“How’d you get that?”
“Long story. Just trust me, it’s him, and he’s committing the murders to bring her back, because her cousin wants him to. I think she’s been drugging him. And that was the wrong dirt, Aros must have switched it in the Grave Supplies building, so it didn’t catch, it blew back at me.”
Lex nodded. “Had the wonder on that one, me. You got the right dirt, then? Get her sent on back the City, aye, we get the fuck outta here. Ain’t likin the feel of this, I ain’t. Not at all.”
“I’m not either,” she said, handing Beulah two Cepts and her water bottle. Six left. As soon as they walked out of the building she was going to ask Lex for more. “But … no, I don’t have the right dirt. I can’t Banish her. I mean, any other time I could Banish her with generic dirt, but it wouldn’t be as strong and there would be a greater chance she could come back. The dirt isn’t to Banish so much as it is to seal the Banishing, you know?”
“Nay, I ain’t, but ‘slong as you do I ain’t bothered neither.”
“Right. Anyway, the real problem is that when Aros summoned her he— Remember the ghost house? Kemp and Vanita and all that, how the building was turned into a safe house and the ghosts couldn’t be Banished from it?”
Lex looked around. “Shit, we gotta find us some dead cat or whatany? Why you witchy shit always so nasty, Tulip, dead hands and maggots and all like that?”
Her smile felt strange, there in the middle of the wreckage of her ritual, with an angry ghost pacing her circle and her blood drying all over the floor. “It isn’t always. It’s just you seem to get stuck dealing with black magic, and a lot of that is pretty intense. But this isn’t quite like that, no. That was the house holding them, making a spirit home. This is a totem Binding, at least I think so.”
He just looked at her, his eyes expectant. Right.
“Kemp and Vanita turned the house into, like, a safe house. The psychopomps couldn’t get into it. So it didn’t Bind the individual ghosts to something on earth, it just kept them safe as long as they were in the house, you know what I mean? If one of them had gone outside they could have been taken. But this is specific, this locks that specific ghost here, and I can’t break that without having whatever totem it is that Binds her.”
“Damn. Ain’t stupid, that witch ain’t.”
“No. Especially since I don’t think the totem is here. She’d be stronger if it was.”
He glanced at Beulah, who still looked dazed. Her tears had dried, though. Chess hoped that meant she was feeling better. “Seems to me she plenty strong on the already.”
The skull beneath Lucy’s skin grinned its unfeeling smile as Lucy glared at them and paced around inside the salt circle.
“So you just gotta find them totem, get she sent all back, aye? And then we finished up.”
Just like Lex. Was there anything that didn’t seem perfectly simple to him? “Sure, except it could be anywhere in the city and we have no idea what it is.”
He shrugged. “So we get a look-on for Mr. Witch, make him give us the tell. Easy. You always seein the hard side, ain’t you? Sad, that is. Oughta be more along with the optimism.”
“Yeah. Thanks for that, Lex, I’ll work on it.” She rolled her eyes. But she smiled, too.
“Come on. I need to get this stuff packed up and get my blood off the floor, and we need to figure out what to do next. I need to make—” Right. “I need to make a couple of calls. But why don’t I have a little talk with Beulah first.”
Funny how eyes wet with tears almost always looked innocent, how people were hardwired somehow to feel sympathy at the sight of them. Funny too how that look of surprise Chess had noticed earlier, that wounded-soul look, wouldn’t quite leave her memory, even though she knew it shouldn’t make a difference.
At least she thought she did, and that was the problem. Her initial certainty that Beulah had been trying to kill her, that Beulah had been somehow involved with Aros, had faded. Not completely, but enough to make her question a little less … blunt than she’d originally intended.
“Beulah, is there something you want to tell me?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. She sounded like she suspected Beulah of having a crush on her or of borrowing her pen and forgetting to give it back. Worse, it alerted Beulah that something funny was happening.
“What? Like what? Oh. No, you know already. You were right.”
“What?” Shit, she hadn’t expected it to be that easy.
