Ghosts & Echoes

5 Echoes & Leftovers

MMM. JAIL AIR, SYLVIE THOUGHT. THE STINK OF BLEACH AND DESPERATION, old coffee, alcohol, and chemical-laced sweat. She sat, cuffed to the long bench on the edge of the main squad room, with Wright a sullen presence at her side. At least, this early in the morning, near the end of night shift, before day shift, there weren’t a lot of people waiting processing. Gave her space to think about Wright and his memory gap.

Fugue states were rare but far more common than ghosts, and Wright had enough trauma to suggest a fractured psyche: Dead and back again wasn’t all roses. On the other hand, Wright had died in Chicago, where the Magicus Mundi was everywhere, snatching at everything like greedy children freed from the need to be mannerly.

A dead man brought back to life on an ordinary day, suffering mental gaps, she’d write him off as delusional or damaged. A dead man brought back to life while gods were roaming around and magic was reshaping reality? Chicago made possession a possibility.

But a ghost, given abrupt freedom of a body, should have betrayed itself somehow.

Beside her, Wright slumped, an unstrung puppet, all uncomfortable angles and quiet misery.

She’d thought herself in circles, gotten no closer to a solution to Wright’s problem. Frustrated, she leaned back and thumped her head against the wall, regretting it when her hair stuck. “I hate this place.”

“Then maybe you should have gotten a permit,” Wright said. He leaped into conversation as if he’d been desperate for an opening. “Christ, Sylvie, what kind of PI doesn’t even register her gun?”

From the wary expression on his face, he had come up with an answer of his own—the kind of PI who might need to walk away from used guns and dead bodies.

“I have a concealed-carry permit,” she said.

He raised his brows, double-barreled skepticism, followed by a speaking eye sweep of their surroundings. An utterly nonverbal yeah right.

She licked her lip. He hadn’t been anywhere near that expressive during the time they were roaming around the parking lot, checking for burglars.

“They ignore it or lose it,” Sylvie said.

“It’s a conspiracy? The Man out to get you? I hear that a lot.”

Sylvie sighed, pitched her voice to the most annoying whine possible. “Yup. But it’s different this time, Officer. . . .” At his expression, she said, “What? You never played the game at all? Losing info? Just long enough to make a difference?”

“I’m a beat cop,” Wright said. “I risk my neck for a general pop that spit on me if I give ’em a chance. I do my job, I do it well, and I don’t play games.”

“Don’t you?” She stood, tried to stand, and was yanked to an awkward crouch by the cuffs. It did nothing for her mood. “Thing is, I’m used to my clients lying to me, Wright, but it still burns me every single time.”

“I haven’t—”

“Lying by omission is still a lie,” she said. “You have blackouts? Fugue states? You think the ghost is walking around in your skin, and you didn’t think to mention that?”

The receptionist, a heavyset cop with a permanently etched scowl on his face, said, “Hey, Shadows, keep your freak show quiet!”

The rasp in her throat pointed out, if the cop’s reprimand hadn’t, that she’d been one step away from shouting. Sylvie sucked in a breath, brought her temper back under control, and dropped into the seat.

Wright didn’t make it easy. The moment she sat, he said, “I told you I was possessed. I thought that kinda thing came with the label.”

“That’s it?” she said. “That’s all you’re going to say. You just expected me to know?”

He nodded once, jerkily.

The bad temper washed out of her; he looked so . . . broken. A tough guy barely hanging on.

He scrubbed his free hand over his mouth, his eyes, as if he could wipe away things he had seen or said. As if the whole problem could be erased. Then his shoulders went back, stiff and strong. “So, you going to tell me what happened? I mean, what . . . it did when it had control?”

Sylvie studied the juncture of cuff and bench, a spot worn slick in the terrazzo. She wasn’t sure she had an answer to his question—two questions in one, really. The covert one was a plea for assurance that there was a ghost at all.

Setting aside her default paranoia, Sylvie wasn’t convinced that there had been anything more at play than the sleep spell messing with a man already fighting his own mind.

“Did it try to hurt—”

“You were helpful,” Sylvie said. “You were useful. A little mouthy, a little logy, not all that different.”

Wright’s mouth twisted, rejecting what should have been good news. Sylvie reminded herself that cops had their own instincts, and he was reading between what she had and hadn’t said. His voice deepened to a growl, an angry pitch she hadn’t thought he could reach. “I recognize that look. You’re going to dump me and my problem on someone else.”

