Finding Magic

by Stacia Kane

  A few minutes of silence while they skimmed over the lame-ass menu full of fried things and trademark symbols. A few minutes of chatter while the gaudily dressed waiter pretended he liked them and took their orders. Not that Chess was interested in food. Work was done and it was dark; she wanted a drink, and she wanted it alone in her room with the door locked and a good book in her hand. Or she wanted a man, someone who’d do what she wanted him to do and then shut up so she could go home.

  What she did not want was a Grande Burger and a Coke, but it was what she asked for, because Jillian hadn’t ordered a drink—a real drink—so Chess figured she shouldn’t, either, despite the pounding in her head, the voices coming back.

  “Gloria said her parents didn’t mess with magic they shouldn’t be messing with,” Jillian said, her eyes scanning the restaurant aimlessly as she talked. “She said they were kind of scared of the whole thing, really, and never got over the loss of their religion.”

  “A lot of people feel that way.” Chess resisted the urge to add “Right?” to the end of the sentence. They’d been taught this; even before she entered Church education she’d been taught this, about the suicides and the small hidden cults and everything else.

  Jillian nodded. “It’s not unusual. Might be why the Warings hired someone else to do their sex spell, too, if they weren’t comfortable doing their own magic.”

  “They did the luck charms. And the protection charms. At least it felt like them.” Did that sound bitchy?

  Apparently not, because Jillian didn’t remark on it. “They did feel like them, yeah. So why would she get someone else to do her sex magic?”

  “Maybe she needed something a little stronger,” Chess said before she thought. Her face warmed. “I mean, that’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Not that she wanted to think of it at all. That sex spell refused to leave her memory, refused to leave her alone.

  Jillian shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, really. The sex spell didn’t feel like ghost magic, and we didn’t find anything that would indicate they were doing ghost magic.”

  “Why’d they keep the sex spell in the closet, though?”

  “Hmm?” Jillian wasn’t looking at Chess; she was looking at the guys by the bar, and they were looking back. Hmm indeed.

  The last thing Chess was going to do was look interested in the men, though. And she wanted an answer to her question. “Why was the sex spell in the closet? Don’t most people keep them under their beds? And—and that spell felt kind of dark to me, kind of, like, frustrated.”

  “Maybe that’s why they kept it in the closet. It just didn’t work and they were planning to get rid of it.”

  “I wonder who made it for them.”

  Jillian flashed a smile at the men across the room. “Look, Cesaria, I get that this is your first case and it’s exciting and everything, but I think you’re reading way too much into this.” The smile softened a little. “If you’re just curious, fine, but this was a crime of opportunity. It’s the third ghost murder like this in the last two weeks. It’s bad, and I’m interested in what you have to say, but we should be focusing on identifying the ghosts and trying to catch them, instead of worrying about where our victims bought their magic.”

  Fuck this. Yeah, fine, Jillian was trying to be nice. At least it looked like she was. And yeah, fine, Chess was new at this, and she was curious, and she was anxious to make a good impression, but she wasn’t an idiot and she wasn’t a child, and fuck Jillian and her condescension.

  Chess stood up. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “Walk by those guys, see if they say anything to you.”

  “Sure.” Ugh.

  But she did, and they did, and by the time she came back from the bathroom sucking another candy and feeling much calmer—the voices quieted, the world softened just a little bit; hey, she wasn’t technically working anymore, right?—the men were firmly ensconced at their table, with Jillian holding court over their newly arrived food.

  Looked like work time was over. Fine. Chess sat down and turned toward the least objectionable-looking of the men, plastering a smile on her face as she did. There was more than one way to forget.

  Chapter Five

  Jillian picked her up at eleven the next morning, late enough that Chess had just about managed to shake her hangover, but still early enough that Jillian’s enthusiastic discussion about the men the night before, and which one she liked, and how he’d asked for her phone number, and blah blah blah whatever, still felt like fingernails on Chess’s mental chalkboard.

