Ghosts & Echoes

by Lyn Benedict

  Wales didn’t try to get any closer, only studied him. “There’s a touch of death on both of you.”

  “It’s Wright’s body,” Sylvie said. “Look, we didn’t come here for this, but is there any way to give Wright his body back and keep Demalion’s soul in the land of the living?”

  “Oh yeah,” Wales said. “Your friend already knows how to do it. Done it once already. Wait for someone to die, and move in when the soul vacates. Of course, that usually means lingering in terminal wards of the hospital, and those bodies are wrecked or rotting, so hey, just enough time to say good-bye. Or maybe he’ll be lucky and find a coma victim whose brain matter isn’t too scrambled. Most likely, though, he’ll find a body he likes, debase and destroy the soul in it, and move on in. See, no problem at all.”

  Sylvie’s lips parted. “Bastard.”

  “I’m honest,” Wales said. “I’ve heard you prefer that to pretty words.”

  Demalion tightened his lips, said nothing at all, only headed for the door, his stride tightly controlled.

  Sylvie gritted her teeth; the door slammed behind him. “There’s got to be another option.”

  Wales picked up Marco’s Hand again, just holding it in his own. It seemed to give him an extra jolt of courage. “People always want what they can’t have,” he said.

  “Most of the time, they’re not trying hard enough,” Sylvie said, and left him alone with his ghosts.

  18

  No Rest for the Wicked

  AFTER THE STUFFY, MILDEW-DRENCHED HALLWAYS, AFTER THE MEATY scent of Wales’s apartment, the nighttime air felt fresh and sharp, like a winter morning, and never mind that it was a sultry, humid eighty-five degrees on a grungy city street. She found Demalion—definitely Demalion by the elegant way he used Wright’s wiry frame—leaning against her truck, staring up at the dark windows. He looked sick and exhausted; he jammed his hands in his pockets but not before she saw the tremor.

  “You believe him?” he asked. It was a vague question, able to cover so much of what Wales had said tonight, but Sylvie knew there was only one thing on Demalion’s mind.

  “No,” she said. Just that, met his gaze, not too long, not too short. Not trying to convince him. Not trying to convince herself. Demalion was a good guy. He wasn’t going to body-jack Wright.

  “Yeah,” he said. He climbed into the truck, settled into the seat with a groan. “Me neither.”

  She climbed in on the other side, and the silence lingered. They were both good liars when needed. They both had fears. So many terrible things had been done in the name of survival.

  “At least Zoe should be safer, wherever she is,” Sylvie said. “I might actually get a little sleep.”

  “Yeah,” he said, again. “That’d be a nice change of pace.”

  She started the engine; it growled, and Demalion echoed it, looked at his stomach with some surprise. “Shadows, aren’t you feeding him?”

  “Been a little busy,” she said. “And he’s a grown-up. He can feed himself.” The guilt still rose. Wright didn’t complain enough. When he did, she shut him down.

  When a McDonald’s lit up the night in the shut-down outskirts of the city, Sylvie pulled into the drive-through, listening to Demalion bitch, “Fast food? Really, Shadows?”

  Five miles later, she pulled the truck off the highway, letting it ping and cool on the quiet shoulder. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t drive while the cab of the truck smelled of salt and grease and the bacon on his burger. His contempt for fast food had faded as soon as the bag hit his lap. Now she had to deal with the sight of Demalion eating his meal like it was gourmet. Like he was in love.

  He licked his fingers, said, “God, would you believe I’ve been letting Wright do all the eating for us? You’d think—I mean, they’re his taste buds, not mine, and he’s been eating all this time, it shouldn’t taste . . . new. Wonderful. So damn good.” A smear of ketchup smudged his mouth; he rubbed it off with the back of his hand, so fastidious, then licked his skin clean, catlike, small, quick licks. She half expected purring.

  Her body still churned out adrenaline from the lich ghost’s attack, and all she wanted to do was crawl across the cab, lick the salt from his fingers until he forgot the meal and dragged her close. Her second chance.

  “You know, you haven’t washed your hands since we held the Hands of Glory,” she said instead.

