Unholy Magic Read online

  Terrible sniffed. “Smells like that dude Tyson,” he said. “He skin were kinda like that.”

  “Really? I don’t remember.”

  “You ain’t got as close as me.”

  That was certainly true, and she was glad, too. Tyson was a Host, someone who’d made a deal with a spirit to share his body in exchange for power—as opposed to a Bindmate, where the energy was shared but the body kept separate. Not an ordinary spirit in Tyson’s case, she didn’t think, but she hadn’t wanted to stick around to find out, especially not after Terrible attacked him and his guest decided to make an appearance. It felt like it had happened years before. It had only been months.

  “Thinkin maybe they use the box, then leave it here? Ain’t straight, aye?”

  “No, it isn’t.” She closed the box. “But who knows why people do things. Maybe it just didn’t work as well for them as they’d hoped, or maybe it was already here and they used it and didn’t take it with them.”

  “It feel off to you?”

  “Vibes like everything else. The same energy, I mean.”

  He nodded. “What else need a checkout back here?”

  “Shit. As much of it as we can, really. There’s probably not much point using the Spectrometer, not if it isn’t an active haunting—the ghost involved is a traveler, you know?—but we should see if there’s anything more about the human Bindmate or witch who summoned the ghost, in case that’s what the psychopomp was for.”

  Together they moved around the walls as best they could, Terrible behind her with the light. The bricks hummed with energy when she ran her bare palm over them. Something had definitely happened in here. She just had no way of knowing when.

  “Can you move that chair? I want to get behind it.”

  He was only a deeper shadow in the now dark alley, picking up the broken skeleton of the chair and hauling it out of the way.

  Her foot landed on something squishy. A rat. It squeaked at her, shrill in the night, and she gasped and leapt back. Terrible caught her shoulders, but she didn’t need it. She had her balance.

  Still, she stood for a few seconds longer and let him touch her, fighting the rising tide of desire caused by that damn spell but unable to fight the simple need to be touched, in the cold darkness where a girl had been murdered. How his hands stayed so warm, even in the winter cold, she didn’t know, but the heat seeping through her sweater and coat felt fantastic.

  It probably would have felt even better if she weren’t afraid the ghost would reappear at any moment—the ghost or, worse, Slobag’s men again. With just Terrible and herself here there was no way she could call Lex and put a stop to it. The thought made her shudder. At least that’s what she thought it was.

  “You right, Chess?”

  She cleared her throat, pulled away from the weight of his hands. “Yeah. Yeah, right up. I just want to get this done with. It makes me nervous.”

  “Naw, no need. Nothin show up we ain’t handle, aye? You an me.” The light started moving again.

  She turned away, not sure how to respond but pleased anyway. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

  “You want me ring up Red Berta, see if she free for a chatter? Be good to get the knowledge sooner.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  Where was her speed? This day was taking much longer to end than she’d hoped. The image of her couch, her semi-warm apartment, the cold beer in the fridge, hovered before her. She sighed.

  Normally she didn’t take speed when she was trying to work; experience had taught her it interfered with her body’s reactions to ghosts, masked them. But she wasn’t trying to detect a ghost at the moment. That a ghost existed was Fact and Truth; she didn’t need her abilities to tell her that. All she needed at the moment was whatever clues she could see or find, and she was fucking tired, too, running on less than five hours’ sleep and an empty stomach in the wintry air.

  Terrible handed the light back to her, picked up his phone. She wondered how many numbers he had programmed in his. More than three, she guessed, choking down a couple of Nips.

  The light picked up a few smears of ectoplasm on the bricks while Terrible’s voice rumbled behind her. No surprise there, but further confirmation. A ghost and its Bindmate. Just your average cozy, unholy, psychotic couple.

  “Berta ain’t free.”

  She glanced back and saw him standing there, a rueful look on his face. “Say she house too full to think. Got all the girls there, dig, keepin off the street. Try again on the later.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Hungry?”