  “Thanks for letting that other one give you a ride home, anyway,” Jillian said, taking a swig of coffee. “I appreciate it.”

  “Sure.” That wasn’t all he’d given her, but she wasn’t about to mention that. He’d chased away some memories, distracted her for a few minutes, and that was all she cared about.

  “What was his name, again?”

  “Um … Mike, I think.”

  “Did he ask for your number?”

  “I didn’t give it to him.” Chess pulled out her notepad and started flipping pages in an effort to get Jillian to quit the girl talk. “So where are we going today?”

  “Back to the Waring house. Gloria Waring is meeting us there. Why didn’t you give him your number?”

  “I just didn’t, is all.” Lie. That was a lie and she was a liar. She hadn’t given it to him because she never wanted to see him again, because she never wanted to see any of them again afterward. Because she was weak enough to want them so the least she could do was keep them from hurting her; because if she let them into her life they would hurt her. How could they not? They were people. That was what people did to each other.

  Jillian opened her mouth; Chess spoke before she could. “So Gloria Waring will be there again? What are we going to ask her about? I thought you said it was just a crime of opportunity.”

  “It is. At least we’re ninety-nine percent sure it is. But we want to be a hundred percent sure—we are the Black Squad, after all—so we just want to give the place another go-over. It won’t take long.”

  “Then what?”

  “We’ll see.” Jillian shrugged as she turned the car onto the Warings’ street. “Maybe we’ll head down to the City and talk to the Liaisers, see if they’ve turned up anything on these ghosts, if they’re missing from the City or—”

  “The City?” It came out as a sort of raspy squeak; embarrassing. Chess cleared her throat and tried again. “The City of Eternity? We’ll go down there?”

  “Today or tomorrow, yeah. Oh—you haven’t been down there yet, have you?”

  Chess shook her head. Shit. The City … that was a big deal. An exciting deal, and a scary deal, and she wasn’t entirely sure which emotion she felt more.

  “Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.” Jillian parked the car on the curb outside the Waring house and turned it off. “It’s kind of weird the first time you go, but really, once you see how peaceful it is … it’s really nice, this whole other world, and you get to go there when you die. So it’s like not even really dying. It’s, well, it’s nice, you know?”

  Chess forced a smile. At least she knew exactly what reaction was expected from her on this subject. “I’m just amazed I might get to see it.”

  Jillian’s smile widened. Double shit; Chess knew what Jillian was going to say before she said it, and it wasn’t really what Chess wanted to hear. “Tell you what,” Jillian said, “we’ll go down there either way, okay? After we leave here, we’ll just go.”

  “Oh, hey, don’t put—”

  “Don’t be silly.” Jillian’s hand rested on Chess’s arm for a minute; Chess managed not to react. “I’m here to teach you stuff, right? Just think, you get to go before anybody else in your year. They’ll be so jealous.”

  Like she gave a shit what they thought. “Wow, yeah, that’s … thanks, that’s really great.”

  “No problem.” Jillian grinned a
t her for another few seconds, like she’d just handed Chess a couple thousand dollars for no reason, then opened the car door. “Come on, let’s hurry up here so we can go.”

  Yeah, that really gave Chess incentive to hurry. The thought made her feel even shittier. What was the matter with her? Jillian was being nice to her, she genuinely was. Chess had little doubt that yes, her classmates would be jealous if she got to visit the City before they did. What Jillian was offering was a Big Deal. And here she was, being a fucking bitch about it just because … well, who the hell knew why. Because she was a fucking bitch, really.

  Vaughn and Trent—oh, goody—stood outside, smoking cigarettes and squinting at the sun. They nodded when Chess and Jillian crossed the yard. “Hey.”

  Jillian glanced around. “Anything?”

  “Not really. Just what we saw yesterday.”

  “Gloria Waring is on her way—” Trent started, but stopped when another car, a dark green sedan of some kind, pulled up behind Jillian’s. “Ah. Gloria Waring is here.”