  Demalion froze, grimaced, swallowed, then shook his head. “There were wipes. I remember seeing them on the floor. We used them. Besides, they’re Wright’s germs.”

  “He gets sick, so do you,” Sylvie said.

  He took another bite of his hamburger, chewed, and said, “True, and he’s too thin. I don’t know how he survives Chicago winters. He’s not a vegetarian, do you think? Or what if he has allergies? I should find out if I’m going to be taking my share of the meals.”

  “You’re not going to be inside him long enough for it to matter,” Sylvie said. She started the truck up again, worry canceling out that brief surge of desire. “Don’t get cozy.”

  “The Ghoul didn’t have any . . . decent suggestions.” Demalion slanted a long, low glance at her. In the dim glow of a distant streetlamp, the one not broken, his eyes looked more like Demalion’s than Wright’s. “You think he’s on the level? He’s far too close to his Marco to make me think he’s as firm in his convictions as he says. He could be our guy.”

  Sylvie shook her head, getting a brief smear of traffic light and oncoming headlights for her pain. “He’s not our guy.”

  “Really. You just know that.” Demalion crumpled his food wrappers, bagged them neatly, and dropped them in the narrow gap behind the bench seat in lieu of a trash can.

  “Nice,” she said. “Odalys is our guy.”

  “What?” he said. Sylvie normally would have given herself a point for eliciting that precise tone of exasperation, doubt, and surprise, but she was just tired.

  Apparently, fighting for your soul really took it out of you.

  “Why would you think—”

  “Location, location, location,” Sylvie said, flippant though there was a low, familiar roil of anger in her belly. It might seem sudden to Demalion, but she’d been puzzling at it ever since they’d set foot in the tenement. Was Wales their necromancer and if not, why not, and if he wasn’t, then who? Once Odalys crossed her mind as a possibility, it wouldn’t be dismissed, only expanded upon.

  Odalys? Tatya had pinpointed her as a necromancer, and Sylvie had allowed herself to be distracted by the superficial. Odalys had lied to her more than once in the conversation, lies that Sylvie had caught her in. How many lies had she missed? Had she been manipulated?

  Her little dark voice pointed out that Odalys had sent Sylvie to Wales, sent her primed to kill him, had called him Ghoul. Odalys scared of Wales? Hell, Sylvie had no magical talent at all, and she wasn’t the slightest bit scared of the man. Wary, but not scared. A witch with real talent? No. Odalys had feigned her fear, turned Sylvie’s visit into a chance for Odalys to remove her necromantic rival. Corporate takeover, small-scale, with a gun.

  She said as much to Demalion, and when he looked thoughtful, she added, “Plus, think about this. These are teenagers we’re talking about. Innocents in regard to black magic. They don’t jump headfirst into the deep end. They’re brats, not scholars. Odalys runs a store, on a major street. Wales lives in nowhere land.”

  Demalion frowned at the dash. “How much did I miss while Wright was in control?”

  “A critical lot,” Sylvie said. “Wales is not our guy. And given a choice between the two known necromancers in the area, given a choice between creepy-ass Wales in an Opa-locka tenement or Odalys . . . If you were a teenage fashionista, who’d be your pick?”

  “Just like that?”

  “I can tell you, straight up, that if Wales even got within ten feet of Bella’s crowd, they’d be hitting 911 on their cell phones. No, if these kids are getting Hands, they’re getting them from Odalys.”

  D
emalion sighed. “Maybe Wales cleans up well. Maybe he meets them elsewhere.”

  “Much as I approve of playing devil’s advocate,” Sylvie said, “this isn’t the time. It’s personality as much as anything else. Wales is a shut-in freak who has trouble with thinking outside the box. Odalys is a go-getting merchant. Odalys is all about the money.”

  “You think she’s the manufacturer as well as the seller? That she knows the Hands are defective?”

  “Creation and knowing are the same thing here. If she was just the merchant, if she’d just got some bad stock, she’d send it back and demand a refund from the makers. She’s a businesswoman, maybe the only true thing she told us. She wouldn’t endanger her client base if she could salvage her profit any other way. But if she made them . . .” Sylvie said. “Think about it. You’ve just made really powerful tools. Only you did something wrong. They’re dangerous to the wielder as well as the bystander. You can’t use them without risking your own soul. Destroying them is problematic. So what do you do? You sell them and try again. Sell them to teenagers who are too self-centered to ask why anyone would sell them a tool worth more than the cash they pay.”

