Unholy Magic

Chapter Fourteen

Terrible swung on her the minute he closed his car door behind him, his heavy brow beetling over his deep-set eyes. “You ain’t—”

“Did you know what he wanted?” Frost completely covered the windows of the Chevelle. It was like being in a spaceship hurtling through emptiness. She dug around in her bag to avoid looking at him, then focused on unscrewing the lid of her water bottle with slow deliberation.

He should have warned her. How could he do that to her, how could he put her in that position?

He wasn’t answering. Damn him. “Terrible, did you know what he wanted?”

“Naw, it weren’t—Shit, I ain’t know he plan on that. He say it earlier, aye, but I had the thinkin he dropped it. He tole me weren’t on, the bait, meaning. I tole him no way.”

“But the other thing? The part where I use magic to kill people? You knew about that? You—you knew? And you didn’t tell me?”

“He ain’t said that, not ever. Not before. Chess—”

“Guess he just came up with that on the spur of the moment, huh. What a clever, original thinker he is.”

“You ain’t doin it real though, aye?”

“Why?”

He blinked. Frigid air blasted from the dashboard. Chess pulled her coat more tightly around her neck.

“Just … I ain’t think you’d do it. This is killin, Chess. Bump ain’t jokin, dig. He say maybe some other magic work, but he ain’t … he ain’t gonna ask you it, when it gets time. He ask for death. You know, aye?”

“Yeah, so?” His concern grated on her, like sandpaper rubbing her soul raw. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t warned her. Couldn’t believe he’d let her walk into that blind. He could say all he wanted that he hadn’t known, but he knew Bump. He had to know this kind of shit went on in Bump’s fuzzy head. And he’d sat there with his hands tight and not said a fucking word.

It didn’t matter that the more she thought about it the more she thought acting as bait was probably the best plan possible—which wasn’t saying much. It didn’t matter that he’d tried to stand up for her over that. What mattered was how he’d let her down. How he’d kept something from her.

And speaking of keeping things from her … Lex was Slobag’s son? All this time and she’d assumed—hell, she’d assumed he didn’t have parents, just like her. He’d never mentioned them, never said anything about any family except his sister, Blue, whom Chess hadn’t met.

He wasn’t just a soldier in Slobag’s gang. Wasn’t even just a higher-up soldier. He was heir to it. One day it would be his.

And he’d never told her. For almost four months now he’d kept it hidden.

Did Slobag know who she was? Did they all know who she was? If Terrible was getting rumors about Slobag’s hookers being murdered … would he one day hear that Slobag’s son was spending the occasional night with a Churchwitch? It wouldn’t be hard to make the connection there.

Slobag could shop her, too, if he knew about it. Why not? Why not take away the one asset Bump had that he himself didn’t? At least she assumed he didn’t, or Lex wouldn’t have asked for her help with the murders.

And sometime soon—shit, she hadn’t even asked when—she’d be standing around with all of them. Bump and Slobag, Terrible and Lex. Every one of whom thought she owed them something.

Not to mention her mysterious friend, the one who’d left human body parts in her car outside her work and followed her through the dark streets.

How the fuck had she gotten herself into this one. Did she want to be killed?

The fact that she didn’t have an immediate answer to that one chilled her even more effectively than the wind outside had done.

“I just … Look, Bump get ideas on the sometime, ain’t mean they gotta be done, if you dig. Lemme talk to him.”

She set the cap back on the bottle with a decisive snap, not bothering to screw it on, and turned to him. “What the fuck, Terrible?”

The wipers groaned across the glass, pushing slushy chunks of frost out of the way. Splotchy shadows swept across his face before clearing, leaving him pale in the streetlight’s glow. “Ain’t like it. Told him so.”

“And you didn’t bother to tell me, right? Just to let me know what to expect, to give me a—Fuck. Whatever.”

“Ain’t expected him to say. Ain’t expected you to give him the aye iffen he did.”

“So you’re blaming me now?”

“Naw, I just—killin people, aye, it ain’t—”

“You kill people all the time.”

He clicked something on the dash. Hot air hit Chess’s frozen skin as he shoved the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.

“Aye,” he said finally. His hands clenched the steering wheel like it was a neck he could break. “Aye, I do. But you ain’t me.”

“What, you don’t think I can handle it?”

“Ain’t say that.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Nothin. Ain’t sayin nothin, dig? You make you a choice. Cool by me. Whatany you want.”

“You’re the one who took me there. Without even warning me. I don’t know why you’re so fucking upset about it now.”

“Ain’t upset. Like I just say, you do what you like, aye?”

“So why ask me if I’m really doing it to begin with?”

His eye twitched, but he didn’t answer.

“Terrible?”

He switched the radio on, Motorhead so loud her seat vibrated. She snapped it back off. “Terrible.”

