Ghosts & Echoes

18 No Rest for the Wicked

AFTER THE STUFFY, MILDEW-DRENCHED HALLWAYS, AFTER THE MEATY scent of Wales’s apartment, the nighttime air felt fresh and sharp, like a winter morning, and never mind that it was a sultry, humid eighty-five degrees on a grungy city street. She found Demalion—definitely Demalion by the elegant way he used Wright’s wiry frame—leaning against her truck, staring up at the dark windows. He looked sick and exhausted; he jammed his hands in his pockets but not before she saw the tremor.

“You believe him?” he asked. It was a vague question, able to cover so much of what Wales had said tonight, but Sylvie knew there was only one thing on Demalion’s mind.

“No,” she said. Just that, met his gaze, not too long, not too short. Not trying to convince him. Not trying to convince herself. Demalion was a good guy. He wasn’t going to body-jack Wright.

“Yeah,” he said. He climbed into the truck, settled into the seat with a groan. “Me neither.”

She climbed in on the other side, and the silence lingered. They were both good liars when needed. They both had fears. So many terrible things had been done in the name of survival.

“At least Zoe should be safer, wherever she is,” Sylvie said. “I might actually get a little sleep.”

“Yeah,” he said, again. “That’d be a nice change of pace.”

She started the engine; it growled, and Demalion echoed it, looked at his stomach with some surprise. “Shadows, aren’t you feeding him?”

“Been a little busy,” she said. “And he’s a grown-up. He can feed himself.” The guilt still rose. Wright didn’t complain enough. When he did, she shut him down.

When a McDonald’s lit up the night in the shut-down outskirts of the city, Sylvie pulled into the drive-through, listening to Demalion bitch, “Fast food? Really, Shadows?”

Five miles later, she pulled the truck off the highway, letting it ping and cool on the quiet shoulder. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t drive while the cab of the truck smelled of salt and grease and the bacon on his burger. His contempt for fast food had faded as soon as the bag hit his lap. Now she had to deal with the sight of Demalion eating his meal like it was gourmet. Like he was in love.

He licked his fingers, said, “God, would you believe I’ve been letting Wright do all the eating for us? You’d think—I mean, they’re his taste buds, not mine, and he’s been eating all this time, it shouldn’t taste . . . new. Wonderful. So damn good.” A smear of ketchup smudged his mouth; he rubbed it off with the back of his hand, so fastidious, then licked his skin clean, catlike, small, quick licks. She half expected purring.

Her body still churned out adrenaline from the lich ghost’s attack, and all she wanted to do was crawl across the cab, lick the salt from his fingers until he forgot the meal and dragged her close. Her second chance.

“You know, you haven’t washed your hands since we held the Hands of Glory,” she said instead.

Demalion froze, grimaced, swallowed, then shook his head. “There were wipes. I remember seeing them on the floor. We used them. Besides, they’re Wright’s germs.”

“He gets sick, so do you,” Sylvie said.

He took another bite of his hamburger, chewed, and said, “True, and he’s too thin. I don’t know how he survives Chicago winters. He’s not a vegetarian, do you think? Or what if he has allergies? I should find out if I’m going to be taking my share of the meals.”

“You’re not going to be inside him long enough for it to matter,” Sylvie said. She started the truck up again, worry canceling out that brief surge of desire. “Don’t get cozy.”

“The Ghoul didn’t have any . . . decent suggestions.” Demalion slanted a long, low glance at her. In the dim glow of a distant streetlamp, the one not broken, his eyes looked more like Demalion’s than Wright’s. “You think he’s on the level? He’s far too close to his Marco to make me think he’s as firm in his convictions as he says. He could be our guy.”

Sylvie shook her head, getting a brief smear of traffic light and oncoming headlights for her pain. “He’s not our guy.”

“Really. You just know that.” Demalion crumpled his food wrappers, bagged them neatly, and dropped them in the narrow gap behind the bench seat in lieu of a trash can.

“Nice,” she said. “Odalys is our guy.”

“What?” he said. Sylvie normally would have given herself a point for eliciting that precise tone of exasperation, doubt, and surprise, but she was just tired.

Apparently, fighting for your soul really took it out of you.

“Why would you think—”

“Location, location, location,” Sylvie said, flippant though there was a low, familiar roil of anger in her belly. It might seem sudden to Demalion, but she’d been puzzling at it ever since they’d set foot in the tenement. Was Wales their necromancer and if not, why not, and if he wasn’t, then who? Once Odalys crossed her mind as a possibility, it wouldn’t be dismissed, only expanded upon.

Odalys? Tatya had pinpointed her as a necromancer, and Sylvie had allowed herself to be distracted by the superficial. Odalys had lied to her more than once in the conversation, lies that Sylvie had caught her in. How many lies had she missed? Had she been manipulated?

