Sacrificial Magic (21 page)

“We didn’t leave that door open,” she said to Beulah. “We came in through the …” Shit.

A pause, a long one, while she wondered whether she should tell Beulah about the magic, the other person in the building. To stall she said, “Why would they call
you
to come check out a noise? Why would you come?”

“I was afraid it was Vernal and his friends. They’ve done it before. I didn’t want them to get busted.”

“But why you?”

“Why not me? I’m not exactly a stranger around here or anything. If you didn’t open those doors, who did?”

Above the flashlight’s beam her face was blurry, set back in soft shadows. But her eyes glittered as she looked back and forth between them. “Ah. Someone else was here, huh? Did you— No, I guess you didn’t catch them. Maybe you scared them off?”

Damn. Chess shook her head.

“No what? No, you didn’t catch them, or no, you didn’t scare them off?”

“Both. I guess. We didn’t catch them.” She was beginning to feel like an idiot standing there on the stage while Beulah sat below her, like a director holding auditions. But when she started to sit, Terrible grabbed the back of her shirt. Why wouldn’t he want her to sit down?

He wasn’t going to tell her right then, that was for sure.

“So were you going to look for them, or what? Oh, I guess you weren’t, were you?”

“We knew they left the building. So we were going to leave, too, is all.”

Beulah’s gaze switched to Terrible, swept from the top of his head—pomaded strands falling over his forehead, messy from her hands—past his half-unbuttoned shirt and stretched collar, all the way to his dirty worn-down boots. “You don’t talk much, do you, Terrible? I’d heard that about you.”

When he didn’t answer she shrugged and turned back to Chess. “Well. I guess I’ll let you two get on with it. I’m tired.” She stood up.

“Wait.” Chess shook off Terrible’s grabbing hand on her shirt again and headed down the stairs. There was one thing she could do, and she would. Beulah could say all she wanted to that some good Samaritan—ha, good Samaritans in Downside were about as common as diamonds in boxes of rat poison—had called her, but Chess didn’t buy that for a second. There had to be some other reason Beulah was there, and she intended to find out what it was.

Reaching for Beulah’s hand felt like a stupid thing to do, and Chess had no idea what to say as she did it, but it needed to be done. Her mind clicked and flashed until she finally came up with, “Are you going to be here tomorrow?”

Wow. That was clever.

Beulah’s eyebrows rose; she looked down at their joined hands. “Are you asking me out? Holding hands is okay, but I don’t kiss on the—”

“Ha-ha. Yes, Beulah, I’m dying to—”

Behind her Terrible made a sound; not a sarcastic one, more like surprise. Beulah’s gaze snapped to him; her face paled for a second before she turned back. What the hell was that all about?

“I’m dying to make you mine,” Chess finished. “Please. I just want to know if you’ll be here tomorrow so I can ask you some more questions, that’s all.”

“I will be, yes.” Beulah looked at their hands again, deliberately.

Chess let go. She had what she needed, anyway; Beulah’s energy, the feel of it, very faint—she wasn’t a witch, and didn’t seem to have much talent in that direction, either—but still enough for Chess to make a judgment.
She hadn’t been doing ghost magic, hadn’t been around it. At least not that Chess could feel.

“Fine. See you tomorrow, then.”

She and Terrible watched Beulah climb the steps, sashay behind the booth and over to the theater door. It closed behind her with a soft
clunk
.

The second it did, Terrible turned to Chess. His brows drew down; redness crept up his neck, hiding the bruise-to-be. “Why the fuck ain’t you tell me she was here? She work here?”

“What?”

“You been talking to her? An you ain’t said a word.” Suspicion lurked behind his eyes, growing bolder by the second, almost as fast as her bruised heart started breaking into pieces.

“I don’t— Why would I, she’s just some community liaison person.” When he didn’t respond she reached out, touched his hand with her own. Her fingers were too cold, too stiff to wrap around his, and when she talked she heard the edge of panic in her voice. Too bad being ashamed of that panic, embarrassed by it—and oh, she definitely was—didn’t make it go away.

