The waitress was on fire.
No, that wasn’t accurate. The waitress wasn’t on fire. The waitress was fire, a column of fire about a foot and a half in diameter that reached from the floor to the ceiling. Her unmoving black shape was barely visible through a wall of blue-orange, one arm extended like she’d been reaching for something only she could see.
Even as Chess tried to move, to hunt for a fire extinguisher or tub of water or anything that might help, the flames started to die. It was as if someone had dropped a candle snuffer over them, the way they just…stopped, leaving a waitress-shaped lump of coal in their place. Smoke still rose from it; cracks and fissures in what had been her skin glowed red from heat.
The other waitress on duty lurched toward her, carrying an obviously heavy plastic tub of water. Chess raised her hand and started to shout, but she was too late. The water flew in a sloppy arc. The corpse broke apart, her almost-unburned feet still planted where she’d been standing but the rest of her falling in awful chunks or washing across the floor in the now-gray water. Steam rose in a thick, noxious cloud. Shit, were there molecules of waitress in that steam? Were the rest of them breathing her in?
The cook appeared. With a fire extinguisher, how useful. At least this time Chess was able to get the word out before he opened the thing up and spread foam or whatever it was all over the already-destroyed body parts. “Don’t!”
He gave her that double-take look she was so familiar with, the dismissive glance followed by a second look when he saw the magical symbols tattooed up and down her arms. Those tattoos identified her as a witch, as Church. Kind of refreshing, actually, to have someone give her that half-respectful-half-scared look because of her job instead of her boyfriend or her drug dealer’s protection.
Kind of unfortunate, too, because once he noticed her ink, everyone else did, and they all looked at her. Respectfully. Expectantly. Waiting for her to handle the situation.
Great. It took her a minute to dig her Church ID out of her bag—the jig was up, she might as well get officially involved—to flash as she spoke. “Has anyone called 911?”
Headshakes all around, punctuated by a girl barely out of her teens throwing up on the floor. Which was a perfectly understandable reaction when faced with a pool of burned-corpse stew, really, but didn’t help Chess keep her own nausea under control.
She managed it, though. It helped that Blue caught her eye, a question on her face, and Chess could nod and put her focus on procedure. Blue could be trusted to calm everyone and hand out napkins and drinks and whatever without trying to sneak away or influencing their memories by chatting. Chess wasn’t anywhere near as sure about the others.
She put away her ID and took out her phone. “Okay, I’ll call them. I need all of you to wait until the Squad gets here, please. They’ll want to take statements from all of you, and we need those statements to be as true as possible, so please don’t discuss what just happened, okay? Just sit down over there.” She gestured toward the far corner, away from the mess—from both messes. “Is there anyone else here?”
The cook shook his head. “We’re it, at the moment. Our manager’s here until eleven, and then comes back at three. Do you want me to call her?”
“No, thanks. Just go sit down, okay?” Was there anything else she needed to say to them, or do? This wasn’t her job; usually the only citizens she dealt with in an official capacity were people who claimed to be haunted, in which case she was there to investigate them, not babysit them. Although sometimes, admittedly, it ended up being almost the same thing. Cheaters attempting to defraud the Church didn’t tend to be either the smartest or the most mature of people.
Like she could talk.
Rather than call 911, she went ahead and dialed the extension for the Black Squad office at Church headquarters. Technically she guessed it wasn’t an emergency anyway, since the woman was beyond help and whatever fire she’d walked into or—how the hell had that fire started, anyway?
However it happened, it was out, and the other people in the restaurant didn’t appear to her to be particularly threatening. Of course, appearances didn’t mean shit. Hell, as far as danger went, she and Blue were probably way off the scale—they’d both killed people, and they both knew plenty of other people who’d killed people, and they each knew at least one man who would willingly maim or kill anyone they asked him to, just because they asked.
But none of the other patrons felt threatening, either. And she didn’t have many options. She couldn’t tie them all up. Her authority to detain and arrest was limited to crimes involving faked hauntings, and her authority to investigate was limited to her assigned cases. So the best she could do was hope her ID and tone of voice intimidated them enough to make them stay put.
And hope the Squad arrived quickly.
☠
WHICH THEY DID—WELL, THEY ought to have, since they were only a few blocks away. Less than ten minutes passed before the parking lot was full flashing red-and-blues, with an ambulance and a fire truck for good measure.
And within a few minutes more, the Squad had the scorched area taped off and the restaurant patrons sitting at separate tables writing down their recollections of what had happened. The three initial Squad members had given her a bit of side-eye when she identified herself, but she was used to that. If it wasn’t because of her unwilling involvement in the death of another Debunker, or because of the woman she’d been forced to work with who’d been using a powerful glamour to impersonate the Grand Elder’s daughter, or because that woman had then impersonated Chess in order to let a terrorist group into the City of Eternity, then it was because everyone had seen her with Terrible at Elder Griffin’s wedding and decided that since he was big and strong and scarred and tattooed, he must also be beating her. Okay, yes, the fact that she’d had a few bruises may have had something to do with that, too, but they’d all judged him and they all judged her, and they could all fuck right off.