Her little dark voice pointed out that Odalys had sent Sylvie to Wales, sent her primed to kill him, had called him Ghoul. Odalys scared of Wales? Hell, Sylvie had no magical talent at all, and she wasn’t the slightest bit scared of the man. Wary, but not scared. A witch with real talent? No. Odalys had feigned her fear, turned Sylvie’s visit into a chance for Odalys to remove her necromantic rival. Corporate takeover, small-scale, with a gun.

She said as much to Demalion, and when he looked thoughtful, she added, “Plus, think about this. These are teenagers we’re talking about. Innocents in regard to black magic. They don’t jump headfirst into the deep end. They’re brats, not scholars. Odalys runs a store, on a major street. Wales lives in nowhere land.”

Demalion frowned at the dash. “How much did I miss while Wright was in control?”

“A critical lot,” Sylvie said. “Wales is not our guy. And given a choice between the two known necromancers in the area, given a choice between creepy-ass Wales in an Opa-locka tenement or Odalys . . . If you were a teenage fashionista, who’d be your pick?”

“Just like that?”

“I can tell you, straight up, that if Wales even got within ten feet of Bella’s crowd, they’d be hitting 911 on their cell phones. No, if these kids are getting Hands, they’re getting them from Odalys.”

Demalion sighed. “Maybe Wales cleans up well. Maybe he meets them elsewhere.”

“Much as I approve of playing devil’s advocate,” Sylvie said, “this isn’t the time. It’s personality as much as anything else. Wales is a shut-in freak who has trouble with thinking outside the box. Odalys is a go-getting merchant. Odalys is all about the money.”

“You think she’s the manufacturer as well as the seller? That she knows the Hands are defective?”

“Creation and knowing are the same thing here. If she was just the merchant, if she’d just got some bad stock, she’d send it back and demand a refund from the makers. She’s a businesswoman, maybe the only true thing she told us. She wouldn’t endanger her client base if she could salvage her profit any other way. But if she made them . . .” Sylvie said. “Think about it. You’ve just made really powerful tools. Only you did something wrong. They’re dangerous to the wielder as well as the bystander. You can’t use them without risking your own soul. Destroying them is problematic. So what do you do? You sell them and try again. Sell them to teenagers who are too self-centered to ask why anyone would sell them a tool worth more than the cash they pay.”

Demalion said, “You’re basing your theory on two meetings with two very different people and tangential knowledge of Zoe’s friends. It wouldn’t stand up as evidence.”

“I’m not the ISI. I can make the decision. It’s enough for me to go on,” Sylvie said. “Besides. Wales was genuinely shocked that the Hands had been women’s.”

Demalion narrowed his brows. “Was he?”

“You were ther—” Sylvie shook her head. Wright had been there for that part, until Demalion, pushy and protective, had clawed his way back to the surface. “Yeah,” she said finally. “He was. First thing tomorrow, I’m going after Odalys.”

They traveled back to Sylvie’s apartment in a silence punctuated only by environmental noise: the thrum of the engines, the hiss of other cars passing—the streets busy even after midnight—the occasional distant siren. Eventually, Sylvie reached for the radio, just to keep herself from saying what needed to be said, smothering the words under mediocre rock.

She wasn’t up for a fight, not while driving, not when she felt the weakness of the argument in her bones. It might be Wright’s body, and Wright should get to use it all the time, but dammit, she was enjoying working with Demalion again.

Still, once she’d pulled the truck into her parking spot, cut the lights, the ignition, she took a breath and turned to her quiet passenger. “You need to let Wright—”

Demalion put a hand over her mouth. “A night? One night. One night’s nothing to him. To me? To us?” He moved his hand away, and before she could say yes or no, he leaned in and kissed her.

She met his kiss, chasing that tempting familiarity in an unfamiliar form, lips soft against hers, stubble rasping against her palm. The kiss ended, but she didn’t pull away, leaned in closer, reclaiming his mouth. Making it all familiar. The way his hands moved, one settling at her left hip, the other closing on her nape like a cat’s teeth. The soft sounds they made together. The words she felt him breathe against her tongue. Missed you. Afraid I’d lost you.

She collapsed into him, all her willpower draining away, her hands questing for skin, for closer contact. Worming her fingers into his shirt, the warmth of his skin, that slick curved scar—Sylvie jerked away, hitting the horn with her elbow and startling herself all over again. Her breath was uneven; her lips stung.

“Syl—”

“No,” she said. “He has so little he can trust right now. If he can’t trust us?”

