by Stacia Kane
“Dogs? What do you mean?”
Lauren glanced at her; Chess caught the frown but ignored it.
“Well, Miss—Putnam?—all slaughterhouses are required to keep our own psychopomps as well as providing hallowed space for their creation should it be necessary. We only handle a few a year, but of course for Haunted Week—”
“Right, you have a special room. and you have psychopomps in that room?” Her head spun.
“Of course. I guess this isn’t your department, but we’re not permitted to do any slaughtering during that week without a psychopomp present—”
“Who oversaw them? The psychopomps, I mean. Was it Va—Hunt? Or do you have someone else?”
Lauren opened her mouth, but Carlyle spoke before she could. “Yes, it was one of his responsibilities.”
“This is all in order,” Lauren interrupted, handing the employment file back to Carlyle. Chess hadn’t had a chance to look at it, but Lauren didn’t seem to care and frankly neither did she. Who gave a fuck what ID Vanhelm had provided? He’d handled psychopomps here. He’d been in charge of them. He knew about them, in other words.
So she ignored Lauren’s glare. “Can we see that room?”
“Of course.”
It took a minute for Carlyle to find his key—apparently he was as absentminded as he was jittery, although Chess couldn’t help wondering if perhaps some of his nerves were due to their presence—and lead them along an iron walkway above the slaughterhouse floor to the Ritual Room.
By the time they reached it her ears were ringing and her entire body felt sticky and cold. Not just from the fear and death and pain, either; actually, if she were honest, she’d have to admit the floor wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. Loud, yes, but not horrible.
Something else lurked beneath it all, though, something she didn’t have time to stop and think about but that she was aware of, slow and sinuous in the air. Something wrong.
It didn’t feel like Lamaru; didn’t have the same dark, almost maniacal edge to it, the same feeling of evil lurking beneath it.
But something was there, and she didn’t know what it was, although it tingled just out of reach in her memory.
“This is it,” he said, pushing the thick, heavy-looking iron door open and ushering them inside.
The energy hit her harder there, locked in—she assumed—by iron-lined walls. Snippets of information came back to her, hazy memories of lessons she hadn’t paid much attention to since she’d known from the beginning she wouldn’t be working in Compliance or any of the Government-related Church jobs. Slaughterhouses were required to have ritual rooms, just as hospitals were required to have iron-walled wards for terminal patients. Death of any kind posed a double threat during Haunted Week, and no chances could be taken.
The room she stood in appeared to be in total compliance: locked, clean, empty save for a naked lightbulb high overhead. Faint brownish stains lurked on the concrete floor, but that was to be expected. The scent of bleach tickled her nose.
“Erik started working for us just before last Haunted Week.” Carlyle scratched his neck. “He oversaw production in this room during the week, and the cleanup after.”
Chess inched her way along the walls, scanning the floor. “And that included psychopomps?”
Behind her Lauren sighed, but who gave a fuck what she thought.
Carlyle nodded. “We have Elders in the room, of course, for the summoning, but Erik was in charge of the team.”
The closer Chess looked at the room, the less convinced she became that it hadn’t been used in months. She supposed the bleach smell could remain in the air as strongly as it had, with the door locked. She supposed the energy could stay as heavy, too, given the iron in the walls. Determining the age of a spell or a particular energy usually didn’t pose much of a problem, but with iron walls …
It didn’t matter, anyway. Lauren said her name, loud enough to cut through her thoughts; she looked up to see Lauren and Carlyle outside the room again, Lauren with that raised-eyebrow look that made Chess want to hit her. Want to hit her more.
“Will you call me if you hear from him?” Lauren handed Carlyle something that could only be a business card. La-de-da. Chess didn’t have business cards.
Carlyle nodded and smiled, and made all the right responses, but Chess blocked him out. He didn’t have anything to do with the case; she’d known that the minute she shook his hand. He had about as much magical ability as Lex, which meant none at all.
