Finding Magic

Chapter Eleven

Fuck. She should have known. Fuck fuck fuck, why hadn’t she known, why hadn’t she guessed?

Of course Mark was there; of course he’d come. Gloria had called the Rosses. She’d called Mark as well, and he’d known. Known they were on to him, known where she and Jillian were going. Known, too, that Trent and Vaughn were on their way to his place.

If he hadn’t killed them already. That time of night, the trip from his address on the outskirts of Downside to this place would only take fifteen minutes or so if he went the speed limit, and somehow she didn’t think he was the type to worry too much about traffic laws. She didn’t think he was the type to worry much about anything but his own shitty plans.

But apparently—obviously—she was the only one. Both Rosses were finally shaken from their semi-catatonia, surprise replacing the fear on their faces.

Mr. Ross spoke first. “Mark, what—guns won’t work against ghosts, you know that, you—”

“Shut up, Eric.” Mark waved the gun. “Go stand over there. Where’s the other bitch from the Church?”

“Mark, I don’t—”

Mrs. Ross cut him off. “This is what you were doing? Why you needed the van? This is—you used me? You were using me to kill our friends?”

What?

But as Chess glanced from Mark to Mrs. Ross and back again, the pieces fell into place. Of course, that might have been helped by the fact that Mark replied. Cheerfully. Just like the fucking psycho he was.

“Of course I did, Tracy. What did you think, that a woman your age could really interest a man like me? Did you really believe that?”

Eric Ross still looked like he couldn’t understand what was happening; Chess guessed she couldn’t blame him. Finding out his wife had been cheating on him with a trusted friend and that said trusted friend also wanted to kill him probably was a lot to take in. Not to mention finding out that the trusted friend was an egotistical shitbrain. “Tracy, I don’t—Mark, what are you—”

The gun went off. Tracy screamed, Chess threw herself to the side, and Eric fell dead to the floor. Blood spattered the wall behind him, a physical embodiment of the life that had escaped.

Eric’s ghost rose from his body, a glowing column of death. It looked at his corpse on the floor. Looked at Mark, at Tracy, at Chess.

And snarled.

Shit. Why wasn’t it disappearing? Why wasn’t a psychopomp coming for it, taking it to the City?

Jillian appeared in the kitchen doorway, her gun drawn. “What the hell is—”

The gunshot cut her off, and she fell. Her gun clattered across the floor; Chess lunged but was too late. Mark already had it.

Tracy whimpered and sobbed. Jillian moaned. Not dead, then, at least not yet, though that could change at any second. Just like it could change for Chess, because Eric Ross was gliding toward the row of knives stuck to a magnetic strip on the wall, and the ghosts in the other room would be there any second, and Jillian was down.

The barroom-type doors weren’t the only entrance to the kitchen. There was a hallway, too. From her position on the floor Chess couldn’t see where it went, and she doubted it ended in any kind of exit, but she was sure there was at least one room off it that would have a door she could lock, a window she could climb out of. Anything to buy her even a second or two, not just to try to call the Squad but because the memory of the City loomed in front of her, throbbed in her mind, and her entire body went cold at the thought of being there again as a permanent resident.

Eric’s ghost grabbed a knife and turned toward Mark. Maybe he’d—no. No, because Mark set Jillian’s gun down on the counter and grabbed something from his pocket. Chess figured it was graveyard dirt and asafetida, just like Jillian had used—just like all Church employees, or anyone who could do any kind of ghost magic, used—and she was right. Mark flung it at Eric’s ghost almost lazily, and Eric froze.

Chess took her chance. She scrambled along the floor, trying to cross the distance to the mouth of the hallway as quickly as possible, trying to cross it before Mark saw her—

And failing. Pain erupted in the back of her head as Mark grabbed her hair and pulled it hard, lifting her hands off the floor, yanking her to an upright kneel.

“Oh, no,” Mark said. The gun waved just before Chess’s eyes, its nozzle a dark tunnel straight to the City. “You’re not going anywhere. I need you.”

Needed her?

Before she had a chance to figure out what that meant—she certainly wasn’t about to ask—the living room ghosts appeared, hovering in the doorway, their faces twisted with rage. Shit. Yeah, Mark could apparently freeze them, but again, it wouldn’t last. What was he doing? What was he planning to do?

Tracy Ross launched herself at Mark. He let go of Chess’s hair, giving her a second or two of blessed relief before another gunshot broke the air, made Chess’s ears ring. Another dead body, another ghost. What the fuck was he doing? Did he plan to fill the fucking house with ghosts?

