She’s just kind of cold. I tried to engage her, let her know she could talk to me, but she didn’t.”

“And you feel the connection she discovered between your victims was merely luck.”

“Well …” Jillian hesitated. “Not entirely. She wanted to look into the New Hope Mission from the beginning, and of course I gave her permission to investigate Mark Pollert. I thought it would placate her, get her to open up a little. So she had some okay instincts there, except I think maybe her fixation on Pollert came from feeling the energy of a sex spell he’d made. She seemed really, well, fixated on that. But—”

Elder Griffin must have made a sound, or a face, or something. Or maybe the roaring in Chess’s ears simply overwhelmed anything she would have heard, the noise like waves of rage and pain washing over her and drowning out everything else.

That was it, then. All the hope she’d had, all the hope she’d been building, collapsed into a sodden pile of wasted dreams at her feet. She wasn’t going to create a life for herself, wasn’t going to make something of herself. She couldn’t escape, would never escape. Everyone knew who she really was, what she really was, that she was sick and shriveled and twisted inside, and they could all see it. Even when she thought she was hiding it, they could see it.

And Jillian actually thought she’d liked that sex spell. That she’d liked feeling what it made her feel, liked having it forced on her.

Just like the rest of them had. She would never escape.

Jillian went on, too, digging Chess’s grave deeper with every word. “But Trent and Vaughn would have found the connection once they started really processing the evidence. She saved them some time, yes, but it isn’t like she cracked the case or anything. She’s not stupid, she’s not a terrible investigator, but working with her just isn’t, well, enjoyable. Like I said, she’s not a team player.”

Elder Griffin’s voice was sharp. “You doubt her loyalty to the Church? To the Truth?”

“Oh, no. No, I can’t say that.” Well, that was something, at least. Jillian would throw her to the wolves but not to the angry crowds at the stocks on Holy Day, or to the executioner. Wow, that was something to be grateful for. Actually it was, but at the moment Chess felt too ill to have room for much gratitude. “She seems very loyal. I just doubt her ability to handle working with other people, or to work effectively under a regular chain of command. There’s no room for disobedience in the Squad, sir, as I’m sure you know.”

“I do.” Paper shuffled. “Well, thank you, Jillian. I appreciate your coming to answer my questions.”

“No problem, sir. I’m happy to help. I was wondering if, while I’m here, we could …”

But Chess wasn’t listening anymore. She was walking away as silently as she could, heading for the bathroom at the end of the hall. No, she shouldn’t do it, and it was yet another sign of how fucking weak she was, how little she deserved the chance she’d just lost, but her eyes stung and her chest hurt and their voices echoed in her head, all of those voices, and now Jillian’s and Elder Griffin’s, too, beating into her mind, and if she didn’t manage to dull them somehow she was going to scream. It was too much, and that embarrassed her and made shame pound through her body just as hard and fast as her blood in her veins.

Into the bathroom, into the stall, her hand already in her bag, finding the cool steel of her flask and yanking it out at the same time as she slid the door bolt home. Her fingers shook as she unscrewed the cap; her arm did not shake as she raised it to her lips and drank, one long swallow, then another, the burning heat of the vodka chasing away the icy lump that had formed in her gut. It was wrong but it didn’t matter, it was wrong but who cared, because her career at the Church was over, anyway.

She’d never worked before, not a real job, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d already realized how big a part politics could play in success at the Church; hell, she’d been trying so hard to be—to be
friendly
, to not let on that she couldn’t stand to have anyone touch her, that they freaked her out when they wanted to talk to her or ask questions about her life, that sometimes when she was in a group of her classmates she had to clench her fists to keep from panicking because there were so many of them and she felt so exposed.

And she’d thought she was doing a good job. Apparently not.

Warmth spread through her body, warmth and that familiar dull muscle ache she sometimes got from alcohol. Not that it mattered. It was better than the pain of her feelings; it was better than nothing, and she’d take it. Willingly. Gratefully. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to want it or need it, but what the fuck ever. She might as well.

For a few seconds, maybe a minute, she just stood there, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. So much better. Jillian’s voice, all of the voices, retreated enough for her to breathe, enough to let her focus again.

The cinnamon candies tingled in her mouth, elevating her mood a little further. Was it possible to build up some sort of Pavlovian conditioning with those? And eventually they’d do for her what the shots did?

She shouldn’t need either, she reminded herself as she flushed the toilet and headed for the sinks. She shouldn’t need something to get her through the day. She shouldn’t need any help.

