Ghosts & Echoes

24 The Quick and the Dead

WHEN SYLVIE WOKE, IT WAS TO PINS AND NEEDLES ALL OVER; HER skin burned and itched, an enormity of discomfort so great that it took her long minutes to realize that things had changed. She had joined the ranks of bound-to-chairs; the wrought iron was savaging her spine through her empty holster. But as befitted an unwelcome guest, her chair had been dragged away from the table, closer to the house. Her gun was gone; her hands were tied, and the cloth bundles of grave dirt were attempting to burn holes through her flesh.

Damned Odalys, Sylvie thought. Gun versus a lighter, and the woman still got the jump on her.

The little dark voice growled. You didn’t take the kill shot. Always take the kill shot. Your fault, all of this.

She should have, Sylvie agreed. Forget that Odalys was human; forget that Demalion wanted Odalys alive. Given a second chance, a third chance, she’d shoot first.

Sounds of struggling, grunting, caught her attention. Cautiously, she turned her head, neck aching, to see what could be seen. Odalys, hair coming unpinned, skirt smeared with rust and dirt, was manhandling Demalion onto the table itself, having run out of chairs. Wright’s body might be long, might be lanky, but it was muscled. The task was made more difficult by the closeness of the other chairs, of Jaz’s and Matteo’s proximity to the table, and the ghosts pressing in close behind them.

Sylvie blinked. Was that? It was. Her gun lay unattended on the table, bare inches from Demalion’s lax hand. Wake up, she thought. Goddammit, wake up!

She couldn’t understand why Odalys hadn’t killed them both. A glance at the blazing Hands of Glory suggested the answer. They were bait. A sop to Margaret Strange so that she wouldn’t interfere with the other ghosts and their transitions to flesh.

A cold blur at the edge of her vision, and Sylvie turned her head. The general’s ghost, standing beside the dead boy, jabbed an accusing finger at the boy’s corpse; the gape of his mouth shaped words Sylvie couldn’t hear. It didn’t matter; his gesturing was explicit, and Odalys’s response was clear enough.

“He didn’t tell me he had a bad heart. He’s a goddamned kid. I wasn’t trying to palm off a defective body on you. You’re no good to me if you gain the body and kick the bucket at the same time. I’ve been counting on my completion fee. I’ll give you a choice. Either take your lieutenant’s boy—”

The lieutenant’s ghost stepped back from the Matteo as if burned, offered the body to his general. The general shook his head, drifted toward Odalys, scowling. The lieutenant lashed out and began feeding off Matteo.

Odalys put up wary hands. “Okay, okay, not stranding your lieutenant. I get it. Here—what about this one?” She gestured toward Wright, splayed and trussed like some particularly gothic table centerpiece. “This one’s good. Yeah, it’s a little older and it might be a little work to get into; he’s doublesouled. But the body’s got training. Gun calluses come standard.”

Sylvie bridled, bit her lip to smother her shout of outrage. Odalys, the consummate saleswoman, selling things that didn’t belong to her. Selling people . . . Sylvie jerked harder in her bonds, felt the rope pop with the first tiny frayed thread, a small bite into the loops that held her. She couldn’t do anything to help Demalion until she got free. If Odalys found out she was awake, aware, she’d put a stop to that, and Sylvie wouldn’t wake up until it was all done, until there were strangers looking back at her through Zoe’s eyes, through Wright’s.

In her chair, Jasmyn twitched and thrashed as Marianna Li fed off her, the barbed tongue wrapped twice about her neck, sinking into her chest. Marianna Li was going to wake up in a body full of bruises if she didn’t slow down, but the ghost’s hunger for a new life was like a starving dog’s whine; it resonated in her flesh, instantly understood.

Jasmyn thrashed once more and fell back to laxity—slack muscles, slack expression.

Beyond Jasmyn, Matteo twisted and struggled ineffectively; even as the lieutenant’s ghost fed on him, he seemed reluctant to fight back, to cause himself pain. A brute body and a delicate constitution.

Sylvie had no such compunction. She jerked her wrists back and forth, ripping at the rope, tearing her skin, greasing the ropes with human iron, until she was free.

She took a deep breath, began the effort of slipping out of the windings of rope. Though the knot was gone, the rope still fed through the gaps in the scrollwork, pinning her in place.

Marianna Li’s ghost pressed closer, embracing the girl from behind Jasmyn’s lap, then into her skin. The Hand of Glory went out, flame sucked inward. Jasmyn twitched once, twice. Her eyelids fluttered.

