Unholy Magic

by Stacia Kane

  Terrible caught her eye. His were shadowed, both from the absence of light and from something like sadness. Not good, then. She steeled herself and went to his side.

  Empty eye sockets stared at the sky, filled with blood. It was all Chess saw for a long minute, that dark space where life should be. Whoever had killed the girl hadn’t just taken her eyes, he’d cut the flesh around them so bone peeped from the ragged edges. Chess closed her own eyes and set her feet more firmly on the cracked sidewalk. Not just because of the sight before her; that same invasive magic hung in the air around the girl, stronger than from any of the others.

  That didn’t make sense. The girl was dead. Her spell should have died with her instead of insinuating itself farther into Chess’s own energy, curling and spinning, tinged with a throbbing darkness Chess didn’t understand. Instead of running hot it felt cold, dank, and oppressive. Like being shoved into a cave. She knelt by the girl’s pale, motionless arm, hoping to steady her trembling legs.

  The girl’s age was indeterminate, in the way of most prostitutes. She could have been fifteen or fifty; the slack, ruined skin of her face told Chess nothing.

  Neither did her body. Beneath the blood already freezing into a crackled coating, her limbs were slender, but it was rare in Downside to find people who managed to eat more than a few times a week. Almost everyone was thin, even painfully so.

  The only thing that stood out about the girl, save the obvious, horrible fact of her death, was the thick sex energy wrapping itself around Chess, sliding up her arm when she touched the girl’s ice-hard flesh. It couldn’t be hers, it couldn’t belong to her. It had to be an aftereffect of her death. Part of the ritual, perhaps? Had they somehow used sex magic to kill her? The darkness hiding in that energy, smooth and secret as an intimate chuckle, indicated that whatever it had been, it was not a regular sex spell.

  “It be the Cryin Man,” someone said helpfully. “He tooken she eyes, so she ain’t see him even in the City, aye?”

  “Left his mark on her, too,” another voice piped in, younger and higher with fear. “On her, and on yon wall.”

  Chess glanced up, finding the speaker’s pointing finger and following it to the symbol scratched into the wall. Not a rune, as she’d originally feared. A glyph of some kind, like a gang sign. A triangle, decorated with upside-down arrows and crosses. It looked more like a bizarre doodle than something to inspire fear, but the hairs on the back of her neck stood up just the same.

  Finding the symbol on the girl took a minute. Chess expected it would be carved into that too-pale skin, but it wasn’t. The mark covered her left breast, just below the plunging neckline of the girl’s hot-pink top. Not cut in. Burned. And burned before she died, because blisters had started to rise on the wound.

  “Did anybody hear anything?” She had to clear her throat to get the words out, to busy herself with snapping a couple of quick pictures of the mark to keep from seeing the entire body, as if she could filter away the girl’s lost humanity by viewing it through the lens.

  “Cryin Man ain’t let she scream,” someone told her. “Nobody hear nothing.”

  “Was anyone with her?” Did it matter? Shit, how was she supposed to do this? Yes, Debunkers sometimes investigated witchcraft-related crimes, but only as they related to cases like Madame Lupita’s or ghost abuse. She wasn’t a detective. How the fuck did Terrible or Bump expect her to look at this poor dead girl and know whether or not a ghost had done this?

  Of course … shit, she already knew one hadn’t, at least not alone. Ghosts couldn’t do magic. Unless the girl had been trying out an incredibly strong new spell—not likely, as the kind of power Chess felt wasn’t the kind just anyone could project—her murderer had definitely been human.

  Red Berta shoved someone forward, one of the hookers standing in the circle. The girl stumbled on her teetery shoes and righted herself, but not before Chess saw how high she was.

  “I hadda go get somethin,” the girl mumbled, swaying in place.

  “You left Daisy alone to die.” Red Berta fixed her with a glare that would have made a sober person quake. At almost six feet tall, Berta wasn’t someone to mess with. She’d been a showgirl before Haunted Week—Haunted Week and an attack from a razor-wielding ghost. Berta had survived. Her looks had not.

