by Lyn Benedict
She raised her face, and he kissed her. A strange first kiss that felt nothing like new. Slow, familiar, comforting, his tongue dueling gently with hers. The rasp of stubble a gentle friction against her skin, as welcome as a breath of sea air. She shifted closer, slid onto his lap, a knee moving to each side of his hips. His hands caged her waist, spanned her ribs, thumbs rubbing circles in the hollows between bone, all of it familiar. “Shadows,” he whispered against her throat.
She leaned closer still, chasing that elusive sea taste of him, that familiarity. Her hands found their way into his hair, carding the tufts to wilder heights yet. She settled more comfortably across his lap, spread her knees wider to take him closer. His hand slid up her spine, rested heavy at her nape; his fingers curled around the crest of her shoulder, traced familiar patterns, S after S after S, her name drawn on her skin with careful touches.
Just like. . . “Demalion,” she murmured.
“Yes,” he breathed back.
She scrambled away from him, the shock of it heating her face, her throat, her chest. Shame burned in her breast.
“What are you doing—” Her breath failed her, caught tight and muffled by her own welter of conflicting emotion. Anger, as always, came to her rescue. “What the hell? I tell you to give me a name, and you choose that one?”
“I reclaim what’s mine,” he said. He shrugged, a fluid rearrangement of Wright’s stiffly set shoulders, projecting an ease he obviously didn’t feel. His eyes were on her, sandy brows drawn tight; his lips still damp with her breath. “And I remember. You kept that last piece of me safe. And then you gave it back to me. I am, was, Michael Demalion. Want to welcome me home?” Though he smiled at her, it was shaky, hard to hold.
“Demali—” She shook her head, felt like the world spun with it. “It’s not possible. The Furies devour souls.”
“I don’t know how I escaped, but I did,” he said, rose to draw her back into his arms. She resisted, kept from pressing herself back into Wright’s lanky chest, set hands flat against his skin, wanting to believe, wanting not to. If Demalion was a ghost, he was beyond her aid, and this could be nothing but a cruel reminder of what she had lost.
As if the thought proved the facts, Demalion shivered beneath her hands, then he was stepping back, his eyes wide and wild. “Sylvie? What’s—”
She didn’t need the clipped tone to know; the surprise was enough. Wright was back where he belonged.
“Missing time?” she asked.
He nodded once. “What hap . . . No, don’t wanna know. I’m gonna—Can I go get a shower?”
She realized her hands were still on his skin, jerked back. “Go for it.” He slipped away from her like a feral cat, contorting himself to evade her and the couch, before disappearing into the bathroom.
Sylvie collapsed back onto the couch. Could she believe it? She turned possibilities over in her mind like garden rocks, wary of things beneath.
The ISI and a sneak attack? They knew Demalion, but they didn’t know how she and he had fitted together.
Her lips burned; her hands still carried the memory of warmth. She shifted uneasily, and pain spiked her thigh, a sudden snake-strike of unexpected hurt.
Sylvie slapped her hand over the pain and found that curved piece of glass that was all she had held of Demalion. Her blood wetted the edge of it, ran thin and dark into the curved heart of it. Despite the crystal’s gloss, the shine of reflected light, it was oddly empty; the pale glow it had held, that kiss of soul—was gone, reabsorbed.
A broken crystal ball. Such an impossible thing to save a soul, such a contradictory egg—only birthing once its pieces had found the same flesh and become whole.
Her face was wet, the skin tight on her cheeks; her throat ached. She scrubbed salt from her face, her lashes. In the bathroom, she heard Wright swearing, and flinched at the idea of facing him. She couldn’t. Not now. Not when she’d be peering at him, wondering if she could see Demalion in the way Wright moved, not when Wright was the one who needed her help.
The shower cut off, and Sylvie jumped into motion.
She dropped the crystal fragment into the wastebasket, forced determination into a body that wanted to sink under so many emotions: guilt, relief, a spike of joy, despair. Wright was a no-go for the moment. But the magical burglars were just begging for attention. One quick change later—trading her sweatpants for comfort jeans, a little loose in the waist, and an oxford on over the tank top—she collected her gun and realized she’d left the holster in the bathroom that Wright was using as a hidey.
