Ghosts & Echoes

by Lyn Benedict

  “It’s stolen property. The police can retrieve it.”

  “The police get involved, she’ll claim total ignorance, and he might lose the brooch forever, piss off the customer waiting for it. Just have him call me.”

  A few back-and-forth comments later, Sylvie ushered Conrad down the stairs and out the door. She handed Alex another check with a smile. “For expenses. Cash it.”

  “And Wright’s check? I haven’t cashed it yet. I could send it and him on to someone else. I still think Val—” Alex said it all on one long breath, half-apologetic, half-challenging.

  “Last time I tell you,” Sylvie said. “My case. I’ll help him.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Wright said, closing the front door behind him. “So’s the ghost.” She jerked in surprise. She hadn’t heard him come in, hadn’t expected him back so soon. Noon at the shrimp shack was a madhouse, which was exactly why she had sent him there. To get breathing space.

  He handed her a white paper bag, hot and grease-spotted, and said, “The one place had lines down to the beach.” He smiled with the smug awareness that he had confounded her plan. “I got us conch fritters instead. I don’t know what a conch fritter is, but it’s fried, and people looked happy to be buying them.”

  “Good choice,” Alex said, when the silence threatened to linger. Her smile, a little tight, flashed and faded. She pushed Wright gently toward the kitchenette, her fingertips on his shoulder, and said, “You’ll love ’em. You like spice? There’s habañero sauce in the fridglet.”

  And that was Alex in full protective mode, Sylvie thought. Still scared of Wright’s ghost, but she’d put herself between him and the woman with the gun. Not sensible. The kind of thing that could get her killed, and definitely a sign that Alex was going to be . . . difficult about accepting Demalion’s return.

  Wright cast a worried glance at Sylvie, cop enough to distrust Alex’s change of heart and man enough to want to believe her earlier chilliness was just a mood.

  Fumbling for something, anything, to ease the tension in the office, Sylvie noticed that the bell was quieter than it had been before, a mute reproach instead of a warning wail. Sylvie said, “What’d you do with the trash can, Alex?”

  “Coat closet,” she said. “Under all those old ’Canes sweat-shirts of yours. It’s all right.”

  “You’re assuming it is,” Sylvie said.

  “I’m not the only one with assumptions,” Alex said.

  “Later for that,” Sylvie said. She still wasn’t sure how she was going to explain Demalion to him, the possibility that Wright had been hijacked just to get Demalion to Sylvie. Here Wright was thinking she was the answer to his problems when she was likely the cause of them. No, she and Alex couldn’t get into that debate now, not with Wright as an audience.

  Sylvie applied herself to lunch, evicting Alex from her desk. Wright took the couch, Sylvie the hot sauce, and Alex shuttled between them both, chatting with her mouth full, ramping up on a capsaicin high, asking Wright increasingly pointed questions about his ghost. “So you don’t have a name, or anything tangible. What do you have? Something he remembers?”

  Wright set down his sandwich remnants, scrubbed his hands on his jeans, and lowered his gaze. Sylvie tensed. She’d begun to learn Wright’s tells, and focusing on his jeans meant something unhappy and hurting.

  “The sky rained blood,” he said.

  Alex swallowed and shut up. Sylvie shivered, her mouth dry. Before Alex could get her nerve back, Sylvie sent Wright for sodas, ignoring his protest of not being her caterer as utterly insincere: Even as he made it, he was rising, ready to escape Alex’s interrogation.

  The moment he was out the door, Sylvie turned on Alex, raced her into speech. “If you can’t control yourself, I will send you away for the duration of this case.”

  “Control myself?”

  “Not talking about this now. Wright’ll be back, and I need to talk to you about the burglaries.”

  “You sent him away, again, for that?”

  “Are you listening?” Sylvie said. When she got an irritated huff, and Alex frowning in silence, she filled her in on Bella’s bad dreams, on the Hand of Glory. Attention diverted, and after a disgusted glance at the closed closet door, the Hand behind it, Alex said, “You think she’s been dreaming about the crime?”

  “Looks like.”

  “You want me to see if I can find out where the Hand came from? Maybe knowing where will give us some idea of who, if this is something out-of-state, or local?”

