Chasing Magic

The crowd had grown in the short time she’d been upstairs. It spread out into the yard of the building across the street, into the corner itself. Some people had brought chairs to stand on or rickety ladders; others sat on the walls edging the staircase to her front door. It was a hell of a show, after all. Nobody wanted to miss it.

Nobody except her, anyway. Too bad she didn’t have a choice. She fought her way through the forest of bodies, pushing as hard as she could. What were they going to do, attack her? Fuck them. They needed to get the hell out of her way, and they needed to do it immediately.

With every step—with every person she shoved to the side—the buzzing of her tattoos, the creeping sensation through her body, the cloud of despair and horror, grew, until she wondered how she managed to stay upright.

Luckily she did, and so did Terrible, although he definitely looked paler than he should. Whatever that was, it was clearly starting to get to him, to infect him, and she didn’t have much time.

The killer still struggled to get up, still waved that arm around like a fucking winning lottery ticket. No way was that guy alive by normal means; she could see his throat almost crushed under Terrible’s foot.

So how was he alive at all?

First things first. She grabbed the iron-ring water—clean water with iron rings in the bottle, left to purify under a full moon—and watched Terrible take a swig. Some of his color returned. At least that was some weight off. For the moment, anyway.

More of that heaviness lightened when she took a drink herself. Excellent. Start with the iron filings, then; clearly iron had some power over whatever the spell was—it usually did—and what she needed most was to neutralize it enough to think.

“Arkrandia bellarum dishager.” Her hand swung in an arc over the supine killer, spreading a fine dust of iron. The power lessened again.

But the killer hadn’t blinked. He hadn’t blinked and he hadn’t choked. Chess bent down, trying not to get too close but needing to see it anyway.

Holy shit. Either she was in the presence of some unbelievably fucked-up magic or this guy was out of his mind on Burn—a drug even she wouldn’t go near—or both, because he hadn’t blinked, and tiny shards of iron dug into his eyeballs. As she watched, blood welled around one of the largest pieces, started trickling down to the outer corner.

He could certainly see, though. His free hand—the one not clutching its grisly souvenir—shot out and grabbed for her, caught her ankle in a grip so strong she cried out. Horrible cold magic, death magic, ghost magic, flew up her leg, spread through her body and darkened her vision.

Terrible’s foot smashed into the killer’s head; blood sprayed from his nose and mouth. Still the killer’s hand clutched her ankle; still he pulled harder than she would have imagined he could.

Chess went down. Lukewarm blood soaked into her clothes, her hair. Her stomach lurched. She was covered with it, it was all over her, on her skin. …

Terrible’s foot slammed down again, and again. The killer’s face broke. He still didn’t let go, started yanking her closer. What the fuck was going on? He couldn’t be alive, no way could he be alive.

One more heavy stomp. The killer’s head … “exploded” was the only word that seemed to fit, although it wasn’t quite as dramatic as that. It looked like … like a smashed M&M, oozing blood and spilling pulpy tissue from its hard candy shell.

His grip didn’t loosen.

She shoved her blood-slick hand into her pocket to pull out the switchblade Terrible had given her a couple of months before, but Terrible was faster. He crouched down, dug the point of his own knife down into the killer’s arm, hard enough that it scraped the pavement beneath.

The killer started to babble, syllables falling from his misshapen mouth dying-fish-like against the pool of blood.

Terrible dragged his knife to the left, slicing through the killer’s arm; Chess did the same on the other side. Oh, that was so fucking gross, and the magic kept spreading through her body, thicker and heavier every minute like cold crawling slime, making her vision blur further and her head buzz.

Terrible’s eyelids fluttered again. His hand had come in contact with the killer’s wrist as he finished cutting through the skin. Chess reached out to grab him, pushing as much energy as she could into him. Please, please let it work. If he passed out that man-thing was going to get up, she knew it, and no one else would have a hope of defeating it.

Not to mention what it would do to Terrible to pass out in front of everyone, how that would affect him. She couldn’t even think of that.

His head dipped for a second, his face paling further. He started to fall forward. No, no damn it, that couldn’t— She gripped his arm harder, dug her nails in and shoved everything she had into it, as much energy as she could summon.