“What did I do? I don’t know why I would need to tell you, I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate or anything—”

His deep-set black eyes, pools of shadow in his face, focused on her. His head tilted. “You ain’t know? True thing?”

“No, I— Please tell me what I did. I didn’t mean to, whatever it was I didn’t mean to, okay? Tell me, please?”

Ah, yes. How much better could she make herself look? She’d failed to Banish the ghost, and now she stood there begging, with her eyes stinging and hot. Fuck.

“Ain’t can believe you don’t know, sleepin at—at Lex’s place all you did.” With a jolt of surprise that sent waves of nausea through her, she saw the hurt on his
face, the confusion. This was it, this was it, she knew it was too good to last, she knew she’d fuck it up just like she always did. Just like she took anything and everything that might be good for her and trampled it beneath her irresponsible feet every chance she got.

“I’m sorry,” she managed. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry.”

Pause. “Callin her what? Beulah? What the fuck game she got on.”

It wasn’t really a question, but she tried to answer it anyway. “That’s her name, I don’t— That’s how she was introduced to me is all …”

Oh, no. Oh fuck no. Oh please please please no, because the pieces snapped into place in her head and she knew what he was going to say, and her blood turned to acid. Suspicious indeed.

“She’s Lex’s sister, isn’t she. Blue. That’s her, isn’t it.”

He nodded. Opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he was going to say snapped off like a spent rubber band when Beulah’s scream invaded the theater.

   There had been worse nights than this one. This one didn’t even really compete, all things considered; hell, most of her life she’d considered any night a victory if she managed to survive until morning with food in her stomach, without being beaten or used.

But not this night. Not when she still felt Terrible’s distance even though he stood by her side smoking a cigarette; not when she felt Beulah’s shock and grief like bristly wires jabbing her skin.

Not when the sick creep of death magic slid around her body, up her legs to wrap around her chest and squeeze, as she looked at the dead body—at what was left of the dead body—of Jia Zhang, spread-eagled within the confines of the
hafuran
painted in still-wet blood on the cracked patch of cement right outside the
school’s front doors. It was worse than Eddie’s, in some ways; it hadn’t burned, so the slices on the girl’s skin, the way she’d been torn open, were still clear.

That had been the ritual being done, she guessed, the spell they’d felt. The one giving the spell caster more power. And the ghost was coincidence. Wrong a-fucking-gain.

“I can feel them this time,” she told Terrible, standing close to him. Not too close, but close. If she stood
too
close she thought he’d move away, and she couldn’t bear it if he did. Especially now, when even her bones felt cold despite the balmy night, and all she wanted to do was bury her face in his chest, feel his strong arms around her keeping her from falling into the abyss beneath her. She couldn’t see the pit, the crack in the earth that wanted to swallow her, but she knew it was there; she walked a tightrope over it every day, every minute.

It took almost all of her strength not to throw herself at him. It took almost all of her strength not to dig into her pillbox and swallow everything she had. She couldn’t take this. Too much stress, too much sadness, too much frustration … it would never end, and she was so fucking tired of trying to find a place to rest.

Tired of finding it—thinking she’d found it—and having it torn out from under her.

Terrible nodded. “Aye? Same as Eddie?”

“Eddie? Who is that? This happened before?” Beulah seemed to have no compunction about standing close to either of them. She circled the
hafuran
and came to a stop right between them. So helpful of her to stand there; Chess would have to remember to thank her later.

Terrible gave her a sharp glance. Right. Shit. Did Beulah already know? But—no. No, the idea that she’d deliberately come into the theater just so she could seem stunned and upset at the murder to throw them off the
trail seemed a bit much, didn’t it? Why wouldn’t she just not show up at all?