Sylvie yanked herself free, one hand already seeking out the dirt pouches. Right pocket, red bag, Li’s grave dirt. She wound up and threw it, fastball, into Jasmyn’s chest.

The cloth bag, porous, loosely tied, exploded as it was meant to do. The ghost erupted from Jasmyn’s body like a volcano plume, like a body blown to ash, burning the skin as she left.

Jasmyn sagged back in the seat, eyes glassy, body utterly limp. Matteo’s eyes bulged over the gag; his struggles doubled. In the shadows, Zoe made some shrill sound behind her gag.

Christ, Sylvie thought. She’d just killed her. Killed both of them. Jasmyn as well as the ghost.

The girl was dead already, her soul devoured, her little dark voice said. You just made it evident.

One more dead on her watch. Sylvie’s throat burned. No more. She was going to save the rest of them. Zoe, Demalion, Wright, even Matteo. And she was going to do it all before Margaret Strange showed up and turned them all into ghost chum.

Odalys spun around at the sound of Jasmyn’s de-ghosting, Sylvie’s gun in her hand. Odalys might be talented at necromancy and running a business, Sylvie thought, hitting the limestone so hard she felt it chip, but she couldn’t aim for crap. The shot went hopelessly wild, spanged off the eaves, splintered wood, and buried itself in the pine mulch around the pool. On her second attempt, the gun jammed, bloodying her hand. She cursed and hurled it into the pool.

“You shouldn’t even be awake,” Odalys said.

Sylvie rose, brushing at her scraped skin, still dark with graveyard dust, still humming with a shield she’d inadvertently applied. It coated her clothes, her skin; hell, she’d probably even breathed some in. That, coupled with her own willpower—she doubted Odalys could put her down again, even with a whole chandelier of burning Hands.

“I learn,” Sylvie said. “I came prepared. Besides, I think my soul’s too damn unpalatable for your ghosts.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Odalys said.

Behind her, there was a sudden breeze, a ruffle of dank, warm air, like a person’s stopped breath. The water on the pool, rippling where the gun had parted its surface, began rippling in another direction.

A peacock shrieked, its cry abruptly cut off, a deadly fade.

“I think Margaret will like you very much,” Odalys said. “In fact, I’m counting on it. The best of both worlds. I get rid of you, and I get to keep Zoe.”

Odalys smirked at her. “I always did want an acolyte.”

She stepped away from the table, stepped into a shadowy area beneath sheltering trees. The ground glimmered faintly in a familiar circle. Protection of Odalys. In the heart of it, a single chair. One where Odalys intended to sit and watch her dead clients come back to life. Priding herself on her work.

“If I pull you out of your safe space, how much do you think she’d like you?” Sylvie said. A choking gasp made her threat meaningless. It wasn’t just her and Odalys here. Wasn’t just a choice between her and Odalys that Strange would make.

It was Zoe. It was Demalion. It was Matteo. Best thing Sylvie could do would be to free them and get the hell out of here. Leave Odalys trapped in her circle, leave her attempting to placate the spirit she’d created.

Zoe kicked, spitting mad, wiggling fiercely in her bonds.

Demalion growled, nothing catlike about it, only a stubborn refusal to scream. The general’s ghost drew back, circled the table, came back again. Sylvie, trying to keep an eye on Odalys, on Zoe, for the unbound ghost of Margaret Strange, who could be anywhere, fumbled through her pockets for the cloth with the general’s grave dirt. Demalion and Wright would have to come first in this soul-saving triage.

Matteo leaned away from the ghost, the lieutenant gone nearly translucent with effort. The ghost was weak, Sylvie thought, a tagalong from the general’s staff.

Sylvie hefted the bag, dirt bound with a blue ribbon, heard Odalys curse, and aimed—and balked. The general was draped over Wright’s body, seeking a way in. She couldn’t hit him without hitting Wright, without expelling his souls. She might take out the general, but Wright and Demalion would be forced out of body, and the lieutenant’s ghost could give up wrestling with Matteo and just step in.

But if she got Matteo’s ghost, saved Matteo, got him out of the tangle of iron and ghosts and flesh—she could have a clear shot on the general. If Odalys didn’t stop her.

She lunged the distance to Matteo’s chair, bent down, let the grave dirt bag fall, fingers working the knots, wishing she carried a knife. “Fight, Demalion. Keep fighting him.”

At least, given Matteo’s lackluster attempts at escaping, the knots hadn’t drawn tight, unmanageable to her fingernails. She got one of his hands free, working fast, murmuring, “Hold on, hold on. It’s going to be all right.” His eyes, when she glanced up, were glassy and wild. Her skin crawled, expecting the lieutenant’s ghost to object to her actions at any moment, but he was growing thinner and paler by the moment. The flames on the Hand on Matteo’s lap were dimming.

