Sacrificial Magic (46 page)

Her first instinct was to jump away, but what was the point? They’d seen what they’d seen, and fuck it, it wasn’t like they didn’t know anyway. Obviously they did.

Besides, she had something more important to say, didn’t she? It was still there, something in her head that felt important even though she wasn’t sure why. She kept her hand tight in Terrible’s and cleared her throat. “I chose you guys. I didn’t have to stay but I chose to, because I didn’t want to leave you. Any of you.”

Lex’s brow furrowed. “You right, Tulip? What got you, what was on the happening?”

What did happen? Something about memories, and she’d seen something different, or felt different? She’d had a fuckload of power, she remembered that, she’d felt like she could actually create a whole new life or a huge change or something, but for herself. A new life for herself.

But she couldn’t explain that. So she just said, “I had—I could’ve—I can’t explain. But I thought about you guys, all of you, and I chose you.”

Even through the thick unhappiness coating their
faces, she thought they looked pleased, and that felt good. At least she could—

Yeah. The good feeling disappeared, replaced by something else she’d almost forgotten. Slobag. Slobag was dead and it was her fault. She was supposed to save him but she hadn’t. She’d failed, failed hard-fucking-core, and he was dead.

Another death on her head, on her hands. He could join Brain and Randy, Jia Zhang, the hookers she’d failed to help in time, Bruce Wickman who’d died in the City—along with some of Lex and Terrible’s men, also her fault—because she hadn’t figured out the Lamaru’s plan soon enough to stop the battle from starting.

Now Slobag stood with them, another solemn disapproving face sneering at her from the murkiest depths of her mind.

Another disapproving face she deserved. “I’m sorry. I’m— Shit, I’m so sorry, I had him untied, he was helping me, he was dragging Aros off me and then …”

If she were lucky, if she lived in the kind of world where things went smoothly, one of them would interrupt her to fill in the blanks: “Monica shot him,” or whatever. But this wasn’t that kind of world, not one little bit. They didn’t say a word.

She swallowed. Where was her bag? She’d kill for a drink right about then. Oooh, a drink and her Cepts. It sounded like the heaven people used to believe in.

But she had to get the words out first. “Aros was choking me, inside the circle. Really choking me, I couldn’t breathe.”

Terrible’s hand twitched in hers.

“Slobag did something—knocked him on the head or something—and he started to let go. So I could take a breath. He saved me, really.” That wasn’t entirely true, necessarily, but that didn’t matter. He’d certainly helped her, and that mattered and they deserved to know it;
he deserved to have them know it, because they hadn’t been able to see anything beyond that glowing purple wall.

“He’d almost pulled Aros off me and I heard the gunshots, and Aros grabbed me again and I saw him fall … It was really fast, he didn’t feel it. I know he didn’t feel it, he was gone before he hit the ground, he wasn’t there anymore. He didn’t suffer or anything.”

Somewhere in the middle of her story Beulah’s face had crumpled again. Seeing it, feeling the sadness and pain from across the wide cement floor, felt horrible, made her ill. She didn’t want to feel it. She had enough of that already, enough for a lifetime, for two or three—

The screaming in her head—

But she couldn’t help it. Well, she could have, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t because it was her fault Beulah felt it, she was responsible for it. She deserved to feel that pain, too, and she owed it to Beulah—to Beulah and Lex—to feel it along with them.

It was really the least she could do.

   The silence felt even better than she’d expected. Almost as good as her pills felt—would feel, when they kicked in. They’d do that any minute, and she couldn’t wait.

Meanwhile, she busied herself scooping up the last of the salt ring, dumping the salt along with the herbs into an inert plastic bag to dispose of later. No way was she throwing that stuff into the school’s trash. Not when Monica or Aros—or Wen Li—might have taught those kids anything.

“Hello.”

She jumped. So much for silence.

Martha Li stood by the hall entry. A respectable distance away, a deferential one. Maybe losing her husband had knocked some of the snot out of her.