  “It’s a waste of . . .” Sylvie started to say, but then paused. Usually, Hands of Glory were old, but Bella’s dream was modern. A woman poolside, with a scoop net. “No, tell you what. Go ahead. An old woman who drowned a toddler.” Modern media would be all over that story. Infant murders were popular with the press.

  “You got it, and listen, Sylvie—” Alex jerked her head around, checked the door, leaned close. Sylvie closed her eyes and hoped Wright would be back soon. Immediately. Anything to forestall this argument, but she’d been a fool for thinking it would be that easy.

  Your fault for confiding in someone else, her voice mocked her.

  Sylvie interrupted Alex’s second speech of the day on grief and guilt. “Alex! If I flipped out and saw ghosts every single time someone I knew died because they got involved in my life, I’d be sitting in a padded room, carving names of the dead into my skin.”

  She won a moment’s silence from Alex and took ruthless advantage of it, “Shut up and listen. And watch the damn door. I don’t want Wright walking in on us again.”

  “Fine,” Alex said. She put her feet up on Wright’s chair, crossed her arms over her chest.

  “We have a dead man from Chicago who knows my name. He didn’t pull it out of the ether. And my reputation might be growing, but not that fast. He’s a recent ghost, or he wouldn’t be so confused, wouldn’t be riding around in Wright. . . .”

  “Circumstantial.”

  “Didn’t say you could talk yet,” Sylvie said. “Still my turn.”

  “It’s always your turn—”

  “Coincidence only goes so far. He’s scarred, the mark of a crystal ball burned into his skin, with a gap. I brought home a piece of that crystal. It matches the gap like a key in a lock.

  “It held his soul. Don’t ask me how. The Furies chased it; they wouldn’t have done that if there hadn’t been something of him trying to escape.” Sylvie’s hands clenched on the desk. She raised her head, looked out across the office, out into the sunny day, trying to erase the memory of bloody rain and a high, dark rooftop where Demalion’s bones had been ripped out of his skin. “But there were only two of the Furies then. Alekta was dead. They hunt in a pack. And with only two of them, they lost his scent. Demalion’s soul escaped, found the nearest harbor it could.”

  Alex didn’t say anything, but her mouth twisted, and Sylvie wanted to lunge across the room and shake her. She knew, suddenly, what her clients must feel; the certainty that they were right, and at the same time, unable to express it. She hadn’t felt like this in a very long time. She didn’t like it any better this time around. “It’s Demalion,” she said, kept her voice level. “Just . . . trust me.”

  If she’d had any doubts, they’d been erased by the way he’d traced her name into her skin, but that wasn’t something she could share. “He said he was Demalion,” she offered instead. “If you’d rather take his word over mine.”

  Alex gnawed her lip, her cheeks spotted with red, and finally asked, “Will you listen to me now? Really listen?”

  Sylvie’s temper fretted, threatened to spike. Was it too much to ask Alex to trust her? Instead, the girl—who knew barely the surface of the Magicus Mundi—was setting herself up as judge. . . . The dark voice crept closer, mingled with her own.

  Alex leaned forward, caught Sylvie’s wrist, and said, “Please,” in a tone of such soft desperation that it defanged her growing anger. It was one thing to refuse to bend her head to someone who
claimed unfair authority over her, another to refuse to listen at all.

  “Wright’s possessed. You say that, and I believe you. But . . . Oh god, Sylvie, he knows about Demalion. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—but Zoe was asking about him, if you were still seeing that guy, and I said Demalion had died.”

  Sylvie sat back, a niggling bit of doubt winding neatly around her heart. The human answer was the more common answer—casual venality, con artistry, murder. . . . But when she closed her eyes, she felt Wright’s fingers on her skin, guided by Demalion’s knowledge, and shook her head. “Nope, you’re still wrong. I know Demalion.”

  “If you’re wrong, it’s really dangerous,” Alex said. “If you’re wrong, then there’s a possessing spirit lying to you. Manipulating you. Please, at least take him to Val’s. Take the Hand also. Get her diagnosis.” Alex’s voice shook. “I’ve been looking up ghosts ever since you said they weren’t a game. You’re right. They’re not. They ruin lives.”

  “It’s Demalion,” Sylvie said.

