Chasing Magic (19 page)

Her stomach was empty. That didn’t stop it from trying to empty itself further, over and over. She stayed there, her knees aching from the tile floor, her forehead sweaty under her bangs.

One thing she knew, anyway. They could never remove that sigil from him. If they removed that sigil he’d
die. They had to find something new to add to it—to him—something protective, some sort of shield. She had to find something, had to do something. Immediately.

Finally her stomach settled. She managed to stand, to splash cold water on her face—she avoided looking in the mirror—and make it back into the living room. Her body felt like a slack rubber band.

Elder Griffin handed her a cold damp cloth. It almost set her crying again. He was being so nice to her, and she didn’t deserve it.

Not just nice in handing her the cloth, either. Nice in pretending she was perfectly fine and resuming the conversation without a bunch of hovery questions. “I take it you have attempted to rectify the situation?”

“I’ve—I’ve marked some other runes and stuff on him, and a couple of those helped, but not enough, and I don’t know which one works best. We keep meaning to try them individually but whenever we get started on it … um, we get distracted or something.”

Mercifully he didn’t ask by what, but she assumed he knew, anyway. Her flaming face was probably as good as a blinking sign over her head.

“There is no way to completely destroy the risk associated with that sigil.” He stood up, walked past her to the far end of the room where the built-in bookshelves had already been filled. “It will always be a danger for him. I take it he had some mild ability before that happened?”

“Not a lot, but yeah, it was there.”

He grabbed several books, handing two of them to her as he walked back to the couch. “All right, then. Let us see what we can find, shall we?”

Her phone rang when she was about halfway home. The code
MSB
came up on the screen: Blue. Lex’s sister. “Yeah?”

“This is why I like calling you. You’re so friendly.”

“Good.”

An edge crept into Blue’s voice. “What’s wrong, Chess?”

What’s wrong is that your brother is trying—no, not trying, is actively pursuing, has paid someone—to kill my boyfriend. What’s wrong is that once again someone who trusted me has learned how fucking stupid that was
.

But she didn’t say that. “Sorry. Sorry, I just— I’m not having a great day.”

“Want to meet up for lunch or something? I kind of wanted to talk to you. About that speed. We found six more people out of their heads from it last night.”

A gaggle of girls in a blue convertible cut Chess off; she swerved to avoid them. Bitches. “Shit. That— Wait, how do you know about that, why are
you
the one calling me?”

“What?”

“Why isn’t Lex calling me? He’s the one who talked to me about this before, he brought some of it to my apartment so I could check on it.”

She could hear the shrug in Blue’s voice. “I don’t know. Lex asked me to call and tell you about it, and I was going to call anyway to see how your dress went over last night. It was last night, wasn’t it?”

Right. Lex asked her to call. Lex asked her to call because Lex knew damn well Chess wouldn’t want to talk to him, that she’d be furious with him.

If she had any doubt at all that he was behind the attack the night before—which she didn’t—that would have put an end to it. Bastard.

But Blue didn’t get involved in that side of Lex’s business; in any side of it, actually. Which meant Chess couldn’t take her anger out on her.

Nor did she particularly want to. What good would telling Blue about Lex’s contract on Terrible do?

“Chess?”

“Huh? Oh yeah, it was last night. It was fine.”

“Did you have a good time? What about the dress, did Terrible—”

“Yeah, it was okay. You said six more last night? Do you know where they bought the speed, did anyone find out?”

Pause. “Um, yeah, actually. There was a guy with them who hadn’t done any of it. He said they got it up off Baxter, Baxter and Seventeenth.”

That was north. That was way north. It was also definitely Lex’s side of town. “Is he still around? Did you guys keep him or something?”

“Lex found out where he lives.”

Right. Chess flashed her blinker, pulled into the right-hand lane in preparation to exit. Lex. He’d want to be there if and when she questioned someone. If he even told her who it was and let her be there. “I want to talk to him.”

“He’s not here right now, he’s—”

“Not Lex. The guy.”

Another pause. “What the fuck is going on?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. You’re right, Lex doesn’t have me talk to you about this stuff. He hardly talks to me about it at all. Why do you sound so cagey when you say his name?”

The light at the bottom of the exit was red. Chess paused, glanced around, and kept moving. “Nothing’s going on. I’m just worried about this speed thing.”

“Right. I assume you don’t mind calling Lex and asking him to tell you where the guy is, then?”

It was Chess’s turn to pause. Shit. She really didn’t want to put Blue in the middle of anything; bad enough
she was anyway just because she was who she was. Lex’s sister, who lived on the wrong side of town.

Lex was all Blue had left. “Yeah. I’ll call him.”

Relief came through the phone loud and clear. “Okay, good. Now tell me about last night.”

She expected the Market to be packed on an afternoon as sunny as that one, but it … wasn’t. It was busy, sure, but only busy, certainly nowhere near the standing-room-only levels it usually reached on hot sunny days.

But then, it was early afternoon, and it
was
hot out—already in the nineties—so that might account for it. She bet once the sun started to set, it would be a zoo.

Damn that stupid promise she’d made to Terrible the night before. The pipes were across the Market, but she really didn’t have time, and she couldn’t score anything else because she’d said she would ask him for it.

Unless … she could ask Bump, couldn’t she? Terrible said she could get it straight from Bump.

Bump’s “private stock” kicked ass, too.

She headed down the center aisle, past the booth selling cheap vinyl tie-back tops and miniskirts, past the blue-velvet-draped booth laid out with jewelry made from bolts and scraps of tin, past the booth with oil lamps and broken appliances sold for the parts, until she reached Edsel’s, almost at the end.