Sylvie bit back her first, second, third retorts, before saying, temperately, “I just don’t think it’s my kind of problem.” A police station was not the place to have this talk. This discussion should be happening in the privacy of her office, not under the bloodshot eyes of an overworked cop. But Wright was as pushy as the best cops tended to be.

He swallowed hard, his throat working, his chest rising rapidly beneath his thin T-shirt. “I thought you were supposed to help me. Thought you were supposed to believe all this shit.”

Sylvie scooched over on the bench to put her mouth close to his ear. “What ‘shit’ is that? Wright, all I’ve seen so far is a man with a blackout. And that’s explicable by lots of things: drug abuse”—she held up her hand to forestall his instant protest—“psychological trauma, organic trauma, just plain exhaustion. Just because there are monsters doesn’t mean that every shadow is cast by one. You have a high-stress job in a high-stress city that just had big problems. You have money problems. You’re having trouble in your marriage. And you died. You’re the poster boy for stress-related disorders.”

“I dreamed you. Isn’t that proof enough?” He picked fitfully at the fraying denim on his knee. She addressed herself to the high blade of his cheekbone, the bronze stubble blurring his tight-held jaw.

“Tell me what type of possessing ghost would be so helpful? Possession isn’t a good thing, Wright—”

She ignored his dry Tell me about it and bulled on. “Possession means taking over someone else, trammeling their will beneath your own, claiming their flesh. Not the mark of a good guy. Not the mark of a nice guy. Yet your supposed ghost helped out. Do you see why I’m having doubts?” It sounded good. Believable. Solid. Everything she said had been true. Facts. Logic. The PI’s best friends.

Yet she couldn’t quite shake the tiniest doubt in herself. The idea that Wright’s ghost might be a very real threat.

“You don’t want to take the case, fine. Don’t lie about it,” he shot back, and he was hissing in her face now, red-flushed, a vein pulling tight in his neck. “If you don’t believe me, tell me why Cedo Nulli makes you flinch.”

“You’re mangling the Latin,” she said.

The intake cop growled another warning.

Wright leaned back, let bleach-scented air drift between them; the red heat faded from his skin before he said, “I’m not leaving. You don’t believe? Just wait. You’ll get your fuckin’ proof. I’ll be your sidekick if I gotta. But I’m sticking around.”

“You could help your cause,” Sylvie said. Her voice was sharp, torn between guilty relief that he wasn’t going to let her push him away, anger for the same cause. “You got someone else in your head, and you know nothing about them? Not even a name? C’mon, Wright, you want me to believe you? Give me something. Give me a name.”

Wright’s eyelids fell closed, shutting off that fever-bright gaze. The last of the hectic flush faded, leaving him ashen. His brow knotted. Behind his eyelids, movement, searching his own mind. She found herself holding her breath.

“It’s . . .” His hands fisted, his jaw tightened, and he gritted the words out. “I don’t think it knows. It’s all broken glass; edges and bits and pieces. Like those toys, kaleidoscopes, and you turn ’em and you turn ’em and it’s pretty and shiny but it never makes sense. It’s like there’s a piece missing.” He went back to picking at his jeans.

She didn’t say anything. She might be a bitch, but she didn’t kick a man when he was down. Unless he deserved it.

“I’m still sticking to you like glue,” he muttered.

She licked her lips, hated to give him false hope, but ghost or not, his distress was real. “I’ll get someone to take a closer look, do a proper diagnosis. I can help you that much.”

A rude laugh interrupted their talk; Felipe Suarez loomed over them. His partner, three steps ahead, holding two cups of coffee, paused on his way toward the exit. “Shadows, you don’t help people. You fuck ’em over. I’d run back to your wife, Chicago, if I were you. Or you’ll end up on a slab.”

“Felipe, man, c’mon,” his partner urged, and silence fell in their wake.

Wright cleared his throat. “So, why exactly are they out to get you?”

“Rafi . . . Rafael Suarez was an employee of mine, as well as related to a good chunk of the force.”

“Was?”

Yeah, trust a cop to home right in on the point.

“He died. We tangled with some would-be sorcerers, and he got killed.” It cost her something still to winnow Rafi to cold fact and report his death in a level tone.

“They blame you,” Wright said. “ ’Cause grief makes people crazy. I get that. So our arresting officer?”

“First cousin, Felipe Suarez,” Sylvie said. “And if it hadn’t been him, it could have been one of Rafi’s brothers, his uncle, his sister, or his father. They’re a big family, and they bleed blue. So, they lose my permits and give me the runaround. We’ll sit, they’ll yell at me, maybe fine me. Depends on how bad their day went.”

