Chasing Magic

She sat on the arm with her feet on the cushion, so she could face Terrible, still standing at the kitchen counter. “Do you know what it is?”

“Nay, but this ain’t the first time we got these, dig. Third time, seen two like it in the last week. So brought it here, aye. Figured on you giving me the help.”

“Why?”

He rolled his eyes. “Like you ain’t gonna.”

“No, I mean, why me? What can I do?”

“Thinkin you know what. ’Sall magic and ghost shit, it is.”

Yeah, she knew that. But how the hell did he know that? Lex had about as much magical ability as a plastic cup.

He must have seen the question in her eyes—well, she wasn’t exactly trying to hide it—because he tipped his head in the direction of the Blackwood box. “Take that box off in the dark, dig, an give it an open. Shit’s all glowing, it is. Damn freaky.”

Glowing? Fuck. That didn’t sound good, not at all.

Terrible followed her into the bathroom—the only room in the apartment without windows. It wasn’t light outside, no, but she wanted utter darkness for this.

She set the box on the toilet lid, hit the light switch, and opened it.

First the wave of dark magic rolled over her; she kept some unpleasant shit in that box, not just the packets but some curse items, a few things she’d found and a few she’d bought for security’s sake.

All of which she could see, because Lex had told the truth. The packets glowed. She shot a quick glance at Terrible. “You okay?”

He nodded. “’Sget he outta here, aye?”

That was probably for the best, huh. But first … “That guy, DV, he said his friend bought the speed off what’s-his-name—”

“Rickride.”

“Right. He’s one of yours, right? One of Bump’s?”

He nodded, his face white in the pale blue light from the open box.

“And now I guess one of Lex’s people sold the same bad speed. Do you guys get your stuff from the same—”

“Naw. Not what I got, anyroad. Don’t deal with the same supply.”

“So how is this happening, then? How—”

“Ain’t knowin that one, neither.” He glanced away from the box, his eyes glittering in the semi-darkness. “Guessin we got us a connection, though, like the speed and them bespelled dudes—Samms an he just now. The same, aye?”

“I guess so, but I don’t know—well, I don’t know how, or why. The speed doesn’t feel so much like that spell Samms had on him, the nut spell.”

“Be the same ones doin it? You got that from it?”

Damn it. She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask that. “I don’t know for sure. This feels male, like that did, but … there’s something different about it. I don’t know what it is, but something’s different.”

He nodded. “Dude back there ain’t had a nut on he, though. For bein controlled, like Samms.”

“No, he didn’t have much on him, did he?”

The eerie glow cast by the tainted speed illuminated his faint smile, the little tilt of his head. “Naw, that he ain’t.”

She saw his hand rising to touch her face, saw the look in his eye start to change, and tried to stop herself from saying the words already formed in her head, in her mouth. Too late. They popped out anyway. “I’m sorry. About the speed—about what happened when—I should have—”

“Ain’t yon fault.” She didn’t think he meant it, though. His eyes left hers, his shoulders lifted like a pair of scissor blades snapping the moment-that-might-have-been in half.

“It is my fault. And I should have found a— I’ll visit the church. I’ll do some more research and—”

“Aw, shit. Don’t know why you still botherin on it, ain’t gonna find—”

“I will.” She reached up and pressed her palms to the sides of his face, his thick muttonchops dense and rough-soft against her palms. “I will. I promise. I just—”

“Oughta give it the leave-out, Chessie, ain’t can—”

“No, I can. I will.”

He still didn’t look at her. Shit. She inched forward, raised herself on her tiptoes so she could be closer to him—so her face could be closer to his, so she could put everything into her eyes and force him to see it. “I know you don’t really like talking about—I don’t like it, either. But you have to let me try this stuff, okay? I know it’s not fun. I know that one time it made you sick, but it was only the—”

He pulled away. “Aye, right. Right, then.”

He didn’t mean that, either. She knew that “Right, then.” It meant I’ll agree so we can stop talking about this.

Too bad knowing what it meant didn’t give her any way to counter it. She stood there for a minute, a long uncomfortable one, before finally managing, “It’s important, Terrible. I’m sorry. I’m—but I’m not going to let this keep happening. You have to let me fix it. I know I can fix it.”

Finally he nodded. “Aye. Guessin us might as well keep givin it the try.”

The bathroom wasn’t a big room at all, especially not with him in it, but she still had to reach out to grab him and pull him close enough to press her forehead into his chest. “I’m so fucking sorry about this. I’ll fix it. I’ll find a way to fix it, I swear. It’s all my—”

Lex’s voice intruded through the closed door, ruining the moment as effectively as—well, as effectively as he ruined so many other things. “You two forgotting on me?”

Shit.

“Tryin to,” Terrible muttered, but he opened the door and walked into the short hall after her.

Lex twisted his upper body on the couch to watch them return. Chess steeled herself for some kind of dirty joke, but he said, “Ain’t good, aye?”

“No.” She set the now-closed box back down on its shelf. “No, not good at all.”

“Ghosty shit, aye?”

“Yeah, but—” Oh, damn, that was fucked up. She sat down beside Lex, barely noticing she was doing it. She hadn’t made the connection in the bathroom, hadn’t really thought about it because their discussion hadn’t gone that way. But now that she did …

“But?”

“It isn’t ghost magic that glows,” she said, still trying to get her head around it. “Ghosts themselves glow. But the reason they glow, what glows about them … How is that even possible?”