None of them said anything, of course. Very few judgy bastards were brave enough for that sort of thing. Instead a new man—an Inquisitor Third, obviously the guy in charge since the others were uniforms—arrived, spoke to one of the initial responders, and then approached her with a hesitant smile on his pleasant face. “Chess? Do you remember me?”
The second he said it, she realized she did. Of course she did. It wasn’t easy to forget the brother of an Elder Chief Inquisitor, especially when that brother had been only a year ahead of her in Church training. “Well, hey, Will, how have you been?”
“Not bad, not bad. It’s good to see you.” He tipped his head toward Ella’s corpse, now being photographed by the Body Removal Squad. “You know, if you wanted to catch up, you could have just left me a note or something.”
She fought back her smile. Will always had been fun to talk to, though they’d probably only spoken a handful of times. “Nah, that’s boring.”
“A lot safer, though. What happened?”
She gave him a quick run-down, and agreed to hang on while he talked to the other witnesses. Which gave her time to think, too, about what the hell could have happened to that poor waitress. How had she burned up so fast? How had that fire started? It was so hard not to start talking to the witnesses herself, not to dig in and start investigating. No, it wasn’t a Debunking case, but it wasn’t like she’d been given a decent Debunking case in the last few months. And really, she’d done enough non-Debunking shit for Bump that it hardly seemed to matter anymore.
But she couldn’t. She especially didn’t think she could go shoving herself into a case being handled by someone whose family name carried serious weight in the Church, and who was himself probably on a fast-track to further glory. The fact that he couldn’t have been more than twenty-six and was already an Inquisitor Third told her that.
All of which meant she was going to have to sit this one out, and hope she got an update when it was all over.
She’d just come back in from having a cigarette when Will
motioned for her to join him near the back of the room, by the soda machines and kitchen entrance. The smell of hot oil and bacon drifted through the gaps around the flimsy two-way door as she sat in one of the chairs that had been placed on the grimy floor. Hopefully somebody had turned the fryer back there off, because another fire was the last thing they all needed.
Will sat in the chair opposite and scanned the written statements in his hand. “So you didn’t see the fire start?”
“No.” It was unnerving to be the subject of official questioning, rather than the questioner. It had only happened to her a few times in her cases—she never closed a case without solid, inarguable evidence, and the Church almost always got a confession anyway—but even when it had, she’d been backed up by the Church, testifying on their behalf. This was not the same.
Nothing in Will’s demeanor indicated he thought of her as a suspect. Why would he? Everyone else had seen that fire start, too, and they knew she hadn’t been touching Ella or standing next to her or whatever. But she still had to fight the instinct to clam up, to tell half-truths or deny everything. Old habits died hard, she guessed, especially when there were other kinds of habits that had to be kept hidden.
“You just felt the heat and turned to see her on fire.”
Chess nodded. “I’d only just looked at her when the flames started to die, and then the other waitress threw water on her. That’s when she broke apart. The cook came out with the fire extinguisher but I managed to stop him from spraying everything.”
“Thanks.” Will had a nice smile; he was a decent-looking guy, actually, with short sandy hair and blue eyes. Way too preppie for her tastes even if she’d been remotely interested in any man but Terrible, which she wasn’t, but still not bad-looking. “Or, I guess Kevin should really be the one to thank you, since he’s the one who’d have to scoop up all that foam and go digging through it.”
“Kevin’s the fire investigator?”
“Yep.” Will hesitated. Like he was about to ask an uncomfortable question, or one more important than he wanted it to seem. Hmm. “Did you feel anything before the fire started, or notice anything strange?”
“She was really hot,” she said slowly. Why had he hesitated before that question? What was he looking for? “She came to drop off our drinks, a couple of minutes before it happened, and I noticed she looked really overheated. But she seemed fine, she was smiling and energetic.”
“Nothing else?”
“No” was just about to jump off the tip of her tongue, when she remembered it wasn’t entirely true. “There was, actually. When she gave us our drinks…”
Shit shit shit, this was so fucking embarrassing. “I felt sick when she got close. But it didn’t feel like how magic usually feels, and my friend and I—I just thought it was the heat outside catching up with me, or something.”
Amazing. Lex could fuck things up for her by just being mentioned in a conversation.
“Do you think maybe you were picking up something from her? Her energy, I mean. Maybe something was wrong with her?” Will was looking at her very oddly. Very closely. What the—shit. Fuck, he could ask her to take a blood test, couldn’t he? He could search her bag.
Okay, now she was being ridiculous. Calm down. Yes, he could, but he probably wouldn’t. Why would he? Unless she started acting like she was nervous and high, of course.
“I don’t know,” she said, knowing it sounded cagey but really not sure how to change that. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Did your friend notice you feeling sick? Did you mention it to her?” He glanced at Blue, engaged in another fashion-model lean on a low bench near the window, messing with her phone.
“I didn’t mention it. She knew something was wrong, but she didn’t ask what it was—um, the subject we were discussing wasn’t one of my favorites, so maybe she thought that was it. You’d have to ask her if she did or what she specifically noticed, though.” Did that sound snotty? “I just mean, obviously I can’t speak for her, and I don’t want to make it seem like I am.”
