Chasing Magic

by Stacia Kane

The woman turned around when Chess touched her shoulder. “Aye? The fuck you wanting?”

  “That speed. Give it to me.”

  Cracked lips stretched into a disbelieving grin. “Fuck you.”

  “No, listen—you have to give it to me. You can’t do it, it’s poisoned.”

  They’d attracted a little crowd themselves. Shit. Because nothing was more fun than an audience.

  “Fuck you, poisoned. Know who you is, Churchwitch. Why you ain’t buy you fuckin own, you wanting some?”

  Chess pointed back at Terrible, who was standing over the dealer with his arms folded across his chest. “Why would Terrible knock that guy out if he wasn’t doing something wrong? Ask him, okay? He’ll tell you. He’ll get somebody to give you a new bag. Just let me have that one.”

  The woman hesitated. The golden sunset light managed to make even her wizened face look almost smooth and delicate, blurring the harsh lines and drooping eyebrows.

  Chess held out her hand, palm up. “Come on. If you know who I am, you know I’m not lying about being able to get you more. Give it to me. Okay?”

  The speed landed in her palm. Fuck, that magic, that dark nasty slither of it up her arm, over her skin.

  Who the hell was that dealer, and who was he working for?

  Terrible opened the back door of the storage space and nodded at Chess. “He’s talkin now.”

  Damn. The dealer had lasted—she checked her watch again—almost half an hour. Not bad.

  It was even more impressive when she saw him, almost unrecognizable under the angry glare of the single naked lightbulb hanging from the stained ceiling. Blood covered his face, drying in thick sticky lines from his pulped nose and mouth. One of his cheeks had a horrible caved-in sort of look, like a dented fender. Broken fingers crumpled uselessly at the end of his arms, tied to those of the chair. She was glad the pills she’d taken would kick in soon; viewing that without help was not pleasant.

  Terrible wouldn’t quite meet her gaze. She turned from him, giving him what privacy she could, and tried to see the whites of the dealer’s swollen eyes. Sympathy crept unbidden into her heart; it wasn’t just blood running down his face, but tears, too.

  Sympathy until she remembered what he’d been selling, what it would do to people. Sympathy until she remembered Yellow Pete’s arm flailing around in the hand of a body controlled by magic, Sharp-eye Ben torn up on his bed, Rickride strewn across his floor. Sympathy until she thought of living people trapped inside bodies compelled by another person, their souls crying out but unable to escape, their freedom stolen.

  Flesh was a hell of a prison.

  She walked closer to him, keeping her eyes as steady and cold as she could, and reached out to touch his hair—the only spot she could see that wasn’t soaked in blood.

  No magic. Even when she opened herself up a little more, she got nothing from him. “Who’s doing the magic?”

  He just looked at her.

  At least, he just looked at her until Terrible’s fist snapped his head back. Chess forced herself not to react, not to cringe as more blood flew from his mouth. If he saw weakness he’d take advantage of it. If he saw weakness he’d try to form some kind of bond with her, and she definitely didn’t want that.

  So instead of wincing, she set her jaw and repeated her question. “Who’s doing the magic?”

  His lips were so swollen—and she suspected he was missing a few teeth—that at first she thought he was speaking some sort of foreign language. It wasn’t until the words sunk in that she realized what he’d said. “Don’t know shit about magic.”

  Terrible hit him again.

  “Ey! Said I don’t know, I don’t know. I ain’t no witch, don’t know any witch.”

  Chess and Terrible looked at each other. Terrible shrugged. The guy had been talking before she walked in, so … maybe that was the truth?

  Or maybe he was more afraid of what a witch—the witch he apparently worked for—would do to him than what Terrible would do. Kind of hard to believe, really. Witches who liked to play on the nasty side of magic could do a hell of a lot of damage, but Terrible could do as much if not more in the course of a day’s work.

  “Told you everythin, told you all I know, what else you wanna know? Tell you what you wanna know.”

