Finding Magic

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Chess was sitting in the Church library, studying Psychopomps: Their Uses and History, when Elder Marks appeared on the other side of the table. As usual, his blue suit looked dusty and the cuffs were frayed; as usual, the black Church makeup ringing his eyes had smudged halfway down his cheeks, making him look less like a ghost and more like a drunken clown.

“Thou are wanted in Elder Griffin’s office, Miss Putnam,” he said, and left almost before he’d finished the sentence, like giving her the message had been only a stop before the many important errands he had to run.

Chess already knew that was bullshit. Three years of Church training had taught her a lot; a lifetime of shit had arguably taught her more, and she knew—along with everyone else, to be fair—that Elder Marks did little more than fill space at that point, that he was just waiting for the retirement shoe to drop.

Not that she blamed him. How could she? He’d been with the Church all his life, had started back when it was nothing more than an underground magical group, before the ghosts rose from their graves during Haunted Week in 1997 and changed the world forever. Before the Church sent those ghosts into the City of Eternity under the surface of the earth and took control of the world above it.

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