Unholy Magic (12 page)

“Shit.” Lex wiped his forehead with the bottom of his shirt. “All that and we get nothing for ourselves, aye?”

“Not exactly,” Chess said. Those eyes … that face. Fuck, who was going to believe this? Would—well, Terrible would, she knew that. But … shit. Yeah, he’d believe her. All she had to do now was come up with an explanation for why she was hanging around in Slobag’s territory at midnight with Lex. Or make up a damned good lie.

“What’s your meaning there?”

“I know who the ghost is.”

“Aye? How’d you get that?”

The wind blew Chess’s hair from her forehead, dried her sweat, and left her feeling encased in ice from the chin up. Almost exactly how she’d felt when she’d seen the Remington file. “I’ve seen her picture before. Her name is Vanita. She was a murder victim.”

There didn’t seem to be enough drugs in the world to help her forget the sight of those bloody eyes floating before her, but she would certainly try. She grabbed four Cepts, thought better of it, and put one back. Lex would have Oozers. She’d ask him for one before she went home.

Home … It was all she wanted, and it would take forever to get there. If she was even safe there. The killer knew her, she couldn’t stop thinking it like a scratched record skipping over and over again in her head.
He knows where I live, he knows where I live …

They trudged back along the streets, not saying much, letting the icy air cool them down. Her water bottle was as empty of liquid as her body felt.

Finally Lex spoke. “So why come a murdered ghost kill other people? Kill hookers too?”

“Yeah. Ghosts … especially murder victims, they just hate. They get stuck in whatever pattern they were in when they died, they don’t evolve or anything.”

“So this dame doing the killings works with some dude. Kills for they eyes? She see without em?”

She sighed. Her sweaty bangs were turning into little icicles. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Blind people become blind ghosts, and her murderer took her eyes, so I guess she needs them.”

He nodded. They walked on. “You staying at mine?”

“I should go home.”

“Ain’t sure that’s a good idea, with him knowin you and all. Maybe my place better, aye? Keep you safe.”

“I don’t have any of my stuff, and I have a lot to do tomorrow. I’ll be fine,” she said, but he was right, and she knew it. Her heart wouldn’t stop jackrabbiting in her chest, fear and exertion and speed making her movements jerky. She wished her Cepts would kick in.

“How bout I come along?”

“No, thanks.”

“Get your stuff then, an come back to mine. Ain’t joking, Tulip.”

His concern made her skin crawl. One minute he’d want her to stay at his place to keep her safe, the next he’d want to stay at hers, and before she knew it … ugh.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stay at his place, although she really wanted her own bed. It certainly wasn’t that she didn’t like the thought of having a warm body next to hers, tonight of all nights. She just couldn’t stand the thought of needing it. She didn’t want her life to be any of his business. Once people started thinking she was their business, they’d start wanting a say in what she did. Where she went, who she saw. What pills she took and how often. Addiction was a sensitive little plant; it needed privacy in which to grow. “Yeah, okay.”

“Come get you, I will. You get all your needs, aye, and ring me up.”

“Okay,” she repeated.

She just hoped it would be as safe as he thought. They’d followed her without her noticing. Nothing said they couldn’t do the same to Lex.

Chapter Twelve

The Church has trained you. The Church has put its trust in you. The people have put their trust in you. It surrounds you like an aura wherever you go; and you must never forget it.

—
The Example Is You
,
the guidebook for Church employees

Terrible was waiting for her outside the door of her building. The sight of him eased something in her chest, made her smile. Such a shitty night she’d been having. Her head still hurt and she couldn’t stop seeing that face, those eyes, picturing it coming for her…. She could do with just hanging out. Having a couple of beers and relaxing. Maybe he’d even crash on her couch and she could text Lex and tell him she wasn’t coming after all.

Then she saw the look on his face and knew he wasn’t there to listen to records and it would be a long time before either of them got to crash anywhere.

She stopped, her bag falling from her slumped shoulders. “Another one?”