  Not with that much speed in her system, she wasn’t, or rather she wouldn’t be once it kicked in. But she could have a Coke, nibble at a few fries or something. “You buying?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then yeah, I guess so.” What the hell. At least the restaurant would be warm—she knew where he’d take her, where he always took her, the diner a few blocks from her place. He liked their shakes, and the burgers they gave him—and by extension her, when she was with him—had a much higher beef content than what everyone else got, so they were actually decent. She also knew it would be loud and crowded and bright, and at that particular moment nothing sounded better.

  She could use some life around her just then.

  Chapter Eight

  Punishment of both crime and sin is the exclusive dominion of the Church. That punishment begins before death. Be assured it continues after it.

  —The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 220

  There were lots of better ways to spend the free hours after Holy Day services, but Chess wasn’t in a position to enjoy any of them. A pity, that. She had a few keshes freshly rolled at home, a blanket without too many holes in it, and a disc copy of ten episodes of Roger Pyle’s television show—not her usual thing, but she figured it could be a decent afternoon. And a decent afternoon was worth a lot these days.

  Instead she was walking down the long corridor connecting the main Church building to the outbuildings, ready to go farther still into the spirit prisons. According to the Log Books, Charles Remington resided in Prison Ten; Chess intended to see if he was still there.

  She wasn’t sure if she preferred him to be or not.

  Her footsteps echoed around her in the tunnel-like hallway, making it sound as if she wasn’t alone. As if there was an army following her into the sterile misery of Prison Ten. She resisted the urge to turn around and check. This hall was for Church employees only. She’d had to press her index finger to the ID pad and use her key to get in; the door locked automatically behind her and she hadn’t heard the buzz of it opening again. Pale gray light filtered through the smoked glass skylights, pale blue joined it from the special bulbs lining the jointure of wall and ceiling. Of all the places in Triumph City she could possibly be at that moment, this was undoubtedly the safest.

  The hair on the back of her neck didn’t quite believe it, but her brain did, and that was all that mattered. And bad as the spirit prisons were—and they were bad—at least they weren’t quite as awful as the City itself.

  Most people wouldn’t take that view, but then, most of them didn’t see the eternal silent peace of the City as a terrifying, isolating vacuum, either.

  She pressed her finger into the pad by the door, used her right hand to turn the key. The door buzzed and opened, and Chess entered the prison anteroom.

  Goody Chambers, the prison Goody, sat behind her desk, her black bonnet neatly tied beneath her pointed, whiskery chin. Sometimes Chess wondered exactly how old the woman was; she hadn’t visibly aged a day in the nine years Chess had been with the Church, as if she’d become a septuagenarian in early middle age and stayed there.

  “Good morrow.” The Goody reached for her pen, poised it over her log. “Have you a message, or are you here to see a prisoner?”

  “A prisoner.”

  “Name and date of death?”

  Chess told her.

  “Sign here, please.”

 
While Chess scrawled her name the Goody took a pale blue velvet robe from a hook. “You’ll need to put this on. You visited the prison during training? Very well. You may leave your clothing and effects in the dressing room there. I’ll call the elevator for you.”

  Chess’s fingers shook as she unlaced her boots. She did not want to do this. She glanced over her shoulder, checked the closed door for holes and saw none. Good. A chance to shove a couple of pills down her throat, hope they calmed her nerves a little before she got on the elevator. Showing any sort of emotion—especially fear—to the dead was a huge mistake. To show it to imprisoned spirits, trapped in iron cages, subjected to punishments, was like slicing open a vein and waving it around in front of a starving tiger. Not a good idea.

  She pushed the image from her mind and focused on the black chalk she pulled from her bag, focused on putting power into the sigils she drew on her forehead and right cheek, on choosing which of her unfinished tattoos to activate by completing. Most of her tattoos were done, but a few were too powerful to keep active all the time.