She couldn’t imagine knocking and saying, I know you’re having a freakout that I helped cause, but could I have that holster so I can go out and harass people, and no, you’re not invited. . . . Even her courage had limits. Far easier to shrug on a silvered denim jacket Zoe had left on her last visit: It was fashionable on some model’s runway in a city like Paris, Venice, Hong Kong, and way over the top anywhere else. But it had pockets. Discreet, padded pockets, the perfect thing to secrete a compact gun.
Her satchel shouldered, jacket on, attitude in place, she headed out into the Miami morning, bookended on either side by the trouble she left behind and the trouble she hoped to find.
6
Information Retrieval
DIFFICULT TRAFFIC TO THE BEACH, NOW THAT IT WAS CLOSER TO EIGHT, helped her to narrow her focus. Forget about Wright for the moment. Forget the whys and hows of Demalion’s return. Forget about Zoe and her problems. Forget about her dislike of Lisse Conrad. Concentrate on the simplest things. Driving without accident. Hunting down her leads on the burglars. Compartmentalization was the key here.
She slued the truck into the alley between the bar and her office, taking quick advantage of a gap between cars. She had to stomp on the brake to avoid hitting the Dumpster, left a quick yelp of burned rubber, and rocked herself in the seat. But hey, another perfect parking job. She’d recovered enough of her composure to actually feel a tiny smidge of pride.
The bar’s alley door opened; Etienne poked his head out, all tousled dark curls and a faceful of piercings over a pale green beater tee. Dragonfly tattoos decorated his bare shoulders, black wings on black skin, and a blurred image of what she presumed was Jesus or a saint stretched the length of his forearm. He yawned, propped himself on the mossy stucco, and said, “’Sup, Shadows? Coffee in a mo’.” He turned around, not waiting for a response. That was Etienne, all over, slow-moving but inexorable.
Sylvie watched him go, decided she really had been out of the neighborhood loop if Etienne was sleeping in the bar as a deterrent to burglars. Confrontation was a dangerous tactic at the best of times; in this case it was likely to be a useless one if her experience was anything to go by.
She squeezed out of the truck, pushing the door open the whole eight inches available—parking in the alley did tend to leave precious little space—and dropped to the sand-coated asphalt, just as Etienne reappeared with two paper cups in his hands. An unbuttoned guayabera had been slung over his tee: business wear, Miami bar casual.
“Kinda busy,” Sylvie warned, even as she took the first cup. The heat went straight to her bones. She warmed her hands around the cup as if it were thirty degrees outside and not a damp eighty-five. She inhaled the deep roast, popped the lid to see the oily shimmer of serious caffeine, and thought she could make the time for a single cup’s worth of conversation.
He grinned, white slash of teeth. “You’re always busy, and I’m not looking to chat.” He pressed the second cup into her hands, sweet-scented even through the lid. It was a WASP-SPECIAL, mocha plus hazelnut, double cream and sugar: candy bar in a cup. She popped the lid; no jimmies, at least.
Sylvie looked down at it with more disapproval than the concoction really warranted. It wasn’t the coffee so much as what it foretold: Her plan for a quick in-and-out raid on Alex’s computer for that list of homes had just been squashed flat as a conch fritter. Her fault, completely. She’d been in such a hurry to avoid . . .
. . . the explanation she owed Wright that she’d left the list behind.
Her nerves jittered without her taking a single caffeinated sip. Alex was a minefield of potential questions, and Sylvie wasn’t ready to answer anything that might touch on Demalion’s inexplicable return.
“Thanks,” she said, lifting herself from the side of her truck, where she’d been slouched against the warm metal, tipping the coffee cup in Etienne’s direction.
“De nada,” Etienne said. He disappeared back into the bar on a waft of air-conditioning that mingled spilled alcohol with the cloying, chemical bite of Freon.
She sidled around the truck, slurping at her own coffee, scalding her tongue as always, but hell, impatience was a familiar flaw. The front door was locked; she kicked at the metal surround, rattle and clang, and shouted, “Alex!”