He reached for the stereo knob. She caught his arm before he could reach it, and he slammed on the brakes.

The tires squealed on the street, the heavy front end of the car tipped down and sent her flying toward the dash.

His arm caught her before she hit. “What the fuck you want, Chess? Wanna have a little chatter? Fine by me, you chatter away, then.”

His anger crawled over her skin, enough energy to make her tattoos tingle. She should have been scared, especially after watching him snap Nestor’s leg on the street earlier. Maybe if she wasn’t so high, she would have been. She didn’t imagine most people saw him the way he looked now—his big body looming over her, his eyes narrow and dark with rage—and lived to tell about it.

But she wasn’t scared. She fixed him with her eyes and said, “You set me up. You set me up, taking me there, just like Bump’s little lapdog. So I don’t know who the fuck you think you are to judge me for saying the only fucking thing I could. No, I don’t plan to actually kill people. But I want to find out who’s killing those girls. I want to keep my job. And I definitely want a fucking apology from you for doing that to me.”

In response he stabbed the gas pedal. Chess fell back against her seat. She still hadn’t screwed the cap on her bottle and water sloshed onto her coat.

Fine. He wanted to be like that, fine with her. This was his fault. There was no doubt in her mind she was right about that one, and that he knew it. And he had the nerve to get all fucking superior with her? To act like she’d done something wrong, in doing the only thing she could?

If he was really her friend, he would have helped her. Would have understood. Wouldn’t even have asked, wouldn’t have thought for a second that she was actually planning to build death curses. He knew what that entailed, knew they required a sacrifice to work—if they worked at all. If he was really her friend …

How pitiful was she? No, he, wasn’t her friend. Back when everything went down at Chester Airport, she’d been the one who asked him if they could hang out sometime. She’d … she’d been the one who’d kissed him in that bar. She thought. Her memory of who started that one was pretty fuzzy. Everything after it she knew, with miserable, breathless clarity.

This whole stupid friendship thing was some dumb fantasy she’d made up in her head. Made up because she’d gotten weak. Because she’d been enough of a loser to think it might be nice not to be alone all the fucking time.

Because she’d been dumb enough to trust a man who sold drugs, managed prostitutes, and beat and killed people for a living, a man people ran from if they saw him on the street. Not just trust him, really trust him.

Shame and disappointment made a lump in her throat that she couldn’t get down. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? No one was trustworthy. No one was safe. And that was Fact, and Truth.

“You know what?” She risked a glance at him, but he was staring through the windshield with his big jaw set. “Forget what I said. I really am going to do it.”

The silence in the car deepened.

He pulled up outside her building a minute later. She didn’t bother to say goodbye as she swung herself out of the car and slammed the door.

He didn’t speak either. But when she got back into her apartment and peeked through the stained-glass window that made up the front wall, the Chevelle was still sitting on the curb, its engine rumble the only sound she could hear.

Lex always kept the blinds of his bedroom windows pulled down, blocking as much light as possible. A good thing for sleeping during the day, but not so helpful in the middle of the night.

Chess wasn’t sure what woke her up, dragging her from sweaty, nervous sleep, until she heard the sound again.

Skritch. Squeak. Like nails against glass.

She started to roll over. Lex hadn’t moved; his heavy, even breathing made calm background noise. She adjusted her T-shirt—odd to be sleeping there with clothes on—and tugged the blanket back over her shoulders. Just a tree branch, she figured. The wind had picked up by the time she’d calmed down enough to call Lex and have him come get her, whipping her hair across her face, stealing her breath when they emerged from the tunnel—

There weren’t any trees outside his window.

Skritch. Skriiiitch.

She sat up, turned her head so fast it made her dizzy. Something was outside the window. On the fifth floor.

She reached for Lex, meaning to wake him up, make him go look, but stopped herself. That was the kind of thing boyfriends did, right? Boyfriends and husbands. Lex was neither. She wasn’t going to ask him to fight her battles for her, much as she was tempted to. Especially not when the clock told her it was almost five in the morning.

Besides, she had a feeling that whatever lurked on the other side of that glass, he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

She slipped out of bed, wishing she had more clothes on than just the shirt. Even a pair of socks might help. Realistically she knew whatever it was out there probably wouldn’t be able to hurt her; ghosts couldn’t float fifty feet off the ground, and nothing else would be able to come through the walls.

But something about being barefoot, about the cool air against her naked thighs, made her feel especially vulnerable. Somehow she was pretty sure whatever waited outside the window was probably not going to make her feel any safer.

She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself tight. The cold floor numbed her bare feet by the time she reached the window.

What she saw when she yanked the blind down, hard and fast so it flipped back up with a whir, numbed the rest of her as effectively as an hour at the pipes.

