by Lyn Benedict
AS SHE DROVE, SYLVIE CHECKED THE CLOCK AGAIN. STILL TOO EARLY to call Alex and ask her to do research. She called anyway, got her voice mail, and left a long report of the previous night’s events. Something nagged at her, and freed of the worry about Zoe’s immediate safety, of Demalion’s tempting company, of Wright’s scared eyes, she was able to pinpoint it.
The trouble was, despite the Ghoul’s assumptions, Sylvie wasn’t all that sure the Hands were defective.
Odalys was competent at lying, at projecting what she wanted to, at running her business just under the radar. It was hard to imagine that competence didn’t spread to her magic. Hard to imagine that a lich ghost—rare monster that it was—could be created by accident.
Harder still to imagine her wasting time and money creating more than one defective Hand. Given Bella’s illness, that soul sickness, Sylvie felt sure that her Hand of Glory had held a lich ghost as well.
One might be a mistake. More than that? Was deliberate.
There was something else the Hands were meant to do.
Hell, maybe it was some type of return policy. Sell the Hands cheaply knowing you’d get them back when the user wigged out at getting sick. Or maybe they were defective. Maybe she was assigning too much ability to the woman; after all, people overstated their abilities all the time.
Sylvie just didn’t believe it. There was a pattern she was missing. Two Hands, both defective. Both women’s hands. Both old women’s hands. Why? Women committed murders; she was proof enough of that. But old women? Bella’s dreams had shown Patrice Caudwell old and murderous. Sylvie’s own trial with Zoe’s Hand had been much the same: a murder committed with gnarled hands.
She’d be interested to see what Alex could dig up on the defunct lich ghost’s past.
ADELIO SUAREZ’S UNMARKED CRUISER WAS PARKED OUTSIDE HER office when she arrived; Lio himself sat on the bumper, smoking a thin cigar and drinking convenience-store coffee. Her gaze skimmed him, focused in on the sulking teen locked in the backseat of the cruiser.
“She’s okay?” Sylvie asked.
“You know, I only smoke these things when I’ve got something to celebrate,” he told her. “I’ve been saving this one.”
“Catching a teenage runaway that much a coup?” she said.
“Shadows, don’t make me ask. Tell me about Rafi. Tell me about his killers.”
Sylvie let out a breath. “You wired?” She didn’t think he was, and hell, even if he was, what would the tapes prove but that she was crazy.
“I play fair,” he said. “Tell me.”
Zoe banged on the window, made demanding gestures at Sylvie, and Sylvie gestured Lio away. Sat on a bench where she could keep an eye on her sister but still have the relief of knowing Zoe couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t know what Sylvie had done.
“You believe in magic?” she asked. “All those things you’ve seen on duty that you can’t explain.”
“I believe in evil,” he said.
“It’s not the same thing,” she said. “Much as I sometimes think it is. Look, the long and short of it is, the satanists are gone. Transformed by magic into something harmless.”
“You telling me you’re a bruja?”
“Hell no,” Sylvie said. “I’m telling you I farmed the task out. I couldn’t do it myself. Didn’t have the right skill set. But he did.” The words were stark, oddly easy to say after all the effort she’d put into not telling him. Maybe because she knew, deep down, how he’d react.
Lio groaned and put his head in his hands. “This is bullshit, Shadows. Bullshit.” His cigar fell to the concrete, smoldered slowly. “I trusted your word.”
Sylvie said, “There’s not going to be the kind of satisfaction you’re after, Lio. I can’t take you to a secret grave, can’t show you their bones. There’s not going to be anything you recognize as justice, but Rafi’s death has been paid for. I promise you.” Cold comfort for a man who didn’t understand how far-reaching magic could be.
“How do you mean, transformed?” he said.
“You know what I mean,” Sylvie said. “No longer human. They weren’t worthy of it.”
He shook his head, sighed. “No lo creo. No te creo.” He rose, stared back at the car, at Zoe slouched as low as possible in the backseat in case any of the early-morning tourists or joggers saw her.
Sylvie said, “You don’t want to. You want to be part of the normal world. To be blind to the rest of it. I can understand that. But I’ve been honest with you. If you change your mind, call me. I’ll show you what became of them though I doubt it’ll give you the closure you want or need.”