“He wouldn’t have to know—”

“You do love your secrets, ISI man,” she said. It wasn’t a friendly reminder. They’d first started dating on a lie. That was the thing she had to remember. Demalion might be a good man at heart, but he had been trained by those who were less particular about their ethics. “Let me point out,” she added, “you’re the one who has the most to lose if he decides you’re a threat.”

“Would you help him?” Demalion asked. “Choose him over me?”

Sylvie got out of the truck, slamming the door hard enough to echo along the street. She felt bad for her neighbors: First the horn, now this. She watched Demalion come out the passenger’s-side door, the clawed hood between them, her fingers tight on the metal as if she had been the one to mark it. She waited until she had control of her voice, her temper, her own disappointment and fear. “He’s the one who’s alive. You tell me who I’m supposed to choose.”

Demalion’s eyes widened, but he only nodded, a quick jerk of acknowledgment. She stormed up the stairs, making the slats jounce beneath her steps. She’d reached her apartment door before she heard him begin his own climb.

The apartment was quiet and dark, but Sylvie’s nerves reacted instinctively; she found the gun in her hand before the door was more than a few inches open.

“Burglars?” Demalion said behind her.

One of the pluses of having very little in the way of stuff; her apartment was easy to keep clean and easy to notice when someone else had been in it. Especially since they’d made no effort to hide their visit.

Her living room was a jumble of opened drawers, strewn magazines, books tumbled on the floor, sofa cushions thrown pell-mell about the place.

“No,” she said, reholstered her gun. “Zoe.” The lock hadn’t been broken or otherwise disengaged, and while the existence of Hands of Glory made that a moot point, Sylvie kind of recognized the mess. Or rather, the temper behind it.

“Looking for her cash.”

“Yeah, that’s my thought,” Sylvie said.

“At least you know she’s alive,” he said.

“Alive and pissed,” Sylvie said.

“I think that’s your bloodline’s default mood,” Demalion said, and she whipped around to look at him. Did he know? Had he found out about Lilith?

“I’m more concerned with how she got in,” Sylvie said. He didn’t look like he knew. But this was Demalion. He was good at hiding his emotions, and now he had an extra layer of mask to do it in.

“Key?” He picked up a magazine, smoothed it absently, set it beside the television.

“She doesn’t have one,” Sylvie said. Her throat felt tight, her eyes dry and tired. “But there were four kids at Bayside. God, what if they all have Hands? What if Zoe just borrowed one?” If she’d spent the night attempting to save Zoe from herself, and the girl had just wandered off and put herself right back in danger—

“They’re bonding to the Hands, right?” Demalion asked. “You said that Bella girl did. Doubt they’d lend them out. Don’t borrow trouble.” He slouched back against the wall, scratched at Wright’s incoming stubble. “Think about it. It’s not all that late. If she had come here with a Hand, there’d be paramedics tending to all your neighbors who woke up freaked-out at collapsing in front of their TVs.”

Sylvie sighed, studied the wreckage; it was mostly disarray and not damage. There was that at least. “I keep a spare key at the office. She probably lifted it. Planning to get her stuff back. Even before I stole her cash.”

“You really didn’t give her a key?”

“No,” Sylvie said. “Didn’t give my parents one either.” She met his disbelieving gaze with her own. “What? I deal with weird shit, and sometimes it follows me home. You think I want them to walk into that unexpectedly just ’cause Mom decides to bring me a houseplant? My parents aren’t supernatural entities who can eat intruders.”

“Hey,” Demalion said. “My dad was an archaeologist.”

She met his gaze, and said, “No, he wasn’t. You never met the man. He died hundreds of years before you were born.”

“What the hell, Shadows?”

“Sphinxes gestate extremely slowly. A thousand years or so. I don’t think there was a lot of archaeology being done back then.”

His lips thinned. In Demalion’s body, that expression had been intimidating. In Wright’s, it looked . . . tired. “I hate that you know more about my life than I do,” he said. “Just to get that out there.”

“Not my fault you and your mom don’t communicate.”

His shoulders drooped, and Sylvie felt the instinctive urge to soothe the pain of her hasty words. His taste was still on her lips, and it would be so easy to reach up, pull him down, and kiss his fears away. She shook her head, busied herself picking up the sofa cushions and replacing them. “I’ll get the couch made up for you.”

“Not the bed?”

“Couch,” she said.

She hunted the spare pillow that had been on the couch before recalling that Demalion and she had dragged it back to her bed; nausea swept through her again. She’d been so close to saying yes to Demalion, too close. Then and now.

Couch assembled into a facsimile of a bed again, she left him to it. Stumbling over a scatter of books—Zoe and her brutal sense of fair play at work again. There hadn’t been any hiding place in Sylvie’s bookshelves, but she had dumped Zoe’s books, so Zoe dumped hers—Sylvie homed in on her bed, shoved the pile of searched linens to the floor, and passed out on the bare mattress.

