Sacrificial Magic (3 page)

If she wasn’t a witch it wouldn’t matter. Marriages were bound by blood and magic combined, not one or the other, so they required the Church’s assistance. But magic was
in
her blood, and that meant spending six days burning with frustration.

His eyebrows rose; his hands wandered with more
purpose. “You ain’t really wanna stay here, aye? Whyn’t we head on out now instead?”

“I thought you wanted to see the band,” she teased.

“Changed my thought. Let’s us go. Back my place, aye?” He was smiling, that smile she’d always loved, while his hands distracted her and his body warmed her through her clothes. Summer drew closer every day, and the temperatures reflected that, but it seemed like she was always cold when he wasn’t around. “C’mon.”

“My place is closer.”

“Aye.” He leaned in to bite her neck; she shivered. “But mine’s got thicker walls, dig, an I plan on makin you scream a few times afore we get to sleeping.”

It took her a minute to draw enough breath to speak, through a throat suddenly too tight for anything but a gasp. “I thought we decided we wanted to actually get out tonight, though.”

“And done it. Now us can go back in.”

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. It was becoming more difficult to talk, especially since he’d started sucking gently on her neck, making her dizzy.

“Think on this one, then, Chessiebomb. Nobody seein us right here, aye?” His nimble fingers popped the top button of her jeans. “Then we still out.”

“No way.” She giggled and swatted at his hands. “Last time I got a splinter—”

The sound of his phone ringing, a loud jangly sort of ring, cut her off.

“Ignore it,” she suggested, but she knew he couldn’t. They both knew he couldn’t. Midnight was practically the start of a working day in Downside, yes, but she doubted anyone who’d be calling him at that hour would have good news.

She was right. Within seconds of answering the phone his face darkened; darkened and took on that look she’d only seen a few times before, that lowered-brow-narrowed-eyes
look of absolute rage. The kind of look that would be the last thing the person who caused it would ever see. His fingers tightened on her waist.

“Aye,” he said. “Get em—aye. On my way.”

Her heart sank. Looked like they weren’t going back to anybody’s place, to anybody’s bed. At least not for a long time.

His phone snapped shut. “Pipe room’s burnin.”

“What?”

He was already walking up the alley, back toward the street, holding her hand in an almost painful grip. “Fuckin Slobag, ’swhat. Pipe room up Sixtieth, green one. On fire.”

She didn’t want to say “What?” again, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t seem to get any other words into her head. A pipe room burning? All those people, even on a weeknight. All that Dream, waiting to be smoked, waiting to send those people into a soft golden fog. Gone.
“What?”

He didn’t answer. She had to trot to keep up as he pulled her along, dropping her hand just before they emerged from the alley. She almost wished he wouldn’t, wished they hadn’t decided to keep everything secret. Certainly she could have used more physical contact at that moment. With every step the awful picture in her mind grew clearer: burning bodies in a pit of flames, exploding glass, storerooms full of Dream knobs, their smoke wasted. She wrapped her arms around herself to still the shakes.

Terrible’s car, a black 1969 BT Chevelle, waited for them in the circle of pale yellow cast by one of the few working streetlights. “Waited” being the operative word. To Chess, the car always seemed ready to leap from its resting place, ready to start mowing down pedestrians just because it could.

But it didn’t. It stayed silent and still while Terrible
opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and got in on the driver’s side.

On their way to the fire, to the— Wait. “The one on Sixtieth? Didn’t you say nobody’s in that one, Bump’s doing something else with it?”

“Aye.” The car plowed away from the curb in a squeal of rubber. “Were thinkin on makin it storing rooms, dig, gettin other shit done there too. Figured on setting a new room a block up.”

“So no one died.” The tightness in her chest eased a bit.

“Naw. Least not what Bernam say. Maybe one or two in there, ain’t can say certain. But nobody ought, leastaways.”

“Good.”

He glanced at her, swinging the heavy car right, north on Sixtieth. “Aye, cepting, how Slobag knew nobody in there?”

“If the room’s closed—”

“Ain’t hardly nobody got that knowledge, though. Nobody been told. Just let em know tonight, first night it shut down.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t care who he killed.”

Terrible snorted. “Still a fuck of a chance.”

She sat for a few seconds watching his profile before finally resting a hesitant hand on his thigh, not sure it was welcome. Not sure if she should say anything. Anger still hovered around him, filled the car and tried to find a way into her body. She felt it like icy fingers sliding over her skin.

Not much she could do when he was in that kind of mood, at least not in the car on the way to check the wreckage.

Not to mention … he hadn’t said anything. She didn’t
know if he was thinking it, if he’d thought of it. But he probably had.

If Slobag had some sort of inside information about Bump’s operations, he had to be getting that information from somewhere. And there she was, the one person Terrible knew for a fact had been in Slobag’s pocket; or to put it more bluntly, Terrible knew she’d been in Slobag’s son’s bed, for months. Knew she still talked to him.

How long before she became a suspect?

The last vestiges of the cheer she’d managed to find at Trickster’s evaporated. It wouldn’t be long. He’d think of it. He’d wonder.

And she couldn’t blame him. What was she supposed to do, get all pissed and indignant because he didn’t trust her? Why the hell should he trust her? He’d trusted her before and she’d paid him back by fucking his enemy. He’d be stupid not to wonder about her now.

That sucked. But it was true.

Their destination wasn’t difficult to spot. The Chevelle growled up Sixtieth, chasing the orange glow of the flames ahead. A fire indeed. The building had simply disappeared. In its place a set of half walls created a bowl of fire, surrounded by curious onlookers standing too close even though it was spring. A few of them held out sticks with various animal parts on the ends; free fire shouldn’t be wasted.