But that room, and Vanhelm …
“Vanhelm handled psychopomps,” she said as they left. Intellectually she knew the parking lot didn’t smell any better than the interior had, but it still felt amazing to be outside again.
“So?”
“So? Lauren, come on. Vanhelm handled psychopomps here. He manipulated a psychopomp at Church yesterday. You can’t tell me—”
“He didn’t ‘handle’ them, he might have seen them once or twice. And you don’t know that he manipulated that psychopomp. And even if you did, that’s not our—”
“It is our investigation. The Lamaru are our investigation, and if they’re doing something with psychopomps, we—”
Lauren sighed. “Okay, Cesaria. Fine. Let’s say for the sake of argument you’re right. How do we prove that? How do we find out what their plan is?”
“We—” Oops.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She’d been about to mention Maguinness, and the possibility of finding and questioning him. Had been about to mention the toad fetish. Damn it. She had real information, information that could have made a difference to Lauren, but she couldn’t share any of it. Instead she had to let it fester in her mind, had to spend hours turning it over and over again to find some way to introduce it.
“Fine.” Lauren pulled her keys out of her little purse. “Look, Cesaria. I appreciate you think you’re right about this. I don’t agree. But even if I did, spending hours in useless conjecture does us no good. We need to work with the facts, and the facts we have are that the Lamaru are murdering people with real physical weapons.”
“This could be a lead—”
“And so could the bodies. You know, the actual evidence we have. Let’s focus on that, okay?”
The worst part was that as much as she wanted to, Chess really couldn’t fault Lauren. Given the information they had—the information they were supposed to have—Chess might very well have thought the same way.
Oh, who the fuck was she kidding. No, she wouldn’t have, at least she hoped she wouldn’t have. But she couldn’t totally fault Lauren, which pissed her off.
“Fine,” she said, because Lauren seemed to want her to say something.
“Good. Now why don’t you meet me at the Church in, say, three hours. We should have some new reports by then. And we can head over to the docks and check out the place where the Lamaru body was found, what was his name?”
“Denby,” Chess said. “Why three hours? Why not head over now?”
“I have a meeting with Daddy.” Lauren frowned and checked her watch, while Chess just managed to restrain her eye roll. “In fact, I’m late. Have you finished studying the file? You said yesterday you were looking into that genetic anomaly—did you finish?”
“I haven’t had time, since—”
“Well, you have time now.”
Chess gritted her teeth. Mustn’t smack the Grand Elder’s daughter. Mustn’t smack the Grand Elder’s daughter. “Yes, I guess I do.”
Lauren plunked herself down into her car. “Good. You can fill me in later. See you then.”
She didn’t wait for a reply. Chess hadn’t expected her to. Instead she watched the car speed out of the lot, and thought about what to do next. Yes, she could head over to the Church and sit for hours in the Restricted Room. She probably should do that. But what the hell did it matter? The case wouldn’t be solved by figuring out what the genetic problems of the victims were. The case would be solved when they caug
ht the fucking Lamaru and figured out what the hell they were doing with psychopomps, and what that had to do with people with genetic problems.
She had her psychopomp with her, in her bag. For the first time ever she thought of it with unease, picturing the skull as something that could erupt into being without warning and attack her. In her years as a Debunker she’d gone through four or five of them; they were tools, something to be controlled. More than that, they were part and parcel of the Church, a symbol of its sovereignty, and as such represented her own power and independence. Her freedom, such as it was.
The Lamaru had attempted to destroy the Church before. Had been attempting to destroy it almost since it had taken over. But they’d never struck at its heart like that, turned its own magic against it in such a direct fashion.
Lauren could say all she wanted that the Lamaru and the psychopomps had nothing to do with each other. Lauren was also welcome to say the earth was flat. Neither happened to be true, and Chess knew it.
