by Stacia Kane
Yellow Pete again. So Yellow Pete had been friends with Sharp-eye Ben, too? As well as with Gordon Samms. His murderer.
Or, the man who’d been magically forced to become his murderer.
Chess fought the urge to grab the woman and take her home. What else did she know? What else could she see? Maybe if she lived near Chess, she could figure out what the hell was wrong with Chess’s life, explain it all.
Ha, like Chess needed that. She knew exactly what was wrong with her life: her. And everything she touched turned to shit, and everyone she touched ended up bleeding, at least on the inside. Some of the cheer the woman’s babbling had created left her.
“Yellow Pete be a friend to Ben? Or to she?”
“Aye, oh aye. To Sharp-eye, Pete was. Here on a lot, see, an when Ree coming along themselfs having three togethers. Only on the weeks past Pete ain’t having himself coming over no more, causen all they three having some big screaming fight on one day.”
“Fight on what?”
“Dunno. Only hear a speak or two, see. Sounding like they argue on who they gots loyalty to, who’s makin deal better. Ain’t had the hearing all, though, causen my man were wanting himself fed an bedded up, see.”
Terrible handed the woman a twenty. “Got any else for us?”
“Got plenny.” The gap-toothed grin showed again; one of the few remaining teeth hung at an angle, as if it was trying to escape. She reached up to scratch her exposed breast. Obviously she knew it wasn’t covered, then. Chess had no idea what to think of that. “Ree looking all clean-like, she not being from here, see, not around here. Ain’t never could have the figuring why she wanting Ben, he all skinny-like an big ears, only she do, guessing, causen she here alla time an they making the noises.”
That one Chess could figure out on her own, and when Terrible glanced over at her, she saw he could, too. Marietta was a Northside girl wanting to live on the edge, and she’d found herself a boyfriend who was already there to give her what she wanted.
Talking to her family—assuming she had one—might not be such a bad idea.
Or it might be completely irrelevant, of course. What was relevant was that they talk to Ben immediately. Maybe he’d crashed?
Terrible nodded at the woman. “Be a help, aye? Thanks on it.”
“You coming back anytime, I helping more. You telling Bump? Telling himself I were helping?”
Terrible nodded, then crossed back to Chess and tried the doorknob. Locked. “What you thinkin I oughta do? Break it open?”
“Let me try first.” The lock looked pickable, at least, and if it was pickable she’d be able to pick it. If it was chained Terrible would need to kick it in, but best not to do that unless they had to. She could picture Ben hiding inside, paranoid, with sweat dripping off his body. The last thing they wanted to do was burst in and give him a heart attack.
It took her a minute or so to pick the lock. No chain. Blue-braids over there—still watching them—hadn’t lied. The door did sound like a cat being skinned when Terrible pushed it open, a hideous screeching sound that raked up Chess’s spine.
The second the door parted from the jamb, power hit her, the deep slithering power of dark magic, of ghost magic. Of a particular kind of ghost magic.
Ben had scored, all right. But what he’d bought himself wasn’t very good.
The apartment stank, a smell she tried to ignore even though she knew what it meant. They crept into it, the grimy floor trying to grab their shoes. To the right a kitchen, dirty take-out boxes and containers on the counters creating a buffet for the flies buzzing around. Ugh.
To the left the living room. Someone had made an effort to tidy up in there. A warped slab of wood sat on two stacks of old water-bloated magazines to form a makeshift coffee table, on which three loaded syringes were lined up with military precision. Beside them a rubber catheter coiled neatly, and beside that a notebook with its cover closed and an empty ashtray.
Behind the table, against the wall, was the sofa, a hulking shape under a dirty sheet. Someone had put a vase of now-dead flowers on the windowsill, taped a picture of Triumph City at night to one bare-plaster wall. An ancient TV sat on cinder blocks in the corner.
But the feel of it, the feel of that magic, the skin-itching feel of ghosts, refused to let her fully process the room itself.
She followed Terrible down the short hallway, past a bathroom she didn’t even want to consider looking into. At the end of it, on the left-hand side, stood a door, and beyond that Ben’s bedroom waited for them.
Ben waited for them, too, torn into pieces and strewn around, scattered on the blood-soaked bed, surrounded by flies.
“Just ramblings, it looks like,” she said, flipping through the pages of the notebook they’d taken from Ben’s. Her throat still ached from being sick; her stomach still threatened to twist again every time she failed to keep the memory of Ben’s body from flashing back into her mind. “Shopping lists, shit like that.”
Terrible swung the Chevelle up onto the curb and came to a stop, leaving the engine running so its throaty rumble echoed off the houses around them. “Now he gone, Pete’s gone, Samms’s gone. An all of em friends.”
“He must have known something. Him and Pete.”
“An them fightin with the dame.” He lit a smoke. They sat outside one of Bump’s safe houses, the one where Marietta and the men she was with had been taken the night before.
It looked exactly like any other shell house in Downside, covered with peeling paint and filth, its gutters stuffed with years’ worth of rotting leaves against the cracked and missing shingles on the roof. Anyone on a casual pass-by would have no idea what it was.