  Not just Gloria, either. At first Chess thought the man with her was her husband, but no. This was a different man, older. Maybe not as old as the Warings—definitely not, she saw as he drew closer—but he had a good ten years or so on Gloria.

  What was he doing there? Who was he?

  Uncle Mark was who he was, at least according to Gloria. “Well, he’s not really my uncle, he’s just—he’s been friends with Mom and Dad for … my whole life.” Her lip trembled; Uncle Mark put his arm around her.

  “Why did this happen?” He looked at all of them, even Chess, like she had any answers. “How did this happen?”

  Jillian spoke. “Sir, the rate of ghost-related deaths in the District is one of the lowest in the world—”

  “But it still happened,” he snapped, and real malice flashed in his eyes, solidifying Chess’s initial instinct. Something about him bothered her; something about him set her on edge. She didn’t like him one bit.

  “Yes, it happened.” Trent stepped forward. “And we’re sorry for your loss. But that’s no reason to get nasty with Inquisitor Morrow. Is it.”

  A moment of stare-down. A moment of something flashing in Uncle Mark’s eyes. How could Gloria stand there and let him touch her, how could she not see—

  Maybe there was nothing to see. Maybe she stood there and let him touch her because there was no reason not to, right? She knew the guy. Chess didn’t. And just because something about him made Chess uncomfortable—well, shit, a lot of people did, didn’t they?

  And she needed to pay attention to what was happening, because Trent had clearly won the little mental battle and the conversation was moving on.

  “Shannon and Joe would never do that sort of thing,” Uncle Mark was saying. The sun hovered just over his head like a halo. How appropriate. Or not. “They were kind of afraid of magic, really. You know, they had very strong beliefs before Haunted Week and never really—”

  He stopped, apparently realizing to whom he was speaking. “I’m not saying they kept believing after Haunted Week or anything. They didn’t, of course they didn’t. Just that they were kind of set in their ways.”

  Chess started to ask how he knew that, how long he’d known the Warings, when Jillian asked for her. Which was good, because Chess didn’t figure she should really be asking any questions.

  “They worked at a mission,” Uncle Mark said. “A religious charity. I was—well, I lived there. I was an orphan, and they took me in, gave me a job.”

  “When was this?” Jillian asked.

  “Oh, um … I was thirteen, so that would have been in 1993. They helped a lot of people. Too bad it was all a lie, really.”

  A lie? Chess looked at him more closely. Yeah, a lot of people who’d believed in the old religions had felt betrayed after Haunted Week; well, of course they had. That was one reason hardly any of their churches or whatevers still stood: angry hordes of ex-believers vented their rage on anything and everything they could, and the fires had burned all over the world for weeks after.

  When the—what was it, the New Hope Mission?—had burned, had Uncle Mark poured the gasoline? Had he stood and watched? Cried? Smiled?

  Jillian didn’t ask, damn it. “And what happened to the mission after Haunted Week?”

  A shadow passed over Uncle Mark’s face. “It closed. Well, of course it closed. They all did, didn’t they?”

  “Uncle Mark stayed with us for a while,” Gloria said. “Before he got a job and got his own place and everything.”

  “I just can’t believe they’re gone.” Mark wiped his eyes, took a few deep breaths. “They—they taught me everything, they made me feel like a real person. They told me anything was possible, and I believed them.”

  The others nodded and made sympathetic noises. Chess didn’t. He sounded … bitter, didn’t he? Again she inspected him; again she saw something in his eyes that she didn’t like, something that made her uncomfortable.

  It wasn’t until the conversation had ended that she realized what it might be—what it probably was. He held out his hand to her; her first instinct was to ignore it, to pull away, even, but with everyone watching she really couldn’t. So she took it. She let his skin touch hers, and his energy shocked her, made her breath catch in her chest and her heart give an unhappy leap.

