Ghosts & Echoes

15 Trouble, Trouble

“SPECIALTY?” SYLVIE ECHOED. HER VOICE WAS SOFT, MUFFLED BY THE wall shelves of wicker baskets, by the soft rug on the floor, by the fact that even after ten-odd years dealing with the Magicus Mundi, she could still be shocked and repelled.

Black magic was bad enough, but it was familiar to her. She’d seen it in Troilus Cassavetes, who used voodoo to rule his drug running in South Miami. She’d seen it in Gabriel Brand, who’d used false lycanthropy to slaughter his enemies. And she’d seen it far more often than she liked in the Maudit society, the organization of sorcerers that played every type of nasty magical trick possible. But someone who specialized in a single black skill—the Hands of Glory—who profited on murder, who cultured malevolence—it just made her despair.

Odalys shook her head, a clear “I don’t want to talk about it,” and headed back into the main shop.

Sylvie followed, her own distaste for the subject gone in the urge to push Odalys on it. “An address would be nice.”

Wright twitched away from his scrutiny of a shelf full of spice jars, his eyes seeking Sylvie’s, asking a wordless question. Sylvie’s stomach roiled. She hadn’t asked Odalys a single thing about Wright’s problem; the woman had diagnosed it herself, proffered aid without being asked, and Sylvie had done nothing. Asked nothing. Hadn’t even accepted the small help Odalys had offered. Caught up in her worries about Zoe, she was neglecting her client.

Or at least, so she excused it to herself.

You don’t want her help. You want to keep Demalion here, the little dark voice whispered.

“Don’t worry, darling,” Odalys said. “I’ve got help for your little problem.” She held the pendant out; in the bright sunlight, the stone glittered as it spun, age-smoothed stone with shiny flecks and a hole through the center of it. “Consider it your pay for watching the shop.”

He reached out, as cautious as a child approaching a strange dog. At the last, he pulled back. “No,” he said. He put his hands behind his back, his expression closing off into distaste, a little fear. Sylvie frowned. Was it Wright’s fear? Or Demalion’s?

“It’s good for what ails you,” Odalys said. “It’s a fragment of a tombstone from sacred ground.”

“I hope no one’s missing it,” Sylvie said. Her fingers itched to take it away from her, keep it away from Wright.

“It’s old,” Odalys said. “Broke off naturally. I swear.” Her lips curled, a smile that said she didn’t care whether Sylvie believed her or not. “It will help you. Why do you think we mark graves with stones? Our ancestors remembered. To keep the dead from rising. Body or spirit. We dress it up with religion and respect, but gravestones are all about fear. About holding down the dead.”

Wright’s hands fell slack by his side, and Odalys reached forward, folded his long fingers around the stone. “Spill a little blood to initialize it, rub it in, and let it hang over your heart. It’ll drive away any revenant spirit.”

He was looking at it, considering it, turning it over in his hands. Demalion’s second death in a piece of rock. Wright’s wary eyes met hers over Odalys’s shoulder, and Sylvie shook her head slightly. Time, she mouthed. He had promised her time. Time to find a better solution.

Blood magic was always more dangerous than it seemed, fed a tiny piece of yourself into the air, where anything could smell it, taste it, track it down. The safest way to live with the Magicus Mundi was simple: Don’t get its attention.

Besides, her reluctance wasn’t all about saving Demalion. Odalys seemed too eager—maybe because she thought Sylvie and her problems would leave, maybe because the stone would do something other than she said—and blood risk aside, it seemed too simple. A piece of rock, hung around his neck, and Wright was cured?

Color her skeptical.

Wright shifted Odalys’s attention from the stone, from his indecision. “The Ghoul,” Wright said. “Do I want to know?”

“He’s dangerous,” Odalys said. “I know you don’t think much of my morals, but I don’t want your fates on my conscience if you barge in on him and get yourselves turned into parts.” She scanned Sylvie head to foot, and added, “You would probably find your hands taken. If I’m not mistaken as to your character.”

Sylvie bit back complaint—what was it with witches and character assassination?—as well as the new surge of skepticism. Odalys didn’t know that only the left hands were used?

“Let me worry about us. Just give me a direction—or do you want me to park myself in your store and ask every practitioner who comes in if they know how to disarm, so to speak, these Hands I’m carting around?”

“He hangs out in the Grove on weekends. Sells bone jewelry.”

Sylvie froze. “That’s . . . disturbing.”

“Well, there are only so many uses for a body,” Odalys said. “Even the most thrifty of necromancers have extras. But he claims to be selling animal bone—buffalo, deer, cow, anything but human.”

“Where else?” Sylvie said. “You understand that I’m in a bit of a rush, and that’s three days away.”

Exasperation laced Odalys’s voice. “What on earth makes you think I keep tabs on someone who scares me shitless?”

The vulgarity rang oddly in the woman’s voice, a sign of stress. Sylvie hid a smile. Terrible of her, but she never felt like she was doing her job unless her questionee was feeling stressed.

“I think you’d keep tabs on him for exactly that reason,” Sylvie said.

“I can’t help you.”

Wright said, “What about a real name? People can’t call him Ghoul to his face, can they?”