Only someone with experience would see the signs. The shadows of the upstairs windows almost hid the bars across them on the inside. The downstairs windows were blocked by old furniture and junk. The door was intact, and closed; not unusual, no, but another clue. Chess knew there would be plenty more inside.
“And she was dealing,” she said.
“Guessin a bunch of em is. Gave it to Rickride, maybe Levi, too, an now the dame. An whoever sellin on Lex’s side, iffen he gave us the truth. Got us seven, eight street men dead, all over.”
“When Edsel gave me that key, he said it’s up by the slaughterhouse, too. Galena’s brother said there’s been a lot of people acting crazy around there.” But no murders that she knew of; did that mean something? “Oh, maybe Bump could kick some cash his way for that?”
“I’ll take care of it.” He looked around them, looked at the house. “Guessin we oughta get us in, aye? See if she still alive so we can give her some asks.”
More signs of the house’s true purpose inside, as Chess had expected. Especially the heavy steel door at the foot of the staircase. Bump never used the first floor; too difficult to keep the presence of his people hidden.
Terrible knocked on that steel door, a set pattern of knocks: three, then one, then two. No reply.
He glanced at her and tried again. Still no reply.
“Ain’t right,” he said. “Oughta be answerin.”
Uh-oh. Chess shifted on her feet. Marietta had been up there, along with the men and probably more of that speed. Her guardians—guardians, jailers, watchers, whatever—hadn’t tried any of it, had they? And gone crazy?
Terrible shook his head when she asked. “Naw, them ain’t so stupid. Know them ain’t s’posed to tank while them workin, ’specially not that shit.”
Sunlight poured through the empty windows. In its glow, the empty house with its bare patchy walls and dusty floorboards looked almost cheerful. Now a shadow passed overhead; it passed over Chess’s heart, too, making it cold. “Do you think … something happened to them?”
He reached for the doorknob. It turned in his hand. “Fuck.”
Chess didn’t need him to tell her to pull out her knife and flick the blade out. Nor did she need him to tell her to stay close as she followed him up the stairs, silent step by silent step. No c
hances of a creak giving them away; the stairs, like the floors upstairs, had been reinforced with steel when Bump decided to use the place.
She didn’t like the smell in the air. Not one bit.
Terrible glanced back at her just before his head cleared the upper floor, a questioning look she understood very well. Not a sound came from the floor above. Not the faintest indication of movement, of any kind of life up there.
Terrible’s eyes told her he felt it too, knew it too. The sensation of … emptiness. Stillness, the heavy unnatural stillness of a room empty not because there were no bodies in it but because life had left those bodies.
Two of them. Bump’s men, propped up against the wall like passed-out drunks, their heads leaning toward each other and their legs straight out in front of them. They’d been dragged there; trails of blood from their feet to deeper pools indicated the spots where they’d died.
Where they’d died messily. Red exploded at her, assaulting her eyes at the same time the smell hit her nose. It wasn’t that there was so much of it, it was that what there was had gone everywhere. It sprayed across the walls in horrible arcs; it spattered the ceiling like a rash.
Terrible took her arm and shifted her so her back was against one of the non-bloody spots on the wall. “Stay here.”
Fuck that. There was nobody in the place; they both knew it. She followed him while he checked the small bathroom, the two other rooms used for storage or whatever else—Chess didn’t think she wanted to know too much about what went on in there, really.
But only emptiness greeted them. Emptiness and that silence growing louder and louder every second, until it beat against her eardrums. She spun around, certain someone stood right behind her, but no one was there.
When they returned to the main room—the death room—Terrible bent down and placed his fingers on the forehead of one of the dead men. “Ain’t warm. Been dead awhile.”
“When was the last time you talked to them?”
“I ain’t since last night, afore we got sleepin. Dipper Bob say he checked with em on the morn an they right up then, bout ten maybe? So seven hours, leastaways.”
Seven hours. She’d been in the shower, getting ready to head to Elder Griffin’s place. She’d been drying her hair, putting on some makeup, getting ready for her day, and these men had been dying. Not just dying; being killed.
“Hey, wait. They were shot.”
“Aye, just—aw, damn, aye. Weren’t torn up, like them under that spell do. Some else done this, aye? Some not under the spell. Came an took them who’d been doin the speed.”
They stood there for a few seconds, letting the implications sink in. How had the killers found Marietta and the men? They wouldn’t have had their—
“Their phones. Where were their cells? Did they have them?”
“Ought not to. Shoulda been taken first thing, put inna— Hold on.”
Chess headed for the windows while Terrible ducked back into one of the empty rooms they’d inspected. Outside, the street looked completely still, completely empty, but she knew people lurked inside the other houses. People squatted in those buildings, slept under those leaky roofs, set fires in them when the weather was cold.
Had any of them seen anything?
“Chess. C’mere.”
She’d taken about three steps toward the open doorway when she felt it: the shiver of magic—of dark magic, a very familiar dark magic—over her skin. What—how had that happened, how had it— Oh.
Terrible stood beside an open safe set into the floorboards. Every step closer to it brought an increase in the energy; it didn’t surprise her one bit to see a walnut sitting by itself on the rough steel bottom of the safe.