Chunks of cement littered the pavement, more and more of them as the Chevelle approached the scene, until finally Terrible had to park because there were too many of them to avoid. Broken glass sparkled under their feet.

Against the angry flames, Bump’s profile stood like a
pimp-shaped inkspot, his hat brim ostentatiously wide, his cape moving in the breeze. Even at a distance she could see how pissed he was, just from the way he held his shoulders.

The closer they got the more obvious his anger got. He glowered at the fire, glowered at Terrible, glowered at her. “You finding they, Terrible, yay? Fuckin make they dead.”

It wasn’t much of a greeting, but she supposed it could be excused under the circumstances. Hell, even if they weren’t standing in front of what was probably half a million dollars or so on fire, it could be excused; it would have to be excused. No matter who she slept with, no matter who she still couldn’t believe she was lucky enough to sleep with, the fact was that at its base her relationship—such as it was—with Bump entailed the biggest power imbalance possible. She was a junkie. He was her dealer.

In other words, he got to say whatever he wanted to her, do whatever he wanted to her, treat her like less than nothing, and she got to take it without resistance if she wanted to keep getting her pills. Which she did.

He glanced at her now. “Ay, Ladybird. Ain’t fuckin supposing you witchy skills fuckin find they done it.”

She shook her head. “Sorry” sat on the tip of her tongue; she swallowed it. “Not the sort of thing I can do, no.”

“But you got them fuckin snooping skills, yay? Do you findin out things, on you fuckin cases or what-the-fuck them is you doin.”

Shit. Usually the problem she had with people knowing her job was that they thought she could wave her hand and make things disappear or whatever; now she had Bump obviously thinking she was some sort of Sherlock Holmes or something and could just pop in
and find out who—of the hundreds, even thousands, of possible suspects—had spied, had set this up.

If she had a choice … well, she’d probably still say yes, because this affected Terrible’s life, and that made it something she needed to do. But she didn’t have a choice anyway.

“I’ll try.” She shifted her weight, hoped she didn’t look as uncomfortable as she felt. “But really, I don’t know any of the people involved, so I don’t really see what I can do.”

“Aw, nay, ain’t you fuckin count youself short. Got them fuckin brains hidin in you head, yay? You use em for Bump. Use em for Terrible, yay? Got the thinkin you catch this one straightup fast, yay, fuckin straightup. What fuckin happening if them get Terrible afore you fuckin get the finding? Thinkin you ain’t fuckin liking that.”

No, she certainly wasn’t fucking liking that. Did he not realize that was why she’d agreed to help out?

She’d known it was a mistake to tell Bump what was happening between them, what had happened. Being right usually felt a lot better than it did at that moment. This night was just going from shitty to shittier, wasn’t it?

“I’ll do whatever I can.”

Bump gave her a slow, fluid sort of nod, the kind that told her he’d known all along that she would do it, and how he’d get her to do it. Damn him. He wasn’t stupid; no one got to be lord of the streets west of Forty-third—almost all of Downside—without being smart, tough, and fast, and of course utterly ruthless. Bump was all of those, with a greasy layer of sleaze smoothed on top like rancid frosting covering a moldy cake.

He leaned back on his gold-tipped cane, crossed one ankle in its furry boot over the other. Somehow even standing on the street across from a burning building he managed to look as if he was lounging around his horrendous
living room, perfectly relaxed, lord of his tacky pornography empire.

“Nobody in, aye?” Terrible asked. He stepped closer to her; just half a step, really, nothing anyone would notice, but she did, and it helped.

“Nay, ain’t none people in there, when it fuckin go. Only our fuckin supplies, yay? Fuckin only half got out, fore it blowin the fuck up.” He leered at her. “Too fuckin bad, yay? Got less smoke now, price goin up, Bump gots the guessing on. ’Course, could be you ain’t gotta get the fuckin raise, you helping Bump out, get what we needing done up, yay?”

She didn’t answer him. Would not. He didn’t deserve an answer.

Instead, she watched the fire, watched Terrible’s profile silhouetted by it and the way it cast changing golden light on everything. Downside looked almost wholesome with the flames dancing in their enormous makeshift firecan; the delicate changing light softened the sharp edges, bleached out the blood and needles and filth, the passed-out bodies and pockmarked walls and broken streets. The fire smoothed it all over, made it look almost normal.

Funny, she’d never noticed that before. But then she’d never paid this much attention to a fire before, at least not one she wasn’t inside. Burning buildings were as common an occurrence in Downside as muggings and beatings; they no longer attracted much attention, save from scavengers looking for something to snatch from the wreckage.

After the fire finally died they’d swarm, looking for every scrap of metal, every piece of furniture, every smoke-damaged pipe. And of course, any lumps of Dream that might have survived. The thought pinched her heart. She could use a visit to the pipes just then. It
would be nice to forget Bump’s beady eyes, his dismissal of her, the confidence with which he used her.

But that was the price she paid, and she knew that. So she squared her shoulders. “You don’t have any idea who could have told? Who knew the place would be empty?”

“Terrible an meself, coursen. An a some they others. They needed for fuckin clearin up, dig, movin fuckin furniture. Movin them fuckin Dream out, yay. They Bump gots fuckin trust for.”

“So who could they have told?”

Bump shrugged. “Ain’t shoulda given none the fuckin tell, yay? Bump’s business Bump’s own fuckin business. Ain’t for nobody givin out.”

“Well, clearly someone you trust isn’t really someone you should be trusting,” she said without thinking, and regretted it when Terrible glanced at her. He did it fast, just a quick cut of his eyes in her direction and then away again, but she saw it. She felt it.

It was starting already. She wished she could say she was surprised, wished she hadn’t been waiting for it, expecting it the way she expected rain from black clouds overhead. Nothing in the world was permanent, especially not happiness.

She’d always known that. She just wished life would stop proving her right.