Читать книгу Sacrificial Magic - Stacia Kane, Stacia Kane - Страница 6

Teach your children from a young age to be careful in their choice of friendships. Unwise acquaintances can have unforeseen consequences.

—Families and Truth, a Church pamphlet by Elder Barrett

And it had, thankfully, but the whole thing—including driving that pussy Riley back to the Church, filing her report, and giving Elder Griffin a quick rundown of Riley’s freakout—took way longer than she’d thought, which pissed her off again. One of the benefits of taking a newbie along was supposed to be sticking them with the paperwork. Just her luck to get the one who couldn’t handle it.

That wasn’t fair of her, but she wasn’t in the mood to be fair. Especially not when the effects of her pills were starting to wear off, leaving her ragged around the edges and even antsier than she would ordinarily be. She grabbed her pillbox from her bag, shook four Cepts into her palm, and downed them with a slug of water before heading for the shower. Rushing through her shower, really, and everything that came after.

That quick, tickly, lifting sensation in her stomach—that feeling that never got old, that feeling she would give her soul for and pretty much had—intensified when she finally got to Trickster’s bar about an hour and a half after leaving the Church. Later than she wanted, but still she had made it, and given the whole quadruple-ghost fun, the result could have been a lot different.

Red assaulted her eyes when she stepped into the building, like walking into a bordello in hell—if hell existed, which it didn’t. Or rather, no one else thought it did. For them the City of Eternity, where everyone’s souls lived on after death, was a peaceful loving place, a quiet rest several hundred feet below the surface of the earth. Only Chess thought of it as hell, as punishment, cold and unrelenting and miserable. Life sucked, yes, but the City was worse.

Then again, sometimes life could be okay. Terrible stood in his usual spot against the back wall, talking to a couple of guys whose names she didn’t remember. They all looked the same to her, to be honest, or maybe it was simply that she never really bothered to look at them. Their faces didn’t interest her. Nothing they said interested her, not when she could be talking to Terrible instead.

Seeing him was like being hit in the chest. Like something exploding inside her, a quick ravenous fire that made her shiver. So bright and so hot it still amazed her that no one else seemed to notice it, that every eye in the place didn’t turn to her while she went incandescent.

But they didn’t—which was a good thing, since spontaneous human combustion would probably raise an eyebrow even there. No one seemed to notice at all. They were all too busy drinking dollar beers, listening to X’s “Johnny Hit and Run Paulene,” and talking or arguing or trying to pick each other up. Spiky heads, heads bald or slick with pomade, like bizarre flowers strewn in a humid half-dead meadow, swaying in a stale-beer breeze. None of them turned to her.

Excellent. She didn’t want to be noticed. She never did, but especially not just then.

She shoved a couple of bucks at the bartender for her own beer and a tip and pushed her way through the field of oblivion-hunters until she reached him, stopping about a foot away, careful to not quite meet his eyes.

He did the same. “Hey, Chess. You right?”

She shrugged. Sipped her beer. “Right up. What time do they go on?”

“Ain’t for certain. Ten minutes maybe, fifteen? Thought you was comin earlier.”

“I was. My trainee lost it, I had to handle it all myself.”

“Handle what?”

She gave him a quick rundown, her mind only half on her words. The rest was examining him, his black hair slicked back with pomade, the width of his shoulders, his height. His face, the face she’d once thought ugly with its crooked, repeatedly broken nose, its scars, its heavy brow and thick muttonchop sideburns. The kind of face people ran away from because the only place it looked like it belonged was behind a loaded weapon. Hell, it made his body look like a loaded weapon. Which it was. And that’s all people saw.

People were shitbags, with their easy smiles and their cold eyes and brutal hearts. She knew that better than anyone. Knew, too, that the face she looked at wasn’t ugly, that it was strong and it was Terrible’s. That meant it was hers to look at as much as she wanted, and that made something she thought might be genuine happiness ride higher in her chest.

