Sacrificial Magic (27 page)

The pounding didn’t stop. She finally got to it, noticed with gratitude that she’d at least remembered to lock the door, and flung it open.

Beulah.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

If Beulah noticed her confrontational tone, she didn’t say anything. “You didn’t come to school today. You said you were going to.”

“What? I just got up, it’s only—”

“Chess … it’s almost seven o’clock. At night.”

Oh. Fuck. She was supposed to go to the school; she was supposed to go to the Church, take a look at Aros’s files.

Beulah held up a can of Coke. “Here. Lex said you don’t really drink coffee, so I brought you this.”

“Oh. Thanks.” She took it, realizing she was dry as sand, and chugged some down. Her sinuses, her throat, her chest … every drop of moisture sucked out by smoke. Why was Beulah still standing there, why— Oh. “Um, do you want to come in? It’s kind of messy, I haven’t really cleaned …”

That was an understatement. But oh well. What did she care? That was the way disgusting slobs lived, disgusting people who couldn’t even keep friends much less anything else, who said horrible things and had horrible things said to them.

Beulah brushed past her—she smelled like spices, and a little like Lex, like his house, which only made sense—and sat down on the new couch. Chess would have to get another one. She couldn’t stand looking at that one anymore. Not when she remembered why she’d bought it, remembered how he’d gone with her to Cross Town to get it, where nobody knew them and they could hold hands in public. Remembered, too, how they’d tried it out when they got it home, how they’d—

She caught a glimpse of Beulah’s eyes but couldn’t hold them, not while she was running for the bathroom, when she knew she probably wouldn’t make it.

She did, mercifully, but the next few minutes were so bad she almost wished she hadn’t. She was fucking up,
she was losing it, she had to get it together,
had
to. She had a job, she had people depending on her, she had a bunch of teenagers whose lives were in danger and they needed her to help them.

She’d never felt sorrier for a group of people in her life. How the hell was she supposed to help anyone? What idiot would trust her with the life of a fucking mayfly, much less actual living people? Those kids would be better served just cutting school, dropping out.

A cold damp washcloth appeared by her face, and she grabbed it, pressed it to her skin. “Thanks. I, um, I must have caught a bug or something.”

“Sure,” Beulah said. “That’s probably it. There’s always something going around.”

Chess looked at her, inspected her face for signs of sarcasm or snotty superiority but saw none. That was almost worse than if she had. She didn’t want to be grateful to Beulah.

“Hungry?”

Ugh, was she kidding? The only thing Chess intended to put in her stomach was her Cepts, maybe some vodka. “No.”

“You sure? I could run out, get us some—”

“I’m fine.” She hauled herself to her feet, flushing the toilet, wiping her face with the damp washcloth. “Look, Beulah, thanks for coming by and everything but I really, I don’t want you to get sick, and I’m sure you don’t want that either, right, so—”

“I’ll leave soon.” Beulah followed her back down the short hall into the living room. The couch sat there staring at her, filling her vision. Accusing her. It knew what she’d done, how she’d ruined everything, how stupid she’d been.

She pulled the squashy, broken-spring chair over instead, perched on the end of it. “Soon?”

“I need to let Lex know you’re okay.” Beulah waved
her cell phone. “He asked me to check. I’ll just tell him you got a stomach bug, right?”

Fuck. Lex would know that wasn’t it. But then Beulah knew that wasn’t it, too, didn’t she. They all knew, everybody knew. She sighed; her whole body sank into it. “Tell him whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Beulah looked down at the phone in her lap and started pressing buttons. Giving Chess what privacy she could, or so it seemed. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“You sure? Sometimes it—”

“Hey, I— I appreciate you coming and everything but I still have work I could do, and I want to get started on that, okay? So it would probably be better if you just go, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She glanced at the kitchen counter; perched on the end of it was her small frameless mirror, a straw. Had she been doing speed? Had she planned to? She couldn’t remember. Shit, she must have been completely out of her mind to just leave that out in the open, she never did that, not ever.

Beulah watched her for a minute; the measuring directness of her gaze made Chess want to squirm. With effort she resisted.