An owl. No, not an owl. The owl. She would have known that, even if the chances of two Great Horned Owls showing up in Downside were about as good as her chances of becoming an Elder someday. Would have known it even if the owl before her hadn’t held an eyeball in its sharp, vicious beak.

Cold black eyes stared at her through the glass. The air left her body. Frozen, she stood, trapped by its bottomless, empty gaze. The owl. The harbinger of death.

Who had just died? Whose fresh, dripping eye did the owl hold in its beak?

And who would be next? She thought she had a pretty good idea on that last one.

The owl flapped its wings at her, and the motion broke her trance.

“Arcranda beliam dishager,” she whispered, pushing the words out with her power, feeling her magic slide through the glass and hit the warm, feathered body. Almost instantly the energy backlashed, bloody red and thick with the now-familiar clenching ache of sex magic. Her jaw set; she refused to react, refused to move, despite knowing the owl didn’t give a shit either way. It was a tool, a pet, not a practitioner. But they were watching, she knew they were. From a rooftop, from the ground, from somewhere. They saw her. Bastards.

The owl flapped its wings again, leapt from the windowsill. Chess stood and watched it fall, watched it catch the wind and soar back up and away, over the crumbled roofs of Downside, until she could see it no more in the darkness.

Without thinking she climbed back into bed, and lay there staring at the ceiling until Lex woke up around noon.

Dead hookers. Four dead hookers now—not counting Slobag’s—the streets had been alive in the morning with discussion of the second body found just before dawn, up by Seventieth. The hooker whose eye Chess had seen being munched by the owl outside Lex’s window.

And Terrible hadn’t called to tell her about it.

Thinking about dead hookers wasn’t a pleasant way to spend the drive out to the Pyles’ place, but it was better than any of the other topics she had to focus on at the moment. And it reminded her of the position she was in, made her feel sick for getting involved to begin with. Which kept her from checking her phone every few minutes like some stupid girl.

She pulled over a block back from the edge of the Pyles’ white wall to empty her pillbox. Four Cepts. She’d have about six hours, she figured, before she had to get out of there. Not that she planned to stay that long, with the heartless white sky threatening snow and her mind focused on questions she wasn’t sure she could answer. On questions she didn’t want to answer.

Vanita had clearly decided to step up her game. Eyeballs in her car, two murders in one night. That was a lot. So … was it her fault? Had the little run-in with Vanita pissed her off even more, made her rush to build up some sort of eyeball stockpile?

She didn’t know, but the thought made her pills stick in her throat.

She forced them down and drove on.

Against the white sky the house looked even more threatening, as though the gray slate roof and the branches like bare, bony fingers were the only things keeping it from attacking her. She hadn’t had much time the night before to think about the ghosts she’d seen, about that axe rising toward the ceiling and slamming back down. Now the memory came back full force, and she shuddered as she stepped out of the car and handed her purse to one of the security guards.

“Merritt’s not here?”

“Later.”

Good thing she hadn’t brought her pills. His search was alarmingly thorough. More than she’d expected it to be, if she thought about it, but she didn’t say anything, not even when his hand brushed her breast a few more times than she thought strictly necessary.

There were more guards out as well. The one holding her purse—Taylor, his badge read—caught her curious stare.

“There was a break-in last night,” he said. “We think.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged and handed back her purse. “Have fun. You can go in the side.”

“Actually, I’d like to interview some of you guys first, if that’s okay.”

“Mr. Pyle didn’t say anything about—”

“And you can ask him if you want, but I have the authority to interview anyone and everyone on the premises. I’d like to start that now. If you can get me a list of all the guards’ names, please? And if you know anyone who’s specifically seen an entity, I’d like to talk to them first.”

He hesitated. “I’ll have to ask Mr. Pyle.”

Asshole. She was not in the mood for this today, not one bit. “Fine. Can you just show me where the security office is before you do? It’s cold out.”

That he could apparently do, albeit without speaking.

The security office hid behind the garage, an unobtrusive shedlike building with one-way glass. It distorted her reflection as she walked past it, twisting her torso, squashing her face, and making her forehead bulge.

Bright fluorescents of the same type as in the hallway connecting the house and garage hung from the ceiling. Added to the winter light through the windows, the room looked almost like one of the ritual rooms in the Church, pale and clean, waiting.

Along one wall sat a long gray desk, its surface stacked with small monitors. Security cameras. Fuck, she hadn’t even thought there might be outside cameras. Had they seen her? No, they couldn’t have. They would have caught her if they had.

But one of the cameras was clearly trained on the back of the house. Arden’s window was there, at the far end. So why hadn’t anyone been watching? Why hadn’t her presence been discovered until someone noticed the open bathroom window?

She glanced around the rest of the room, taking in the switchboard, the wheeled leather chairs, the smaller desk with its neat trays full of paper. A shelf half-full of radio receivers covered the thin slice of wall by the door. Beneath it was a gun rack prickly with rifles.

