Chasing Magic (34 page)

“Yeah?”

“C’mere.”

She followed the beam of his light to the opposite corner. Hmm. Another door.

In the floor.

“Clean on them edges,” he said. “Like been opened some, dig.”

She leaned closer. “Yeah. Shit.”

“Lemme go, aye? Check it out. Know you ain’t like the downs, no—”

“No, I can’t—I have to see it anyway, if it’s related to the magic or if there are ghosts down there or something.”

“It feel like magic in here?”

“No. There isn’t any. But who knows what could be down there, you know? They could have iron plates or whatever to block it.”

He shrugged.

She knelt by the door—trapdoor, really—to get a closer look. It was locked, but that wasn’t a problem; she had her pick case. And, yeah, she definitely needed it, because those marks were fresh. The areas at the edge were free of dirt and dust, and there were signs of movement in what covered the rest of the floor. “Let me just get it open.”

He held the light for her while she picked the lock but grabbed her hand before she could lift the handle. Oh, right. He might have to let her go down there, but no way would he let her go first.

Please let it be just a little storage area, a few feet deep,
maybe, where they’d scooped out some of the dirt the Church had filled it with, please— No. No, of course not.

It was a tunnel, a tunnel breathing warm foul air at her. It was a damp ladder covered with dirty shoe marks, covered with a faint greenish tinge of mold. “Fuck.”

“Aye. Ain’t good.”

“No, it isn’t.”

He crouched beside her, leaning over the empty space to shine the light down into it. “Ain’t see shit in there, just empty. Tunnel, though, keeps goin.”

He didn’t wait for a reply; by the time she’d opened her mouth, he was halfway down the ladder. He was going first this time, then. Last time they’d done something like this he’d dropped her down, and she’d hurt herself, and … Her body heated at the memory.

Terrible was obviously remembering, too. His hand slid up her thigh as she climbed down. “You wanna get them jeans you got off again, you just gimme the say.”

“Ha, no.” But she paused long enough to lean over and kiss him, still amazed somewhere deep inside that she could do so, that he let her. That he kissed her back, his hand finding her neck and resting there.

“C’mon,” he said. “Lessee what we got waitin for us.”

Nothing. At least that was what she thought at first, as they picked their careful way along the rough slimy tunnel floor. And it was a tunnel in the most basic sense of the word, a narrow hallway crudely hacked out of solid earth; not like Lex’s tunnels, which had been built for utilities or the train or something back before Haunted Week and had cement walls and floors and fluorescent lighting in places.

This tunnel wasn’t flat. It wasn’t even. It jogged oddly to the left once or twice before resuming the same trajectory; Chess couldn’t figure out why.

“Light posts or some shit, guessing.” Terrible shone
the light up and to the side, toward the outcropping of solid dirt. “Thinkin we under the road.”

“Oh, right.” She looked ahead again as they reached another curve. Probably the last curve, because bright light emanated from it so the end couldn’t be much farther. “Shit. That means we’re headed straight for the bay, doesn’t it?”

“Aye.”

“And that means—”

His hand on her arm cut her off. In the same motion he switched off the flashlight, tugging her to the side.

A few seconds of silence. More than a few, really. Enough for her to lose track, enough for her to become aware of her heart hammering in her chest.

Terrible glanced at her, tilted his head to the side. Had he heard something? She hadn’t, but, then— Oh. Yes. He had heard something. She leaned forward enough to see a man—one of Razor’s, she assumed, one of Kyle Blake’s—climbing from the bay into the tunnel, silhouetted by the blank bright blue behind its mouth.

Terrible pressed his palm against her thigh for a second, a “stay here” gesture, before making his silent way up along the rough wall.

The guy looked up. “Hey! What—”

Chess watched him fall. Watched Terrible pull bungee cords out of his pack and hog-tie the guard, stuff a bit of dirty rag into his mouth. “Oughta hold he a bit,” he said, shoving the guard farther away from the lip of the tunnel, back into the shadows. Back where the guy probably wouldn’t accidentally roll off and drown.

“Are there any more?”

He glanced behind him. “Bettin so. Ain’t can see em, but gots us a little boat here, get us onto the
Agneta
, guessing, so … were I handlin it, be more men waitin there.”

