Sacrificial Magic (34 page)

She’d lost. She’d lost, she’d lost, the files were gone. Any evidence she might possibly have found was gone, destroyed by fire or water.

Yes, she knew Aros was her killer, and that was a good thing. But for some reason it didn’t feel that great as she stood there staring at the wreckage of the cottage. Just … Damn.

Her phone had rung, hadn’t it? Just before Elder Griffin set off the spell? She pulled it from her bag, took a look at the screen.

Yes. It had rung. Terrible had called her.

Her breath froze in her lungs; she couldn’t seem to do anything but stare at the phone, not moving, not blinking. Somehow she managed to check her texts, found
that he had indeed sent her one. “Another body. Call when.”

Not exactly “I love you, I miss you, I’m sorry,” but she had no right to expect anything like that, did she? No. All things considered, she was lucky she got anything at all, even though she knew the only reason she did was because Bump wanted her there.

If anyone should be sending the apologies it was her, anyway.

She glanced at Elder Griffin beside her, panting and examining his bleeding fingertips. He’d advised her to apologize, to talk to Terrible. Looked like she was going to get a chance to follow that advice after all.

   Vanity. Taking the time to shower, dry her hair, and put on some makeup was pure vanity, but she couldn’t help it. What was she supposed to do—go see Terrible for the first time since that horrible night looking all rumpled and sweaty? No fucking way. Bad enough that her left eye was smudged with darkness from Jia’s fist two days before, that her cheek was still scratched from the catwalk and Lucy’s pipe had turned her arm purple-yellow. Bad enough that the magical wounds on her fingers looked red and raw, that the fire had caught the side of her palm and turned it red as well.

So she didn’t. Instead, she pulled up outside the destroyed warehouse at Sixty-fifth and Foster wearing the red top she knew was his favorite, with matching lipstick, figuring she looked about as good as possible. Wasn’t saying much, but it was all she could do.

All she could do as far as her looks went, anyway. She lifted five Cepts from her pillbox, gave them a quick nose-wrinkling crunch, and washed them down with Coke. Maybe they’d slow her frantic heartbeat; maybe they’d ease the panic threatening to choke her where she sat.

They probably wouldn’t. But at the very least they’d keep her from throwing herself at his feet and bursting into tears, so that was a good thing.

A little crowd stood around the body, or what she assumed was the body. Why else would a little crowd be there, right?

Right. A man, again. Burned black, carefully placed within the scorched lines of the symbol. Her skin tingled at the energy still in the air, stronger than it had been with Eddie’s body, or maybe it was simply that she was attuned to it now.

Or maybe it was Terrible. She was aware of him from the second she stepped through the hole that had once been a doorway into the remains of the building. Afraid to look at him, yes, but aware of him. She smelled him, saw him out of the corner of her eye, felt him; every cell in her body cried out for him.

And she couldn’t have him, and probably never would again.

She cleared her throat. Terrible’s gaze sat on her; she felt it on her head, her shoulders, heavy and searing hot like molten steel. She gritted her teeth against it, against the pull toward him in her chest, and focused on the corpse. “Do we know who this is?”

“Naw. Ain’t this part of town, dig.” Terrible shifted on his feet, his eyes focused on the top of her head. “Gave Bernam here the tell to have a look-out when the fire stopped, figured might be another, dig. This what he found. Gave you the call-up right after.”

“I was stuck at work.” He didn’t sound angry, or cold. Was that good? Or did he just honestly not care anymore? And how shitty a person was she, that at that moment she didn’t give a fuck about the dead man or how he’d died or anything else, she just wanted his corpse and everyone else to disappear so she could talk to Terrible? Pretty shitty, right?

But she couldn’t help it. Standing across from him, not knowing what he was thinking or feeling … every bit of energy she could spare went into not running to his side and wrapping herself around him.

The others watched her, too, not that she gave a fuck. “I know who’s behind it now. But finding him—them—isn’t going to be easy, and— Wait!”

They all blinked.

“Aye?”

“You said he’s not from here. He’s from Slo— He’s from the other side?”

Nod.

Did the dead man have something to do with Aros, or Chelsea, or both? She imagined he did.

“What is this—what was this building used for, I mean?”

Pause. “Ain’t much, just now. Storin stuff, dig, when we got the need.”

“So why this place?” She looked around. Of course if anything had been in there it was gone now, probably destroyed—a stab of pain almost as bad as the pain of seeing Terrible, at the thought of all the drugs that might have been eaten by fire—or moved out. “I mean, why a building you’re not really using? Why here?”

One of the onlookers—she’d almost forgotten there were other people there—took a half step forward, like he was expecting to be told to tuck in his shirt and fix his hair. Chess couldn’t have cared less what he looked like, a slight form with brownish hair dyed green at the ends and a baggy long-sleeved black shirt over loose black vinyl pants. “Simple, ain’t it? Had theyself some access to it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Aye, gettin yon meaning.” Terrible still didn’t look at her, not in the eyes, but her heart kicked anyway.
“Maybe them got other reasons pickin this one. Weren’t even much in here, it started burning.”

Excitement—well, not excitement, but a sort of eagerness, the sense of finding another Truth in her case—kicked in her head. “Like, the other night. Why take that risk to do it there, when they could do it anywhere?”

He saw where she was going, and thankfully seemed to know she meant the school, too, not the pipe room. She’d known he would; he always did. “Got me a map in the car. You thinkin maybe they got some pattern happening, aught like that?”

“It’s worth a look, right?”

He nodded. If he would just look at her, even just for a second, so she could meet his gaze and show him how sorry she was … “You needin him for aught else, or we can get on the clearing up?”

