Stacia Kane

“Now mayhap you quit givin Terrible the fuckin slurpy-eyes an give Bump the listening, yay? Thinkin you can? Gots some fuckin chattering wants doin, needs you fuckin head on straight up.”

“So she took a deep breath, glad she wasn’t speeding so much anymore, glad she could look him in the eyes and really feel it. “Even if it’s not what you want, I’m yours.” Now she did see the change in him, saw the slow smile start, the one that always made her feel so good because she could make it appear. “Always want you, Chessiebomb. Always.”

“Love you too Chess. You got that aye? Ain't you know it? Love you right, till it hurts. Ain't going nowhere…………”

“What are you doing here?” They shared one of those awkward kiss-hug-or-what moments, ending up kissing on the cheek. Odd, that. She and Lex had never really been cheek-kissers, but since they weren’t kissing anywhere else these days she guessed it was the thing to do.”

“How the hell was it that she’d always been so comfortable with him before, but as soon as she’d realized she was in love with him, as soon as she told him that … she was nervous all the time?”

“So don’t go, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t. Not when he looked so happy, so excited about what his future might hold. That was the way normal people felt when they were trying to move up, when they’d found someone to love who loved them back. Not the way Chess felt, like she was trying to stem an arterial bleed with her fingertip.”

“Changed my thought. Let’s us go. Back my place, aye?” He was smiling, that smile she’d always loved, while his hands distracted her and his body warmed her through her clothes. Summer drew closer every day, and the temperatures reflected that, but it seemed like she was always cold when he wasn’t around. “C’mon.”

“Looking at dead bodies wasn’t really very high on her Things-Chess-Enjoys list. And yeah, her total knowledge on what people in relationships did might fill a shot glass—especially if she used extra-large letters to write SEX—but something told her “looking at dead bodies” wasn’t a generally accepted togetherness-type activity, either.”

“Well, clearly someone you trust isn’t really someone you should be trusting,” she said without thinking, and regretted it when Terrible glanced at her. He did it fast, just a quick cut of his eyes in her direction and then away again, but she saw it. She felt it. It was starting already. She wished she could say she was surprised, wished she hadn’t been waiting for it, expecting it the way she expected rain from black clouds overhead. Nothing in the world was permanent, especially not happiness. She’d always known that. She just wished life would stop proving her right.”

“Authors, reviews are not for you. They are not for you. Authors, reviews are not for you.”

“It was her problem, and she'd deal with it. Because dealing with personal problems was so fucking high on her list of skills.”

“Seeing him was like being hit in the chest. Like something exploding inside her, a quick ravenous fire that made her shiver. So bright and hot it still amazed her that no one else seemed to notice it, that every eye in the place didn't turn to her while she went incandescent.”

“Always want you, Chessiebomb. Always.”

“Aw, naw, ain’t sayin that. You do what you need an ain’t try telling you no, but … takin you to bed, want you there, not just your body. An want you knowin it’s me. Love you, Chess. Dig?”

“Chessie … shit, Chessie, I love you so bad.” His teeth on her throat, biting hard, his lips soothing the spot. “So fucking much, so … so bad.”

“I’m not into danger, either.” “Aw, Chess. You so into it you ain’t climb out with a rope. Why else you do your job, live down here, buy from Bump?” “It’s just—I mean—I just do, is all.” Her cheeks burned. She shouldn’t have let him come in here. She should have just sent him home and let him wash his stupid shirt himself. “No shame in it. Some of us needs an edge on things make us feel right, else we ain’t like feeling at all, aye?”

“If Mrs. Morton would stop verbally jacking off her husband and son, this would all be done so much more quickly, but then Chess figured it was just about the only sex the woman got.”

“She’d fucked him over hardcore. She’d betrayed him and she’d lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she’d led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she’d hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he’d felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he’d eventually decide she’d been punished enough and they could maybe move on.”

“Just what she needed. More filth in her soul. Someday, maybe, she would explode from it, someday maybe, every rotten thing that had every been done to her and every rotten thing she’d ever done would erupt from her in a fountain of sewage and sorrow, all those secrets she kept even from herself spilling out and adding to the muck she could never wash off no matter how hard she tried.She’d never been bound by magic to keep those secrets. Just by her own shame.”

“So aint you think just causen you in this car now means any damn thing. It aint. He pretending it do, he lying and saying it do, but it aint. Pretend that other dame just he friend, so he say, but aint like it true.Some churchbitch she is too. Leastaways that what Amy telling me. Amy say she met her once and she aint shit.”

“Aye. Freaky iffen you ask me. But guessing that what Terrible like, aye. What he deserve sneaking off into the bathroom with some rigmutton cunt, leaving me on my alones in the bar, and other men talking to me and saying I got me a date there and he fucking some whore while everyone outside the bathroom hearing them.”

“Yes, my enormous sexual appetite tends to scare men away. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find my dinner date.”

“It's like touching you in your unmentionables,” Maleficarum said. “We never could, m'lady, not ever. Mr. Dante wouldn't like it.”

“Oi, mate,” he said, jabbing his thick index finger square in the center of Richard's chest. “No need to get grabby, is there?”

“Bump stood in the middle of the room, wrapped in a heavy fur coat, with a black silk top hatcovering his fuzzy head and unnecessary sunglasses hiding his pale face. He looked like the Abominable Snowpimp.”