That, at least, worked. Too bad when he slipped, his foot left the killer’s head, and the killer was moving again. Would that thing never die— No. No, it wouldn’t, would it? It snapped together in her head, a disgusting idea, but the only one she could think of.

The man was possessed by a ghost. Or worse, it was a corpse re-animated by a ghost.

Okay. It was a ghost, and she could Banish it. She just had to disconnect it from that body first, and while that wouldn’t be easy, it was something she knew how to do.

Terrible straightened, kicking out at the killer and shoving it back to the ground, while Chess threw a handful of graveyard dirt and asafetida at it.

It froze.

Her shoulders had started to sag in relief when it moved again. Shit! It must be getting some sort of extra protection from the body it was in, either the body or the magic or both.

Okay. Try something else. She popped the cap of her salt canister and started walking a circle, focusing on the energy. People stepped out of her way and stayed outside the circle, something she hadn’t expected but was grateful for.

But, then, of course they stayed outside it; Downsiders weren’t quite as afraid of magic as they were of Terrible, but probably close. At least of this kind of magic.

She reached the end. Fuck. She needed to use her blood to set the circle, but her knife had just been buried in a dead man’s muscles. The thought of cutting her own flesh with it was just … No.

Oh, this sucked. It fucking sucked. She wiped her knife on her jeans, set down the salt canister, and gritted her teeth. The second this was done, she was going to soak her hand in antiseptic.

“With blood I bind.” The stinging pain of the cut in her left pinkie faded when the circle set in place, strong and pure, giving her that little rush of energy that never grew old.

That was all well and good, but whether or not the circle would hold a ghost possessing a corpse was another question entirely.

Terrible glanced at her, his expression a question. She nodded and he turned to Burnjack, still holding down the killer’s legs inside the circle. “Go on, now, only don’t step on that salt, aye? Don’t fuck it up.”

Burnjack nodded. The second he let go of the killer’s legs they started moving again, kicking and jerking like a toddler having a fit. At almost the same moment Terrible crossed the salt line himself and stood near Chess.

Not too near, of course, but at moments like this she almost didn’t give a shit that they’d decided to keep their relationship secret, that Terrible thought it would keep her safer if people didn’t know they could get to him through her. It made sense, and she agreed most of the time, but right then … right then she was freaked out and covered with cold blood, and she wanted nothing more than to have him wrap those strong arms around her and make her feel safe.

But he couldn’t, so she focused on the killer dragging himself to his feet, his upper body wavering, his flattened head sagging forward praying-mantis-like, too much for the crushed neck to support. She didn’t know how she managed to keep from throwing up; blood drooled from the sick ruin of his face, dripped on his shirt, flew through the air in a vile rain when he shook his deflated head.

He stumbled toward her, arms outstretched. Did he see her—could he see anything through those eyes anymore? Or, no, he probably felt her, felt the power in her blood. Ghosts always did.

She held her breath when he reached the circle. The entire crowd held its breath when he reached the circle, all of them waiting to see what would happen. He reached out—

The energy of the spell on him, of the ghost and the practitioner, slammed into her and knocked the air out of her chest. So cold, so fucking cold, and so dark. The circle was connected to her and the magic probed the circle, finding her, sticking sneaky inquisitive fingers into her, poking and prodding to see where it hurt the most, finding the weak spots. There were so many for it to find.

She tried to push back against it but she didn’t have the strength, not if she wanted to keep the circle in place. It was holding; she would call it a miracle if she didn’t know those didn’t exist, didn’t know it was the Church—the magic the Church had taught her to use—keeping that barrier in place.

How long it would stay in place, she didn’t know. The spell on the corpse was so fucking strong.

She clenched her fists and struggled. Not the time to think about it. Thinking wasn’t going to help anything. What she needed to do was find a way to separate ghost and body.

She could do it with her psychopomp, but there was no way she could get into that circle to summon it, not without Terrible, and she couldn’t take the chance of him collapsing again. No, she’d need to break or weaken the spell first, and that wasn’t going to be easy.

What else was new?

Chapter Four

Murder is a crime. Murder by psychopomp is an evil.

—Psychopomps: The Key to Church Ritual and Mystery, by Elder Brisson