But she was quickly coming to realize that “shouldn’t” might as well be “fat chance.” A second or two of honesty—all she could bear—reminded her that she hadn’t managed to go a day without the flask for over a month, and that wasn’t good. That was, in fact, Bad, capital “B” and all. The kind of Bad that would get her caught; booze wasn’t that easy to hide, and sooner or later the candies would stop working or they’d catch on some other way.

But wasn’t it ironic that she couldn’t make herself feel too guilty about it, couldn’t make herself worry too much about it just then, because her body was warm and the sharp edges in her brain were softened ever so slightly, and Jillian’s disregard had faded in her mind just enough for her to handle it?

The next day. She’d make it through the next day without a drink, she would. She could do it. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

She didn’t meet her own eyes in the mirror as she rubbed on a little lip gloss and gave her clothes a cursory glance to make sure she hadn’t spilled any vodka on them. Nope. Good. Time to go pretend she hadn’t heard anything, to pretend Jillian was her respected mentor, to pretend she had a future.

Good thing life had taught her a lot about pretending, or she’d have been in real trouble just about then.

G
loria Waring’s Cross Town two-story looked peaceful in front of the preparing-for-sunset sky. A long porch, a tidy lawn, sleepy-eyed windows watching the world go by. Calm.

A direct contrast to how Chess felt, which was like someone had wired her up to an outlet of electricity and misery. She hadn’t asked Jillian and Elder Griffin about the names she’d written down, the ghosts who were Summoned. Not after that whole
She goes off on tangents and isn’t a team player and is sexually frustrated
bit. The last thing she wanted to do after hearing that was walk in with another special request, another “tangent.” It wouldn’t make her look on the ball and ready, it would make her look disobedient and like a fucking creepy nymphomaniac or something.

So she’d kept her mouth shut and responded to Jillian’s chitchat in the car with what she hoped were normal-sounding responses. Jillian accepted them, but then, she would, wouldn’t she? Rather than just tell Chess flat out that she was a failure?

Of course. And really, Chess was grateful, because now she knew Jillian wasn’t to be trusted, either. Just like everyone else.

Gloria Waring answered the door, her eyes red and tired, her face pale. Only to be expected, really. She stood back to grant them entry. “You have news?”

“We have more questions,” Jillian said. “Just some background stuff. We hope this is a good time?”

Gloria shrugged and waved them into a yellow-and-blue living room littered with toddler toys. And a toddler, a little boy in overalls putting a Barbie doll into a tow truck. Cute.

“Can I get you a drink or anything?”

Chess and Jillian both refused, and sat on the couch Gloria indicated.

Jillian pulled out a notebook and pen. Oh, right. Probably a good idea to take some notes. “Mrs. Waring—”

“It’s Paulson, actually. My married name. My husband’s just run to the store.”

“Sorry. Mrs. Paulson. We were hoping you could give us some more background on the New Hope Mission.”

Pause. “Why? It was all legal. My parents had licenses for the souvenirs, they didn’t—”

“No, no, of course. We know that. We were actually wondering if you could tell us anything about the other people there. Did your parents keep in touch with them?”

Gloria didn’t look like she necessarily believed Jillian, but she answered. “Not really, no. I guess they did with some of them—Uncle Mark, of course, and Tracy and Eric—”

“Tracy and Eric?”

“Ross, Tracy and Eric Ross. They live in Northside now. He runs some sort of delivery company. Ross Transports, I think.”

Ross Transports. Chess knew that name. She knew it because she was usually still awake at one or two in the morning when supplies were delivered and corpses were taken from the burial grounds behind one of the Church buildings to the Crematorium—the main one was in Downside, but there were a couple more on the outskirts of Triumph City, too.

Most of the vans that made those deliveries and pickups were Church-owned and driven by Church employees. But they occasionally needed extra help. And when they did, they called Ross Transports.

At least some of the time; they used another company, too, Oaktree Van Lines, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Ross Transports had specially made vans, iron-lined vans to carry magic supplies and corpses. And what mattered was that Mark Pollert had access to those vans—at least, she fucking bet he did.

Jillian didn’t pick up on it, just wrote down the name. “Any others that you’re aware of?”

“I don’t think so. Why are you asking this? Didn’t you say it was ghosts who killed my parents? You don’t think any of their friends could have somehow, what, set ghosts on them or something? I didn’t even think that was possible.”