  By the time she was done marking, her entire body felt warm and tingling with power. The pills hadn’t kicked in yet, but it didn’t matter; she knew they would, and she knew she could do this. This was her job. This was the one thing in the world she was good at, and she refused to be afraid.

  The robe smelled faintly of incense and smoke, comforting smells because they reminded her of Church and of … well, she didn’t know why smoke would be comforting, but it was just the same. It made her feel safe, as if the thin napped fabric was armor. Which in a way it was.

  Goody Chambers handed her a file folder—Remington’s file—and a bag of graveyard dirt. “It’s only generic, but it will help if there’s a problem.”

  “Thanks.” Chess had some melidia as well, which she tucked into one of the robe’s pockets. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” the Goody informed her as she held the elevator door open. “After that we sound the alarm.”

  Chess nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Good luck. Facts are Truth.”

  “Facts are Truth,” Chess replied, and the elevator door slammed shut, leaving her alone to descend deep below the surface of the earth, to the realm of the criminal dead.

  Silence prevailed in the City of Eternity, expectant, pained silence like the hush before the guillotine blade falls. Occasionally metal clanked against metal, echoing in the empty space.

  Prison Ten was not the City, though, and the first indication of that difference was the blast of heat from the roaring fires, the sizzle of ectoplasm on hot coals. Chess was grateful for the thin robe; her regular clothes would have been soaked with sweat in minutes. Ghosts hated heat and disliked fire. Chess wasn’t particularly fond of them either, but if the ghosts down here could take their punishment, so could she. Especially since after she’d checked whether Remington was in here, she could leave.

  The iron walkway rattled under her feet as she made her way into the prison, a cavern so large she couldn’t see where it ended. Across the red-hot expanse, bottomless and spiked with flames, all she saw were ghosts, hanging from the ceiling in iron cages through which mild electrical currents ran, forcing them into solid form and making escape impossible—or more impossible, given that every object in the room had been charmed and bolstered with magic.

  And they watched her, the dead, with their empty eyes and wide-open mouths. Her skin itched like heavy withdrawals, crawled and tingled so hard she imagined they could all see her vibrating on the walkway. Power thrummed through her body like a line of speed times ten as her tattoos reacted to their energy and her muscles to their hate.

  Sparks flew into the air on her left; gears in need of oil screeched high in the smoky, too-thin air. It took her a second to realize what was happening, to remember what to do, but she made it in time, ducking below the hot iron railing before the first metal cage passed over it. Every hour or two the ghosts were moved to a new torture station. Some got a respite. Chess knew better than anyone how that could be the worst form of torture, that brief peace. Even a ghost knew it wouldn’t last, had to wait as the minutes ticked by too fast, knowing the pain was coming again.

  Through the slats in the railing she watched the cages glide over her head. Ectoplasm dripped like sweat onto the walkway and oozed through the diamond-shaped holes.

  She stood up again, kept walking, careful to keep her gaze straight ahead. How long had she been down there? Five minutes, seven? The last thing she wanted was for an alarm to sound.

  The walkway turned and twisted, angling between the fires. To her left iron spikes drove themselves through the cages, through the ghosts. To her right two cages swung back and forth through high bluish flames. Minor punishments. The serious stuff was farther in, farther than Chess would go even to find Charles Remington. If he was there to be found.

  Sweat dripped into her eyes. She wiped it away, turned another corner. Each cage had a plaque bearing the spirit’s name; Remington should be in this sector.

  He was.

  His cage hung upside down over a vat of boiling water, dipping down, hanging for long minutes, then coming back up. Luckily she caught him on an upswing, got a good enough glimpse to know he was indeed Charles Remington.

  Or not so luckily. Much as it pleased her to see him getting the punishment he deserved—those mortuary photographs, those empty eye sockets, would stay with her for a long time—this opened up a whole new set of problems.

  Remington was in prison, his spirit bound in iron and tortured. In prison, and therefore not on the streets of Triumph City killing prostitutes.