Sylvie got Matteo’s second hand free, already saying, “Hurry, run, don’t look back—” and took a fist to the jaw that sent her sprawling.

She tasted blood, her lip split against her teeth, and her head reeled. The table jerked on the stone, Demalion fighting to save himself, Wright, her . . . unable to do anything.

Sylvie spat blood, fury at yet another bad decision fueling her. She’d read it wrong. The lieutenant’s lich ghost wasn’t translucent because he had been weakening. It was translucent because most of his soul had taken over Matteo’s flesh: She’d just freed a bad guy.

Odalys was laughing, as entertained as if she were watching a pratfall comedy.

Knees under her, Sylvie pivoted, got up in time to block the next sluggish blow with her forearm. Her sneakers slipped on the damp stone, the wavelets lapping over the edge of the pool.

Matteo—no, the lieutenant—twisted in her grip, dodged her blows at nose, neck, groin, knee, and she gritted her teeth and cursed. He was getting faster, learning his new body. And that was nothing but bad news. Matteo had been fit in body but soft in experience. Sylvie, who fought dirty, ugly, and for keeps, could have had Matteo down and restrained by now, but she was fighting an experienced soldier in a young man’s body; a man who’d killed before, full of desperation to stay alive. Experience told. Despite her best efforts, Sylvie took a punch to the collarbone that sent her reeling, gasping for air; then his hand was at her nape, at her waist, dragging her the two steps to the glimmering blue-lit pool.

“Hold her! Hold her!” Odalys shrieked. Sylvie got a quick glance of Odalys looking alarmed, a more disturbing glance of Strange making the scene, her ghost shape swelled nearly solid with stolen bits of soul; then Sylvie’s world was blue-lit water and the bite of chlorine in her nose.

She had a heartbeat of time to realize his intention, sucked in a thin thread of air, all she could manage before the lieutenant pushed her facedown into the water. He knelt on her hips, pressed her head deeper. Her hair streamed about her; her nails scrabbled at the stucco side of the pool, keeping him from slamming her head into the side wall of the pool. She refused to let out the air she’d taken, refused to give in and take a breath of water. She kicked, felt her heels hit his back, but too weakly.

One hand, her forearm on the wall of the pool, bracing her, she reached back with her other, clawing at his flesh, feeling the knotted muscle beneath the smooth skin. He flinched briefly, his grip on her nape slackening, and she got her head up, took a healthy gulp of air, caught a glimpse of something she hadn’t noticed before.

From this angle, so close to the concrete, Zoe’s chair was centered in a glimmering salt ring. Strange was pacing it, complaining in an incomprehensible fashion at an unbearable pitch.

Zoe’s soul and body apparently weren’t up for grabs.

The relief was sweet, if short-lived. Zoe, possessed by a dead woman or a slave to a necromancer—there wasn’t a win there. At best, there was a delay of game.

Sylvie gasped for air, for breath. Her attacker firmed his grip, fingers pinching tight on the back of her skull, and down she went again. Waiting for her to lose consciousness. To breathe in when she should be breathing out. To slacken her grip on her will, her body, and open a path for Margaret Strange.

She twisted, managed to get her mouth above water for the moment, an ear that popped with water flowing out of it. Margaret Strange complained, “You promised me a body, Odalys. I paid in advance.”

“A deposit’s not enough,” Odalys said. “Your estate is worthless. But I’ll give you a body, out of the goodness of my heart. Just not Zoe.”

Sylvie clawed at the coping, tried to claw him again, and he yanked her jacket up over her flailing arm. The grave-dirt package still left in her jacket—Lt. Charles Sorenson’s grave dirt—slid into the water and drifted downward in muddy clouds. Sylvie clawed at it, tried to catch it, but her fingers tipped it deeper in a slimy cloud.

Weight hit her back, and she coughed—water rushing into her mouth, choking her, her vision blurred by more than the dirty water—Sylvie went limp, praying, Let this work, let this work. . . .

And she found herself pulled out of the water, flung onto the limestone with jarring force; water burbled out of her throat, dark and gritty, and Sylvie couldn’t breathe for coughing. The lieutenant knelt on her outflung arms, kept her splayed and displayed. “Odalys. She’s ready now.”

Sylvie held back the laughter; oh, she was ready. Just give her the chance and she’d show them how ready she was. . . .

Strange peered down at her, the ghostly blur of her face sharpening. “This one?”