Fuck the Restricted Room. Chess had real evidence. And real drugs. She already knew how to use the latter; she had years of practice at it. Now she just had to figure out how to use the former, and she wanted to do both immediately.
She hopped back into her car and headed for the Market.
Chapter Fourteen
Family is the most important thing there is, and you should encourage your beloved spouse to be close to your children.
—Mrs. Increase’s Advice for Ladies, by Mrs. Increase
Yes, fine, she’d been hoping to see Terrible, and yes, fine, her heart sank a little when she scanned the crowd and didn’t spot him. But at least that wasn’t the only reason she’d come there, even if it was the only reason she’d taken four Cepts instead of three before leaving her car.
Nor did she see Maguinness anywhere, which really sucked. She’d been certain he’d be giving his flowery speeches from his makeshift stage. He had to know something. Had to. Why else would the Lamaru be scared of him?
Of course, getting involved with someone who scared even the Lamaru didn’t exactly appeal, but she didn’t have a choice. Her thoughts during the short drive from slaughterhouse to Market had continued along the same lines as her thoughts in the parking lot: she couldn’t stop picturing the skull in her bag suddenly erupting into a thoughtless, emotionless deathbringer.
If she could be made to fear Church magic, what the fuck was left to her?
Well, okay. She knew the answer to that. What was left to her were the pills hiding in their ornate silver box in her bag, the pipe room off to her left. She took solace from them, wrapped them around her. She still believed in them.
She could believe in her own talent, too. As a person she was pretty much useless, but as a witch … That had value.
And she still believed in the man who hated her. Shame that all those things—except her magic—were equally bad for her; was it less self-destructive to ride the knife edge of slow suicide, or to spend most of her time wanting someone who wished she’d just go ahead and slip on that edge?
But she still had things to believe in, things to trust, and she needed to keep that firmly in mind if she wanted to keep her fucking sanity during this mess.
The bright weather had brought Downsiders out in droves; they lounged on crumbling steps and sidewalks with their sleeves pushed up to catch the sun, stood in ragged clumps on the corners, and flooded the Market. Chess pushed her way through the crowds, felt them watching her.
Erik Vanhelm had her picture. Any one of the crush of semi-humanity around her could be Lamaru. Did eyes follow her because she was Bump’s Churchwitch? Because everyone had seen her with Terrible all the time and that had obviously stopped? Or because they planned to grab her, drag her into an alley, and slice her to ribbons?
She gripped her knife handle in her pocket and kept walking. They hadn’t come after her yet, she reminded herself. When she’d tangled with them before, they hadn’t waited long to break into her apartment and attack her.
She wasn’t sure if that thought made her feel better or worse.
Seeing Edsel definitely cheered her up, though, despite having to ignore the concern in his eyes. Did she look that bad?
“Chess.” He smiled and finished taping a price note to a basket of beeswax chunks on the counter. “You right?”
“Right up,” she answered automatically. He’d set up closer to the meat booths, where the background noise hummed louder. Good. It gave her an excuse to lean in tight. “I wanted to ask you about something.”
“Ain’t chattered with Terrible on you, baby.”
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s not what I wanted to ask.”
“Just givin you the tell, is all.”
“I don’t—Whatever. Do you know anything about that potion guy, the one from yesterday? Maguinness.”
“The hairy dude? Give me the creeps, he do.”
“Yeah, him. Have you seen him before, have you heard anything about him?”
Edsel’s head tilted; a ray of sun soaked into his hair. “Ain’t can say as I have. Been here a while’s all the knowledge I got. Sells he potions an magic. Never buy from me, though.”
“Do you know where he gets his supplies?”
“Figure he makin em heself, dig. Ain’t been told he buyin elsewhere.”
Shit. She’d hoped—Wait. “Wouldn’t that cost a lot, or need a lot of space?”
“Guessing him got a big place, aye. Way up. Could be him uses the market there.”
“Shit.” She’d never visited the market closest to the address Maguinness gave when he signed in to the prison.