She touched his arm a last time, and stood. “Thank you for finding Zoe.” She licked her lips, hating to do it, but hating the despair on his face. “I made a deal with you. You didn’t find it satisfactory. I don’t usually offer rain checks. But I owe you one.”
He waved a hand at her dismissal, and said, “Get your sister out of my car and stop the burglaries before the press figure out there’s something going on.”
“I could take that deal,” she said. “But I won’t. I would have done both those things anyway. Listen to me, Lio. I owe you one. That’s more valuable than you think. Remember it. I don’t offer myself in debt lightly. You need me, you call.”
“Don’t think so,” he said. He straightened on the bench, rose, and said, “People you deal with end up dead more often than they should. Bella Martinez died last night. Doctors still don’t know why. Do you?”
It felt like a punch to the gut, all unexpected. Sylvie had thought the girl would get better, the Hand’s ghost gone, not worse. But maybe the ghost had been gone because it had already succeeded in eating Bella’s soul, had fed and moved on.
She shook her head, and Suarez took it for ignorance, not denial. He headed back to the cop car, popped the back door, and pulled Zoe out. She was cuffed, hands behind her back, and Sylvie remembered she’d been found near the last burglary site.
“Is she under arrest?”
“I didn’t do anything,” Zoe protested. “I can’t believe you sicced the cops on me.”
Suarez looked at Sylvie a long time, ignoring Zoe; Sylvie imagined him balancing scales in his mind. His disappointment in her answers. His need to make progress on a case. His lack of tangible evidence.
Eventually, he pushed Zoe forward, unfastened the cuffs, and said, “She’s all yours.”
SYLVIE UNLOCKED THE OFFICE DOOR, USHERED A SILENT ZOE INSIDE, and said, “We have to talk.”
“I don’t want to talk. There’s nothing to talk about. Why don’t you be a good big sister and take me out for breakfast. I’m starving.” Her sister’s tone was false casual, her poise a front to buy time. Waiting to see what exactly she was in trouble for. A childish tactic, and it made Sylvie’s fury stronger. Zoe had no business getting involved with the Magicus Mundi.
Sylvie leaned up against the doorjamb and waited her out. She knew Zoe had been back to her house, had found the money gone, had found Sylvie’s note. Otherwise, Zoe wouldn’t have trashed Sylvie’s apartment. She didn’t have to wait long. Zoe’s eyes darkened, narrowed, her jaw clenched. “Where’s my money? You had no right!”
“Do you really want to talk about rights?” Sylvie asked. “ ’Cause there’s a lot of things we can talk about, including the right of the dead to be treated with respect.”
Zoe made a face, a fierce grimace, and trotted out a lie. “I know, it’s gross. But it’s part of a biology class, like that exhibit on musculature—”
“Black magic on the curriculum now? Christ, Zo, how the hell could you bring that into the house? Sleep with it in the walls? How could you do that?” She stormed across the room, slapped the desk hard; her hands stung, her breath rasped in her throat.
Zoe looked older, suddenly, than her years. Harder. She stiffened on the other side of the desk. “You’ve no idea what I can or cannot do. And you never will.” She closed her eyes, raised her hands, palm up, began murmuring, rubbing her finger
s along the edges of a gemstone ring.
Sylvie slapped her sister this time instead of the desk, her gun leveled even before she recognized the spell: Pearls for sorrow in her ring, and what bigger sorrow was it than to forget the past and be doomed to repeat it?
Zoe took a step back, her cheek reddening, her words stopped. Still an amateur to be distracted so easily.
Sylvie lowered the gun immediately. Almost immediately.
“I can’t believe you,” Zoe said. “You pointed a gun at me. Mom and Dad are going to be piss—”
“Shut up,” Sylvie snapped.
“Who are you to tell me what to do? I’m sixteen, nearly—”
“I’m the one who cleans up the messes made by humans fucking around in the Magicus Mundi.” Her hand was tense on the gun; Zoe’s ring hand was behind her back. “I wouldn’t try that again. You’ll find I’m immune to most magic.”
Zoe paled. For one moment, Sylvie thought that was it. Either her older-sister glamour was back, or Zoe really hadn’t expected such fierce and informed disapproval and was feeling chastened.
