Stacia Kane - Finding Magic

“How many others were there?”

“Six. Mark, two other couples, and then one other man.”

“You have their names?”

Chess held up her notebook, pleased that she’d thought to scribble the information down before she and Jillian left the Church.

Vaughn took it from her with a quick nod of thanks. “So … we need to get in touch with these people right away.”

Trent glanced at the list. “I don’t suppose you checked to see how many of those who worked at the Mission are now deceased. Or how the ghosts escaped from the City.”

“They were Summoned,” Jillian said. “But as far as we could tell they had nothing to do with the Mission.”

“Any other connection to any of the victims?”

“Not that I saw, but I’d only just opened the first file when Cesaria showed me what she’d found.”

“How many others who worked at the Mission are dead now?”

“We didn’t look. I wanted to get this to you guys as soon as possible. But Cesaria wrote down the names. If you have your computer, you can access the files from here.”

Vaughn considered that for a minute while Chess became aware that they weren’t alone. Well, she’d known that already, but as they stood there she felt eyes on her; on them. More and more every second. The street seemed quieter than it had. The Squad presence had been noticed; hell, they’d been spotted the second the car came down the street. But now they were standing around outside, and that made everyone nervous. Nervous people were dangerous.

The others noticed it, too. Vaughn handed her back her notebook, glancing around as he did so with his eyes squinted against the afternoon sun. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“Good idea.” Trent turned to Chess. “Maybe you can stumble blindly into some information in there, too.”

Whatever Tom Imry had done after the Mission closed, it hadn’t paid very well. Yeah, she knew that already; people who made money didn’t live in Downside. But—“Wait a minute.”

“What?” Jillian looked up from Tom’s bookshelves, where she’d been scanning the titles while Trent and Vaughn accessed their laptop, mumbling to each other and—in Trent’s case—shooting Chess the occasional baleful glare.

“Mark,” Chess said. “He didn’t mention it.”

“What do you mean?” Vaughn asked. He sat perched on the edge of the cushion on the book-propped couch, in front of a window covered with a tattered, bloodstained blanket. Chess didn’t like to look at the bloodstains; some of them, she knew, would be from Tom’s untimely demise, but some … They were faded and watery—more like rust stains—and they reminded her of fireworks or flowers, with dark splatty heads and long trailing stems. She recognized those bloodblossoms. Someone had been cleaning needles in that room, filling them with water and emptying them again so they’d be ready when the time came for another fix. She’d seen it done. She’d been made to do it.

Damn, not even any of the sacks of shit who’d put a roof over her head had cleaned their spikes against the walls. That was hopelessness. That was truly not giving a shit anymore, about anything.

But then, that was where the needle led. Always had, always would.

“Mark didn’t say anything about the others.” Chess pulled her attention off the blanket and back onto Jillian and Vaughn. “Four people he knows—or at least used to know—including the Warings, have been killed in the last couple of weeks, and he didn’t say anything?”

“He probably didn’t know,” Trent said.

“Their deaths weren’t in the papers? They had no contact with each other, really?”

“Their deaths weren’t news.” Trent glared at her. “We’re not telling the public, remember? So maybe they had obituaries, maybe they didn’t, but even if they did, the details of their actual deaths wouldn’t be made public. And who the hell knows if they stayed in touch with each other? We didn’t find any evidence of a connection between them, remember?”

Fuck it. She cocked her right eyebrow, let her gaze rest on him just a beat longer than necessary. “Yeah. I know you didn’t.”

Vaughn stood up, fast, like the couch had an ejector seat, and reached for her. She started to flinch away but he had her; his grip on her arm was surprisingly gentle as he led her toward the open doorway off the kitchen area. “Since you did find the connection, why don’t you come with me and see if we can find something else relating to it? Maybe there’s something in the bedroom.”

There were a lot of things in the bedroom. Especially junk. Long twisted ropes of dirty sheets across the floor, wires and bits of paper and needle caps and spent matches, clothing so full of holes it looked like only the copious stains held the fabric together. Evidence of a life nobody cared about, not even the person living it. Evidence of lost hope.

“I know Trent can be a pain in the ass,” Vaughn said quietly, surprising her. “I know he can be a jerk. He’s just trying to toughen you up—he was trained by one of the meanest sons of bitches I’ve ever known, and he thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to go.”

Chess didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say to that, anyway— That’s okay ? Because it wasn’t, not really, and Trent wasn’t some kind of loving but tough grandpa, he was a dickhead who hated her for no good reason.

Vaughn seemed to want her to say something, though. She decided on “Sure.” That seemed noncommittal enough.

And apparently it was, because Vaughn’s face cleared. “Okay. Good. Thanks.”

Another few seconds passed while they both stood there like people on a blind date, not knowing what to say or do or if they’d even find something to say or do. Stupid, really. Chess clasped her hands together in a brisk let’s-get-to-it gesture, the sort of thing she associated with Church Goodys or matrons or whatever. Not the sort of thing she would ever do unless she felt totally uncomfortable, which she did. “So, you wanted to search around in here?”

He blinked. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

He took one side of the room and Chess took the other, though she thought it was probably going to be a waste of time and she suspected Vaughn did as well.

They were wrong. The first thing she found, after searching only a couple of semi-empty drawers, was a copy of the picture. The one in the Warings’ spare room, the one with the graininess of a pre-digital photograph. If Tom Imry had had a copy of it, was he in it? Who else was in it? Were all of the people in the picture dead? If not, were the still-living ones in danger?

She asked Vaughn.

“I don’t know,” he said, taking the picture from her to give it a closer look. “We’ll have to look at the files of the people still alive, see if we can match the faces. I don’t know how easy it’ll be—maybe Gloria Waring will have some idea who they are.”

Duh. She’d actually forgotten about Gloria for a minute there; she’d gotten so excited about investigating on her own she’d forgotten that part of investigating meant questioning witnesses. “Maybe Gloria has a lot more information than she thinks she does, huh?”

He nodded. “You and Jillian should talk to her soon. If you get to her place in an hour or two, you can probably catch her right around dinnertime, so she’ll be sure to be home.”

Wow, that was kind of a scummy thing to do. But then, Chess figured scummy was sometimes the only way to get things done, at least for the Squad or anyone else doing any investigating. Or, well, anyone who needed anything else done, really; everything was scummy to somebody, right?

Whatever. The point was, she needed to go interrupt Gloria Waring’s dinner, and she needed Jillian to go with her, so it was time to leave the Trent-free peace of the bedroom and go do it.