Finding Magic

Chapter Nine

Whatever Tom Imry had done after the Mission closed, it hadn’t paid very well. Yeah, she knew that already; people who made money didn’t live in Downside. But—“Wait a minute.”

“What?” Jillian looked up from Tom’s bookshelves, where she’d been scanning the titles while Trent and Vaughn accessed their laptop, mumbling to each other and—in Trent’s case—shooting Chess the occasional baleful glare.

“Mark,” Chess said. “He didn’t mention it.”

“What do you mean?” Vaughn asked. He sat perched on the edge of the cushion on the book-propped couch, in front of a window covered with a tattered, bloodstained blanket. Chess didn’t like to look at the bloodstains; some of them, she knew, would be from Tom’s untimely demise, but some … They were faded and watery—more like rust stains—and they reminded her of fireworks or flowers, with dark splatty heads and long trailing stems. She recognized those bloodblossoms. Someone had been cleaning needles in that room, filling them with water and emptying them again so they’d be ready when the time came for another fix. She’d seen it done. She’d been made to do it.

Damn, not even any of the sacks of shit who’d put a roof over her head had cleaned their spikes against the walls. That was hopelessness. That was truly not giving a shit anymore, about anything.

But then, that was where the needle led. Always had, always would.

“Mark didn’t say anything about the others.” Chess pulled her attention off the blanket and back onto Jillian and Vaughn. “Four people he knows—or at least used to know—including the Warings, have been killed in the last couple of weeks, and he didn’t say anything?”

“He probably didn’t know,” Trent said.

“Their deaths weren’t in the papers? They had no contact with each other, really?”

“Their deaths weren’t news.” Trent glared at her. “We’re not telling the public, remember? So maybe they had obituaries, maybe they didn’t, but even if they did, the details of their actual deaths wouldn’t be made public. And who the hell knows if they stayed in touch with each other? We didn’t find any evidence of a connection between them, remember?”

Fuck it. She cocked her right eyebrow, let her gaze rest on him just a beat longer than necessary. “Yeah. I know you didn’t.”

Vaughn stood up, fast, like the couch had an ejector seat, and reached for her. She started to flinch away but he had her; his grip on her arm was surprisingly gentle as he led her toward the open doorway off the kitchen area. “Since you did find the connection, why don’t you come with me and see if we can find something else relating to it? Maybe there’s something in the bedroom.”

There were a lot of things in the bedroom. Especially junk. Long twisted ropes of dirty sheets across the floor, wires and bits of paper and needle caps and spent matches, clothing so full of holes it looked like only the copious stains held the fabric together. Evidence of a life nobody cared about, not even the person living it. Evidence of lost hope.

“I know Trent can be a pain in the ass,” Vaughn said quietly, surprising her. “I know he can be a jerk. He’s just trying to toughen you up—he was trained by one of the meanest sons of bitches I’ve ever known, and he thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to go.”

Chess didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say to that, anyway—That’s okay? Because it wasn’t, not really, and Trent wasn’t some kind of loving but tough grandpa, he was a dickhead who hated her for no good reason.

Vaughn seemed to want her to say something, though. She decided on “Sure.” That seemed noncommittal enough.

And apparently it was, because Vaughn’s face cleared. “Okay. Good. Thanks.”

Another few seconds passed while they both stood there like people on a blind date, not knowing what to say or do or if they’d even find something to say or do. Stupid, really. Chess clasped her hands together in a brisk let’s-get-to-it gesture, the sort of thing she associated with Church Goodys or matrons or whatever. Not the sort of thing she would ever do unless she felt totally uncomfortable, which she did. “So, you wanted to search around in here?”

He blinked. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

He took one side of the room and Chess took the other, though she thought it was probably going to be a waste of time and she suspected Vaughn did as well.

They were wrong. The first thing she found, after searching only a couple of semi-empty drawers, was a copy of the picture. The one in the Warings’ spare room, the one with the graininess of a pre-digital photograph. If Tom Imry had had a copy of it, was he in it? Who else was in it? Were all of the people in the picture dead? If not, were the still-living ones in danger?

She asked Vaughn.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking the picture from her to give it a closer look. “We’ll have to look at the files of the people still alive, see if we can match the faces. I don’t know how easy it’ll be—maybe Gloria Waring will have some idea who they are.”

Duh. She’d actually forgotten about Gloria for a minute there; she’d gotten so excited about investigating on her own she’d forgotten that part of investigating meant questioning witnesses. “Maybe Gloria has a lot more information than she thinks she does, huh?”

He nodded. “You and Jillian should talk to her soon. If you get to her place in an hour or two, you can probably catch her right around dinnertime, so she’ll be sure to be home.”