Will smiled. “You Debunkers make the worst witnesses. Why are you all so paranoid all the time?”
Ha, he had no idea. “Are we?”
“Yes. Weirdos.” His smile widened. “I used to think it was just because your work forced you to be suspicious of everyone, but my friend Red—he’s an Inquisitor, too, Brian Redding? You’d probably know him if you saw him—says you all chose Debunking because you’re twisted loners who don’t want to work with other people, and it’s a good thing you don’t carry guns.”
“Is that what Red said.” She played along, keeping her tone lightly sarcastic. If he searched her he’d find her knife, too. Technically it was okay for her to have it on her, since she wasn’t working, but still. “And Red knows this because…I guess he tried to be a Debunker and failed, so he had to settle for the Squad?”
“You mean like how all of you guys tried to be Inquisitors and failed, so had to settle for Debunking?”
“Hey, if that’s what you need to believe, you go ahead.”
“Seriously, though,” he said, still smiling. “I don’t get how you guys can work alone all the time like that. It’s been bad enough for me the last few weeks since my partner transferred to Protection. Do you ever work with another Debunker, or have you maybe partnered up with one of us—”
His sudden horrified blush told her that his sentence hadn’t snapped off like a twig because he’d gotten distracted or forgot what he was going to say. It was because he’d remembered. He’d remembered that she’d been partnered with a Squad member who turned out to be a terrorist in disguise who wanted to destroy the City. Or he’d remembered that she’d been working a Debunking case that Randy Duncan, another Debunker, had been involved in, and that Randy had ended up dead.
The terrorist—Cassie Benz was her name, and she’d been a member of an anti-Church organization called the Lamaru—had fooled a lot more people than just Chess, and Chess had been the one who uncovered her deception. Randy had also joined the Lamaru in a plot to take over the City of Eternity, and the ghost he and the Lamaru were planning to use as a tool had decided to kill him instead.
That was what had actually happened. Chess knew damn well that not everyone believed it. Or rather, they believed it, but they also thought it was awfully strange that both cases had involved her, and wondered about Randy’s death. Living in Downside—off Church grounds—and not hanging out with other employees hadn’t exactly made her popular and trusted, even before she’d become semi-notorious.
Will, though, didn’t seem like he suspected anything. He looked like he wished he could burst into flames himself—hell, his face looked hot enough that she thought maybe he would. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I mean, I’m not sorry, because I don’t think—I mean, I didn’t mean—”
She managed to smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m sorry. I just forgot that you’d—shit, I’m not handling this well, am I?”
“Really, don’t worry about it.” Actually, forgetting that she was the common denominator was the best thing he could do, as far as she was concerned. Her smile got easier to maintain. “I think I understand now why you aren’t capable of working on your own.”
“Well, you can see how smooth I am,” he said. Relief hid in his joking tone. “Do you think I should be left to handle cases by myself?”
She just managed to stop herself before she laughed too loud; there was still a dead body on the floor and a roomful of traumatized citizens. And they knew she was a Church employee and that Will was, too, so for the two of them to lurk in the corner laughing like ghouls was probably not the best idea.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to reply, though. “Honestly, I don’t think you should be trusted to eat or bathe by yourself, at this point.”
“Well,” he said, “you’re wrong there. I have recently mastered the fork.”
“That’s pretty good for an Inquisitor. Maybe someday you
’ll be able to handle a steak knife.”
“Actually…” He glanced over his shoulder again. “Maybe you can help me out with that, a little. Your friend there, Blue…is she seeing anyone?”
Well, that was unexpected. And difficult to answer. Blue had been on-again-off-again with Theo for longer than Chess had known her; the on-again-off-again was understandable, considering even aside from the fact that he was cheating on his wife with her, he just seemed like a dickhead in general. Lex hated him, and while Lex hating someone wasn’t an absolute guarantee that they deserved to be hated—case in point, Terrible, although “hate” probably wasn’t quite the right word for how Lex felt about Terrible—his judgment of people was usually pretty trustworthy.
But that guy whose parents owned the space Blue wanted to rent for one of her community groups had asked her out, and she hadn’t said she told him no because she was with someone. She hadn’t said she’d told him yes, though, either.
None of that was the main reason for her hesitation. If Blue went out with an Inquisitor… Shit, what would he find out about her? What would that lead to him finding out—to the Church then finding out—about Chess? Yeah, she trusted Blue, and Blue wasn’t going to say or do anything that might get Lex in trouble, but it still didn’t send a thrill of happiness through her to think of Blue and Will getting close.
He obviously noticed her silence—how could he not? “If she’s got a boyfriend or something, you can just say so, you know.”
“Oh, sorry. No, it’s not—she just sort of ended a relationship, is all.” The back of her neck prickled with discomfort. Talking about Blue’s personal life was barely easier than talking about her own. “I don’t know if she’s looking to date again.”
“But I could still ask for her number, right? She doesn’t have a huge boyfriend who’d probably kill me just for looking at her, like some people do.” The last words were spoken with an exaggerated air of pointed disapproval, and accompanied by a ridiculous raised-eyebrows-pursed-lips expression that made him look like a sanctimonious fish.