“‘Bout an hour past.”

An hour. Of course. Vanita and her Bindmate must have left the Crematorium and headed straight for a new victim to get Vanita some fresh eyes.

The pounding headache was back. “Where?”

He hesitated.

“Where?”

He jerked his head to the right. “Around yon corner.”

Her head thumped. “Right by my place? Right here?”

People died on her street all the time. Hell, people died on every street in Downside all the time. It wasn’t exactly the safest place in the world. But a ritual slaying right by her home … No shit they knew where she lived, who she was.

The eyeballs hid in an inert plastic bag in her purse. She should show them to him, tell him what happened.

But not now. Not here on the street, where anyone could see, not knowing what his reaction might be. After they’d looked at the body maybe he’d come up to her place for a while and she could show him then.

She grabbed a cigarette from her bag, tilted her head so he could light it from the roaring flame of his metal lighter. “Show me.”

He led her around the corner and back to the small private parking lot behind her building. It didn’t belong to her building—but fuck, the tiny room in her apartment where the washer and dryer sat overlooked it. The window ledge in that room was wide and smooth; sometimes she liked to sit on it and smoke a kesh and read. If she’d been home, would she have seen something, been able to do something?

The crowd around the body was larger this time, not just hookers but residents, some with pajama bottoms sticking out from beneath their heavy coats, some still dressed for a night out, all with the same expression on their faces: hostile, fearful, suspicious.

She recognized the girl. At least she thought she did, thought the broad nose and pointed chin were familiar. It was difficult to see anything beyond those gaping, bloody holes where her eyes should have been.

“Be the Cryin Man,” someone said. “Ain’t even think the Church can do nothing ‘bout him. He too powerful, yay?”

“It’s not the Cryin Man.” Chess spoke without thinking as she knelt by the body, pushed the fur minijacket and vinyl blouse aside to see the burn mark on the chest. Blistered, just like the others. The poor thing had been alive, bound and gagged, when he’d done this to her.

“Who else it, then?” someone demanded. “Be the Cryin Man’s symbol on her, you ain’t say it’s not.”

“Gotta be the Cryin Man, everybody sayin—”

“It’s not the Cryin Man,” she said again, barely paying attention. Where was the girl’s purse? It wasn’t on the ground beside the body or anywhere nearby that Chess could see.

“You ain’t know nothing,” a man scoffed. “How I’m supposed to trust some junkie Churchwitch—”

The words sliced through her like razor-sharp fangs. Her face flooded with shame, so hot she imagined it steamed in the icy air.

At least it wasn’t difficult to identify the speaker. All she had to do was look for the man with Terrible’s fist locked around his neck.

“Ain’t think I hear you right,” Terrible said in a calm, quiet voice. “Wanna loud up?”

The man shook his head. His eyes bulged. He looked like a bug, with his thin fair hair standing in wisps off the top of his head and his hands clenching into tiny useless fists.

“You sure? You got else to say, you best say it now, instead of later. Now we got us watchers. Later might not be true, dig?”

The man dug. So did everyone else in the crowd. Watching them all step back might have amused her if she hadn’t been so humiliated, and so sick at the sight of the dead girl before her. This one was her fault. She hadn’t caught the bad guy, she’d let him get away, and this girl’s blood was on her hands. Just like Brain’s. Fuck, she needed a drink.

Terrible let go, dropping the man in a gangly heap, and crouched down beside her. “All just the same, aye?”

She nodded. “And I don’t see her purse.”

“Elitha, where her purse gone to? She have it when you found her?”

Elitha was definitely familiar. Chess had given her a cigarette on the corner just a few weeks back. “Ain’t seen it,” she said, blinking back tears. Her thumb drifted to her mouth and she bit the nail, looking for all the world like a little girl playing dress-up. “She gone and I ain’t even can find her purse.”

“Were you with her?” Chess asked.