  Chess stood and glanced at Terrible’s impassive face, then back at the girl. “Did you see anything? When you got back?”

  “Bettin she saw lotsa things,” someone whispered in the back. “Flowers an puppies floatin upward the sky, aye?”

  “Saw the spook.” The girl hugged herself. “Saw it disappear when I come back.”

  “You saw the ghost?”

  “Aye.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Wearin a hat.”

  Fear rippled through the crowd as everyone took a step back. “She seen the Cryin Man. Cryin Man wear a hat.”

  Before Chess could reply, Berta spoke up. “Terrible.” She nodded across the street.

  Chess followed the look with the slow sinking feeling of someone whose night had just gone from worse to deadly.

  Slobag’s men watched them from the alley.

  Chapter Three

  Violence is the worst of humanity’s foibles, and the least necessary. The Church protects you from the need to perform such acts; there is no excuse for violent behavior in modern society.

  —The Book of Truth, Laws, Article 347

  It wasn’t a large crowd. Five, perhaps six men stood in the shadows, caught by the firelight. They didn’t move when all faces turned toward them. Somehow that stillness was more threatening than sharpening machetes or playing with guns would have been, as if they knew beyond a doubt there would be no reliable defense against their attack.

  Then Terrible stepped forward, lifting the bottom of his bowling shirt so the diamond-patterned handle of his knife showed. Chess tried not to respond. On his opposite hip the brushed steel butt of a gun reflected the watery moonlight. When had he started carrying a gun? Usually he didn’t, at least not so obviously.

  Next to Chess, Berta reached up and extracted what looked like a machete from the crimson bird’s nest of her hair. In an instant the mood changed from terrified sadness to hot rage. Excitement. Butterfly knives opened in a blur of metal, zippers gave way so sharpened nail files and pipes could be pulled from cheap nylon purses. One of the girls flicked open an ivory-handled straight razor that had to be a hundred years old. Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.

  Slobag’s men didn’t move. Fuck! What was she supposed to do here? Slobag’s men were Lex’s men, and she doubted he’d take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed. On the other hand, Terrible was her friend, and the people around her were—well, they were his friends, or his to protect, anyway.

  Not to mention the dead body turning to ice on the pavement at her feet.

  “Chess,” Terrible said, his lips barely moving. He held his head like he was sniffing the air for prey. “Whyn’t you head back into yon alley, aye? Get yourself offen the street.”

  “I have my knife.”

  “Naw, naw. Get on out. Ain’t your fight.”

  Wasn’t going to be a fight at all, if she had anything to say about it. She held up her hand, intending to pat him on the back or arm, something to show her thanks, but she dropped it before it reached him. It would only be a distraction.

  Instead she pulled her phone out of her bag as she picked her way through the black alley. Things rustled and moved in the garbage piled along the battered walls. Rats, probably. Maybe cats or small dogs. She stepped carefully, hearing the sliding shink of Terrible’s knife being drawn as she opened the phone.

  The bright screen hurt her eyes and made her feel like a fucking target, standing there in a pool of light. It hit her then what she’d done. Left the fight, picked up a phone. Target indeed. She didn’t have much time.

>   Her fingers didn’t shake as she scrolled down to Lex’s code name. He was only one of three numbers she had programmed into the phone.

  Her ass hit something hard and sharp-edged when she crouched down. A metal box of some kind. Her mind automatically took note of it—it looked like just the sort of place to hide electronic equipment of the kind used to fake hauntings—but Lex picked up before she had time to really register it.

  “Hey, Tulip, what you up to this night?”

  “Call them off, Lex,” she whispered, but as the words left her mouth she knew she was too late. Someone shouted. The fight was on. They clashed in the middle of the street opposite the alley, giving her a perfect view of what was happening. Not just five or six of Slobag’s men; at least as many again poured onto the street from somewhere. How many had been waiting, and why? Did they just keep an eye on the street, or what?

  “Call who off? Ain’t know what you saying. You right?”