Not to mention that their presence made Chess feel queasy. Something made her feel queasy, anyway, and she was pretty sure that was it. Without any markings on her skin, either the tattoos all Church employees were given as protection and power enhancers or the sigils and runes Jillian had scrawled on her earlier on the train, the ghosts’ energy beat against hers. Of course. That was why she’d been uncomfortable earlier, just before the ghosts had appeared. She’d never been around a ghost without being marked; the Church instructors were very careful about that. So it was good—or at least worthwhile—to know.

But knowing that didn’t help. She turned in a vain attempt to head down the hallway again, but Mark caught her just as quickly as he had before. This time he dragged her—again by the hair, ouch—over to crouch near Jillian, who still moaned softly as she clutched her bleeding shin. “Stay right there. If you move, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

She managed to nod. He grabbed something out of another pocket: a small canister. Church salt. Of course. Chess watched as he dumped it in a thick line, blocking the ghosts from entering the kitchen, and then in another line that separated himself from Chess, Jillian, and the ghosts of Eric and Tracy. Eric was still frozen, but Chess could already see signs that the freeze was lifting, and Tracy’s blank eyes had focused on Jillian. Shit.

Mark opened the kitchen door—the back door. Beyond it Chess made out the dark shape of a black van. The van, idling on the grass, with ROSS TRANSPORTS painted in white on the side. A typical van no one would notice as it made its way through quiet suburban streets.

“Come on.” Mark waved the gun at her, at Jillian. “Get her up. Let’s go.”

Tracy swiped at Chess’s head; it was like having someone drive an icicle into her brain. Not fatal—Tracy couldn’t kill her by touching her—but fuck it was cold, and fuck that made it painful.

And that was nothing compared to what Tracy could do—would do—when she figured out that touching wasn’t going to work, and picked up a weapon.

Jillian spoke up from her fetal position on the floor, the words broken and punctuated by gasps. “The other Squad members know we’re here, Mark. You won’t get away with this.”

He snorted. “I certainly hope they do. An idiot would figure it out.”

Chess spoke before she thought of it. “You wanted them to know. You want them to come here.”

“I want them to know everything.” His lips curled into a snarl. “I want them to know I’m on to them. I want them to know what I think of them. And you bitches are going to help me. Now get up and get in the van.”

Chess glanced at Jillian. Jillian hadn’t moved. So … did that mean Chess shouldn’t, either, or was Jillian just trying to gather her strength, or what? If it were up to Chess she would get up, try to act compliant, look for an opening to attack, but for all she knew Jillian was planning some kind of attack already, or she’d managed to actually call someone while Mark was trying to rip Chess’s hair out at the roots, or whatever.

Mark sighed and checked his watch in an exaggerated fashion. “In about eighty-nine seconds, the dynamite I’ve placed around the foundation of this house is going to explode. So you have your choice. You can get in the van, or you can try to run for it. Personally, I don’t think you can run that fast.”

He hadn’t finished the sentence before Chess was up, hauling Jillian to her feet and pulling her over the salt line. Yes, she could try to run, to a neighbor’s house or into the middle of the street or something, but this was Northside. One of the more expensive neighborhoods in Northside, which meant the nearest neighbor was a good fifty yards or so away at least, and Chess somehow didn’t think she could drag an injured Jillian that far in a minute.

Hell, she didn’t even think they could get that far by van, but it looked like her only chance, didn’t it?

So she threw herself forward, hauled Jillian along with her, and leaped into the van’s open door. Before she had a chance to even consider closing it behind her Mark was there, his body repugnant against hers as he pushed her further in and put the van in gear.

The van’s engine roared, and it lurched forward. Jillian yelped in pain; Chess gritted her teeth. How much time did they have left, how far away did they have to get, how powerful would the explosion be?

Really fucking powerful, was the answer. The air around them went white and orange; the van jerked sideways as it turned onto the street at the end of the long driveway. The van didn’t have back windows, but Chess saw it through Mark’s window, saw his profile outlined by fire, saw wood and stone and chunks of unidentifiable materials fly into the night sky. The noise was deafening, horrible; the light seared her retinas so when she blinked all she saw was bright, fierce green.

But Mark had already reached another bend in the road. The last image Chess saw was the plume of vicious fire against the darkness before it really hit her where she was, who she was with, and she closed her eyes in despair because she had no idea how she was going to escape this one. No answer presented itself as they drove along the highway, back toward Downside—so she assumed—and Mark’s home. No bright ideas sprang fully formed into her head, no clever plans appeared. Instead she just felt miserable, and she fought back the terror threatening to overwhelm her. She was trapped. Trapped in a moving vehicle by a man holding both a gun and a grudge, and she was apparently part of some plan of his, and she didn’t want to know what it was.

Jillian’s quiet sobs grated on her. Why wasn’t Jillian thinking, why wasn’t Jillian coming up with a plan? Why wasn’t Jillian holding her hand, trying to reassure her, instead of just clutching at her leg and huddling against the van’s door? Jillian was the fucking Squad member, the fucking adult. Chess was eighteen. In training.