“Were at the house, me. She ain’t showed up there …”

Terrible took her arm and led her away from the crowd. “You sure now it ain’t the Cryin Man? You find somethin?”

His eyes told her what he was thinking: he wasn’t even going to dignify the “junkie Churchwitch” comment by mentioning it, wanted to get her mind off it. Maybe it was possible, maybe not, but she appreciated it anyway. If he’d tried to talk to her about it, she probably would have done something stupid like cry. By keeping his silence he allowed her to keep what little pride she had.

Luckily it also gave her a minute to think. She couldn’t tell him about Vanita, not without coming up with a good reason why she knew. But she did know Remington wasn’t the killer, and why. “I went into the spirit prison today. Remington is there. I saw him. It’s not him.”

“Fuck.” He stood for a minute, staring at a point just over her head. She could see him reordering his ideas to fit the new information. “Bump wantin me to swing you by him, cool?”

“What, now?”

“Aye, if you got time.”

She thought about it for a minute. She was so tired … Maybe Bump would give her some speed if she went. The Pyles would be expecting her the next day, but at no set time, and hard as it was to believe, it was only one-thirty now. And maybe when she talked she’d think of a reason, an excuse … “Yeah, okay. Just let me get something from my place first.”

The crowd around the hooker’s body had mostly dispersed. A few stragglers still clumped together off to her right, as if waiting for her to rise. Or maybe they were just unwilling to leave until she’d been collected by whoever was coming to do that job, eager to witness her final indignity as she was loaded into the back of someone’s truck like a piece of furniture abandoned on the curb.

As if on cue a van pulled up, its headlights bleaching the dead girl’s skin and making her hair glow silver in their cruel sharp brightness. Chess watched, along with everyone else, while the girl’s small, pale form left for her last ride.

The drive to Bump’s place didn’t take long—just about long enough to hear “Ace of Spades” all the way through—but it felt like forever. Whatever Bump wanted to discuss with her, it couldn’t be good. Since their little deal regarding Chester Airport a few months back they’d barely said two words to each other, and even if they had … When a drug dealer summoned you it was never good news.

“You right? Know it must be a shake-up, seein them girls.”

Her Cepts made a bitter, eye-watering mess between her teeth as she crunched them, left her tongue feeling gritty and dry after she washed them down. On top of the three she’d taken an hour and a half ago, and the Nips, she was pushing it, but she couldn’t have given less of a shit at that particular moment. “What about you? You knew them. I didn’t.”

He hesitated, like he was trying to figure out how best to reply. “Aye. Sure wish we could end this.”

He glanced at her, slowing the heavy car to a stop near the Market. They’d have to walk across it to get to Bump’s place. “Got a thought for you. What you think iffen I say I hear Slobag got himself a problem just like this?”

Oh, shit. This was it, he knew, he’d somehow heard …

That’s why he was taking her to Bump’s place. They suspected her.

Which was only what she deserved. She
was
lying to them, and she
was
going behind their backs. They didn’t know she’d agreed to sabotage Chester Airport for Lex or that she’d discussed their dead hookers with him. Didn’t know she’d been wandering around his side of town earlier, that she got most of her drugs from him, that she was literally sleeping with the enemy. So why was her stomach aching, instead of twisting in fear?

“Chess?”

“I didn—Um, Slobag’s been losing hookers?”

“Aye, what I’m told. Earlier some boy give me the rumor. Ain’t wanted to say it out where any can hear, dig?”

“I—no, actually. Why don’t you want people to know it’s happening in Slobag’s part of town?”

He pulled out his cigarettes, raised his eyebrows. Chess nodded and he lit two, handed her one. “Causen some still thinkin it is Slobag, an we ain’t ready to tell them untrue. They worry less, aye, thinkin it’s fightin instead of ghosts.”

“Damn, Terrible. That’s clever.”

Dull color crept into his cheeks, visible even in the meager light shining through the windows. “Aye, well,” he said. “Well. Point is, ain’t just our side gettin it.”