She slid her hand across his back as she stood beside
him, looking down a few feet at the surface of the water, the sunlight glinting off it so bright it felt like an attack. The “little boat” he mentioned—a dinghy? A raft? Some sort of
boatlet
, anyway, something that looked like a toddler’s bath toy—bobbed below. “Yes, but they’re not as smart as you.”

He snorted.

“Hey, if they were smart they wouldn’t have come here—against you—in the first place, right?”

He shrugged. Casually, as if it didn’t matter, but color started on his neck just the same, so subtle she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been watching for it. Expecting it. “C’mon, let’s get us over there. Longer we stand here, better odds we get seen.”

She squinted up at the pale steel side of the
Agneta Katina
rising skyward and stumbled against the wall, digging in her bag for her sunglasses, ignoring the gun butt rubbing against her arm.

“So this is like a private entrance, huh, for Razor or Blake or whoever?” She glanced back at him. “And how do you always have your sunglasses ready?”

“Don’t carry as much shit as you.”

“Uh-huh.” Found them! She slipped them on, smiling. “I get there in the end, though.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Know you do, Chessiebomb.”

With the dark lenses shielding her eyes from the horrible screaming sun, she was able to get a better look at the ship before them, a line of other ships stretching to the left and the right. They were so still, looming over the end of the tunnel, glaring at her—at the world. They were so aggressive, as if any second they were going to start advancing onto land and slicing through it, flattening anything and everything that got in their way.

She’d never been on a boat before. Not ever.

She and Terrible stood right at the end of the docks,
or, rather, right below them; she guessed the tunnel opened about five feet below the ground. Guessed, too, that when night fell it would be full of water, because she thought the tide usually came in around sunset, and the bay wasn’t far below the tunnel floor.

That water, dark and murky and smelling of waste. The unblinking cruelty of that sharp sky. And the ships, a long row of steel walls, silent towers rising dead gray against the blue.

They looked abandoned. Not a soul on any of them—not a living soul, at least. Every one of them stood butted up to the docks, as silent and cold as wrapped corpses against a Crematorium wall.

But what might be lurking inside … That she didn’t know. Wouldn’t know until she went inside, and the frown on Terrible’s face told her he’d had the same thought.

Terrible hunched his shoulders, touched her arm. “Figure be a private way in or aught like it. Guessin we find out.”

“Yeah.” One last glance at the boats, menacing her from a sort-of-safe distance, and she shouldered her bag more securely. “Okay, let’s go.”

They managed to get into the dinghy-thing without too much trouble, except for the splinter digging into her palm from gripping the bare wooden slats that functioned as seats. The boat moved beneath them, shifting when they shifted; it dipped down low when Terrible climbed in, and terror raced up her spine. The water beneath them … so dark and murky, stinking of dead fish and slime and sea monsters or whatever the fuck was down there. She eyed it with distaste.

“Witches ain’t like the water, neither? Or just you?”

“I don’t like it,” she said, wishing she had a better excuse. “I mean, I’ve never been on it before. But I don’t think I like it.”

“Aye. Neither me.” But he picked up the lone oar from the bottom and used it well enough.

At least from what she saw. She closed her eyes after they started moving. Watching the dock recede, even just a few feet—it was horrible, and the water was horrible and boats were horrible, and she’d rather be doing anything, anything, other than sitting in that dinky block of wood being tossed around like a speck of dust in the breeze.

“You right, there, baby?”

“I’m fine,” she said, without opening her eyes. Yeah, it sucked looking like a pussy, but she didn’t think she could open them. Hard enough feeling as if her insides were tumbling over each other—in a bad way—when she couldn’t see. She had some vague suspicion that if she actually saw the horizon jumping around like an old movie, she’d be sick.

“Almost there, dig.”

“Great. Then what?”

“Guessin be a door, a ramp or ladder or whatany like that. Them gotta get on someways, aye?”

The boat veered beneath her; she heard him doing something but didn’t know what, and she dared to open one eye. Sure enough, the steel wall of the
Agneta
had a hole in it, a small door—what looked like a door—cut into the side. A short rope ladder hung from it, and Terrible was tying the boat to it. “Get you up first, aye? Rather me, only wanna— You know.”

