She slipped on a fresh pair of gloves and jerked the tip of the iron blade she kept in her pick case through the black stitches at the top of the bag.
The rough edges of the fabric fell open, revealing a—well, damn. The spell was about the size of a walnut because it was a walnut—a large one, but a walnut all the same.
She dug the point of her knife into the crack in the shell and pried it open. Blood oozed out. Thick dark blood, so clotted that for a second it looked like some sort of rotted fruit inside the shell.
Her stomach gave another heave, but she ignored it. Not just because she didn’t want to go through that again but because part of her was honestly fascinated. How the hell had he—the same spell caster, the same man—done that? What the hell was that spell?
“Ain’t lookin so fuckin bad.” Bump leaned over the table, peering down. “Fuckin small, yay?”
“But really strong.” Were those clots in the blood, or was something else in there? “Blood … I think it might be corpse blood, like from a murder victim, or maybe menstrual blood. When someone’s using blood like that in a spell, they’re not fucking around.”
Of all the things she could have done without that day, having to say “menstrual” to Bump was—okay, not the biggest or the most important, no, but it was certainly on the list. Not because she was embarrassed; she wasn’t. She just didn’t want to have to discuss anything remotely related to the female reproductive system with him.
Sure enough, he grinned. “Yay, seen me some of that blood fuckin turn dames into—”
“There’s hair in there,” she interrupted, holding one of the hairs up with her gloved index finger and thumb. “See? It’s been tied in knots, too. I wonder if it’s his.”
It probably was. The fingernail clipping she found might have been, too. But the rat’s eye, the three sharply bent pins, the tiny pieces of eggshell and feather, the ball of cobwebs and wax—and were those fish scales?—definitely were not.
By the time she’d finished laying it all out in an orderly if grisly row, her neck ached. As did her head, because she had a pretty good idea what those ingredients were for, what the spell did. “I think that’s it.”
“Aye?” Terrible reached over, offering her a drag off his smoke. She took it. “What’s on with the blood, then?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s clotted, old, you know?”
“Naw, that ain’t it.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Too thick, leastaways what I’m thinkin. Old blood don’t get … rough like that, dig? Gets thicker, aye, an darker, but not like that.”
Well, she guessed he would know. Yeah, she’d seen lots of spilled blood in her life, but she probably hadn’t paid as much attention to it, had a chance to observe it as time passed, the way he had. “Yeah? You think something’s mixed into it?”
He shrugged. “Ain’t can say on that one. But that ain’t usual blood.”
“It feels kind of grainy.” She rubbed it between her fingers.
“Ain’t should.”
“Shit. I have no idea how to analyze it or whatever.”
“Ain’t you got you a fuckin lab, up you Church? They got the fuckin skills run it all through, yay?”
She stared at him for a second. “Sure, Bump, how about if I head on in there and ask if they’ll test the blood from a spell I found on the body of a man I killed with my psychopomp? That’ll be no problem at all.”
He hunched his shoulders a little, rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Were only giving the fuckin ask, yay, no needing to get all fuckin rumbly-sharp on it.”
She glanced at Terrible, whose features were arranged into the carefully blank look he always had when she bickered with Bump. He’d been wearing that look more and more lately, hadn’t he?
Something to worry about later. “It might be some sort of powdered herb in there, or … well, almost anything can be powdered. Bones, animal parts—I don’t know how to figure it out, really. But whatever it is, this is a fuck of a spell.”
“Know what the purpose is?”
“Yeah, I think so. The hair, the fingernail clippings—it’s a binding spell. A control spell. I don’t know for sure how it works or how magic got inside him like that, but I think the spell is the reason why he killed Yellow Pete and attacked us. The spell made him do it.”
Terrible considered that for a second. “Be why he ain’t died, too?”
She nodded, the realization taking shape in her mind as she spoke. “His soul—if the soul is under that much control, I mean, if it’s been so strongly ordered to carry out a particular task, it’ll force the body to keep going. Like, you know how under hypnosis, people can be injured without feeling it?”
“Aye.”
“That’s kind of like what this is. His soul isn’t his own, it’s powered by someone else, which means his body is powered by someone else. So it doesn’t matter what happens to his body. As long as it can move, it will.”
They were silent for a minute, absorbing that. With every passing second the implications grew worse; with every passing second the blood on her gloves looked darker, more threatening.
Terrible finally spoke. “So whoever made that spell got heself a killer ain’t can be killed, aye? Got heself a weapon can be used anyplace.”
She nodded.
Bump raised his eyebrows, tilted his head. “Damn, then, Ladybird. Lookin like you got some fuckin tough work coming, catchin em all.”
Chapter Five
And they had laws to cover all sorts of unnecessary things, because they did not have Truth to keep the peace.
—A History of the Old Government, Volume V: 1950–1997
She’d just tucked her new psychopomp into her bag and headed through the vast dark-wood hallway when Elder Griffin stepped out of his office and smiled. “Ah, good morrow, Cesaria. I trust you are well?”
She gave him a quick curtsy. “Very well, sir.” Aside from the scrapes and the bump on her head and the fear a decent night’s sleep hadn’t chased away completely, of course, but that wasn’t something she could tell Elder Griffin about. Sure, she liked him a lot, and sure, he liked her, too, but some things were best kept to herself. “And you? Nervous?”
“I confess I am, a bit.” His face colored slightly, almost pinkish beneath his pale hair. “It seems to be coming up awfully fast. You are still— That reminds me. Come in, please?”
Elder Griffin’s office soothed her; it always did. The smell of herbs, the shelves stuffed with books and jars of spell ingredients and skulls and bones … Those shelves were empty today, of course, since he’d be moving to a new position after his wedding, and boxes sat everywhere on the carpet, but it was still his office. His heavy desk before the window, and his antique globe on a stand near the small easy chair. Chess especially loved the globe. Seeing where the countries had divided in the days BT—Before Truth, when people still believed in gods and the dead hadn’t risen to kill so many people—fascinated her.
She sat down in the wooden chair before his desk. “Yes, sir? Is everything okay?”
He smiled, that peaceful smile that made him look so kind. He was