Sacrificial Magic (39 page)

Another angry glance at Lex and Beulah, who both continued to look chastened, although she suspected the impact of her anger was beginning to wear off.

Time to call Terrible, and say … what? That she knew who the snitch was, sure. But to tell him Lex knew about his—well, his problem? His problem that she’d caused. His problem that was evidence of her crime. His problem that she felt proud of and guilty for every time it came up, every time she thought of it.

With a shock she realized that wasn’t all she felt. Her tattoos tingled. Her tattoos tingled, and the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and her mouth felt dry, and that wasn’t anger or drugs. That was a ghost.

Before she finished the thought Lucy McShane appeared, gliding across the cafeteria floor, the thick steel bars she held catching the dim light and reflecting it back so sharp it hurt Chess’s eyes.

Fuck. Terrible would have to wait. She started backing up, moving casually, unafraid—showing fear to a ghost was the sort of mistake people didn’t live to regret—and glanced at Lex and Beulah. “You guys go find someplace to sit, and don’t— Well, you know, Lex.”

He nodded. Good. He’d tell Beulah not to make eye contact, to keep her movements slow and calm. It might not make a difference; ghosts picked victims the way Chess picked Cepts, just grabbing whichever ones were within reach. But sometimes it helped.

In this case it certainly appeared to. Lucy didn’t even glance in Lex and Beulah’s direction. She headed straight for Chess, gliding slowly on legs almost fully formed. So much more powerful than she’d been, cranked by ritual sacrifice. She looked bizarrely like a bride on her way down the aisle, stepping slow and dignified, pale against the darkness behind, anticipating killing Chess like it was her wedding night. Something she’d waited years for.

Either she didn’t see the altar set up behind Chess, didn’t understand what it was, or just didn’t care, because she didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Ghosts rarely were. She kept her slow pace, kept watching Chess with rigid intensity; she had all the time in the world, at least so she thought.

She was definitely stronger than she’d been. Her ethereal form still wavered, revealing the underlying decay, the bones, the gruesome Truth behind the moonglow beauty of death, but Chess suspected that had to do with the power’s source—murder always carried a stain—rather than weakness. Lucy glowed too brightly, was too well formed everywhere else, looked too cunning.

Chess reached her stang, the bag of Lucy’s graveyard dirt, the salt right nearby with her psychopomp. Just seeing it all gave her strength, made her heartbeat slow as her fear fell away. This was what she did, what she did well. The one thing in the world she knew without a doubt she was good at—hell, she was
very
good, and that made her proud, and that pride gave her confidence, and she knelt quickly to fill her hands, to feel the familiar tingle of power that came only from graveyard dirt.

One more breath, slow and even. Lucy’s bars kept swinging, like metronomes marking her invisible steps as she drew closer, watching her.

Another breath. She had to pick the exact right moment, when Lucy was close enough to hit with thrown
dirt but not so close that Chess was within range of those steel bars.

Another breath. Get ready, deep inhalation, fill her lungs with air so she could cast her words of power clear and strong—

“Dallirium espirantia!”

The words—designed to intensify the power of the dirt to freeze ghosts, to keep them stiff and controlled for longer than the dirt alone—flew from her mouth, smooth and clean. Her power flew with them, erupting from her in a wave, and the dirt went with it all. She was a vortex; she was the source, something bigger than herself, and the rush overwhelmed her. A perfect cast. Perfect.

Until it went horribly, horribly wrong.

The power that had flowed so smoothly from her flew back, knocked her down, tore through her like a chain of rusty nails and spikes. She fell into her stang, landed on it and on her cauldron and thankfully unlit firedish. Scalding water soaked through her jeans; three fingers on her left hand caught the sharp end of her stang base and were sliced open. What the fuck, what the fuck had just happened, that wasn’t supposed to happen—

Lucy was grinning, and she raised her cold bone-bright hands so the steel she held caught the light in a quick flash like shooting stars in the darkness. Not frozen. The spell hadn’t caught, she was triumphant, she looked at Chess with unholy glee, making terrified rage boil in her chest.

The dirt wasn’t from Lucy’s grave.

