Read Unholy Magic for Free Online Page B

dangling from her clenched fist, and extracted a couple of pills, swallowing them with more beer. Hey, she didn’t have to get up early in the morning. Good thing, too, as it was after three.
    “‘Specially with she so close to us, hanging the border like that. Why she up there? You ask Terrible that one?”
    “No.”
    “Maybe you oughta.”
    Talking to Lex about Terrible made her twitchy, as it always did. It felt like they were talking around something rather than through it. She crossed the open space between the wall and the kitchen and leaned on the countertop, hiding her lower body. “I wish you would stop hinting around and say whatever it is you’re trying to say.”
    “I’m saying, you gots a dead hooker. Only it ain’t the first dead hooker I seen about.”
    “What? Wait. You mean somebody’s been killing hookers on your side? Slobag’s girls?”
    He nodded. “See? I keep thinking you smart, you keep proving me right.”
    “And you think Bump’s behind them.”
    “Who else?”
    She blinked. “No offense, Lex, but they’re hookers. I can think of a lot of who elses.” Like the Cryin Man, she thought, but did not say. Life had taught her ghosts were real, but the Church had taught her to be skeptical when faced with rumors of one, even if the magical evidence of human involvement wasn’t making fine sweat break out on her skin.
    “Aye? Like who. They ain’t with a trick, dig, when it happen. Just picked right off’n the street. You think—hey.” Chess watched the nimble movements of his hands as he lit a cigarette and exhaled thick bluish smoke, more fragrant than the cheaper smokes everyone else she knew bought. “You figure it for a spook, aye? Bump bringing you in to catch a ghost.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “Ain’t gotta say it. You ain’t got such a stiff face as you suppose, least not with me. I got some practice with you, aye? So Bump bringing you in to see if you gotta kicker doing the killing. Lemme say, Tulip, you sure do get yourself in demand.”
    She raised an eyebrow. He grinned. “Oh, you in demand with me, and you know it. How Bump trick you into checking this one out?”
    She blinked. There hadn’t actually been a trick, had there? Only the vague, implied threat that if she didn’t do it, Bump might make trouble for her. Maybe invent another debt—she still bought from him, despite getting most of her drugs free from Lex, simply because to stop buying from him would raise suspicion. And she wouldn’t dare visit Slobag’s pipe rooms. Not everyone in Downside stayed with Bump or Slobag. Some switched back and forth. The last thing she needed was to be recognized, even if most of the Chinese gangs—like Slobag’s gang—didn’t hate Church employees on principle.
    Not that she didn’t understand. When so much of your culture was based on ancestor worship, to be suddenly told you had to pay to commune with their spirits in a Church-approved fashion had to be a bite. Understanding didn’t make life easier, though.
    “No trick,” she said finally, realizing he was watching her decide what to say.
    “Just doing it outta the kindness of your heart, aye?”
    She nodded. The trap was there, she knew it and she knew what it would be. What she didn’t know was how to get out of it.
    “So you gonna help me too, aye?” He stood up and came toward her, his footsteps silent on the floor. She watched him advance, again seeing the trap and this time not caring. Quite the opposite, in fact. She was ready to fling herself into its steel-sharp teeth by the time he stood behind her.
    His hand slid over her hips and forward, palm flat on her stomach, fingertips working their way under the waistband of her jeans.
    “Maybe ghosts on my side of town, what do you guess?” Smoke from his cigarette touched her skin when he pushed her hair back from her shoulder. His teeth scraped her earlobe and nibbled a line down so he could suck gently on her neck the way he knew she liked.