City of Ghosts by Stacia Kane

“well taken care of” to mean “fucked and beaten” and “loving foster families” to mean “child-raping, drug-running, money-grubbing pieces of shit.”
    So much for “should have.”
    Once inside the car he thrust the file into her hands and shot the car off the curb in a maelstrom of squealing rubber. She looked at him sharply, her back tensing in anticipation of an argument.
    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.
    But at that moment they were on their way to interview the man—Ratchet—who’d found the body parts in the vacant lot. She needed to have her wits about her, not to be waiting for the next verbal barb or dirty look. He could slash at her with knife-sharp words later; maybe if he did it enough her blood would finally flow clean.
    Somehow she doubted it ever would.
    But he didn’t speak at all. He’d flipped on his sunglasses so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his heavy jaw and lowering brow, the tension in his arms and the way his lips pressed together …
    “Are you okay? I mean,” she added quickly, “do you feel okay. That guy back there, I don’t know about you, but he made me feel kind of twitchy. He had some power and I felt it. So I just wondered if maybe you did, too.”
    “Ain’t no witch.”
    “Yeah, I know, but you look like—He was creepy and I just wondered if you’d felt it, too, is all.”
    When he didn’t respond, she tried again. “That sigil in your chest, have you been feeling—”
    “I’m right.”
    “I’d really want to help—”
    “Said I’m right , dig?”
    She bit her lip and turned to the file. Thanks to his sneaky thief act the night before she hadn’t even had a chance to look through it, only to skim it before trotting outside like a good little doggie to wait for Lauren.
    And she hadn’t missed much. At least she hoped she hadn’t; but no, they wouldn’t have stolen anything. Copied it, sure, she had no doubt. But not stolen.
    Sun glinted off the heavy chain around Terrible’s right wrist and stung her eyes, and for once she had her sunglasses. She was digging around for them when he pulled the car up in front of an empty-eyed building with dead weeds poking out of the ground floor windows, its walls dark with remembered flames. A squat.
    She grabbed her notebook and pen, secured the edges of the file with a rubber band, and stuffed it into the depths of her bag.
    He didn’t ask if she was okay, but opened his trunk while she climbed out of the car and stood on the patch of crumbled cement that had once been a small parking lot. Ahead of her, dried blood crusted the street; she could still see the tire tracks he’d left when he’d peeled away the night before.
    The pig carcasses were gone, of course. And now that she thought about it—Yes, the air carried the faint fragrance of roasting pork. She couldn’t imagine the glee that little bit of magic must have left in the hearts and stomachs of the neighborhood, most of whom had probably never seen that much meat in their lives. Didn’t want to imagine if any of those lives had been lost in the battle over who got to eat it, either. None of her concern.
    She tried to shrug off the heavy stares she knew the two of them were getting, and headed for the empty doorway when she heard the trunk slam shut.
    The entire bottom floor was choked with weeds as high as her chest, long spiky stalks of ivory-colored grass gone to seed, spindly