Stacia Kane: Unholy Magic

“Cryin Man ain’t let she scream,” someone told her. “Nobody hear nothing.”

“Was anyone with her?” Did it matter? Shit, how was she supposed to do this? Yes, Debunkers sometimes investigated witchcraft-related crimes, but only as they related to cases like Madame Lupita’s or ghost abuse. She wasn’t a detective. How the fuck did Terrible or Bump expect her to look at this poor dead girl and know whether or not a ghost had done this?

Of course … shit, she already knew one hadn’t, at least not alone. Ghosts couldn’t do magic. Unless the girl had been trying out an incredibly strong new spell—not likely, as the kind of power Chess felt wasn’t the kind just anyone could project—her murderer had definitely been human.

Red Berta shoved someone forward, one of the hookers standing in the circle. The girl stumbled on her teetery shoes and righted herself, but not before Chess saw how high she was.

“I hadda go get somethin,” the girl mumbled, swaying in place.

“You left Daisy alone to die.” Red Berta fixed her with a glare that would have made a sober person quake. At almost six feet tall, Berta wasn’t someone to mess with. She’d been a showgirl before Haunted Week—Haunted Week and an attack from a razor-wielding ghost. Berta had survived. Her looks had not.

Chess stood and glanced at Terrible’s impassive face, then back at the girl. “Did you see anything? When you got back?”

“Bettin she saw lotsa things,” someone whispered in the back. “Flowers an puppies floatin upward the sky, aye?”

“Saw the spook.” The girl hugged herself. “Saw it disappear when I come back.”

“You saw the ghost?”

“Aye.”

“What did it look like?”

“Wearin a hat.”

Fear rippled through the crowd as everyone took a step back. “She seen the Cryin Man. Cryin Man wear a hat.”

Before Chess could reply, Berta spoke up. “Terrible.” She nodded across the street.

Chess followed the look with the slow sinking feeling of someone whose night had just gone from worse to deadly.

Slobag’s men watched them from the alley.

It wasn’t a large crowd. Five, perhaps six men stood in the shadows, caught by the firelight. They didn’t move when all faces turned toward them. Somehow that stillness was more threatening than sharpening machetes or playing with guns would have been, as if they knew beyond a doubt there would be no reliable defense against their attack.

Then Terrible stepped forward, lifting the bottom of his bowling shirt so the diamond-patterned handle of his knife showed. Chess tried not to respond. On his opposite hip the brushed steel butt of a gun reflected the watery moonlight. When had he started carrying a gun? Usually he didn’t, at least not so obviously.

Next to Chess, Berta reached up and extracted what looked like a machete from the crimson bird’s nest of her hair. In an instant the mood changed from terrified sadness to hot rage. Excitement. Butterfly knives opened in a blur of metal, zippers gave way so sharpened nail files and pipes could be pulled from cheap nylon purses. One of the girls flicked open an ivory-handled straight razor that had to be a hundred years old. Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.

Slobag’s men didn’t move. Fuck! What was she supposed to do here? Slobag’s men were Lex’s men, and she doubted he’d take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed. On the other hand, Terrible was her friend, and the people around her were—well, they were his friends, or his to protect, anyway.

Not to mention the dead body turning to ice on the pavement at her feet.

“Chess,” Terrible said, his lips barely moving. He held his head like he was sniffing the air for prey. “Whyn’t you head back into yon alley, aye? Get yourself offen the street.”

“I have my knife.”

“Naw, naw. Get on out. Ain’t your fight.”

Wasn’t going to be a fight at all, if she had anything to say about it. She held up her hand, intending to pat him on the back or arm, something to show her thanks, but she dropped it before it reached him. It would only be a distraction.

Instead she pulled her phone out of her bag as she picked her way through the black alley. Things rustled and moved in the garbage piled along the battered walls. Rats, probably. Maybe cats or small dogs. She stepped carefully, hearing the sliding shink of Terrible’s knife being drawn as she opened the phone.

The bright screen hurt her eyes and made her feel like a fucking target, standing there in a pool of light. It hit her then what she’d done. Left the fight, picked up a phone. Target indeed. She didn’t have much time.

Her fingers didn’t shake as she scrolled down to Lex’s code name. He was only one of three numbers she had programmed into the phone.

Her ass hit something hard and sharp-edged when she crouched down. A metal box of some kind. Her mind automatically took note of it—it looked like just the sort of place to hide electronic equipment of the kind used to fake hauntings—but Lex picked up before she had time to really register it.

“Hey, Tulip, what you up to this night?”

“Call them off, Lex,” she whispered, but as the words left her mouth she knew she was too late. Someone shouted. The fight was on. They clashed in the middle of the street opposite the alley, giving her a perfect view of what was happening. Not just five or six of Slobag’s men; at least as many again poured onto the street from somewhere. How many had been waiting, and why? Did they just keep an eye on the street, or what?

“Call who off? Ain’t know what you saying. You right?”

“No, I’m not fucking right. Your men, Lex. Slobag’s men. They’re here, they’re—” A scream cut her off. Red Berta in full battle cry, the voice that used to belt out show tunes, striking fear into the hearts of anyone within a few miles. The machete sliced through the air and grabbed a piece of one of Slobag’s men. He howled and stumbled sideways.

Terrible didn’t miss a beat, grabbing the man’s hair and slamming a heavy fist into his face. The man fell. Terrible turned to the next one.

All around were the hookers, stabbing at the men with their small blades, wielding pipes like pros. Sharp heels dug into soft leather shoes. They were holding their own, but they were outnumbered. Even as Chess watched, one of the girls went flying, her screech ending abruptly when her face hit the street.

“The fuck is that sound? Where you at?”

“I’m on Forty-fifth, dammit, Forty-fifth and Berrie, and there’s a bunch of your guys here and they’ve started a—”

“What you doing there? Ain’t nowhere near your place.”

“Can we talk about this later? Call them off, now .”

Metal scraped the pavement. A long, slim knife skittered on the sidewalk across the mouth of the alley, the blade sticky and dark. One of the men fell. His blood steamed in the cold air.

“Shit. A fight? You safe, Tulip?”

“For about the next two minutes. Lex, I’m not kidding here. There’s a fight, and it’s on Forty-fifth and I’m stuck in the fucking middle of it, please find out who it is and call them off!”

Another scream. Blood spurted from one of the hookers’ arms. Chess couldn’t tell which one she was, and in a moment the girl had disappeared, another wounded fighter in a crowd full of them. Over it all Terrible’s face, oddly peaceful, totally absorbed. As she watched he ducked down, catching a man midleap and shoving him over his shoulder and onto the street. His knife flashed in his fist.