  “Where are you from?” Chess asked, more out of curiosity than anything else. He wasn’t from Downside, that was for sure. Not only did he not sound like it, he didn’t look like it. Underneath the bruises and swelling and blood there was … something that didn’t look like Downside. Didn’t look like Triumph City.

  “What the fuck you wanna— Okay, okay, don’t hit me again! Come from Baltimore. Ain’t from here, from there.”

  “Why?”

  “Why you ask? You wanna go out on a date with me or—”

  The chair rocked back when Terrible hit him again. For the space of a heartbeat, the chair leaned there on two legs before righting itself with a thud.

  It took another few seconds for the guy to come around.

  Chess tried again once his eyes cleared. “Why did you come here? Why are you in Triumph City, in Downside? Who are you working for?”

  He tried to move his fingers but winced instead. “Southpaws—true ’til death.”

  “That’s a gang or something?”

  “You fuckin stup— Okay, hey, hey, sorry. Just can’t believe some chick ain’t heard of us. Everybody knows the Southpaws.”

  Terrible folded his arms over his chest, raised one eyebrow. “This ain’t Baltimore, aye? Ain’t give a fuck who down there. Care who’s here, an you ain’t s’posed to be.”

  He shrugged. “Free country.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “I don’t see no Church down here. No law says a man can’t move house.”

  She imagined how much fun it would be to push up the sleeves of the long-sleeved shirt she wore under an old Crumbs T-shirt and show him that the Church was standing right in front of him. Probably not a good idea, no, but fun.

  Terrible’s slight smile showed her he was thinking the same thing. Now was probably not the time to do what that smile made her think of, either; maybe later. It would be nice to have something go right that day.

  It would be even nicer if they could get some good information from this guy. What the fuck was his name, anyway?

  “Tagger,” he said when she asked. At least, that was what she thought he said. Close enough, anyway.

  “Right. So what are you doing here, really? Why are you here?”

  He moved a bit in his chair; Chess thought it was supposed to be a nonchalant shrug, but it looked more like a nervous twitch. “Searchin for some new play, is all.”

  “Did you bring the speed with you?”

  “What?”

  Another punch. No more obfuscation or game-playing, not anymore. This was the big question: where he’d got the speed, who he was working for. And he could play the “what?” game to delay as long as he liked—as long as he could stand it, anyway—but he wasn’t leaving until they knew.

  Terrible leaned forward, bracing himself with his hands on Tagger’s wrists—his weight pressing them into the hard arms of the chair—so he loomed over Tagger, blocked his vision of everything else. “Can keep you livin a long time, dig? Still lots of places I ain’t touched on you yet.”

  The little stare-down didn’t last long. They never did with Terrible. Not the sort of thing she should be proud of, again, but … well, what was she supposed to do? Be upset that no one in the world would ever be able to touch her again as long as he was there? Feel bad because the man she was firmly convinced was the best, strongest one in the world loved her? Fuck that.

  “He called up Janko. My man Janko, he’s in charge. Called Janko, said got room up here, send some dudes. Said got a takeover plan.”

  “Who?”

  Tagger hesitated, but started talking when Terrible pulled his fist back. “Ain’t met the dude. Got the powder from a chick. Had me meet her up
… up off Baxter, think it was? By the docks, there, right at em.”

  Marietta? “What was her name?”

  “Ain’t caught a name. Ain’t asked. Guess she work for Raz— Fuck.”

  “Who?”

  Tagger looked at her, looked at Terrible. Looked at Terrible’s clenched fist for a long moment, then sighed. “Razor be the name I was told. He the one running it all, the one moving in. Come from someplace else, don’t know where. Don’t know him, only met him once.”

  “The boss, his name is Razor? That’s what he calls himself?”

  Tagger nodded. “ ’Swhat he said to call him.”

  “He alone? Got partners? Where he came from?”

  They were finally getting somewhere now, and she only hoped they could get something stronger, something more, out of Tagger before one of Bump’s men slipped an employee at the Crematorium an extra fifty to add his body to the pile, no questions asked.

