LITMIR.BIZ

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aye? Babies got needs, you dig.”

      “Yeah, I’ll ask him, okay? I…”

      He definitely looked paler, she thought, seeing Terrible push through the crowd. Last night she hadn’t noticed it, not even at Bump’s place; all that red gave everything a low-key sort of glow. But in the sunshine she saw it. He looked a little tired, a little pale. She wondered if his wounds still hurt. She wished she could turn her greedy eyes away.

      “Might wanta get yon mouth closed, baby,” Edsel murmured.

      Chess did, snapping her teeth together so hard it hurt and wishing desperately she’d paid better attention to casting glamours in training. She could have wiped the stupid blush off her face.

      Instead she focused on the grinning skulls dancing down the wide stripes on the front of his bowling shirt. It was easy to do so, considering he stood about a foot taller than her own five feet six.

      “Edsel,” he said. “You right?”

      “Right up. Been telling Chessie here, maybe I got some knowledge be useful. You thinkin Bump might kick in, be the case?”

      “Aye, he lash you back. No problem.”

      “Cool. Chessie gonna keep touchin me, I keep her up, aye? She pass it on.”

      Terrible’s gaze fell on her. His chin jerked; it could have been a nod, she guessed.

      “Hey.” She fumbled in her bag for some money and thrust it at Edsel. “Do you have the file—”

      “Aye.”

      “Where is it? I really need it back, you shouldn’t have just—”

      “Car.”

      Deep breath. “Um, I wanted to grab something to eat first, okay?”

      Shrug.

      Okay, this was bullshit.

      The food booths were at the far end; Edsel had set up in the middle, where he usually tried to find a spot. The center was the best, away from the hot smoke of the firecans and the meats cooked over them, far from the clucking chickens and the occasional goat, where the sawdust spread over the cement wasn’t soaked with blood.

      But she wanted food, anything she could find, despite knowing it would deaden her high. Like he wasn’t doing a fine job of that all on his own.

      She took her purchases from Edsel and shoved them into her bag, her scuffed boots shuffling on the cement as she headed for the food. The noodle lady was there, but she didn’t…yes. One of the vendors had a set of bamboo skewers turning over a fire; on the skewers were chunks of what appeared to be chicken. That’s what she was going to assume, anyway. They looked good and they smelled good, and if the meat was something unnamable she didn’t want to know about it.

      Terrible loomed behind her while she made her purchase, barely concealing his impatience, until finally she swung around on him with her stick in hand.

      “Look. You want to be mad at me, that’s fine. You want to not give me a chance to explain, I can’t do anything about that either. But we have to work together. So the least you can do is not treat me like I’m carrying some kind of fucking communicable disease, okay? Be pissed at me on your own time, because I can’t work like this.”

      “Depends the kinda work you doin, aye?”

      Oh, man, that hurt. Not showing it, though? Now that was easy. She’d had a lifetime of practice at pretending not to be hurt.

      So she pegged him with her eyes, folded her arms across her chest. “Fuck. You.”

      “Ain’t thinkin I got the price.”

      “No? Then—”

      The horn cut her off, loud and rough in the bright clear day. A vinyl record, she realized; the telltale pops and crackles came through the speakers. What the…

      She turned, along with most of the crowd around her. Street performers weren’t entirely unusual in the Market; not common, because most Downsiders mistrusted outsiders almost as much as they liked to stab them and steal their money. But every once in a while some singers would set up, or a couple of acrobats.

      This was different.

      At the far end, by the crumbled remains of what had once been a wall, a stage had been set up; it appeared to be a layer of wooden crates with wide boards laid across them. Pillars rose at the four corners, draped in orange fabric, and across the top of those stretched more orange strips, the color glowing against that aquamarine sky.

      A sign hung down from the top: ARTHUR MAGUINNESS’S POTENT POTIONS.

      Okay, this should be interesting.

       Chapter Eight

      Only through penitence and pain is forgiveness possible.

      —The Book of Truth, Veraxis, Article 72

      The trumpet record continued playing, a musical backdrop for the gathering crowd. Chess didn’t particularly want to go see—what was the point, really?—but she wasn’t eager to get into Terrible’s car and fight with him some more either, and she wanted to finish her food.

      Plus he appeared to want to check it out, which made sense. Bump didn’t generally allow such shows on his front porch. If “Arthur Maguinness” hadn’t gotten the okay first, or if his potent potions contained something that might affect Bump’s business…Terrible would need to know about it.

      So she followed his broad shoulders through the crowd, tearing bits of what she was almost certain was indeed chicken off her skewer. It was good, too; when had she last had hot food? She couldn’t remember. The hospital, she guessed. They’d brought the stuff to her whether she wanted it or not, and made her take at least a few bites so they could write it on their little charts. It had been made clear that she wasn’t getting out of there unless she ate, so she had.

      Since getting out, though? Sure, she’d eaten, but nothing more than a couple of sandwiches or something. Hot food wasn’t much of a priority for her. Not when there were so many better things she could put in her stomach, and she needed them so much more.

      Which reminded her. Thanks to Bump’s little gift the night before she wouldn’t need to call Lex yet, but she probably should. She hadn’t seen him since she left the hospital.

      That wasn’t a conversation to look forward to, not at all. No, she wasn’t seeing him anymore—well, what they’d been doing together wasn’t really “seeing,” not unless the sentence finished with “each other naked. A lot.”

      The problem was, he didn’t know that.

      Sure, he probably had some idea. Seeing her go hysterical—which was a bit of an understatement, really—when Terrible almost died, and commit a capital offense to save him, probably gave Lex some indication that their days together were numbered. Luckily he’d missed most of the horrible scene in the graveyard; well, luckily for her, anyway, as it spared her some embarrassment. Not so luckily for Lex, who’d been out cold on the frozen ground with a broken jaw after Terrible caught them together and expressed his feelings on the subject.

      Anyway. She wasn’t going to be able to put it off much longer. Thanks to the wired-shut jaw, he hadn’t hit on her much while she was still in the hospital, but now she was out…he’d be expecting to see her, and he’d be expecting to see her the way he usually did, which was in his bed. After he’d given her drugs.

      Technically the drugs and the bed didn’t have anything to do with each other. The drugs were payment for the destruction of Chester Airport; it had been haunted, and Bump had wanted her to banish the ghosts so he could run drugs into it. She hadn’t been able to, and the airport was no more, and that was good for Lex.

      The bed…that was just a

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