But then, when had any adult, ever, in Chess’s entire life, bothered to take any responsibility when it came to her, bothered to act like an adult at all instead of like a selfish bag of shit? So why should Jillian be any different.

Maybe that wasn’t fair. But Chess didn’t feel like being fair. She was scared and trapped, and being trapped reminded her of all those other times, of her entire lifetime of being trapped, and her fingers itched to grab the flask out of her bag. In another second she was going to do it, Jillian and Church and everything else be damned.

Cars zipped by on the highway; Chess briefly considered trying to signal one of them, then discarded the idea. Even if Mark didn’t kill her before she could attract anyone’s attention, and even if she could manage to attract someone’s attention, no one would do anything. No one ever did. The only place helpful onlookers appeared, the only place people went out of their way for strangers, was in movies. In real life people just focused their eyes on the horizon and pretended they hadn’t seen a thing. They lied to themselves, told themselves they were still good people even as they left others to be abused and die.

She’d have to figure out something on her own. Fuck.

Okay. The Church hadn’t covered anything like this in her training, but life had taught her one or two things about trying to mitigate whatever abuse she was in for, trying to placate sick fucks. It didn’t always work—well, it almost never stopped whatever was going to happen—but every once in a while it helped. Made it a little easier, a little not so bad.

Of course, every once in a while it made it worse, too. She’d have to take a chance.

She cleared her throat. “Hey, um, Mr. Pollert? Mark? I have a flask in my bag. Vodka. Do you want some? A drink? Seems like maybe we can relax a little now that we’re not at the Rosses’ house anymore.”

He didn’t answer for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her. Then he snorted. “Of course you need to drink, working with those people.”

Please, please, let her relief not show. Don’t let him see that he’d just said exactly what she was hoping he’d say, that he’d just given her an opening. “It’s a lot of pressure. Trying to be what they want me to be. They expect so much.”

“But not from themselves, do they? Only of other people. Only of you.” He jerked his head in her direction—in Jillian’s direction. “Look at her. Black Squad. Supposed to be the elite. And yet she sits there whining.”

Chess didn’t know quite how to respond to that. He was right, after all.

Which was what bothered her. That what she’d been thinking was so closely mirrored, that she could have anything in common with Mark Pollert … the thought made her squirm. So she lifted her hand to the zipper of her bag. “I’m going to get my flask, okay?”

“You don’t need that thing.” The words weren’t spoken in a harsh tone, but they were definite enough to stop her. Shit. It wasn’t just that she thought if she could get a little booze into his system, get him to loosen up, she could maybe earn a bit more of his trust and it might be easier to escape. It was that she seriously could use a fucking drink.

But then he pulled something out of the van’s center console. A little plastic bag full of pills, round white pills Chess thought she recognized. Lonticepts, or at least that’s what they looked like. Cepts. Opiates, strong ones. Good ones. The kind some of her foster parents used to give her to shut her up or to make her feel better after they’d finished with her. The kind she paid five bucks a pop for in the Corey Home but hadn’t touched since, because she wasn’t doing that stuff anymore now that she had a future.

Right. Because sneaking shots was so much better and stronger. For fuck’s sake, who was she kidding?

Mark shook the bag at her. “Take one. Go ahead.”

So much for her clever trap, for trying to gain his confidence. She hadn’t done anything except show him she had a weakness, give him an intro so he could drug her. Make her more pliable, just like all those other shitheads had done.

“Go on.” He shook the bag again. His voice hardened. “Take one.”

She pretended she hadn’t noticed his tone, didn’t know what he was trying to do. “Hey, thanks. Um, can I give Jillian one? I bet she could use it.” She forced a mean snicker.

He echoed it. “Go ahead. There’s plenty.”

What if she didn’t actually swallow it? She could probably fake it. Palm it and tuck it into her pocket, drop it onto the floor between the door and the seat where he might not look.

Yeah, he might check, he might look for it. That didn’t mean she couldn’t try. She should try.

But she didn’t. She didn’t. Instead she popped that pill into her mouth and dry-swallowed it. Instead she let her eyes close for a second in anticipation, because even though it had been a few years, she still remembered, still knew what was coming, and found herself waiting for it, eager for it, her entire body tense like she was on the brink of an orgasm. The best orgasm, because it would last. It wouldn’t disappear in thirty seconds and leave her alone and stuck inside her own head again.

She didn’t give Jillian the choice, though. She shoved the pill into Jillian’s mouth, ignoring the look in her eyes, and turned away as soon as Jillian swallowed. Maybe Jillian was faking it. Chess hoped not. She didn’t really want Jillian paying attention to what she was saying, what she was doing.