“It’s better for your purposes,” Odalys said, voice sweet, low, coaxing. “Zoe’s magically talented. A budding necromancer. Too much for you to take over, perhaps. But her sister . . .”

Zoe’s eyes were huge above her gag; her hands were nearly free. Blood streaked her wrists.

Sylvie coughed water, let her limbs stay limp as if the fight had been beaten out of her. “You think you’re going to keep Zoe? As an apprentice? After you kill her sister?”

Odalys came to the very edge of her salt ring, and said, “Zoe will remember you came here all hotfoot to keep her from her birthright. From her power. She’ll get over it. Her kind always does. What’s family compared to power? And if she proves recalcitrant? Well, there are spells for that.”

“She’s older,” Strange said.

“She’s legal,” Odalys said. “No waiting. I know you’re a woman of . . . appetites.” The coaxing tone dropped from her voice, became blunt. “Take it or leave it, Strange. You stiffed me my fee. I’m being extraordinarily generous here.”

“Generous with my body,” Sylvie snarled. “I don’t think—”

“Put her under again,” Odalys said. “She’s too lively.”

Sylvie twisted, fought, kicked, but it was mostly for show. After all, he was taking her back the direction she wanted to be. The pool. Still, she needed to—she managed to squirm away from him enough that he had hold of her hips when she went back into the water, instead of her neck. It allowed her the leverage she wanted.

Sylvie pushed forward, put her hands against the wall, pulled herself into the water, splashing free, ungainly as a beached dolphin. But she was in; she was free of his hands. She hit the bottom, pushed off, lunged upward, and caught the lieutenant around the knees, pulling him into the water after her.

He shrieked as he hit it and went utterly limp, as if the surface of the water had slapped him senseless. He sank past her, hit the bottom, and drifted back up again, limbs splayed. Foam splattered from his skin.

Grave-dirt soup, she thought, but was already moving past him. She surged out of the pool, toward Demalion. Zoe was safe enough for the moment, and Odalys was stuck in her circle.

Sylvie’s clothes were clammy, slapping and constricting her skin, and in the midst of that she missed the first cold press of Margaret’s barbed tongue lashing tight about her neck. But she couldn’t miss the muffled breathlessness of a pillow pressed tight to her face, even in the ghost’s memory, replaying the murder that gave her another chance at life. All the grave dirt on her skin, in her clothes, in the water streaming off her meant nothing to Strange. Just like the showdown at Invocat. An unbound lich ghost was more powerful than that.

Faintly, even as she clawed uselessly at the feeding tube, scoring her own skin, she heard Strange say, Acceptable. Keep your little would-be witch.

Relief seared her, weakened her just a little bit: Whatever happened here tonight, Zoe would live. . . .

As a slave. But you won’t. Demalion won’t. Wright won’t. Maybe they’re already gone, and you’ll miss it. As if to emphasize the voice’s point, she heard Demalion kicking at the table; it sounded entirely too much like death throes.

Sylvie shuddered; the barbed tongue re-formed no matter how she clawed at it, ghost plasma immune to all her human determination and strength. She was conscious of her soul being drawn up, fed on, peeling out of her flesh like her marrow being cored from her bones.

The god of Love had taken a piece of her soul once to shore up his own. He had returned it once he no longer needed it.

She didn’t think Strange would be so generous.

Her head ached, her body felt smothered, and her heart kept to irregular bursts of panic. She was going to die. Wright was going to die. Demalion—

There had to be something she could do, besides lie here and feel her soul ripped out.

As if a ghost could do it, her little dark voice growled. When a god had to ask permission . . .

She’s doing it, Sylvie thought. Eros had just been polite about it.

She’s not doing it very well, the little dark voice pointed out.

Sylvie relaxed, calm suddenly, even as a particularly vicious pull on her soul woke pains in places she never knew had nerves at all. Strange sighed above her, the sound tired, frustrated. Exasperated.

Not doing it very well, indeed, Sylvie thought. She was Lilith’s human daughter, and she didn’t yield. She wasn’t unconscious, wasn’t lost in the lich ghost’s memory of death, wasn’t giving in. . . . She could still fight.

The faint taste of victory receded as fast as it had come. She could fight, felt like she could fight this ghost forever, but Demalion couldn’t. Wright couldn’t.

Sylvie clawed at the ghost’s connection again; this time, the tongue felt nearly real, nearly flesh, as Strange poured all her effort into devouring Sylvie’s soul. And flesh was something she could fight.

Stop fighting me, Strange complained.

