Unholy Magic (16 page)

Chapter Sixteen

So much fear and misery, so much anger, made humankind vulnerable to the dead, for they ceased to remember the danger posed by the unseen.

But the unseen never forgets. It never stops looking for its chance to destroy.

—
The Book of Truth
, Origins, Article 459

She had to admit it was interesting. Interesting in the way a man might find his last few hours before facing the firing squad interesting, sure, but still interesting.

She’d never had a chance to spend this much time with her investigation subjects before. She’d certainly never spent a night in one of their homes.

Damn shame, then, that in another couple of hours she wasn’t going to be good for anything but hugging the toilet bowl and wishing she were dead. And trying desperately to figure out how she was going to leave in the morning without anyone noticing she could barely stand.

She wiped her damp forehead with the back of her hand and tried to focus on the plate in front of her. Outside the tall dining room windows, snow swirled in the empty sky. Inside, voices chattered around her, discussing empty things. Shopping. Mutual friends. If she’d cared about their world at all, it would have been fascinating. As it was, the only thing she cared about was keeping herself from scratching her arms raw.

The itch burned like fire on her palms, on her calves and the sensitive skin of her wrists. Her stomach hadn’t joined the party yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Servants cleared the table silently, removing Chess’s barely-touched chicken and replacing it with some sort of chocolate confection. Chess grabbed her fork. Sugar. Sugar would help a little. It might help enough for her to get back upstairs without anyone noticing something was wrong.

“So, Miss Putnam, you’re staying here tonight?” Oliver smiled at her from around a forkful of food.

She nodded.

He turned to Roger. “Why haven’t you given her my room?”

“Well … because you’re in it?”

“But my room is the nicest. Please, I insist.”

“Thanks, Mr. Fletcher, but it’s fine.”

“No, you must have mine.”

“I’m really happy with the one I have.”

“You can’t be.” His brows drew together as if he was an infant and she’d stolen his pacifier. “Mine is the nicest, you must have mine.”

“Oliver, I think you’re making her uncomfortable,” Roger said quietly.

Chess seized on it. “Yes, please, Mr. Fletcher, don’t make me feel guiltier than I already do. I like my room and I wouldn’t feel right about taking yours. Please.”

Fletcher opened his mouth, his face red. Chess stared back as coolly as possible. It was nice of him to offer, but really, why the insistence? It wasn’t like she cared. She wouldn’t be sleeping in there. She could be about to spend the night in a dungeon for all it mattered.

“Arden,” Kym said, dipping her fork into the puddle of chocolate sauce around the edge of her plate and slipping it into her mouth, “don’t eat too much of this. You’ve gained enough weight as it is.”

Arden scooped up a huge mouthful and shoveled it in.

“Arden! What did I just say?”

“I don’t care!”

“If you don’t care, I certainly do.”

“Let her enjoy her dessert,” Oliver said. He leaned back and put an arm over his chair, the pose obviously calculated to show off the muscular chest beneath his casual white shirt. He winked at Arden, who smiled back.

“See? Oliver likes me the way I am.”

“Oliver isn’t your mother.”

“I wish he was.”

Their voices scraped across her skin like claws. Why wouldn’t they just shut up?

The discussion deepened, turning into a fight. Every muscle in Chess’s body cringed. She shouldn’t be here for this, it was like they’d forgotten she was even in the room.
Was
she in the room? Why was she here?

Her hand trembled on her fork as she scooped up more dessert. Some kind of pie, covered with whipped cream. The sort of thing she never ate, cloyingly sweet, coating her tongue with stickiness. It was like swallowing lard.

Almost exactly like it, in fact.

That was a memory she didn’t want to revisit. None of her memories were ones she wanted to revisit. Too bad. They were all coming, she knew that, hovering like the ghosts that might or might not be haunting the Pyle house, waiting until she was at her most vulnerable before attacking.

Arden’s screams turned incoherent; every one was like fingernails scraping Chess’s brain. Her footsteps as she ran out of the room vibrated up from the floor and made Chess’s legs tremble.