Wow, that was kind of a scummy thing to do. But then, Chess figured scummy was sometimes the only way to get things done, at least for the Squad or anyone else doing any investigating. Or, well, anyone who needed anything else done, really; everything was scummy to somebody, right?

Whatever. The point was, she needed to go interrupt Gloria Waring’s dinner, and she needed Jillian to go with her, so it was time to leave the Trent-free peace of the bedroom and go do it.

Or so Chess thought. Jillian had another task for them first; well, not for them, for herself. Apparently she wanted to check in at the Church, so they headed back over there. Chess was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball from all the back-and-forth driving they’d done that day, not to mention just plain tired and wondering if the day was ever going to end.

“Besides,” Jillian said as she opened one of the wide double doors at the Church’s entryway, “this way we’ll be sure to catch Gloria at dinner or right after, right? It’s only four-thirty now, and I didn’t think keeping you hanging around there with Trent was such a good idea. Although, you know, Vaughn—”

“Should I wait here for you?” Chess interrupted, waving her hand at one of the benches lining the hall. Yeah, she knew. Knew that she was already sick of the cloying hints about how he really seemed to like her—where Jillian got that from she had no idea; sure, he was nice enough, but he wasn’t flirting or asking her out—and how she could do a lot worse than him, and that was after only twenty minutes in the car.

Jillian sighed and looked at her watch. “Why don’t you head on back to your room, and I’ll call you when we’re done? I don’t know how long it’ll take. We don’t want to be at Gloria’s until at least six, so you might as well go relax or something.”

Relax? Relax, when they were so close to maybe finding something? Relax when that closeness might be due to her own work, to the clue that she’d actually found all by herself?

Relax, when that stuffy blood-covered apartment had stirred so many memories and they were starting to clang and rattle in her head louder and louder, when the only way she could possibly hope to drown them out—the only responsible way, the only way she should do it—was by working?

But Jillian’s expression didn’t brook argument; she clearly wanted Chess gone, so Chess would have to make herself gone. “Great,” she managed. “Okay, sure. Just call me when you’re ready.”

“I will.”

As soon as Jillian’s back disappeared into the open doorway of Elder Griffin’s office, though, Chess turned away and headed for the stairs. Yeah, she could go back to her room … or she could visit the library and see if she could learn anything more. No, she didn’t know the Church login Jillian had used—and wasn’t quite daring enough to use it unauthorized even if she had—but she could access the Internet if she wanted to, and she could check the shelves and the Restricted Room for any books about transporting ghosts.

Or … wait. Three ghosts had been Summoned from the City, and no, the Liaisers hadn’t noticed any specific connection between them, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still something that could be learned about them.

Not to mention that Mark’s parents had died in a fire when he was ten. Chess was very interested in learning more about that. The files on him she’d managed to look at earlier hadn’t contained details, and details were what she wanted, some indication of what had actually happened.

What had Jillian said about the file cabinets? Green was for buildings that had confirmed hauntings, red for people who’d died before Haunted Week, right?

Yes. There were several files under “Pollert,” but it wasn’t hard to find the ones she wanted. Not only because the dates were on them, but because when she flipped them open she saw pictures of charred rubble, charred bodies.

And a big stamp that said ARSON.

Holy shit. Not just a tragic house fire. A deliberate house fire. What exactly had—Okay. Hmm. According to the reports from the BT—pre-Church—police force and some laminated newspaper clippings, Mark’s father had been involved in some kind of shady business. Organized crime. Everyone had suspected the arson was revenge, and that was that.

She set the file on top of the cabinets so she could start flipping over the pages. There. A picture of Mark, looking … well, shit, looking like a smug little psycho. Tears had cut whitish tracks through the soot on his face, and the skin around his eyes looked shadowed, his brow furrowed. But something in the eyes themselves, something about the set of his jaw … Chess looked at that picture and didn’t see what she thought she should have seen, didn’t see someone horrified and upset over losing his parents.

She saw emptiness. The kind of emptiness she’d seen so many times in her life that she couldn’t help but recognize it, the kind that still made her wake up sweating in the middle of the night.

She wasn’t the only one who’d seen it, either. The original detective had made a few notes about Mark’s attitude, his lack of affect, his coldness.

But they hadn’t been able to prove anything, or at least so she assumed, given that he’d gone into foster care and not a hospital or mental facility or whatever it was they’d had back then.

Okay, then. Next she’d have to—

“Hi, Chessie. What are you doing?”

