He took a deep drag off his smoke, rubbed the back of his neck, folded his arms; discomfort oozed off him and hung heavy in the air. “Knew I ain’t could say it up right. Ain’t … just wanting … fuck. Just forget I say aught, aye? No worryin on it.”
“No, tell me what you meant. Please. I don’t want to fuck everything up again.”
“Aw, shit. You ain’t fucked up, Chessie. Ain’t you, aye?”
“But it is, I made you mad, I—”
“Ain’t made me mad, neither, not causen of that. Thing is … Fuck. You high like that, like you was on the other night, ‘slike you ain’t in yon head, dig? Like—like you might could be any other dame. Only I ain’t wanting any other dame. Wanting you.”
“But … if you don’t trust me …”
He looked at her with narrowed eyes, like he was trying to figure something out. Trying to figure her out. “What the fuck you think I’m wanting you for? Just wanna get my— Shit.” He shook his head. “Ain’t about trust, dig? Wouldn’t be here iffen I ain’t got trust in you, wouldn’t be takin you to bed iffen I ain’t trustin you.”
Oh. Oh, shit. It hadn’t even occurred to her before how that might make him sound, how little credit she was giving him. How little trust that sounded like she had in him.
He wasn’t one of the dozens of rent-a-daddies or whatever who’d used her, who’d treated her like a toy. That was one of the reasons why she loved him, right, because he was so exactly the opposite of that, because he was safe?
It terrified her in some small weird way to think of it like that, but she had to, because it was obviously the way he needed her to think of it.
Wait, hold on. He wasn’t saying she had to give up her pills, right? That wasn’t what he seemed to be saying. Shit, please let that not be what he was saying, because she had no idea how she would reply to that or what she would do, and that fact, that knowledge, led her down a filthy, crooked path in her mind, one she did not want to explore.
Not an easy question to phrase, though, was it. “Um … so what does that mean as far as, I mean, what I take and stuff, do you mean I can’t—”
“Aw, naw, ain’t sayin that. You do what you need an ain’t try telling you no, but … takin you to bed, want you there, not just your body. An want you knowin it’s me. Love you, Chess. Dig?”
Thunder broke through the silence following his words, low and thick. Her skin still tingled from the storm in the air.
Or maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was finally starting to know what he meant, and being scared of that because—well, shit, of course it scared her. If that was what he wanted, if it was about her, who she was inside and not her body, that meant the entire relationship hung squarely on that, on her. That he thought she was important, and special, and who she was inside mattered, and if that mattered …
If that mattered, if that was what he cared about, then she could never, ever let him know the truth, let him know how little she deserved that. “I’m sorry. I’m really, I didn’t know. I’ve never done this before, you know, I’m not very good at this …”
He nodded. “I ain’t good with the explains, dig, know I fuck it up tryin.”
“You don’t. I don’t listen very well.”
“Guessin we all set up for trouble then, aye?” He smiled at her, sending those happy little wings fluttering in her chest again.
“I … So you don’t want to not be with me anymore, I mean, you still want to?”
“Told you, weren’t me ended it. Never wanted that, neither. Never.”
She didn’t quite trust her voice; it felt clogged with grateful words, with probably way too sappy words, just like the ache in her forehead told her it was furrowing, the sting in her eyes told her she was about to make an ass of herself.
What else was new? She leaned forward, buried her face in his chest to try to hide it, but she was pretty sure he knew anyway. “I didn’t want it either. I thought, I thought you were sick of me and you hated me, and it was awful, I felt awful.”
He held her for a minute, his hand tight on the back of her head, pressing her closer. “Aye, weren’t … weren’t good for me neither.” He cleared his throat. “Mean it, though, on trust. Ain’t can do this iffen you don’t trust me. So … maybe you oughta give that one some thinking, causen if you always waitin for me to do a run-off, hidin shit from me … ain’t good, aye?”
And there was the terror again. This time she did understand what he meant. He wanted all of her, wanted her to stop being scared and nervous all the time, to stop doing things like assuming his lack of desire for sex one night meant he didn’t trust her and was done with her completely. Or that it didn’t matter if she was practically passing out in the middle of it. Wanted her to believe he really loved her.
