by Lyn Benedict
“Odalys needs to stay away from my life, my family, my friends, and my city. If she knows what’s healthy for her, she’ll stay tucked up nice and tight in prison and behave herself.”
“She’s a witch; she’ll eat your heart—”
“Someone’s been watching too much Disney,” Sylvie said. “Go on. Get out. Give her my message.”
He rose; she tracked his movement, kept the gun leveled at his heart. “By the way, leave the knife.”
He growled, dropped it, and she shifted stance enough to let him sidle around her, hand white-knuckled on his shoulder. Sylvie kicked the door closed after him.
“You got careless,” she said. Wales glared up at her, untangled himself from the heap he was in, and folded himself into a seated position.
“I’d noticed, thank you,” he said. “You put Odalys in jail? Guess that means you saved the day.”
“Something like that,” she said. “Get up, Wales. We gotta go.”
“I’m all packed,” Wales said. His voice shook, as did the hand he pressed to his neck. The blood seemed to have stopped, though, and Sylvie felt her shoulders relax.
“So you are,” she said, allowing herself the luxury of looking around now that there wasn’t a knife-wielding assassin taking up her attention. The room had been bare the last time she saw it—furnished with a single table, a chair, a futon, and decorated by a dozen or more Hands of Glory dangling from the ceiling. Now the mobile from hell was packed away, only small hooks showing that anything had once hung from the ceiling, and the futon was covered with taped-shut cardboard boxes. “Leaving town?”
“That was the plan,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet, a scarecrow rising, making the room seem suddenly smaller. “Thought I might have made myself unwelcome.”
Sylvie’s response faded before she voiced it. The puddle of blood—Wales’s and the assassin’s mingled—was disappearing, small half circles curving inward, revealing the linoleum squares in damp spots. “What the hell—”
“Marco,” Wales murmured.
Sylvie grimaced. Marco, the murdered convict. The ghost associated with Wales’s favorite Hand of Glory. “I thought they snacked on souls, not blood.”
Wales didn’t look at her, let his gaze fall to his blood-spotted hands. “Some ghosts like both.”
“And you just let them wander loose?”
“Marco and I came to a new agreement.”
“Well, it doesn’t seem like a good one. Where was he when you were attacked?”
Wales raised his head, grinned. “Doing the only thing he could. Letting you in. Amazing what a little independence in a ghost can get you.”
The blood on the floor began disappearing again; Sylvie was torn between being creeped out that she couldn’t see him, and grateful. Her imagination was bad enough, showing her a man kneeling facedown in a puddle of blood and licking pale lips.
“Get your shit and let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Where’d the we come from, Shadows? I’m leaving. You’re not invited.”
“Stop fussing and be grateful. I just want a consult on a case. It’s right up your alley. Dead people.”
“It’s been two days!” he said.
“You’ve been hanging around the dead too long. Life moves fast,” she said. “C’mon, I’ll let you store your boxes in my office. I’ll even buy you lunch.”
She hefted the first box—distressingly light and rustling—eight boxes in the room, and she had to have picked up his box with the Hands of Glory. . . . But she’d lose her momentum if she dropped it and danced around, shaking off the squeamish.
He growled. “Y’know, Shadows, I thought Southern women were supposed to be sweet and courteous. You’re pushier than a damn wheelbarrow.”
“Yeah, yeah, bitch too much, and I’ll take you to Mickey D’s instead of someplace good. Time’s a-wasting, Wales.”
He caved all at once, his scarecrow body easing from the stiffness he’d been holding tight.
“Fine. Fine. But it’s going to cost you more than a lunch. I want a consult fee.”
“Everyone’s greedy,” she said. “Hurry it up, Wales. And hey, do we bring that knife or what?”
Wales looked back at it, his aggravation swapping back out for remembered fear. “Only if you need a knife that can hurt ghosts.”
Sylvie shook her head and laughed. “Odalys. Christ. She would have been better off just sending someone to shoot you through your window. There’s a convenient roof right across the way. That’s the problem with you magic-users, always reaching for the esoteric answer.”