She spun around, her hands already scrambling to shut the file before anyone saw. It wasn’t necessary, really, since any Church employee or student was allowed access to those files—they weren’t confidential—but still. It was none of anybody’s business.

It was none of Agnew Doyle’s business.

He stood a little too close, the way he always did. And just the way it always did, her body reacted; not a lot, but enough that she noticed it. Enough that she knew he probably noticed it, because she noticed the way his did, too, the way his blue eyes widened when he looked at her.

Not that it mattered. They were in the same year, in the same classes; they’d work together after they graduated, and that meant he was off-limits. The last thing she wanted was to be forced to see one of her—Well, she didn’t want to see them again after, so she definitely didn’t want to have to work with one of them and deal with him on a regular basis.

She reminded herself of that as she pressed herself against the filing cabinet in a mostly vain attempt to put a little more space between Doyle and herself. “Oh, hey. Um, I’m doing some research—”

“Elder Martin said you’re on your training week. I didn’t know you wanted to work with the Squad.”

No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, but she lowered her voice anyway. “It’s just a training week. To see what it’s like.”

“And how is it?”

She shrugged.

He reached past her to lift the file and read the tab. “What are you investigating? That’s kind of an old file, isn’t it?”

“Quit being nosy. You know I can’t tell you.” She tugged the file away and tucked it under her arm.

“Oh, come on. Murders? Conspiracies? What? I haven’t done my week yet, I want to know what they have us do. How involved we get to be.”

“Are you doing yours with the Squad?”

“Nope.” He grinned at her and leaned against the cabinet, tucking his shaggy black hair behind his ear as he did so. “Debunking. I’ve already talked to Elder Griffin, you know, about how that’s what I want to do. He said he’d get me scheduled.”

“How—” No. No, she wasn’t going to ask how he’d managed to do that, because it would make her look stupid. Naive. She changed it to “How do you like Elder Griffin? He seems okay.”

“Yeah, he is. He’s pretty straitlaced, but they all are, huh? And you know he started with the Church before Haunted Week and everything, he fought during it. They put him into Elder training right after that, apparently, so I guess he did some serious shit.”

Chess thought about that for a second. “He doesn’t really seem like the type.”

“You never know.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice so it felt like a caress on her skin. “Some of us have hidden depths.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Some of us are full of shit.”

“Now, was that really necessary? You wound me.”

“Oh, did I hurt your widdle feelings?”

“You can make it up to me.” He was closer now, not close enough to be entirely inappropriate but close enough that she started both panicking and wishing he’d get closer; close enough that she wanted him to touch her and was afraid he would. “How about having dinner with me on Friday? And Randy’s having a party in his room, we can—”

“I can’t.” She slid away. “Too much studying to catch up on.”

“Come on, Chessie, everyone will be there. One night won’t—”

“Sorry.”

His head tilted. “Another time?”

“Maybe.” She shifted the file in her arms. Ordinarily she wouldn’t mind talking to Doyle, but Jillian could call her any minute and she wanted to try to at least learn something before that happened. So it wouldn’t look like she’d been wasting her time. So it wouldn’t look like she didn’t deserve to be there.

“Well.” He raised his hand like he was about to touch her, but stopped. “If you change your mind …”

“Sure.”

“Have fun with your week, anyway.”

She watched his back as he strolled down the row of cabinets and turned, disappearing past the next aisle of books. How much of that interest was in her, and how much was just curiosity about her training?

They were probably about equal, really. Yeah, he’d asked her out before, but yeah, he was also ambitious and arrogant, which meant he’d do anything to get some kind of inside or advance information.

Whatever. She had far more important things to focus on just then. Like Mark pollert. Like the names of the ghosts Summoned from the City, and who they might be to him. All but one of them had also died before Haunted Week, so she grabbed their files and carried them and the pollerts’ to a table by the wall, where no one could come up behind her.

Jason McBride’s was the first file she opened. Jason had been forty-three when he died, a sudden heart attack while at his job as … oh. Oh. Well, damn. Jason McBride had been a social worker for Child Protective Services, the BT version of the Church’s Department of Minor Care. Chess could only imagine how lousy things must have been for kids BT, given that they had to have improved under the Church and they hadn’t exactly been great for her.

But then, as she kept reminding herself, she must be an anomaly or something. Because contrary to what she’d grown up believing, the Church actually did care about her; they’d found her, they’d rescued her, and look at her now. Actually working for them, working with the Black Squad, getting ready to have an actual life beyond anything she’d ever dreamed of. They deserved her loyalty for that, her gratitude, and she’d give it to them.

But whoever had done the job of “protecting” children before the Church … they deserved nothing, and she scanned the photo of Jason McBride with little curiosity. He had that wispy, ineffectual look she’d seen so many times, the kind of guy born to be stepped all over.

