Chasing Magic (15 page)

The speedometer told her they were doing about a hundred, zipping in and out of traffic and passing slower cars. At that speed they reached the Ace Street exit in a few minutes; the Chevelle’s fat black tires left long angry streaks on the cement as Terrible steered it down the curved ramp and jumped the light at the intersection.

“Guessin you head on back yours we get there, dig, an I give you the ring-up—”

“What? Why would—”

“Ain’t wanting get yon pretty dress all fucked up, aye?
An them shoes an all? Four dudes out them minds in there, ain’t gonna be—”

“Yeah, and? I can’t help in a dress?”

He hesitated. “You just, you lookin so—”

“I’m going with you.” Not to mention that if there were packets of that powder around, someone needed to be able to touch them. And it wasn’t like her attempts at fixing that problem were making one damn bit of difference.

A few pieces of black chalk always laid in one of the little pockets inside her bag, so she could find them easily. Funny. Some people thought addicts were lazy, but it took an enormous amount of work and time. Making sure she put things back exactly where they belonged so she could find them no matter how fucked up she was, making notes on everything so she wouldn’t forget, trying to do things in a set routine as much as possible. She devoted a lot of energy to appearing normal, to not giving anyone a reason to suspect; it was a very small price to pay.

“Here. Give me your arm,” she said, as she had earlier. And with about as much hope.

He held it out, wrist up. She glanced at him. “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m going to do with it?”

“You want me to?”

“No, I just—no, it’s fine.” Warmth spread through her chest and up to her face, warmth that had nothing to do with pills or booze or anything else. It was trust heating her from the inside, making her feel like a real live person who mattered. The kind of trust she didn’t think he gave to anyone else. The thought made something swell inside her, something wonderful and painful all at once.

The kind of trust she didn’t deserve.

She glanced out the window to distract herself. They’d reached Fortieth already, ten blocks from Trickster’s. She didn’t have much time; wasn’t like he’d stay in the
car waiting for her to finish marking him up when they got there.

One deep steadying breath to gather as much power as she could, and she set the chalk against his skin. First a sigil for strength. He didn’t need it, of course, but it made her feel better to give it to him anyway. Then protection. She tried a couple of those. Maybe a few runes, too? The standard ones, a couple of bindrunes to be safe … more sigils, a few charm symbols … She even added a sigil to protect against the Evil Eye. Some anti-sleep sigils might be good, too, given the passing-out thing. She made up a couple of those on the spot.

When she was finished, his right arm looked more decorated than his left. He examined it without much curiosity. “Figure on that makin a difference?”

“I hope so. I mean, it can’t hurt, right?”

He didn’t answer.

“Something has to work, Terrible, you know something will. We just—I just haven’t been focusing on it like I should. But I’m focused now, and I’ll figure it out. Okay?”

He nodded. “Aye, know you will.”

But he didn’t sound convinced.

She leaned over to give him a quick kiss. “You should. Didn’t we already decide I’m the best witch in the whole world?”

His snort of laughter made her spirits rise. “Aye, ain’t can forget that one.”

His smile—both of their smiles—froze, then shattered, when they got to Trickster’s. Or, well, not quite to Trickster’s; they couldn’t get in, she didn’t think, and they couldn’t get past on the road, either, not with all the people. A huge crowd of them: kids staring at the spectacle, light-fingers trying to steal a living, people placing bets. The obligatory old woman in a bathrobe and curlers stood at the edge of the rippling mass of humanity;
Chess wondered for one ridiculous second if she rented herself out for shit like that.

She had one last moment to savor that semi-amusing thought as Terrible cut the Chevelle’s engine. Before it had fully died, his door was open and he was climbing out, and rather than wait for him she did the same. Time to see what new victims the ghost-and-magic-infused speed had claimed.

The screaming hit her first. High, desperate screams, ripped from raw throats to sail into the night sky—that same blank sky, dead but full of life, that had made her so melancholy before. In the face of those screams the crowd itself seemed to shrink, the streetlights to recede.

She reached the edge of the crowd in time to push her way into the gap Terrible left as he plowed through it. Please, please let those sigils she’d put on him hold. Please, please let him not be affected by that powder. She couldn’t imagine how he would feel if half of Downside saw him collapse. She didn’t want to imagine it.

As she got closer the screams started to separate themselves, to become more than simply desperate wails. Different voices, forming a barrier in the air, weaving together. Men’s voices, a woman’s voice.

Sobs rode beneath them, choking, hopeless sobs. The kind Chess recognized. The kind she’d learned a long time ago wouldn’t do any good at all.

Only a few backs stood between her and the screamers when she finally saw them. Saw Terrible, too; his fist hit one of the men in the face.

The man fell. Terrible didn’t. She had a second to be
thankful for that before she noticed the rest. Two more men, there were; the lone woman was already down, sobbing and clutching her face and hair. Blood trickled down the backs of her hands and forearms. What the fuck?

One of the men had taken off his shirt. His thin, hairless chest and back glistened with sweat as he ran around the circle with his arms spread out, like a child playing airplane.

A terrified child playing airplane; his face was hideous with fear, his mouth a gaping pit, his eyes bulging. He didn’t even seem to notice Terrible.

Terrible saw him, of course. His fist leapt out again. The runner went down.

The third man took about the same amount of time to silence, and only the girl remained. Her sobs were more horrible somehow in the dead quiet. Chess felt her own heart throbbing in time. She knew that sound, those hopeless, helpless sobs. That was the sound she heard inside herself every minute, every day, the sound she took whatever she could to drown out. The sound that hung behind the voices in her head telling her how bad she was, how worthless and wrong, a constant backdrop of pain.