“I don’t think I should leave you alone right now.”

Shit. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What are you going to do? You want to follow me to Church, stand there while I work? That’ll be fun, right? Why—why are you here, why are you doing this?”

“Lex told me—”

“Yeah, well, Lex should mind his own fucking business, and you should too. Whatever happened it’s my problem, right, it’s my fault, it’s my—it’s my—”

Shit. Her eyes were stinging again, pain like a softball wedged in her throat. This had to fucking stop, she
couldn’t keep going like this, not when she had work to do.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her forehead, held her breath, and for once something went her way. It wouldn’t last, she knew, but at least it was a respite. “I need to get to work. So you really should just get going.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“What? You can’t.” Well, this was good; she wasn’t even thinking about Terrible, or anything else except for how crazy Beulah was if she actually thought she was going to walk into the Church library with Chess, stand there while Chess looked through files. “I have work to do, actual work.”

“I could help you.”

“How the hell— I’m just going to work, so—”

“No, Chess, I really think I should go with you. I really think you should be seen with me. Don’t you think that’s a good idea?”

Was she still high? Maybe she was still asleep. Hell, maybe she was still in the pipe room, and this was a very elaborate Dream hallucination. She’d certainly spent enough time there to get a few of those. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh shit. You’ve been sleeping all day, haven’t you? You do remember last night, right? Not whatever it was that did or didn’t happen to you later, but Jia? The symbol, the body? Any of that ring any bells?”

“Oh shit” was right. Like Chess’s stomach didn’t feel hollow enough, like her body didn’t feel empty enough.

And like she wasn’t a shitty enough person. A young girl was dead, and it was partially Chess’s fault for not catching the killer first, and she’d completely forgotten. Another kid had died because Chess wasn’t smart enough, fast enough; she had another name to carve onto her soul. “I remember.”

“Right. Well. I’m sure you’re capable of making the connection between Jia and a set of parents, right? And those parents and other parents? And those parents with the community in general?”

Chess stared at her. Oh, no. Oh, no, things couldn’t get worse, right, that couldn’t happen, it wouldn’t—

“Our community isn’t really very fond of the Church, as I’m pretty sure you know, and they’re, ah, they’re a bit unhappy. Aggressively unhappy. So I kind of think—well, I think, and Lex thinks—that you really shouldn’t be out places without one of us. Okay? Especially not Aros’s place, which I thought you wanted to visit today. So why don’t you go take a shower, and I’ll drive you.”

   Technically the Church offices closed at six, but employees—especially second-level employees like Chess—had keys. Had the code and thumbprint to bypass the Church’s security system, too, the one Elder Ramos had ordered expanded from the prisons to every Church building almost before the smoke had even cleared from the battle in the City of Eternity.

So she could enter and use the library and files any time she wanted, even with a guest. Even with a guest she didn’t want. Like Beulah. The temptation to have Beulah just take her to Aros’s Downside apartment and skip this was strong, but she wanted to see the file first.

Their footsteps echoed in the great empty hall, pale-blue walls dull in the dim light cast by a lone bulb in the storeroom behind the stairs. For once the sight of it, the feel of the walls around her, didn’t comfort her much.

Not that there was anything left to be comforted. There was nothing left inside her at all.

“See?” she said, not bothering to hide her irritation as she started to lock the door behind them. “There was no reason for you to come here with me.”

Beulah raised her eyebrows. “Whatever. You know you’ll definitely need me at Aros’s place.”

Sure. Sure she would. Suspicion in her head, in her chest, that either Beulah just wanted to keep Chess away from the pipe room, or she wanted to get a sneak peek into some Church files.

Like that was going to happen.

She led the way to the library, though, using her flashlight to help Beulah rather than switching on the lights. Sometimes if Church employees in the cottages were up and saw lights, they’d come over to see what was happening, and she did not need to be found with a guest. It wasn’t against the rules, but it was frowned upon after hours. The last thing she needed was trouble at work.