Alex popped the latches, a series of clicks and snaps one after another, and said. “Dammit, I knew you’d be in. I could have been sleeping.”
Sylvie waved the coffee cup, and Alex’s attention derailed. She pounced on it, and Sylvie said, “So, I’m a bad boss, made you get up early, and asked you for info that kept you up. You got anything useful?”
“List’s on the desk,” Alex said. “Organized for driving ease since there’s nothing much else to go on. All the neighborhoods are nice, no one reported a car stolen, and none of the owners have criminal records. How’d it go with Wright?”
Sylvie considered telling Alex exactly how it had gone, down to the little groan he’d made when her nails grazed his throat. Then she imagined the result: an impromptu lecture on the psychology of grief-driven behaviors as seen on Oprah, and god help her, but probably some type of client-employee counseling as scripted by Alex. Instead, Sylvie bit it all back, and said, “About as you would expect.”
Alex looked down at the murky froth of her de-lidded coffee, and said, “Jimmies, this needs jimmies,” and disappeared into the kitchenette with suspicious alacrity.
Sylvie eyed the computer, thought about her list, and followed Alex. Alex had her head buried in the cabinets, hunting candy toppings they didn’t have, and Sylvie leaned up against the counter. “Something you need to say, Alex? About Wright’s case?”
Alex pulled her head out of the cabinet, wiping a stray cobweb from her hair. “We’ve got to clean—”
“Alex.”
“Is he possessed?”
“You had doubts, and you force-fed me the case anyway?”
Alex slumped against the counter. “I did a search on him before I said yes to his case. No red flags. Cop right out of high school, wife in insurance, apartment, kid. A few small commendations for the job, but he’s looking at beat cop for a while longer. I couldn’t see any reason he would lie; it’s not the right type of lie for a cop, but you always say to look for real-world reasoning first. And I might have skipped that step.”
Alex poked morosely at the foam on her coffee, the better to flavor the fingernail she began to chew. “He was just so desperate, I guess I got caught up in his fear, then in selling him to you. I didn’t start worrying until later.”
“You lucked out,” Sylvie said. “He’s possessed.” As soon as the words, sure and decisive, left her mouth, she grimaced. Red flag to a bull.
“Oh, good!” Alex said, then backtracked. “I mean, bad. For him. Good I didn’t waste your time with galloping PTSD or a really special case of dissociative identity disorder. So what’d you find out? What’s up with the ghost? What does it want?”
“I’ll catch you up later,” Sylvie said. “I just came by for the list. Since you’re in, can I assume that you’ve added useful facts to my info?”
“C’mon, Syl, I’ve never seen possession before.”
“It’s not a game or a collectible card,” Sylvie snapped. “It’s a man’s life.” Two men’s lives. Her breath tightened in her chest again.
Alex went white, set down her coffee, and passed Sylvie the list. It had grown in her hands, gone from sketchy information to a page-long dossier on each car and owner.
Sylvie tucked the sheets into her jacket, the slick denim reminding her—“Zoe come back yet?”
Alex shook her head, still silent. Still upset.
“Crap,” Sylvie said, wondering where her sister had washed up. Bella’s? Not likely, given their apparent spat, but teenage fights healed as fast as they happened. Jasmyn? Ariel? “She’s probably hanging out at one of the princess pack’s homes. Or off bumping uglies with Raul—”
“Carter, I think,” Alex offered. Her voice was small, uncertain.
Sylvie felt guilt sting her. She let out her breath, and said, “Drink your coffee before it gets cold. And it’s not Carter. It’s Carson. God help us all. Basically she could be anywhere.” Sylvie shook her head. A sulking Zoe could disappear for days, staying with one friend or another. She’d done it before. But she’d be back soon enough for her stuff. The material girl wouldn’t go far without her phone. The burglars, on the other hand, needed finding, preferably before the cops blundered in and scared them into hiding, or worse—caught them and made all Sylvie’s hours unbillable.
She patted the list in her pocket, snagged a handful of candy from the kitchenette, and headed back out with a final admonition to Alex. “If Zoe comes wandering back? Keep her here.”
Alex nodded, then said, “What about Wright’s case? You want me to see if I can get a line on an exorcist?”
