Chasing Magic

“Wanna spit it out, Tulip? Pretend like some of us ain’t witches got the same knowledge as you.”

That at least snapped her out of her daze, just in time for her to catch Terrible’s eyes narrowing at Lex. She wondered what parts of Lex’s body Terrible was removing in his head. Not that she really wanted to know. “Ectoplasm.”

“What?”

“Ectoplasm.” She looked at both of them, Lex on the couch beside her and Terrible standing against her bookshelves glowering at Lex. “Ectoplasm is what glows. It’s what they’re made of— I mean, ghosts are souls but it’s ectoplasm that’s visible. That’s what enables them to solidify, why they can only solidify around things that are already solid, because of the way it reacts to— Never mind. The point is, the only thing that feels like a ghost and glows is ectoplasm.”

They stared at her for a second. Not as if they were waiting for her to go on—both of their expressions told her they knew very well what she was saying—but as if they were having the same problem she was.

Terrible said it first. “Why the fuck anybody snort a ghost?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’ll—I can’t see it giving some kind of high. I mean, I’ve never heard of somebody getting high off it.”

Thankfully neither of them mentioned that if it were possible to do so, she probably would have done it.

And now she probably should. A heavy gong struck somewhere in her stomach. “I’ll try it.”

Terrible’s brows lowered farther. Oh, here it came. “No fuckin way.”

“No, listen. I’m the only one who can. Lex wouldn’t feel any magic, so he wouldn’t know what the effect was, and you’d—you’d need to be there in case something went wrong, so—”

“Naw, don’t give a fuck, Chessie. Some else gives it the try. Not you.”

“Aye, thinking he got it right, I do, you ain’t should be giving—”

“Shut up, both of you.” Like it wasn’t bad enough having one person worry about her like that, in that tight way that made her feel obligated, as if something was expected from her. No matter how much she loved Terrible, it still grated, and that was only one person. She didn’t need to have two. “How are we going to know why people are doing it if we don’t know— No, that doesn’t make sense.”

Thinking about it made her reach for her pillbox. “Lex, you didn’t feel anything when you touched it. So you would have done it, right? If you’d bought it. You would have chopped a line like normal.”

“Aye, guessing so. Them two days past were shooting it, too.”

“And it feels like magic, too.” She washed three Cepts down with water from her bottle and grabbed a cigarette. “It’s not just ectoplasm, it’s magic.”

“You get high on that?”

“Not that kind of high, no. And especially not magic like that.” Yes, there was a little high in it: the rush of power, the lifting feeling of magic in the pit of her stomach, and the way it could force a smile onto her face like a drag off the pipes. It was a weak high, usually, not one she chased, but still there.

The men waited for her to continue. “It’s dark magic. Someone who can feel it will know that. It feels … well, it feels bad. It feels unhappy and sick. Nobody who could actually feel the energy coming off that shit would snort it, seriously. But if you can’t feel it when you touch it, I don’t think you’d feel it after you did it, you know?”

Terrible nodded. “So you thinkin it ain’t the ectoplasm they tryna get high from, an not the magic neither. Them buyin it ain’t know—’sall hid in there.”

“Right.”

Lex put his empty beer bottle on the rickety table. “Aye, sounding all on the sensibles, but where the hell it coming from, then? Ain’t thinking we got no troubles in our supplies, iffen you dig. Ain’t can say the same on Bump, but guessing Terrible knows.”

“No trouble, not what I got.”

“Guess you guys need to start asking some questions, then,” Chess said.

Lex lit up a cigarette, leaning back on her couch and propping his feet on the table. “Talkin on questions, when you coming on over, Terrible, start working with me?”

“I ain’t.”

Silence. Lex blew smoke slowly into the air. “Really thinking you wanna have you a mind-change on that one, I do. Ain’t tryna pull no shit with you here.”

Terrible didn’t respond; his face didn’t move, not a blink, not a twitch. Any normal man would have been extremely uncomfortable right about then, with that cold blank look aimed right at him.

Lex wasn’t a normal man. Or, he wasn’t abnormal, he was just … normal with a few extra shots of arrogance, like a cocky blended coffee drink. And Chess knew that Lex didn’t believe deep down that Terrible would seriously injure him. Didn’t believe Terrible would kill him.

Because of her. She’d stopped Terrible from continuing to attack Lex after he’d broken his jaw that night, and she guessed in doing so she’d proven to Lex that she wouldn’t let Terrible kill him and—worse—that Terrible would listen to her and let him live.

She couldn’t feel bad about saving Lex’s life, but damn, she didn’t feel good knowing Lex sat there with confidence wrapped around his shoulders like a king’s ermine because of her. “Making the offer causen of Tulip, dig, but making the offer causen I got a need for my own muscle. Getting that one whether it’s you or some else.”

Terrible shook his head. “Guessin you find some else, then.”

“Aye, I dig it.” Lex stood up and took a few steps toward the kitchen, stopping just beyond where Terrible stood so he could face both of them. “Ain’t can say I ain’t gave it the try, though. You remember that one, aye? On the later. Gave it the try, I did.”

He was talking to Terrible—it seemed as if he was, anyway. But as he finished he looked directly at Chess, right into her eyes, and cold spread through her chest because she knew what he meant. What he was really saying to her, to them both.

He was planning to have Terrible killed.

Chapter Eight

Home décor says so much about a person, after all.

—Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase

“Here.” She held out her hand, waiting for him to put his arm into it. Was her hand shaking? Not surprising. Despite the fact that her high was kicking in, nerves still jittered up and down her spine. They were probably going to find some of that powder at Rickride’s place, and what she was about to try would probably not work.

Admitting she couldn’t fix a problem she’d caused—yeah. Not really the best start to her day.

Seeing the doubt in Terrible’s eyes while she scrawled the new sigil on his skin didn’t help. Even the tingle of magic sliding through her to him didn’t help. The only thing that would help would be if it worked, and she didn’t think the odds were great. Maybe it would, sure, but … maybe not.

“Okay.” She put the chalk back in her bag. “We’ll see what that does.”

He nodded and got out of the car.

Rickride lived on Eighty-seventh, far enough from the docks that the crooked skyline of ships wasn’t visible but close enough that the sour undercurrent of brine and dead fish clung to the air. A fairly typical Downside street, made grubbier by its proximity to the docks; more boarded windows and garbage on the pockmarked sidewalks, more crumbling walls. And a—was that a sold sign attached to a porch six or seven doors down? How old was that? She didn’t get a good look; Terrible was moving too quickly for her to see. Had to have been fairly old, though. Or maybe stolen and stuck up to repair a hole?