Sylvie growled, her voice a ragged whisper beneath the constriction. “You’ve not seen fighting yet.” She let go of her death grip on the hungry hold Strange had on her, stopped throttling the flow of something intangible, and scraped her hands along her own skin. Searching.

The cloth bags of graveyard dirt were gone, one dropped, one in the water, but Margaret Strange’s ashes had been shoved in the nearest Ziploc. Sylvie found the plastic bag; clammy, greasy, a gritty weight. She punctured the bag with torn nails, and flung a handful into Strange’s face.

“That’s your bones,” she snarled. “You’re dead. You should stay that way.”

The ghost recoiled; the ash blowing across her surface and sticking, like sand to wet skin, like metal filings to a magnet. It wasn’t destroying her, wasn’t dissipating the spirit as the grave dirt had done for Li or the lieutenant, but it was . . . working in its own fashion, reminding Strange of what it was like to be flesh.

The ash seeped inward, sketching bones beneath the ectoplasm, creating vulnerabilities—old bones could ache, old bones could break—Sylvie kicked hard at the ghost’s forming skeleton, got purchase, and felt impact race up her own shins. Margaret Strange stumbled back.

Sylvie scrabbled for the rest of the bag. If one handful could slow her, bring her to a shape that could be harmed . . .

Getting as close as she could—she wanted all of the ash to hit Strange—she ripped the plastic apart. Bone scrap and ash flew outward, carried on the evening breeze and zoomed in on Strange like hornets.

Strange twisted, flickered, shrieked, and slowed. Bones sprouted and grew like kudzu, opaque, brittle, a faint hint of organs ghosted into place. All vulnerable. All mortal frailties in an untouchable spirit.

Matteo’s iron chair, abandoned when he attacked her, loomed close, and Sylvie grabbed it, grunted with the effort, and swung it as hard as she could. Wrought iron, and she couldn’t get it off the ground more than a foot, but it smashed satisfactorily into Strange, through the ectoplasm, and juddered hard against bone. The ghost . . . fell, her shin-bones cracked, her knees out of place.

She flailed at the stone, howling, and Sylvie sagged over the chair, breathing hard, willing herself to swing it again. And again, as many times as was needed to pulp bone. Her hands shook; the lich ghost might not have stolen her soul, but the fight had exhausted her. She tightened her grip on the chair, sucked in a breath, and heard its pained echo in another gasp.

Demalion. Another breath. Her name on his lips, a sibilance barely voiced. “Syl—”

His body was a taut arc of pain; his soul being torn out, though the general’s ghost was nowhere to be seen. Gone translucent. That close to success. That close to erasing Wright and Demalion, and digging a new home for himself in Wright’s flesh. The general reeled back for a moment, looked startled and sated, a man finding his pleasure sooner than he expected.

Demalion screamed, his voice rough and full of despair.

“Hey, General!” Sylvie said. Her heart felt frozen in her chest, terror for Demalion girded round with scalding rage.

Odalys swore, and rose from her seat, paced a tight circle within her salt shield, her prison. She wouldn’t stay put much longer, and there were Strange and Zoe yet to deal with. . . . But Demalion . . .

Sylvie remembered the bag she’d dropped, unwilling to risk hitting the joined spirits of Wright and Demalion. That risk seemed a hell of a lot smaller now, when they were going to be lost anyway if she didn’t act.

The bag felt like lead in her hands, heavy with her fear and exhaustion, with the potential for this to go so wrong. The general growled, pressed as close as a lover to Wright’s body; his eyes glimmered at Sylvie with hatred.

She could feed that, she thought, get his attention, maybe draw him away. “Looking for your lieutenant? I left him dead in the pool.”

The general stiffened, raised his head, animal-bright eyes narrowing. His lips curled up, bared teeth. “You—”

“Guess you’ve been off the battlefield too long,” Sylvie said. “You’ve forgotten how to look out for your men.”

The ghost took one furious step forward, and it was enough. Sylvie smashed the bag down at his ghostly feet; the dust plumed upward, and the general billowed and dissolved.

She hissed in satisfaction, but then Demalion went limp, and Zoe screamed, recognizable even through the gag. Sylvie spun and wanted to scream herself. Couldn’t she catch a break?

Strange had pulled herself forward, crawling toward the nearest refuge she could find. And the bones that had allowed Sylvie to hurt her allowed Strange to claw right through the salt ring surrounding Zoe. Clawed her way up and bit deep into Zoe’s neck. Zoe screamed again; loud, shrill, rising, and angry. There was nothing of fear in it. Only a rage that echoed Sylvie’s. Zoe was her sister after all.

Zoe’s hand found freedom, just that bit too late, and flailed at the ghost, tore at her gag. “Sylvie!”