She woke partially when her cell phone buzzed against her hip. Swatting at it, still half-dreaming of clutching ghosts, brought her to full wakefulness. The room was watery with grey light, the first diffuse glow of morning approaching, and Sylvie thumbed the call through without even looking at it.

“What.”

“Shadows. Got your sister.” Lio. Zoe.

She jerked upright, pushed her hair out of her face, coughed her voice to full capability. “What?”

“I’m bringing her to your office on my way off shift. If you’re not there, Little Miss can spend her time in juvie until you bail her out.”

“What she’d do?”

“Other than use language that shocked even an old cop? Showed up too damn close to another burglary. See you soon, Shadows.” He disconnected while she was still speaking; she’d done the same to him more than a dozen times. Payback was a bitch.

AS SHE DROVE, SYLVIE CHECKED THE CLOCK AGAIN. STILL TOO EARLY to call Alex and ask her to do research. She called anyway, got her voice mail, and left a long report of the previous night’s events. Something nagged at her, and freed of the worry about Zoe’s immediate safety, of Demalion’s tempting company, of Wright’s scared eyes, she was able to pinpoint it.

The trouble was, despite the Ghoul’s assumptions, Sylvie wasn’t all that sure the Hands were defective.

Odalys was competent at lying, at projecting what she wanted to, at running her business just under the radar. It was hard to imagine that competence didn’t spread to her magic. Hard to imagine that a lich ghost—rare monster that it was—could be created by accident.

Harder still to imagine her wasting time and money creating more than one defective Hand. Given Bella’s illness, that soul sickness, Sylvie felt sure that her Hand of Glory had held a lich ghost as well.

One might be a mistake. More than that? Was deliberate.

There was something else the Hands were meant to do.

Hell, maybe it was some type of return policy. Sell the Hands cheaply knowing you’d get them back when the user wigged out at getting sick. Or maybe they were defective. Maybe she was assigning too much ability to the woman; after all, people overstated their abilities all the time.

Sylvie just didn’t believe it. There was a pattern she was missing. Two Hands, both defective. Both women’s hands. Both old women’s hands. Why? Women committed murders; she was proof enough of that. But old women? Bella’s dreams had shown Patrice Caudwell old and murderous. Sylvie’s own trial with Zoe’s Hand had been much the same: a murder committed with gnarled hands.

She’d be interested to see what Alex could dig up on the defunct lich ghost’s past.

ADELIO SUAREZ’S UNMARKED CRUISER WAS PARKED OUTSIDE HER office when she arrived; Lio himself sat on the bumper, smoking a thin cigar and drinking convenience-store coffee. Her gaze skimmed him, focused in on the sulking teen locked in the backseat of the cruiser.

“She’s okay?” Sylvie asked.

“You know, I only smoke these things when I’ve got something to celebrate,” he told her. “I’ve been saving this one.”

“Catching a teenage runaway that much a coup?” she said.

“Shadows, don’t make me ask. Tell me about Rafi. Tell me about his killers.”

Sylvie let out a breath. “You wired?” She didn’t think he was, and hell, even if he was, what would the tapes prove but that she was crazy.

“I play fair,” he said. “Tell me.”

Zoe banged on the window, made demanding gestures at Sylvie, and Sylvie gestured Lio away. Sat on a bench where she could keep an eye on her sister but still have the relief of knowing Zoe couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t know what Sylvie had done.

“You believe in magic?” she asked. “All those things you’ve seen on duty that you can’t explain.”

“I believe in evil,” he said.

“It’s not the same thing,” she said. “Much as I sometimes think it is. Look, the long and short of it is, the satanists are gone. Transformed by magic into something harmless.”

“You telling me you’re a bruja?”

“Hell no,” Sylvie said. “I’m telling you I farmed the task out. I couldn’t do it myself. Didn’t have the right skill set. But he did.” The words were stark, oddly easy to say after all the effort she’d put into not telling him. Maybe because she knew, deep down, how he’d react.

Lio groaned and put his head in his hands. “This is bullshit, Shadows. Bullshit.” His cigar fell to the concrete, smoldered slowly. “I trusted your word.”

Sylvie said, “There’s not going to be the kind of satisfaction you’re after, Lio. I can’t take you to a secret grave, can’t show you their bones. There’s not going to be anything you recognize as justice, but Rafi’s death has been paid for. I promise you.” Cold comfort for a man who didn’t understand how far-reaching magic could be.

“How do you mean, transformed?” he said.

“You know what I mean,” Sylvie said. “No longer human. They weren’t worthy of it.”

He shook his head, sighed. “No lo creo. No te creo.” He rose, stared back at the car, at Zoe slouched as low as possible in the backseat in case any of the early-morning tourists or joggers saw her.