“Lightner!” A big-voiced man in a rumpled suit poked his head into the hall, saw her cuffed, and sighed. He scrubbed at his face, stubble dark along his jaw, eyes weary. The very picture of a tired man about to go off shift and finding that he had one last unwelcome task to complete.

He disconnected her from the seat, the jangle of hand-cuffs, and pointed her down the hall. “You know the way.”

She wiggled her fingers bye-bye at Wright and let Detective Adelio Suarez lead her into one of the interrogation rooms.

THE ROOM WAS A FLUORESCENT HELL: CHEAP LINOLEUM, CHEAP paint, cheap video camera aimed squarely at the table bolted to the floor, all of it reflecting the flicker-shine of the false light. A rectangular window high up, filled with wire-mesh glass, showed a sky going blue and bright outside.

Here we go again, she thought, stiffening her spine. It was hard: With all the other Suarezes, she felt equal portions irritation and patience. With Adelio Suarez—she just felt guilt. Rafael had been his son, and when Rafi had come to work for her, she’d told Adelio she’d keep him safe. He’d been pleased. One child out of the line of fire.

He stabbed his thumb at the chair. “Sit.”

Disobedience ran deep in her soul, but she dropped into the wooden chair, heard it screek against the faded turquoise linoleum as she shifted her weight. The sooner she shut up, the sooner she’d be out of here. He paced behind her; then, just when she was preparing to start the game by asking for a phone call, he said, “Wait here,” and left the room. A total change of pattern. It made her wary.

Adelio came back with a file folder, and her gun, which he set on the table before her. It drew her eyes like a magnet; she missed his first words, lost in the itch to reclaim what was hers.

“. . . even with your testimony and Ms. Figueroa-Smith’s, we’ve had no luck finding the cultists that killed my son. We’ve got a set of probable names, but the suspects themselves are gone. All of them vanish on the same night, except for one of them, who disappeared some days earlier—a college student named Mira Castellan. She vanished from the UM campus, and funny thing is, Shadows, campus security recalls seeing your truck on that day. You’re no student.” He flipped through the folder, showed Sylvie a picture of the woman. Sylvie felt her upper lip curl, restrained any other response. Murderess.

“Campus is open to community,” she said. She traced a chip in the table’s laminate, pried at the edge of it with her fingernail. There wasn’t any point in denying her presence there. Her truck was noticeable, had been ever since the dire hound—her very first monster—had clawed six long furrows through the red paint to expose the metal beneath.

“These are the people who killed my boy, right?”

“You’re the detective,” she said.

“What happened to them?” Suarez said, his voice strung tight. “Did they run from you? Where are they, Shadows?”

Sylvie sank back in the seat, folded her arms. “I wish I could tell you.”

Yeah, this was a change of routine, and an unpleasant one. She wondered how the hell he had gotten the cultists’ names when she hadn’t been able to.

Hadn’t needed to. The god of Justice had done her scutwork.

While Adelio Suarez didn’t have preternatural help, Sylvie should have realized that grief, determination, and the resources of an entire police department were enough. Look what she managed with attitude and a gun.

He pressed his chair back to two legs, stared at the ceiling for a long moment, and dropped it down again with a thunk that made the table vibrate. “You wish you could tell me?”

“I don’t have any answers,” Sylvie said. “Does that make it clearer?” She stared him down; after werewolves, succubi, and gods, one overworked night-shift detective was barely a blip on her radar.

He dropped his gaze. “Tell me this one thing, Shadows, one thing. Do you think they’ll ever resurface?”

Sylvie grimaced. Maybe if he hadn’t been asking her in the middle of a police station, maybe then she’d be tempted to give him the answer he expected.

“Look, Lio, I’m sorry about Rafi—you know I am—but I don’t have any answers for you. And that’s a client of mine you’ve got cuffed out there. He’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“They never do; you take them down with you, anyway.” Suarez stood, turned away, facing the door. His shoulders slumped.

Sylvie was grateful for his weakness. It hid her own, the quick tears that burned her throat and filled her eyes. He was right, of course. Demalion was only the most recent, most graphic example of that. The Furies had shredded him down to his soul for doing what she had asked him to do. She reached out blindly, put her hand on the gun, finding familiar, cold comfort.

“Can I go?” she said.

“When you answer one question more for me,” he said. His voice was ragged, as if he’d been fighting to control his breath.

Sylvie groaned, put her head on the table, smelled greasy laminate and the lingering scent of gun oil. “I should have stayed at the beach.”