“No, no, of course not,” Jillian replied, shifting in her seat. “We’re trying to get some loose ends tied up, is all.”

“And those loose ends involve my parents’ friends? No. You tell me, please. Am I in danger?”

“We have no reason to believe—”

“But you believe something, you think something is going on. What is it, please?” Gloria’s face grew pinker by the second; she perched on the end of the chair on which she’d been sitting completely a minute before. Shit. This was going nowhere fast, and they needed to come up with something, because Chess knew exactly what was going to happen when they left. Gloria was going to call Uncle Mark, and Uncle Mark was going to know they were on to him.

Of course, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe it was what Jillian wanted. How the hell was Chess supposed to know?

She certainly couldn’t tell from Jillian’s actions; she would have been impressed if she hadn’t already learned firsthand what a good liar Jillian was. Jillian didn’t answer Gloria’s question, instead pulling the picture out of the file she carried and handing it over. “Do you recognize these people?”

“Yes. These are the Mission employees. Will you please tell me what’s going on?” She looked at Chess. Panic rose in her eyes and in her voice. “You. Will you tell me what’s happening? Please? You—you talked to me in my bedroom, you—Please, just tell me what’s happening?”

Jillian kept silent. Great. How was Chess supposed to handle this without knowing what Jillian wanted her to do, what she had planned? And
with
knowing that Jillian thought she was some kind of sex-obsessed ditz?

Okay, focus. This was another test, and Chess was not going to give Jillian another reason to tell Elder Griffin—or any of the others—what a useless twit Chess was. So what would she do if it was her case?

If it was her case, she’d want to flush him out. If it was her case, she’d sort of hint to Gloria what they knew, and wait for her to pass it on. Hell, if it was her case, she wouldn’t be bothering with Gloria; she’d have gone to check out Mark’s place.

But it wasn’t her case, and it was only the first case she’d ever been on, and Jillian hated her and she was only eighteen, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t even know what the regulations were for the Black Squad. So—because both Gloria and Jillian were watching her and making her feel like some kind of fucking game-show contestant or something—she said, “The ghosts are former members of the Mission. We know where they are and can catch them, but we just wondered if you had some additional background to help us.”

She waited. If Jillian had a problem with her lie, she’d say something, she’d say it right there and then, and yeah, it would make Chess feel worse than she already did, but at least it wouldn’t fuck up the case.

But Jillian didn’t speak. Did that mean Chess had done right, or was Jillian just too pissed to find words? She didn’t look pissed, no, but neither did she look cheerful and approving.

Damn it. She’d fucked up again. She’d thought telling the lie, giving Gloria a hint but making sure the information she’d pass on to Uncle Mark was false, would be the right thing to do, and it hadn’t been, and she’d just totally blown it.

More lousy shit for her file. What would it say now, in addition to comments about how unpleasant she was to work with? Maybe
Cesaria is unsuited for working in any capacity that requires independent thought
. Or
Cesaria cannot keep secrets
. Well, no, they certainly couldn’t claim that one. Chess had so many secrets they threatened to make her explode, so many she had to try to hold them down with vodka and work, but they never really quieted.

Not that it would matter when the only job the Church would allow her to have was as a Liaiser. The thought of working in the City all day hadn’t appealed before. Now? After having been there, seen it for herself? No fucking way. She wanted to be something, wanted to work for the Church, to be clean, to be
part
of something, so bad it hurt. No matter how much it terrified her, she wanted it. But she couldn’t do that, couldn’t work in the City. Not even to keep herself off the game.

If it came down to letting ghosts use her body in that cold hellish darkness or letting men use her body on the streets, she’d take the latter. A shitty choice, but life was all about that, wasn’t it?

Jillian’s voice cut into her thoughts. Shit, she’d let herself get distracted, lost track of the conversation. “That’s very helpful, Mrs. Paulson, thank you. And meanwhile, like we said, we don’t think you’re in any specific danger. We do ask you, of course, to keep the information we’ve given you to yourself. I assure you, we’ll be visiting the others, so please don’t call and alarm them. We’ll handle it.”

Gloria sniffled, nodded. “Sure, of course.”

Chess didn’t believe that for a second, especially not when Gloria’s gaze cut to the phone on her left. Twice, quick sneaky little glances, like her eyes were doing what her hands wanted to, like she was reassuring herself that she could do it any second.

It wasn’t the most pleasant thing in the world to realize that she herself had glanced at the flask in her bag that way.