Sylvie said, “You don’t want to. You want to be part of the normal world. To be blind to the rest of it. I can understand that. But I’ve been honest with you. If you change your mind, call me. I’ll show you what became of them though I doubt it’ll give you the closure you want or need.”

She touched his arm a last time, and stood. “Thank you for finding Zoe.” She licked her lips, hating to do it, but hating the despair on his face. “I made a deal with you. You didn’t find it satisfactory. I don’t usually offer rain checks. But I owe you one.”

He waved a hand at her dismissal, and said, “Get your sister out of my car and stop the burglaries before the press figure out there’s something going on.”

“I could take that deal,” she said. “But I won’t. I would have done both those things anyway. Listen to me, Lio. I owe you one. That’s more valuable than you think. Remember it. I don’t offer myself in debt lightly. You need me, you call.”

“Don’t think so,” he said. He straightened on the bench, rose, and said, “People you deal with end up dead more often than they should. Bella Martinez died last night. Doctors still don’t know why. Do you?”

It felt like a punch to the gut, all unexpected. Sylvie had thought the girl would get better, the Hand’s ghost gone, not worse. But maybe the ghost had been gone because it had already succeeded in eating Bella’s soul, had fed and moved on.

She shook her head, and Suarez took it for ignorance, not denial. He headed back to the cop car, popped the back door, and pulled Zoe out. She was cuffed, hands behind her back, and Sylvie remembered she’d been found near the last burglary site.

“Is she under arrest?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Zoe protested. “I can’t believe you sicced the cops on me.”

Suarez looked at Sylvie a long time, ignoring Zoe; Sylvie imagined him balancing scales in his mind. His disappointment in her answers. His need to make progress on a case. His lack of tangible evidence.

Eventually, he pushed Zoe forward, unfastened the cuffs, and said, “She’s all yours.”

SYLVIE UNLOCKED THE OFFICE DOOR, USHERED A SILENT ZOE INSIDE, and said, “We have to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to talk about. Why don’t you be a good big sister and take me out for breakfast. I’m starving.” Her sister’s tone was false casual, her poise a front to buy time. Waiting to see what exactly she was in trouble for. A childish tactic, and it made Sylvie’s fury stronger. Zoe had no business getting involved with the Magicus Mundi.

Sylvie leaned up against the doorjamb and waited her out. She knew Zoe had been back to her house, had found the money gone, had found Sylvie’s note. Otherwise, Zoe wouldn’t have trashed Sylvie’s apartment. She didn’t have to wait long. Zoe’s eyes darkened, narrowed, her jaw clenched. “Where’s my money? You had no right!”

“Do you really want to talk about rights?” Sylvie asked. “ ’Cause there’s a lot of things we can talk about, including the right of the dead to be treated with respect.”

Zoe made a face, a fierce grimace, and trotted out a lie. “I know, it’s gross. But it’s part of a biology class, like that exhibit on musculature—”

“Black magic on the curriculum now? Christ, Zo, how the hell could you bring that into the house? Sleep with it in the walls? How could you do that?” She stormed across the room, slapped the desk hard; her hands stung, her breath rasped in her throat.

Zoe looked older, suddenly, than her years. Harder. She stiffened on the other side of the desk. “You’ve no idea what I can or cannot do. And you never will.” She closed her eyes, raised her hands, palm up, began murmuring, rubbing her fingers along the edges of a gemstone ring.

Sylvie slapped her sister this time instead of the desk, her gun leveled even before she recognized the spell: Pearls for sorrow in her ring, and what bigger sorrow was it than to forget the past and be doomed to repeat it?

Zoe took a step back, her cheek reddening, her words stopped. Still an amateur to be distracted so easily.

Sylvie lowered the gun immediately. Almost immediately.

“I can’t believe you,” Zoe said. “You pointed a gun at me. Mom and Dad are going to be piss—”

“Shut up,” Sylvie snapped.

“Who are you to tell me what to do? I’m sixteen, nearly—”

“I’m the one who cleans up the messes made by humans fucking around in the Magicus Mundi.” Her hand was tense on the gun; Zoe’s ring hand was behind her back. “I wouldn’t try that again. You’ll find I’m immune to most magic.”

Zoe paled. For one moment, Sylvie thought that was it. Either her older-sister glamour was back, or Zoe really hadn’t expected such fierce and informed disapproval and was feeling chastened.

Then Zoe let out a shriek, more air than sound, as angry as a spitting cat, shrill as a siren. “You knew! All this! This . . . world, this power, and you knew! And you kept it from me!”

The gulf between them was deeper than she had ever imagined. Zoe’s introduction to the Magicus Mundi hadn’t been like Sylvie’s, a long haul of fear and chaos and loss. Zoe’s introduction had been about pleasure and power and profit.