“Bernam. That’s his name. But I don’t think my father knows yet, about—Terrible, and the magic thing. I don’t think—”
She cut Beulah off. Shit again. She’d actually managed to forget that for half a minute, which was incredibly stupid and pretty much just proved that she shouldn’t be taking care of anyone, anywhere, ever. “No, not that. About— Fuck. What did you have for lunch today?”
“Huh?”
This was completely not working. “You brought me lunch today. Why didn’t you have the same thing I did? Where did you get the food?”
Beulah’s brow wrinkled. “I, um, I didn’t have the same thing because I just didn’t, that’s all. There wasn’t a lot left. And I got it from the table in the lounge where the rest of the food was, I got yours and then decided I was hungry so I got myself something. Why? Isn’t this kind of a weird time to ask about food? I don’t know the recipe or anything.”
“I do.” Chess reached into her bag, keeping one eye on Beulah while she dug around for the report Elder Lyle had given her. “I don’t know about anything else, but the main ingredient in my lunch was Vapezine. Enough to kill me. Enough to kill just about anyone.”
Beulah’s mouth fell open. Surprised, or surprised she got caught?
“Blue?” Confusion spread all over Lex’s face, and Chess was more relieved than she thought she’d be. She’d never honestly thought he would know about an attempt to kill her, much less approve, but it was still nice to see his genuine shock at the idea.
It was even nicer—way, way nicer—to feel her pills start to hit, like light spreading lazily through her entire body, like time slowing just a little. She managed not to smile, but only just.
Beulah looked as shocked as her brother. Too bad Chess couldn’t quite believe her, not even as she climbed higher every minute. Nor could she believe the surprise, the near-panic, in Beulah’s voice, no matter how much she wanted to, and she kind of did. “I didn’t. I didn’t do any of that. Lex, I didn’t, I wouldn’t, you know I wouldn’t— Chess, I was trying to, I thought maybe— Fuck, I swear I didn’t do that.”
“Then who did? And why were you really here the night Jia was killed? Your father is working with Aros, and you could be, too. You were here that night, you could have set that up, come inside to keep me from going out to see what he was doing.”
Beulah didn’t argue. That more than anything made Chess think she might actually be innocent. People who had something to hide almost always denied it. “Someone thought they saw something and called me.”
So much for not lying or denying. “That night you said they heard something, not saw something.”
“What’s the difference?”
Chess stared at her.
Big sigh. “Fine. No, you’re right, nobody called me. Not about that, anyway. I was here because … Shit.”
Her gaze flicked to Lex, back at Chess. Why did she look so guilty? “I was supposed to meet someone here and he didn’t come, okay? He couldn’t make it at the last minute.”
“This is kind of a weird place for a date, isn’t it?”
Another glance at Lex, who hadn’t moved, watching the discussion with great interest. The color on Beulah’s other cheek began to match that of her injured one. “It wasn’t exactly a date. It was … we were just meeting here, that’s all.”
“Why would you meet here?” Chess thought she had some idea already, a small suspicion, but one growing every minute. Why would two people meet in an empty building at night for a not-date? Why
would at least one of those people blush and apparently feel somewhat guilty for having that meeting?
Well, why had she usually met Lex at his place, and why had she felt guilty about it?
Sure enough, Beulah looked away from her, down at her hands folded in her lap. “He’s married.”
“Aw, Blue. Ain’t that fucking smell-smock again, that Theo, aye? After what he done on the last time? Shit.”
“That won’t happen again, it’s—it’s a different—”
Lex rolled his eyes. “Aye, got a certain it is. Just like on the last time, him keeping you backbenched near two fuckin years, an you cryin all over everywhere. And you ain’t even gave me the tell you was seeing him again, you ain’t, tryin to gimme the sneak.”
“For some stupid reason I thought you might not be pleased,” Beulah snapped. “I can’t imagine why I might have been worried about that.”