  Tagger screamed, cutting into her thoughts. Terrible had grabbed the fingers of his right hand and twisted them. Damn, what had the man said to bring that on?

  Something insulting, whatever it was, because when the scream ended, the apologies began.

  Terrible interrupted them. “Where you met him? Where he stay?”

  “Don’t know. Met him where I met the chick, up off Baxter like I said. An alley off it, by a building used to be a taxidermist. Walked down it, he was there.”

  “Who else you meet here? Any you pals come up from Baltimore too? You got any more? Better knowledge you give, better chance you stayin alive, dig?”

  Tagger’s eyes were as wide as they could get, which wasn’t wide at all given how puffy they were. “Not a snitch, okay? But two Southies come up with me. Three of us. Razor, he said money here and he gonna take it. Said …” He looked down. The next words were a mumble, made even more unintelligible by his ruined mouth. “Said the two gangs runnin Downside at war, be a good time to get his feet in.”

  It was all Lex’s fault. Lex and his stupid war, Lex and his big plans, turning Downside into a beacon for every criminal in five states. Lex and his fucking explosions and— Okay, technically the explosions had been Slobag, but Lex had been behind it and she knew it. Shit, he’d even gone hunting for some new muscle of his own, hired some asshole to kill Terrible, hadn’t he? She couldn’t imagine what the grapevine must be saying about that one.

  It shouldn’t have surprised her; they’d already figured out that some outside gang was trying to make Downside its new home. But it still did.

  Worse than that, though, it scared her. Looking at the latest crop of torn-up bodies tossed around the shabby apartment building on Fifty-sixth in which they now stood scared her, with her entire body going cold and her mind adding to those new images a few old non-favorites she’d never wanted to see again. Terrible on the street, the hawk swooping down …

  Lex’s man wouldn’t be the only one wanting Terrible out of the way, if a new gang was trying to muscle in.

  Hell, some of them might even be looking for her.

  They were obviously looking for somebody. Unless they just liked setting their human-attack-dog zombies loose to see what they would do, which was entirely possible. She didn’t know which of those options sounded worse, but she sent a few more pills down her throat to muffle them. When had she taken the last ones? While she waited, and they’d been with Tagger for about forty-five minutes, and she’d had something to eat … Whatever. She hadn’t taken that many. And she wouldn’t take more, because losing count was never a good idea.

  Zimmer—one of Bump’s men, whose phone call was the reason they were there—shuffled his feet as he indicated the bodies; the scraggly dreads and spikes of his hair jiggled with the movement. “All of em lived here. Only them two’s bought offen me, though.”

  “You come make a drop-off, aye?”

  Zimmer nodded. “Always, once in the week this same night. Them bought steady.”

  “Speed?”

  “Nay, them buyin keshes for most, some pills. Sizzle on sometimes, but mostly just the light shit. Never no straight powders.”

  Chess glanced around the room; she couldn’t bear to do more than that. All that blood everywhere … like footprints marking a path on a map, showing who the killers had reached first, where they’d dragged the bodies, how they’d used the parts they tore off to kill the others.

  It looked as if at least a dozen people had been in that building. “So …” Her voice cracked.

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “So no one else in the building bought from you? They were all clean?”

  “Aye, ’sfar’s I got knowin, leastaways.”

  Fuck, that was bad. That was bad. “So, why, then? Why just kill them all?”

  “Could be maybe them worrying on getting theyselfs identified an all, were the thought—”

  “Naw,” Terrible interrupted. He’d been wandering around the hallway—the entryway to the building, where they stood at the foot of the stairs—peering out the windows, ducking his head into the other apartments on that floor. “Weren’t thinkin on theyselves. Weren’t thinkin at all, dig? Some else wanted all dead here.”

  “Ain’t had the feelin on any them knowin each t’other much, dig?” Zimmer darted his gaze back and forth between Chess and Terrible, as if he expected one of them to attack him or blame him. But then, Chess imagined that in his position she’d be pretty nervous, too; hell, she was pretty nervous. “Weren’t like I seed em all chatterin much or any like that stuff, when I come. They ain’t mentioned none of t’others to me, neither.”