“Telling on getting shit done,” he said, “Bump got an ask for you. Whyn’t you come on out back, lemme give you the knowledge.”

She shifted on her feet, glanced at the other guys still standing there, waiting to be included in the conversation. “Can’t it wait?”

“Could, aye, but might as well give it you now.”

The song ended; she nodded in the second or two of silence before the next one started. “Yeah, okay then. But let’s make it fast. I don’t want to miss the band.”

He shrugged. “Neither me. Longer you stand here, longer us take gettin back in, aye?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, still careful not to look him in the eye, and headed down the hall that led to the bathrooms and the back door. Technically it wasn’t a back door. Technically it was an emergency exit. But the alarm wires had been ripped from the wall years before, and even if they hadn’t been it wouldn’t have mattered. Fire trucks didn’t respond to calls from Downside in general; one too many false alarms that ended in muggings and murders had stopped that particular service, and there was little worth saving there anyway.

Terrible pushed it open for her. She ducked under his arm and stepped into the alley, the soft squelch of still-wet dead leaves and garbage under her shoes reminding her for one unpleasant second of the earlier fun in the construction swamp. She couldn’t decide which one smelled better, but neither was pleasant.

But while the building had been full of people and ghosts, the alley was empty. Not even any light from the tenement windows behind occupied the space; only the dull glow of the gibbous moon overhead showed her that no living beings—no human ones, at least—waited there.

Terrible obviously noticed that, too. The sound of the exit door slamming back into its frame hit her ears at the same time his body slammed her against the back wall, farther into the shadows where no one could see him kiss her long and hard.

Had she thought seeing him made her insides explode? She’d been wrong. This was an explosion. This was better than anything else; sometimes she thought it was even better than her pills. At his touch something inside her that had been tense and twisted and black finally relaxed. At his touch something inside her that was constantly terrified found a little security.

Security Chess hoped and hoped would last, despite the nagging voice in the back of her mind that insisted it couldn’t, it wouldn’t, she didn’t deserve it, and she should just give up on the very idea.

Fuck that stupid voice. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pushed her hands down the collar of his shirt to feel his bare skin warm against hers. He was always warm. His palms left shivering trails of heat from her face to her throat, blazed up her thighs and ribcage, over her breasts.

Finally he pulled away enough to meet her eyes. That jolt of electricity, the one she’d been so careful not to feel inside the bar, hit her. Her cheeks tightened, her mouth curved into a grin she couldn’t stop. “I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it at all.”

“Aye, me too. Glad you did. Feelin like I ain’t seen you in weeks.”

“It’s been three days.”

“Feels longer. We all clear now?”

She nodded. The past week had been the first time in her life she wished she wasn’t what she was, wasn’t a witch, didn’t have extra power in her blood that meant anyone coming in intimate contact with it would be affected by it; wished the Binding effect of that contact wasn’t part of the marriage ceremony and so meant a commitment she didn’t think either of them was ready to make.

If she wasn’t a witch it wouldn’t matter. Marriages were bound by blood and magic combined, not one or the other, so they required the Church’s assistance. But magic was in her blood, and that meant spending six days burning with frustration.

His eyebrows rose; his hands wandered with more purpose. “You ain’t really wanna stay here, aye? Whyn’t we head on out now instead?”

“I thought you wanted to see the band,” she teased.

“Changed my thought. Let’s us go. Back my place, aye?” He was smiling, that smile she’d always loved, while his hands distracted her and his body warmed her through her clothes. Summer drew closer every day, and the temperatures reflected that, but it seemed like she was always cold when he wasn’t around. “C’mon.”

“My place is closer.”

“Aye.” He leaned in to bite her neck; she shivered. “But mine’s got thicker walls, dig, an I plan on makin you scream a few times afore we get to sleeping.”

It took her a minute to draw enough breath to speak, through a throat suddenly too tight for anything but a gasp. “I thought we decided we wanted to actually get out tonight, though.”

“And done it. Now us can go back in.”

