Chasing Magic

Terrible shrugged and leaned forward to stub out his smoke. As he did, his glance fell on her arm. “What’s on there?”

“Huh? Oh.” Damn, she’d almost managed to forget about the Darnells. “Remember my case, the people who broke the mirrors? I busted them today. They weren’t very happy about it.”

“They hit you?”

“Yeah. Well, they had a witch there who tried to kill me, then they had a gun, but it was fine. I’m fine, no biggie.”

He opened his mouth, but she cut him off. “How about you, how was your day?”

She could practically see him trying to decide if it was worth pushing or not; thankfully, he didn’t. Even better, he lifted her arm and kissed the smudgy dark spot forming there, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Hey.” She reached up to trail her fingers down his thick sideburns, unable to keep herself from grinning. “I might have a few more bruises, too.”

His eyebrows rose, his own smile transforming his face the way she loved so much. “Aye? Where?”

“Oh, all over. It’s really bad. There are tons of them.”

He shook his head. “Damn. Thinkin you oughta show me, aye? So’s I can be all certain you ain’t hurt much.”

“I think you’re right.” She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and lifted it off, shivering harder when his warm hands found her bare skin, reached behind her to unfasten her bra and slip that off, too. “I definitely need your help.”

Love wasn’t one emotion, she didn’t think. It was a combination of a whole bunch of them, and each one had a slightly different formula. Like how if she mixed black powder with an equal amount of blood salt and powdered cat’s skull, she’d have a nice little hex-shield that would bounce curses back to the caster, but the same ingredients in different proportions would induce people to admit the truth if it got on their skin.

Love was like that, and the formulas were always changing. It never sat still and let her get used to it; she didn’t feel as if she ever quite had her balance.

And there was the formula changing again, going from light and warm to tingly and hot. Hot and getting hotter when his mouth took hers, his fingertips on her jaw and then sliding into her hair. His body urged hers back, so she lay on the couch with his warm solid weight above her and her hands already finding bare skin under his shirt, spreading her fingers apart as wide as she could so she could feel more of him at once.

He took his time, inching his palm up her rib cage to barely skim her breast, sliding it down over the curve of her hip and thigh. His teeth caught her tongue and held it for a second, just long enough to send a flash of heat through her entire body. Still he didn’t speed up, but that heat did, racing through her, screaming it was going so fast, and she felt as if she glowed in the ever-darker room as the sun set over Downside.

Then Terrible stopped, and she realized it wasn’t her body screaming—well, her body was screaming, like it always did when he touched her, but the sound she heard wasn’t her body. Wasn’t her voice. It was a voice of terror, a voice of pain and despair, and it sent a shiver that had nothing to do with sex or love or anything even remotely pleasant up her spine.

It was coming from the street outside, and more voices joined it every second.

Chapter Three

You must always be ready.

—Debunking: A Practical Guide, by Elder Morgenstern

Quite a crowd had gathered by the time Chess and Terrible burst through the tall, heavy wooden doors of her building, down the steps and across the patch of scrub grass and pebbles to the street, where dozens of backs obscured her view of whatever was happening.

Too bad they didn’t obscure the screams, those awful wails. Why were people standing there watching if they were so scared—

“Fuck!” Terrible was gone before the word even registered in her head, shoving his way through the crowd. Of course, he could see over them. He knew what was happening.

So whatever it was probably wasn’t a good thing. But then she hadn’t imagined it would be.

And what the hell was she doing, standing there in the back while Terrible did whatever it was he was doing in the center? Fuck that.

People didn’t move as fast for her as they had for him, but the ink on her shoulders, arms, and chest carried enough weight to get them going. Most people thought witches had a lot more power than they actually did, and Chess didn’t do anything to disabuse them of that notion. It had kept her safer in Downside than she had any right to be for almost four years, especially since everyone learned that Downside’s Churchwitch worked for Bump.

They might have taken their chances with the Church, but no way would they do that with Bump. Fucking with Bump meant fucking with Terrible, and the only people who did that had death wishes even more serious than Chess’s. If that were possible.

Through the tiny spaces between people, she caught glimpses of … something … what the fuck? The street red with blood, a shoe lying in a glistening puddle of it …

She reached the center just as Terrible pulled back his fist and slammed it into the face of a man in the circle. That man stood over another man—a dead body—and was swinging the corpse’s disembodied left arm like a bat.

