Stacia Kane - Finding Magic

Or so Chess thought. Jillian had another task for them first; well, not for them, for herself. Apparently she wanted to check in at the Church, so they headed back over there. Chess was starting to feel like a ping-pong ball from all the back-and-forth driving they’d done that day, not to mention just plain tired and wondering if the day was ever going to end.

“Besides,” Jillian said as she opened one of the wide double doors at the Church’s entryway, “this way we’ll be sure to catch Gloria at dinner or right after, right? It’s only four-thirty now, and I didn’t think keeping you hanging around there with Trent was such a good idea. Although, you know, Vaughn—”

“Should I wait here for you?” Chess interrupted, waving her hand at one of the benches lining the hall. Yeah, she knew. Knew that she was already sick of the cloying hints about how he really seemed to like her—where Jillian got that from she had no idea; sure, he was nice enough, but he wasn’t flirting or asking her out—and how she could do a lot worse than him, and that was after only twenty minutes in the car.

Jillian sighed and looked at her watch. “Why don’t you head on back to your room, and I’ll call you when we’re done? I don’t know how long it’ll take. We don’t want to be at Gloria’s until at least six, so you might as well go relax or something.”

Relax? Relax, when they were so close to maybe finding something? Relax when that closeness might be due to her own work, to the clue that she’d actually found all by herself?

Relax, when that stuffy blood-covered apartment had stirred so many memories and they were starting to clang and rattle in her head louder and louder, when the only way she could possibly hope to drown them out—the only responsible way, the only way she should do it—was by working?

But Jillian’s expression didn’t brook argument; she clearly wanted Chess gone, so Chess would have to make herself gone. “Great,” she managed. “Okay, sure. Just call me when you’re ready.”

“I will.”

As soon as Jillian’s back disappeared into the open doorway of Elder Griffin’s office, though, Chess turned away and headed for the stairs. Yeah, she could go back to her room … or she could visit the library and see if she could learn anything more. No, she didn’t know the Church login Jillian had used—and wasn’t quite daring enough to use it unauthorized even if she had—but she could access the Internet if she wanted to, and she could check the shelves and the Restricted Room for any books about transporting ghosts.

Or … wait. Three ghosts had been Summoned from the City, and no, the Liaisers hadn’t noticed any specific connection between them, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still something that could be learned about them.

Not to mention that Mark’s parents had died in a fire when he was ten. Chess was very interested in learning more about that. The files on him she’d managed to look at earlier hadn’t contained details, and details were what she wanted, some indication of what had actually happened.

What had Jillian said about the file cabinets? Green was for buildings that had confirmed hauntings, red for people who’d died before Haunted Week, right?

Yes. There were several files under “Pollert,” but it wasn’t hard to find the ones she wanted. Not only because the dates were on them, but because when she flipped them open she saw pictures of charred rubble, charred bodies.

And a big stamp that said ARSON.

Holy shit. Not just a tragic house fire. A deliberate house fire. What exactly had—Okay. Hmm. According to the reports from the BT—pre-Church—police force and some laminated newspaper clippings, Mark’s father had been involved in some kind of shady business. Organized crime. Everyone had suspected the arson was revenge, and that was that.

She set the file on top of the cabinets so she could start flipping over the pages. There. A picture of Mark, looking … well, shit, looking like a smug little psycho. Tears had cut whitish tracks through the soot on his face, and the skin around his eyes looked shadowed, his brow furrowed. But something in the eyes themselves, something about the set of his jaw … Chess looked at that picture and didn’t see what she thought she should have seen, didn’t see someone horrified and upset over losing his parents.

She saw emptiness. The kind of emptiness she’d seen so many times in her life that she couldn’t help but recognize it, the kind that still made her wake up sweating in the middle of the night.

She wasn’t the only one who’d seen it, either. The original detective had made a few notes about Mark’s attitude, his lack of affect, his coldness.

But they hadn’t been able to prove anything, or at least so she assumed, given that he’d gone into foster care and not a hospital or mental facility or whatever it was they’d had back then.

Okay, then. Next she’d have to—

“Hi, Chessie. What are you doing?”

She spun around, her hands already scrambling to shut the file before anyone saw. It wasn’t necessary, really, since any Church employee or student was allowed access to those files—they weren’t confidential—but still. It was none of anybody’s business.

It was none of Agnew Doyle’s business.

He stood a little too close, the way he always did. And just the way it always did, her body reacted; not a lot, but enough that she noticed it. Enough that she knew he probably noticed it, because she noticed the way his did, too, the way his blue eyes widened when he looked at her.

Not that it mattered. They were in the same year, in the same classes; they’d work together after they graduated, and that meant he was off-limits. The last thing she wanted was to be forced to see one of her—Well, she didn’t want to see them again after, so she definitely didn’t want to have to work with one of them and deal with him on a regular basis.

She reminded herself of that as she pressed herself against the filing cabinet in a mostly vain attempt to put a little more space between Doyle and herself. “Oh, hey. Um, I’m doing some research—”

“Elder Martin said you’re on your training week. I didn’t know you wanted to work with the Squad.”

No one seemed to be paying any attention to them, but she lowered her voice anyway. “It’s just a training week. To see what it’s like.”

“And how is it?”

She shrugged.

He reached past her to lift the file and read the tab. “What are you investigating? That’s kind of an old file, isn’t it?”

“Quit being nosy. You know I can’t tell you.” She tugged the file away and tucked it under her arm.

“Oh, come on. Murders? Conspiracies? What? I haven’t done my week yet, I want to know what they have us do. How involved we get to be.”

“Are you doing yours with the Squad?”

“Nope.” He grinned at her and leaned against the cabinet, tucking his shaggy black hair behind his ear as he did so. “Debunking. I’ve already talked to Elder Griffin, you know, about how that’s what I want to do. He said he’d get me scheduled.”

“How—” No. No, she wasn’t going to ask how he’d managed to do that, because it would make her look stupid. Naive. She changed it to “How do you like Elder Griffin? He seems okay.”

“Yeah, he is. He’s pretty straitlaced, but they all are, huh? And you know he started with the Church before Haunted Week and everything, he fought during it. They put him into Elder training right after that, apparently, so I guess he did some serious shit.”

Chess thought about that for a second. “He doesn’t really seem like the type.”

“You never know.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice so it felt like a caress on her skin. “Some of us have hidden depths.”