Wait a minute. If there was a market near his address, why had he started selling out of this one?
Granted, he’d need Bump’s permission to set up his stage there, too. Hell, he’d need Bump’s permission to set up a booth—or rather, if Bump or Terrible or one of Bump’s other people noticed a vendor selling anything they shouldn’t, they’d be shut down. And probably beaten down, too, to make sure the message sank in.
But if he’d been in Downside for a while and had suddenly changed his methods, didn’t that suggest he needed money, and fast?
Unless he’d just decided to branch out, to expand. She saw again those pale, grimy ankles below his too-short pants, the way his shirt hung off his bony frame. No. It may have been safer to pretend to be poor, especially in Downside, but most people couldn’t resist the chance to show off. Especially when trying to convince others of their power and skill. In order to impress, one first had to look impressive.
Appearances were deceiving, sure. But it was elementary psychology, or had been back when psychology was legal. Chess had done enough late-night reading in the Archives to know that, even if a lifetime spent watching empty-pocket shitbags being treated like kings simply because they looked the part hadn’t taught her already.
It was possible Maguinness was rich. He could be richer than Bump for all she knew. But she just didn’t think so. Bump would have known if he was. How much was Bump charging him to work the Market?
Wait. Hadn’t Terrible said Maguinness had a big family to feed, and that’s why he’d asked to work the Market in the first place?
“What’s in yon thoughts?” Edsel watched her from behind his black shades. “Trouble up with he?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Just, could you ask around for me? Anything you hear about him would be a help.”
“Aye, coursen I will.”
“Thanks. Hey, do you know anything about psychopomps?”
“Sure I ain’t know more’n you on that one.”
“No, I mean—Here.” Suppressing a shudder, she pulled the fetish parts in their plastic shrouds from her bag, laid them out on the fabric-covered counter. “I figure they used this to make psychopomps, but it’s also a destruction spell.”
“Aye. Seein the finger there.” Edsel gave one of the bags a tentative poke, yanked his hand back and shook it like he was trying to fling off drop
lets of evil. “Some serious trouble you got with that, baby. Tear the energy around it good, be a bomb with the right words behind it.”
“Right. That’s what I figured. But I’ve never seen a destruction spell with these other ingredients. They look like the kind of thing the Trainers use to make psychopomps, I mean, when they first start summoning them before they release the skulls to the supply room, you know?”
“That one part I ain’t got much knowledge of.”
“But you know the kind of ingredients that go in psychopomp spells. So why add something like the finger?”
“Guessin they either tryin to destroy them some psychopomps, or make them some psychopomps destroy other else. Come to think on it … been hearing some chatter lately on dogs. In the deathhouse, dig. Galena got she a brother up that way, say them ain’t sleeping so well with barking.”
The thrill running up her spine had nothing to do with the goat horn she’d brushed with her hand. “Dogs? At the slaughterhouse?”
“What Galena’s brother tell she, aye.”
Vanhelm in the slaughterhouse. What had Carlyle said? That Vanhelm had been a very dedicated employee, coming in early, staying late after everyone else had left.
Spending lots of time alone there. Alone in a building with its very own psychopomp creation room.
Lauren would have to listen to her now, right?
As soon as the thought formed she knew the answer: No. No, Lauren would not have to listen to her now. She’d tap her pointy little foot and say of course dogs barked in the slaughterhouse; dogs lived there, guarding the building. Dogs lived inside, too, or at least they lived until they walked down their own chutes.
Not all dogs became psychopomps. The skulls of the ones who didn’t were destroyed, but dog bones and fur had other magical uses, as did their blood and eyes and organs and just about everything else. It would all be gathered there and handed over to the Church, or sent to dealers like Edsel.
Not to mention that a thriving little black market existed for their meat, although she didn’t think Lauren would even know about that. The point was, the fact that dogs barked at night at the slaughterhouse wouldn’t make one bit of difference to Lauren.