Sacrificial Magic (13 page)

“Uh-huh.” Beulah sat down, held up a plastic tray and cup. “Here, I brought you these.”

Eating or drinking something Beulah offered her didn’t seem like the best idea. But her water bottle was almost empty and her throat felt like someone had set sawdust on fire and shoved it down there, so …

She took the cup, downed the contents in one long swallow, and almost spit them back up. “Ugh, what the fuck is that?”

“Green tea. It’s unsweetened, it’s good for you. Cleans the blood, gets rid of impurities.”

For fuck’s sake. She didn’t spend most of her income on drugs so she could have clean fucking blood. And that green tea tasted like swampwater and death.

Beulah obviously saw the look on her face— Chess wasn’t making any effort to hide it—and continued. “You should really start taking care of yourself. You’d feel much better.”

“I feel fine.” At least she did until she opened that plastic container. The smell assaulted her, that horrible sodium smell, damp meat and soggy pale fries, old pasta with sauce dried into crustiness. Institution food. Food she’d find in Dumpsters behind the school because no one gave her money to buy any. She gagged, swallowed hard the saliva flooding her mouth, and snapped the lid back shut so fast she gave herself a cut with the sharp plastic edge.

“Sorry,” Beulah said. “I know the food from there is gross, but it’s really not great anywhere around here, and I didn’t know what you’d like, so …”

“It’s fine.” She needed a smoke. She needed her pills. Needed them like she needed … well, needed them like she needed her fucking pills, and that was an awful lot, more than anything. Beulah’s presence annoyed her, an itch she couldn’t scratch; why wouldn’t the woman go away so she could take her pills? She closed her eyes, wished as hard as she could that Beulah would just leave.

“So why were you in that trunk?”

That didn’t sound like leaving, damn it. Chess opened her eyes to see Beulah watching her with an intensity that made her want to squirm. She didn’t, and she wouldn’t, but she wanted to. “What do you mean, why?”

“I mean why? Did you see something? A ghost?”

“No.”

“Then why—”

“Why nothing. I was looking in it. The lid fell. I got out. No big deal.”

Beulah nodded toward the trunk—the wreckage of the trunk, the hole in the center of the lid a ragged exit
wound. “You just destroyed it? Are you going to replace it?”

Beulah deserved a punch in the face. “I have the authority to destroy, take, or use anything I want.”

“Yes. And you do exercise that, don’t you?”

“What the hell is your problem with me? Seriously. You don’t know me, or anything about me. Is there some reason why you keep acting like I spit on your baby or something?”

A flash of surprise on Beulah’s face, and then there was that damned look of amusement again. “You’re right,” she said after a pause. “I’m not being very nice.”

“Were you like this with Aros?”

Beulah tilted her head. Thinking. “No. Aros wasn’t as cold as you are. I mean, he seemed very nervous all the time. Like he thought someone was going to start yelling at him. He talked very quietly and he didn’t ask a lot of questions. He probably would have peed himself if he’d walked into that crowd in the office earlier.”

“The ambush you set up for me, you mean?”

Beulah smiled, a broad, genuine smile. “I didn’t set it up. I just didn’t do anything to discourage it.”

Beulah certainly did seem to have an awful lot of authority in the school for someone who wasn’t an administrator. Hell, she wasn’t even technically a school employee.

So why did she have the keys to all the locks in the building? Why would she talk about the pissy party that had greeted Chess as if her encouragement or discouragement would make a difference?

“Why?”

“I guess I wanted to see what you were really made of. As a person, I mean.”

Right. So Chess was apparently some sort of experiment for Beulah now. Okay, well, good to know. She didn’t trust the other woman anyway, but now she knew
really not to trust her. The last thing she wanted to do was hang around near someone whose idea of a good time was to set up mind games for others to navigate, so they could sit back and laugh at them.

Her phone beeped at her. A text from Terrible, a reminder to let him know when she left Mercy Lewis. He must have just woken up, and— Shit. It was five after two.

