by Lyn Benedict
“You’re missing the point, Shadows. That blinding spell ain’t aimed at us. It’s a specific blinding spell. Our sorcerer’s got an enemy.”
Sylvie blew out a breath. She couldn’t tell if that was good news or bad. The enemy of her enemy was her friend. But that only worked in black-and-white worlds. In the real world, there were endless permutations of evil.
The sorcerer who had abducted, enchanted, and bound the women was evil—that, she didn’t doubt. The man he feared?
“What’s the last symbol?” she asked. “The linked ovals.”
“Transformation,” he said. He traced the lightly sketched symbols with his finger, his nails ragged, bloody at the edges. He’d been chewing them, internal anxiety clawing its way out.
“Problem?”
He twitched, opened his mouth, let it close. Fidgeted. Alex leaned closer, said, “What is it? You can tell us. Even if it’s weird.”
“Not one of your clients,” Wales reminded her.
“Then don’t play coy,” Sylvie said. “My clients always hide things from me. Or try to. What’s rocking your world?”
“Two things,” Wales said. “I think I know what he’s doing. Broad strokes at least. Not the why, not even the specifics, but—”
“Tex—”
“It’s like a power filter,” he said. “Transformation. The power that’s coming in isn’t the same as what he’s getting from it.”
“Like a plant,” Alex said. “Turning carbon dioxide to oxygen.”
“More like money laundering,” Wales said. “Turning power that’s actively trying to injure him into power he can use to protect himself. Using the women’s lives as filters. He’ll have one of these sigils carved into his own skin, the better to link himself to them. To feed off them.”
Sylvie grimaced. “Ugly.”
“It gets worse. I think I know who’s doing it. Except I never thought he was real. He’s a sorcerer’s bogeyman. The soul-devourer.”
“The soul-devourer?” Sylvie repeated. “You’ve seen this before?”
“Not this; if it were this, I would have said at the scene. But it reminded me of something. Got back, started looking at the symbols, and it twigged. There was a kill zone in the Louisiana bayou. A pile of women’s bodies found, their hearts torn out. Some local sorcerers took a look but said they couldn’t even summon the murdered women’s ghosts. That their souls were—”
“Devoured, got it,” Sylvie said.
“I remember that,” Alex said. “That was just after Katrina. They thought it was a serial killer.”
“Serial killer, sorcerer, potato, potahto,” Sylvie said. “Where’s the link, Tex? Our women aren’t dead.”
“There were symbols carved into the flesh,” Wales said. “The police started asking around. And in Louisiana, they don’t make any nonsense about asking the magical folk. If this binding spell is truly a filtering system, the last step would be to kill the women.”
“And steal, bind, or devour their souls,” Sylvie said, flatly. Her shoulders felt heavy, her breath leaden. She loathed magic. Loathed necromancy, which denied the dead even their final rest. “Don’t suppose you can fix it, now that you’ve recognized it? Can you call for help from the others in the community? Your good necromancers?”
“They’d be more like to never speak to me again if I brought them to the soul-devourer’s attention. And if I mess with his spell, believe me, I’ll be a shining beacon for him.”
“Can you do it? Unbind the women before they wither away or get dragged off to have their hearts yanked out?”
Wales lifted a single shoulder, his gaze avoiding both Sylvie and Alex. “No. Maybe? I might be able to slip each of them out of the binding. Thing is, breaking the stasis doesn’t mean I can free them from the power pouring into them. Or the power from changing within them. Those symbols were carved into their skins. They’re black holes for the power.”
“I’m lost,” Alex said. “Who’s pouring all the power into them? Why?”
“It’s a curse,” Sylvie said.
Wales raised his head, caught by surprise, and his eyes were wary and wide. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s my thought. The blinding spell? The soul-devourer is putting some serious effort into hiding his presence. Which implies—”
“Someone’s putting nearly an equal amount into finding him,” Alex said, pleased with herself. Then her triumphant expression froze, faded. “Wait. The soul-devourer’s a sorcerer’s bogeyman.”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s hiding from someone his equal or worse?”