She wanted that, too. She really, really did. But if telling him she loved him the first time had been like jumping off a cliff, giving him that kind of trust … that was like jumping out of an airplane, and it was a demand she honestly didn’t know if she could meet.
Her silence sure wasn’t making him feel more secure, she knew, but she didn’t know what else to do, aside from squeezing him harder and hoping he knew that meant she was trying.
“Well. Just … just have you a think on that one, aye?” He gave her a final squeeze before shifting her so he could take the wheel. “C’mon, Chessiebomb. Let’s us get ourselves outta this rain.”
She’d thought—she’d hoped—that “getting out of the rain” would mean heading back to his place, or to hers, and spending the rest of the afternoon in bed.
No such luck. She sat next to Terrible on Bump’s hideous scarlet couch, the cacophony of reds in the room throbbing at her.
He’d rearranged some of his awful “art” as well. Directly opposite Chess hung a stylized, luridly colored painting of several naked women bent over a sawhorse. Chess pressed her forehead into Terrible’s upper arm rather than look at it, let her right hand rest on his thigh. She had to admit, Bump’s place did have that advantage. She could touch him there, kiss him, hold his hand.
And she could look at him all she wanted, and he could look back at her so their eyes met and heat raced through her body. It kept racing even after he turned away; she watched his craggy profile sharp against the red walls, reached up with her left hand to stroke the line of tiny bruises on the side of his neck, from her teeth. She liked seeing it almost as much as she liked the ones he’d left on her, the little marks and bruises she ended up with when he got carried away—which was often—as though he’d branded her. As though he’d written his name on her skin. Maybe Bump could leave the room for a bit? They still had so much catching up to do, after all, it had—
“Ladybird, you fuckin got the hearing on? Gots the fuckin askin for you, wanna tell up?”
“What? Um, sorry. My mind wandered for a second there.”
“Oh, yay? Ain’t even woulda fuckin guessed up on there.” He glared at her with his pale eyes narrowed. Impatient. Well, if he was so damn impatient he could start talking then, instead of just staring at her like she’d suddenly grown horns.
Or he could do what he was doing, which was stand up—he’d been in his customary lazy lean against his desk, the better to display the loud red, pink, and purple Nehru shirt—fucking Nehru shirt—he wore with bright orange pants. What the hell was the deal with badly dressed people and her current case? For a second she contemplated the idea of getting Bump and Monica into the same room. They’d either blind everyone or make them all ill.
His gold toe ring flashed as he oozed around the desk, then back to her. In his hand sat a small wooden box.
Chess’s heart gave a cheery skip. That box was Bump’s private stash, the stuff he didn’t sell to anybody. Hey, there had to be some fucking benefit to being his personal witch, right? Aside from the obvious one sitting beside her.
He set the box down on the coffee table in front of her. “Now mayhap you quit givin Terrible the fuckin slurpy-eyes an give Bump the listeni
ng, yay? Thinkin you can? Gots some fuckin chattering wants doin, needs you fuckin head on straight up.”
The words should have embarrassed her. Probably would have, if he hadn’t given her that box. That dealer-junkie dynamic again; he could say what he wanted and she would take it, because he held the keys to the kingdom and she needed them.
But then, too, she had been giving Terrible the slurpy-eye, and she didn’t give a shit if Bump saw it or what he thought of it, either.
She would have paid attention anyway once the discussion actually started, but this was even better. So she opened the box, slid out the little bag and blade and got started chopping herself a couple of lines. Not easy to do, because Bump’s stash was so pure it clumped. Awesome. “Go ahead.”
“Aw, I fuckin allowed to? Givin you the fuckin mighty thanks.”
Whatever.
“What knowledge you fuckin givin Bump on the now-time? New shit, fuckin hopin so, yay? Something on the fuckin use-type side, get that fuckin scum Slobag down.”
Slobag hadn’t looked at all like he recognized the hafuran, the magic that Jia Zhang had been killed for. She’d believed he didn’t know anything about it. Hell, she’d told Terrible he didn’t.
