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Chess was alone with two Elders and a woman who probably had the power to throw her into prison just for looking at her funny, and the silence in the room pounded into her skull like a speedfreak with a hammer.
Elder Griffin sat down. “Cesaria, may I present Lauren Abrams? She just arrived from New York this morning.”
The woman—Lauren—held out one thin pale hand. Her tattoos went all the way down the back of it, like a fingerless glove; at the end of those bare fingers her nails were short like a man’s, and shiny. “Nice to meet you, Cesaria. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
An electric hum ran up Chess’s arm when she shook Lauren’s hand. She ignored it. Ignored too the way Lauren clearly wanted her to ask what she’d heard, or make some kind of joke. It wasn’t her job to jump through hoops, and she didn’t like this one bit.
She’d done some work with the Black Squad before, a few little side jobs, but this was different. This time she wasn’t being brought into a group and given a quick briefing; she wasn’t meeting a gang of lower Squad members. Lauren’s power, her air of command, told Chess more clearly than anything else could have that this woman was a higher-up. Very high. In fact…
“Abrams,” she said. “Any relation to the Grand Elder?”
Lauren gave a light, soft laugh. “He’s my father.”
If Chess hadn’t already been sitting down she might have stumbled. No fucking way. They were sending her on a case—there had to be a case here, either that or they were busting her, and she somehow suspected that if that’s what was going on they would have done it already—with the fucking Grand Elder’s daughter?
“Oh,” she said finally, since everyone was looking at her as if they expected her to respond. “Okay.”
Lauren sat down in Dana’s empty chair, crossed her legs with a whisper of nylon. “I bet you’re wondering what’s going on.”
Chess shrugged.
“We have…an offer for you. An investigation we think you could really help us with. Interested?”
“What is it?”
Lauren opened her mouth, but before she could speak Elder Thompson cleared his throat and leaned forward, his heavy brows drawn together in a solid line. His eyebrows fascinated Chess; they seemed to grow wilder and thicker every time she saw him, while the hair on his head grew lighter and thinner, like some sort of migration process. Someday she imagined the brows would simply fall over his eyes in a wiry curtain.
Lauren glanced at him, nodded, glanced back at Chess. “It’s a very…sensitive case.”
“All my cases are sensitive.” What the hell was this? Why were they looking at her like they expected her to explode? “I don’t gossip, if that’s what you’re implying.”
“Oh, no, no, that’s not it. It’s just—I’m not explaining this very well.” Lauren looked helplessly at Elder Griffin, biting her lipstick-coated lower lip.
Great. One of those women: tough and authoritative when it suited her, acting like a simpering poor-me baby when it didn’t. So they wanted to bring her in on a case with the Grand Elder’s pampered little daughter, who would expect Chess to do all the work while she batted her eyelashes and took all the credit? Ugh. No, thank you.
But then…how much money was in it? She fully expected she’d have to start paying for her own supplies again, once the bag she had ran out and she had to tell Lex she wasn’t going to sleep with him anymore. So it wasn’t like extra money wouldn’t come in handy. The payout on her last case would have been huge, but she’d been forced to give it up to save her own skin, so…she was broke. As usual.
“Cesaria, the problem isn’t that we do not trust you,” Elder Griffin said. “It’s that the sensitivity of this case, the subject of it, makes explaining a little difficult.”
Elder Thompson folded his arms. “We can’t tell you what it’s about. Not until you agree to take it.”
“What? I don’t—”
“And it will require a Binding Oath.”
Her mouth fell open. A Binding Oath? They had to be kidding. No. No way. They wanted her to take a case so serious it required an oath of secrecy—a form of magical control over her actions—and they weren’t even going to tell her what it was about first? Not even a hint?
Lex would surely front her. If he was going to stop giving her what she needed for free, she knew he would at least front her until she got a real case, one where she’d get a bonus. It wouldn’t be long, it never—
“The case comes with a bonus before you begin, simply for agreeing and accepting the Bind,” Elder Griffin said. “Thirty thousand dollars. You will be given a thousand dollars a week on top of your salary for the duration of the case—we anticipate a resolution within two weeks, however—and an additional fifty thousand when it ends.”
Her protest died in her throat. Eighty-two thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars minimum. That was a fuck of a lot of money.
That would buy her a fuck of a lot of oblivion. And the way things were going these days, oblivion was even more important than usual.