Not that it mattered what he’d been in life. In death he was a killing machine like 99.9 percent of all ghosts, an ethereal shark endlessly searching for human chum.

Just like Marie and Ryan Wagner, the other two ghosts. Aw, a married couple, how sweet. Ryan had been a salesman, Marie a teacher—and Chess could just bet she knew who one of Marie’s students had been.

Too bad she couldn’t confirm it. If the name of Mark’s school had been in his file—and Chess imagined it had been, because everything like that would be—it either hadn’t been in the part she could access or she just hadn’t written it down, which was more likely.

But Jillian could access the files. So could Elder Griffin, couldn’t he? And since Doyle had actually talked to him and requested his training week be in Debunking—and why had no one told her she could do that? Or maybe Doyle had just created his own opportunity, which seemed more likely—and since Elder Griffin had actually seemed pretty decent to her when she’d met him, maybe she could ask him about it. Let him know she was taking the assignment seriously, that she was using her head.

Files weren’t supposed to leave the library, at least that’s what she thought she remembered being told. But taking them to Elder Griffin’s office wasn’t—No, they weren’t supposed to leave, and she didn’t want to take a chance. So instead she quickly scribbled down the names and their places of employment, shoved the files back into their approximate places in the cabinets, and headed for the wide staircase and Elder Griffin’s office.

The hall was empty. Well, sure—it was getting close to six, and the offices technically closed at five-thirty. Most employees stayed later than that, but no regular people sat on the benches waiting for appointments. A Goody Chess wasn’t familiar with passed her on the steps, but that was it.

Which was why she was able to hear the voices inside Elder Griffin’s office so clearly when she raised her hand to knock.

Actually, that was a lie. She heard murmurs beyond the door, and one of those murmurs sounded exactly like Elder Griffin saying her name. Her hand froze just before hitting the wood—good thing, too, because it turned out the door hadn’t latched, and that’s why she could hear.

Shit. What should she do?

Listening wasn’t the right thing. She knew that.

But doing the right thing wasn’t exactly her strong suit. Not really possible for her, even; she was a walking wrong thing, wasn’t she?

So she listened. She inched her head forward, careful to keep from view and very careful to keep from accidentally touching the door and opening it, and heard Jillian say, “She’s very standoffish, actually. She’s already made an enemy of Trent.”

“Oh?”

“Trent’s not the easiest guy to get along with, but it’s like she’s gone out of her way to be disrespectful to him.”

Pause. A pause, while Chess’s stomach twisted and her eyes started to burn. She’d gone out of her way to be disrespectful to Trent? When she’d taken every bit of shit he’d flung at her until just a few hours ago and finally made one single comment in response?

What the fuck, Jillian? She’d thought … well, she hadn’t thought she and Jillian were becoming friends, because she didn’t want friends, and she especially didn’t want friends who seemed to be only interested in simpering and obsessing over men. But she’d thought there was some kind of respect there, that Jillian had at least liked her okay, had valued what she’d contributed so far.

Apparently not. Good to know. She felt sick.

Elder Griffin spoke; Chess put Jillian’s betrayal aside—for the moment—to listen. “But you’ve had no problems, aside from her … standoffishness?”

“I don’t know. I kind of think she resents me, resents having to clear her actions with me. She keeps wanting to go off on her own.”

“She does not follow directions?”

“She follows them, she’s just really caught up in her own ideas. I don’t think she sees this as a team effort.”

“Does not work well with others,” Elder Griffin said.

“I don’t think so, no. She’s just kind of cold. I tried to engage her, let her know she could talk to me, but she didn’t.”

“And you feel the connection she discovered between your victims was merely luck.”

“Well …” Jillian hesitated. “Not entirely. She wanted to look into the New Hope Mission from the beginning, and of course I gave her permission to investigate Mark Pollert. I thought it would placate her, get her to open up a little. So she had some okay instincts there, except I think maybe her fixation on Pollert came from feeling the energy of a sex spell he’d made. She seemed really, well, fixated on that. But—”

Elder Griffin must have made a sound, or a face, or something. Or maybe the roaring in Chess’s ears simply overwhelmed anything she would have heard, the noise like waves of rage and pain washing over her and drowning out everything else.

That was it, then. All the hope she’d had, all the hope she’d been building, collapsed into a sodden pile of wasted dreams at her feet. She wasn’t going to create a life for herself, wasn’t going to make something of herself. She couldn’t escape, would never escape. Everyone knew who she really was, what she really was, that she was sick and shriveled and twisted inside, and they could all see it. Even when she thought she was hiding it, they could see it.