“They call me Shadows,” Sylvie muttered.

“That’s your fault,” he shot back. “It’s on your sign.”

“Wales,” Odalys said. “Tierney Wales.”

“Thank you,” Wright said. “For that, and for this.” He held up the stone pendant and forced a smile. “Get the briefcase, Sylvie. Let’s go.”

Calling the shots, is he? Sylvie thought. But it was so evidently an excuse to get himself out of these surroundings, out from under Odalys’s scrutiny, that she let it go. Instead, Sylvie paid for the silk scarf, figuring it was better to leave Odalys with a smile than a curse. Sylvie knew she’d need witchy aid in the future.

Sylvie left Odalys’s shop and stepped into the full heat of the day. She rocked back on her heels, her breath suddenly thick and tight in her chest. Wright moved on without her, his steps uneven, but Sylvie didn’t think the heat was to blame. He held the stone pendant up to the sunlight; his mouth twisted, a mobile expression of dismay and doubt.

“I got two souls,” he said. “And a pendant to drive one away. Do I put it on? Erase your guy? Save myself?”

Sylvie’s throat felt parched, her words dry and brittle. “If you trust her.” It took all her considerable willpower not to make the decision for him, take that stone, and hurl it away.

He caught the stone in his hand, hid it in his palm. “It’s so hard,” he said. “It’s all questions all the time. Do I trust you? Do I trust her? How does magic even work? How can this piece of rock tell which soul’s the bad one? Even docs’ll tell you that antibiotics fuck up the good bacteria as well as the bad. And your Demalion’s stronger’n that, like a cancer in my bones.” His voice tightened, stretching his tenor shrill and sharp. People driving by stared at the gringo in the stress-sweated T-shirt gesturing wildly on the street.

“Let’s have the breakdown in the truck, please?” And see, she was being polite. She’d said please, even while anxiety still churned in her. A name was a start, but Zoe was still out there. Hell, it was conceivable she was with Wales. With the Ghoul.

“No,” he said. “The sun feels good. Got a problem with that? I mean, I’ve come all this way. I’m gonna get some goddamned sun to go along with severed hands, black magic, and possession.”

“Hey,” Sylvie said. She throttled back her own emotions, touched his trembling shoulder, and guided him beneath the ragged shade of a palm tree. “What’s going on?”

He sat on the low concrete edge, his knees nearly at his shoulder, hung his head. “It’s just too much.”

“Hey,” she said again, sharper this time. His eyes were glassy, his face slack. “Don’t fade out. You can’t pass the buck on this. Running only works when you can leave your problems behind.”

“I’m not a coward,” he said. “I’ve faced bad odds before. But not like this, not tired and alone. I’m used to having backup. A rule book. A gun.” He picked up a fallen palm frond, scritched it aimlessly through the dirt. His eyes, when he looked up at her, seemed as blank and empty of intent as the glyphs he had drawn in the soil.

“When I died,” he said, “I was scared shitless. I saw it coming. I had time enough to realize that this was it. That I was dead.”

She bit her tongue, tasted blood. Wright had better get to the point, soon. Sylvie was too hyperaware of the pendant he dangled carelessly from his hand to keep paying attention to his words much longer. Sylvie hadn’t realized how much she had begun to hope Demalion could be saved until Odalys had offered up her quick ’n’ easy soul disperser.

Blood was easy to come by. There was glass in the gutter. If Wright decided to go for it, to trust Odalys’s spell, he could pick up a piece of broken glass and carve Demalion out of his life and into hell.

“When I came back, it wasn’t tunnels and white lights; it wasn’t heaven or hell—”

“Weren’t dead long enough to be sorted,” Sylvie muttered, thinking of the gods divvying up mortal souls.

“But I knew I’d been dead, and now was alive. And I knew I was lucky. Billion-dollar-lottery lucky, only it feels like a nightmare, and sometimes I’m not even sure I ever woke up, and this is death. Dreams of a life I left behind, gone sour, mangled, and terrifying. And it’s going to be like this forever. . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Sylvie said. “This is life, and you’re mortal. Nothing in this world is forever.”

He laughed, brief puffs of air that were more surprise than amusement. He pinched at the bridge of his nose, transferring Miami dirt to his pale Midwestern skin. “Jamie’s scared of me, scared of the ‘wispy man’ who walks around in the night. Who doesn’t answer to Dad. I scare my son.”

The silence stretched between them, expectant, and Sylvie groaned. She was fresh out of reassurance.

It didn’t matter. Her little dark voice was willing to pick up the slack.

“It’s your life, and it’s real. Fight for it, or give in. Indecision means you don’t want to admit you want to give in.”

The acid in her tone shook him, widened blue eyes tinting darker. He rose, dropped the pendant in the dirt, and said, “You’re quite right. There’s nothing so human as the fight for life.”

“Demalion,” she said.

“Yeah, and thanks for the pep talk,” he said. “But before you encourage him too much, let me point out that we both died. Unless you’re one hundred percent confident in that spell, who’s to say the revenant soul the stone drives off might not be his?”

Sylvie said, though it hurt her throat to do so, “It’s still his choice.”