“Are you sure it’s Slobag’s witch? I mean, really sure?”
Bump looked at her like she’d just suggested they all paint themselves pink and perform ballet in the Market. “Ain’t no fuckin chance-game. Slobag’s witch. Bump got the fuckin knowing, yay, no fuckin maybe-nots. Got we the fuckin proof on.”
Hold on. If Bump had proof it was Slobag’s witch doing the murders … holy fuck. Looked like she wasn’t the only Churchwitch who’d found demand for her services with Downside’s drug lords.
She opened another drawer in the box, both to give her a second to process that and to pull out the short gold straw. Just like Bump; tacky and pretentious, but necessary.
“The witch’s name is Aros,” she said, holding the straw. “Aros Burnett. He used to be Church, but he went kind of insane and quit, and I guess now he’s working for Slobag.”
“Ain’t got the know you can fuckin quit that Church, yay, how that one fuckin possible.” Calculation flashed in his eyes. Dream on, Bump. She’d never quit the Church to become his personal witch.
No point bringing that up, though. “Of course you can. Usually they do a ritual when you leave, a pretty major one that … sort of makes you forget your Church education. They laser off tattoos, too, the most powerful ones. And then they keep tabs on you the rest of your life, they check up on you.”
“That happen to that dude Riley pussed out on you th’other night? He getting him mind erased out?” Terrible asked.
“If he decides to leave the Church, yeah, instead of just taking a job in a different branch.” He even remembered Riley’s name. Amazing. “But Aros didn’t leave the usual way. He just took off. I guess—I mean, I assume—he met Slobag somehow while he was working on the case at Mercy Lewis. The case I’m working now.”
“An that fuckin scum set he onto workin, yay, burn up Bump’s buildings. Leavin fuckin dead pieces in em. Motherfucker.”
“I’m not sure.” She leaned forward, sucked up one of the lines. Oh, that was so fucking nice. That bitter numbness—so soothing—in her nose and sinuses, the back of her throat … like parts of her didn’t exist anymore. Especially when her heart jumped and happiness blossomed in her chest, in her mind. Definitely like parts of her didn’t exist anymore. All the bad parts.
Or at least most of them, because if she got rid of all of her bad parts there’d be nothing left.
“The sigil the murder was committed on is a hafuran, and it’s a basic power builder, so the spell is designed to build and change power. And in this case— Okay. Back in 2001 there was a girl at the Mercy Lewis Second School named Lucy McShane, and she killed herself.”
Bump folded his arms, recrossed his ankles in the other direction. Yeah, yeah, boredom, whatever. This was important information, and she felt so damn good she didn’t care if he fell asleep.
In fact she wished he would, and she could be alone there with Terrible. Sure, all that speed meant it would take her forever to finish if she managed to at all—which was unlikely—but she could still watch him … her insides did a flip.
Bump’s eyebrows rose so high they looked like arrowheads.
“Oh, chill out, this is important. Lucy had a cousin named Chelsea Mueller, and Chelsea was almost powerful enough to enter Church training, but she didn’t quite make it.”
Terrible had given her thigh a quick squeeze when she told Bump to chill, but said nothing, and Bump actually looked almost interested and didn’t mention it himself. “What on the dead dame, Lucy, yay? She holding up the fuckin juice do you fuckin magic shit?”
“Her Church-test scores weren’t as good as Chelsea’s.”
“That why they doin the murders? Tryin bring Lucy back for real, dig, not like when we seen her on the other night.”
“Right.” Chess grinned at him before she bent to the mirror again. Just this one, and she’d let at least ten minutes or so pass before she did the last one, because speed this good should be savored. Empty the lungs with an exhale, pinch the nostril … there were better things in life, yeah, but not that many.
“That’s what I think, anyway,” she continued a second later. “Chelsea wants Lucy back, but she’s not powerful enough to summon a ghost on her own. So she gets Aros to do it, and to do these murders to steal power and give it to her. I guess she figures that way she can be strong enough to summon Lucy for good. Like permanently.”