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. It was becoming more difficult to talk, especially since he’d started sucking gently on her neck, making her dizzy.

“Think on this one, then, Chessiebomb. Nobody seein us right here, aye?” His nimble fingers popped the top button of her jeans. “Then we still out.”

“No way.” She giggled and swatted at his hands. “Last time I got a splinter—”

The sound of his phone ringing, a loud jangly sort of ring, cut her off.

“Ignore it,” she suggested, but she knew he couldn’t. They both knew he couldn’t. Midnight was practically the start of a working day in Downside, yes, but she doubted anyone who’d be calling him at that hour would have good news.

She was right. Within seconds of answering the phone his face darkened; darkened and took on that look she’d only seen a few times before, that lowered-brow-narrowed-eyes look of absolute rage. The kind of look that would be the last thing the person who caused it would ever see. His fingers tightened on her waist.

“Aye,” he said. “Get em—aye. On my way.”

Her heart sank. Looked like they weren’t going back to anybody’s place, to anybody’s bed. At least not for a long time.

His phone snapped shut. “Pipe room’s burnin.”

“What?”

He was already walking up the alley, back toward the street, holding her hand in an almost painful grip. “Fuckin Slobag, ’swhat. Pipe room up Sixtieth, green one. On fire.”

She didn’t want to say “What?” again, but she couldn’t help it. She couldn’t seem to get any other words into her head. A pipe room burning? All those people, even on a weeknight. All that Dream, waiting to be smoked, waiting to send those people into a soft golden fog. Gone. “What?”

He didn’t answer. She had to trot to keep up as he pulled her along, dropping her hand just before they emerged from the alley. She almost wished he wouldn’t, wished they hadn’t decided to keep everything secret. Certainly she could have used more physical contact at that moment. With every step the awful picture in her mind grew clearer: burning bodies in a pit of flames, exploding glass, storerooms full of Dream knobs, their smoke wasted. She wrapped her arms around herself to still the shakes.

Terrible’s car, a black 1969 BT Chevelle, waited for them in the circle of pale yellow cast by one of the few working streetlights. “Waited” being the operative word. To Chess, the car always seemed ready to leap from its resting place, ready to start mowing down pedestrians just because it could.

But it didn’t. It stayed silent and still while Terrible opened the door for her, closed it behind her, and got in on the driver’s side.

On their way to the fire, to the—Wait. “The one on Sixtieth? Didn’t you say nobody’s in that one, Bump’s doing something else with it?”

“Aye.” The car plowed away from the curb in a squeal of rubber. “Were thinkin on makin it storing rooms, dig, gettin other shit done there too. Figured on setting a new room a block up.”

“So no one died.” The tightness in her chest eased a bit.

“Naw. Least not what Bernam say. Maybe one or two in there, ain’t can say certain. But nobody ought, leastaways.”

“Good.”

He glanced at her, swinging the heavy car right, north on Sixtieth. “Aye, cepting, how Slobag knew nobody in there?”

“If the room’s closed—”

“Ain’t hardly nobody got that knowledge, though. Nobody been told. Just let em know tonight, first night it shut down.”

“Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he didn’t care who he killed.”

Terrible snorted. “Still a fuck of a chance.”

She sat for a few seconds watching his profile before finally resting a hesitant hand on his thigh, not sure it was welcome. Not sure if she should say anything. Anger still hovered around him, filled the car and tried to find a way into her body. She felt it like icy fingers sliding over her skin.

Not much she could do when he was in that kind of mood, at least not in the car on the way to check the wreckage.

Not to mention … he hadn’t said anything. She didn’t know if he was thinking it, if he’d thought of it. But he probably had.

If Slobag had some sort of inside information about Bump’s operations, he had to be getting that information from somewhere. And there she was, the one person Terrible knew for a fact had been in Slobag’s pocket; or to put it more bluntly, Terrible knew she’d been in Slobag’s son’s bed, for months. Knew she still talked to him.

How long before she became a suspect?