“Explain to me why you and your client were passed out at a crime scene. Or did you not know the Bayside Mall was the latest in a string of robberies?” Suarez leaned over the table, forced her to look at him. The sunlight creeping through the barred window was unkind to him, pointed out the fatigue tint to his skin, the silver in his stubble, and blanked those remarkable eyes.

“Motherfucker,” Sylvie muttered, the heels of her hands pressed tight to her forehead. “That’s why I was there. To prevent it or find out who was doing it.”

“Your Chicago beat cop hired you to worry about south Florida robberies?”

“Ever heard of multitasking?” Sylvie said. “He’s not my only client. Just the most needy.”

“The robbery?”

Sylvie shook her head. “I didn’t get a good look.”

He waited, leaning pointedly against the hallway door. She growled, but forked over her list of the car plates, the long one with all the cars in the lot, and the new additions nicely circled for him. She felt like she was back in high school, handing homework over to a bully. Except, of course, she had never been the bullies’ target.

He folded the paper into his hand, expression still somber. “Anything else?”

“I gave you my leads. You give me nothing. I think we’re more than done. I think you owe me one.”

“There was graffiti this time,” he said, as she pushed away from the table.

“Graffiti’s nothing compared to a list of getaway vehicles,” she said.

“So you don’t want to know what it said?”

Her hand was on the doorknob. She wanted out, but the case, her clients . . . “Something really interesting, I hope.”

“One word. Glory. On the glass of the sporting goods store. Nothing elaborate, a rush job. Just the word. You get anything from that?”

She imagined it. Narrow letters scrawled across the glass. Handwriting, spray-painted, scraggly, and too large. Hurried, even though they had had all the time they could need. Testing the waters. Feeling their oats. Getting bored with the ease of it all.

A faint image came to her, the shape of the group moving toward the stores, one lagging a little behind. “Someone’s feeling ballsy. Teenagers, Lio. You’re looking for teenagers. But I’ll find ’em first.”

He let her go, and she swept out into the main room, found Wright released and drinking cop-shop coffee. He said, “Finally free?”

“I’m not a dangerous criminal after all,” she said, kept moving for the main door. “This visit didn’t even cost me money. Just my head start on a case.”

He gulped down the last of the coffee and hastened after her. “Where to now?”

“Depends,” she said. She juggled her cell phone into her hand and dialed Alex. If Alex could pull the plate information soon enough, Sylvie could beat the cops to the cars’ owners. After a visit from the police, they’d be stirred and defensive.

Just before it went to voice mail, she was rewarded with a series of clatters and thunks, then a sleepy mumble. “Syl? You in jail again?”

Sylvie laughed. “Shaking the dust from my feet as we speak.”

“Then c’n I go back t’sleep?”

“Run some plates for me first? Addresses first, personal info as you can?”

Alex yawned, an audible jaw-cracking contagion that set Sylvie off in response.

“I guess.”

Sylvie snapped her fingers at Wright, hovering politely just out of hearing range. He scowled in response to her abrupt demand for his attention, spread his hands in the universal “what?” gesture.

She bit back her own irritation. Fugue state, ghost, right. Whatever had happened, Wright didn’t remember it. She pointed at his jeans, and said, “Pocket.”

He found the crinkled paper with weary surprise and passed it over. She rubbed her thumb over the elegant script, noticing this time that the handwriting was different. His earlier notes had been squared off, the pencil tip pressed into the paper. That was strange but might fit with a trauma-induced personality shift. Or someone using the muscles of his hand differently.

Cedo Nulli. The memory spiked her adrenaline straight to redline, jolted her heart. How did Wright know about that? If it were the god of Justice poking around in her life again, he’d have dropped by, made sure she helped Wright out.

The government thorn in her side, the Internal Surveillance and Investigations agency, knew about her personal motto inked onto her skin. They could have set her up. Wright could be some sort of poisoned apple. It would be just like the ISI, overelaborate and sneaky.

But Wright seemed genuinely scared. Even now, standing in a sunlit Miami morning, he couldn’t rest. He was all angles, jittery, restless, moving from one defensive posture to another.

“Syl?” Alex whined, waking Sylvie back to the moment. Sylvie read off the plates’ numbers, let Wright’s problems slide. “The ones I’m most interested in are a Navigator and the Subaru. More room for stuff.”

“Did they get stuff?” Alex asked, all disapproval. “You were supposed to keep them from getting stuff.”

“Plans change, Alex,” Sylvie said.