Demalion stretched long and lean, all cat-slink and aggravation. If he’d had a tail, he’d have been lashing it. “I’m going to disagree. I have a say in this situation, and I will be heard, Sylvie. Make no mistake. I will fight for my life.”

Rather than be drawn into an ugly argument in a public place, Sylvie put her back to him, headed for her truck, and let him catch up when he would. A quick sidelong glance as he settled into her passenger’s seat let her know the argument was off the table for now. Demalion was gone; Wright was back.

THE SOUTH BEACH OFFICE WAS QUIET WHEN THEY REACHED IT, Alex’s head bent over the laptop she’d dragged over to the couch, and she was frowning furiously. Quiet wasn’t good. A happy Alex was a chatty Alex. It meant that even with the heads-up phone call, Alex hadn’t had any luck locating Tierney Wales.

“I can’t believe this guy!” Alex erupted into speech, without ever looking up. “He just vanished from the system in the past two years. No bank, no credit cards, no address, no DMV. Nothing. I mean, I got a few random Google hits, old mentions of a Web site that’s gone down. Other than that, he’s a ghost.” She licked her lips, and said, “Um, Syl? Promise you won’t be mad?”

“What’d you do?” Sylvie asked. “Are the cops going to break down the door, and did it work?”

“No cops. I hacked the ISI database with Demalion’s old codes.”

“Jesus,” Sylvie said. “That’s the last thing we need, them having a reason to dig back into my life.”

“I thought they were the good guys,” Wright said.

“The ISI and I don’t agree on which of us is the good guy. They staked out my office for years, gave up recently. I don’t want them back,” Sylvie said. She grinned mirthlessly. “Waste of taxpayers’ money.” Her temper itched at her. Sitting still made her crazy. Dead ends made her angry.

Sylvie leaned against the desk, and Alex looked up, belatedly puzzled. “The bell’s not going off.”

“Locked the briefcase in the truck box,” Sylvie said. “I’m sick of it. Sick of the whole damn thing, and those Hands aren’t healthy to keep close. Next you know, we’ll all be having bad dreams. Find Wales and let me shove those things down his throat.”

“I’m trying,” Alex said.

“Try harder. We don’t have the time to stake out the Grove in the vain hope of catching him selling bones to tourists.”

“What about the girl?” Wright asked. “Bella. Why don’t you ask her?”

Sylvie blinked a moment, then said, “I should have thought of that.” She should have. Normally, she would have—only thinking about Bella made her think about Zoe, and that made her dizzy with horrible possibilities.

Sylvie really missed the early days, when it was find the monster, kill the monster, and the biggest problem was getting rid of the body.

It will come to that, her little dark voice assured her, nearly purring. It always does.

“I’ll give Bella a call.”

She left Wright and Alex eyeing each other warily and went upstairs for the phone and some privacy. At her office door, she closed her eyes and leaned against the peeling green doorjamb. She had to be better than this, think faster than this, distance herself from all of this. It was no different from any other case. If she couldn’t stop thinking that it was Demalion’s soul on the line, or her sister’s life, she wouldn’t be doing her best work.

Sylvie picked up the phone, hesitated, then pulled Zoe’s cell out of the drawer. Given the miracle of caller ID, Bella’d be more likely to pick up if she thought it was Zoe.

The phone rang through to voice mail, three times running.

Unease rose. For a teenage girl, answering the cell phone was an avocation and not a chore.

She dialed the house number, and, when Eleanor answered, said, “I need to talk to Bella. It’s important.”

Eleanor’s response slipped in and out of English. Sylvie followed just enough of it to get cold to the bone. Alex greeted her return with, “Bella give you an answer?”

“Bella’s in the hospital. She’s not expected to make it.” Sylvie collapsed on the couch. “Total systemic failure. Like rapid-onset AIDS. Her entire body’s shutting down.” She stared at the ceiling, watching the sunlight shift along the plaster. “She wanted to bond with the Hand. She kept it beneath her pillow, slept with it, carted it about with her. Decorated it. She invited it into her soul.”

Wright shivered, a spasm of movement there and gone, unnoticeable except this was Miami, and even the air-conditioned office ran closer to sultry than shiver.

“Yeah,” she said. “You stay the hell away from those things. Don’t touch them; don’t look at them.”

“Not a problem,” he said. “You’re the one carries them sightseeing.”

Alex said, “What are you going to do? Can you save Bella?”

“I don’t know how the Hands work. I don’t know what kind of connection they have to Bella, to Zoe. Bella was trying to bond with it, and now she’s sick. . . . Finding a way to sever that connection has to be the first priority. Hopefully, destroying them will do it. Wales is our best bet.”

“He’s the seller!” Wright said.

“Then he’ll have the manual,” Sylvie said.

“We still have to find him,” Alex pointed out. “Just saying.”

“If he’s selling things on the street, the beat cops will know him,” Wright said. He rocked back on his heels, slid his hands into his jeans pockets, read their faces, and said, “What? It’s a good idea.”

“We don’t call the cops,” Alex said.

“Not our MO,” Sylvie said. “Alex, call the Grove merchants’ association. They’ll know who he is.”