Odalys kicked her way out of her own salt ring, and Sylvie wished very badly for her gun. But wishes were meaningless—the gun stayed wet and waterlogged, lost in the pool.

Odalys said, “I propose a deal.” It wasn’t what Sylvie had expected, and she shot Odalys an incredulous look, turned to help her sister.

She didn’t get far; a muttered word from Odalys, a splash of her own blood, and in the pool, Matteo twitched and started rising. “Zombies are inelegant,” Odalys said. “But often useful. Let’s make a deal, Shadows. I walk away, you get to save your sister from Strange. You don’t hunt me, and I don’t slow you down, just enough—”

There was a wail in the air, a banshee shriek that Sylvie thought was Strange, then the peacocks, then realized—police sirens, headed their way. Odalys’s gaze flicked toward the door, toward escape, and Sylvie felt relief and dread in equal measure.

Backup and a threat of their own. What would the cops think when they came through the house and found the corpses sprawled in chairs, on the stones, on the table—

Demalion groaned, and it was a sweet, sweet sound.

Zoe and Strange still battled, and Matteo rose out of the water, not slow at all.

“Muscle memory,” Odalys said. “The easiest zombies of all. All instinct. Finishing up what they started. He wanted to kill you. Make the deal, Shadows. Save your sister.”

Sylvie dodged Matteo’s lunge, his hand ripping at her jacket, her hair—it stung but was harmless. He kept himself between her and Zoe, between her and Strange. . . .

“Odalys,” Sylvie said.

The woman hesitated, half in shadow, the amulet in her hand glowing softly, a small telltale glimmer.

“No deal.” Sylvie burst into motion; Matteo was between her and her sister? Fine. She could get rid of him by taking out the necromancer who controlled him. Odalys, necromancer, businesswoman, civilized killer—she squeaked in shock and surprise when Sylvie closed on her, turned, and ran.

She didn’t get far, her high heels useless off the stone. Sylvie tackled her long and low, sent her sprawling against the raised roots of a strangler fig, and snatched the amulet from her hand, snapped it in half—it was old bone and brittle.

Odalys twisted and clawed, waking to the animal side of what was happening, but it was too late. Sylvie punched her hard between the eyes, knuckles first, twisting her wrist for that extra snap.

Odalys went satisfactorily limp, dazed and passive. Sylvie dragged her back out to the pool, ignoring the sirens coming ever closer. Odalys shrieked as the saw grass and mulch tore at her skin.

“You think that hurts?” Sylvie said. “You should try getting your soul munched on. Oh, wait. You will.” She frisked her quickly, efficiently, ripped off anything that might be a protective amulet, and dragged her back toward the pool, back toward Zoe and Strange.

“I bet Strange will like you even better,” Sylvie said.

“No, please,” Odalys said. “Please!”

“You’ve got the perfect package after all. Looks, not too old. Even a healthy bank account.”

In the light, she could see Zoe still struggling, still fending off Strange, with a determination that didn’t surprise Sylvie at all.

Lilith’s daughter. Awake. An unyielding will.

She hadn’t wanted Zoe to know about the Magicus Mundi, but at least her introduction to it had woken that strange part of Lilith’s bloodline that was determined to survive and win at all costs. It was saving Zoe’s life right now.

“Please!” Odalys shrieked, and Sylvie threw her down.

“Oh, shut up,” Sylvie said. “I’m not feeding you to Strange. I want her dead and gone even more than you.”

She shoved Odalys against the table, picked up one of those iron chairs again, and staggered forward. This time, she’d crush Strange’s skull. This time, she’d do so much damage that even a ghost would give up and die. . . .

Strange’s ghost screamed.

All of them froze. Police sirens had nothing on the sound of something dead and in agony. The sound rattled Sylvie’s bones, made her eyes sting and water, her nose bleed.

Strange flailed; her nails grew long, deformed, and gouged at Zoe’s face.

“Fuck you,” Zoe whispered, past the constricting tongue about her throat, plunged through her skin. Blood streaked her jaw, her cheekbones in thin rivulets. “You’re nothing but hunger. Nothing but slime and memory.”

It didn’t sound like her sister’s voice at all, sounded like Sylvie’s own internal predator, that little black voice. Implacable. Refusing to be beat. Lilith’s legacy awake in her sister’s blood.

Zoe gritted her teeth, her jaw a knot of effort, and she drove her free hand into the ghost’s chest, shattering brittle, ghostly ribs, and closed her fist around a ghostly heart. In that frozen moment, Strange cried out once more, a sound entirely inhuman. It spiraled up and up, so sharp Sylvie expected it to pierce the clouds, completely unconstrained by the human need for breath. A sound of purest pain.

