Unholy Magic

Chapter Nine

As she wound her sneaky way through the barren forest behind the Pyles’ house, she decided she was glad she’d gone ahead and worn black. Not much of a choice, really, as she didn’t own any white clothing; still, the prospect of scaling the broad side of the house, standing out like an ink spot on a tablecloth, wasn’t one she looked forward to. Especially not when every time she turned her back she felt phantom eyes marking it.

Hopefully she wouldn’t be so exposed for long. Hopefully they hadn’t discovered the popped lock and the missing wire at Arden’s bedroom window.

Cold wind howled through the empty branches. Good. It masked whatever noise she made, gave her some cover until she reached the house. From what she could tell, the security team made rounds every thirty or forty minutes—she’d waited in the woods long enough to see them go by twice—but who knew if one of them might decide to up the schedule just for fun? She couldn’t sit out there all night trying to figure out their pattern.

That morning before the service she’d managed to get her hands on a Church-issue expanding ladder. It looked like nothing more than a metal tube, painted a pale gray, with a few short spikes sticking out of it in two neat rows. She pulled it out now and turned the dial on the bottom to thirteen feet, then knelt in the grass and pressed the button.

The rest of the ladder emerged, like a snake from its old skin. More foot- and handholds popped from the sides. The ladder wasn’t sturdy, it wasn’t the safest thing to climb. But it did the job, and it collapsed on itself again quickly.

She unfolded the prongs at the bottom and jammed them as far into the frozen dirt as she could, then started climbing.

The ladder jiggled under her weight but held. Hopefully her luck would do the same.

It did at Arden’s window, at least. The pane slid up easily. Chess hauled herself inside and retracted the ladder, remembering to change her grip to avoid pinching her fingers when the bottom got within reach. The ladder went back into her bag; several wires and baggies came out. Much as she wanted to explore Arden’s room, especially that closet, she had to set up her wards and warnings first.

The sound of laughter made her jump when she opened the door, but the hall was dark and empty. The party was downstairs, and loud enough to wake the dead. Or not, which Chess fervently hoped would be the case.

In 1924 BT, five people had died on this land, brutally murdered. The newspaper clipping Roger Pyle had included with his documents told part of the story, but she’d had to go to the Church records for the rest of it.

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Cleveden; their adult son, Andrew; and two servants. One of their neighbors—this part of the city had been a small town in its own right at that time—had stopped by that morning hoping to borrow a cup of sugar. Finding the place oddly silent, she’d let herself in through the unlatched door and found them in their beds, the rooms awash with blood. The Church had absorbed the police records, which included photos and suspect interviews. There hadn’t been many of either. The Clevedens had been popular in their small town. Nice people.

Too bad that niceness wouldn’t have carried over into death. If there was anything more mindlessly violent, more full of rage, than the ghost of a murder victim, Chess didn’t know what it could be. And she didn’t want to find out.

“Shedka ramedina,” she whispered, sprinkling white salt in a semicircle at the top of the staircase. With her left pinkie she etched a warding sigil into the air, felt it breathe into life and set. It wasn’t perfect. She would have much preferred setting it at the bottom of the stairs. But if all went well, any partygoer planning on coming up here—not that many would, she imagined, given the supposed ghosts—would decide it wasn’t so important after all.

There was a handy electrical outlet in the wall below a long table. Chess plugged her floor alarm into it and switched the alarm on, then pulled out her box cutter and made a tiny slit in the carpet by the baseboard.

The music downstairs grew louder. She glanced up, saw nothing, and went back to work, sliding the alarm under the carpet until the tiny lump at the end hit the opposite wall. Good. She’d checked the system before she came. If anyone broke the weak force field emitted by the alarm, the unit on her belt would buzz.

Time for Arden’s room. Chess clamped her penlight between her teeth and started hunting.

So many clothes hung in the closet that the pole bowed under their weight. They were almost impossible to move. Chess scooped up as many as she could and set them on the floor, making careful note of their order. Next she shone the light along the ceiling. Nothing again.

Her electric meter came from the bag next. She set the sensor on the floor with no result, and tried various places along the wall. Only one spot beeped, and it was low-level enough to make her certain it was nothing more than regular wiring in the wall.

So what was dear little Arden hiding?

A small collection of decidedly inappropriate clothing, for one thing—spangly halter tops, skirts Chess imagined barely covered the girl’s bottom. A small white shoe box …

Pay dirt. Well, not pay dirt, but items of interest. A few keshes, a little baggie with more weed waiting to be rolled. Chess sniffed it, made a face. Nowhere near as good as Bump’s product. A razor blade. Hmm. No straw, though, so unless Arden clipped fresh ones every time, she wasn’t cutting lines with it. Condoms. A tacky butterfly necklace made of different shades of gold. A gift from a boyfriend, maybe, that Arden’s parents didn’t know about? Either way it didn’t matter. None of this was Chess’s business.