  Demalion said, “You’re basing your theory on two meetings with two very different people and tangential knowledge of Zoe’s friends. It wouldn’t stand up as evidence.”

  “I’m not the ISI. I can make the decision. It’s enough for me to go on,” Sylvie said. “Besides. Wales was genuinely shocked that the Hands had been women’s.”

  Demalion narrowed his brows. “Was he?”

  “You were ther—” Sylvie shook her head. Wright had been there for that part, until Demalion, pushy and protective, had clawed his way back to the surface. “Yeah,” she said finally. “He was. First thing tomorrow, I’m going after Odalys.”

  They traveled back to Sylvie’s apartment in a silence punctuated only by environmental noise: the thrum of the engines, the hiss of other cars passing—the streets busy even after midnight—the occasional distant siren. Eventually, Sylvie reached for the radio, just to keep herself from saying what needed to be said, smothering the words under mediocre rock.

  She wasn’t up for a fight, not while driving, not when she felt the weakness of the argument in her bones. It might be Wright’s body, and Wright should get to use it all the time, but dammit, she was enjoying working with Demalion again.

  Still, once she’d pulled the truck into her parking spot, cut the lights, the ignition, she took a breath and turned to her quiet passenger. “You need to let Wright—”

  Demalion put a hand over her mouth. “A night? One night. One night’s nothing to him. To me? To us?” He moved his hand away, and before she could say yes or no, he leaned in and kissed her.

  She met his kiss, chasing that tempting familiarity in an unfamiliar form, lips soft against hers, stubble rasping against her palm. The kiss ended, but she didn’t pull away, leaned in closer, reclaiming his mouth. Making it all familiar. The way his hands moved, one settling at her left hip, the other closing on her nape like a cat’s teeth. The soft sounds they made together. The words she felt him breathe against her tongue. Missed you. Afraid I’d lost you.

  She collapsed into him, all her willpower draining away, her hands questing for skin, for closer contact. Worming her fingers into his shirt, the warmth of his skin, that slick curved scar—Sylvie jerked away, hitting the horn with her elbow and startling herself all over again. Her breath was uneven; her lips stung.

  “Syl—”

  “No,” she said. “He has so little he can trust right now. If he can’t trust us?”

  “He wouldn’t have to know—”

  “You do love your secrets, ISI man,” she said. It wasn’t a friendly reminder. They’d first started dating on a lie. That was the thing she had to remember. Demalion might be a good man at heart, but he had been trained by those who were less particular about their ethics. “Let me point out,” she added, “you’re the one who has the most to lose if he decides you’re a threat.”

  “Would you help him?” Demalion asked. “Choose him over me?”

  Sylvie got out of the truck, slamming the door hard enough to echo along the street. She felt bad for her neighbors: First the horn, now this. She watched Demalion come out the passenger’s-side door, the clawed hood between them, her fingers tight on the metal as if she had been the one to mark it. She waited until she had control of her voice, her temper, her own disappointment and fear. “He’s the one who’s alive. You tell me who I’m supposed to choose.”

  Demalion’s eyes widened, but he only nodded, a quick jerk of acknowledgment. She stormed up the stairs, making the slats jounce beneath her steps. She’d reached her apartment door before she heard him begin his own climb.

  The apartment was quiet and dark, but Sylvie’s nerves reacted instinctively; she found the gun in her hand before the door was more than a few inches open.

  “Burglars?” Demalion said behind her.

  One of the pluses of having very little in the way of stuff; her apartment was easy to keep clean and easy to notice when someone else had been in it. Especially since they’d made no effort to hide their visit.

  Her living room was a jumble of opened drawers, strewn magazines, books tumbled on the floor, sofa cushions thrown pell-mell about the place.

  “No,” she said, reholstered her gun. “Zoe.” The lock hadn’t been broken or otherwise disengaged, and while the existence of Hands of Glory made that a moot point, Sylvie kind of recognized the mess. Or rather, the temper behind it.