“I hate you,” Zoe spat. “Hate you.”

“That’s too bad, because I’m the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.”

Zoe stamped her foot. “Where’s my money?”

“Who sold you the Hand?”

“Who made it your business?”

“You’re in trouble, Zoe. Real trouble. Your friends are in trouble,” Sylvie said. Exasperation and fear made uncomfortable inroads in her belly. Bella . . . Suarez hadn’t told Zoe. That much was obvious.

“Hardly my friends,” Zoe said.

Sylvie dropped onto the couch and stared at her sister. “You’ve spent every waking hour with them for the past two years.”

“C’mon, Syl, you really think the rich kids play nice with me out of the goodness of their hearts? I bought my way in.” Zoe slouched back into the desk chair, brought her knees up, crossed her wrists over them. She looked ready for a photo shoot, down to the soft pout and the hard eyes. She looked like a stranger.

Sylvie swallowed, her fingers tensing on the arms of her chair. “You weren’t holding those pills for Bella.” She made it a flat statement though her voice quivered with rage. How could Zoe have fallen so far? So unnoticed? “You were refilling them.”

“I make a good go-between,” Zoe said. “Keeps Bella and Jasmyn and their boys from having to talk to the dealers. Keeps their parents in the dark. In return, as long as I can keep up with them, they let me play.” She rubbed the pearl ring thoughtfully.

“ ‘ Keep up with them’?” Sylvie kept her gaze on that ring, on her sister’s words. A large part of her was paying the kind of attention she’d spend on an enemy, waiting for them to strike. But Zoe’s words were more hurtful than any attack; she’d had no idea her sister felt like this. Left out, bitter, alone, valueless.

“With their style? The clothes? The parties? Eating out? It all costs money. God, Syl, people pay you to find out things? You’re slow.” Zoe shifted in her chair, crossed her arms across her chest, dropped her gaze. Sylvie wondered coldly if it was shame that made her refuse to meet Sylvie’s eyes or anger so great it choked her.

“Why? Why bother with them if they’re that shallow?” Sylvie asked. Her throat felt stretched around all the words she wanted to say.

Zoe raised her head, pushed back the dark mane of her hair, streaked salon-tipped nails through it, her eyes old and cynical. “Because they’re the power brokers. Their futures are mapped out, and people go out of their way to help them along the path. All I was trying to do was get a push here and there. Half their parents are benefactors at major schools. Hang out like I’m one of theirs, and who knows the letters they’d write, recommending me. Grades aren’t enough anymore.”

“So you’re prostituting yourself to make them happy?”

“Not since I learned that I can make things happen. All on my own. I don’t need them anymore.” She smiled, and it was such a happy thing that Sylvie almost didn’t say it.

But facts were facts.

“Magic turns on its user,” Sylvie said. “It’s not the answer, Zo.”

“Maybe not for some people. Maybe for them, it’s dangerous. But I’m good at it.” Zoe licked her lips. “It’s like, all my life, I’ve been waiting for a talent. For something that interests me more than school. For something that feels right. This is it.”

“Who told you that?” Sylvie said. “That you’re good. Your what—do you have a mentor? Or are you basing it on the fact that you’re not dead yet? ’Cause it’s early days.”

Zoe jerked as if Sylvie had struck her. “You’re just jealous.” She was losing momentum, though, in the face of Sylvie’s convictions.

“You’re in danger, Zoe. Your friends are in danger.”

“I don’t care about them, remember?” Zoe scowled.

“Bella’s dead. You’d better care.”

Zoe went white.

Sylvie found a brief spurt of relief in her sister’s reaction. The girl had some fellow feeling after all. Sylvie, who’d dealt with her share of sociopaths, thought that simple selfcenteredness and alienation were far easier to stomach. Zoe might grow out of both.

“You’re lying,” Zoe whispered. “She’s sick, yeah, but—”

“Truth,” Sylvie said. “If you hadn’t kept your Hand of Glory in milk, you’d be dead, too. Not that I’m not thrilled to pieces you’re not dead, but why did you do that?”

“Bad dreams,” Zoe said, malleable with shock. “When I complained, she said to put it in milk. Said warm milk made for sounder sleep.” Her voice lost its brittle edge, became her sweet little sister again, whom she had read to, babysat, entertained, and taught. It soothed Sylvie’s temper as nothing else had.

“Oh, Odalys,” Sylvie said. “Selling platitudes along with spells.”

Zoe gaped, her poise utterly gone under the twin blows. Bella’s death. Sylvie’s knowledge. Something satisfied purred in Sylvie’s chest. Always so good to have her suspicions confirmed.