“That excuse is old, old, old,” Alex muttered, but low enough Sylvie could ignore it. She chose to. “Hey, Syl? Speaking of changing plans . . . Zoe took off.”

“When?” Sylvie said.

Alex sighed. “Sometime last night. I’m sorry, Syl. I was running a few programs—updating the office laptop—and I fell asleep. Woke up. She was gone.”

Sylvie sighed. She should have expected it. When she was Zoe’s age, she hadn’t paid much attention to the rules, either. Especially when there was a boyfriend waiting in the wings. “I’ll catch her later. What about the plates?”

“The Navigator’s in the Grove. The Subaru’s in Kendall. The Taurus? That’s a rental, not what you’re looking for, unless you think your thieves are renting a getaway car. The Audi is right at home on the Beach. Got a pen?”

Sylvie cadged Wright’s pencil stub and took down three addresses. “Those are pretty nice neighborhoods, Alex.”

“What? The rich never steal? Tell that to the SEC, Sylvie.”

“Your point,” Sylvie said. “Go on back to bed.”

“Wright still with you?”

“Yeah,” Sylvie said, and glancing over, found she was wrong. Wright was nowhere to be seen. “Got to go.”

“Syl—what are you up to?”

“Chasing down my client,” Sylvie said. She scanned the street, found Wright waiting beside a cruiser, leaning back against the hood, idly kicking the toe of one foot against the heel of the other. His fidgeting, his quizzical expression when she waved him back over, reassured her that Wright was in charge, that his wandering off was courtesy and not fugue state.

“I mean, it’s six a.m., you just got out of jail, and if you go sneaking around the Grove, harassing people and breaking into garages, you’re going to end up right back in jail.”

“If I go now, I can beat the cops there—”

“Nope,” Alex said. “No. This is your common sense speaking. Go home. Let the cops handle it. Give them a chance, and if they screw it up—then you can show ’em how it’s done.”

Sylvie hesitated. She hated to cede the advantage when she was being paid to investigate, but she was tired, grubby, and not even sure that following up on the cars would be useful. Only in children’s books and Scooby-Doo would the cars turn out to be owned by the perps.

Alex was right. Let the cops rule out the obvious and save her the effort. Time to get some sleep. Real sleep. Whatever else that sleep spell did, it didn’t leave its victims feeling rested.

SYLVIE AND WRIGHT TOOK THE METRORAIL BACK TO THE MALL AND reclaimed her truck. She went round front of it, pulled the parking ticket with a curse—Felipe was so damn petty—then asked Wright, “Where am I dropping you?”

He slumped against the door. His face, already reddening in the slanting tropical light, grew red highlights on his cheeks and ear tips. “I wasn’t joking,” he said, quiet. “I got nothing. No money. No local connections. Nothing. This is my Hail-Mary moment. My life’s in your hands, and you don’t even believe me.”

She pulled her sunglasses from the visor, covered her expression with them. He watched her as intently as a dog, trying to read her mood.

Sylvie reached over and pushed the passenger’s-side door open. “Get in,” she said. “There’s a couch in my apartment.”

Her little dark voice growled warning, but what else could she do? Pat him down for cash, call the banks, and make sure he was telling the truth?

She couldn’t leave him at the office. Alex wouldn’t be in until noon, and that left a lot of files open to his scrutiny. She locked the file cabinets as a matter of course, but every cop she’d ever met had a dab hand at popping the usual locks. Her files were coded, but codes were easy enough to crack if someone had a talent for it.

He waited, hanging off her door like some scrawny excuse for a gigolo, nervousness in his expression, leery of her offer. Of her. Maybe even of himself.

Sylvie had a few doubts of her own. The least dangerous scenario Wright presented was that he was delusional, and she was inviting him home. She stifled her common sense, sighed, and said, “In the car, Wright, or you’ll be bunking on the beach. And sand fleas are a real bitch.”

He shook off his own worries, slipped back into the passenger’s seat like he belonged there. Once he was settled, she turned her truck for home, flicking on the radio, and flicking it off when the morning DJs blathered at them. The traffic patterns were just going to have to surprise them.

Wright closed his eyes, and his face aged. The morning light traced the stubble on his chin, half-gold, half-grey; lines of exhaustion pulled his slack face toward sorrow’s mask.

Sylvie took another quick look at the list of cars, wondering if any of them were on her way. Made no sense to pass by if she was just going to have to return later.

“Home, James,” Wright muttered. He reached out a sleepy hand and took the list from her.