  “Who worked for the ISI. Not exactly the most ethical bunch.”

  Sylvie’s certainty soured in her chest; she knew it was Demalion. She also knew that Alex was right; hadn’t Sylvie said it herself? Possession wasn’t the act of a benign man. At best, Demalion was desperate enough to control someone else’s body to make his wishes known. And, like cornered rats, desperate men were dangerous.

  She leaned her head into her hands, her heart thumping. The warning bell continued to ring in unpleasant counterpoint. She surged off the desk, headed for the closet. “Fine. You win. I’ll take Wright and the Hand by Val’s. See if she can throw some good news my way. You. Keep looking into Bella, and find Zoe.”

  She snagged the trash can out of the closet, ignoring the bell’s sudden increase in sound, and headed out to hunt Wright, careful not to meet Alex’s eyes, unwilling to see the pity she knew she’d find there.

  9

  Consequences

  SUNLIGHT SLANTED INTO THE TRUCK, DECLARED TRIUMPH OVER SYLVIE’S laboring AC, and left them sweating gently into midday heat. She could smell Wright next to her, hot salt and the lingering scent of habañero spice. Utterly different from Demalion, who had smelled of sandalwood, coffee, musk.

  She shook her head, tightened her grip on the steering wheel, and blistered the air with her curses as the too-hot wheel burned her hand.

  “Feel better?” he asked wryly.

  “I should have stayed on vacation,” she muttered. Should have stayed away from the job, with its reminders of broken friendships and things lost to the Magicus Mundi.

  Instead, she was sharing tight quarters of a too-small truck with a man who housed her dead lover. But she couldn’t think of him like that. Or shouldn’t. Wright was more than a vessel: He was the cop she reluctantly liked, her tidy houseguest, Giselle’s husband, Jamie’s father. A living, human man.

  Wright squirmed away from the trash can, propped between his legs again, and her frustration and anxiety found an outlet. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop fidgeting. It’s not like it’s going to crawl out and cop a feel.”

  He pressed it all the way to the front of the leg space, held it there with his sneakers, knees up in the air, and said, “So why not throw it in the truck bed?”

  “Too risky,” she said. “Ties break; accidents happen. You’re a cop. You should know that. How many men do you catch on outstanding warrants ’cause their car tags are expired, the taillights broken, their driving erratic?”

  He bristled at being treated like a not-too-bright child, then said, “You’re expecting to wreck? You know what they say, Sylvie. Cowards die a thousand deaths—”

  “And heroes die for lack of common sense and a little forethought.”

  She got a dry chuckle. He let his legs down slowly, sneakers slipping off the top of the wastebasket, stretching long muscles forced tight by his hunched shape. The pink-plastic bin slipped back, rested between his legs. He kneed it gently. “So . . . what’s in it?”

  “Short-term memory a problem for you?”

  “Black magic artifact doesn’t mean much to me. I’m a cop. Give me details.”

  “A hand.”

  “A human hand?”

  “I didn’t say paw.”

  “Wow,” he said. “That’s . . . pretty perverse. Body snatching common in your magicus thingy?” He reached over, ran his fingers along the edge of the tape, testing the security of the seal. The model on the cover of the magazine simpered at him. He grinned, with sudden mordant humor that brought a taste of Demalion to his face. “Yeah, I get it. Crash the truck, fling a hand into traffic, and some poor commuter gets a windshield full of hand.”

  Sylvie’s lips tugged upward, nearly against her will. Then she imagined the scene continuing, car wrecks, police reports, her evidence lost.

  “Wow,” he said, again. “A hand.” His amusement faded; she had thought it would. Wright was, after all, a cop. “Where’d it come from?”

  “According to legend, it’s the hand of a murderer,” Sylvie said. “I’m inclined to believe it. The girl who’s been using the Hand has been having . . . unsettling dreams.”

  “Good,” Wright said. “Nice when crime doesn’t pay. It’s something real-world to charge ’em with. Desecration of a body. That’ll get police attention.”

  “Rich kids,” Sylvie repeated. “Misdemeanor at best. Slap on the wrist. And it depends on whether they dug it up, hacked it off themselves, or if they bought it. If they bought it—be hard to press any charges at all.”