Twenty-five more minutes of searching convinced her the girl’s room was clean, which sucked. But then, nothing had ever manifested in this room, had it? So that was a point in Chess’s favor.

She replaced the clothing, then set the light on the carpet by the bed in order to slide out the photo albums and various books and papers under there, but they gave her nothing either. No information on ghosts, no books on electronics, no wires or machines anywhere. Nothing. She put those back as well, and opened the door.

The noise level on the lower floor had abated somewhat. Was the party ending?

Knowing she shouldn’t, but unable to resist, Chess sneaked along the hall to the top of the stairs. Her transmitter buzzed when she crossed the warning line, a nice little additional test of the system.

She lay on her belly on the carpet and peeked around the corner.

From here she could see a small slice of the couch. Men lined up behind it, their eyes intent, their hands wrapped around their …

They were naked. Watching the bodies on the couch, writhing together. Kym Pyle half-sitting, her skin glowing with sweat, kissing a dark-haired man Chess hadn’t seen before while he kneaded her breasts like bread dough. Kym’s hands reached down her flat stomach, tangling in another man’s sleek, swept-back hair.

Against the wall, behind the spectators, stood Roger Pyle, his pelvis moving energetically against a woman whose face Chess couldn’t see.

A swingers’ party.

No wonder they’d sent Arden away. Although the girl probably knew. Her comment about her mother’s exhibitionism now took on a whole new level of meaning.

Chess gave a mental shrug. The ritualized sex below, with its furtive lack of spontaneity, meant nothing to her. She was relieved to notice it didn’t even call up any bad memories, though this sort of scene wasn’t new to her. Those parts of her mind were blessedly silent, and she was grateful for that.

One last glance—another man had joined Roger and his partner—and she scooted back toward the Pyle bedroom.

She should start in the bathroom. Should, but didn’t want to. Instead she checked along the ceiling, looking for cracks in the crown molding or the glint of projector lenses. The Pyles hadn’t actually seen anything in this room, but this was where the most direct attack—the only violent attack—had allegedly taken place.

Next she checked the bed, pulling back the thick comforter and soft silk sheets. She hoisted up the heavy mattress and peeked beneath it, but found only the box spring.

The headboard was padded in thick gray suede. Chess felt carefully over every inch of it, but no odd lumps marred the smooth expanse of fabric.

The painting of Kym Pyle was heavy and awkward to remove, but Chess did. Pay dirt. A tiny hole, about the size of the head of a pin. It wasn’t directly behind the frame, but the mere presence of the frame hid it; it blended into the shadow unless someone inspected carefully. A small camera lurked back there. A camera … or a projector.

It could almost have been Church-made, that setup, so small and clever was it. She couldn’t remove it to find out for sure what it was, and she wasn’t sure how they managed to use it, either.

Her electric meter provided the answer. Low-level readings led her to the floor, where a small flap of the baseboard was removable. The lens in the wall was nothing more than a wireless transmitter or receiver; the corresponding element sat on the floor inside the wall, and the A/V wires from it ran off to the right….

Into the bedside table. Chess opened it and found the machine itself. An awfully sophisticated setup. What exactly were they using it for? To record, or to project?

She pulled it out and, after making sure it was off, found that the switch on it was set to receive. Of course that didn’t mean it always was. Perhaps they had something set up for her, a little display for the next time she stopped by in the early evening. Such a setup wouldn’t work at night. The cone of light from a projector, even a holographic one, would be too easily seen. But at dusk, when the light took on that unusual absorbent quality and all the electric lamps in the world didn’t seem to brighten the insides of rooms … then it might fool anyone. Might even fool her, at least until she realized it might look like a ghost, but it didn’t feel like one.

Well, if they liked cameras … none of the video recorders she had on her were small enough, but she’d bring some next time and hide them. The curtain rods were big gold bars, with ornate finials at the end; she could run a wire and minicamera behind them without much trouble. Meanwhile she could find out what exactly they were recording on their own.

Chess opened the drawers and found a startling array of vibrators and other sex toys—a few of which she couldn’t figure out—but no disks for the recorder/player.

She found them under the bed, among some boxes of black lace nighties. Seven of them, unlabeled. She’d have to find out what they were later, and with that in mind she copied them one by one on the little scanner/recorder she’d brought. It would have been easier, and probably a clearer picture in the end, if she’d used their recorder, but she didn’t want to take any chances.

She put the penlight back in her mouth to photograph the little setup, closed the door, put the disks back under the bed, and started on the dresser. All Roger’s belongings. Kym’s would be in the closet, which Chess would inspect next.

Six drawers filled with nothing but underwear, socks, and plain undershirts, not so much as a nudie magazine hidden under the clothes. She guessed nudie mags were unnecessary when you had not only Kym, but an assortment of willing party guests whenever the mood struck. A quick swipe with the electric meter confirmed nothing hiding beneath the drawers or the dresser itself.

Kym’s closet—Kym and Roger’s closet, technically, as about a third of it was devoted to men’s clothing—was almost as large as the bedroom itself. Chess stepped inside and jumped, her heart pounding.