“Hey, baby.” Edsel’s deep, smooth voice poured over her like syrup; his pigmentless skin was hidden under a
black wide-brimmed hat and his pigmentless eyes behind black lenses. Edsel had to be careful of the sun. “Ain’t seen you in a week, you right?”

“Yeah, sure. Right up.” It wasn’t as hard to smile as she thought it’d be. Seeing him really did make her feel better. Once he’d been the only person she could call a friend. He still was her friend, and one of the few people who knew about her relationship with Terrible—not because she’d told him, but because he’d followed the whole story as it happened. “How’s Galena?”

His ice-blue eyes sparkled over the frames of his glasses for a second, the way they always did when he talked about his wife. “Gettin big now, she is, feelin some kicks an all.”

“How much longer?”

“Bout four months.”

Chess ran her fingers over some of Edsel’s merchandise, not paying much attention but enjoying the shivers of power floating up her arm. That high was even legal, and Galena’s pregnancy imbued everything she made with extra power. A few defense-charm bags made of shed snakeskin, bird-bone scrying sticks, insects in wax for hexes. All vibrated with that energy.

Not to mention the regular items: spiderwebs, bones, herbs, mirrors, animal bloods, various types of salt, black powder, iron in all different forms. The basics.

She took her almost empty iron sack from her bag and started scooping filings into it. She could get them cheaper from the Church, but not only did she like buying from Edsel—not only could Edsel use the money—but she didn’t particularly want to go back there.

Ever.

“Business good?”

“Aye. Been meanin to give you a touch on the phone, dig. Somethin I got the thinking you ought should see.”

He turned to the back of his booth and opened an
African Blackwood box like hers; in fact, she’d bought hers from him when she first moved to Downside four years earlier. The African Blackwood blocked negative energy and dark magic, which meant if he was keeping something in there, it was not good news.

Fuck. The second he lifted the lid her tattoos reacted, tingling and itching, a burning on the surface of her skin. Whatever he had, it wasn’t just touched with dark magic; only ghost magic, ghost energy, would elicit that particular reaction.

What he held out to her was a key.

She didn’t want to take it. She took it anyway. The irritating pin-scratched feeling of her ink intensified. The key didn’t feel like a key somehow, like an inanimate object. It felt alive, warm and heavy, slightly damp as if from sweat; it was repugnant. Like holding a boiled earthworm.

It was one of those old-fashioned keys with a round bar and big crooked teeth. The kind the Church used for doors within the building, the kind that had magical powers anyway. All keys had a touch of magic simply by virtue of their existence; keys were gateways.

Thick black paint coated it, but a chipped spot revealed what lay underneath. She looked up at Edsel. “It’s iron.”

He nodded. That explained the warmth of it, then. When iron and ghost energy mixed, the iron heated.

It still made no sense at all, but at least she knew why it was warm.

“But—how can it take ghost energy if it’s iron? Iron repels ghost energy. How can that work?”

The thing in her hand was an impossibility. Something that could not, should not, exist.

But, then, Terrible should be free to not pass out when he touched dark magic. Elder Griffin should still be proud of her. Theoretically she should be living on
Church grounds, normal and happy like everyone else. “Should be” was another term for “bullshit.”

Besides, she’d answered her own question. “They’ve infused the paint.”

“Aye, that’s how I got it figured on, also. Be some kinda controller, that do, with the iron an ghost, and just bein what it be, dig.”

“You can control ghosts with it.”

He shrugged. “You got that knowledge better’n me, baby. Got me some knowin on them dark magics an all, but not the ghosts. You Church teaching you all it, aye?”

She barely heard him. A key that could be used to control ghosts or have power over them. Could the key open the City of Eternity somehow? It shouldn’t be able to, but who the fuck knew for sure what something like that could do, something that wasn’t supposed to exist?

Or … well, damn, she knew of at least one person out there who liked to mix ectoplasm with other shit and bespell it. Did the key have something to do with that?

Yep. Of course it fucking did. When she closed her eyes and focused for a second, she could feel the energy, that same miserable energy as from the walnut—at least she was pretty sure that was it. It was definitely familiar.

So how the hell did the key fit in to that?

Man, people were shit, with their games and plans and endless quest to hurt and control.

She held the key horizontal in front of her eyes, seeing if there were any markings on it. “Are … are those initials?”

“Thought em were, aye. Lookin like ‘R’ an ‘A’ to myself, how bout you?”

“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Was it an “R” or a “K”? A “P,” maybe? It must have been scratched into the key before the key was painted. Well, duh, of course it was,
since the scratches weren’t in the paint itself. If they were, they would have been easier to read. “Where did you find this?”

“Ain’t were me on the find. Sharp-eye Ben—be a cut-purse, speed-banger too—brung it on me, thinkin maybe I hand over some lashers for it.”

“Did you?” She was already reaching into the cash pocket in her bag. Yeah, if Sharp-eye Ben was into the speed-needle, she bet he could use as much cash as he could get. The needle was always the end, she knew. The needle meant giving up, not even trying to live the lie anymore. She hoped to fuck she never found herself there.

“Aye, gave he five. Only to make he happy, dig.”

She handed him a twenty. At least that was something she could do; Edsel wouldn’t take money from her unless she was actually buying something, but this way she could pay him back and add a bit of a reward, and that let him keep his dignity, too.

He dipped his head toward her iron sack. “Be included, aye?”

“That’s at least ten bucks’ worth.”

“Aye. An ten an five, still fits under.”

Pride was such a funny thing. People would starve for it; they’d kill to keep it or kill because it had been injured.

Pride wasn’t something she’d ever had a lot of. Her pride came from things beyond her control. She was proud of her magical abilities, but those had just happened, an accident of birth. She was proud of Terrible, proud to be with him, but that was because he was who
he
was.