Strange’s back arched and split, ripped apart from the inside as Zoe squeezed hard, squeezed tight, and pulped the ghost’s faded heart. Something like blood rolled down Zoe’s arm, dark, smoky, clinging. Strange’s expression of fixed hunger went blank and shocked, the face of mortality on something long dead. Her body—ectoplasm, bone, memories of organs and muscles—burst over Zoe’s skin, sinking in as if it were no more than a splash of water.

Zoe sighed, her eyes wild and bright. “A girl could die of waiting,” she said hoarsely.

“What—” Sylvie couldn’t take her gaze from her sister. From her sister’s flexing hand, stained red to the elbow from a ghost’s blood.

“Winner. Loser. I decided which one I was going to be when I was thirteen years old. Cut me loose.”

Sylvie rocked back on her heels. “No.”

“What?”

Odalys had staggered to her feet and was nearly to the dark shelter of the bushes. Sylvie waved a dismissive hand at Zoe, and said, “Odalys.”

Odalys flinched, her gaze jumping from Zoe to Sylvie and back. “What did she . . . What are you? What is she?”

“Lilith’s human brood,” Sylvie said. “It has its perks. Now, sit down.”

The woman stopped in her tracks, collapsed where she stood.

Soft, the little dark voice scoffed. Odalys’s hair was full of dirt, bits of glittering salt. Her white shirt was shredded at the shoulders, and she was limping.

“Stay there,” Sylvie said. “I’ve got some things to do.” Maybe there was still time.

The police sirens cut off; flashing lights seeped toward them.

Never time enough.

She surveyed the scene with increasing dread. Three dead teenagers, one unconscious Chicago cop, one pissed-off teen, and Sylvie’s gun in the pool. Odalys would try to spin this, make herself the victim; her expression was already shifting from fear to calculation.

So Sylvie’s priority had to be—

She freed Demalion, pulled him up into a sitting position, tapped his face. “Demalion. Come on, come on.”

“Ow,” he murmured. “Not one of our better dates.” Despite the wry humor, there was nothing of amusement in the lines of his face. His closed eyes were deep shadows; his lashes tangled cobwebs.

“Never mind that,” she said. There were footsteps in the drive, approaching the house. Zoe fidgeted, working her way up to a real temper tantrum. “Pick a body,” Sylvie said. “Matteo or Jasmyn. Hurry it up. Younger than you might want, but hey, you could be a girl this time around. Not Trey. He’s defective. You don’t want to jump in and die again.”

Her voice shook. They really didn’t have time for this. But she could help Wright, help themselves at least a little. One less body lying around if Demalion left Wright now.

“You need a bridge of some kind,” Odalys said. “It won’t work.”

“Did I ask you,” Sylvie snapped. “Besides, he did it before, and he’s at his best under pressure, aren’t you? C’mon, Demalion—” She shook him. He winced away.

“Stop it.”

“Missing the boat here,” Sylvie hissed. “The cops are going to show up, and they don’t like the walking dead.”

She shook him again, trying to shake his eyes open. It worked; but the expression in them silenced her, made her heart pound. It looked like guilt.

“No point,” he finally said, made the fear real. “I’m alone in here. Wright’s gone . . . devoured.” He levered himself off her lap; she sprang up, paced the contours of the patio as if she could find Wright’s spirit hiding under the lawn furniture. Her throat ached.

Zoe said, “Could I please get untied?”

“You got one hand free by yourself,” Sylvie snapped. “One to go. Get to it. I’m busy.” She rubbed at her face; the salt on her bloody palm stung her eyes and made them water. Sickness soured her belly, tasted of flat metal in her mouth. Her hands twined, seeking the comfort of her gun, but it was drowned like Wright’s hopes. What she was going to tell Alex, so convinced Sylvie always saved people . . .

“I can’t believe you’re upset I saved myself!”

“I can’t believe you walked into this in the first place!” The spurt of rage was welcome, and if the cops hadn’t made the scene at that moment, walking out of the house, backlit by the interior lights into shooting gallery cutouts—generic men with guns—Sylvie would have happily sailed into a brawl to end all brawls with Zoe.

Demalion groaned, rose to his feet; he was white-faced, clumsy, staggering with pain, weariness, and—she bit her lip—moving like a man who didn’t know himself. A tiny balloon of hope she hadn’t known she held burst. Alone in a strange body without even Wright’s subconscious to guide the long limbs.