  “No, I’m not fucking right. Your men, Lex. Slobag’s men. They’re here, they’re—” A scream cut her off. Red Berta in full battle cry, the voice that used to belt out show tunes, striking fear into the hearts of anyone within a few miles. The machete sliced through the air and grabbed a piece of one of Slobag’s men. He howled and stumbled sideways.

  Terrible didn’t miss a beat, grabbing the man’s hair and slamming a heavy fist into his face. The man fell. Terrible turned to the next one.

  All around were the hookers, stabbing at the men with their small blades, wielding pipes like pros. Sharp heels dug into soft leather shoes. They were holding their own, but they were outnumbered. Even as Chess watched, one of the girls went flying, her screech ending abruptly when her face hit the street.

  “The fuck is that sound? Where you at?”

  “I’m on Forty-fifth, dammit, Forty-fifth and Berrie, and there’s a bunch of your guys here and they’ve started a—”

  “What you doing there? Ain’t nowhere near your place.”

  “Can we talk about this later? Call them off, now.”

  Metal scraped the pavement. A long, slim knife skittered on the sidewalk across the mouth of the alley, the blade sticky and dark. One of the men fell. His blood steamed in the cold air.

  “Shit. A fight? You safe, Tulip?”

  “For about the next two minutes. Lex, I’m not kidding here. There’s a fight, and it’s on Forty-fifth and I’m stuck in the fucking middle of it, please find out who it is and call them off!”

  Another scream. Blood spurted from one of the hookers’ arms. Chess couldn’t tell which one she was, and in a moment the girl had disappeared, another wounded fighter in a crowd full of them. Over it all Terrible’s face, oddly peaceful, totally absorbed. As she watched he ducked down, catching a man midleap and shoving him over his shoulder and onto the street. His knife flashed in his fist.

  “Stay on, aye? Gimme a minute.” Over the screams and shouts of the brawl she heard Lex speaking Cantonese to someone, heard several different voices answer.

  Chess crouched lower in her not-very-good hiding place, her stare focused on the fight. Berta kept swinging her machete, southpaw. Chess expected to see heads start flying at any second. With her free hand she found her knife; her palm was so sweaty it took her three tries to get a grip on it and pull it out. Just in case …

  “Tulip? You there?”

  It took her a few seconds to find her voice. “Yeah. I’m here.”

  “Aye, hang on there. All be over soon. You all hidden up? Stay out of sight. Them dudes, they ain’t know you, dig?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I get it.”

  “What you doing on Forty-fifth?”

  “Terrible asked me—”

  “Terrible’s there? All by hisself, aye?”

  “No, not by himself. There’s a fucking army here, okay? And even if he was by himself—which he isn’t—I wouldn’t tell you.”

  “Thought you was fun.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why he ask you to go there for, anyhow? Ain’t safe there, you know that.”

  “There’s a—there’s a dead girl. One of Bump’s girls.” Hell, he was going to find out anyway, if any of his men made it back safely. Which she guessed they would. A voice rose over the shrieks of the girls on the street, Cantonese ratcheting through the empty air. A call to retreat, she hoped.

  “Oh? Looks like somebody getting some payback,” Lex said with satisfaction. The empty eye sockets of the dead girl flashed into Chess’s mind. If he’d been standing in front of her, she’d have tried to slap him.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Ain’t talking about nothing. Just saying, is all.”

  “What’s that—I gotta go.” She snapped the phone shut as Terrible appeared at the end of the alley, his broad form blocking out what little light there was. Behind him she saw Slobag’s men becoming shadows again, disappearing into the spaces between the buildings.

  “Come on out now, Chess.”

  Her legs didn’t want to support her as she stood. More bodies appeared—Red Berta, a few of the other girls, Chess couldn’t tell which ones. All were panting like they were being paid extra to get into it, but they were alive.

  Most of them, anyway. The hooker Chess had watched fly through the air did not get up. Neither did four of Slobag’s men. Red Berta and her girls emptied the dead men’s pockets with crisp efficiency, like murderous bank tellers.

