“Think about it. Think about her,” Brian said. “She’d come back again and again. She’d never let you leave her bed. You could do anything you want to her, and she’d beg you to keep doing it. Anything. Roley was right, wasn’t he? You want her. You’re picturing her right now.”
He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. He would not.
Fuck … her body against his, her voice in his ear, the taste of her skin, her legs wrapped around him …
“This is your chance. You can have her. Any way you want, as many times as you want. She’ll love you for—”
It weren’t even a thought. Not a conscious impulse. But his hand closed around Brian’s throat, squeezing hard.
Because no. No, she wouldn’t. That were the problem. She wouldn’t love him, not the right way. Not the way he wanted. Even iffen she said it, it would be a lie.
And he didn’t want that. He didn’t want just her body, some fucking blow-up doll with her face. Iffen he ever had Chess in his bed—not that he ever would, he knew that, but if—he wanted it to be real. True. He wanted to look in her eyes and see her there, Chess, looking at him. Wanting him, not some fake bullshit magic version of him, not some dull-eyed manipulated version of her. He wanted her to choose him, and iffen she ever said she loved him, were he ever to hear those words in her voice, he wanted it to be Chess saying em. The real Chess. His Chess.
Having it any other way—having her any other way … that was the wrong way. And he were not fucking doing it the wrong way. Not with her.
Through the haze of anger and determination and sex he saw Brian sink to the floor, felt Brian’s Adam’s apple hard against his palm, Brian’s pulse pounding as his blood struggled to get past Terrible’s fist. Fucker. Motherfucker. Bad enough what he’d done to the whores. That were enough for Terrible to want to slice open he stomach and yank out his guts. But now he were using Chess to sell his shitty magic? Trying to use Chess to get Terrible to make a deal. Trying to use the way Terrible felt about Chess. She weren’t even there, Brian had never even met her, and he was using her. Trying to turn Terrible into someone just as bad as him, causen what he were suggesting Terrible do to Chess were no different from what they’d done to the whores. They was trying to take him down with them.
And fuck Roley, too. Terrible shoulda killed him harder.
But what else would shitbags like them do? He ain’t could forget what that magic came from, what they’d done to create it. He held on to that anger and used it to remember: to remember Slick’s body—aye, both Roley and Brian said they hadn’t done Slick, but still—and Essie and Clapper Sue and Drina, and suddenly he didn’t feel turned on any more. He felt sick. Manipulated.
And furious. Furious at Brian and Roley and all them in this building who’d made that magic. Furious at himself for forgetting even for a second, and for actually … for enjoying it for a second, for letting it work on him. Maybe he couldn’t help it—he had the feeling he probably couldn’t have, that iffen he were to ask Chess on it she’d say there were no way to keep from feeling anything with magic like that—but he shoulda remembered sooner, shoulda thought on it before he opened that door.
That magic came from someplace wrong, from something wrong, and disgust rolled his stomach and spread through the rest of him. And he encouraged that disgust, kept thinking on how that magic came to be, because being turned on by it made him sick.
He’d learned from Chess that the best way to kill a spell was to throw it in a river, or wash it down a sink. Anything to cover it with running water. But the room—his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and he were still sweating but he’d managed to make the images in his head fade some—was loaded with magic, boxes piled up the walls, row after row and layer after layer. Looked like they reached the whole length of the building. No wonder he felt it so strong.
Burning spells weren’t always right to do, so Chess said. Could spread the ashes or some shit. But he had the thought that sex spells weren’t the kind he had to be that careful with. People kept em in their houses and all.
No choice, anyroad. He had to destroy the spells. And he ain’t at all minded the idea that destroying the spells would destroy the whole fucking building, neither. What they deserved.
He dragged Brian by the throat over toward one of the boxes against the wall, a half-open one, and peered in. The spells were just little cloth bags, like most he’d seen. Good, then. They’d burn easy.
Pain erupted in his side. What the—oh. He’d loosened his grip on Brian, and the fucker had taken the chance and jumped at him, knocked him into one of the file cabinets.
Woulda been a mistake iffen Brian weren’t gonna die anyway, but he was. And it weren’t like fighting Brian was hard. Wouldn’t have been hard even if Brian ain’t still had his wrists taped together behind him.
Terrible grabbed Brian’s shirt—Brian was tryna get off him to run away—and threw him back down to the floor. Brian opened his mouth to yell, but Terrible was faster; he crouched down and dug his knee into Brian’s chest, tugging the roll of duct tape out of his bag at the same time. Only took a second to tear off a piece and stick it over Brian’s mouth.
He ain’t had a lot of time, he knew, but he couldn’t stop himself. He leaned down real close, so he could look Brian right in the eye. So Brian could see what was coming. “Still wanting make a deal?”
Brian nodded, the jerky, too-fast nod Terrible saw a lot in people scared shitless. Hope lit his eyes up. Terrible couldn’t wait to see it die.
“How about this one. How about you make it so them dames never got raped, and I forget the whole thing. You do that? Make it so it never happened? Give em back what you fuckin took?”
Watching Brian’s face fall ain’t should have felt as good as it did, but it did anyway. Watching the fear come back into his eyes stronger than before felt even better.
Terrible shook his head. “Guessing there ain’t a deal to make then. Too bad for you, aye?”
He taped Brian’s ankles tight together—Brian weren’t ever gonna walk anywhere again—and dragged him over to sit opposite the door. He could watch what happened next.
Lighter fluid oughta do it. He had a new bottle in his bag. The smell of it, sharp and somehow cold, filled the air as he squirted it over the spells, opened the file cabinets and rifled through their contents till he found what he wanted. That file he put in his bag. The rest he threw all over the floor. One way or another they was losing all the knowledge they had written down, on all of their magic.
Just like they were gonna lose their building and their business, and as many of their lives as he could swing.
He emptied the bottle, making sure he left trails of lighter fluid down the entire length of the room and across the width, making sure each box of sick magic had at least some on it, especially the boxes at the bottom of the stacks. The windows along that outside wall was covered in iron bars, but he could still get at em; he wrapped a rag from his pack around his fist and punched through a couple of the panes to make sure there’d be enough air to feed the fire.
Voices from downstairs. They’d arrived. Terrible glanced at Brian to make certain he were visible through the open doorway. The handle of his knife practically vibrated in his hand, ready to get used. And over it all that magic still throbbed, his skin still felt all stretched out, his heart still beat too fast. Like hundreds of soft little hands all over him, stroking the back of his neck, his chest, reaching into his jeans. He couldn’t stop being turned on, and he couldn’t stop hating that, and feeling sick from it. All that shit in his head, those memories he never, ever let himself think on, and they were all there again, and he saw Brian on the floor and heard those voices coming closer and it was their fault he was seeing that shit again. Their fault. They’d done this to him.