“Got it in one,” Wales said. “We’ve just stepped into a grudge match between seriously amped sorcerers, and I for one would like to go home and beef up my security.”
“You moved out of your apartment,” Sylvie reminded him. “You’re homeless.”
“That’s what hotels are for,” he said. “I’ll call you if I get any leads.” He collected his computer, a change of clothes, the box with the Hands, and headed for the door.
“Hey, Wales,” she said.
He looked back, raised a shoulder. “Yeah?”
Sylvie said, “The ghost girl—Jennifer Costas. She’d be able to tell you more, don’t you think? Who’s hunting him? Why? If you can get her to calm down.”
“Yeah,” Wales said. “She’d know. Guess I’m going to be talking to her tonight.” He didn’t look happy about it, his shoulders stiff, his arms tightening about his boxes so hard the cardboard dented.
Sylvie didn’t feel that good herself. Jennifer Costas should be on her way to her afterlife, claimed by one god or another, whisked away from mortal concerns, and Sylvie kept conspiring to keep her from her rest.
“Wales?”
“What?” he snapped.
“You’re gonna pay for the hotel room, right?”
“You gonna pay me now?”
She hesitated.
“Yeah. Thought as much. Besides, I prefer to stay under the radar,” he said. “And the Hands need to be fed.” At her grimace, he said, “Don’t ask if you don’t want to be told.”
She flipped the latch after him and took his place on the couch.
Alex perched on the desk, and said, “Soul-devourer? That really doesn’t sound good.”
“A necromancer so secretive and vile that the other necromancers won’t name him? Not good is an understatement. Christ,” she muttered. “I hate necromancers.”
“Not Tierney,” Alex said. “He’s helping. He helped you earlier, and he’s helping you now—”
“Ease off,” Sylvie said. “I’m not bad-mouthing him. He’s all right. For a ghoul.”
“I think he’s sweet,” Alex said.
Sylvie said, “Alex? Just hold off on falling for him until we get this resolved? He’s twitchy. You jump him, he’s gonna run. Let’s finish the case first.”
Alex grinned. “Can’t be too long. You guys have a plan.”
“Plans so rarely survive contact with the real world,” she said. She poked listlessly at her sandwich. It was tasty, but she lacked the appetite now. Wales’s pulling the ghost back was dangerous, even if he hadn’t made a big deal of it. Dangerous and repugnant. And necessary.
Sylvie’s thoughts circled. When did necessary stop being an acceptable excuse? When did the means stop justifying the end?
Her little dark voice growled, Someone has to do what’s needed.
“So I called Demalion,” Alex said, and successfully derailed Sylvie’s morbid speculation. She swallowed the first thing that came to mind, the eager question of How was he?
“He going to help with the Odalys issue?” Sylvie sat up on the couch. Alex fidgeted, her gaze on her brightly colored sandals.
“Sort of,” she said, when Sylvie let the silence linger.
“Sort of?”
“He wants you to call and ask,” Alex said.
Sylvie let her breath out. “Well, I guess I don’t need to ask you how he’s doing. That’s classic Demalion.” Her traito
rous heart jumped in her chest at the idea of talking to him. Anxiety, excitement, something of both. She dragged herself off the couch, headed up the stairs for dubious privacy.
She closed the door to her private office, sat down, and stared at her phone for a long while, then dialed. The phone rang, and she was concentrating so hard on her lines that she forgot what his would be.
“Wright.” The voice was familiar and not. Demalion’s cadence in Wright’s tenor. It twisted her stomach and made her mute.
“Alex?” he said, then more surely, “Sylvie.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
A breath let out, a rush of relief in her ear. “I wasn’t sure you’d call.”
“You basically blackmailed me into it,” she said. And maybe this wasn’t so hard after all. They were falling right back into their usual patterns.
“I know you, Syl. You were going to try to cut me off while I . . . accustomed myself to a new life, then you’d get weird and decide it was better not to call. And time would keep passing.”
A smile tugged at her lips, warmed her from the inside out. “You learn all that in high school? Either you had a lot of bad breakups, or you didn’t have any.”