A mirror. Idiot. A wide, full-length mirror, of course. Beside it, a dressing table surrounded with darkened bulbs.

She circled the room with her Spectrometer, getting only a few random beeps, then again with the sensors of the electric meter. Still nothing. Nothing in the hundreds of pairs of shoes, racks four rows high, lining the walls. Nothing in the pockets of any of the silky trousers, nothing in the linings of the fur capes. She used her mirror on its long handle to check the shelf, just a little too high for her to see over.

There was no way to put it off anymore. She’d have to check the bathroom.

It waited for her, seeming to breathe a sigh of welcome when she stepped onto the dark marble floor. In the dim, cold moonlight coming through the frosted window the entire room looked wet, slick with something dark and unpleasant.

The unit on her belt gave a tiny buzz. People upstairs? She hadn’t heard voices or footsteps, but electronics did not lie. She flattened herself against the wall and waited, straining to hear something.

But instead of what she expected, there was only silence, growing ever louder until her ears throbbed with it. What was going on? Was someone just standing in the hall—or, given the type of party this apparently was, fucking in it?

Being caught wouldn’t be the end of the world. The documents the Pyles had signed when they turned in their complaint gave Chess and any other Church employees free rein to enter their property at any time with or without notice. But it was bad form, being caught. A sign that perhaps you weren’t as good as you should be. Atticus Collins still hadn’t lived down the time he’d forgotten to use his Hand; he’d been caught searching through a drawerful of lingerie by an angry, gun-toting husband who thought Atticus was some kind of home-invasion pervert. For months afterward he’d found panties everywhere he looked, including attached to his car’s antenna.

She could just imagine what sorts of things would be tossed at her if she were caught at the Pyles’ place. Ugh.

She wasn’t going to stand here against this stupid wall all night, either, so after her watch ticked off five minutes she decided she’d had enough. Her head was starting to ache from standing tense in place like that anyway.

Her light scanned across the ceiling, revealing nothing. Not even a spiderweb in one of the corners, no surprise there. She did find a tiny seam of shadow on the nearest wall, which proved to be a small cupboard.

Bleach, disinfectant, scrubbing cleanser, bleach emulsion to cling in crevices, spare disinfecting toilet disks to make the water blue—why would people want to make their own bathrooms look like public toilets when you could get disks that didn’t dye the water?—scrub brushes, sponges, gloves … The entire cupboard reeked of bleach and cleansers, as though one of the bottles had spilled. It was making her light-headed, making her eyes sting.

The Spectrometer showed some extra interest around the sink, which had been restored to its original sparkling white. Chess leaned over, ready to shine her light down the drain—

And almost jumped out of her skin when a face flashed in the mirror, just behind her right shoulder.

The penlight fell, bouncing off the marble with a series of clacks and clatters, rolling to the edge and finally falling on the floor. Chess searched the room, found nothing.

She had not imagined that face. A woman, her eyes pale pupilless orbs set in the furious visage of her face. Tangled hair hanging in clumps down over her shoulders. Lips curled in a snarl … Chess shuddered, tried to get control of herself, and shuddered again.

This time it did not stop. Her hands seemed controlled by someone other than herself. She tried to lift them to push her hair back from her face, to rub her forehead, but they trembled like she was in the throes of a seizure.

She wrapped her arms around herself. When had it gotten so cold in here? The marble at her back froze her spine. She couldn’t move, couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.

A sound, barely audible, from the bedroom. She couldn’t identify it, but when she turned to look she saw a pale shape taking form …

Her grip on her arms started to hurt, but she couldn’t let go. The hazy mass writhed, trying to find its form, then snapped into being with sudden clarity.

A man. Faint folds and lines indicated trousers and a loose, tucked-in shirt. He hadn’t seen her. His attention was focused on the empty bed, but she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he didn’t see it. He saw shapes there, sleeping forms. He must, because his translucent arms lifted and the sharp head of the axe formed a steep angle with the ceiling.

The axe came down.

She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood, but barely felt it. All she felt was a miserable sickness, fear and shame at that fear, the horror of witnessing a gruesome murder almost a hundred years after it happened …

The axe came up again, and down. Up, and down again. She could practically see blood spurting from the long-buried figures on the bed, practically smell the—

The smell. The smell was back, waves of choking foulness that left her gasping on the floor. She couldn’t get away from it, couldn’t stand it. The window was only ten feet away, across the wide expanse of dark marble floor.

As quietly as she could she reached into her bag, using every bit of her strength just to get her hands to obey. She was prepared this time, with graveyard dirt and asafetida. She’d even brought some melidia with her, just in case.

She’d take her chances with the ghost. She needed air. Had to have it, or she would die. Her stomach churned, her head pounded like she’d drunk a case of beer the night before, and spots flashed before her eyes, but the window was there.

She curled her legs beneath her, gave the figure in the bedroom one last look, and leapt for it.