Unholy Magic by Stacia Kane Page B

They what you use?”
    “No. I mean, yes, they do in normal circumstances, but no, we use specially trained dogs. Birds are too unpredictable, they can be hard to work with in ritual.”
    “Why a ghost use a—a bird? Ain’t need it get up here, aye?”
    “I’m not sure. No, he wouldn’t necessarily use it to get up here, but—” With her free hand she found some plastic pouches in her bag and dug them out. “Open one of those, will you?”
    He did, holding it out for her to slip the feather into. She felt better once it was sealed away, but not much. “Ghosts don’t use psychopomps, no,” she said slowly, trying to force her recalcitrant brain into thought. “They’re not capable of magic—I mean, they can only feed off energy, not create it.”
    “The psychopomp give them it?”
    “No. They have energy of a sort, but it’s not the kind a ghost can use.”
    Terrible caught the implication, as she knew he would. “So somebody working alongside yon ghost, aye?”
    She nodded. The walls of the alley loomed over her, stretching into the dim sky like broad hands trying to cup over her and squash her. She hadn’t mentioned the energy from the night before, but she couldn’t put it off any longer. “Last night …,” she said, then cleared her throat and tried again. “Last night I noticed, I felt the energy from the magic they’d been doing. Sex magic. They were doing sex magic.”
    Pause. “Them who killed her?”
    “Yeah, I think so. I’m pretty sure. It was really strong, on her body and everything.”
    “Lots of whores use magic. Makes them work go faster, if you dig. Maybe were them other dames you felt?”
    “No. I wondered that too but this was … blacker, if you know what I mean. It didn’t feel right. And it didn’t feel like any of those girls could have made it. Too powerful, for one thing. And it felt male.”
    Funny, she hadn’t really thought of that the night before, but it was true. It had felt male; too strident and aggressive to be a woman’s magic, even a woman like Red Berta.
    “Ain’t know you could tell.”
    “Yeah. Everyone’s magic feels a little different, it’s kind of like fingerprints. Or how everyone smells like themselves, it’s all chemical, you know what I mean? The energy from one of my spells wouldn’t feel like the energy from yours, or anyone else’s. It’s unique.”
    “So you can say who done it from the feel?”
    She nodded. “Usually, if I have something to compare it with. Like with the Lamaru, since it was a lot of people doing the spell, the energy was mixed and I couldn’t identify it. But if it’s a single practitioner, yeah, I could.”
    “Damn. ‘Sfucking cool, Chess. You like—cool, is all.”
    To hide her blush she focused on tucking the plastic-encased feather into one of the pockets in her bag. “Thanks.”
    “Ain’t think birds lose feathers in winter,” he said, standing up. She did the same, the movement making her legs ache.
    “Some do, it all depends on—no. No, you’re right. Great Horned Owls don’t molt in winter. It’s their mating season.”
    “Ain’t just fall out, aye? Got pulled out.”
    “Well … I guess it could have caught on something, but yeah, chances are it got pulled out.”
    She took the light back and shone it around, looking for something the bird could have landed on. The alley was full of sharp edges, but nothing looked like it could have snagged a feather.
    “That’s some serious, aye? Takin a feather? You figure maybe it’s part of it?”
    “I don’t know, really. It’s not as serious a crime to hurt a psychopomp as it is to kill one, but it was probably an accident anyway. You can use the feathers in ritual, but I can’t think of any where you leave it behind after, or where the ritual doesn’t destroy it. You know, like burning it or something.”
    “Hey, look here.” Terrible shuffled a few boxes, bent down. The light sparked off the piece of mirror he held. His hand engulfed