Chasing Magic

He shrugged and took the few steps that brought him to the small circle of people in the middle of the intersection. They moved aside for him without speaking; Chess wondered if a few of them were able to speak. They looked barely human, like evolutionary throwbacks to the period when tiny dark creatures discovered fire. Masses of dirty hair tangled from the tops of their heads to midway down their backs; what appeared to be burlap sacks covered their bodies, and their feet were bare. Even Chess had never seen anything like it. Downside was poor, yes, but these people weren’t poor, they had nothing. And people who had nothing developed their own world to compensate, and now she’d walked into it.

They knew Terrible, though, backing away from him without looking into his face.

“Who find him?” he asked, and when he stepped to the side Chess saw the body.

Greenback lay on his stomach in a pool of blood on the tar-streaked concrete, his pale face staring at the street beyond. It took Chess a second to realize what had happened, how that was possible; he should have been facedown, but his neck had been cut with so much force it had almost been severed, and his chin rested on the concrete.

Terrible crouched beside the body. Chess tried not to see his boots making dents in the sticky blood puddle. “Who find him?” he asked again.

Someone stepped forward, a dirty, skinny wraith of a woman with long thin scratches on the outsides of her arms and track marks on the insides. “Were me. Seen it, I done. I done seen it.”

Mutters ran through the crowd at this; a few people edged away from her. She didn’t appear to notice. “Were two mens. Jumped outen a car an cut he. Lay he out like so an drive off.”

“What kinda car, you knowing?”

The nest of hair on her head—it had once been blond—shook, like a leafy branch moving with the breeze. “Black one. All I know.”

“You seen the men, them faces or aught you could know iffen you see em again?”

Another shake. “Black car. Black clothes.”

“You touch he? Got him wallet?”

Yet another shake, faster, so fast Chess knew—even if she hadn’t already—that it was a lie.

Terrible glanced at the body, then back at the woman. “Any lashers in it you keep, dig? Drugs, too. Ain’t give a fuck on it. But needing to see he wallet, iffen you got it.”

She didn’t respond.

Terrible stood up slowly. Chess never could figure out how he managed to make himself look even bigger when he wanted to—a particular furrow of his brow, a slight hunch to his shoulders, his arms held just an inch or so farther out from his body—but he did it then, staring at the woman with a calm intensity Chess felt even from a few feet away.

The woman hiked up her dress in the back and produced a leather wallet. Shit, had she been keeping that thing in her underwear?

Yes, she had. Chess hoped to see some sort of thigh holster or garter, but lifting the excuse for a dress showed the woman’s spindly bruise-covered legs, and they were bare.

Terrible wasn’t coming anywhere near touching Chess with those hands again until they’d been washed. Twice. At least.

He didn’t look any happier about where the wallet had been kept, but he opened it anyway. “Got any else? Needing to see all it, dig?”

Greenback had apparently also had a watch, several small bags of pills and powders, an earring, and a few scraps of paper. That was a lot to keep in a pair of underwear; Chess had to hand it to the woman for that.

Terrible set the items on the ground at his feet and kept digging through the wallet.

He glanced at Chess. “No lashers taken, dig, still all in here. Adds up, too, for what bags there is missing.”

“They didn’t steal anything, then.”

“Naw, ain’t lookin like.” He turned to the woman. “You see him before the car come? Were he standin here?”

The woman licked her lips, her gaze flicking from the wallet in Terrible’s hands to the drugs on the ground and back again in constant restless motion. “Were in the car.”

“What? Greenback were?”

“Greenback dead one?”

“Aye.”

She nodded. “Him get outen car. Other two followed. Killed he.”

Terrible’s expression didn’t change, but Chess could imagine what he was thinking. Probably it was the same as what she was thinking, which was: What was Greenback doing in the car? If those were Lex’s men, why was he in the car with them, and why hadn’t they stolen his money and drugs?

“He look like him wantin get out the car, you see?” Terrible pulled a couple of things out of the wallet—papers, she thought—and tucked them in his pocket before handing the wallet back. “Or like them pushed he out?”

“Said I keep the lashers, you did.”

He shrugged. “An you keeping em. Weren’t lashers I took. Papers, an you don’t need em, dig?”

The woman glared at him. He stared back at her, with that same deadly patience.

The woman gave up. “Look like him got pushed. Them follow right on he, cut him throat. Lay him out. Drive on off.”

Terrible nodded, then scooped up the bags at his feet. “Any else seen? Heard aught? Got any knowledge?”

A hand raised at the back, a skinny pole with fingers jutting above the crowd of matted hair. “Mr. Terrible? Gots trouble. Mine friend, gots him trouble.”

“Aye? What’s on?”

The man pushed through the crowd, his bright orange hair—spray-painted, it looked like—glowing as the last rays of sunlight hit it. Seeing it reminded Chess that the sun had almost set, and with that realization came another, an unpleasant one: The crowd around them had grown, and at the end of the street, mist rolled off the bay and started inching toward them.

The man stopped in front of Terrible. Ribs showed through holes in his thin T-shirt like the bones had cut the fabric, and his ashy ankles protruded from the bottom of tight, gaudy striped pants. He wore mismatched flip-flops on his feet. “Mine friend, him taken the speed. Bangin it. Him gone all fluffcutty, ain’t won’t leave him room, screamin them after he, screamin on ghosts in him head.”

“Aye? Maybe him oughten quit the bangin a day or two, get he some sleepin.”

“Nay, ain’t like it. Ain’t like it. Him …” The man glanced around, took a step closer to Terrible. “Him done gone out on the morn, come back with blood on he. All wet blood. Fucked in crazy, him bein. Talkin to he, ain’t like he, ain’t in he eyes. Then him come back, start screamin. Then go all silent on the again.”

Terrible looked at Chess, then at the street. The mist had advanced another quarter block or so; it had almost reached them, and the streets darkened by the second.

The crowd grew closer by the second, too. Chess took a step closer to Terrible—easy, because he was moving closer to her—before realizing the crowd wasn’t looking at her. They were looking at the body on the street, and she did not want to know what they had planned for it.

“Just keep he locked in, dig? He sobers up, he be right then, aye?”

The man shook his head again, his eyes huge in his dark face. “Been like this three days gone. Please comin have you a see. Be the speed, gotta be. Got he a bad batch, thinkin.”

Another glance at her. Another glance at the mist, at the fading glow of the sun dying behind the buildings. “Come back on morrow, dig? I come down see he—”

The scream, so loud and shrill, so full of darkness and horror that it made Chess cringe, cut Terrible off—cut everything off. For a long minute, all there was in the world was that horrible banshee-like shriek, tinged with madness and death and unholy glee.

They all turned—everyone—to see the figure emerge from one of the intact buildings a few doors down and start running toward them.