“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? What I want to know, Zoe, is what she told you. What she said to make you think this was a good idea, dabbling in magic. Did she say you were special, were her friend? She’s not your friend, not your savior from the unfairness of life. She’s your dealer, and she’s pushing death.”

“Not true,” Zoe said. “She warned me. She told me how to be safe.”

“She gave you a defective Hand of Glory with a lich in it. That’s not being safe. Tell me about the Hands. Tell me which of your friends still have them.” Hammering hard, and Sylvie saw her mistake even as she made it. Zoe lowered her head, and when she raised it again, her eyes were hard, her jaw set.

“No.”

Lilith’s blood. That refusal to bow her head, passed down in the blood, passed down as a latent force hidden as stubbornness. Lilith’s blood in her. And in her sister.

Zoe’s eyes grew wet, but they stayed resolute. It took all of Sylvie’s willpower to not start the interrogation up again. Instead, she sucked in a steadying breath, counted her heartbeats, making them slow down.

She reached out, stroked Zoe’s hair; the girl jerked her head away. “I’m not the person you need to talk to. I don’t like magic. I don’t trust it. And I don’t want you involved in it. But if that’s where your talent lies—”

The door jangled, and Alex came in, coffees already in hand, mouth already going. “Hey, Syl. Got your report. Wales sounds like freaky good fun. I want to go next time. Wright upstairs?” She balked when a few steps in allowed her to assess the mood in the office.

“You found her!”

“Lio did,” Sylvie said. “Alex, I want you to take Zoe to Val’s. Get Val to take her in, keep her safe. From herself and from Odalys.”

Alex groaned. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? She hates us.”

“You sent me there,” Sylvie said. “Didn’t seem to bother you then. Look, I’ve got to put Zoe someplace safe. Hell, I even considered letting Lio keep her, but I’m not sure he can control an angry teen-witch wannabe.”

“I’m not a wannabe,” Zoe said. “I am a witch.”

“So’s Val. You’ll like her. She dresses well,” Sylvie sniped. “And you will be polite to her, or she’ll turn you into a toad.”

“Aw, c’mon, Sylvie, people can’t get turned into things—” Sylvie shook her head, muttered, “You really do not know the world you’re fucking around with, Zoe. Go to Val. Be nice. Learn stuff. Learn to walk away.”

“Am I supposed to say thank you?” Zoe said. She snagged a cup of cold coffee and nuked it.

Sylvie said, “Hey! You’d better be damn grateful. Sending you to Val is going to save your life.”

“Give me back my money, and you’ll see gratitude.”

Sylvie slapped the wall. “Goddammit, Zo. You don’t need money and magic both. Pick one or the other.”

“I need both,” Zoe snapped. “The one gets the other.” Sylvie’s temper moved to high boil. “Oh, don’t tell me. Odalys is making you pay her for the privilege of fucking up your future, for giving you a deadly toy.”

“Whatever,” Zoe muttered, and Sylvie marveled that it was possible to love and hate someone so much at the same time. Zoe took her coffee and headed upstairs, probably to try the safe. Sylvie had no illusions. Zoe would run if she got her hands on the cash.

Her grip tightened on the desk, and she hung her head, chest hurting. Alex rose, leaned over her shoulders, and rested her forehead on Sylvie’s back. “Teenagers suck?” Alex offered. It was thin, brittle, scanty comfort, but Alex’s concern came through loud and clear.

Sylvie laughed. A little ragged, but laughter nonetheless. “Eloquent as always. But I’ll have you know, I was a saint when I was a teen.”

“Of course you were,” Alex said. She sighed. “Anything else you want me to do? Once I’ve dropped off Zoe?”

“Back here and do the computer searches on Odalys.”

Alex eyed her a moment, sighed, pressed keys at random on her computer keyboard, and said, “So. Just dirt in general? Do you even know her last name?”

“Nope,” Sylvie said. “’Swhat I pay you for. I’m especially interested in any connection with the murderous old woman we identified.”

“Tentatively identified,” Alex corrected. “Based on Bella’s dream and a tragedy with a toddler. You know how many kids drown every year?”

“Do you?”

Alex grinned, caught out. “Well, there’ve got to be lots, or there wouldn’t be so many PSAs.”

“Check out smothering victims and old ladies also,” Sylvie said, thinking of the moment when the lich ghost had touched her, shown her a piece of its corrupt spirit. “Zoe’s Hand remembers a dead man in a hospital.”

“I can do that. What are you going to do while I’m playing chauffeur and research assistant? Bang down Odalys’s doors and start demanding answers . . . ? I was kidding, Sylvie.”

Sylvie paused at the front door. “But it sounded so good. Alex—”

“Yeah?”

“Will you get Zoe out of here before she figures out the code to the safe?”