Blessed silence fell. Blessed to Chess at least. The others looked embarrassed. “I’ll go talk to her,” Oliver said, dropping his napkin with careful negligence onto the snow-white tablecloth.

“No,” Kym said. “Nobody can talk to that girl. I just don’t know what we’re going to do with her. There’s a Church-run school I read about, outside Arcadia. They’ll straighten her out. Miss Putnam, don’t you think a Church education is best?”

“What? Oh, um, yes.”

“Do you think they’ll be able to help Arden?” Her steely gaze trapped Chess in her chair like a bug under glass.

“Nothing’s wrong with Arden but typical teenage growing pains,” Oliver said. “The offer to let her come stay with me is still open, you know.”

“We can’t impose on you like that,” Kym said. Chess glanced at Roger, who was still sitting in his chair, hardly moving. Stoned again? Where did he keep his drugs? Maybe she could sneak into the office and find them. She’d pulled her transmitter out from under the carpet already, she could lay it out by the office door, maybe there would be something in there.

And if she got caught? Fuck it. She didn’t care, not now. She needed her pills. She needed something, anything. Even some decent cold medicine might help. Just … just anything. She wiped her forehead again and stood up, her fork clattering against her plate.

“I’m sorry. The meal was lovely, thank you, but I’m—I’m going to leave you to your evening, if that’s okay.”

“That’s not necessary.” Roger spoke for the first time. “Really. We were going to watch a movie, Oliver’s newest. It hasn’t been released yet. There should be
some
perk for having to spend the night in a haunted house, right?”

Her smile felt more like a grimace. “Oh, no, I couldn’t intrude. I’ll just … I’ll just go ahead now. Thank you so much, though.”

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. If he didn’t stop talking in the next minute, she was going to turn and run for it.

“Just ring the buzzer if you need anything,” Kym said. “And the blue button will put you through to security.”

“And if you see a ghost,” Oliver said, “well, I guess you know what to do, don’t you?”

His lips parted; Chess thought it should have been a smile. It looked more like he was getting ready to eat her.

She fled.

The office door was locked. With trembling hands she picked it, her mouth flooded with saliva. He had to keep them in there. Had to. Where else would they be?

The lock gave and she slipped through the door into the darkness. True darkness; the window shades were pulled tight, blocking what little light might have come through with the storm raging outside. Wind howled around the corners of the house. It hadn’t been audible in the dining room, but here it was, the wild anger of the skies making its presence known. Chess shivered beneath her sweaty skin and headed for the desk.

Nothing. Papers, sure, lots of papers. Ordinarily they would have interested her, but as it was she barely spared them a glance. What difference did they make? What difference did the outcome of this fucking case make? She needed her pills. That was what mattered.

A sob escaped her throat when she got to the last drawer. Still nothing. No little baggies filled with multicolored promises, no envelopes, no coin purses, no … fuck, no pills, no drugs.

Behind her was a liquor cabinet, stocked with shining bottles and crystal glasses. On top of it sat a small TV and disk player. Chess made her way toward it on legs just starting to feel rubbery.

Her panic wasn’t helping. Physically she wasn’t that bad yet. Itchy, sweaty, a little shaky. Her head hurt. Nothing she couldn’t handle in itself. It was knowing it was going to get worse, waiting for it to get worse …

She opened the cabinet, started shifting bottles. Maybe Pyle hid his stash behind them. A bar was a reasonable place, right?

Some part of her watched herself, sickened at the very idea that she was on her knees hunting for drugs to steal from a subject’s house. The rest of her didn’t give a shit. None of her was surprised. This was what she was, after all. A junkie Churchwitch. Nothing. Nobody.

A filing cabinet yielded nothing. Some financial records she barely glanced at, and a few photographs of Kym dressed up in some sort of naughty Goody outfit.

Bookshelves held only books. No secret panels hidden in the walls, no safes sheltered behind tacky paintings. The room was clean.

So where the fuck did he keep them? Not in the bedroom. Not in his office. Where? For fuck’s sake, where? She knew he had them. He had to have them, she’d seen it in his eyes. So where did he keep his fucking drugs?