“Maybe you oughta get youself some worry on Theo, dig, quit letting him put he feet all over—”
“Guys!” Fascinating as the discussion was—who would have guessed gorgeous Beulah would have trouble with men?—her sense of urgency hadn’t gone away; clocks ticked in her head. “I’m sorry, but we really need to get going here, you know? This kind of isn’t— You can talk about this later, right?”
They shrugged. Neither of them looked at the other. Great, just what she needed: to work with two people not speaking to each other.
And she would need to work with them. At least, if she decided she could trust Beulah after all.
Another beep from her phone. Terrible?
No. Elder Griffin. The tech guys had retrieved Chelsea Mueller’s file.
Looked like it was time to make that Beulah decision. “Beulah. Can I use your computer for a minute?”
It seemed to take forever to connect to the Church mainframe. Chess hadn’t expected anything else. The Church’s system may have been faster than the general Internet—and of course it wasn’t as strictly censored—but that wasn’t really saying much.
Should she tell Lex and Beulah about the pentacle, and where the next sacrifice would probably be?
Lex would get a message about it anyway, when the storeroom caught fire or whatever. Telling them would be a betrayal. Yes, Lex was her friend. Yes, she wanted to help him out. But Terrible … he wasn’t her friend, he was her life.
If she could let him be, anyway.
The cheerful lightness from her pills helped her think about better things. Or at least about other things. She scanned the bookshelves. “Are all these yours?”
Beulah—who hadn’t spoken until then, apparently preferring to glare at Lex—shook her head. “They’re the school’s. I’ve never even really looked at them.”
The mainframe still hadn’t booted. Should she disconnect and try again, or …?
Her fingertips drummed on the desk as she checked the titles. A few Church-based books for students: Teen Truth, You Are Special, Facts and You. Some classic novels: Dickens and Austen, Steinbeck and Hemingway. An entire shelf of yearbooks. A bunch of college guides, and another shelf of career— Wait.
“Fuck.” The word slipped out before she’d even finished thinking it. Not that she cared; it wasn’t like she had to watch her language in front of Lex and Beulah.
“What?”
“Yearbooks.” 2020, 2019 … 2000 and 2001 were the ones she needed. She found them at the end, yanked them off the shelf. “Fucking yearbooks. These have been here the whole time, haven’t they?”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“Chelsea Mueller went to school here. She’s the missing link, the one I can’t identify. But if I can find her picture in here …”
Beulah’s brow furrowed. “You think she’s back here at the school?”
“Somebody poisoned me, right?” Check the index first. She flipped to the back of the 2000 book, that long list of names broken by pictures of Best Dressed, Best Driver, those dumbshit awards schools gave out so the snotty-ass “popular” crowd could pat themselves on the back even more. Whatever. Chelsea Mueller’s picture was apparently on page thirty-three, so …
Martin, McElroy, McShane—there was Lucy, smiling that fakey smile—Mertel, Miller, Miller, Mueller …
Monica.
A much younger Monica, grinning shyly from beneath incredibly thick eyebrows and a mop of white-blond frizz held back with barrettes. Monica with a different nose, a smaller, more receding jaw, but still Monica, if Chess looked closely. Chelsea Mueller was Monica.
“Chess, holy shit, did you know that?”
“What?”
Beulah’s face right next to hers, staring at the yearbook. “Did you know—”
“That Monica is Chelsea? No, of course I didn’t, I wouldn’t have been trying so hard—”
“No.” Beulah’s finger moved across the page, stopped beneath Lucy McShane’s picture. “Did you know about her and Wen Li? That’s Wen Li, right?”
Beneath Lucy’s picture, a sentence in tiny grayish print: “Cutest Couple—Lucy McShane and Wen Li.”
Holy shit was right. Lucy and Wen Li? Lucy had been pregnant, Wen had been involved in all of those student groups … She’d just started to think of all the implications when the explosion sounded in the distance.
Lex’s car was the fastest, so they all piled into it. Chess’s palms were clammy, her forehead hot. This was it, this was it … her fingers shook as she texted Terrible. They were coming, whether Aros was there or not, and if he wasn’t she’d just hang back somewhere.