She allowed it; she’d seen what she needed to. Each house on the list was a destination, not a drive-by. Instead, she turned the truck’s scarred nose toward her apartment and a couple of hours’ sleep. She sighed. One day back on the job, and she was down to catching bits and pieces of sleep when she could.

The ride was quiet, South Dixie blessedly clear at this early hour, and Wright collapsed into a boneless sleep she hadn’t thought possible in anyone past the age of fifteen. Like a colicky baby, she thought, soothed to sleep by the motion of a car. But if he was asleep and dreaming, his dreams were unpleasant.

He woke when the truck came to its usual coughing halt and squinted at the bright Miami morning, yellow light and haze, reflecting off the white-stucco apartment complex. “Come on,” she said, and he followed her past the cutesy would-be Chinese entry arch, the single stranded Kwan-Yin sculpture left bereft in a rocky alley pathway between the buildings, with only a raised brow for all the kitsch.

“Home sweet home,” she said.

“Thought Florida was all about the Latin look,” he said. He took in the view of tilted-up roof corners, red tile cartoon-bright against the blue sky, the expanses of raked gravel and sand.

“Landlord was trying for the foreign-student demographic,” Sylvie said. “Ended up with something as authentic as grocery-store lo mein.”

Her building was the one deepest into the lot, farthest from the pool. She’d chosen it for the quiet, plus the nice long view of the walkway, which let her see who was coming to visit.

One flight of stairs up, and Sylvie put the key into the lock, jiggling the key as it stuck again. Humidity was a killer. The lock gave after a solid thump, and she ushered Wright in, kicking the door closed. He moved forward with the awkward shuffle of a guest preceding his host, awaiting cues and guidelines.

Sylvie felt tight in her skin, all too aware of his eyes sweeping the small expanse of the living room, the tiny kitchen, the shadowed depths of her bedroom, her bed unmade, sheets still tangled from that final nightmare that had driven her out of town. She’d slept better in Sanibel, defying all logic. Slept soundly and at length, no matter that her most pressing problems were things she’d brought along.

She sidled past him once he had moved beyond the narrow pseudofoyer, and found herself standing awkwardly in the living room. Times like this, she wished she were more of a regular person, with a dog, a cat, an aquarium, even houseplants that needed watering—anything to let her fuss with until she got over that first stranger-in-the-house discomfort.

Instead, she had a nearly bare room, a comfy couch with magazines strewn along one half—Guns & Ammo, Closer, and a month’s worth of inserts from the Herald—newspapers piled beneath and beside the end table, collecting dust. A TV on a cheap stand, DVDs piled beside it. A bookshelf, three-quarters full. A floor lamp at strategic distance from the couch. It wasn’t even messy enough that she could justify a scamper round tidying. Instead, she just did a quick point and show. “Bedroom, mine, thataway. Couch, yours. Bathroom down the hall. Drinks in the kitchen. Help yourself. If you dirty something, put it in the dishwasher. I’m going to shower. I think I rolled in oil.”

Once off the road, out of the truck, in the clean confines of her apartment, the scent lingered about her like a cloud, a reminder of the failed night on her skin.

She grabbed a couple of blankets, one of the pillows from her bed, and tossed them to him. “Don’t worry. I don’t sing in the shower. You should be able to sleep.”

“I’m not that tired,” he said. “We could talk about my case.” He swayed gently, foot to foot.

“In the morning,” she said.

“It is morning. You’re the one who got PO’d I was holding out on you—”

“Know anything new and urgent, like a name?” she asked.

He wrapped himself in his own arms, shook his head. She said, “Then we’ll talk later in the morning. Much later. After coffee. After a spicy breakfast omelet. And more coffee. You need some rest, and I need a clear head.”

Maybe with some sleep under his belt, he wouldn’t look so close to the edge. Whatever sleep he’d gotten in her truck, it had been the opposite of refreshing. He looked strung tight, and worse, he looked . . . crowded, as if the thing in his head, having surfaced briefly, was watching for another chance.

Sylvie shuddered. He might be ready to talk about it; she wasn’t. Enemy, ghost, crazy? Or some combination of all of the above? Sylvie didn’t want to start that round of speculation again. Once had been enough, and nothing had changed in the interim.

“You came to me for help. I’m telling you now. Sleep will help. You can’t think clearly if you’re exhausted.”

“Can’t think clearly when someone else’s using my brain,” he muttered, but nodded agreement. He toed off a sneaker, white leather worn nearly grey with age and use, then the other, and Sylvie found herself shying away from his bony bare feet, the unwelcome intimacy of it. Ridiculous in a city where flip-flops were so common, but there it was. Wright needed help; she didn’t want to give it. She didn’t want to see any further signs of vulnerability—his or hers.