She swallowed. Hard. He wanted to be there to catch her if she fell, didn’t want to knock her into the water if he did. Man, she wished she were doing something else. “Yeah, okay.”

The docks themselves were empty. Not a single person stood on them. Not a single person on dry land saw them sitting in the little boat—at least, if there were people, she didn’t see them. No one moved. A ghost town.
Chess focused her gaze on the tower at the edge of the dock, a sort of radio or control tower or something, a steel spire poking the sky. It wasn’t very tall, maybe twenty, twenty-five feet or so, but it was a steady point to look at while Terrible finished his knot and helped her stand up.

Climbing from the rocking boat onto the first damp, dirty rope rung was bad. Climbing up the ladder itself, her knuckles scraping the side of the boat while it tried to twist beneath her, was worse. Her hands and feet were numb from fear, although the ladder was only four or five rungs; hardly a ladder at all.

It was tied to some sort of thick bolt or post set in the floor, several feet back from the doorway. The rest of the room was clear. No one stood there, no one watched or waited.

Her feelings came back the second she dragged herself onto the steel floor. A shame, that, because what she felt wasn’t good. Not at all. Dark magic, death magic, washing over her in a wave of sorrow and filth, nearly making her already unhappy stomach crawl out of her throat.

She gasped and tried to swallow it, without much success. Or, with success—she wasn’t sick everywhere—but she didn’t think that was going to last.

Terrible slipped over the edge to stand beside her. “Feelin off, aye?”

“You feel it, too?”

“Feel somethin. Ain’t so bad, though.” He colored a little. “Ain’t like what it were, thinkin. Like maybe be worse afore.”

“Before the sigil.”

He nodded.

Footsteps came toward them, down the hallway to the right. They stood in a plain room with bare dingy walls and scuffed flooring. Chess imagined this was some sort
of loading area; it didn’t look like the sort of place the boat’s millionaire owner would visit.

Terrible threw himself against the wall, pushing her to the side so he stood between her and the door. His knife shone in his left hand, down low against his thigh, ready to be lifted and used when the door opened.

Which it did. Terrible lunged, his right arm wrapping around their visitor’s throat, the knife held just below it so the sharp tip could be felt.

“Where’s Razor?” He jerked his arm back, tightening his grip on the man’s throat before loosening it again. “Where?”

“I don’t—don’t know—”

A driblet of blood sprang up under the knife’s point. “Ain’t bother me iffen I kill you now, go find he myself.”

The man gasped; when he looked at Chess, she forced herself to keep her face impassive. “I—think he’s in the captain’s room. Think he is.”

“How we get there?”

“Be all guarded, you ain’t getting in, just to say—”

The blood ran faster down the man’s throat as Terrible widened the cut. “How we get there?”

“Two—two doorways down this hall, up three floors. First—first door on the left, you—”

He tumbled to the floor, out cold from Terrible’s fist to the top of his head. Chess didn’t need Terrible to tell her to keep a lookout for more while he tied the man up as he had the one in the tunnel, and shoved him into the corner.

Together they moved down the hall, the power in the air growing stronger with every step, until they reached the first doorway. It opened onto a staircase, its sick energy breathing at her like bellows of evil.

Terrible paled a bit but shook his head when she opened her mouth. “Feelin it, aye, but not so bad.”

Something had to be close. The open stairway led
both down and up carpeted steps, and foulness filled the air. Nothing to obstruct whatever magic was happening near the stairs, then, on whichever floor it happened to be. They’d have to look for it—if they couldn’t get Razor to talk.

For the first time the idea came to her that this could be it, that the sorcerer could be on the ship and they could catch him and end the whole fucking mess. She didn’t have a lot of hope that would be the case, no, but it was possible. And she could really use some kind of positive thought at the moment.

The second doorway—the second staircase—felt as bad as the first. And was just as empty. Terrible leaned close to mutter, “Ain’t got the right feel to me. Oughta be more here, dig, more men.”

“What do you think is going on?”

He glanced at her, nodded toward her bag. “Thinkin they on the wait, dig. Get ready.”