It hadn’t been her dirt, which meant it had no power over her at all, not even the power generic graveyard dirt carried. Hadn’t been hers, so it had a different signature or whatever the hell Elder Payne had called it, a signature that actually gave Lucy a jolt of power. Using the wrong dirt was bad news, a bad idea, a very, very
bad thing to do, and she’d done it, and she’d done it in front of two other people—two living people—who were counting on her to save them.

She’d failed. Again.

It wasn’t just the wrong dirt, though; she knew it, felt it when the energy backlashed at her. Lucy’s was mixed with another, the energy of the living. The energy of a witch. Lucy had been bound down; magically held to the surface of the earth by the power of her summoner—her summoners—and by whatever item they’d used to summon her. Whatever personal items Aros and Chelsea held and controlled. Chess couldn’t Banish Lucy, not without that object, and she had no idea what it was or where in Downside—hell, where in Triumph City, where in the District, where in the country—it might be. Sure they might have it with them when—and if—they headed to Mercer and Twenty-fifth, but there was no guarantee, and to find out, Chess first had to get past Lucy with her weapon and her cruel triumph.

Fuck, that was bad.

While these thoughts screamed through her head in a blast of pain and horror she scrambled away from Lucy, trying to regain her footing, trying to grab her bag and keep from having her bones turned into dust at the same time.

The steel bars whistled down. She managed to avoid one of them, rolling to her left, but that only put her closer to the path of Lucy’s other bar. A glancing blow, and fucking lucky for that because had it not been, it would probably have broken her hip. As it was her vision went white for a second, the pain too intense to feel; for the space of a breath she hung suspended, waiting for it to hit.

It did, with a crash that knocked the air from her lungs and every bit of strength from her muscles. She
managed to gasp, harsh and loud in the near-silence, before the bar fell again.

She didn’t know how she managed to get away. Somehow she convinced her body to move, to roll farther to her left. Lucy’s swing hit so close it caught her shirt with its jagged metal tip, pegged her there to the floor for a hideous moment before she tore the fabric to get away.

A further roll, until she hit her knees. Push off with her hands and toes, try to stand, stand so she could run, stand so she could dig into her bag and get her generic dirt and asafetida. No, she couldn’t Banish Lucy, not while Lucy was bound like that, but she could sure as fuck lock her down, and she would.

She glanced back to see Lucy struggling to pull one of her bars away from the combined efforts of Lex and Beulah, while the other one rolled away from them. A second of warm gratitude and something like pride before it occurred to her that fucking right they should help; not only was it their lives, too, but they’d been sneaking behind her back, spying to hurt Terrible, and Beulah might have tried to kill her. They owed her.

Still, it was an enormous help. The generic dirt should be in her bag, where was it? Where the fuck—

A scream from Beulah, but Chess didn’t have time to look. She was too busy grabbing her asafetida, digging her hand into the bag of graveyard dirt, which was—of course—empty. Could her night go any fucking worse?

Not a good idea to have that thought. Fate hated her enough as it was.

Her salt had rolled a few feet away. She snatched it up, popped the lid, and stumbled over to where the others still struggled. Well, Lex and Lucy struggled; Beulah crouched on the floor, clutching her head. Shit! Shit, what had happened to her, what had happened that was Chess’s fault—

She’d find out soon enough. At that moment she
needed to get Lucy circled, locked in place without first freezing her with dirt.

She might as well try. She raised her left fist with its three sliced fingers, let her blood pool in her palm and run down toward her elbow to soak into her sleeve. Better than dropping it on the floor—or rather, letting more of it drop on the floor—but not great; ghosts could smell blood, sense it, especially powerful blood like hers.

All the more reason to hurry. She ran around Lucy and Lex, staying low, her injured hip screaming at the movement even louder than it had when she walked upright.

A jog in the line as she dipped in to avoid enclosing Beulah in the circle—if Beulah had to be moved she could break the line—and she was done. She lowered her left hand and watched the drops fall, black in the darkness, black against the pure white salt, a Rorschach blot in her own blood that looked like the image of death.

She ignored the superstitious shiver slithering up her spine. At least she didn’t need to ready herself to summon power; she had it, pain and anger flowing through her like her body had become a hydroelectric plant. “With blood I Bind!”