She grabbed a shower, scrubbing her skin clean, trying to purge the guilt over her reluctance to help. It was just bad timing. She’d been truthful with Alex; she wanted a nothing case. Not something that was life-or-death desperate. Wright’s problem was twigging every nerve in her body attuned to Serious Trouble.

The water was hot and plentiful at this hour, before her neighbors rose for work, and Sylvie lingered until the knots of tension in her spine—

What happened to the satanists, Sylvie?

Help me.

Find the thieves.

Save me.

That your gun, Lightner?

—faded away into a dull ache.

She got out, her fingers pruned, the mirror glass steamed and drippy, and dragged on a pair of ’Canes sweats, faded from forest to olive, and a black tank top.

The apartment was silent and dim; Sylvie expected to see Wright a mute, mummy shape of blankets along the couch. Instead, he perched on the edge, bare-chested, barefoot, bent over something small in his hand, something that gleamed with an opalescent shine. He was utterly still, staring into it.

Sudden rage washed Sylvie. She snatched it from his hand, the broken curve of glass leaving a tiny crescent of blood on his skin. He jerked back. “What the hell?”

“Don’t touch that. Where did you even—”

“It was on the couch,” he said. “Memento mori? Didn’t expect you to go in for that sort of thing.”

On the couch, right. She remembered now. That last night before her vacation, packing and repacking and repacking again. All of it centered around a quarter moon of cloudy, broken glass that she couldn’t decide to take or leave behind.

A tiny broken piece of a crystal ball, cloudy with a fragment of a dead man’s soul. She rubbed it in her palms, familiar by now with the sharp edges. She’d left it behind. A fragment of a soul. It wasn’t good for much when the rest of it had been obliterated, devoured by the Furies. She’d slept better in Sanibel? Maybe because she hadn’t taken it with her. She rocked it in her hand now. Sometimes she swore she could see a slice of Demalion’s life in it. A boy in a blazer, raising his head, and facing down a school bully with nothing but arrogance.

Sometimes, in her nightmares, she was child-Demalion’s bully. Sometimes, in her nightmares, she killed him herself. Shot him, hit him, sicced the Furies on him. She shivered, closed her palm around the glass in her hand without looking at it, afraid of seeing that boy’s face in it.

She dropped heavily onto the couch beside Wright. “It’s important to me.”

Wright pressed on the small slice in his palm until the blood welled up over his fingertips. “Glad to hear it.”

“God, you did a number on yourself,” Sylvie said. She hadn’t thought the crystal was that sharp. “Hold on a moment.” She collected her first-aid kit, pulled out the butterfly bandages, and, after wiping the blood away again, fastened them over the curved wound. She traced the edge of the wound with her fingertip, checking that pressure on the rest of his hand wouldn’t be more than the bandages could control. Tracing that small curve, over and over again.

“Ow?” he said. He folded his fingers inward, out of her grip. “Bad bedside manner, Shadows.”

“You’ve no idea,” she muttered. “Last person I patched up wasn’t even a person.”

When she looked up to see if he was shocked silent, or just thinking, her gaze never made it to his face, caught on that curved scar on his chest. She lifted his hand in hers, brought it upward. The curves matched. Like key in lock. She jerked away, trembling. Coincidence? Or the ISI, playing vicious games with her and using Wright? She touched that spot on his chest, that smooth gap in the arc.

He touched her cheek, fingertips cool against her flushed skin. She twitched away.

“Sylvie,” he said. “You look wrecked.”

“Not your problem,” she said. As she rose, she stumbled, and he drew her back, wrapped her in an embrace that shook, as if the weight of her problems and his combined might break him. It would have been easy to push him away, but it was easier still to rest her head in the curve of his neck, his shoulder bony and flat beneath her cheek. Easy to pretend. He smelled of salt and sweat, and she wondered, if she parted her lips, leaned that tiny increment closer, would he taste of the sea beneath her tongue?

She curved her palm over that evocative scar, felt it cool and smooth and incomplete. A fragmentary wound as cool as crystal. She shivered in his arms. Step away, she thought. End this before she did something she’d regret in the name of comfort. But he was warm and alive, and his arms felt good closed on her shoulders, his breath stirring her hair.

She raised her face, and he kissed her. A strange first kiss that felt nothing like new. Slow, familiar, comforting, his tongue dueling gently with hers. The rasp of stubble a gentle friction against her skin, as welcome as a breath of sea air. She shifted closer, slid onto his lap, a knee moving to each side of his hips. His hands caged her waist, spanned her ribs, thumbs rubbing circles in the hollows between bone, all of it familiar. “Shadows,” he whispered against her throat.