“I’m so glad you’ve thought of ways to kill me,” Wales said. He kicked the knife toward the wall and stalked out.
“Don’t take it so personally,” she said. “It’s my job. Besides, it’s not like she didn’t have a go at me already.” Even as she said it, she was wondering. Why would Odalys bother to send a messenger to threaten Zoe when she’d already sent a witch to kill Sylvie? Threats only meant something if there was someone alive to feel threatened.
While Wales loaded boxes in her pickup, Sylvie took the opportunity to call Zoe. There was a small but quantifiable difference between knowing her sister was safe at Val’s, and knowing it. Zoe picked up just before the phone went to voice mail, and said, “Too early! Call me later,” and hung up. Sylvie doubted she’d ever really woken up. Zoe liked her sleep. But hearing that familiar whine had soothed the worst of her nerves. Sylvie called Val also, got the machine. No surprise there. Even if Val had agreed to take care of Zoe, to teach her Magic 101, AKA how not to get yourself killed in a truly freakish fashion, it didn’t mean things were copacetic between Sylvie and Val. That was going to take some time.
“Hey, Val,” Sylvie said. “Just a heads-up. Odalys sent a magically armed thug after Wales, and he made noises about coming for Zoe, too.”
Wales returned, sweating, pushing his hair out of his face, and gave her a dirty look. “We’d be out of here faster if you’d help.”
It took them three silent trips to get the rest of the boxes into the truck, and Sylvie spent the time thinking about Odalys with increasing grimness. She’d known that jail wasn’t going to be the end of things if they even managed to get Odalys convicted. The charges Suarez had arrested her on were approximations at best, real-world analogues for magical misbehavior, and hell, Suarez hadn’t even had jurisdiction. A single wrong step, and the entire house of cards would fall, setting Odalys free. Sylvie had been willing to wait and see. That no longer looked like an option.
The problem was that the bars imprisoning Odalys also protected her. Odalys had contacts she could reach on the outside, but Sylvie’s only friend on the inside was in the hospital and out of the loop. Still, something had to be done.
Sylvie didn’t know if it was just a bad idea, or a really bad idea, that made her think she had a solution.
But first . . . she battened down the last of Wales’s boxes and slung herself into the truck’s cab. The Ghoul was a sullen presence in her passenger seat, idly tapping his fingers against his inner jacket pocket.
Like her, wearing a jacket in the Miami heat was more a matter of practicality than comfort. Sylvie used her collection of Windbreakers to help disguise the gun she carried at the small of her back. Wales used his ratty leather jacket for much the same reason, though in Miami, her gun was less disturbing than what he carried. She eyed the bulge over his heart, and said, “So, why cart Marco’s Hand around? Thought you came to a new agreement. Gave him independence.”
He looked at her for a long moment, a narrow, unwelcome gaze, before he deliberately settled on an answer. “I find his presence comforting,” he said.
She licked her lips, and said, “That’s payback for the sniper comment, isn’t it?”
“You tell me, Shadows. Since you know me so well.”
The boxes slid as she made a turn onto the highway, and she sighed. Time for a little Alex diplomacy maybe. “Sorry. I don’t like Odalys’s threa
tening people I care about.” She kept it vague, let him wrap himself into one of those people if he chose.
He let the leather seat cradle him more firmly, his spine losing some of its rigidity. Apologies could do that even if they weren’t sincere. It was the veneer of civilization—the hope of rational discourse. It worked more often than Sylvie cared to let Alex know.
Thing was, she did care about Wales more than she wanted him to know. Alex had done more digging in the days between their first interaction and this one, and had pulled up enough on his past to let Sylvie know that Wales was pretty much like her. They’d both been normal once. Both cared about their friends and family, were the designated problem-solvers, the ones who just couldn’t sit by and let trouble happen to other people. Then they’d run into the Magicus Mundi and learned a whole new world of trouble existed.
Their paths had forked at that point. Sylvie had picked up a gun; Wales, like a child, had been formed by what he’d seen—the CIA and Hands of Glory. In other words: necromancy and paranoia.