Then Zoe let out a shriek, more air than sound, as angry as a spitting cat, shrill as a siren. “You knew! All this! This . . . world, this power, and you knew! And you kept it from me!”
The gulf between them was deeper than she had ever imagined. Zoe’s introduction to the Magicus Mundi hadn’t been like Sylvie’s, a long haul of fear and chaos and loss. Zoe’s introduction had been about pleasure and power and profit.
“I hate you,” Zoe spat. “Hate you.”
“That’s too bad, because I’m the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.”
Zoe stamped her foot. “Where’s my money?”
“Who sold you the Hand?”
“Who made it your business?”
“You’re in trouble, Zoe. Real trouble. Your friends are in trouble,” Sylvie said. Exasperation and fear made uncomfortable inroads in her belly. Bella . . . Suarez hadn’t told Zoe. That much was obvious.
“Hardly my friends,” Zoe said.
Sylvie dropped onto the couch and stared at her sister. “You’ve spent every waking hour with them for the past two years.”
“C’mon, Syl, you really think the rich kids play nice with me out of the goodness of their hearts? I bought my way in.” Zoe slouched back into the desk chair, brought her knees up, crossed her wrists over them. She looked ready for a photo shoot, down to the soft pout and the hard eyes. She looked like a stranger.
Sylvie swallowed, her fingers tensing on the arms of her chair. “You weren’t holding those pills for Bella.” She made it a flat statement though her voice quivered with rage. How could Zoe have fallen so far? So unnoticed? “You were refilling them.”
“I make a good go-between,” Zoe said. “Keeps Bella and Jasmyn and their boys from having to talk to the dealers. Keeps their parents in the dark. In return, as long as I can keep up with them, they let me play.” She rubbed the pearl ring thoughtfully.
“ ‘ Keep up with them’?” Sylvie kept her gaze on that ring, on her sister’s words. A large part of her was paying the kind of attention she’d spend on an enemy, waiting for them to strike. But Zoe’s words were more hurtful than any attack; she’d had no idea her sister felt like this. Left out, bitter, alone, valueless.
“With their style? The clothes? The parties? Eating out? It all costs money. God, Syl, people pay you to find out things? You’re slow.” Zoe shifted in her chair, crossed her arms across her chest, dropped her gaze. Sylvie wondered coldly if it was shame that made her refuse to meet Sylvie’s eyes or anger so great it choked her.
“Why? Why bother with them if they’re that shallow?” Sylvie asked. Her throat felt stretched around all the words she wanted to say.
Zoe raised her head, pushed back the dark mane of her hair, streaked salon-tipped nails through it, her eyes old and cynical. “Because they’re the power brokers. Their futures are mapped out, and people go out of their way to help them along the path. All I was trying to do was get a push here and there. Half their parents are benefactors at major schools. Hang out like I’m one of theirs, and who knows the letters they’d write, recommending me. Grades aren’t enough anymore.”
“So you’re prostituting yourself to make them happy?”
“Not since I learned that I can make things happen. All on my own. I don’t need them anymore.” She smiled, and it was such a happy thing that Sylvie almost didn’t say it.
But facts were facts.
“Magic turns on its user,” Sylvie said. “It’s not the answer, Zo.”
“Maybe not for some people. Maybe for them, it’s dangerous. But I’m good at it.” Zoe licked her lips. “It’s like, all my life, I’ve been waiting for a talent. For something that interests me more than school. For something that feels right. This is it.”
“Who told you that?” Sylvie said. “That you’re good. Your what—do you have a mentor? Or are you basing it on the fact that you’re not dead yet? ’Cause it’s early days.”
Zoe jerked as if Sylvie had struck her. “You’re just jealous.” She was losing momentum, though, in the face of Sylvie’s convictions.
“You’re in danger, Zoe. Your friends are in danger.”
“I don’t care about them, remember?” Zoe scowled.
“Bella’s dead. You’d better care.”
Zoe went white.
Sylvie found a brief spurt of relief in her sister’s reaction. The girl had some fellow feeling after all. Sylvie, who’d dealt with her share of sociopaths, thought that simple selfcenteredness and alienation were far easier to stomach. Zoe might grow out of both.