“Bump’s men took it off one of them?”
“Guessin so.” He glanced at the doorway. “Ain’t can ask em, aye?”
Well, actually, she probably could, if she wanted to. Trouble was, she didn’t. Making the long cold trip down to the City of Eternity—most people stayed above-ground and went through a Church Liaiser, but she was a witch herself so she’d get to go it alone, yay—stripping down, letting a spirit use her body … no fucking way. Enough people had already done that in her life.
She’d go down to the City if she had no other options. She didn’t think they were quite there yet. “It had to be one of the men. I would have felt it on Marietta.”
He nodded. “Figured so.”
Damn. If she’d searched the men—well, really, what difference would it have made?
It might have meant more guards assigned. It might have meant the two out there would still be alive.
Or more likely it would have meant more guards died. Not a damn thing she could do about it now, either way. Fuck.
“Got them phones here.” Terrible held up two of them, a sparkly pink one that had obviously been Marietta’s—well, probably had been, anyway; for all she knew, one of the men had liked sparkly pink phones—and a black one. He tossed her the pink one and started pressing buttons on the other. “Fuck. Dead battery. Any luck you got there?”
Marietta’s phone still had juice, yeah, but that didn’t do any good. It required a pass code, and Chess had no idea how to figure that one out. “It’s locked.”
“Give it me. Take it over one a Bump’s brainmen, aye? He get it cracked.”
She handed it over.
He made his way around the room, inspecting the walls. “Ain’t can see how them mighta touched up whoever came to get em, dig. No phones an all. How they get found? Got any thoughts?”
“Only … only that maybe somebody told them where Marietta and the guys would be. Maybe somebody knows where this place is, knew they’d be coming here?”
He nodded, the frown on his face sending a chill up her spine. “Aye. What thought I had, too. Got us a traitor.”
“Working for—”
“Works for whoever pushin that bad shit around, aye? Tryin build theyselves an army, I’m thinkin. Start them a war here.”
It was after six by the time they sat down at Dunk’s Diner to eat. Or they sat down so Terrible could eat and Chess could pick at food; several more pills meant she didn’t want anything else, but she knew he’d insist that she at least have something.
So she did, nibbling at fries and a burger while they talked, looking out the wide windows at the streets full of people. The setting sun cast long warm streaks of light across Downside, red and gold-orange across the sky.
“Ain’t them Lamaru, aye?”
She blinked; it hadn’t even occurred to her that it might be them again. Or, rather, another group like them; as far as she knew, they’d been essentially wiped out. Three months now and she hadn’t heard a word about them re-forming. But they certainly hadn’t been the only anti-Church group. “No. Doesn’t feel like them at all. And it’s not group magic.”
He nodded. “Good. Ain’t got that trouble, then.”
She looked at him, moved her foot under the table to brush against his, then pulled it away. The touch reflected in his eyes, in that spark deep inside them that was just hers, just for her, and despite everything she started tingling.
Finally he averted his eyes, glancing around the diner to make sure no one had seen them. “So ain’t them Lamaru. Only one mighty fucked-up dude, aye?”
“Right. After this we’ll go back to my place and see how the energies combine—the walnut and the speed, I mean, since we didn’t get to last night.”
“On morrow you head over Marietta’s place? See iffen you get some knowledge there we can use.”
“You want to come with me?”
He shrugged. “If you’re wanting. Ain’t sure havin me there’s the best idea, dig, I ain’t look too much like Church.”
She glanced around the diner. No one appeared to be paying them any attention. “I think you look perfect.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her; his mouth opened, then closed again when his phone beeped. “Fuck.”
He scowled at the screen and stood up,
already moving.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Whatever it was, it was serious enough for Terrible to run out of the diner.
Chess went after him. She worried for a second that someone would grab her and make her pay the bill before she got out the door, but no one did. That made sense, really; what were the owners going to do, go after Terrible for the money?
He disappeared around the corner; she followed, down the block and across the street, her lungs aching, to where a small raggedy crowd of people stood on the corner. Shit, not another one, please not—
It was over by the time she got close enough to see. A man was down, out cold with cash and drug packets spilling from the front pocket of his hoodie. The onlookers stepped out of her way as Terrible crouched beside him, grabbed the cash, and shoved it into his pocket.
What was— Oh. Oh, fuck.
Chess reached out to catch Terrible’s arm before he picked up one of the packets, but he stopped himself before she touched him. Relief flooded her chest.
Short-lived relief, because the look in his eyes when they met hers would have scared her if she didn’t know him as well as she did. “Ain’t one of Bump’s.”
“Yeah, I guessed that.”
He twisted his lips in what would have been a smile if he hadn’t been so obviously furious and pushed a button on his phone, while Chess tried to absorb what had just happened. A dealer who wasn’t one of Bump’s, selling ectoplasm-cut speed on the corner in Bump’s territory. They’d caught one of them, they’d actually fucking caught one of them. Whoever sent Terrible that text would certainly be eating well for the next couple of weeks.
But, shit, he’d been selling. He had cash on him, how much had he sold, and who— Right. She left Terrible there with the still-unmoving body of the dealer and chased after his last customer. “Hey. Hey, stop.”