She could have wished he’d gone a kinder, fluffier route, except the Magicus Mundi didn’t reward gentle tactics, and she knew better than to rue things that couldn’t be changed. If she ever started that, she’d be useless, left mired in hopeless nostalgia for an easier time, when she lived in ignorance. No one should ever strive to live in ignorance.
“Where we going?” Wales asked. “You said you had a job?”
“I’m not sure what I’ve got other than an unholy mess,” Sylvie said. “You follow the news at all?”
Wales shook his head. “News feeds the fear.”
“There’s something new and nasty in the Everglades—”
“And it involves necromancy?”
“It involves dead things waking up and savaging people.”
“Zombies?”
“Bear,” Sylvie said. “Or so I was given to understand.”
Wales patted his pocket again, that nervous tell. Sylvie put her attention back on the road, suddenly quite sure that he’d told her nothing but the truth; that Marco’s severed Hand was a comfort to him.
With Wales’s worldly possessions sliding gently in the back of her pickup, with the reminders of his personality flaws—things she’d glossed over in her memories since she needed him—she decided that stopping at the office was not only desirable but an absolute necessity.
If she dragged Wales straight out to the Everglades, all his stuff still boxed, after her unfortunate comments about shooting him, he’d probably assume she was clearing out one more necromancer from the city. He looked like he expected betrayal at any minute.
When Sylvie pulled the truck to a stop outside her office, Alex was waiting in the doorway, framed nicely by midday sun, and with Sylvie’s thoughts still running on Odalys and on sniper shots, the sight sparked aggravation and concern. Alex had the self-preservation instincts of a lemming.
3
Monsters
ALEX MADE WAY FOR THEM AND THEIR PARADE OF BOXES, PROPPED herself up on the desk, and watched as the boxes stacked up in the kitchenette. “Is that Tierney Wales?” she asked on one of Sylvie’s trips in that coincided with one of his exits.
“Yeah,” she said. “That’s the Ghoul.”
Alex frowned. “He’s skinny.”
“So feed him a sandwich. Just don’t adopt him,” Sylvie said. She dropped the box she held, listening to the rustling of dried flesh scrabbling at cardboard; she’d picked the damn short straw again. She kicked the box toward the closet, wanting to wash her hands of an imaginary contamination. And Wales carried these things in his pockets.
Alex was still rubbernecking, watching Wales stack boxes outside the door. “He doesn’t look like a necromancer. He looks like a stressed-out grad student.”
She caught Sylvie’s scowl and flushed. “Okay, okay, necromancers don’t wear black robes and chant all the time. I get it. Just . . . he looks . . . scared. I didn’t think necromancers got scared.”
“Yeah, about that,” Sylvie said. “You up for a vacation?”
“What?” Alex narrowed her gaze. “You’re trying to get me out of the way again.”
“Better me than Odalys,” Sylvie said. “Someone tried to flambé me in the office last night.”
“Is that what happened to the bell?” Alex asked. “I saw it had gone all melty.”
“And you just stuck around?”
“I figured whatever happened had happened, and I knew you were all right. So it didn’t seem that important.”
“It’s important,” Sylvie said. “I think it’s Odalys. She sent someone out to slice and dice Wales. There was even some mention of taking out Zoe. Thank god for Val.” She grimaced at the welling of gratitude in her breast. Not her usual sentiment when it came to the witch. But after Val had seen Zoe’s occultly stained hand and forearm, she’d decreed that Zoe needed protecting.
“And you, you’ve been caught in the magical cross fire before, Alex. You need to be more careful.”
Alex waved a dismissive hand. “I am careful. Besides, Odalys doesn’t even know I exist. Sucks about Zoe and Wales, though. What are we going to do to protect them?”
That was Alex all over. An abundance of caution. For other people. Reckless trust in her own safety. It made no sense at all. It wasn’t like Alex had led a charmed life even before she’d become Sylvie’s partner.