  Terrible came back to her side. “So they come in, kill you men, aye? Then head through the rest of em.”

  Zimmer burst into tears. What the fuck?

  For a minute they just stood there, staring at him. How the hell was— How close had he been to those customers of his? Sure, walking into that mansion of manslaughter couldn’t have been fun—wasn’t fun, she wasn’t exactly enjoying herself—but Zimmer seemed barely to have the strength to stand. His skinny arms were wrapped so tight around himself that she wondered if he could cut off his own circulation, and tears and snot ran down his face to dribble off with every quavering shake of his body.

  That, at least, she could do something about. She reached into her bag and grabbed a couple of tissues, handed them to him as unobtrusively as possible.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, swiping at his face with them; he used the whole handful, like he’d never been introduced to the concept of Kleenex before. Or had no idea how big his own face was.

  Not really the time to be a bitch, she reminded herself. And she didn’t feel like being bitchy, either, not in the face of what was obviously serious pain on Zimmer’s behalf. He looked like he was ready to explode from it; she wondered if she should try to help him find a place to sit down.

  “Ain’t can believe it happening on agains,” Zimmer said. Or sobbed, actually. “Two days past, my friends, they been torn—”

  “What?”

  Zimmer gave a little shriek and jumped back; Chess would have laughed if it hadn’t been so pitiful and if the anger and confusion in Terrible’s voice wasn’t so understandable. If she didn’t share that anger and frustration, rising harder in her chest with every second.

  “My—my friends, some friends I got, kilt two days past an like this, had the thinking be my fault, all on me or—”

  Terrible held up his hand, ending Zimmer’s stammered sentence with the gesture like an orchestra conductor ending a performance. “Hold up, now, aye? You sayin you seen bodies like this—you got friends died like this, an you ain’t said shit on it?”

  Oh fuck. How many were there, how many more? They’d been so focused on street men—on dealers being killed, on dead customers—well, of course they had been, because it was business. Because it was a war over territory, everyone fighting for the same however-many square miles of earth and the same customer base.

  Wasn’t it?

  She glanced at Terr
ible, but he wasn’t looking at her. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need to; she knew what he was thinking, that he had the same questions running on a what-the-fuck loop in his brain.

  Whether Zimmer knew exactly what they were thinking or not—she bet he didn’t—he obviously knew something was wrong. “Thought—ain’t none tell me I oughten say on it, them weren’t workin for Bump an don’t use, them worked down the slaughterhouse or on the garbage truck, maybe played them some cards onna Friday nights, an—”

  This time Chess interrupted him. “Cards?”

  “Aye, well, sometimes them do—them did, only ain’t knowing why them dead now, an torn up, figured them got hit by dogs or some like it.…”

  He seemed to realize how lame that sounded; his already pink face reddened further. “Only sayin, ain’t seed no reason to give Bump the knowledge on it, were all, them families had it, an called them the body wagon and all, so … Guessin I shoulda said on it?”

  All those houses. In her mind she pictured Downside from an aerial viewpoint, all those buildings: squats and barely-hanging-on-with-rent-paid apartments and duplexes and rooms-by-the-hour and doorways and, shit, all those buildings, and most of them had bodies inside them eking out whatever living could be eked.

  All those Downsiders, all anonymous, maybe known by sight on their streets or blocks but not two over. All those faces she’d never seen and names she’d never heard. Why would she?

  All those people in all those houses, and how many of them could die and have their deaths make not the slightest impact on the people around them? How many of them could even say their neighbors would notice? As she’d thought while they stood and listened to Sharp-eye’s blue-haired neighbor with her exposed breast, most people didn’t appreciate having neighbors who paid attention to their comings and goings. Most people wanted their private business to be just that, their own private business, and people trying to get involved could very well find themselves getting dead instead.

  So how many people could at that moment be lying in pieces on floors in small dingy rooms, while the people next door resolutely kept their heads down and their gazes focused straight ahead?