Luckily, it wasn’t the time to think about that realization, either, because Jillian was standing up and holding out her hand and all that so-professional-and-brisk goodbye shit, and Chess did the same even though touching Gloria felt like opening a vein because the woman’s grief and anger and fear were so strong. The last thing Chess needed was someone else’s misery on top of her own.

The second she pulled the car door shut behind her and reached for her seat belt, Jillian turned to her. “That wasn’t a bad lie, you did well. Now what do you think will happen? What do you think we should do?”

Chess hesitated. Was that a serious question? What shit would Jillian report back if she disagreed with Chess’s suggestions?

“Oh, come on, surely you have some sort of ideas. Right?”

Amazing how Jillian’s eyes could still look friendly, her smile could still look genuine. But then, Chess could do the same thing, couldn’t she? Pretending everything was fine, pretending she actually liked the people around her, pretending—well, pretending all sorts of things, because when the penalty for not pretending was being beaten, pretending became second nature. “I think we should try going to the Rosses’ house and see if Gloria calls them. And ask someone to check on Mark and see if he’s home, because if Gloria calls him, he’ll know we’re on to him and he’ll probably make a move. To finish what he’s started.”

“You’re still convinced he’s behind this? You don’t think there may be some other explanation?”

Bitch. “There might be, sure. I just thought maybe you wanted to have every possibility covered, you know?” She widened her eyes just a touch, hoping she looked innocent and enthusiastic and not like she hated Jillian at that moment. “I mean, if nothing else, he could be in danger, couldn’t he?”

Jillian shrugged. “I’ll give Trent a call and see what he thinks. Unless you want to ask Vaughn about it.”

“It’s probably better coming from you, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.” Jillian made a three-point turn and headed back the way they’d come, back toward 300, or so Chess assumed. “You know, I didn’t have much chance to look at the identities of the ghosts, the ones missing from the City. But they didn’t really live near each other or anything.”

Should she say something? Would it be better or worse? Did it matter? Jillian was obviously going to think whatever she wanted to think. “Um, I had a look at them, too, while you were talking to Elder Griffin. I think they’re connected to Mark Pollert as well. The—”

“Do you really think that if Mark Pollert was involved in some kind of plot against the former members of the Mission—people who are supposed to be his good friends, remember?—he’d be drawing such an obvious arrow at himself? Don’t you think that’s a bit odd?”

Yeah, it was a little obvious, wasn’t it? Chess hadn’t really thought of it that way before.

But then, she’d also been taught that the most obvious answer was usually the right one. And every day of her life had taught her that not only would people do all kinds of shit for the most specious or insignificant reasons, but people always, always thought they were smarter than they actually were. Certainly they always thought they were smarter than whoever was after them. And they were usually wrong.

She didn’t want to argue with Jillian. But neither did she want to just give up. “Maybe he wants us to know it’s him.”

“Why? Because he wants to get busted? Cesaria, I understand, and I appreciate, that you have a different viewpoint on this. I think it’s great you’re forming your own opinions. But really, I have a little more experience here than you do, and Trent and Vaughn have a lot more, and they don’t seem to think we need to keep a special eye on Pollert.”

Jillian was right. Well, no, she wasn’t right, because Chess couldn’t believe it was all a big coincidence. But she was right that there could be another explanation—someone out to get Mark Pollert, for example—and she was right that if three experienced investigators didn’t see what the big deal was, Chess should really just chill out a bit.

“So maybe someone should check on him. For his own protection,” Chess said.

Jillian sighed and picked up her phone. “Let me ask the guys.”

Chess waited, watching the tidy streets go from light to shadow, shadow to light, as they passed the streetlamps. Every street in Triumph City—every street in the world, pretty much—had extra lights, after Haunted Week.

“No, well, she gave us another name, another couple,” Jillian said into the phone. “We’re going to head over there now. But Cesaria says”—she shot Chess a glance—“that she thinks the Summoned ghosts might be connected to Pollert as well. Yeah, I know. But I kind of agree with her that at the very least it’s worth checking on him, isn’t it? Just making sure he isn’t in danger, too. We’re heading over to this other couple’s house now. Yeah, call me then.”

She clicked the phone shut. “Trent agrees that it’s a long shot, but he and Vaughn are going to head to Pollert’s anyway. Just for a minute. Okay?”

“Thanks.” Having to say it made Chess’s skin crawl. But she didn’t have a choice. “Hey, um, something else, too. The Rosses? Gloria said they own Ross Transports.”

“Yeah?”