“Hey,” he said, “I was suave for my age. Very. You can check my yearbook out if you want.” The background noise around him swelled: people shouting suddenly, a fight going from zero to sixty and ending just as fast.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Police station,” he said. “Seemed simplest to just walk Wright’s beat for a while. Gets me out of the apartment anyway. Gives me an excuse to stay late.”
Yeah, she thought, an excuse to stay away from Wright’s wife and son. She wanted to know how that was going, didn’t want to know at the same time. That was another reason she hadn’t called. She felt like someone’s mistress.
“So, Odalys,” she said, ignoring the whole mess, retreating to the safety of business. “You still have any way of getting info to the ISI?”
“I can’t believe you want me to,” he said. “That’s an about-face.”
“She’s a threat,” Sylvie said. “And I don’t have time to deal with it.”
“You all right?”
“I’m working with the Ghoul on a case,” she said. “My client is Adelio Suarez, and the body count is already at four, three of them cops. Oh, and the ISI is sniffing around again.”
Silence from his end, then, “I can be back in Miami by morning if you need me.”
Oh, she was tempted. They brought out the best in each other, worked well together. Did other things well together. She bit her lip hard, said, “Just get Odalys off my back. I’d do it myself, but oddly, it’s as hard to get into a prison as it is to get out.”
“All right. I know someone who can pass the information on.”
“Thanks,” she said. She hesitated. She should hang up now; their business was concluded. “You doing all right?”
“Miss you like hell,” he said. “And I’m in way over my head, but I’m coping. Mostly.”
“Anything I can do?”
“Stay alive,” he said. “It’s too weird if no one else in the world knows who I really am.”
“There’s always Alex,” Sylvie said, teasing.
“Alex knows my name. Not me.” His voice was nearly the right pitch now, roughed and deepened with emotion, hushed through the distance. It made her ache.
“I get it,” she said. “Demalion, be careful. You came back from death once. Don’t blow it on some pissant traffic stop.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Go easy with the case, huh? Watch your mouth. Play nice with the necromancer if he’s going to watch your back.”
“Playing nice isn’t as much fun as winning,” she said, and disconnected on his laugh.
6
Delegation and Negotiation
SYLVIE CLATTERED BACK DOWN THE STAIRS AND FOUND ALEX TIDYING up the dinner dishes.
“So?” Alex said. “You talked to him?”
“He’s going to deal with the Odalys issue—”
“Yeah, not what I meant. Did you talk to him?”
“He’s fine,” Sylvie said. “I’m fine.”
“I can’t believe you sent him away. Unless . . . what? Does he not do it for you anymore now that he’s all body swapped? Got something against blonds?”
“Alex!” Sylvie said. “Would you just think before you talk tonight? Wright’s dead. He was flat broke when he died. He’s got a child, a wife who’s working full-time to cover her student loans. Wright died, saving Demalion.”
Her throat hurt, thinking about that close call; she’d been slow, caught up in saving her sister, in fighting Odalys. If it had been left to her, Demalion would have died. Again. “We owe Wright. I can’t do anything to help them out. Demalion thinks he can.”
Alex’s face shuttered; she winced. “Sorry. I didn’t . . . I thought . . . He told me he was trying to get back into the ISI. I thought maybe you’d dumped him for that—”
“I try not to make the same mistakes twice,” Sylvie said. “I don’t like the ISI. I don’t trust them. But I trust him.”
“Good,” Alex said, still quieter than was her usual wont.
Sylvie sighed. “Look, I had to leave those women in the’Glades at the mercy of their abductor. It makes me cranky. And we’re going back tomorrow, and I still know nothing about him. Except that he has a rep as the soul-devourer. It just doesn’t look good.”
“You can take care of it,” Alex said. “This is your world.”
And wasn’t that a lovely thought. That she belonged to the Magicus Mundi. She shook it off, and said, “All right, then. If he is a sorcerer, he’ll have a reputation somewhere. Can you hit up the contact list and see if anyone knows of a sorcerer with a penchant for killing shape-shifters for his own gain? Link it up with alchemy. This guy, if Wales is right, is old-fashioned.”