Then again, she had—through a bizarre combination of skill, dumb luck, and incredible misfortune—managed to build up a file any Debunker would envy. She could probably wander naked through the halls in the middle of the day at this point and just get her wrist slapped for it.

That made it all the more important to keep Beulah’s presence hidden, though. Work was the one thing in her life she hadn’t managed to completely destroy. Keeping it that way might be good.

“Sit there,” she said, jerking her head at one of the tables. The main library floor, like pretty much every library Chess had ever seen, was filled with dark wooden tables, twelve of them in three rows with one more, the thirteenth, centered at the head. Shelves sunrayed from them to the walls in a loose semicircle; at the far end sat the Library Goody’s desk, and behind that the glass walls and locked door of the Restricted Room.

Chess wouldn’t be needing that room that night, luckily. Entering it after hours hadn’t held much appeal to her since the night months before when she’d almost been killed there.

But hey, nobody actually was trying to kill her at the moment, right? Maybe a couple of ghosts, sure, but that actually made a refreshing change after the last few months. No
humans
trying to kill her.

Except herself, of course, but that was hardly new.

She left Beulah sitting at the end of the table closest to the doors and headed over to Goody Glass’s desk on a hunch. Sometimes files got handed to the Library Goodys to be refiled, and Goody Glass was lazy in addition to being unpleasant. Chess hadn’t been able to ask before, but …

Yes! A few minutes of hunting found her Lucy McShane’s slim little manila memorial, and just for good measure she went to the cabinets and grabbed the Mercy Lewis file again. She didn’t think she’d missed anything the first time, but anything was possible.

Anything else? She wanted to see Aros’s employee file, but that wouldn’t be in the library; she’d have to ask Elder Griffin for that one. Assuming he’d let her see it, but she imagined he would.

And while she was back there, out of sight of Beulah, she went ahead and took a couple of Nips; speed and work didn’t always mix, but reading files and taking notes didn’t really count as the type of work speed interfered with. Besides, exhaustion still dulled her mind. Plus she wanted to also grab three more Cepts and toss those down her throat, because “completely numb” was really the only possible way she’d be able to get through the next few hours. In fact, another of those would be good, too.

Desk lamps stood dark on each table. Chess switched one of them on, set down her bag, grabbed her notebook. Time to get to—

Beulah’s voice cut through her thoughts. “What are you doing?”

“What?”

“I asked what you’re doing.”

“Um …” Chess picked up the McShane file, waved it. “I’m working.”

“Really.” Beulah folded her arms, looking meaningfully at her seat at the desk closest to the door, and Chess’s on the opposite side of the room.

“Yes, really. You wanted to come along, I brought you along. You don’t get to sit and look at confidential information when you’re here.”

Big heavy sigh, like this was the worst inconvenience Beulah had ever suffered in her entire life. Of course, given whose daughter she was, that was very likely true. “Fine. Can I at least look at a book or something, or do I have to sit here staring off into space?”

“Whatever. Just don’t go in the files.” Most of the books were Church histories or academic texts, or books on the Old Governments, especially the American one. A smallish section of fiction and some nonfiction on various other topics, and that was pretty much it; the advanced magic and religion books sat behind glass in the Restricted Room, so Beulah couldn’t get into much trouble wandering around.

Better that than trying to make conversation.

Okay. Lucy McShane. Born May 1984, died April 2001. A month away from seventeen. Shame.

A stiff, shiny piece of paper: a photograph. The same picture Chess had seen scanned into the mainframe, but bigger and clearer; innocence projected from the smiling eyes, the cheerful curved lips.

Chess didn’t buy it, not one bit. She set the photo upside down on the other side of the folder with distaste. Seeing someone’s photo after having seen their ghost always felt a bit like seeing them after having seen them naked, only naked of both skin and clothes.

After all, wasn’t everyone a lot like a ghost, under the skin? Angry, vicious, vengeful? Thirsty for the pain and
blood of others, for anything they could get, desperate to make themselves fat on their own superiority?

Church theory was that ghosts killed out of envy, because they hated the living simply for being alive, because they wanted to steal that life for themselves and would never give up trying no matter how many times they failed.