Shed worry about that later. For the moment she focused on Jillian Morrows ready smile as the Inquisitor looked down at Chess and said, Sure. Ill meet you out front in fifteen, okay?
Chess was ready in ten.
Shed run to the student dorms, tucked behind the main Church building, back past the building housing the elevator to the spirit prisons, behind and to the left of the Church employee cottages. Maybe someday shed have one of those, although she had to admit the thought didnt appeal as much as it should have. Life in the dorms made her itch, all those people on top of her; life in the cottages would be just as bad, she imagined.
But some employees lived off-grounds. Some of them got permission. Maybe one day maybe one day she could, too. If she worked hard enough, was smart enough. Which she would be. The others didnt know how lucky they were to be there; the others had families to fall back on. All Chess had to fall back on was the knowledge that she could turn tricks for food money if she had to, and she refused to allow that to happen. Not now. Not when shed almost had something different.
The early afternoon sun blazed right into her eyes, like a finger pointing straight at her, as she crossed the square of bare earth where the Reckonings were held every Holy Day morning. That day, Monday, the stocks stood empty, the dirt around them freshly combed after the mess Saturdays always brought, the piles of rotten vegetables and tears that always ended up there after sinners gained their redemption, after crowds got off on giving it to them.
She crossed the space and waited right outside the enormous double doors of the main entrance until a dull black sedan pulled up to the curb fifteen feet or so away and Jillian Morrow beckoned her through the open window. Cmon, lets go.
Chess forced her reluctant feet to move. She didnt want to do this. Didnt want to work for the Squad. Working for the Squad meant having a partner, someone to cozy up with and have over for dinner or whatever else, and she did not want that.
But she didnt have a choice, at least not at the moment. So she popped the door handle of the sedan and sank into the pine- and Armor Allscented interior, clutching her bag on her lap and fastening her seat belt with the feeling that she was on a roller-coaster ride she didnt want to be on.
Guess you didnt think youd end up working with the Squad, Jillian said, pulling carefully away from the curb. Dont worry. Nothing big on the schedule for today, just going for a drive.
Great, Chess said, because it seemed like an answer was required.
Mostly we just
Static on her radio broke into her sentence, made her brows draw together in annoyance at first, before anger and a little fear replaced them. Damn it.
Chess didnt reply. She was too busy listening to the radio, the announcers voice saying something about bodies found and an address.
Jillian glanced at her as the announcernot an announcer, Chess realized, a dispatcherwent quiet. Well, she said, lunging the car into traffic and speeding down the road, cutting off another car behind them, looks like youre going to get a taste of real Squad work after all.
Chapter Two
The sedan pulled up in front of a bland-looking ranch house in Cross Town, a semi-suburb struggling to leave the working class behind. The house, a slab of dull tan and brown, hid behind a couple of trees and about half a dozen sedans and Squad cars. Holy shit, this was a real crime scene.
Well, duh, people were dead, right? Of course it was a crime scene, or at least a dead-body scene. But still Chess was aware of her feet crossing the tidy green lawn, the sound of her boots sliding against the grass and the sound of her bag shifting on her shoulder. The lawn looked extra green, the sky extra blue, like the nights back in the Corey Youth Home when she and a few of the others would score some Sizzle and spend the night giggling and watching the colors dance in the air. But that had been fake. This looked too real. It looked like something she didnt want to see.
Jillian approached two men standing just outside the wide-open front door. Vaughn, Trent.
The men nodded. One of them spoke. Morrow.
Their gazes fell on Chess, who forced herself not to fidget under their weight. They wanted to look at her and wonder? Let them. She didnt need to offer them any information.
Jillian gave her up. This is Cesaria Putnam. Shes a student, out with me for her last-year shadowing.
The mens eyes thawed a little. One of themTrent?gave her an appraising kind of smile. Thinking of joining us?
Chess shrugged.
Trents face hardened; clearly hed expected her to blush and giggle under his manly attention or something. Well, he said, stepping back and sweeping his arm out in a you-first kind of gesture, this is as good a start as any, right? Go ahead.
She should have hesitated. She should have looked at Jillian, waited for a nod.
But she didnt. Not with Vaughn smirking and Trent still standing there waiting for her to move.