Alex reached for her computer, heading straight into research mode. Sylvie put a hand on the screen, and said, “Take it home with you.”
Alex met her gaze head-on. “You’re getting me out of the line of fire.”
“It’s getting late,” Sylvie said. “Besides, you can research from home just as easily, and we don’t get a lot of drop-ins. Odalys hit me here once already, and now the bell is dead. I don’t want you caught in the cross fire.”
Alex worried her lip, and said, “If I work from home, you’ll keep in contact?”
“Promise,” Sylvie said. “Go home.”
“You’re not going to sit here all night and play bait, are you? Demalion said I should watch out for you.”
“Demalion has problems of his own to worry about,” Sylvie said. “Don’t encourage him to focus on mine.”
Alex shut the laptop down, pulled the cord, and started packing up. “Sorcerer, alchemy, shape-shifting. Check. You want me to look for more incidents like Cachita found? I mean, I know we’ve been busy, but he can’t have been around here for that long, or we’d have noticed. If we can track where he’s been, maybe we can ID him. I mean, he might be Maudit.”
“Unlikely,” Sylvie said. “The Maudits are bastards, but they’re modern in their habits. I can’t see them going back to alchemical scribblings, even ones that work.” She poked at a peeling sticker of Chibi Cthulhu on Alex’s laptop. “I don’t know, Alex. I got a bad feeling about this one. It’s all so thin.”
“We’ll find him. There’s no way a monster sorcerer goes completely unnoticed. We’ll find him, and you’ll shoot him. End of problem.”
“I live in hope,” Sylvie said.
She saw Alex out, hit the phone again. Lio wasn’t in the hospital any longer, which was a plus, but it also meant that Lourdes could play gatekeeper a lot more efficiently. She hung up on Sylvie before she’d gotten three words out.
Sylvie sighed, flipped through the images of the women on her phone. They were all youngish, midtwenties. They were all Hispanic. They looked like they would have been healthy if they didn’t l
ook so . . . dead. Made sense in a sorcerous sort of way: If the sorcerer was using them as receptacles for an overabundance of corrupted magical energy, healthy people would last longer.
That they were all women, all attractive women, implied that no matter what the sorcerer’s magical use for them was, he was indulging himself. He wasn’t desperate; he was picking and choosing.
She really hoped Alex was right, and this one could end with a single bullet. The Everglades could hide a dead sorcerer just as well as the ocean could. She and her little dark voice contemplated the idea with a shared hunger that lingered until a car honked outside.
Sylvie flipped the phone closed, rose from the couch, smelled swamp and dirt, and grimaced. So past time for this day to be done.
Unfortunately, the world disagreed. She had just closed and locked the door when she turned to find Salvador Ruben coming up the sidewalk.
* * *
“SHADOWS!” HE SAID, HIS VOICE TIGHT WITH STRESS AND NERVES. His suit coat, open, rumpled, flapped as he hurried toward her. He tripped on the curb, stuttered in his question, but didn’t stop. “Wh-what the hell is going on? You said she was . . . You said the cops would call—”
Sylvie held up a finger—give me a moment—unlocked the door, and hauled him back inside her office. “Have a seat,” she said, busied herself with Alex’s ridiculous coffee-maker. He subsided onto the couch, clutching his knees. Anxious but obedient.
She wished the brew time were longer, wished that it required more of her attention: She needed every moment she could get to figure out what she was going to tell him. Maria was alive. That was a plus. But she was close enough to death that giving him hope might simply be cruel.
“Here,” she said, passing him a cup of coffee heavily adulterated with sugar. Good for stress, sugar. He wrapped his hands around it, brought it toward his chest as if the coffee could ward off some internal chill.
“What’s happening?” he asked again. Pleaded. Salvador Ruben was the kind of client she wanted to help most, the ones who might break under the weight of the world without her. “I called the cop you mentioned, but he’s ‘not available,’ and no one knows anything about Maria. Is she dead or not?”