She stood up, fast enough to give herself a headrush. Her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, too, and she really, really wanted to get some pills into it as fast as possible. “I have to go. I have to talk to those kids.”

Beulah’s delicate eyebrows rose. “You think they’ll talk to you?”

“Not really.” She slung her bag over her shoulder. “But who knows?”

Yeah, they didn’t want to talk to her. The first one Laurie brought her was Maia Song. Or, as Chess knew her, Bleached Blonde. Didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t say a word.

The nausea started right before Maia left, the dark hollow feeling in her gut. So quiet at first she barely noticed it, thought it was frustration from Maia’s zipped lips. But no. It grew, kept growing, until Chess realized she was sweating, sitting behind the teacher’s desk staring at her notepad blurry in front of her.

She was going to be sick.

That tea … Was it the tea? Had that shit even been tea?

Whatever it had been, the taste of it, the sour-bitter dankness of it, flooded her mouth again. A hideous reminder that she’d actually put that shit into her body. That was where the nausea came from. The tea—assuming it had been tea—seemed to coat her tongue, throbbing there, waves of it stronger and stronger.

Fuck, that was so disgusting.

She had a few minutes before her next interview—hell, she had all day if she wanted it, and who the fuck
cared, they weren’t going to talk to her anyway—and she’d be damned if she was going to spend another minute with that flavor, worse than crunching up Cepts with her teeth, worse than the metallic, gritty feeling of her teeth during a speed comedown. She always kept a folding travel toothbrush in her bag; brushing in a public restroom didn’t exactly appeal, but if she didn’t get the essence of slime out of her mouth she was going to puke, and that would be even worse.

Her feet echoed in the empty hall as she half ran down it looking for the bathroom. Where the fuck was it? Hadn’t it been down— Yes!

The bathroom was grimy, coated like all school bathrooms with a thin, sticky film of estrogen and teenage angst. Chess didn’t need either touching her. She felt queasy enough already; the building was depressing enough.

Having Mrs. Li walk in while she brushed her teeth at the sink didn’t help. The woman looked at her with shocked disapproval, as if Chess was giving herself a full-on intimate wax instead of just brushing her teeth.

Ha, that was one thing she didn’t have to do anymore, not after Terrible admitted he liked it better when she didn’t, and now that she wasn’t sleeping with anyone else.

Not that that helped her at the moment, as she stood over the sink drooling foam while Mrs. Li’s cold eyes, beady behind thick glasses, stared her up and down. “What are you doing?”

What the fuck did it look like she was doing? Chess didn’t answer, just started cleaning the toothbrush. Rinsing and spitting while being stared at really didn’t appeal—she hated having anyone watch her brush her teeth—but neither did she want to stand there with a mouth full of toothpaste, either.

She finished up, trying to ignore Mrs. Li. Not easy
when the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stood on end. Not magic, just creepiness; Mrs. Li was creepy. Who stood and stared at someone while they brushed their teeth?

“I know what you’re doing.”

Oh, for … “I don’t think it’s too hard to figure out. Toothbrush, sink, toothpaste—”

“Not that. I know what you’re trying to do to us. Undermine us. Get control of this school back to the Church. Get rid of us.” Her painted-on eyebrows drew together. “Get rid of
me
.”

Chess sighed, tossed the paper towel she’d used to dry her face into the trash can. “Mrs. Li, I’m not trying to get rid of anyone. I’m just trying to find out if there’s a ghost, that’s all.”

“A ghost. Incredible. Almost twenty-five years since she died and that slut’s still causing problems here.”

“I don’t have any— What?”

Sometimes people grew more attractive the better you got to know them; Terrible again. Mrs. Li was not one of those people. With every passing second she looked more and more like one of those crazy-haired troll dolls vendors in the Market sometimes sold for a dollar. “You heard me. She was a slut. Slept with everyone. Made them fall in love with her.”

“Made them?”

Mrs. Li sneered. “Love spells. The kind of thing you people do. The kind of thing you people brought into the world.”