  “Looking for her cash.”

  “Yeah, that’s my thought,” Sylvie said.

  “At least you know she’s alive,” he said.

  “Alive and pissed,” Sylvie said.

  “I think that’s your bloodline’s default mood,” Demalion said, and she whipped around to look at him. Did he know? Had he found out about Lilith?

  “I’m more concerned with how she got in,” Sylvie said. He didn’t look like he knew. But this was Demalion. He was good at hiding his emotions, and now he had an extra layer of mask to do it in.

  “Key?” He picked up a magazine, smoothed it absently, set it beside the television.

  “She doesn’t have one,” Sylvie said. Her throat felt tight, her eyes dry and tired. “But there were four kids at Bayside. God, what if they all have Hands? What if Zoe just borrowed one?” If she’d spent the night attempting to save Zoe from herself, and the girl had just wandered off and put herself right back in danger—

  “They’re bonding to the Hands, right?” Demalion asked. “You said that Bella girl did. Doubt they’d lend them out. Don’t borrow trouble.” He slouched back against the wall, scratched at Wright’s incoming stubble. “Think about it. It’s not all that late. If she had come here with a Hand, there’d be paramedics tending to all your neighbors who woke up freaked-out at collapsing in front of their TVs.”

  Sylvie sighed, studied the wreckage; it was mostly disarray and not damage. There was that at least. “I keep a spare key at the office. She probably lifted it. Planning to get her stuff back. Even before I stole her cash.”

  “You really didn’t give her a key?”

  “No,” Sylvie said. “Didn’t give my parents one either.” She met his disbelieving gaze with her own. “What? I deal with weird shit, and sometimes it follows me home. You think I want them to walk into that unexpectedly just ’cause Mom decides to bring me a houseplant? My parents aren’t supernatural entities who can eat intruders.”

  “Hey,” Demalion said. “My dad was an archaeologist.”

  She met his gaze, and said, “No, he wasn’t. You never met the man. He died hundreds of years before you were born.”

  “What the hell, Shadows?”

  “Sphinxes gestate extremely slowly. A thousand years or so. I don’t think there was a lot of archaeology being done back then.”

  His lips thinned. In Demalion’s body, that expression had been intimidating. In Wright’s, it looked . . . tired.
“I hate that you know more about my life than I do,” he said. “Just to get that out there.”

  “Not my fault you and your mom don’t communicate.”

  His shoulders drooped, and Sylvie felt the instinctive urge to soothe the pain of her hasty words. His taste was still on her lips, and it would be so easy to reach up, pull him down, and kiss his fears away. She shook her head, busied herself picking up the sofa cushions and replacing them. “I’ll get the couch made up for you.”

  “Not the bed?”

  “Couch,” she said.

  She hunted the spare pillow that had been on the couch before recalling that Demalion and she had dragged it back to her bed; nausea swept through her again. She’d been so close to saying yes to Demalion, too close. Then and now.

  Couch assembled into a facsimile of a bed again, she left him to it. Stumbling over a scatter of books—Zoe and her brutal sense of fair play at work again. There hadn’t been any hiding place in Sylvie’s bookshelves, but she had dumped Zoe’s books, so Zoe dumped hers—Sylvie homed in on her bed, shoved the pile of searched linens to the floor, and passed out on the bare mattress.

  She woke partially when her cell phone buzzed against her hip. Swatting at it, still half-dreaming of clutching ghosts, brought her to full wakefulness. The room was watery with grey light, the first diffuse glow of morning approaching, and Sylvie thumbed the call through without even looking at it.

  “What.”

  “Shadows. Got your sister.” Lio. Zoe.

  She jerked upright, pushed her hair out of her face, coughed her voice to full capability. “What?”

  “I’m bringing her to your office on my way off shift. If you’re not there, Little Miss can spend her time in juvie until you bail her out.”

  “What she’d do?”

  “Other than use language that shocked even an old cop? Showed up too damn close to another burglary. See you soon, Shadows.” He disconnected while she was still speaking; she’d done the same to him more than a dozen times. Payback was a bitch.