And she still needed a new car.
“I assume,” she said, pushing the words out through a throat gone gummy, “that it’s a dangerous case?”
Lauren Abrams rearranged her legs with another nylon hiss; Elder Thompson and Elder Griffin both watched her like they thought she might get up and run screaming from the room. None of them replied.
She’d just watched two people die. Her hand throbbed where she’d sliced it. Her thigh ached. She wanted a cigarette, and she wanted her pills. And she wanted eighty thousand dollars.
No matter what the case was.
“I’ll do it,” she said, and hoped it would be worth it.
Chapter Three (#ulink_0bd9e0c9-a113-5ae1-8fbe-1ccb558a8fa1)
And we honor those first Elders above all others, for they were the Founders of our Church and thus the saviors of mankind.
—The Book of Truth, Origins, Article 1256
Elder Griffin stood up. Light from the candles on the floor spilled across his face, cast jutting shadows over one eye. For a moment he looked alien, almost scary; then he turned farther to his left and was himself again.
Chess’s heart pounded in her chest. It’s just a bit of magic, she told herself. Just an oath, no different from the ones she’d taken when she started her training, certainly no different from the ones she’d taken when she completed that training and became a full Church employee at the age of twenty-one.
It didn’t work, though. This was different, and she knew it. And she didn’t like it. Nor did she like the energy rising in the room, sly and intrusive, or the peculiar smile on Lauren Abrams’s face as she watched the Elders set up the altar.
Chess stood in the center of the room with her hands clasped behind her. Dried blood had settled into the fabric of her plain ceremonial dress, making her stomach protest a little when she thought about it. She didn’t worry about the executioner and Elder Murray; what few blood- or fluid-borne diseases had survived the Church’s strict quarantine and eradication policies, Church employees had been vaccinated against.
But Madame Lupita…disease aside, who the hell knew what sort of bacterial stew had simmered in her plaque-clotted veins? Realistically, Chess knew the risk was gone now that the blood had dried, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to get the damned dress off as fast as she possibly could.
But of course she didn’t have much choice. And the sooner she took the damned Oath, the sooner she’d get a nice fat check. She could slip it in the night deposit on her way home.
Movement to her left brought her back into the room, back into the ceremony. The Elders had started laying out a salt line, murmuring words of power as they moved solemnly clockwise. Lauren stood against the wall, outside the circle, watching them with her arms folded and her ankles crossed. Irritation prickled Chess’s skin.
It wasn’t that it was so unusual for her to dislike people right off the bat. That was pretty much the way she felt about everyone. But she wasn’t usually forced to work with people she disliked right off the bat. She felt…intruded upon.
But then, nobody was forcing her to take the case. No, not forcing. Bribing. And she was taking the bribe, because she needed the money.
Behind the Elders the salt line erupted into shining deep purple, hissing faintly as it rose in thick lines and cast colored light across everything. Their white stockings glowed, their faces glowed; Elder Griffin’s pale hair surrounded his head in a corona of blazing violet that made Chess’s eyes sting.
Not just her eyes, either. The energy buzzed and twirled around her, battered her skin. She was caught in it, a vortex of power swirling around her, catching her in it and twisting her inside out. She didn’t know where to look, what to focus on; she couldn’t bear to close her eyes.
So she looked down, focused on the dusty, bloodspecked toes of her once-shiny black heels. It wasn’t a good compromise. Her head swam; her feet looked vertiginously far away. But it was better than watching the Elders move—setting up their bowls and setting fire to their herbs—inside the sparkling, viciously bright dome.
The only good thing was that Lauren Abrams could no longer see her. The circle would block her view. It was some relief.
Smoke filled the circle, thick, choking smoke the same purple as the circle, the same color as the fire burning in a large firedish opposite her. She didn’t want to breathe it in. Breathing it in was part of the Oath, part of the Binding. Even she didn’t know what some of those herbs were, but when they entered her lungs they would enter her bloodstream, locking every cell of her body into the magical oath she was about to take.
Powerful binding herbs, too. The calamus herbs, vetiver, and sweet flag, combined with the deep, throbbing energy of licorice root. She could feel them spreading through her, finding every empty place, drawing her own magic and mixing with it. She was naked, open to them; they swept through her without caring, without feeling, winding from her feet to her head and forcing her to bend to their power.