“The Church didn’t create magic, they just used it. To save humanity, remember?”

“Not the kinds of spells Lucy did. Ruining boys, making them obsessed with her, writing about her, pages and pages, and did she care? No. She didn’t even know who that baby’s father was, not really.” The woman’s eyes started to glaze over. Chess’s stomach fluttered.

Lucy? The name rang a distant chime somewhere in Chess’s memory. Lucy … Beulah had mentioned the name, right?

Yes. Lucy. Lucy McShane. The theater suicide from twenty years or so before, the ghost the kids thought they saw—said they saw. Well, damn. This could be good, and the more Mrs. Li lost herself, the more she’d let slip.

“She slept with all of them, everybody knew it. And she said it was his, but—”

The bathroom door opened. Fuck! That could have been—almost definitely
had
been—important information. But the way Mrs. Li’s face flushed when she saw Monica, the way her gaze hit the floor and she scuttled into one of the stalls, told Chess there was no point asking questions, then or ever. Mrs. Li wouldn’t open up like that again.

Monica watched Mrs. Li close the door of the stall, gave Chess a smile and a shrug, a friendly eye-roll. “How are you? How are your interviews going? Good, I hope.”

“Fine so far, yeah.”

“Great. Do you want me to get Vernal Sze now or …?”

One last glance at the shut stall door. “Um, yeah, thanks.”

Monica wasn’t done with her, though. She followed Chess out of the bathroom, waited until they were about halfway down the hall before she spoke again. “Having fun with Mrs. Li? She’s awful, isn’t she?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Chess replied, even though she totally would. But what was she going to do, admit that to Monica? Hell, no.

“I guess you haven’t spent enough time with her yet. She’s always in the office, hovering around, watching all of us like a hawk. She’s convinced that every woman in
the world is after that husband of hers. If we so much as say hello to him she looks like she wants to kill us.”

“Really.” Mildly interesting.

“It’s especially bad because she insists on being involved in everything, so she’s always here, and he’s always here, and—it just makes things very uncomfortable. I mean, really, it’s not like Wen Li is some sort of lothario, with a girl in every room.” She laughed at the thought, and Chess felt an unwilling smile spread across her own face.

They reached the front doors of the school. One of them stood open to the warm breeze; through it Chess saw more kids, standing around, sitting on the steps or the greening crabgrass.

“There’s Vernal.” Monica pointed. “The blond one, see him?”

Vernal Sze stood maybe a couple of inches taller than herself—he was definitely under six feet—but stocky, with a short-sides-long-front retro skater boy haircut bleached blond on top. Rubber bracelets covered his right wrist, a silver watch covered his left, and he wore skinny black jeans and a snug black T-shirt.

She checked the back of his left hand. Clean. Not one of Slobag’s, then, at least not fully initiated or dedicated or whatever they called it.

“I guess I’ll see you later, then.” Monica gave her a smile, a quick wave, and trotted off down the hall. Her outfit that day was even worse than the day before, wide orange and purple stripes like something puked up by a barber pole.

Chess pushed through the doors, through the crowd outside it to Vernal’s side. “Come talk to me, Vernal. I have some questions for you.”

“Ain’t talkin shit with you,” he mumbled. His eyes looked everywhere but at her.

She’d bought a small bag of pretzel sticks and a Coke
from the vending machine earlier. Vernal shook his head when she offered him a pretzel—she figured he would—but she needed to get something into her stomach. “So you can listen to me. Come on.”

He followed her toward a cherry tree at the edge of the makeshift parking lot, still with the same sullen expression. He didn’t speak again, and she was too busy chewing to talk. But someone from the crowd had something to say. “Vernal! Have fun with the
yee mm lui
!”

Laughter followed this comment; Vernal didn’t laugh. Neither did Chess. She’d heard that phrase a few times that morning already, and it wasn’t one she’d picked up from Lex. Which meant it probably didn’t have anything to do with sex. “What did that mean?”