The man stumbled and fell onto the bloody cement, the arm in his hand waving as he went down. Chess automatically glanced at Terrible, only to see his eyes close, see him waver on his feet for a second before shaking his head and straightening up.

Her tattoos tingled and burned. A ghost. A ghost and magic and—oh shit. Dark magic, and just punching that man was enough to cause a reaction in Terrible. She had to find a solution to that. No more fucking around. Nothing had worked so far, and she hated being reminded of her failures, but seriously.

Bad enough that Lex knew about it. If the rest of Downside found out … she couldn’t even imagine how awful that would be.

This wasn’t the time to picture it, either, because the killer—she assumed he was the killer—started to stand up. His buzz-cut hair and the back of his dirty white shirt dripped with blood, vibrant and horrible in the darkening air.

Terrible knocked him down again with a savage kick to the throat, using the sole of his boot to shove him to the pavement.

Chess tensed. If the magic affected him that badly from a momentary touch …

Nothing. Her sigh was so deep it made her weak. The sole of Terrible’s boot—what was it made of? Did it matter, or was it simply having a barrier that made the difference?

Whatever it was, the killer didn’t like it very much. He writhed on the cement, grunting, his fingers slipping uselessly off Terrible’s boot and his other hand slapping the arm against Terrible’s leg. Gross. The sight of that limp hand flapping, as if it was trying to grab back the life that had been stolen from it, made her stomach lurch.

Someone else came out of the crowd and grabbed the killer’s legs, holding them down. And still that awful, sly sensation crawled up and down her arms, across her chest and shoulders. Still the black fog of magic intended to hurt and kill oozed into her chest, into her soul, to connect to the filth already there. It countered her high, stole it from her, made sadness and misery and hatred fall on her in a hellish downpour of pain.

At least she could do something about that. She started to turn, intending to run back to her apartment and get her bag, when something struck her.

The killer still lay on the cement. Still fighting against Terrible, still waving that gruesome appendage around like a Church flag at Festival time, still struggling against the other man—Burnjack, Chess thought his name was, one of Bump’s lieutenants—holding down his legs.

How long had he been like that? Why hadn’t he passed out yet, with Terrible’s foot crushing his windpipe?

Terrible wasn’t holding back, either. He was putting weight on that foot, and his weight was considerable, considering he was about six foot four and packed with muscle. She’d estimated it at two-seventy once, and while that had been a bit too heavy, he wasn’t exactly light.

So how was the killer still moving, still breathing?

Terrible must have had the same thought. His eyes searched the crowd for her; when they caught hers he raised his eyebrows, gave her a small tip of his head she understood. She nodded in reply. Yes, something magic-related was going on, and whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

She jerked her own head back toward her building, letting him know where she was going, and he nodded.

She’d run that fast before, but not very often. Her chest ached by the time she reached her bedroom and grabbed the stack of hardcover books she used as a step stool when she needed one. Usually she didn’t anymore, because Terrible got things down for her, but she figured he was pretty well occupied in keeping down a homicidal maniac who seemingly refused to die and radiated black magic and ghost energy like blood spreading through clear water.

She kept all the standard stuff in her bag—iron filings, graveyard dirt, asafetida, iron-ring water, and blood salt; the sort of all-purpose things she used a lot. The box on the top shelf of her closet was where the other stuff was, supplies she’d bought just because, or in case she ever needed them. Always good to be prepared, and almost everything in that box would be helpful in breaking curses or hexes, weakening dark magics, crossing the Evil Eye.

Okay. Powdered crow’s bone, of course. She had some dried chunks of snake, some goat’s blood, tormentil, ground rat tails, a handful of lizard eyes and cat claws. Hell, she should just take the whole box, except someone would steal it.

Her hands shook as she tossed everything she thought might be useful into her bag, catching the silver glint of her pillbox in its pocket. If only … Too bad all the adrenaline in her system made it totally useless to even think about taking more. Maybe after all of it was done she’d take an Oozer or two. If she could; if she was still alive to do so.

Maybe that was being dramatic, but if there was one thing her life had taught her—one lesson it had rammed down her throat until she choked on it—it was that nothing was ever safe. Positive expectations were for idiots.