This wasn’t like the oaths she’d taken when she was initiated, not like the ones when she began her training. This was…this was heavy, dark magic, trapping her, squeezing her with so much pressure that she thought she might implode. Like nothing she’d ever experienced before. This wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right…
Dimly she heard the Elders speaking, saw vague movement as they added more herbs to the glowing purple fire in the north end of the circle. Myrrh and cedar, bergamot and dragon’s blood. Her vision blurred. Shapes formed in the smoke, open mouths, staring eyes. Someone moaned. She wasn’t sure if it was her.
Elder Thompson started chanting, low and slow, his voice thick with smoke and power and the spine-tingling thrust of command. She moved without intending to, bound by him. Bound by his commands. Somewhere deep down she fought against it.
She didn’t want to do this anymore. She’d changed her mind. Her heart slammed around in her chest like a pinball caught between the paddles, trying frantically to escape. Her mind fought against the Elder, against what he wanted her to do, but she was caught. Trapped. Her hands rose at his words, turned so her pale wrists, veins blue-purple beneath the thin skin, faced the top of the dome.
Elder Griffin’s hand on her arm. Desperately she swam through the smoke before her eyes, fought to see him. Fought the spell that slid hard hands up her legs, curled over her shoulders, caressed her stomach and breasts and stroked her neck. Everywhere.
Phantom hands, unfamiliar hands, all over her body. No. No, she’d sworn she wouldn’t ever—wouldn’t lie there, she wasn’t a child anymore, she didn’t have to do this. Didn’t have to let them do this, she could fight, she was powerful. She was a witch, a fucking Church witch; she was grown up and she had the power now. She did not have to let them—not anymore—she didn’t want this anymore, no…
“Stop.” Her voice didn’t work; her dry lips ached around the word. She couldn’t do this, didn’t want to be controlled anymore, couldn’t give up her power. Couldn’t give up her autonomy. Her independence. The strength she’d fought so fucking hard for, the right to keep her own thoughts and her own body, not to be forced to let other people use her like a fucking toy, to ignore her until they took her out of her box to play with her some more and cast her aside when they’d had their fun.
“Stop!” she tried again, but all that came out was a gurgle. Panic overtook her. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel her hands or feet. Elder Thompson’s voice grew louder, thundering in her ears; his power forced itself into her, over her. Fighting with her to keep her still.
Her feet moved, like wading through half-dried cement. She had to get out. Had to. Fuck the money. It wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth this, wasn’t worth being trapped by heavy black hands and forced to give up everything she’d fought all her life to gain.
Elder Thompson was shouting now. His words slammed into her, beat her like fists. She pushed harder, aiming for the thick purple wall. Get out, she had to get out, had to—
Another hand on her, squeezing her arm. She tried to swing, to bat him away, but he caught her. “Cesaria. Cesaria. Cesaria.”
Elder Griffin. Elder Griffin speaking to her, his voice quiet but still somehow audible over Elder Thompson’s roar. He repeated her name again and again, and the tiny piece of her able to focus grabbed him, grabbed the sound of her name in his voice, and clung to it.
“Cesaria. I am here with you, Cesaria. Give in. Let go and have trust in me. You know me, Cesaria. I know you. You will not be hurt here, no one will hurt you. I promise it will end when you relax, and you will come to no harm. I promise you—let go and it will end, stop fighting it, no one will hurt you. No one will hurt you, Cesaria, I promise…”
She didn’t want to. Her head flew back and forth, denying it, refusing.
He kept speaking, the same soft litany over and over. Tears ran down her cheeks. She could feel them, taste them, salty and flavored with calamus and cayenne from the herbs invading her body.
Somewhere—she had no idea how long it took, how many times he repeated her name or urged her to give in and let Elder Thompson take control of her—she relaxed. Elder Griffin would not let anything happen to her. She knew he wouldn’t. She trusted him as much as she trusted anyone, trusted him more than anyone except—She trusted him, and he wouldn’t let her get hurt, and gradually she felt the energy around her change, heard Elder Thompson’s voice quiet. With a sigh she reached into herself; with a sigh she gave in to her trust.