Taylor’s back was turned while he called the house, presumably to discuss her requests. Quickly she traced the wire leading from the back-of-the-house monitor down beneath the desk, where the recorders were. It was probably too late, but just the same …

The disk came out with a quiet click. Chess, her ears pricked for any change in Taylor’s voice behind her, tugged her nail file out of her bag and scraped a series of deep, quick slashes across the shiny surface. It probably didn’t matter. But she felt a little better for having done it.

The disk was back in and she was leaning against the low, cool rim of the desk before Taylor turned around.

“Okay,” he said, and the new coldness in his deep brown eyes told her he didn’t like what he’d just heard. Interesting. “Mr. Pyle says welcome back, and to give you whatever you need.”

“Those lists, please.”

“Uh-huh. But tell me something first, Miss Putnam. You don’t really think Mr. Pyle would fake a haunting in his own home, do you? Scare his wife and daughter like that, just for money he doesn’t need?”

She didn’t bat an eyelash. “I’m just here to help.”

“Uh-huh.”

Staredown was a game she’d learned to play very early in life, but it wasn’t a very interesting one and she really didn’t care enough to bother. “Are we going to have a problem?”

Just as she’d thought, he backed down. “No. I just want to make sure you know how I feel. Mr. Pyle’s a good man. He’s not some cheat.”

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

“You should. Seeing as how I’m one of the only guards who’s actually seen a ghost here.”

“So tell me about it.” She spun one of the chairs around and plunked herself down, grabbing her notebook and pen. At the same time she turned the knob on the small recorder in her bag.

“What did you see?”

“I was making the three A.M. rounds in Mr. Pyle’s offices on the opposite end from the living areas. He leaves windows open there some nights, falls asleep at his desk or on his couch. He works hard, Mr. Pyle. So sometimes I have to go in there to wake him up, or close the windows and make sure everything’s locked.”

“Why? I mean, you guys keep the grounds here pretty closely watched, right? So why check inside too?”

His eyes narrowed. “We like to be thorough.”

“Okay, just asking. Go on.”

“On that night, Mr. Fletcher was here—you know who he is, right?”

When Chess shook her head he sighed and grabbed his own chair. “Oliver Fletcher is the producer of Mr. Pyle’s show. He’s Mr. Pyle’s boss, basically. But they’re good friends, too. Mr. Fletcher’s the one gave Mr. Pyle his start, way back when Mr. Pyle was still just doing stand-up in little clubs. Mr. Fletcher scouted him, got him on one of the TV talk shows he produces, kept inviting him back. Then he cast him on The Monastery, and … I guess you know the rest.”

She didn’t, really, but she could guess. Roger Pyle became a big star, and Oliver Fletcher had a hit show, and they both made pots of money.

She wrote Oliver Fletcher’s name on her pad. Might be worth a look into his financials, too, if he and Pyle were such good friends.

“Anyway, Mr. Fletcher was here and sometimes they’d stay up late, but not that night. I walked into the office, and … and it felt wrong in there, you know? It smelled funny.” He paled a little. “I tried the light switch but it didn’t work. I thought the overhead bulb was burned out and I should try the lamp. I didn’t want to. It smelled so weird and it was really cold in there, and it just …”

He smoothed his hands over his arms, a gesture Chess recognized. The tiny hairs there stood on end. People never seemed to notice it consciously, but they always tried to soothe themselves when it happened. Either Taylor was telling the truth or he was a damn good actor.

“It just felt so creepy in there. And it never has before and the light wouldn’t work. So I decided I was being stupid, I mean, getting freaked out because of a fu—freaking smell, when it was probably just the heating system in the house working out the kinks. So I took a couple more steps in and … and that’s when I saw them.”

“Them? More than one spirit?”

He nodded, but it looked like a reflex. He didn’t look at her, didn’t even seem to fully remember she was there. “A man. He was wearing kind of a … kind of a loose shirt, white or light-colored, and pants. But I couldn’t see all of the pants, you know, he kind of … turned into mist around the knees, and the light came through the windows around him. But he had an axe.”

“An axe?” A chill crept its way up her spine, interrupting the cozy warmth of her pills.

“An axe. A big one. And he … in his other hand was …” Taylor shuddered. “A head. Someone else’s head, a woman’s head. He held it by the hair, it was all tangled and knotted … and I think she was behind him, her body, with no head. It looked like a woman’s headless body behind him. Reaching for him.

“I ran. I turned and ran, all the way through the living room, into the walkway, and I kept running until I got out here, and I slammed the door shut and I … I waited for the man with the axe to come get me.”

He turned to her now, his eyes wide. “So you see, I know they’re real. I know Mr. Pyle isn’t lying. That thing saw me. It was coming for me. I know it was.”