She scooted herself back along the arm of the couch so she wasn’t quite so close to him. “Thanks.”
“I don’t mean it that way. I just … Bruce thinks something is going on. We thought if we could get a few of us together, try and figure out what, we might have enough evidence then to force the Grand Elder to listen.”
“And you want my help.”
He nodded.
Telling him she never slept well wasn’t a lie. She didn’t. Which made it impossible to say if her recent troubled rest was a normal reaction to a fairly stressful few days or something else.
“There’s more, too,” he said, lowering his voice and glancing around like he thought Church spies might be hiding behind her television. “I’ve had nightmares. Like, real ones. And I thought I saw—no. You’ll think I’m crazy.”
“I already think you’re crazy.”
“Bruce has seen him, too, though. In his kitchen.”
“Seen him? Who?”
Another glance. “The man in the robe,” he said. “The nightmare man.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
After a fat line of crushed Nip she didn’t feel like sleep was something she’d need for another couple of days, but that didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t been able to. Whether it was because of Doyle’s information or … something else … she didn’t know, but sleep had done nothing but taunt her while she lay in her bed with the covers piled high, shivering although the room wasn’t cold, watching the hours tick by on her clock until the early afternoon sun streamed through her narrow bedroom window.
Where was Terrible, anyway? She checked the slip of paper Bump had given her along with another package of chemical cheer, and glanced at the faded numbers on the empty storefront. Number seventeen. Her destination was a couple of blocks away yet.
This was stupid, a stupid sidetrip on a stupid job she couldn’t even do thanks to stupid Lex.
Or not just thanks to stupid Lex. What ever she’d seen at the Morton house, what ever it was that Doyle claimed was stalking Church employees … she was beginning to think she wouldn’t be able to handle it anyway. Not if the night before was any indication. Some tough Churchwitch, calling someone else to retrieve her stuff from the spooky haunted house.
A small gang of teenage goons edged down the street toward her in their black bandannas and latex-tight trousers, fanning out like they were about to run an offensive play. Which they probably were. Without making eye contact Chess shrugged her tattered gray cardigan off her shoulders, letting them see her ink. Their formation tightened up. They might not be afraid of the Church, but they’d be stupid not to know Bump had the only Churchwitch in Downside working for him, and everyone was afraid of Bump.
Their fear didn’t keep them from hissing at her and making lewd comments, but those she could ignore. Too bad she couldn’t ignore everything else, and just stay home today listening to records and getting high. Or even doing her actual job. She should be interviewing the Mortons today, not wandering the streets hunting for a tattoo parlor so she could then go find an adolescent boy.
The parlor was easy enough to find, at least. Just walk until the scent of Murray’s hair pomade drifted to her nose, then turn left.
“Looking for Terrible,” she said to one of the greasers guarding the door. Inside the building she heard the unmistakable sounds of hurried movement, not quite drowned out by the Sonics record playing at high volume.
He barely looked up from the hangnail he was trimming with his butterfly knife. “Aye? Business you got witim?”
“Business.”
“Aw, chickie, you don’t gotta keep no secrets from me, I ain’t—”
Terrible’s voice rumbled from the back room. “Quit playin, Rego, an let she in.”
Rego glanced over in that direction, then up at her, really looking for the first time. She hadn’t slipped her sweater back over her chest and upper arms, and when he saw her skin his blue eyes widened.
“Shit. You that—”
Chess didn’t bother to reply. She brushed past him and walked inside, pausing for a moment so her eyes could adjust to the comparative gloom inside. She’d lost her sunglasses again.
The place smelled of antiseptic and smoke, of male bodies and the curious sharp odor of ink and oil. Frames filled with bright flash covered the walls, save one suspiciously clean spot at the left. That explained those frantic scraping movements. The shop dealt in illegal ink, magical symbols only the Church was allowed to use—symbols like the ones covering her own arms and chest, making her easily identifiable. Other people might get the tats, but not where they could be seen; to do so was like asking for a prison sentence and a date with a white-hot iron slab to remove them. She gave a mental shrug. None of her business. Enforcement of nonmoral law was a totally different department, government rather than religion.
It was a very different room from the one where she’d been given her tattoos, in the ceremony that had officially made her a Debunker. That room was a pure, pale blue, bare save the table and the artist’s equipment, and her fellow initiates and the few older Debunkers attending had knelt, chanting, increasing the energy in the room until she’d felt ready to pass out and hadn’t noticed the pain of the needle anymore, or the power searing itself into her.
“What say, Chess?” Terrible interrupted her reverie, glancing up from where he sat with his bare chest pressed against the slanted back of a chair. She hadn’t realized how many tattoos he had, aside from the almost-full sleeve on his left arm and the small script circling the base of his throat. His shoulders were covered, too, and something decorated his left side from underarm to waist and into his pants. If he hadn’t been so wide, dwarfing the chair, she wouldn’t have seen it.
“I want to—” Her mouth snapped shut.
“What?”
“I … What are you having done?” She watched, fascinated and a little disgusted, as the tattoo artist peeled a long, thin strip of bloody flesh from Terrible’s back.
“One more,” the artist said, and Terrible glanced back at him and nodded.
“Terrible … what the fuck?”
“Scar, Chess. You wait. Ain’t had the fun part yet.”
“Um … there’s a fun part?”
The artist came back with a scalpel, shining silver, and bent over. Terrible’s eyebrows twitched, but he stayed silent—they all stayed silent—while the artist cut and peeled off another strip. He blotted the blood with gauze.
“So what happen? You right?”
“Yeah … um …” The artist had a bowl of something now that looked like ashes. As Chess watched, he started rubbing handfuls of it over the wound he’d created—at least she assumed it was over the wound, she couldn’t see it. “Have you seen that kid Brain?”
“Naw, can’t say so. Why?”
“I want to find him. He came by my place this morning, said Hunchback kicked him out, but I—”
“Fuck.” Anger poured over Terrible’s face like molasses. “That squidgepopper. I fuckin told him, ain’t the kid’s fault. We see him, too? I’d sure do with paying him a visit now.”
“Ready, T?” The artist stood behind Terrible, rocking slightly on his feet like he wasn’t sure if he should run or pretend everything was fine. Chess didn’t blame him. She was half ready to run herself, her legs twitching and her heart pounding. She was jumpy enough, she didn’t need two hundred and seventy pounds or so of furious man in front of her.
“Do it.”
Terrible