Terrible advanced on the girl slowly, in a pose Chess had seen before: one hand up, the other touching the handle of his knife behind his back. Ready in case she sprang up and attacked him. Who knew what she was hiding behind her hands, beneath her legs, or up her sleeves? Especially in Downside, where the crying child you stopped to help might rob you blind and leave you to die.

The men lay still on the pavement, scattered around the circle, which closed in to examine them. Shit. She was supposed to be doing something too, right? Duh.

The almost empty packets weren’t hard to find. What
was hard was touching them. The second her fingers closed around them her arm caught fire, ghost energy and dark magic flying up to make her tattoos scream. She let go, grabbed a latex glove from her bag, and slipped it on. Damn, carrying three or four of those packets—or however many there were—around with her until she could get them home wasn’t going to be fun, was it?

Even with the glove on, touching the packets made her squirm. The men, at least, had been having themselves quite a time; hardly any powder remained. Was there a certain level, maybe, where the high turned into hysterics? A place where the victim started to lose control?

Something to talk to Terrible about—something to talk to Lex about, too. Damn it. Lex. Lex and his threat. She’d managed to bury it in her mind all day, tucking it beneath her nerves about Elder Griffin’s wedding and having Terrible there with her. But crouching there in the middle of a huge gang of Downsiders, it came flooding back, made her skin prickle even more than those magic-infected drugs already did. Any one of them could be armed, any one of them—any group of them—could be planning to leap out and make good on Lex’s warning.

A gasp from the onlookers drew her gaze. The sobbing woman had dropped her hands. Fuck.

Deep scratches ran down her eyelids and cheeks, dark and vicious against her pale skin. She held out her hands. “Help me. Help me, they’re coming, they’re after me, please, look what they made me do oh please help me …”

Just like the man by the docks the day before. Well, of course, right?

But what exactly were they seeing? And had the spell been completed yet, did they have the walnut spell on them?

Terrible crouched beside the woman, talking to her
in that low, soothing voice Chess knew well. Could the woman even see him—see anything?

Maybe. At least her eyes were still in her head.

The litany of terror continued as Chess approached her. Where the hell should she— Damn. She tucked the packets into her black-chalk pouch, not liking the idea of them possibly contaminating some of her magic tools but with nowhere else to stow them quickly. She could buy more chalk the next day.

She didn’t even need to make a special trip. She could buy it from the Church storeroom when she went to listen to Elder Griffin condemn the only person who’d ever really mattered to her. Well, that was a lucky break.

Terrible glanced up at her, edged over so she could crouch down beside him, and scanned the crowd. “Any know her? Got she name?”

No one did.

Okay. The drugs were probably still on her, and Chess needed to get them. She wanted to make sure they were all the same—well, she knew they were, but she wanted to make sure—and get them off the streets.

Where the fuck was it coming from?

She could only hope one of the freaked-out victims on the street saned up enough to say.

“Where are the drugs?” She reached out, gave the girl’s arm the briefest touch. Refusing to go home and change was the right decision, no question about it, but she had to admit she wished she had a pair of jeans or something. Crouching on the street in heels, letting her bare skin touch the concrete, wasn’t exactly fun. “Where did you put them?”

“No … no more …”

Chess exchanged glances with Terrible. They weren’t going to get anything from her this way, were they?

Movement behind them; some of Bump’s men picking up the unconscious bodies and putting them in the rusty
bed of a pickup splotched with Bondo. They watched Chess and Terrible, obviously waiting to take the girl if necessary, waiting to be told what to do next.

Good. The sobs were starting to grate on her, aural sandpaper scraping at the filth inside her.

“I’m going to look for them, okay?”

Was that a nod? She thought it was a nod. She hoped it was a nod, because either way she was going to find those drugs. It occurred to her that she was stealing drugs off someone too high to notice what she was doing; sure, it was because she was helping, but still. It didn’t make her feel good.

Nor did the girl’s reaction when Chess slipped her hand into the girl’s jeans pocket. She screamed and lashed out, her hand bent like a claw aiming at Chess’s face.

Chess started to duck, her own arm rising instinctively, but Terrible was faster. The girl’s hand fell just short of its target; the girl’s torso fell back onto Terrible’s left arm. He’d knocked her out.

Well, what else was he supposed to do, she guessed. She shot him a quick glance of thanks and started checking pockets.

Mother lode. Four packets hid in the girl’s front pocket, and when Chess held her hand a few inches over the girl’s legs she felt more. Ten in each of her socks. No way was this girl just a user. Who the hell could even afford that much at one time? Even crap speed was twenty a gram; Chess only paid twenty for the good stuff, but she got it wholesale, as it were. This girl was—had been—walking around with at least five hundred bucks’ worth of speed on her.

Hell, not even Chess could do that much in such a short time that she’d need to carry it with her.

Of course, the girl might not have a home, but … No. She didn’t look particularly dirty—not under all the
blood, at least—and she didn’t smell. Her clothes were clean, too, and didn’t appear worn out; not secondhand, at least not that Chess could see. She didn’t know much about fashion, but she’d sure as fuck seen and worn a lot of thrift-store and free charity clothing in her life.

Terrible gave her one last glance, then said something to the men standing there, Chess didn’t hear exactly what. The crowd had begun to dissipate, bored now that the spectacle was over. Music broke over their heads as the sound system started back up inside Trickster’s.

Two of the men picked up the girl and carried her to the truck; Chess picked up all of the packets, grabbed the three from her bag. Twenty-four full grams, not counting the tiny bits left in the men’s bags. All that speed—could she despell it somehow, or …?

No. And even if she could, she couldn’t remove the ectoplasm. Damn. That sucked. But not as much as doing a line of it probably did.