THE GLASSY FRONT OF INVOCAT WAS DARK, FEEDING APPROACHING storm clouds back into the heavy sky. Sylvie squinted, trying to see the sign from her slow-moving truck; a car honked behind her, cut around with a roar of exhaust and aggravation. She found an echo in her own breast. Not only did the store look closed, but there was a lean form sitting on the step, hunched over like an old Cuban porch-sitter, watching the street life go by with a frown and a newspaper. All he needed to blend in was about thirty-five years and a cigar.

She pulled the truck over, cut the engine; Wright raised his head and waved at her.

“She’s closed. Running, you think? But how she knew you were coming—”

“Wales isn’t dead. That might be enough for her,” Sylvie said. “I thought you were staying at the apartment?”

“No,” he said. “You left me there. But I’m not an ornament. I can move. I have feet and hands, and surprisingly, cold hard cash. Did you know Demalion kept an emergency cache in Miami? I got a cab.”

“What, he left you a note?” A weird twinge touched her, a tiny taste of something that might be dread.

Draw the line between the living and the dead, keep it fast, her little dark voice murmured.

Maybe that was it. Hard enough to bear Demalion’s presence, a constant reminder that she’d failed to save him before, might fail to save him again, but that was a matter of pain, of resurgent grief. Demalion communicating directly with Wright felt . . . dangerous, like Demalion was encroaching, absorbing more of Wright’s life, a single suggestion at a time.

“Dreams, actually. Apparently we can dream each other. I think a little more practice, and we’ll be able to hold conferences inside my head.” Wright looked up at her, blue eyes sharp with a knowledge he hadn’t earned. “He said you like to ditch people who are trying to help you.”

She sank down onto the cement step beside him, stretching her legs out before her and studying the patterns her shoelaces made. With her hip, she bumped the newspaper he had folded beside him, and he shifted it closer to his side. “You’re my client.”

“No,” he said. “You haven’t cashed my check. This is what’s going to happen. My problem isn’t going to be fixed fast or easy. Especially if you’re dealing with this other case. Especially if you want your guy alive. So I’m going to get off my ass and help you with the Hands, with the kids, with Odalys. After that, you’re going to help me. Full focus, nothing else on your plate.”

“Yeah?” she said. “You and Demalion decided that?”

“Yeah,” he said. He twisted his mouth into a grin. “You going to hold it against us? ’Cause I gotta tell you, it’d be a waste. I mean, you could go sticking your hand in the viper’s nest all on your own—Demalion thought you would; ’swhy I came here—but it’d be nice to have some evidence first, don’t you think?”

“You’re babbling, Wright,” she said. “I think Demalion’s rotting your brain.” Though it had just been a random crack, it made her stomach clench. If the lich ghost was one of the Ghoul’s takeover spirits, could feed on a soul, what could Demalion do to Wright if he tried?

“I didn’t come straight here,” he said. “I stopped by your parents’ house first.”

“You what?”

“Evidence,” he said. “Of the concrete and nonmagical kind. We were sloppy when we tossed your sister’s room, just looking for weird shit. I went back to see if I could find out where the weird shit came from.”

“And?” She should have thought of that herself. If it hadn’t been Zoe at stake, she might have.

He patted the newspaper beside him, shifted it, and revealed a book. One of the innocuous teen witch manuals, heavy on fashion and style, light on practice, that Zoe had had on her shelf.

“You were all about Odalys when we were here, back-room chats and big ideas, but I was in the shop. She uses these gummed labels on her stock. Pale blue. Unusual. Pretentious. Probably pricey. No wonder she charges so much for candles.”

“You have a point to make, presumably,” Sylvie said, still brittle, though she knew where he was going with this. She shifted uncomfortably on the concrete, flipped off a pair of skateboarding preteens who were gawking at them.

Wright opened the book, turned the flap to face her.

Gummed label. Pale blue.

“So?” Wright said. “Do I get to play or what?”

Sylvie bit back the truth, that Wright’s detecting was too little, too late, that she’d already connected Odalys and Zoe from her sister’s own mouth. But Wright wanted to be a detective. Wanted to be useful.

“Welcome aboard,” she said. Sylvie rose, peered into the glass door. A faint shimmer greeted her, a prismatic sheen that raised marching goose bumps across her arms, her back, her nape. Yeah, not breaking into the shop. Not when there was obviously a magical defense system up and running. Cops were bad enough. Being lobotomized, paralyzed, or fed to some magical monster would be worse, and besides, fighting it off would bring the cops, making it a lose-lose.

“Want to help me track down Bella’s friends?”

“Hell yeah,” he said. She held out her hand and pulled him to his feet, just as the first raindrops spattered the cement about them.

“All right. But I drive.”