Lex had mentioned Blue more than once, yeah, but never in connection to work. How much did she have to do with all of that?

Guess it was time to find out. Chess took a deep breath, filtered through her tight throat. “He’s—he was—from our side of town. Killed the night before last, just like this.”

Beulah’s mouth turned down. “And you didn’t tell me. Or Lex.”

“Why the fuck would I tell you? Or Lex? Why do you need to know?”

“Someone’s performing ritual murders in Downside and you don’t think—”

“Someone performed
a
ritual murder, on
our
side of town.” A ritual murder Beulah’s father might already know about, but she bit that one back. She’d find out soon enough. And even if he didn’t, fuck Beulah. “So no, I didn’t think it was time to call in backup. Sorry. I should have known how much more skilled at this shit you and Lex are than me. Oh, but how would I have known, when you didn’t even tell me who you are?”

“Don’t get on your fucking attitude train with me. You should have said something and you know it. You knew I had connections in the community, you knew I could have had people watching.”

“Yeah, your fucking community watchdogs were really effective when those hookers were being murdered. Very impressive how they caught the guy— Oh, no, wait. That was me.”

“With help from my brother.”

“Oh, bullshit. If you think he was any—”

Her gaze fell on Terrible watching them with the disinterested expression he generally wore when he was bored or trying not to react to things. She didn’t know
which one it was at that moment, but she knew neither of them really appealed.

Beulah seemed to come to her senses as well. After a few seconds of embarrassed silence she said, “I’m sorry, Chess. You’re right, why would you have told me. Or Lex. It wasn’t our territory.”

“Thank you.” That sounded stiff, so she softened it with, “I shouldn’t have yelled, either.”

Beulah smiled, a quick flash in the darkness. She turned her head toward poor Jia’s mutilated body. “I guess I should call my father about her, get someone to come pick her up—”

“You can’t,” Chess said, but as soon as the words left her mouth she realized there was no way in hell she could call the Church and report this. Not when she hadn’t reported Eddie’s similar death the night before. What could she say? “Oh, yeah, well, I saw a man murdered just like this last night, but my drug dealer just took care of discarding his body somehow so we didn’t have to get you involved.” Sure. That would totally work, and totally not get her ass fired and thrown in jail.

If she called the Church, she would lose everything. If she didn’t, she’d be giving Slobag something serious to hold over her head, something that wasn’t her addiction and didn’t implicate him in it. If she didn’t, she’d have to handle the case by herself, and for some strange reason that thought just didn’t hold much appeal for her.

Two choices, both of them shitty. Story of her life.

Beulah stood before her, arms folded, eyebrows raised. The look on her face told Chess that the other woman knew exactly what sort of mental calculation she was doing in her head. “Well? Are you going to tell me why I can’t do the only logical thing?”

Fuck. Chess couldn’t quite look up, couldn’t quite meet either Beulah’s eyes or Terrible’s. “No. You’re right, that’s what you should do. And— Okay, I guess we should go, huh? So your father’s witch can get a look at it?”

“What?”

“Your father’s witch. He has one, correct?” Beulah’s eyes narrowed. “I thought they were talking about you.”

“No.” Okay, that answered that one—sort of, anyway. Beulah could be lying.

Whether she was or wasn’t, though, what was Chess going to do, leave this for some random maybe-witch to deal with?

She wanted to. Fuck, how she wanted to. Wipe her hands of this whole mess and head back to Terrible’s place, to his big warm bed. Or hers, which wasn’t quite
as big but would be just as warm. Either one, she didn’t care, as long as no one would interrupt them again.

She folded her arms over her chest, gritted her teeth. “Fine. I’ll stay. Until he gets here, at least.”

Beulah nodded, but instead of pulling out her phone, she looked at Terrible. What was that about?

Oh, right. If one more positive thing happened in this whole situation she was going to explode from the sheer joy of it all. “Beulah, can you take him home? We came in my car, so—”