And Jillian actually thought she’d liked that sex spell. That she’d liked feeling what it made her feel, liked having it forced on her.

Just like the rest of them had. She would never escape.

Jillian went on, too, digging Chess’s grave deeper with every word. “But Trent and Vaughn would have found the connection once they started really processing the evidence. She saved them some time, yes, but it isn’t like she cracked the case or anything. She’s not stupid, she’s not a terrible investigator, but working with her just isn’t, well, enjoyable. Like I said, she’s not a team player.”

Elder Griffin’s voice was sharp. “You doubt her loyalty to the Church? To the Truth?”

“Oh, no. No, I can’t say that.” Well, that was something, at least. Jillian would throw her to the wolves but not to the angry crowds at the stocks on Holy Day, or to the executioner. Wow, that was something to be grateful for. Actually it was, but at the moment Chess felt too ill to have room for much gratitude. “She seems very loyal. I just doubt her ability to handle working with other people, or to work effectively under a regular chain of command. There’s no room for disobedience in the Squad, sir, as I’m sure you know.”

“I do.” Paper shuffled. “Well, thank you, Jillian. I appreciate your coming to answer my questions.”

“No problem, sir. I’m happy to help. I was wondering if, while I’m here, we could …”

But Chess wasn’t listening anymore. She was walking away as silently as she could, heading for the bathroom at the end of the hall. No, she shouldn’t do it, and it was yet another sign of how fucking weak she was, how little she deserved the chance she’d just lost, but her eyes stung and her chest hurt and their voices echoed in her head, all of those voices, and now Jillian’s and Elder Griffin’s, too, beating into her mind, and if she didn’t manage to dull them somehow she was going to scream. It was too much, and that embarrassed her and made shame pound through her body just as hard and fast as her blood in her veins.

Into the bathroom, into the stall, her hand already in her bag, finding the cool steel of her flask and yanking it out at the same time as she slid the door bolt home. Her fingers shook as she unscrewed the cap; her arm did not shake as she raised it to her lips and drank, one long swallow, then another, the burning heat of the vodka chasing away the icy lump that had formed in her gut. It was wrong but it didn’t matter, it was wrong but who cared, because her career at the Church was over, anyway.

She’d never worked before, not a real job, but she wasn’t stupid. She’d already realized how big a part politics could play in success at the Church; hell, she’d been trying so hard to be—to be friendly, to not let on that she couldn’t stand to have anyone touch her, that they freaked her out when they wanted to talk to her or ask questions about her life, that sometimes when she was in a group of her classmates she had to clench her fists to keep from panicking because there were so many of them and she felt so exposed.

And she’d thought she was doing a good job. Apparently not.

Warmth spread through her body, warmth and that familiar dull muscle ache she sometimes got from alcohol. Not that it mattered. It was better than the pain of her feelings; it was better than nothing, and she’d take it. Willingly. Gratefully. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to want it or need it, but what the fuck ever. She might as well.

For a few seconds, maybe a minute, she just stood there, leaning against the wall with her eyes closed. So much better. Jillian’s voice, all of the voices, retreated enough for her to breathe, enough to let her focus again.

The cinnamon candies tingled in her mouth, elevating her mood a little further. Was it possible to build up some sort of Pavlovian conditioning with those? And eventually they’d do for her what the shots did?

She shouldn’t need either, she reminded herself as she flushed the toilet and headed for the sinks. She shouldn’t need something to get her through the day. She shouldn’t need any help.

But she was quickly coming to realize that “shouldn’t” might as well be “fat chance.” A second or two of honesty—all she could bear—reminded her that she hadn’t managed to go a day without the flask for over a month, and that wasn’t good. That was, in fact, Bad, capital “B” and all. The kind of Bad that would get her caught; booze wasn’t that easy to hide, and sooner or later the candies would stop working or they’d catch on some other way.

But wasn’t it ironic that she couldn’t make herself feel too guilty about it, couldn’t make herself worry too much about it just then, because her body was warm and the sharp edges in her brain were softened ever so slightly, and Jillian’s disregard had faded in her mind just enough for her to handle it?

The next day. She’d make it through the next day without a drink, she would. She could do it. It wouldn’t even be that hard.

She didn’t meet her own eyes in the mirror as she rubbed on a little lip gloss and gave her clothes a cursory glance to make sure she hadn’t spilled any vodka on them. Nope. Good. Time to go pretend she hadn’t heard anything, to pretend Jillian was her respected mentor, to pretend she had a future.

Good thing life had taught her a lot about pretending, or she’d have been in real trouble just about then.