  So if it wasn’t Remington … who was it?

  This time of day the library contained only a few people; the library Goody—Goody Martin today—and a couple of students at the far end, huddled together at a table in the Basics section. Chess had felt their gaze on her a few times already, ignored it. None of their business who she was, what she was doing, or why her hair still stood in sweaty spikes off her forehead.

  This was pointless. A ghost was killing hookers, a ghost she had no idea how to track or find short of catching it in the act, and there was no way she would ask any of the girls to act as bait. Not just out of altruism, either; who knew what Bump or Lex would do if she got one of their girls killed?

  The Lamaru could be responsible, no question there. But she didn’t think it was them, not this time. They always identified themselves. They were far bolder than this. And frankly she just couldn’t see any possible way the deaths of a few hookers could connect to the Lamaru’s incessant drive to overthrow the Church.

  Chess shook her head and dug out her camera. The symbol branded onto Daisy’s skin had to tell her something. Anything.

  It didn’t. The image sat on the digital screen as silent as Daisy. She’d never seen those symbols before, she was certain of it.

  Okay, so they weren’t runes. What then?

  She grabbed a pen and her notebook and opened to a fresh sheet. Copying sigils could be dangerous. Most of them only needed to be created in order to be activated, and since she had no idea what this one meant or what it would do, she wasn’t about to copy it straight out. Instead she tried separating the elements, piecing them together one at a time.

  It probably wouldn’t help. Even if she could see what each individual part was, she’d have no idea what it meant. But it was something, and she needed to do something.

  That bit there, if she followed the line around, could be an A … that part could be a rune, maybe Higam? Higam was protective, though, and she couldn’t imagine why someone would brand a protective rune onto the breast of a woman they were about to ritually murder.

  Damn! If only she had some way to tell which layer was which, what elements overlapped, she could make so much more progress with the fucking thing. As it was, she—

  “Good morrow, Cesaria. Do I find you well?”

  Her guilty fingers flexed, try
ing to crush the paper, but she caught herself before they tore it completely from her notebook. No better way to convince someone that something unethical was happening than to destroy evidence in front of them.

  Elder Griffin probably wouldn’t suspect anything no matter what, but still. “Very well, sir. And you?”

  He nodded. Without his hat, his pale hair rose in waves from his high forehead and caught the light from the fluorescents overhead.

  He sat down opposite her, folding his nimble hands on the tabletop in front of him. “How goes your case?”

  “Okay, I guess. I’ll know more tonight when I go back.”

  “Most interesting, that one,” he said. “I admit I have my own doubts.”

  “Doubts?”

  “Roger Pyle has such a reputation for honesty and good works. His anti-drug charity alone … Well, you saw the information in his file.”

  Anti-drug charity? Shit, she hadn’t even bothered to look it up. Yet. She would have, she hadn’t forgotten, but she’d never heard of the Daylight Fund before. Anti-drug anything wasn’t exactly on her radar.

  She nodded, keeping a smile plastered across her face. “Of course. He is a very nice man, actually.”

  He’d also been high as shit when she met him, no question. Hypocrite.

  “Do you think you’ll have an answer quickly?”

  Another nod, an emphatic one. “Absolutely.”

  “Excellent. I do enjoy his show. I hope very much he proves to be innocent of any wrongdoing.”

  “Surely you don’t want him to be haunted?”

  He gave a little laugh, one of the few she’d ever gotten from him. “Of course not. But I understand he has some rather … unscrupulous companions. Well, one can hardly help it, I imagine, in that sort of industry. I don’t wish ill on anyone, Cesaria, but I would be quite disappointed to hear that someone who brings joy to so many people is a liar and a criminal, one who denies the Truth for his own gain.”

  His black-ringed eyes glittered faintly as he shook his head. “I apologize, Cesaria. I find myself in a rather philosophical mood today.”