The circle snapped into place, clean and strong. Her breath left her chest in a relieved sigh; she’d been holding it, afraid the circle wouldn’t cast. The way things were going for her, that seemed a pretty reasonable fear.

But it had.

“Lex,” she said. “Go ahead and step out of the circle, but try not to break it, okay?”

Lex and Lucy looked down at the same time. Luckily Lex’s reflexes were faster. With a speed and agility that surprised even her—and she’d seen both before—he jumped back, cleared the salt line, and almost fell when the bar swung at him, missing him by less than an inch.

Chess grabbed for it on the backswing and barely
managed to avoid being knocked into the circle. Her blood-slick left hand was too wet to get a good grip; Lucy’s eyes widened, and Chess saw she might have a chance to get the bar away more easily. Weapons were good but power was better, power was what ghosts hungered for, killed for. They’d almost always go for it if they had the chance, and that power sang thick in Chess’s blood.

“Take the bar,” she gasped. Lucy was trying to swing that bar with every bit of strength she possessed, and that was considerable, even without Chess being disadvantaged by her wounded left hand.

Lex had started moving before she spoke. His hands closed around the pole, his arms around her, his chest warm against her back. She ducked, already missing that warmth, and stepped far enough away to give him some room.

Shit, she hoped this worked.

Drops of her blood flew through the air when she swung her hand; drops falling into the circle, into Lucy, who wavered for a second. She’d felt it. Oh, awesome, she’d felt it.

Chess stepped closer, let her hand lead the way. Let it lure the ghost, taunted her with it. Closer and closer until her fingertips turned ice cold where they came in contact with Lucy, like dipping them in a freezing mist.

The rotting skull lurking behind Lucy’s face glowed, its mouth wide open in a silent roar, becoming even brighter when Chess’s blood touched Lucy’s ethereal body, that skull like the embodiment of her unholy hunger, her furious, inhuman greed.

Chess chanced a quick peek at Lex, found his eyes focused on her, on Lucy, his pose tense and expectant. Waiting. There was one good thing, at least, one thing going her fucking way. He knew what she was doing, she didn’t have to say it or explain it, and he was ready.

She pulled her hand back, yanked it about six inches away from Lucy, and in the opposite direction from Lex.

And it worked. Thank her Church education and the single-minded lust of the dead, Lucy turned toward Chess’s hand, took one of hers off the pole to make a grab for it, and Lex snatched the steel away.

Lucy realized what had happened, reached for it, reached for Chess as she backed away. No more beauty in front of the skull; her features twisted, her expression turned feral, her form wavered with her rage.

All in vain. The circle held and Lucy was trapped inside it. It wasn’t the first thing that had gone right, no, but it still felt good. Would have felt better if Chess was able to properly Banish Lucy, but she couldn’t have everything. Of course.

What the hell to do next? Her circle would hold, at least unless and until someone deliberately broke it. And unfortunately, Chess knew someone who’d be glad to do just that. Two someones: Aros Burnett and Chelsea Mueller. They had to be stopped, and fast.

She turned to ask Lex to help her pick everything up—damn, she wished she could ask him to hit the streets with her—but the words died on her lips. Beulah still huddled on the floor. Not moaning any longer, sitting up with Lex’s arm around her, but tears ran down her face and her left eye was already swelling, turning a dark mottled color Chess could see even in the darkness.

Shit like that made it kind of hard to remember what Beulah had done to her—what Beulah had
probably
done to her. Lucky for Chess she had a pretty good memory, but still … She also had little doubt that Beulah wasn’t used to that sort of thing, that Beulah felt the shock of having violence committed against her as well as the pain of it. Chess hadn’t felt that kind of shock in a long, long time.

But she remembered it. For that split second she remembered
it, how the first few times—the first dozen or so times, even—it was a surprise, it felt like a betrayal; that disbelief that it was being done, that she was being hurt like that and by the person who was hurting her. The shock and disbelief that the person she’d trusted, the world she’d trusted, weren’t what she thought they were, weren’t welcoming and caring, wouldn’t take care of her the way she’d dreamed they would.