  “Oh, I hate people,” Wright muttered.

  “Welcome to my world. Hopefully, we’ll be able to offload this problem at Val’s, though,” Sylvie said, and cut off a Lexus in her sudden lane shift for the turnoff to Rickenbacker Causeway. Val Cassavetes’ husband had been a gun-runner, drug smuggler, and voodoo king: His house had been placed to facilitate all that, on the private shores of Key Biscayne. Ocean tides, after all, were so useful for hiding the bodies, and Biscayne Bay was hammerhead heaven. Sylvie had fed the sharks a time or two herself, when there’d been no other option.

  She glanced over at Wright; Demalion had known she was a killer—a tiny smidge of wariness that had never left his gaze—but Wright only looked at her like she was salvation.

  THE SCROLLWORK GATE ACROSS THE LONG, BRICK DRIVE TO VAL’S home was closed tight. Sylvie idled the truck and pushed the intercom. “Sylvie Lightner to see Val Cassavetes.”

  The intercom squawked, an electronic shrill of outrage, and Sylvie winced. That wasn’t a welcoming sound. But she knew she wasn’t welcome here at all. She had dragged the witch into the Chicago mess—sorcerers, battling gods, catastrophe—and Val’s magic had flamed out, left her powerless and pissy. The verdict was still out on whether the power-strip was permanent.

  Even with her powers gone, Val presented a challenge to anyone wanting in: The warding spells still worked. Sylvie had proof of that with the office warning bell, which hadn’t lessened in strength at all.

  “Try again,” Wright urged, and she turned an incredulous look on him. Since when had he been so hot to meet Val? Then again, so far as he knew, Sylvie had done nothing on his case. He shrugged, shoved at the trash can again, and grimaced. “I really don’t like this thing.”

  “I agree, but no one’s answering.”

  “It’s a wide-spaced gate,” he said. “I could walk through the gaps, knock on the door.”

  “You would really, really regret trying,” Sylvie said. “And don’t tell me to chuck the Hand through either. Do you know what kind of hell we’d be in for if I threw a black-magic artifact through her wards?”

  “Are there any good kinds of hells?”

  “Some are worse than others. The one where my ex-best friend sends out her son’s pet monster to dismember us? That’s a really bad place I don’t want to go.”

  He shifted, rubbed at the scar beneath his shirt, and said, “Once more? Just for luck?”

  She hit the intercom button aga
in, pressed hard, held it down until the buzz became the swollen sound of a kicked hornet’s nest; she jerked her hand back as energy—blue, electric, and alive—lashed out and danced across the truck’s hood.

  “Holy shit,” Wright said. “Guess she really doesn’t want us around.” A glimmering radiance lingered in the air, whited their teeth and eyes like a blacklight, though it was midday. Fine tremors ran across Wright’s body, a vibration of fear or stress.

  Too close to lightning, she thought. Too close to his death. Maybe there was a little PTSD in his mix, after all.

  The intercom crackled again, and Sylvie growled, then yelled toward it, “I get the picture, Val. Give the pyrotechnics a rest. We’re going. But you still owe me.”

  She put the truck in reverse and gunned it back onto the road, furious with the waste of time. She’d let Alex sway her with easy solutions to Sylvie’s problems. She should have known better; problems didn’t get better if you farmed them out. They just changed hands.

  Hand.

  She scowled at the trash can, trying to convince herself she couldn’t smell a tinge of rot, magical corruption leaking into her truck. Alex had been right about one thing, though. She had to do something with the Hand. Val wasn’t open for business, and Sylvie didn’t want to leave it at the office, didn’t want to force Alex to play guardian to it, didn’t want Zoe to find it if she ever showed up. . . .

  “What now?” Wright asked, his grip on the door handle loosening as her speed slacked back to legal limits.

  “I want to get rid of the Hand. It’s too dangerous to just cart around. Usually, with bad magic, you can burn it gone. But this?”

  “It burns?”

  “Like a never-ending candle,” she said.

  He slumped, said, “I don’t suppose they come with an instruction manual.”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “I bet the person who sold it knows how to destroy it. I can’t talk to Bella; her maid would probably call the cops if I set foot there again. Crap, I should have been nicer to her.”