That was shitty. The woman
had
just lost her husband. Lost her husband, and probably learned he’d been cheating on her, too. No matter how big a bitch she was—probably was, had seemed to be—she didn’t deserve that. Maybe it would be good to give her a break.

“Can I help you with something, Mrs. Li?”

Mrs. Li made a face, one Chess couldn’t quite interpret. Anger, sadness, disgust? Maybe a bit of all three.

Whatever it was, her walk was still the stride of an officious woman, one who was used to being obeyed. It wasn’t until she got close enough for Chess to see her eyes, see into them, that she slowed, that her steps became uncertain. “I’m wondering how my husband died.”

Shit. She’d been afraid of this. Best to just stick to the facts, she guessed. “He was shot.”

“Can I—can I see him?”

“I’m sorry, no. Church law.” The body had to be buried behind the Church grounds immediately so his grave supplies could be created, then sent to the Crematorium three days later. She didn’t think Mrs. Li needed to have the process explained, though.

Mrs. Li nodded. Kept nodding. Like one of those baby dolls with its head on a hinge or something. Or like she was having some sort of spasm. Or maybe she didn’t know what else to do, which seemed the most likely.

Wasn’t like Chess knew what to do either, but she didn’t have the other woman’s discomfort. She probably would have, but she had Cepts and the thick velvety rise of them in her stomach up to her chest, that feeling that was both exciting and soothing at the same time.

So she could stand and wait for Mrs. Li to decide what she wanted to say.

“He cheated on me for years. Almost since we got married. I always pretended I didn’t know, because … it would be so embarrassing to admit I did. To have him
punished. To divorce him. Everyone would know then, they would see how I’d failed …”

That was not at all what Chess had expected to hear. Wasn’t anything she was prepared to answer, either. What was she supposed to say? Sure, that makes sense? I can totally understand why what a bunch of strangers think of you matters more than the fact that your husband treats you like shit? People could be so fucked up sometimes—most of the time—and their priorities even more so.

But Mrs. Li apparently didn’t want an answer, or need one. “This time was different, though, with her, with Monica. He was—obsessed with her, I think. Hardly ever home. And when he was, he started … He’d get out his old books, notebooks and things, love letters, all of that stuff. From when he was in school. With her.”

“With Monica? Chelsea, I mean?”

“With Lucy. I expect you know about that, about him and Lucy, when they were in school. They— I always thought maybe he cheated on me because I wasn’t her. And when I couldn’t have children, well, that made it even worse. He’d lost the only one he’d ever had.”

“What?” Oh, damn, of course. Wen Li was the father of Lucy’s baby. Had his obsession with Lucy created the situation? Or had it been Monica— Chelsea? Which had the idea first, when they met up again after all those years?

Did it matter?

Chess had turned in Monica’s gun. The labs would be able to determine if her bullet had been the one that killed Wen. Whether it had happened because Monica wanted to be rid of him or because she’d seen the plan was going to fail or, hell, because he’d asked her to, or it had been an accident, she’d never know.

Slobag’s body had gone with Lex and Beulah, not that
it mattered. Chess didn’t need a lab to tell her which gun took his life.

Better that one was never analyzed.

Mrs. Li’s face took on that I-know-something-you-don’t-know look Chess hated so much, and found so typical of women like her, women who lived for public opinion. Even in her grief it made her happy to feel like she was in the know or some shit, like she was the important one who had the information. “Lucy was pregnant when she died. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, of course. I just—” What the hell. The case was done, the ghosts were gone, and it didn’t matter anyway. It was a side issue. “I thought someone else was the father at first. The teacher.”

The ha-ha look disappeared. “Yes. So did I. And then I found this. After Beulah called me, told me he and Monica had both been killed, I—anyway, I found this.”

Chess’s heart jumped. It couldn’t be the— No, of course it wasn’t. That notebook, the talisman, had been destroyed. Probably exploded the way Monica had.