The thought of either one made her mouth feel like she’d been sucking on a vacuum hose. She grabbed her water bottle: almost empty. Just like something else that was almost empty. “Shit, I forgot to ask you to hook me up.”
“Aye?” Lex glanced up at her, dug into the pocket of his battered jacket. “Good thing I brought for you, then, figured were about time.”
“Thanks.” She had to thank him, because he deserved it and because, well, yeah, she was grateful. But she couldn’t help the discomfort making her skin prickle, making her cast about desperately for some other topic of conversation. How much attention did he pay to her habit, how closely did he keep track?
Bad enough she knew Terrible did; loosely, yes, but she felt his eyes sometimes when she filled her palm, felt him checking how many pills were in it and how often she took them when she was with him.
Just like Terrible’s eyes on her pills, it bothered her to know Lex was watching, too, that he kept track of how often she asked him for more and thought about when she might. Why did people feel like they had the right to know things about other people, why did they have to observe and pay attention and think about them, why did they have to do that shit?
Her addiction was her own fucking business. It was hers. Hers alone. It belonged to her, and she didn’t have to share it with anybody and she didn’t have to talk to anybody else about it and it was private.
“So if Wen is involved … how did Wen get involved?” Beulah’s face in the dull streetlight glow looked too pale, older with anxiety. “With Aros and everything? He hates the Church.”
“But he loved Lucy.” Another memory snapped into place. “His wife told me Lucy was a slut. She, shit, she said something about men writing Lucy letters—it didn’t even hit me at the time, I assumed it was just a common knowledge thing or something. But I guess Wen wrote her letters, and that’s what Mrs. Li meant.”
“He cheats on her all the time,” Beulah said. “I never understood how he manages to get all those women—”
“No telling what some dames like, aye?” Lex shot her a look. “Guessing for some ain’t matter iffen them married, iffen them treated shitty, dames always fuckin—”
“Shut up, Lex. You don’t know anything about Theo, or our—”
“Know he strung you on the lines two years, know you spent so much time on the cry us thought you ain’t never find a way off—”
“Guys, can we drop this for the moment?” Yes, it had been interes
ting at first, but interesting had turned into a waste of time awfully fast, especially given where they were headed and why. “Don’t we have more important things to think about?”
“Yes. Let’s talk about something important.” Beulah shot Lex one last glare. “Wen cheats on his wife all the time. I think he’s slept with half the teachers in the school. So I didn’t think anything of it when he started up with Monica, but … I guess that’s different.”
This time Chess didn’t need any speed to get her mind clicking. But then she did have a hell of a rough night ahead of her, didn’t she? Miles to go before she slept, and after the day she’d had she could use a little help, and luckily she had some she could snort.
She started digging in her bag for her hairpin. “Monica first told me the story of Lucy McShane. Monica does all those student groups, she did a few with Wen. One of the ones Jia Zhang was in, right, one of the ones that met right by Aros’s place? And Aros was sleeping with Jia, too, he had nude sketches and photos of her in his cottage.”
Lex made a disgusted face. Beulah just looked sad. “That poor girl.”
“Yeah, well, shit, she must have—right. She could have arranged the catwalk with Wen and Aros, or one of the students. There were two people working the bolts.”
“I thought that seemed weird when it happened,” Beulah said. “Even if it was a ghost, how could one ghost handle two things at once like that?”
Chess nodded. “Then any one of them could have locked me in that trunk in the theater, and she has keys to the building, she could have gotten in the night Jia was killed—Jia had a copy of the—of a ghost summoning handbook and I took it from her. It had belonged to Chelsea Mueller, that’s probably why they killed her, because I found it. She’s the one who tried to poison me, she was in the room, wasn’t she, and— Fuck, she followed me into the bathroom, I’m such a fucking idiot!”
“Followed you into the— You mean earlier, before I came in?”
“Yes. She was waiting outside your office to see if I left, and she followed me to the bathroom to see if I knew anything, suspected anything. She tried to blame you, too, she told me you—”