“Ego vos mergam, nec merger a vobis. I sink you, that I will not be sunk by you.”

“Her hands fisted his jacket as she pressed her face to his chest. He didn't touch her in return, stood unmoving, his body tense. "It's not like that," she managed. "I'm not...it's not like I'm... I'm not a whore. I'm not. That's not what... please, please..." She didn't bother to finish. She was crying to hard to finish anyway, couldn't even bring herself to complete the lie. No, she wasn't whoring herself to Lex for drugs. Technically. But the drugs were payment for her false loyalty, weren't they? For her betrayal. And she kept seeing him, kept spending the night with him, because he gave them to her. It might not have been the only reason, but it was one of them. She thought she was going to be sick. The one thing she'd sworn she would never do, the one place she'd always said she had too much self respect to go, and here she was. She'd done it. And she hadn't even noticed. More gently than she would have expected, his hands found hers and disentangled them from his jacket. He pushed her away, his gaze focused on the ground. He wouldn't even look at her. She was glad. She didn't want him to see her like this. "Naw," he said. "Naw, Chess, you ain't a whore. A whores's honest.”

“What the hell was the matter with these people? How did they not see that of all the people on the planet, she was probably the least qualified to help them with their emotional problems? It was like asking a dog to do algebra.”

“She settled for patting him vaguely on the back and wishing she was anywhere but there. Although he did smell good.”

“So many answers flew through her mind that she didn't know which to pick, aside from the obvious truth that "my drug dealers enforcer and his rival who I used to fuck" was definitely not it.”

“You so f*ckin pretty, you got that?” The hand moved lower. “So pretty everywhere.”She swallowed. Her mouth had gone so dry it was hard to talk. “To you, maybe.”“Aye.” His lips moved further up her neck until he pulled away enough for their eyes to meet. “Aye, to me.”

“Got some knowledge for you." "Oh? What's that?" His lips touched her forehead. "Don't give a f*ck what else I got. Ain't never sharin you.”

“Gots me an idea, now. Whyn't you come on into bed with me, let me give you it.”

“Honesty was for those who could afford it, like heating or electricity or a conscience.”

“You let people into your life and you ended up getting hurt. Or hurting them. Either way, the road to pain was paved with other people, and she wanted no part of it anymore”

“When had being an addict gotten so fucking hard? So exhausting? It had been so easy for so long; she had a steady supply, she kept to herself, nobody bothered her. Now she was constantly up to her ears in intrigue and complications, being torn in every direction but her own, all thanks to her need for those pills”

“She wasn’t considering it, not really….but he did have a point. It was her job. Save the cold, and the disgusting suggestion that she might actually turn a trick or two wasn’t a half bad idea. That was the problem with Bump. Despite the fact that he was practically a textbook villain – she expected him to grow a mustache to twirl any day- his ideas made sense.”

“You ain’t know nothing,” a man scoffed. “How I’m supposed to trust some junkie Churchwitch-”The words sliced through her like razor-sharp fangs. Her face flooded with shame, so hot she imagined it steamed in the icy air. At least it wasn’t difficult to identify the speaker. All she had to do was look for the man with Terrible’s fist locked around his neck.“Ain’t think I hear you right,” Terrible said in a calm, quiet voice. “Wanna louden up?” The man shook his head His eyes bulged. He looked like a bug, with his hands clenching into tiny useless fists. “You sure? You got else to say, you best say it now, instead of later. Now we got us watchers. Later might not be true, dig?” The man dug.”

“Most Debunkers spent their money on actual things, rather than just buying anything they could swallow, smoke or snort. Unlike Chess.”

“Her sigh felt dragged from the depths of her soul. Great. Working for Bump again.”

“Suburban generic, right down to the coffee shop sharing the parking lot, so the yuppies could have their frothy caffeine fixes before they even left the property. Funny how addiction was socially acceptable-even a status symbol-when it made people extroverts rather than introverts”

“How the hell did people do this, this emotion-and-forgiveness thing? How did they stand these feelings? She could barely handle it and she had lovely, necessary, reason-for-living drugs to smooth over the rough spots. How did people do this shit sober?”

“But she never thought about the way Terrible looked, at least not that way. He hadn’t been ugly to her for months; he’d gone from just being a face she was familiar with to being a face she loved to look at, a face that made her….happy. Who gave a shit what anyone else saw when they looked at him, when they saw the crooked, many times broken nose, or the scars, or the jutting brow or thick jaw and heavy muttonchops? She knew what she saw, and that was all that mattered. Knew what was behind those hard dark eyes, and wanted it more than anything.”

“People, she was discovering, were like cockroaches: If you allowed one in, more were sure to follow.”

“See I keep thinking you smart, you keep proving me right.”

“She doubted he'd take too kindly to her fighting with them, no matter how much he liked having her in his bed.”

“Nobody spoiled for a fight like a group of Downside hookers around the corpse of one of their own.”

“The penalty for summoning the dead back to earth is death; if the summoned spirit does not kill its summoner, be assured the Church will.”

“With magic almost anything was possible; all objects had energy, and energy could be manipulated.”

“Terrible thought she was brave. She remembered it now, heard his voice in her head as if he stood next to her. "They scared. Not you, though." Terrible thought she was brave, and if he - a man whose name was Terrible, a man whose path people scrambled to get out of - thought so, it must be true. She could do this, she would do this.”