“So, Shadows, we found your truck. But I see you did, too. Nice of you to let us know . . .” Suarez stepped out of the light, took shape in the shadows, and Sylvie’s brain locked up, trying to decide if his presence was good or bad. It wasn’t his jurisdiction, and the cops behind him were his family. An incursion of Suarezes. She just didn’t know if they were coming to help her or to ensure she went down with Odalys.

Adelio’s face was grim, studying Jasmyn’s body, Trey’s; he pointed at the pool. “That Matteo?”

“Yeah,” she said. “But we got the killer for you.” She gestured toward Odalys. It felt oddly like a kid brandishing a finger painting, hoping for praise.

Odalys stroked her hair back, and said, “Please. You brought them here and killed them for involving your sister in their robberies.”

Should have killed her, left her body in the woods for the animals to eat, Sylvie thought. Odalys sounded too damn plausible. Much better than the scrap of story Sylvie had constructed, which consisted of pointing a finger at Odalys, muttering something about drugs to explain away the teens’ bodies, then refusing to say anything else. The Key Largo PD might have believed her. Adelio knew better.

“Oh, please,” Zoe said. “Like she’d bother. She makes me clean up my own messes.” She smiled shakily at the young policeman who knelt to untie her hand and ankles. “Besides, I didn’t do anything. It was all them. Some freaky type of pyramid scheme where they got paid for bringing in new would-be burglars. She’s all about the freaky initiation rites—”

Sylvie tuned her sister out, focusing instead on Suarez, on Demalion still testing his balance with as much success as a newborn colt.

“Nothing to add, Wright?” Suarez asked.

“Yeah, yeah,” Demalion said. “The blonde’s your man. Sylvie tried to save our asses. Drugs and corpses. Freaky initiation rites, indeed. I blame TV. Too many shows about secret societies—”

Tried to save.

He might not have meant it, but it resonated like a body blow, reverberating in her bones. She held her hands out to Adelio; they looked worse than they were, bloody and shaking, clotting thickly where she’d collected dirt and salt in the wounds. “Can we do this someplace else?” she asked.

Suarez toed over a dark, soft splotch on the concrete; it flopped like a decayed frog—one of the Hands of Glory, gone to rot now that the animating ghost was gone.

“Tío—” Felipe Suarez said. “There’s no mark on the bodies.” He stopped talking as Adelio held up a decisive hand.

“If I send you home, will you come to the station tomorrow without fail to file your report? I’m already on a limb here.”

She shivered at the thought. Another report on her failure. To sit across from Lio, to look him in the eyes and tell him a lie about how she’d saved Wright . . .

“Lightner? We can do this at the station. Now, and all night long, if you’d prefer. You have a lawyer, right? I hear they’re expensive if you get them out of bed to tell them—”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes. Tomorrow.” So close to tears, she’d promise him anything if he’d just give her the time to put herself back together, to figure out if she was drowning in relief or guilt.

“What?” Felipe protested. “We’re not just letting them leave—”

“We can . . . trust her,” Adelio said. “She’ll be in.” The knowledge of her debt to him, that IOU he had brushed aside, lingered in his face. He was sure of her.

She wasn’t even sure of herself at the moment. What she’d done, what she’d wanted to happen. If Wright had been in charge of the body, would it have been Demalion who was taken by the general’s appetite? Had her decision to let Demalion steer the body made Wright vulnerable?

Adelio gestured them onward, let the light from the house lead her forward. Demalion came to stand at her side, listing badly; gritting her teeth, she provided a shoulder. She couldn’t look at him. Too much guilt. Too much relief. Too much.

Adelio spoke quietly to Zoe, who was rubbing feeling back into her legs. Trust me, Sylvie thought, with all that entailed. It made her want to cry. That simple phrase that augured forgiveness.

Felipe held his hand out to Zoe, but before their hands linked—cop’s square hand, glint of gold in the light, Zoe’s blood-shadowed fingers—Sylvie snapped, “Don’t touch her.”

He recoiled; Zoe said, “Nice. He was just helping me, since you couldn’t be bothered—” But the look in her eyes was all about hunger and disappointment, an old and ugly expression on her young face. Sylvie shuddered, took Demalion along for the ride. Zoe had defeated Strange, had been drenched in ghostly blood; had she absorbed something with it?

Demalion whispered, “Trouble?” in her ear, a warm breath, a concern he wanted to share with her. She jerked away from him. Wright was dead, but it was hard to remember that when Demalion was walking around in his skin. She couldn’t allow herself to forget, couldn’t just accept it with wholehearted gladness. Wright was dead.