Sylvie froze midstep, her heart racing. It made it hard to keep her tone level, but she managed. “Exorcists hunt demons exclusively. We’ll have to think of something else.”
“I could call Val Cassavetes. Even if she’s still licking her wounds, she’s a smart witch. She can—”
“She’s not answering our calls, remember? Shadows Inquiries is x-ed right out of her little black book.”
“But this is different,” Alex persisted. “It’s not a favor to you; it’s to help—”
“Leave it,” Sylvie said, and fled the office before Alex could really dig in and start working the angle Sylvie didn’t want to think about. Getting rid of the ghost would mean getting rid of Demalion, and that turned her stomach, made her shake.
This is trouble, the little dark voice said. Real trouble.
She slammed into her truck, reversed gears, and slipped back into morning traffic with only two horns going off and one person insulting her parentage. Sylvie just waved a hand in a vicious salute, thinking they had no idea.
The list blew on her dash, its edges dancing in the air-conditioning, and she put a hand on it. First stop? The beach and the Audi.
She found the house easily, but the cops had beaten her there, were speaking to a woman who looked more than displeased to be explaining herself to them. Even at a distance, Sylvie could see the stacked gold bracelets on her arms flash as she told the two uniforms exactly what she thought of them, with plenty of emphatic gestures and a shrillness that carried in the early-morning air.
South Beach, Sylvie thought, turning her truck around at the intersection, where women put their jewelry on before their clothes. The cops would be a while yet; the morning sunlight and the woman’s white-silk robe did little to hide the skin beneath, and ogling her was a more pleasant way for them to begin their shift than rousting drunks.
She left them to it and headed across the water to the Grove, home to a silver Navigator.
At ten o’clock in the morning, Coconut Grove was peaceful and pristine. The sun glazed the stucco, greened the trees, dusted the Mexican-tiled roofs with gold. The air was still and lazy, and Sylvie’s battered diesel truck rumbled through the streets like sluggish thunder. For once, her truck wasn’t out of place; all around her, the street grew battered trucks, bringing men and their machines to work: lawn mowers, pool cleaners, window washers, house painters, coming to get the job done before the peak heat of the day. Coconut Grove was a mecca for laborers, full of homeowners too busy to m
aintain their houses themselves, well-off enough to hire someone to do it, and penny-wise enough to want it done cheaply.
Sylvie imagined that if she yanked drivers and registrations out of all the trucks, she’d find a good half were “hand-me-down” businesses, moving from a cousin to an uncle to a brother or brother-in-law, all using the same state ID.
The legality of their employees didn’t matter to the homeowners, not when their grounds showed the results of their efforts. Every house sported smooth lawns and curving drives studded with palms, poincianas, air-plant-laden Florida oaks. Plush green grass swept up and around drives, its tender blades so closely trimmed it looked like the houses were emerging from velvet. No doubt the pools in back were crystalline blue, untouched by algal growth or fallen leaves.
Sylvie thought of her own apartment’s maintenance man. Told to spruce up the place by distant landlords, he installed random statuary and fake topiary. She passed Kwan-Yin to get to her apartment, walked by the David to pay her rent, and swam under the eye of a laconic ceramic alligator and a St. Francis that doubled as a bird feeder. Coconut Grove was a different world.
Sylvie cruised slowly down the street, pausing to verify that house with the unfortunate pink stucco peeking though the coconut palms was Zoe’s ex-friend Bella’s house. She’d thought the neighborhood looked familiar. Maybe, after she talked to the Navigator’s owner, she’d knock on Bella’s door, take a quick gander to see if Zoe had crashed there.
The Navigator’s house was four doors down from Bella’s—a modest home, with a drive that curved only once instead of three times, with a street view of the house and gates that were ornamental rather than functional.
The Navigator rested in the opened maw of the two-car garage, the foggy silver behemoth that had been out at Bayside Mall the night before. More, the lady of the house, blue jeans, silk blouse, and wedge heels, stood beside it, keys in her hand. There was a puzzled stillness about her that suggested she’d been standing there for more than a minute or two; the shift of her hips suggested indecision.