The energy changed. Instantly, like a puzzle piece snapping into place. Not scary anymore, not dangerous. She was in this. She was resigned to it. She’d agreed to it and she was doing it, and suddenly she didn’t care. In fact…
It filled her, sent her floating. Better than her pills. Better than a knob of Dream. Every cell in her body was pure power, pure thick sweetness, light and full of joy. She had no choices to make, no battles to fight. No memories to deal with, no shame, no misery. She wasn’t herself anymore. She was someone else, someone who belonged to someone, and that someone would make all the decisions and let her float…
It switched again, and she slammed back into herself. Her eyes opened.
The light had changed. Still purple, still glowing, but colored with shooting stars of black and red, streaking across the bright screen of energy. Her blood raced through her veins, through her brain, faster and faster, her tattoos screamed and tingled and writhed on her skin, searing through muscle and bone, setting off alarms in her soul.
Around the perimeter of the circle stood the ghosts, their clothing so familiar, their faces ones she’d seen before in paintings. The First Elders. The founders of the Church.
Controlled by herbs, neutered by magic, they stared at her with eyes that were nothing but blank white spaces. Their hands were clasped before them, their feet planted on the floor. They would witness her oath. They would bind her.
They would punish her if she broke the Oath.
Holy shit.
Elder Thompson’s voice boomed through the silence, an edge of hoarseness ruining the thick slide of it.
“Cesaria Putnam, this night we Bind you. Bind you in loyalty to your Church, to Truth and Fact, to the power of the Church and the power of the earth. Do you accept this Binding?”
Elder Griffin whispered something in her ear. She repeated it with a mouth that felt alien and strange, a voice rusty with nerves. “I request the parameters of the Binding.”
“The parameters of the Binding are these: That you will not speak of your purpose to anyone but those authorized to know it. That you will not act with disloyalty against the Church. That what you hear of your purpose after the words of Binding are spoken, and until they are retracted, will not be repeated by you to anyone but those authorized. That you will repeat them to those authorized when told to do so. Do you accept those parameters?”
Another whisper from Elder Griffin. “Who are those authorized?”
“Those authorized are Elder Thompson. Elder Griffin. The Grand Elder. Lauren Abrams, Third Inquisitor of the Black Squad. Those authorized will also be those names given to you by the aforementioned. Do you accept those parameters?”
“What are the penalties of breaking the Binding?”
“The Binding is unbreakable.”
“No Binding is unbreakable.”
“If this Binding is broken the penalty is thus: That the spirits of the First Elders will punish you. That the First Elders will remove you from your body and discard it. That you will be taken to the spirit prisons and left there until the First Elders shall determine you have been punished enough.”
She shivered. They weren’t fucking around. But then she hadn’t imagined they would be.
“Cesaria Putnam, do you accept these parameters?”
Purple swirled before her eyes; purple flames, purple energy. The First Elders, standing in silent disapproval around her, were translucent, purple glowing through them. Elder Thompson was simply a hulking black shape, barely visible in the vibrant light.
“Cesaria Putnam, do you accept these parameters?”
She licked her lips. “I do accept them.”
Elder Thompson muttered something; her arms lifted again. Her breath rattled in her chest, she knew what was coming and she didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see, but she couldn’t help it that her eyes wouldn’t close—
Bright violet shrieked off the edge of the blade, just before Elder Griffin brought it down over her wrists in a quick, decisive slice.
Her nerves vibrated. Dimly she felt the pain, a cold prickle beneath the skin, but the magical control holding her kept the worst of it at bay.
She saw it though. Saw her blood burble up from the wounds like purple-black ink, like oil bubbling from a fault in the surface of the earth, and fall on the smoking pile of herbs at her feet. She hadn’t seen either of the Elders move it but there it was, the purple flames flashing red when her blood hit it.
“Cesaria Putnam, you are Bound. Bound to obey the strictures of this agreement. From this moment forward you will not speak of what you are told. Say you are Bound.”
“I am Bound.” The words felt sick and slimy in her mouth.
The First Elders came forward. One of them carried a blade, a real one not a spectral one, shining purple. Her tattoos screamed; her soul screamed.
The blade rose. The ghost—how did that work; she didn’t know—he’d sliced their wrists. Each of the ghosts had a wound, a gaping mouth dribbling whitish ectoplasm. Dripping it into her similar wounds. It stung and burned, it raced into her bloodstream, ran through her body, a blast of power and fear and icy death that chilled her even as it set her afire.
“Cesaria Putnam, you are Bound. Bound to obey the commands of those aforementioned in speaking of what you are about to hear. Say you are Bound.”