  He was the one who’d made the sex spell.

  “Maybe he did,” Jillian said. She glanced at Chess. “Sorry. He probably did, if it felt like the same energy to you. And that’s cool, you know? Actually, it’s doubly cool, because it means you made an energy identification, and we learned something more about his relationship with the Warings. About him.”

  Yeah, something gross. Chess hesitated. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to ask; maybe she was being weird wondering. But she couldn’t help it. “Isn’t that kind of … strange, though? To have a friend you’ve known since he was a kid make a sex spell for you?”

  “Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe he’s good at it. I mean, they were married and they had a kid, it’s not like it’s a secret that they had sex.”

  “I know, it just seems—”

  “Takes all kinds, you know?”

  “Sure.” Chess nodded. It was still fucking weird, but whatever. “The spell was strong. Why isn’t he working for the Church?”

  Jillian tilted her head. “You seem really interested in him and that sex spell.”

  “What? No, I just—”

  “Oh, come on.” Jillian patted Chess’s thigh, patronizing and creepy all at once. “I understand. We’re both girls here, right? I can … I can help you, you know. Like, to meet men. I know the Church doesn’t cover that stuff, so … you know, if you want to talk to someone …”

  Why would Chess want to—? Oh. Oh, ick. And oh, like she needed help in that department. The only thing she ever wanted from men was easy to get. “Um, thanks, but, I’m really just wondering about the case. It’s not—it’s not about that.”

  “Well, just the same … you know, your mom probably talks to you about all of this, but—”

  “I don’t have a mother.” They were on the highway again, heading back toward Church—back toward the City of Eternity, shit—and cars zipped past them, flowed around them. What were those people thinking of, talking about?

  If only she was with them instead of trapped with Jillian and her concern.

  Again, not fair. Jillian was being cool. She was a nice person. It wasn’t her fault that Chess felt like Jillian was trying to crack open her soul and poke around inside.

  “Oh. Well, of course, lots of people—did she die during Haunted Week?”

  “I don’t know.” Chess kept her gaze pinned out the window. “Um, I don’t know who she was or anything, I never knew her name. They found me when I was a newborn, outside a hospital. Before Haunted Week.”

  “Oh.” So much hid in that “oh.” Surprise. Maybe a bit of contempt? Because Chess had no ancestry, no family she could trace, like everyone else did. No names of t
he dead to put on her list, to visit through a Liaiser the way normal people did.

  Jillian must have realized she’d let the silence sit a little too long. “Well, my offer still stands. I haven’t had a trainee before, so this is … it’s kind of cool for me, to be honest. I don’t have a little sister or anything, either.”

  Chess nodded. And changed the subject as fast as she could, because unbidden the image of the flask in her bag appeared in her mind. She couldn’t pull out the flask, and she couldn’t continue having this discussion, either. Her throat felt oddly tight as she said, “So, Mark. How did he make such a strong spell when he’s not Church? Wasn’t everyone tested?”

  Pause. “He could have volunteered to be tested, yeah, since he was too old for the mandatory testing. Maybe he did. But lots of people still have some ability even though they aren’t strong enough to work with us. You know that.”

  “Can we check that?”

  Jillian slid the car into the exit lane. Her brows drew together, not like she was worried but like she was trying to think of a way to say something. Uh-oh. Chess had pushed it too far, hadn’t she? Damn it. Jillian was the Inquisitor, not Chess; Jillian had the experience, had dealt with this stuff before. So why hadn’t she just kept her damn mouth shut?

  But Jillian’s reply wasn’t what she expected. “You know … it does kind of stink that we’re not getting a case we can really investigate. I am supposed to be training you. You haven’t said if you actually want to join the Squad after you graduate, but …”

  “Um, I don’t really know what I want to do yet.” Not entirely true, but Chess was pretty sure she didn’t want to join the Squad, and equally sure that Jillian wouldn’t appreciate hearing that.