Tears poured down her face. Nothing here, nothing anywhere. Her pills were at home. The snow piled up outside. She was trapped. And there wasn’t even an arm or leg she could chew off to get herself free.

When the smell started she wasn’t quite sure. She didn’t notice it until it was the only thing to notice, so strong it was almost a solid thing she could touch. With a sinking feeling that had nothing to do with her pills, she stood up and saw the ghost.

His back was to her—both of their backs were to her. The same tableau Taylor had described earlier in the security office. The man with the axe, holding something in his left hand that could have been a clump of dirt if not for the ragged skin at the bottom. The neck, where he’d severed it.

Behind him the other figure stood, gnarled hands reaching out. The flowing gown blew against its body, identified it as female.

They stood between her and the door. Normally she might have tried to run for it, but she didn’t think her legs would carry her fast enough, steady enough.

Her stomach lurched. She had no idea if it was the smell or the withdrawal or the ghosts themselves. Her head pounded, as if her brain was swollen too big for her skull and was going to break free at any second.

The ghosts moved. The man lifted the axe, swung it over his shoulder. He turned his head. Toward the desk.

Toward Chess.

The edge of the liquor cabinet hit the backs of her thighs hard. She barely felt it. Not daring to take her eyes off him she dug in her bag, finding the graveyard dirt and clenching it in her fist. It might work. Would work if she could get any power behind it, if she had any to use. She felt like a shorted electrical cord; sparks sputtered beneath her skin but nothing could conduct.

The man lifted his hand, displaying the severed head. Showing her. He saw her. Not like the night in the bathroom.
He saw her.
He knew she was there. His axe might not be able to hurt her, but a letter opener sat on the desk, sharp edge gleaming in the horrid greenish light the ghosts projected. If she saw it, he would.

She pictured it, like a real-life horror film. Saw him pick up the letter opener, his body gliding through the desk like it wasn’t even there, and bring it up to strike, saw herself try to raise her arms. Saw the opener plunged into her chest, blood spurting from the wound, changing color as it passed through his translucent form.

Finally the image galvanized her. The ghost started to move, the woman following like some bizarre heeling dog. She had to act now, now,
now
—

The dirt flew from her hand, dusting itself over the figures.

“Arcranda beliam dishager!”

The generic banishing words, forced out through her constricted throat, felt like nothing but syllables. No power, nothing behind them. The ghost didn’t falter. He took another slow step in her direction.

She tried again, struggling to focus, to find that well of power deep inside herself. She knew this, she could do it, she’d done it hundreds of times, it was her fucking
job
—

“Arcranda beliam dishager!”

Still nothing. She didn’t feel weak, it felt like it should have worked, but what the fuck did she know? She could barely feel anything at all except her stomach twisting in her belly.

No choice, then. She ran, the floor spongy and uneven beneath her feet. Her hands slipped on the doorknob; she glanced back and saw the ghost’s head turning, watching her. From this angle she could clearly see the head he held in his hand, the face she’d seen behind her in the bathroom mirror.

A scream tried to fight from her throat. She held it back, gritting her teeth so hard they hurt. The doorknob gave.

She flung herself forward, falling on the floor. The ghosts were still in the office, moving again, as though they were coming for her …

Kym’s voice filtered from the living room. Chess managed to get up, giving the ghosts one last look before she closed the door on them. Her hands, her entire body, felt like a wrung-out washcloth.

The door wouldn’t stop them. She had to move. Had to get up those stairs as fast as she could, had to get to the room they’d given her and lock the door so she could fall apart in private. Fuck the Pyles, they could fend for themselves, they hadn’t had any problems in the living room yet, right?

But they weren’t coming through the door. Why weren’t they coming through the door? That wasn’t right, not at all.

Chess waited, hidden in the corner, staring at the door until it became nothing but a black outline against the pale walls, until her eyes burned and the door swelled in her vision. An optical illusion. No ghosts. Somewhere deep down she knew that was important, knew it meant something, but she couldn’t remember what. All she could do was dread the coming night.