“Zoe’s in no trouble right now,” she said. “Not tucked under Val’s wing. The Cassavetes estate is proof against pretty much anything but nuclear magic.”
“If she stays there,” Alex said. She surged off the desk and opened the door for Wales, helped him steady the last few boxes. “Hi. Tierney, right? I’m Alex. Sylvie’s partner and all-around researcher.”
He blinked at her, her bleached-blond hair, her bright makeup, the pink-nailed hand held out toward him the moment the boxes were down, and took a step backward. “Hi?”
Figured, Sylvie thought. Give him death, give him antagonism, give him trouble, and Wales was mouthy and cynical. Face-to-face with a friendly smile, his personality locked up.
“So did Sylvie tell you what was going on? Bears? That’s new. I mean, I get werewolves, I’m used to werewolves at this point, but bears?” Alex chattered easily, pushing Wales toward the kitchenette. “Guess it’s ’cause we don’t have bears around much. You think there are more shape-shifting bears in the West? Were-bears? Like Care Bears, only not?”
Wales looked back at Sylvie, eyes wide and entreating as they hadn’t been even when faced with a knife-wielding assassin. Sylvie smothered her desire to laugh and didn’t step in to bail him out. Wales gnawed his lip, then said, “I don’t know. I’m mostly about necromancy. I don’t . . . Shape-shifters? Shadows, I don’t know anything about shape-shifters. If that’s what you brought me here for, then you’re wasting my time and yours.”
“I do know about shape-shifters,” she said. “I know they don’t play dead well enough to be body-bagged before they wake up and change shape. These women were dead. Cold and dead. You need to pay better attention, Wales. I told you that on the road.”
His response was a petulant huff better suited to a teenager than an adult and was followed by another spew of backchat that made Sylvie wish he was as tongue-tied around her as he was around Alex. “Well, you’ll have to excuse me some since I was still thinking on the man that came to knife me. Normal people need recovery time for that sorta thing.”
Alex’s eyes widened in sympathy, and her urgings that he sit down and have a pastelito and a coffee overrode Sylvie’s reflexive snort of, “You’re holding yourself up as normal now, Ghoul?”
When Alex’s fussing looked like it might drive Wales away, Sylvie said, “Alex.” It was more than a reprimand; Sylvie had Odalys to deal with, and her idea didn’t look any better now than it had earlier, but it was all she had.
“You need something?” Alex said.
“You still got . . . Wright’s contact info?”
In the kitchenett
e, Wales shot to attention, nearly dropping the paper plate Alex had pressed on him. “Hey, I nearly forgot about your possession case. You got rid of his ghost all right?”
Sylvie snapped, “Mind your own business. Alex, you got it?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, slowly, a drawl that nearly matched Wales’s natural speech and was alien in her mouth, a mark of her uncertainty. “But didn’t you . . . I mean, you’ve got it, too, right?”
“You’re the one who’s going to call, though,” Sylvie said. “Just let him know about Odalys’s bid for power, would you?”
She wanted to call; her fingers itched for the phone. She wanted to hear the cadences of his speech in Adam Wright’s voice. But Demalion had a job to do—two jobs, neither simple. Better to wait until he’d dealt with one or the other. ISI or Wright’s family.
Wales shook his head. “What do you think a Chicago cop can do about a Miami necromancer? You’re grasping at—” His gaze narrowed. “That ghost of his was from the ISI. You gave the body to the ghost?”
“Gave isn’t the word I’d use,” Sylvie said.
“Christ,” Wales said. “And the man inside, the man who owned the body? What’d you do with his soul?” He set the plate back on the counter, the pastry untouched.
“It’s none of your business,” Sylvie said again.
“Death magic is my business, and if I’m going risk myself in the swamps with you, I’d like to know that you’re not going to sell me out for your own—”
“She didn’t.” Alex stopped them both. She slammed herself into her seat, her coffee mug onto the desk. It sloshed but didn’t spill. “It wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t anyone’s fault. Wright died. Demalion got the body, but there was no taking or stealing or anything like that.”
“Were you there?” Wales asked. “Or is that what she told you?”