Mark chuckled, an oily, disgusting sound. “Just wait until that kicks in, Princess.”

“I’m not a princess.”

“Oh?” He glanced at her, his face pale in the dashboard’s glow. “Seems to me like you are. Training with the Church, sticking your nose in the air. I bet you think you’re better than me, don’t you? I bet you have a mommy and daddy who worship the ground your precious little feet walk on.”

Not only was he gross and a murderer, he was a fucking lousy judge of character. Was it better to tell him that or to let him go on thinking he’d figured her out?

She only had a second to decide. No. Tell him the truth. Try to form some kind of bond with him. Get him to let his guard down. “I don’t have any family. They—well, my mother, I guess—abandoned me when I was born, before Haunted Week. I was a baby. They found me outside a hospital.”

He steered the van onto the exit ramp at Carter Avenue. They’d passed the Downside exits; where was he—? Oh shit. The Church. He was heading for Church headquarters, and as he did he glared at her so hard it felt like a slap. “Don’t lie to me, like you think it’s going to gain my trust. They don’t let people without families work for the Church. They don’t let trash work for them.”

“I’m not lying, I—”

Stupid. She shouldn’t have tried to argue. “You are lying. I know you’re lying. I passed their fucking tests, and they didn’t let me in. They didn’t let me in because my parents died, because I lived at the Mission. So I know.”

That wasn’t why they hadn’t let him in, or at least she guessed it wasn’t. Something told her that what had kept him out of Church training was the fact that he’d almost certainly murdered his parents and that he was basically a psycho.

But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he believed it. So she’d have to play along, even though the words felt like vomit in her mouth—because they were lies, and because they weren’t. “That doesn’t surprise me. I mean, you should see some of the games that go on there, the way people backstab and everything, pretending they like you and then ripping you up in front of the Elders … they really just don’t care, you know.”

Maybe he’d have to stop at a red light, maybe she could jump—no. No, he’d probably just run them all, and even if he was dumb enough to stop, and even if she could get out without being shot, she couldn’t leave Jillian and with Jillian dragging her down she wouldn’t get far.

“But you still do it,” Mark said. “You’re still playing their game. That makes you just as bad.”

Another decision to make, and no time to make it. She took the plunge; she needed to divert the conversation away from herself and back onto him, and she needed to try to win him over, make him see her as different from the others at the Church. As someone harmless.

“I didn’t think I had a choice.” Deep breath. “And then I felt—I found the sex spell you made for the Warings and I, I was curious about you, and I looked you up. Well, Jillian didn’t want me to, but I convinced her it was for the case. But really it was because I—you felt like me, like how I feel. And your spell was so strong. You’re so … powerful.”

Would he buy that? It sounded like the biggest pile of bullshit on the planet—probably because it was—and it made her skin crawl just to say it, but he was a man. And she was a passably pretty young girl; not as busty and curvy as some, not as pretty as some, but pretty enough. She’d never had any trouble finding men willing to spend a few hours with her, at least, and those were men her age. Mark was abut forty, and had a hell of an ego, judging by his comments to Tracy Ross and the fact that he thought he was pulling some clever plan over on the Church.

Middle-aged egotists had a special weakness for flattery from pretty girls just over the jailbait line. And Chess definitely qualified there. Any normal guy probably wouldn’t have bought it, but Mark did. Thank fuck. It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but if she could get him into a physically compromising position, get him vulnerable … she could hurt him. And she could escape.

She’d done it before.

“You found that, huh?”

“I didn’t know why you weren’t in the Church. I mean, you’re certainly strong enough.” She started to add And smart enough, then thought better of it. Wouldn’t do to lay it on too thick. “But then I realized it was because they didn’t deserve you. They just use people. Like they tried to use me, throwing me into the Rosses’ house tonight when I’m not even marked. I mean, I’m like cannon fodder for someone who can control ghosts like you can, and Jillian didn’t even try to protect me.”

If he believed that shit, he was an enormous idiot. But he would believe it. Because he wanted to.

Then—oh, shit—he turned into the Church parking lot, and her stomach started to tingle. That old familiar tingle, that sweet slow slide of pleasure deep in her belly, of something warm and delightful building there. It was happening, the Cept was hitting; she wasn’t quite smiling yet, but she would be soon.

She glanced at Jillian; was she even awake? Didn’t look like it. Good.

Mark nosed the van into a spot right outside the huge double doors. The lot was empty: not even any Squad vans parked off to the side, not even any Squad sedans sitting in their spaces. No one there.

Of course. Of course they weren’t there. There’d been an explosion, hadn’t there? A house with two Church employees inside. Everyone would be there.

Maybe Mark wasn’t quite so stupid.