“And this is why Bump wants to see me? Why would he want to talk to me about that?”

“Could be. He just say me bring you.”

“So what do you think he wants?”

“Ain’t sure.” He blew out a thick stream of whitish smoke. It hit the windshield and curled away like the foam at the bottom of a waterfall. “You know Bump. Always wants to hear the knowledge straight from them got it, meanin you, aye. Maybe he got some plan figured up, wants the help from you.”

He popped the door handle. Cold air shoved itself into the car. “C’mon. Best see what he’s wantin.”

The Market was still moving, but with the emptiness around the edges that signified a slowdown. The only crowd still visible was the one waiting to get into the pipe room, a snaking semi-formed line of shivering people who barely looked at one another. Chess could almost taste the smoke herself. Maybe after she found out what Bump wanted … She had thirty dollars or so on her. More than enough for a hard little lump of Dream and twenty minutes of oblivion on the curving sofas. Get those eyes out of her mind and give her a safe place to spend some time, too.

“So what’s workin on your Church case, that dude from the TV? Think they got it real?”

“I don’t know.” She dragged her gaze away from the lucky horde. “Could be, could be not. I’ll just have to wait and see what else I can dig up.”

“So them ghosts, meanin if they ghosts. Murdered, aye? Makes em mean up? More than others, dig.”

“Yep. The ghost of a murder victim … They keep it, if you know what I mean. They stay locked where they were when they died.” Hadn’t she just had this conversation?

“Aye, some things ain’t easy to move past. No difference how hard you hit, never leaves all the way. Like that? An they wants their fair evens an come back to get it.”

She blinked, trying to soothe the stinging in her eyes. “Doesn’t work that way, though.”

“Naw. Ain’t can change aught what’s already done. Only can try an lose the memory, but ain’t can lose it real. So them just keep thinkin on it. Like cars on blocks, don’t go nowhere.”

His eyes lowered, away from her face to his feet. Chess watched him reach up and rub the back of his neck, watched him pull another cigarette out of his pocket.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think that’s a lot what it’s like for them. For everyone, really.”

He blew smoke into the air, his expression changing. “Like this, aye. Wait and see. Only you know how Bump feelin when it comes to the waits. Ain’t make him happy.”

“Yeah, I get that about him.”

He gave her a little grunt in acknowledgment as they started walking toward Bump’s place. After a few steps he stopped, his scarred upper lip twisting.

“What?”

“Fuck. Hold it here, aye?”

“But—” she started, but he was already gone, running across the cement. At the far end of the Market a figure moved, spinning away from the gaggle of people hovering around a fire can. Ah. Somebody owed Bump money.

He’d told her to wait, and that’s what she knew she should do. But she didn’t. Instead she followed, nodding to Edsel as she passed his booth, moving as quickly as she could. Her bag thumped against her leg, reminding her she’d forgotten to show Terrible the eyeballs. Idiot. Well, before they went in to see Bump for whatever it was he wanted, she would.

Finding him wasn’t hard. Once out of the Market she just followed the begging wails to the next street over.

Terrible’s victim lay facedown on the pavement, with Terrible’s heavy knee sunk into the middle of his back. Chess slipped into the shadows against the building on the corner. Along the street others did the same, random strangers on the street who knew what was happening and did not want to be involved, did not want their witnessing of the event to be taken as involvement. Terrible had his prey; nobody wanted to be next.

“Ain’t enough money in it, Nestor,” he said, rifling through the man’s ragged wallet. He pulled out a few tattered bills and stuck them in his pocket. “Ain’t good for you, dig? Bump wantin his money. Almost three months gone you had the owes.”

Nestor squirmed like an upside-down bug, tried to kick his legs back but couldn’t. “I just need a wee more time, just a wee more—”

“What kinda work you do?”

“Huh?”

Terrible stood, urging Nestor faceup on the cement, keeping his boot on Nestor’s chest. “What kinda work you do, Nestor? You use your hands for work?”