Stacia Kane - Finding Magic

What she did not want was a Grande Burger and a Coke, but it was what she asked for, because Jillian hadn’t ordered a drink—a real drink—so Chess figured she shouldn’t, either, despite the pounding in her head, the voices coming back.

“Gloria said her parents didn’t mess with magic they shouldn’t be messing with,” Jillian said, her eyes scanning the restaurant aimlessly as she talked. “She said they were kind of scared of the whole thing, really, and never got over the loss of their religion.”

“A lot of people feel that way.” Chess resisted the urge to add “Right?” to the end of the sentence. They’d been taught this; even before she entered Church education she’d been taught this, about the suicides and the small hidden cults and everything else.

Jillian nodded. “It’s not unusual. Might be why the Warings hired someone else to do their sex spell, too, if they weren’t comfortable doing their own magic.”

“They did the luck charms. And the protection charms. At least it felt like them.” Did that sound bitchy?

Apparently not, because Jillian didn’t remark on it. “They did feel like them, yeah. So why would she get someone else to do her sex magic?”

“Maybe she needed something a little stronger,” Chess said before she thought. Her face warmed. “I mean, that’s the only thing I can think of.”

Not that she wanted to think of it at all. That sex spell refused to leave her memory, refused to leave her alone.

Jillian shrugged. “I don’t think it matters, really. The sex spell didn’t feel like ghost magic, and we didn’t find anything that would indicate they were doing ghost magic.”

“Why’d they keep the sex spell in the closet, though?”

“Hmm?” Jillian wasn’t looking at Chess; she was looking at the guys by the bar, and they were looking back. Hmm indeed.

The last thing Chess was going to do was look interested in the men, though. And she wanted an answer to her question. “Why was the sex spell in the closet? Don’t most people keep them under their beds? And—and that spell felt kind of dark to me, kind of, like, frustrated.”

“Maybe that’s why they kept it in the closet. It just didn’t work and they were planning to get rid of it.”

“I wonder who made it for them.”

Jillian flashed a smile at the men across the room. “Look, Cesaria, I get that this is your first case and it’s exciting and everything, but I think you’re reading way too much into this.” The smile softened a little. “If you’re just curious, fine, but this was a crime of opportunity. It’s the third ghost murder like this in the last two weeks. It’s bad, and I’m interested in what you have to say, but we should be focusing on identifying the ghosts and trying to catch them, instead of worrying about where our victims bought their magic.”

Fuck this. Yeah, fine, Jillian was trying to be nice. At least it looked like she was. And yeah, fine, Chess was new at this, and she was curious, and she was anxious to make a good impression, but she wasn’t an idiot and she wasn’t a child, and fuck Jillian and her condescension.

Chess stood up. “I’ll be right back, okay? I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Walk by those guys, see if they say anything to you.”

“Sure.” Ugh.

But she did, and they did, and by the time she came back from the bathroom sucking another candy and feeling much calmer—the voices quieted, the world softened just a little bit; hey, she wasn’t technically working anymore, right?—the men were firmly ensconced at their table, with Jillian holding court over their newly arrived food.

Looked like work time was over. Fine. Chess sat down and turned toward the least objectionable-looking of the men, plastering a smile on her face as she did. There was more than one way to forget.

Jillian picked her up at eleven the next morning, late enough that Chess had just about managed to shake her hangover, but still early enough that Jillian’s enthusiastic discussion about the men the night before, and which one she liked, and how he’d asked for her phone number, and blah blah blah whatever, still felt like fingernails on Chess’s mental chalkboard.

“Thanks for letting that other one give you a ride home, anyway,” Jillian said, taking a swig of coffee. “I appreciate it.”

“Sure.” That wasn’t all he’d given her, but she wasn’t about to mention that. He’d chased away some memories, distracted her for a few minutes, and that was all she cared about.

“What was his name, again?”

“Um … Mike, I think.”

“Did he ask for your number?”

“I didn’t give it to him.” Chess pulled out her notepad and started flipping pages in an effort to get Jillian to quit the girl talk. “So where are we going today?”

“Back to the Waring house. Gloria Waring is meeting us there. Why didn’t you give him your number?”

“I just didn’t, is all.” Lie. That was a lie and she was a liar. She hadn’t given it to him because she never wanted to see him again, because she never wanted to see any of them again afterward. Because she was weak enough to want them so the least she could do was keep them from hurting her; because if she let them into her life they would hurt her. How could they not? They were people. That was what people did to each other.

Jillian opened her mouth; Chess spoke before she could. “So Gloria Waring will be there again? What are we going to ask her about? I thought you said it was just a crime of opportunity.”

“It is. At least we’re ninety-nine percent sure it is. But we want to be a hundred percent sure—we are the Black Squad, after all—so we just want to give the place another go-over. It won’t take long.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll see.” Jillian shrugged as she turned the car onto the Warings’ street. “Maybe we’ll head down to the City and talk to the Liaisers, see if they’ve turned up anything on these ghosts, if they’re missing from the City or—”

“The City?” It came out as a sort of raspy squeak; embarrassing. Chess cleared her throat and tried again. “The City of Eternity? We’ll go down there?”

“Today or tomorrow, yeah. Oh—you haven’t been down there yet, have you?”

Chess shook her head. Shit. The City … that was a big deal. An exciting deal, and a scary deal, and she wasn’t entirely sure which emotion she felt more.

“Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine.” Jillian parked the car on the curb outside the Waring house and turned it off. “It’s kind of weird the first time you go, but really, once you see how peaceful it is … it’s really nice, this whole other world, and you get to go there when you die. So it’s like not even really dying. It’s, well, it’s nice, you know?”

Chess forced a smile. At least she knew exactly what reaction was expected from her on this subject. “I’m just amazed I might get to see it.”

Jillian’s smile widened. Double shit; Chess knew what Jillian was going to say before she said it, and it wasn’t really what Chess wanted to hear. “Tell you what,” Jillian said, “we’ll go down there either way, okay? After we leave here, we’ll just go.”

“Oh, hey, don’t put—”

“Don’t be silly.” Jillian’s hand rested on Chess’s arm for a minute; Chess managed not to react. “I’m here to teach you stuff, right? Just think, you get to go before anybody else in your year. They’ll be so jealous.”

Like she gave a shit what they thought. “Wow, yeah, that’s … thanks, that’s really great.”

“No problem.” Jillian grinned at her for another few seconds, like she’d just handed Chess a couple thousand dollars for no reason, then opened the car door. “Come on, let’s hurry up here so we can go.”