  Chess dug into her bag and pulled out some tissues, which she used to dab at the deep, swelling cut under Terrible’s eye. She had to brace her free hand against his chest and stand on tiptoe to do it, putting her face only inches from his when he looked down at her.

  Their eyes met, and heat flooded her skin. Her heels slammed back onto the sidewalk. “Sorry, maybe, um, maybe you should—here.”

  She shoved the wad of tissues at him, felt him take them from her. Too bad he couldn’t take away the confusion—and something like panic—making her stomach feel like someone was tickling it from the inside. Stupid sex magic.

  She cleared her throat. “Another half-inch to the left and you’d need a hospital.”

  Orange light caught the wet spots on his shirt and illuminated a long rip in one sleeve. Beneath it the flesh was almost as raw as his knuckles.

  “Naw, I’m right.” He took the tissues away, sniffled, and pressed them back against his face.

  “It’ll scar.”

  A deep rumble of laughter. “Guess another scar make a difference?”

  He had her there.

  “What’s your thinkin on Daisy?”

  “Wh—oh.” The dead girl still lay on the pavement. Whitish frost on her skin turned her into an eerie sculpture, like the statues of the original Church leaders outside the Government Headquarters up Northside. Those were carved from white limestone, coated with diamond dust to make them gleam. The rime on Daisy’s dead body created the same illusion, making her mutilated form beautiful.

  “I don’t—I don’t know. If it was a ghost, I mean. It’s really too soon for me to tell, it’s so dark and …” Chess shivered. She’d have to tell him about the sex spell, but not now. Not when her blood still simmered a little too fast for comfort.

  “Aye. Don’t worry on it, Chess. Maybe you free tomorrow, come back for another look? In the daylight, dig at the walls an all. Bring yon Church stuff, them little machines and all you use.”

  “I thought you didn’t think it was a ghost.”

  His eyelids flickered and he nodded toward the huddle of girls, counting their money and lighting the dead men’s smokes. “They do. Bump an me, we ain’t so sure. You ain’t think it’s fair chances, them showing up here this night, aye?”

  “You think—”

  “I pick you up tomorrow round midday, cool?”

  She didn’t want to. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help him; it was that Lex’s words about payback wouldn’t stop echoing in her head. If this was a gang thing, some sort of territory struggle, she did not need
to be involved. Her life worked, as much as it could. Getting in between the people to whom she owed her loyalty—the one person to whom she owed loyalty, anyway, all Bump did was sell her pills and run the closest pipe room to her apartment—and the one with whom she swapped bodily fluids probably wasn’t the best way to make sure it kept working.

  But there really was no good way to refuse. It wouldn’t just look suspicious, it would be … it would be wrong.

  She glanced again at Daisy’s body, abandoned like a busted Dream pipe on the cracked and pitted sidewalk. If it weren’t for the Church, that could have been her. Probably would have been her. Certainly it was what she’d grown up expecting.

  So she nodded. “They told me not to worry about coming in tomorrow, not after what happened tonight. No new cases anyway.”

  “They give you the day off? How bad your night go?”

  “Oh … it was nothing. I got poisoned a little bit. They had an antidote, no big deal.”

  He cocked an eyebrow.

  “Don’t look at me like that. I’m here, right? No problem. Where’s the girl who saw the ghost?”

  He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Laria. She name is Laria.”

  “Yeah, her.” Chess scanned the little crowd of women, picking out the frizzy brown head. Laria stood near the back, a confused look on her face. Chess tried to catch the girl’s eye, but she wasn’t sure if it was possible for anyone to catch the girl’s eye at this stage; she looked like she was ready to keel over backward.

  “I get her.”

  Laria looked younger close up than Chess had thought. Sixteen, perhaps, or seventeen at the oldest. Her pale blue jacket had stains on the sleeves and a tear in one elbow. When she squeezed her arms tighter around her chest her pinkish-white skin poked through the hole like a turtle peeping from its shell.

  “Laria, I’m Chess. Could you tell me what you saw earlier? The man who killed Daisy?”