She leaned closer still, chasing that elusive sea taste of him, that familiarity. Her hands found their way into his hair, carding the tufts to wilder heights yet. She settled more comfortably across his lap, spread her knees wider to take him closer. His hand slid up her spine, rested heavy at her nape; his fingers curled around the crest of her shoulder, traced familiar patterns, S after S after S, her name drawn on her skin with careful touches.

Just like. . . “Demalion,” she murmured.

“Yes,” he breathed back.

She scrambled away from him, the shock of it heating her face, her throat, her chest. Shame burned in her breast.

“What are you doing—” Her breath failed her, caught tight and muffled by her own welter of conflicting emotion. Anger, as always, came to her rescue. “What the hell? I tell you to give me a name, and you choose that one?”

“I reclaim what’s mine,” he said. He shrugged, a fluid rearrangement of Wright’s stiffly set shoulders, projecting an ease he obviously didn’t feel. His eyes were on her, sandy brows drawn tight; his lips still damp with her breath. “And I remember. You kept that last piece of me safe. And then you gave it back to me. I am, was, Michael Demalion. Want to welcome me home?” Though he smiled at her, it was shaky, hard to hold.

“Demali—” She shook her head, felt like the world spun with it. “It’s not possible. The Furies devour souls.”

“I don’t know how I escaped, but I did,” he said, rose to draw her back into his arms. She resisted, kept from pressing herself back into Wright’s lanky chest, set hands flat against his skin, wanting to believe, wanting not to. If Demalion was a ghost, he was beyond her aid, and this could be nothing but a cruel reminder of what she had lost.

As if the thought proved the facts, Demalion shivered beneath her hands, then he was stepping back, his eyes wide and wild. “Sylvie? What’s—”

She didn’t need the clipped tone to know; the surprise was enough. Wright was back where he belonged.

“Missing time?” she asked.

He nodded once. “What hap . . . No, don’t wanna know. I’m gonna—Can I go get a shower?”

She realized her hands were still on his skin, jerked back. “Go for it.” He slipped away from her like a feral cat, contorting himself to evade her and the couch, before disappearing into the bathroom.

Sylvie collapsed back onto the couch. Could she believe it? She turned possibilities over in her mind like garden rocks, wary of things beneath.

The ISI and a sneak attack? They knew Demalion, but they didn’t know how she and he had fitted together.

Her lips burned; her hands still carried the memory of warmth. She shifted uneasily, and pain spiked her thigh, a sudden snake-strike of unexpected hurt.

Sylvie slapped her hand over the pain and found that curved piece of glass that was all she had held of Demalion. Her blood wetted the edge of it, ran thin and dark into the curved heart of it. Despite the crystal’s gloss, the shine of reflected light, it was oddly empty; the pale glow it had held, that kiss of soul—was gone, reabsorbed.

A broken crystal ball. Such an impossible thing to save a soul, such a contradictory egg—only birthing once its pieces had found the same flesh and become whole.

Her face was wet, the skin tight on her cheeks; her throat ached. She scrubbed salt from her face, her lashes. In the bathroom, she heard Wright swearing, and flinched at the idea of facing him. She couldn’t. Not now. Not when she’d be peering at him, wondering if she could see Demalion in the way Wright moved, not when Wright was the one who needed her help.

The shower cut off, and Sylvie jumped into motion.

She dropped the crystal fragment into the wastebasket, forced determination into a body that wanted to sink under so many emotions: guilt, relief, a spike of joy, despair. Wright was a no-go for the moment. But the magical burglars were just begging for attention. One quick change later—trading her sweatpants for comfort jeans, a little loose in the waist, and an oxford on over the tank top—she collected her gun and realized she’d left the holster in the bathroom that Wright was using as a hidey.

She couldn’t imagine knocking and saying, I know you’re having a freakout that I helped cause, but could I have that holster so I can go out and harass people, and no, you’re not invited. . . . Even her courage had limits. Far easier to shrug on a silvered denim jacket Zoe had left on her last visit: It was fashionable on some model’s runway in a city like Paris, Venice, Hong Kong, and way over the top anywhere else. But it had pockets. Discreet, padded pockets, the perfect thing to secrete a compact gun.

Her satchel shouldered, jacket on, attitude in place, she headed out into the Miami morning, bookended on either side by the trouble she left behind and the trouble she hoped to find.