Shit. She hadn’t thought of that. Someone needed to get that body out of there, and she really didn’t want it to be her.

He must have had the same thought; she caught the glance he sent her way—still not meeting her eyes—the measuring tone of it.

“No,” she said. “I don’t need him for anything else.”

She surveyed the small gang of men: four of them including Terrible and Green Hair. One of them—one or two—would have to get the body out of the symbol, and she’d be damned if it was Terrible.

So of course it was. Before she could open her mouth to stop him, he stepped right into it.

But that sigil on his chest … sure e-fucking-nough, the magic in it hit him. Hit him hard, and she knew it because she felt it reverberate like he’d struck a gong with his head, because she saw his face go white and watched him stumble, watched him fall to the cement in a heap.

She moved before she thought about it—not that she would have done anything different if she
had
thought about it. His skin was warm against hers; fuck, it felt so good just to touch him again, even with the horrible energy of the spell around them both. It had only been a couple of days, not even, but it felt like years. It felt like she’d been spinning in the darkness alone, and now she’d finally hit the ground again.

She didn’t look at him, though, afraid that if she did she’d start to cry. And with the other men there … not a good idea. They just stood watching with their mouths open. Fuck. “Help me with him. Help me get him out of the circle.”

They obeyed; it took all three of them to lift him. Chess watched them, watched their faces, to see if any of them appeared more or less affected by the symbol. Green Hair didn’t seem too bothered by it. Neither did his friend in sandals and a T-shirt with smiley faces drawn all over it in marker. Good.

Terrible’s eyes opened when they got him to the other side of the lines, and he tried to stand up. She pressed him back down. Standing wasn’t a good idea yet. She
stayed on her knees at his side, with her left hand on his cheek, hoping he’d stay put. Hoping, because she didn’t have the guts to look down at him. Her entire body shook, and that wasn’t from magic.

“Get the body out of there, okay?” she managed. Her voice sounded strained and awkward to her ears. Nothing she could do about it, though. “Just put him over there, I guess. In the corner.”

They obeyed. With three of them, the job took only a couple of minutes; watching them gave her the first real taste of what it might be like for someone else—for Lex or Terrible—to watch her dealing with some sort of magic. Again with the exception of Green Hair, they looked more nervous and unsettled with every passing second. Sweat formed on their brows, trickled down their necks; their mouths set in firmer and firmer lines, unhappy lines.

Guilt swarmed into her mind like locusts. That should be her. She was the witch, she was the one trained to handle that stuff, to diffuse and dispel it. She was the one who should be protecting them, helping them.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, could induce her to leave Terrible’s side at that moment. Protecting people or no, she may well never have another chance to touch him, and she wasn’t about to waste that one.

Even if she was still afraid to look at him, doubly so because she knew his eyes were open and he was looking at her.

They set the corpse down with a horrible
splat
. After an expectant pause Green Hair opened his mouth. “Aught else? What we doin next, you want?”

Shit. She couldn’t put it off anymore, could she? She glanced down, followed the line of buttons up the front of Terrible’s bowling shirt to the triangle of white T-shirt underneath it, then up his throat, over his mouth and
nose until she hit his eyes and every muscle in her body tightened.

Sure, the second their eyes met he looked away. What else did she expect?

“I can’t think of anything else I need them to do,” she managed. “If you’re wondering, I mean.”

He shifted, rolled away from her and sat up, breaking the physical connection between them. Bereft of his skin her palm felt cold.

“Bernam, put him in they bag there, aye? Take he to the burnhouse.”

Green Hair—Bernam, she guessed—nodded, crossed to the far corner, presumably to get a bag.

“Gettin the map,” Terrible said to her. “Give me a hold-on, iffen you ain’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. Are you okay? I know that symbol isn’t very strong after it burns, but it’s still pretty awful.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t know. Just one second were walkin to it, next were here.”

Thunder rolled through the air; shit. While they’d been standing there the sky had grown even darker, the clouds almost black viewed through holes in the half-burned roof. The air around them waited for rain, that heavy expectant feeling that told her it was going to be one fuck of a storm. She thought the pressure might crush her.

The men must have felt the same way, because they bagged up the corpse in record time. “Aught else?”

Terrible shook his head.

The first raindrops hit as they left, huge drops that left dark marks on the slice of cement she saw when they opened the door. Still far apart, but she’d better get the hell out of there if she wanted to get home semi-dry.

But first … Shit. Shitshitshit. She bit her lip hard enough to send a shock of pain through her, caught his arm with her left hand and let go again just as quickly.
She couldn’t touch him while she did it, couldn’t look at him, either.

“Terrible, wait. I, I’m sorry. I didn’t— I know you probably don’t ever want to talk to me again and you probably don’t care but I didn’t do anything with Lex or anything, nothing happened. I never should have said that, what I said. I didn’t mean it and I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

Her throat ached; by the time she got to the last “sorry” she could feel the tears rising in it, had to swallow hard to try to send them back down.

He didn’t respond. Fuck, she really had blown it. She’d really, completely lost him. The emptiness inside her threatened to explode.

“Um, okay, so I’ll just go now, but, I wanted you to know that. I know you don’t want to see me anymore and you want our, you know, whatever, to be over, but—”

“I ain’t the one ended it.”

“Huh?”

He looked sincere enough; well, not sincere—the word called up images of sappy teen-pop singers and men who made a habit of getting girls drunk to get them into bed—but serious. Honest. And she knew him well enough to know that was exactly what he was being. “I ain’t the one ended it. Were you done that.”

He stood up, brushed his palms on his jeans, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. The six-inch flame from his lighter cut a hole in the gathering gloom, a glimpse into a brighter world she’d never be allowed to enter again.