But the one Mrs. Li held out to her, in stubby hands with rounded fingernails painted the sickly pink of unhealthy gums, looked just like it. Identical. Wen and Lucy had probably bought them together, wrote notes to each other, or …

No. Or not exactly. It was a journal. Wen’s journal; but as Chess flipped through it she saw notes in a different hand, a girlish hand. Lucy’s, she imagined, and when she read the notes she saw she was right. It wasn’t a regular journal, it was notes back and forth. Love letters.

In the beginning, anyway. As it continued, references to other people started slipping in. Other men—well, boys. Boys Wen thought Lucy was too close to. Jealousy and anger dripped off the pages, rose from them like noxious fumes. Bill Pritchard, the drama teacher … other names.

The entries got angrier and angrier. Chilling, really. That kind of possessiveness, that kind of need to control … Chess had known people like that, grown up with them. They hadn’t seen her as a person, just a plaything, something they owned.

“Read the end. The last pages.” Mrs. Li’s voice barely carried over the sound of shuffling paper.

The last entry was dated April 3, 2001.
Dear Lucy
, blah blah blah … Holy shit.

Mrs. Li met her disbelieving stare with a nod, her face sagging more with each one. “I didn’t know. I never knew, I never had any idea … I never thought he could kill someone. Kill someone he was supposed to love, and let that … how can you ever really know someone, if my husband could do that? How can you ever trust someone, commit to them, when they can hide something like that?”

The words chilled Chess even more than the knowledge that Lucy’s death hadn’t been a suicide. She was murdered. Murdered by Wen Li. Murdered when she suggested they take some time apart, that they think about whether they wanted to keep their baby or give it up for adoption.

He’d killed her, and then he’d written her a letter—several letters—telling her what he’d done and why, blaming her.

Pretty fucking chilling, yeah. But not a surprise. No horrid little bit of madness and evil people cooked up in their sick twisted heads could really surprise her. So Wen Li had killed a girl in a fit of jealous rage, a girl he was supposed to love—probably did love? So how did that make him different from any other person, any other sick fuck pretending to be normal? It didn’t.

But that was the scary part. He’d fooled lots of people. He’d fooled his own wife; she’d been a good cover,
Chess figured, to make it look as though he’d gotten over Lucy.

His wife had believed he was a certain person, and he wasn’t. She’d believed that he loved her, and he hadn’t. He’d hidden all of that from her so completely and fully that even after reading the words in his own handwriting she looked at Chess with a plea in her eyes, begging to hear it wasn’t true, that it was some kind of mistake.

But Chess couldn’t tell her that.

“I don’t know,” was what she said. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Li, but I don’t know.”

   Love was full of secrets. Love masked so many evils. Love controlled people, it lied to them, it made them believe things that weren’t true and it hid the truth from them. People said love was blind, but what they meant was that love blinded them. It made them more vulnerable than anything else could.

And it felt so fucking good.

Almost like her Cepts, really. Except those didn’t lie to her. She’d always known what they were, what they would do to her. Most important, she’d chosen them. She’d gone to them, she’d sought them out. No matter which sack-of-shit “parent” had given them to her in the beginning as a reward, or to keep her quiet, or to stop it hurting so much after they were through with her, she’d still gone to them in the end. She’d made the decision.

She hadn’t chosen to fall in love. She hadn’t gone looking for it. Hadn’t even wanted it. It had just—happened to her, and there it was. That was the worst thing about it. It just happened, and there was nothing she could do about it, and she would never be, could never be, entirely sure it wouldn’t go horribly wrong.

All of those thoughts wandered through her head as she bumped up in her car, ducking low so no one
could see. They stayed with her as she put away the vial of powder, as she wiped at her numb nose and pulled air hard through her sinuses until it hit the back of her throat with a bitter white rush, as her eyes closed for a second with relief.