“You’re lying,” Zoe whispered. “She’s sick, yeah, but—”
“Truth,” Sylvie said. “If you hadn’t kept your Hand of Glory in milk, you’d be dead, too. Not that I’m not thrilled to pieces you’re not dead, but why did you do that?”
“Bad dreams,” Zoe said, malleable with shock. “When I complained, she said to put it in milk. Said warm milk made for sounder sleep.” Her voice lost its brittle edge, became her sweet little sister again, whom she had read to, babysat, entertained, and taught. It soothed Sylvie’s temper as nothing else had.
“Oh, Odalys,” Sylvie said. “Selling platitudes along with spells.”
Zoe gaped, her poise utterly gone under the twin blows. Bella’s death. Sylvie’s knowledge. Something satisfied purred in Sylvie’s chest. Always so good to have her suspicions confirmed.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? What I want to know, Zoe, is what she told you. What she said to make you think this was a good idea, dabbling in magic. Did she say you were special, were her friend? She’s not your friend, not your savior from the unfairness of life. She’s your dealer, and she’s pushing death.”
“Not true,” Zoe said. “She warned me. She told me how to be safe.”
“She gave you a defective Hand of Glory with a lich in it. That’s not being safe. Tell me about the Hands. Tell me which of your friends still have them.” Hammering hard, and Sylvie saw her mistake even as she made it. Zoe lowered her head, and when she raised it again, her eyes were hard, her jaw set.
“No.”
Lilith’s blood. That refusal to bow her head, passed down in the blood, passed down as a latent force hidden as stubbornness. Lilith’s blood in her. And in her sister.
Zoe’s eyes grew wet, but they stayed resolute. It took all of Sylvie’s willpower to not start the interrogation up again. Instead, she sucked in a steadying breath, counted her heartbeats, making them slow down.
She reached out, stroked Zoe’s hair; the girl jerked her head away. “I’m not the person you need to talk to. I don’t like magic. I don’t trust it. And I don’t want you involved in it. But if that’s where your talent lies—”
The door jangled, and Alex came in, coffees already in hand, mouth already going. “Hey, Syl. Got your report. Wales sounds like freaky good fun. I want to go next time. Wright upstairs?” She balked when a few s
teps in allowed her to assess the mood in the office.
“You found her!”
“Lio did,” Sylvie said. “Alex, I want you to take Zoe to Val’s. Get Val to take her in, keep her safe. From herself and from Odalys.”
Alex groaned. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? She hates us.”
“You sent me there,” Sylvie said. “Didn’t seem to bother you then. Look, I’ve got to put Zoe someplace safe. Hell, I even considered letting Lio keep her, but I’m not sure he can control an angry teen-witch wannabe.”
“I’m not a wannabe,” Zoe said. “I am a witch.”
“So’s Val. You’ll like her. She dresses well,” Sylvie sniped. “And you will be polite to her, or she’ll turn you into a toad.”
“Aw, c’mon, Sylvie, people can’t get turned into things—” Sylvie shook her head, muttered, “You really do not know the world you’re fucking around with, Zoe. Go to Val. Be nice. Learn stuff. Learn to walk away.”
“Am I supposed to say thank you?” Zoe said. She snagged a cup of cold coffee and nuked it.
Sylvie said, “Hey! You’d better be damn grateful. Sending you to Val is going to save your life.”
“Give me back my money, and you’ll see gratitude.”
Sylvie slapped the wall. “Goddammit, Zo. You don’t need money and magic both. Pick one or the other.”
“I need both,” Zoe snapped. “The one gets the other.” Sylvie’s temper moved to high boil. “Oh, don’t tell me. Odalys is making you pay her for the privilege of fucking up your future, for giving you a deadly toy.”
“Whatever,” Zoe muttered, and Sylvie marveled that it was possible to love and hate someone so much at the same time. Zoe took her coffee and headed upstairs, probably to try the safe. Sylvie had no illusions. Zoe would run if she got her hands on the cash.
Her grip tightened on the desk, and she hung her head, chest hurting. Alex rose, leaned over her shoulders, and rested her forehead on Sylvie’s back. “Teenagers suck?” Alex offered. It was thin, brittle, scanty comfort, but Alex’s concern came through loud and clear.