Terrible shook his head. “Seem like a dumb fuckin plan, aye?”
“Yeah, but if they want Lucy back it’s kind of the only option. Unless Chelsea wants Aros to do the summoning and powering all the time, which … she’d really be dependent on him then, she’ll have nothing when he leaves her, right? So really she’s doing the smart thing not letting him have all the control, making sure she doesn’t have to need him so much so she isn’t left in the lurch when he ends things …”
Even through the speed’s cheerful jig in her bloodstream she knew that was the wrong thing to say. Terrible’s face hadn’t changed, or rather it hadn’t changed a lot, but she still saw the tiny downtwist of his mouth, the darkening in his eyes and the faint flush blossoming on his throat. Fuck.
“So why’s Slobag fuckin giving the yay to that fuckin plan? Ain’t making no fuckin sense, not even on that fuckin scum.”
She never thought she’d be grateful for Bump’s interruptions, but she was. She took her gaze from Terrible’s, took a long drink from her water bottle to help ease her speed dryness. The third line she’d cut sat there on the mirror, waiting. Fuck ten or fifteen minutes, she needed it now. She picked up the straw again. “I don’t think he cares. I mean, he might not know, but as long as the stuff he wants done gets done, he might not care.”
“Aye, had the thought on that.” Terrible didn’t quite look her in the eyes again, but he did look at her, and he hadn’t taken his hand from her leg. At least that was some reassurance. “Like if Slobag gets heself an address, an he witch—Aros—heads heself over to it afore, does he spell, an the building burns up from it? Like that?”
“Right.”
He picked up the map he’d set beside him when they first arrived. “So’s we thinkin all them addresses picked by Slobag, or maybe not?”
“What the fuck you got the thinkin you fuckin see?”
The third line hit the back of her throat. Much better. “We think there might be some kind of pattern. In the addresses, I mean.”
“Aye.” Terrible pulled a thick black marker from somewhere, uncapped it, and started scrawling big Xs on the map. “First one here, dig, Sixtieth an Mercer. Then that school, Twentieth an Foster, aye? An Sixty-fifth an Foster here.”
Bump snorted. “Got the fuckin look like a seven, yay. Ain’t no fuckin truefacts in that one, what fuckin knowledge we gonna get offen that one?”
“It doesn’t look like a seven, it’s—you see it upside down.”
“Yay, so fuckin what? So Bump’s got the lookin—”
“Holy shit.” She glanced from Terrible to Bump—who seemed taken aback at being interrupted—to Terrible again. “He’s looking at it upside down. And it looks right side up to him, right? But it’s upside down.”
“Ain’t gettin it, Chess.”
“Right, I know, sorry, it’s— Here, give me the marker.”
He did.
“Look.” She placed the point where he’d finished his line, at the body they’d found that afternoon. From there she drew another line, ending it at Twenty-fifth and Mercer, then drawing it down to Forty-third and Wayne.
A moment of silence, and Bump spoke. “Be a fuckin star, yay?”
She shook her head. Terrible watched her; she saw the knowledge in his eyes, had another flash of pride. “It’s not just a star. It’s a pentacle. It’s an upside-down pentacle.”
“So thinking he give another one the try tonight?”
The wet gray streets flew past the Chevelle’s windows, almost as fast as her mind whirred and spun. Another two lines from Bump’s private stash had her feeling absolutely no pain, despite Terrible’s telling her he and Bump had plans for the night that he couldn’t break, that he didn’t know when he’d be done.
“I don’t know. Probably, yeah. But we know where he’ll be, that’s good, right?”
He didn’t reply.
“Can’t we set somebody up to watch there, or— I could tell Lex, you know, they could have somebody—”
“Slobag gots he a storeroom there.”
Even with her blood dancing through her veins she felt his discomfort. “Where, at Twenty-fifth and Mercer?”
He nodded.
“Well, so there’ll already be—oh. Oh, shit, seriously? That’s what your plans are for tonight, that’s why you can’t—”
“Maybe best you ain’t ask on it, aye? An won’t be all empty there, gots—”